the keys to the kingdom

If self -help books really worked wouldn’t every half concerned parent be forcing their kid to read them?

If self-help books really worked wouldn’t the authors be doing other stuff HIGHLY SUCCESSFULLY rather than writing endless new self-help books?

Apart from Benjamin Franklin, and the extraordinary Clement Stone, who made a $100 million selling insurance before he wrote a self help book, I can’t think of one self-help writer whose ‘success’ isn’t the rather incestuous kind of writing highly successful self-help books.

ie. selling hope sells really well.

The problem, if I may be so bold, with books like Stephen Covey’s 7 habits of highly effective people is that they don’t work.

Yep. Big claim I know but here's why I make it:

I’ve been reading self-help books all my life. I love ‘em. But they don’t do what they say on the tin. They aren’t a manual for achieving what you want to achieve.

They are good for many other lesser things though. Not negligible things either.

Self- help books can give you a real boost, a pick me up that can last several days.

They can give you a framework for making sense of an enterprise.

They can introduce you to the helpful idea of not blaming others for your current situation.

They can provide very useful tips when you are stuck.

In other words self help books bear much the same relationship to ‘life success’ as how-to-write books do to successful writing.

Writing I know about. To succeed at it you need to have a book or books in mind that you really like and want to copy or emulate. You need two, or preferably three, hours of completely uninterrupted writing time five days a week. You need something you care about to write about. And that’s it bro’.

Not much of a how-to book is it?

The nub of the matter is actually doing the activity not thinking about it, talking about it or reading about it.

Here’s what I did.

I loved the idea of long distance walking as a kid. Yet every long distance walk I did I gave up on, except one of fifty miles I did with the scouts aged 14 where I had the support of my fellow hikers. Fifty miles – not far eh? But it was enough, a slim shard to hang my next attempt on.

Scroll forward ten years. I had tried to write books and not finished one. I had made two short films and then failed to finish a third. Another year threatened to slip by and I didn’t want to be sitting up on new year’s eve thinking, “yep another dud year with nothing achieved.”

So I thought, “Forget what I WANT to do and focus on what I CAN do and what would make me proud and happy too.”

Walking. I can walk. So I set out and walked a combination of the High Route, the GR 10 and the GR11 from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic along the ridge of the Pyrennees. It took me 42 days to do about 700km and I loved it. It wasn’t all easy. At a couple of points I almost gave up, but that thought of yet another thing given up spurred me on. In the last 24 hours of the walk I covered 60 miles over hilly terrain and slept for two hours - I was that pumped up about finishing.

Then I wrote, in cafes mainly, a book about this walk. It wasn’t a good book. It was rambling and dull but it was 60,000 words long. On the last day I wrote 8000 words in about ten hours to finish it. It was kind of like the last dash at the end of the walk. And writing each day was like doing my three or fours walk before lunch and then three or fours hours afterwards.

I’d cracked writing by applying the ‘success method’ I used in walking.

Then I did a year long martial arts course which involved four to five hours training five days a week for a year.

I knew I could keep going because I had kept going during the walk. So the notions of persistence I had ‘grown’ doing the walk I was able to transfer to the course.

Then I wrote a book about spending a year doing martial arts. The method of writing- mainly in the mornings, four to five hours a day was a direct copy of the timetable of the course.

This and subsequent books all succeeded.

But still I didn’t know what was going on. I had a hazy idea. But though I had ‘cracked’ walking, learning a physical art and writing I thought other areas, such as business or even everyday life were a bit beyond me. As such I stumbled along admiring those who seemed far more efficient and organised than I.

I have a friend, a TV producer who is probably one of the most efficient people I know. She once said to me, “Nothing makes me happier than that feeling I get when I tick things off on my ‘to do’ list.”

Weird or what? I thought. For a long time.

Then I applied a little translation, the kind of translation I had done when I converted my success at walking to success at writing. I realised there was NO DIFFERENCE between what she had said, and what I sometimes think when I have done 3000 words in a good session, printed it off, and written the tally on my daily word count sheet. No difference.

And then I thought about all those people I have met who complain about how hard writing is. When I question them I realise they are MAKING it hard by putting loads of obstacles in their way. For example: not setting out sacred amounts of time – instead they write ‘when they have free moment’- get out of here!; or they don’t have a quiet place to write- instead writing in room where there kids can come in and annoy them- impossible.

