What Else?

When I first started teaching engineering design, I adopted a design process that required students to come up with three different possible solutions to any design challenge we worked on - but wasn’t one enough? Over the years, it became strikingly clear why the brainstorming process should include multiple options.

We often think of one viable idea, and that idea is obviously the solution we think we should pursue. But our first idea isn’t always the best, our first thought is nearly never the extent of our thinking, and our first judgment isn’t typically the most accurate.

We get hooked on our first idea and want to just get in action or move on. It’s actually a little intellectually lazy - avoiding the effort to come up with alternative options or thoughts - and, at times, it can be a bit harmful, especially in our relationships.

What do you like? What are you committed to? What’s the next task to accomplish? What type of family culture do you want to build? What would be your dream job? What should you have for breakfast? Is this person worthy of your respect? What’s on your mind? Like with our design projects in school, the first answer to any of these questions is just scratching the surface, and the first answer isn't necessarily the best, most accurate, or even the real answer.

There’s a magical question that I’ve been asking more and more of myself, my students, and my friends, not just in a design project context, but in a broader life context: “What else?” (It’s one of the 7 insight-inducing questions in Michael Stanier’s The Coaching Habit.)

Every time I ask this question of students, I’m shocked that they so easily go into what else is on their mind. It’s like the thoughts and ideas slow to a trickle after a minute of talking, then I ask “what else?” and the valve opens all the way again for more thoughts and ideas to come flowing out.

Why do we do this to ourselves, stop thinking so quickly without digging just a little deeper? We have clearly documented errors in our thinking called cognitive biases that have helped us survive in the wild since the beginning. Each of the biases described in this list of 12 gives a reason for why we are quick to go with our first response.

Our first thought, our first response, our first judgment, our first impression - it’s not likely what’s true for us, others, or the world.

Ask yourself and others the question, “What else?”, and you’ll very quickly realize that the first, typically obvious answer, is not all there is. There’s a lot more juice in that fruit, and it literally only takes a couple moments of a squeeze to get a clearer view of ourselves, others, and the world itself.

What’s on your mind? …What else? ❤️

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Who Am I Talking With?

A handful of years ago, I was asked to give a chapel talk at my school on bullying. One of my friends suggested sharing about how there are actually 6 people present when we’re in a conversation with another:

Well, it might feel like there are 6 people present in that conversation. Actually, there are just two people present, and the more we’re focused on what we’re thinking about ourselves and them, the less aware we are of either of the two people actually in the conversation.

Thought is infinitely creative, powerful, and beautiful, and at times it can distract us from the people we’re actually with or the world of life and color and shape and beauty always all around us. It honors others and ourselves when we focus more on the people actually there instead of the people we've constructed in our minds.

One trick that helps me is to repeat in my mind what the other person is saying; it puts my focus on them and their words instead of my own thoughts. It usually just takes a sentence or two to bring me fully engaged in the conversation.

As far as getting more in touch with who the people in that conversation really are: in addition to the subjects we already study in school, education can also be about developing an understanding of who we really are, fundamentally, beneath all concepts and thoughts about who we are. One goal I have for this summer is to develop and pilot a program for adolescents that does just that.

In the meantime, breathe a little bit, repeat their words in your thoughts, and grow to appreciate the people you’re with - this is an ongoing practice, and it's worth it in my opinion. After all, our thoughts will always be with us, but the people in our life may not be.

I hope you have a great day. ❤️

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The Gift of a Gap

In my first year teaching, a student of mine had been working on some organizational tasks in our class workshop during his lunch period. While I sat with a couple colleagues eating lunch in the faculty room, the student came in and asked a question; I had an immediate response for him and the kid left right away. One of my colleagues with me, my department chair, said that he was impressed by my decisiveness.

There’s something about decisiveness that feels and looks powerful to me. There seems to be value in knowing the right response, and there seems to be value in acting on it immediately, with little space between the stimulus and that response.

Recently, a different student of mine finished Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, and he reminded me of a quote:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

In a high-stakes, high-speed situation, quick decision-making is very important. In a classroom, or when with our kids or spouse or other people that matter to us, quick decision-making can actually be detrimental.

The more in tune I am with my created intentions (described in Living with Integrity), the more quickly I can safely act. But we all nearly always have competing intentions within us, especially if we haven’t consciously created what our intentions will be in our interactions with others.

The remedy to this common problem of our actions not aligning with our best intentions:

1. Take a moment each morning to create your intention(s) for the day. This can take less than a minute, and I suggest writing these intentions down somewhere so you don’t have to keep them in your memory.

2. Take a moment prior to scheduled activities to create your intention for that activity. Before a meeting, before a class starts, before spending time with your kids, before any specific activity, think for a moment of who you’d like to be for others or what talents, skills, or commitments you’d like to foster or live from in these activities.

3. Take a moment, and put a gap between stimulus and response. Maybe take a breath, maybe count to 3 in your mind. Whatever it takes, put a gap between things that happen and your response. Allow yourself an opportunity to then respond from a worthwhile, created intention, and not whatever default intention your psychophysiology awakened in that moment.

In case you're looking for ideas, here are some of my go-to intentions: compassionate, curious, enjoyment, engaged, at ease, in action, patient, unconditionally in love, and fully alive.

Have an intentionally profound day. ❤️

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