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Psychology

Fail your way to a billion dollars: life lessons from J.K. Rowling

March 17, 2010

Llloyd Jones (who tragically/hilariously failed to grad­u­ate uni­ver­sity because of library fines) once said that ‘’the men who try to do some­thing and fail are infi­nitely bet­ter than those who try to do noth­ing and suc­ceed.’’ We’ve all heard a lot of quotes like this grow­ing up (though rarely from peo­ple who failed to grad­u­ate because of library fines). Win­ston Churchill said that, “suc­cess is the abil­ity to go from one fail­ure to another with no loss of enthu­si­asm.” That ‘the path to suc­cess is paved with nec­es­sary fail­ure’ is maybe the com­mon­est of admo­ni­tions when things go wrong.

Like­wise, the uber-successful always, at some point, seem to credit their suc­cess with their own will­ing­ness to make mis­takes. And yet for some strange rea­son, I’d still rather win.

Can Harry Pot­ter help?

If you’re any­thing like me you prob­a­bly don’t go look­ing to JK Rowl­ing for advice on most of the impor­tant mat­ters in life (except, if you’re like me, at Hal­loween). How­ever, in the Spring of 2008 Har­vard Uni­ver­sity did. She was asked to address the grad­u­at­ing class. I imag­ine more than a few Har­var­dians feel a kin­dred con­nec­tion to the magically-gifted char­ac­ters at Hog­warts. (And yes, they really do call them­selves ‘’Harvardians”).

In her speech Rawl­ings dis­cussed fail­ure and imag­i­na­tion, and (sur­prise, sur­prise) the neces­sity of fail­i­ure. Her insights are fresh and worth read­ing (or watch­ing). I’ve listed my favorite below the video.

J. K. Rowl­ing On failure:

[For her]… fail­ure meant a strip­ping away of the inessen­tial. I stopped pre­tend­ing to myself that I was any­thing other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into fin­ish­ing the only work that mat­tered to me. Had I really suc­ceeded at any­thing else, I might never have found the deter­mi­na­tion to suc­ceed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some fail­ure in life is inevitable. It is impos­si­ble to live with­out fail­ing at some­thing, unless you live so cau­tiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Fail­ure gave me an inner secu­rity that I had never attained by pass­ing exam­i­na­tions. Fail­ure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I dis­cov­ered that I had a strong will, and more dis­ci­pline than I had sus­pected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowl­edge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from set­backs means that you are, ever after, secure in your abil­ity to sur­vive. You will never truly know your­self, or the strength of your rela­tion­ships, until both have been tested by adver­sity. Such knowl­edge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qual­i­fi­ca­tion I ever earned.

J.K. Rowl­ing on imagination:

Choos­ing to live in nar­row spaces leads to a form of men­tal ago­ra­pho­bia, and that brings its own ter­rors. I think the will­fully unimag­i­na­tive see more mon­sters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real mon­sters. For with­out ever com­mit­ting an act of out­right evil our­selves, we col­lude with it, through our own apathy.

Greek author Plutarch: ‘’What we achieve inwardly will change our outer real­ity.” That is an aston­ish­ing state­ment and yet proven a thou­sand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable con­nec­tion with the out­side world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives sim­ply by existing.

If you choose to use your sta­tus and influ­ence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to iden­tify not only with the pow­er­ful, but with the pow­er­less; if you retain the abil­ity to imag­ine your­self into the lives of those who do not have your advan­tages, then it will not only be your proud fam­i­lies who cel­e­brate your exis­tence, but thou­sands and mil­lions of peo­ple whose real­ity you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside our­selves already: we have the power to imag­ine better.

My two cents

All of this actu­ally makes me think about pol­i­tics –about how the social­ist imag­i­na­tion is rooted in an under­stand­ing of inevitable fail­ure. (It’s not inevitable all the time, but sometimes).Whereas the cap­i­tal­ist (fis­cally right-wing) imag­i­na­tion is rooted in an under­stand­ing of what it takes to be suc­cess­ful. The two sides focus on dif­fer­ent aspects of suc­cess (free­dom from harm and suf­fer­ing, ver­sus the free­dom to suc­ceed) and each per­spec­tive car­ries its own lim­i­ta­tions and advantages.

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What teachers know

March 11, 2010

Today’s grad­u­ates face a new breed of chal­lenges as they enter the work­force. They will con­front messier, intractable prob­lems such as cli­mate change, global ter­ror­ism, antibi­otic resis­tant dis­eases and per­sis­tent mar­ket weak­ness. The same tech­nolo­gies that empow­ered them as learn­ers at the same time also mul­ti­plied the poten­tial for global havoc.

And this has changed the def­i­n­i­tion of an appro­pri­ate education.

Teach­ers know this

Teach­ers appre­ci­ate that han­dling the new, intractable prob­lems requires a new skill set. They require empathiz­ing, imag­i­na­tive cit­i­zens –in touch with their own cre­ative impulses, con­fi­dent indi­vid­u­als who can imag­ine totally new solu­tions. Teach­ers want to facil­i­tate their stu­dents’ growth as artists. But teach­ers know some­thing else as well.

Tomorrow’s man­agers must also be lit­er­ate and numer­ate. As well as being cre­ative lead­ers, reach­ing out and find­ing fresh answers to the prob­lems of the future, they need to know every­thing we grad­u­ated know­ing. And they need to be firmer in their foun­da­tions than we were. The stakes are higher for them and the com­pe­ti­tion for jobs is more fierce.