I realised I was doing the same thing in everyday life. I wasn’t giving it enough respect, time or obstacle free-ness if I can use such a term.

When I applied the same rules as I did to writing: uninterrupted time, deadlines and goals, celebrate and record progress- it was all plain sailing.

So the keys to the kingdom are simple.

Find something you can finish. Maybe it’s restoring an old car. Maybe it’s getting a grade in a language exam- but outside school if you are still a student- so you have to be a bit self motivated. Maybe it’s like me- doing a long walk. Or climbing a mountain. It can be anything as long as you finish it.

Then you transfer the ‘oomph’ that you have acquired, the skills of setting aside time and energy for a real attempt, the focus and determination, to whatever you want to do next.

It’s that simple.

the Amundsen factor #4

So far, in the interests of simplicity, I have characterised the Amundsen factor as ‘not overloading the mission’. In other words, keeping the goal defined and simple and without sub-missions along the way. This, has of course, been said before in various ways: keep it simple, focus, do one thing at a time and so on. Nevertheless, it is such a natural human tendency that it needs to be repeated again and again: don’t overload the mission.

However it is interesting to look at other aspects of Amundsen’s achievement.

Connected to, and, indeed, nurturing the single minded mission is the ability to learn from mistakes. The feedback time from making a mistake, to realising that something different must be tried, can vary enormously. In some people it can take years before they realise they have in fact made a mistake. The truly wilful blame everything and everyone but themselves. Scott, whilst attending a dying pony, ordered eight more ponies to be sent back to the Discovery hut across dangerous sea ice. This resulted in the loss of seven animals. Bowers, who carried out the orders for this folly, wrote:

“It just had to be…let those who believe in coincidence carry on believing. Nobody will ever convince me it was not something more.”

In fact, Bowers had not followed Wilson, who changed course when he saw what a rotten state the ice was in. If Bowers had, the ponies would have been saved. Scott may have initiated the error in given the orders, but Bowers had made a mistake in the way he executed them and yet he could not admit it.

The contrast with Amundsen is instructive. After finishing the laying of depots at 80 and 82 degrees latitude all the men crowded into a tent to have their say about what had gone right and wrong. The tents were uniformly condemned- these were two man tents that Amundsen had thought would be warmer. They were not; and cooking in a cramped tent, and then carrying half the meal across to the next tent had been a disaster. Boots were also found to be far too stiff and small. The solutions were found immediately. The tents were joined together to make a four or five man model. Pieces of leather were added to the toecaps of the boots to enlarge them, whilst sections of the sole were removed to make the boot less stiff.

The whole tenor of Amundsen’s trip is one of humility in the face of a great challenge. Plans and preparations are made far in advance but if things go wrong a solution is sought. Learning is not inhibited by command structures or ego.

Though it sounds a trifle obvious to recommend that people learn from their mistakes it is actually far commoner to observe the opposite: people making the same mistake again and again and calling it by another name: ‘bad luck’, ‘someone else’s fault’,  ‘that’s just my way of doing things’, ‘it’s not important anyway’. The latter is probably the most insidious. A mistake is recognised- but not as something of importance. It is overlooked because the mind is elsewhere. To have a simple unloaded mission also helps focus on what mistakes really are important and which are not.

It is interesting to note that Amundsen’s works show a sense of humour, Scott’s do not. Humour, apart from being very welcome, is an essential requirement in judgement. Humour rests on the ability to pick out the incongruous, the thing that doesn’t fit. Scott lacked Amundsen’s judgement- that is very obvious. He would spend a entire night tending a dying pony whilst neglecting the transport of his living animals. It might be unfair on Scott to criticise his inability to learn. Perhaps he couldn’t. He just didn’t have the judgement to know what was important and what was not.

the Amundsen factor #3

As the great mountain explorer Bill Tilman often remarked, the quantity and quality of food on an expedition is supremely important. Indeed it can make or break morale.

Amundsen knew this, which was why he was the expedition cook. Amundsen also simplified rations down to only four ingredients – pemmican, biscuit, milk powder and chocolate. No coffee or tea which he regarded as ‘dangerous stimulants’ on an expedition. To coffee addicted Norweigians this is harsh indeed, yet my own experience of too much coffee on a trip that involves long sustained work, is that you over exert at the beginning and crash later on- and on any trip involving the possibility of frostbite when you drop your vigilance, you cannot risk that. An interesting example of Amundsen’s attention to detail.

Having four ingredients in a ration pack simplifies things amazingly. Chocolate plus milk makes a drink. Biscuit plus chocolate makes desert. Biscuit plus pemmican makes dinner. Pemmican plus milk plus biscuit makes a slightly different dinner. Monotonous- maybe- but with added fresh(ish) seal meat it was perfectly adequate. Scott did not capitalise on the fresh seal meat possibilities- as a result all his team were suffering the onset of scurvy by the end.

If you know what is in each pack you don’t have to open it to find out. Very important in sub-zero temperatures when you have mitts on. There is also less chance of waste with opened and discarded packs being pilfered from.

After quantity and quality of food is regularity. On a good expedition you eat at the same time every day. There is nothing more hateful than sitting around for an hour at the end of a hard day waiting for the bloody cook.

When Amundsen packed the food he insisted it be done with great care. Milk was poured into little bags which were inserted between the other ingredients to fill in the gaps. The ration pack containers themselves were made wood painted black. These could then be used to make marker poles which stood out against the snow. A line of such poles either side of a supply cairn enabled its easy discovery during poor conditions.

The cook has the chance to build morale or depress it with his cooking. With his instinct for making every element of the expedition work optimally, Amundsen certainly understood the key role of the cook. One can generalise from this and see what role, in any project or operation, touches everyone on each day in a significant manner. It could be quite lowly- a secretary or receptionist – yet their effect could quite outweigh their apparent ‘insignificance’.

the Amundsen factor #2

Though Amundsen had won his race to the South Pole almost before Scott had begun (he was 200 nautical miles ahead of Scott when the latter started) he made mistakes, some of them just as ‘foolish’ as Scott’s.

I use inverted commas because anyone engaged in pioneering a new route will make mistakes. When an historian who has never made a long journey in unknown terrain criticises the efforts of these early explorers, you can either be amused or annoyed- either way it seems hindsight is always 20:20. Roland Huntford- whose biographies of Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen are always brilliantly informative and excellently written- suffers from the desire to point out and jeer every time Scott puts a foot wrong. He appears to find everything British laughable and everything Norwegian admirable. He puts Amundsen and his co-explorer Bjaaland on a pedestal and he despises Scott. 

There is a photograph in Huntford’s ‘Race for the South Pole’ of Scott and Amundsen. One in furs and the other in a cloth coat. Tacitly the book is supporting the recurrent myth that the British, in their Burberry cloth jackets, were wearing the wrong clothes for a march on the pole. Yet Amundsen wore clothes made from exactly the same cloth as the British! It is true Amundsen started out wearing furs, which were useful when they were ski-jorring (being pulled along on skiis while attached or holding onto the sledge) because the lack of body movement made them colder. But once they had to actively ski, furs were too warm and too heavy to just carry. Once Amundsen and his team encountered the barrier and were ascending to the polar plateau they ditched their reindeer furs. At the pole Amundsen wore a ventile cloth anorak cut to allow lots of movement. He only kept a fur hood which he had cut off his reindeer coat.

My kids came home from school and told me Amundsen beat Scott because he had dogs. It isn’t that simple. It was initially settled by Mear and Swann in 1986 and many subsequent expeditions (indeed all current expeditions as dogs are banned in Antarctica- crazy I know) that manhauling is a perfectly acceptable form of polar transport. If Scott had only manhauled, things might have been different. But he used dogs, ponies and motor tractors as well. All this made for exceptional planning problems. Add in the fact that his polar party- for reasons of service etiquette included the unfit Oates- was enlarged at the last minute from four to five- which made all the prepacked rations the wrong quantity. When the supply teams returned they over consumed from already-opened ration packs and most importantly already-opened paraffin cans.

If there is a single biggest failure in Scott’s expedition it was probably the fact that his fuel supplies were too low to start with and were further reduced massively by paraffin ‘creep’. At very low temperatures paraffin becomes a strange semi-solid that can creep up the inside of a can and out of a poorly secured bung. Lead soldered seams can also open at low temperatures. Amundsen had his cans silver soldered and once opened, Bjaaland soldered a tap on a can so that the precious liquid wouldn’t creep out. Scott was eating semi -frozen rations by the end and sitting in freezing tent because he had not enough fuel. It was not the food he needed at one ton depot but the fuel. Amundsen, with his experience of five years in the arctic knew that fuel supplies were hugely important- for warmth, cooking and for melting snow to avoid dehydration. He took ten times the weight of supplies that Scott did.