Inside most class­rooms today you find teach­ers tak­ing an iter­a­tive approach, bal­anc­ing the advan­tages of con­stancy and rou­tine with their neces­sity for exper­i­men­ta­tion and adap­ta­tion. You find teach­ers who are doing the best they can with the resources they have. The demands on teach­ers have never been greater. And they know it.

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The secret of happiness (from Daniel Kahneman and Jerry Seinfeld)

March 6, 2010

I am by day a mild-mannered Econ­o­mist, qui­etly cor­rect­ing stu­dents’ sup­ply and demand dia­grams, dis­cussing the long-term profit pos­si­bil­i­ties in oli­gop­o­lies. But by night, I get to pur­sue my real pas­sion in life: surf­ing –both chan­nel and web. Some­times I do both at once! So I live a pretty full existence.

Some­times on my quests, I unearth a jewel such as this pre­sen­ta­tion from Daniel Kah­ne­man, on our “expe­ri­enc­ing selves” and our “remem­ber­ing selves.” We expe­ri­ence hap­pi­ness, he explains, in the moment and also (often very dif­fer­ently) in our memory.

The two headed happiness-monster

Self-actualization is a process of rec­on­cil­ing these two selves: expe­ri­en­tial and remem­bered. They way this works is sim­i­lar to the les­son told by the ever-sagacious Jerry Seinfeld:

When it comes to Hap­pi­ness we’ve got the spon­ta­neous ‘Now Guy’ and story-teller ‘Then Guy’. Now Guy is your unso­phis­ti­cated, spon­ta­neous younger-self. He’s always got ideas about how to spend your life­sav­ings fly­ing to Vegas for a really wild week­end. But Mon­day morn­ing it’s Then Guy who has to explain the whole thing to your wife. A happy life requires the two to nego­ti­ate and agree.

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Inside the Mind of Roger Federer: The Mental Advantage of a Tennis Legend

June 26, 2009

Flying FedererI have been a fan of Roger Fed­erer since I first saw him inter­viewed in 2003. I was struck then by his poise and his grace and the way he thinks about the game. And now, at just 27 years old, with 14 Grand Slam titles to his name, he’s still as con­sis­tent as ever.

Federer’s got the whole pack­age: great foot­work, unfail­ing mechan­ics and power which help him keep his oppo­nents on the run. But what really sets him in apart is his men­tal technique.

Men­tal Tennis

The most impor­tant psy­cho­log­i­cal abil­ity in a Ten­nis player is called “selec­tive atten­tion” or “atten­tion man­age­ment” (Source). This goes way beyond sim­ply stay­ing focused; it is about direct­ing your aware­ness to rel­e­vant stim­uli while ignor­ing things like a scream­ing crowd or some­one sneez­ing. The mind wants to focus on any­thing novel or dif­fer­ent, but you have to keep your mind engaged in the tac­tics of the moment. Asad Raza writes, “Con­cen­tra­tion takes men­tal energy…whenever I saw Fed­erer on the grounds, he seemed to be using as lit­tle of it as pos­si­ble”. [Click to con­tinue the arti­cle, or to comment…]

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The Scientific Recipe for Greatness

May 16, 2009

Scientific RecipeThe traits of suc­cess­ful peo­ple is a sub­ject that has intrigued us since at least the 1930s. That was the era when Dale Carnegie founded self-improvement indus­try (which now worth $11 Bil­lion per year in the US alone); it was also in the late 1930s that a group of social sci­en­tists qui­etly began the ambi­tious Grant study explor­ing the lives of 268 Harvard-educated men.

Sixty years later (the study still going strong) they have basi­cally given up hope of dis­cov­er­ing the secret recipe of great­ness which they were after. (They also didn’t achieve their other lofty aim of eas­ing “the dishar­mony of the world at large.”) How­ever, they have at least iden­ti­fied seven pri­mary fac­tors that pre­dict healthy (phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal) liv­ing and aging. They are: get­ting an edu­ca­tion; hav­ing a sta­ble mar­riage; not smok­ing; employ­ing “mature adap­ta­tions;” not abus­ing alco­hol;  hav­ing some exer­cise and main­tain­ing a healthy weight.

All of these strike me as sur­pris­ingly sim­ple, straight-forward and action­able rec­om­men­da­tions –all but the one. Chal­leng­ing is the con­cept of “adap­ta­tions,” which the study has explored. Adap­ta­tions are the defence mech­a­nisms that peo­ple use to respond psy­cho­log­i­cally to chal­lenges in life:

Vail­lant explains defenses as the men­tal equiv­a­lent of a basic bio­log­i­cal process. When we cut our­selves, for exam­ple, our blood clots—a swift and invol­un­tary response that main­tains home­osta­sis. Sim­i­larly, when we encounter a chal­lenge large or small—a mother’s death or a bro­ken shoelace—our defenses float us through the emo­tional swamp. And just as clot­ting can save us from bleed­ing to death—or plug a coro­nary artery and lead to a heart attack—defenses can spell our redemp­tion or ruin. […]

The health­i­est, or “mature,” adap­ta­tions include altru­ism, humor, antic­i­pa­tion (look­ing ahead and plan­ning for future dis­com­fort), sup­pres­sion (a con­scious deci­sion to post­pone atten­tion to an impulse or con­flict, to be addressed in good time), and sub­li­ma­tion (find­ing out­lets for feel­ings, like putting aggres­sion into sport, or lust into courtship). (The Atlantic arti­cle is avail­able here.)

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