It is interesting to look at the expedition structures and how responsive each man was to information and advice from below. Both Scott and Amundsen were desperate to not leave the Antarctic empty-handed. Here we see the germ of ‘overloading’ the mission ie. losing focus. In Scott’s case this meant proposing his 13 day side journey to the western hills and glaciers. Amundsen proposed a similar pre-pole journey to King Edward VII land only to be dissuaded of it by the other expedition members. Because his position was less authoritarian than Scott’s, he backed down. There was some give and take in how things were decided. Scott, as naval officer, simply drafted orders from his desk in the Discovery Hut and expected them to be followed. Evans pointed out that they would better off going 150 miles in the direction of the pole than poking around in the wrong direction- whatever the geological benefits. Scott overruled him.

One can easily get caught up in Scott v. Amundsen as it’s so fascinating. However I am just as interested in what we can learn about the ‘Amundsen factor’. How, while still making errors, Amundsen was never floored in the way Scott was.

Amundsen’s major ‘error’ was to leave too early for the pole when it was still very cold. He was mislead, to some extent, by Scott and Shackleton’s previous temperature readings from the warmer McMurdo sound. But the major cause was over eagerness to move.

His error in starting out too soon when the weather was too cold became apparent very quickly. After five days they turned tail and returned to the hut- some of the men with frost nipped heels. Yet this failure was turned to his advantage in many ways. First it precipitated a bitter argument between Amundsen and Johansen, who was the more experienced polar explorer but resented Amundsen’s leadership. The mutinous comments made by an irate Johansen gave Amundsen the right to remove this troublesome explorer from the polar team. He had already been worried about Johansen’s instability but had lacked a hard reason to exclude him. But it had to be done- emotional ructions use up far too much energy to be countenanced on a serious expedition. A second benefit of the early start was that the ski-boots were revealed as over tight- these were taken apart and restitched to make them more comfortable. Given that tight boots are the single easiest way to get frostbitten feet this was no small advantage.

Perhaps the Amundsen factor is best revealed in the way Amundsen takes ‘bad luck’ and turns it around. Scott constantly bemoans his misfortune in his diaries. If there is a storm Amundsen is philosophical but Scott is depressed. So much so one is tempted to suggest- “What did you expect? It’s the south pole!”

To believe that luck is needed in any enterprise is the wrong footing to start out on. Of course you are probably going to need a ton of luck along the way, but you need to be able to visualise success without it. This Amundsen did, with massive quantities of supplies and meticulous planning for every eventuality. Scott bemoaned his luck because he relied on it. When his luck ran out he lacked the inner perspective to turn things around.

the Amundsen factor

"I may say that this is the greatest factor -- the way in which the expedition is equipped -- the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order -- luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck."          

Roald Amundsen

The equipping of an expedition is paramount, and, just as important is the mastery of the correct use of that equipment. I suggest that equipment fetishism, though, which is common among successful explorers, serves also as a very important tool for refining the visualization of a successful expedition. The successful explorer visualizes every eventuality before making his journey. He prepares for every eventuality and is ready when something untoward happens.

But this visualization is only possible when there is a single, clear and unloaded objective.

Humans, typically, load objectives. You’re going shopping- why not drop into the library too, and while you’re at it post a letter and see what is on at the local art centre. That’s called being efficient, and, in ordinary circumstances, it is efficient.

The householder who leaves his house to buy one item and then returns, only to leave a few hours later to buy another is mocked for his or her inefficiency.

But that is precisely the skill needed for successful exploration. The natural ability and desire to unload an objective.

Loading objectives is at the heart of good business practice. While you are waiting for X, do Y. Multitasking is a skill all housewives and all chefs need.

Not explorers.

Unloading an objective may have to be learned if it isn’t natural. Everyone will push you to have multiple objectives for your journey: scientific, charitable, geographical. You must resist this by resolutely unloading each sub-objective until your basic goal is revealed.

When you load an objective you divert energy and resources elsewhere. The essence of an expedition is that 100% of all resources are needed for the main objective. There is never any slack. This is true of any first time journey, and trebly true if no human has made this journey before.

Without the feeling of 100% commitment to the objective the will wavers, excuses appear and multiply. Look at any failed expedition and you will observe a loaded objective leading to a chain of small accidents culminating in either disaster or giving up.

All big accidents start with an unexceptional chain of small accidents. That these can accumulate is due to attention being elsewhere, diverted. Elsewhere because the main objective is being relegated while a secondary objective is being pursued.

Nothing is ever conquered on the fly. You make a simple plan with a single objective. You then visualize all the stages necessary to achieve this objective. You run a mental what-if for each problem you think up. You use equipment for each stage as a way of making the visualization real. Working on preparing equipment- as Amundsen’s men did with their boots and sledges not only builds familiarity, it also builds a strong mental image of the planned journey and its eventual success.

mastery

What is mastery? How do you master a subject? How do you know when you are a master of something?

Mastery is one of the most satisfying things. Aiming for it is enough. Being a ‘master’ is a snare and a delusion- even if you are one. Better to be on the path to mastery.

The aim of mastery is simple- to get better and better at what you do- be it making meatballs or shooting a bow and arrow to sailing a boat to writing. Mastery in one area gives clues that can be used to mastering another area more quickly, but be warned, real mastery takes at least ten years of continuous, though not excessive, effort.

Are there any shortcuts to mastery? Yes, but if you are interested in them they won’t work. Mostly thinking about shortcuts is a waste of time? Why? Because to achieve mastery you need to be in it for the long haul. To be in it for the long haul you had better enjoy it. Short cuts are never ever enjoyable. If they were, everyone would use them and they wouldn’t be a shortcut. An example is an intensive course in something. It’ll work, but the pressure will take the fun out of it. Very often people who take intensive courses give up soon after.

Mastery is not to be taken lightly. A master craftsman is a joy to behold. He adds something to the quality of all the lives he touches. The hard part of many modern jobs is that there is no clear path to mastery, nor even much benefit to it. Being a master business executive sounds weird because it is. The whole reason to be an executive is to get on the promotion ladder to the top slot in the corporation. This is not mastery in the usual sense, more an exercise in cunning and judicious brown nosing.

Mastery is not a position, a job, a title- it is simple being very good at a demonstrable skill. The general principles of mastery are few but here they are.

Human ‘virtues’ such as patience, singlemindedness, ability to control negative emotions, all these are an aid to mastery. Concentration and avoidance of distraction are another great help. The modern world revolves around increasing distraction opportunities. If you seek mastery you must actively avoid the crap distractions on offer. And even the good ones.

You must centre your life around your mastery subject. Let’s say it is making models of the titanic out of matchsticks. Then you must chose a job which gives you enough free time to be able to spend the best of your energy on model making. Jobs that require body and soul commitment (ie.make you worried) are no good. They are a distraction from achieving mastery.

The plateau is the usual place to find oneself when attempting mastery. Improvements, fast or slow, are quickly taken for granted. Only when you compare yourself to how you were at the beginning do you realise how far you have come, and how far you have to go. Most of the time, then, you are trying to get better but are not significantly improving. To continue without some external sign of progress is the hardest thing. That’s why you need to take it a little easy and enjoy what you are doing. The Japanese have the right approach in their martial arts. They practice everyday but they do it in such a way that it is just another day. Movement from the plateau is most often effected by association with someone inspiring, or a new source of interest. This produces a new perspective. It gives to what you already know a new order. Progress, beyond a certain point, is about reorganising what you already know, re-ordering it, discovering what really is important and what isn’t.

Mastery is its own reward. That’s why it’s such a good thing to aim for. You know when you are improving- who cares what others think?

two types of creativity

Type 1: trying to solve a specific problem. You need to get a heavy canoe down a cliff. You need to design a boat that can be packed into a rucksack. You need to extricate a stuck vehicle from deep sand.

In these type of problems we know our desired outcome very well. We can visualise the ENDPOINT but not the startpoint. For this type of problem brainstorming is useless. What you need is spiral thinking (see the entry by that name) plus, sleeping on it. By spiralling the situation you are simply circling the thing, checking everything out, seeing what is there, observing and not deciding anything. You may come in closer and closer, zooming in as you see what is needed but nothing is forced. You are loading the brain with all it needs to solve the problem. You wake in the morning and hey presto it is solved.

Type 2: This is the open ended type of problem typified by coming up with a GREAT advertising slogan or campaign. Brainstorming was designed for this and works admirably. How many uses can you think for a brick? Brainstorm it and you’ll think of hundreds. There is no fixed ENDPOINT apart from coming up with a GREAT idea. So you need to just chuck as much mud at the wall as you can. You can use this to come up with characters and plot situations too.