My process for preparing for public speaking hasn’t changed much in 30 years.
First, I make sure I know what I’m talking about in general. It seems like lots of people skip this step, but I try not to end up in situations where I’m required to pontificate at length about topics of total ignorance for me. I truly enjoy speaking in front of groups, but I keep it to topics where my knowledge is both broad and deep.
Next, I bullet out my major points. Just to keep me on track, I make sure which core concepts I want to cover. If I want a reminder of a particular anecdote or analogy, I’ll jot one down, but usually I don’t write more than that in advance.
Then I’ll put down time blocks for each concept; how long to talk on each point before moving on.
Sometimes, right before a talk begins, I’ll get this small pang of anxiety – “What if my preparation was insufficient, and I’m not able to think of enough to say?”
I have this moment of anxiety despite the fact that this has never once happened to me in 30+ years.
The exact opposite problem is frequently the case. I have to check myself to make sure I don’t run over, ramble or digress. Despite the fact that this is something I almost always have to actively plan against, I have never once felt anxious about it the way I sometimes feel anxious about a problem that has literally never manifested.
I wonder why that is? Are my anxieties reflections not of what I think is likely to happen, but of what I haven’t prepared for?
Today’s going to be a bit of a departure from my normal routine. I saw something very interesting and I’ve been thinking about it pretty much non-stop, so I’m going to write my thoughts. I’ll warn you, I’m headed WAY out of my wheelhouse on this one, as you’ll see. But stepping out of your area of expertise is good on occasion, and I’m comfortable with being wrong or misguided as long as I’m thinking. So here we go.
First, the thing itself – a fantastic episode of Legal Eagle (as they mostly are):
If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, I’ll give you the basic spoilers. Back in the early ’70s, a couple owned a farmhouse in Iowa; a second home that was not where they lived. Because of its isolation, it kept getting burgled and the Brineys (the couple) were at their wits’ end. So Mr. Briney set up a shotgun trap in an upstairs bedroom where valuables were kept (this is in addition to countless locks, signs, etc.). The place gets robbed anyway by a guy named Katko, who gets his leg (mostly) blown off by the shotgun trap, and is in a cast/brace for two years. He serves time in prison for the breaking and entering, but then sues Briney because of the trap.
Spoiler: He wins. The Brineys had to pay not only his medical expenses, but also punitive damages equal to an additional 50% of the medical cost.
Now, here are my thoughts rattling around. I think the eventual outcome of this case was unjust, but not for what might seem like the obvious reasons. Basically, the reason the case was decided in the burglar’s favor was because it’s unreasonable to set up life-threatening booby traps in unoccupied homes. If there’s no inherent threat to life, it’s wrong to create a trap that could not only dis-proportionately punish guilty people, but also quite possibly injure or kill (relatively) innocent people, like perhaps kids just exploring an old farmhouse or something.
I do not disagree with that. While I believe that you have the right to defend your property, I also believe in the limitations set out above – the likelihood of harming an innocent third party being the main one. I mean heck, the place could have caught on fire and a firefighter could have been in there and gotten shot in the face; that’s bad. All sorts of bad outcomes could happen there.
That’s not why I think the outcome was unjust. The reason I think the outcome was unjust is because Katko should not be the recipient of any money.
The central argument used to win the case is that “booby traps are bad,” and so you should be punished for using them. Sure. But that punishment should be a criminal matter, not a civil one. If Briney owed a debt, it should be to society, not the burglar.
Think about it. Katko paid for his crime by serving time and paying a fine. But he didn’t pay the fine to Briney, even though it was Briney who was robbed. And he did his time in jail, not in service to the Brineys. But then he got paid for burglarizing the house (well in excess of the money he would have gotten from the stolen goods!), and that seems on the face to be a miscarriage of justice.
Katko was injured during an attempt to wrong Briney; both legally and morally. If Briney had been forced to pay a fine or even serve some time himself, I don’t think I’d have further complaint. But Katko deserved no recompense; his fate was the result of his own actions, and those actions were unjust. That’s the essential combo – a firefighter who got shot would also have been harmed “because of his own actions,” but those actions would not have been unjust.
Was Katko’s “punishment” in excess of his crimes? Certainly. Breaking & entering doesn’t deserve a lifetime crippling injury. And Mr. Briney was guilty of that. Even had the judgement been simply medical costs to make Katko whole, I might not think ill of the decision. But $10,000 in punitive damages to the man who was injured while robbing your home is clearly a miscarriage.
Or at least, I think so! I’m about as far from a legal scholar as you can get, wandering far, far afield of my normal thinkin’ grounds. But that’s fun – even more so because I’m not emotionally invested in this line of thinking, and thus am wide open to counter-arguments, other thoughts, fun debates, and the like. Have a different opinion – or even a fun other thing I should watch? Let me know!
A grade or so ago, my daughter was given a little quiz at school. She was shown a piece of paper with pictures of four animals, and told to determine which one was not like the others. The animals were an eagle, a pigeon, an owl, and an alligator.
My daughter, I kid you not, said the owl. Why? Because it was the only one that’s nocturnal.
Lesson One: My kid is amazing.
Lesson Two: Nothing is actually the same as anything else; I could find a reason to choose any one of the four. A pigeon is the only seed-eater. An eagle is the only one that’s a patriotic symbol. Those kinds of questions, and their assumed answers, tell us to look for the obvious; to take the easy path. “Alligator” is the answer that requires the least thinking. That quiz also tries to tell us that things that are mostly the same should be categorized together.
Look, I get that I’m over-analyzing this. I get that the real point of the quiz is just to teach kindergartners that there’s a difference between birds and reptiles. But honestly, I don’t think that’s nearly as important of a lesson as teaching them that we can find differences – and therefore similarities – in anything.
That lesson has far wider-reaching applications. Honestly, I’d rather my daughter grow up not knowing the difference between bird and reptile as categories than have her thinking that just because three things look the same, they belong together – and the thing that looks different doesn’t.
I think a better version of this kind of quiz would be to just show four random pictures of anything, and tell kids to come up with things that they have in common. Look for connections. Look for reasons to draw threads from one piece of information to another. Reasons to group, rather than out-group.
Most importantly, I like that style because there isn’t an inherent “expected” answer. That might be the most important lesson of all – that knowledge and insight don’t have to stay in a box.
You’re never ready for anything. That doesn’t matter. “Ready” is an illusion. You can’t perfectly predict the future, unexpected things happen, and the marginal unit of preparation decreases in value fast.
I suggest aiming for, conservatively, 75% readiness on any serious task, and 50% on any non-vital one. Those numbers are made-up and therefore meaningless, but here’s what I’m getting at: When you’re preparing to do something – look for a new job, buy a house, have a baby – just focus on being generally competent and adaptable and not on a checklist of impossible goals.
Go first, then you’ll get more ready as you iterate. An hour of doing will give you more readiness for the next hour than a week of planning would have given you.
Think about what you’re planning for right now. What things are on the horizon that you’re still in the preparation or even decision-making phase for? What are you “thinking about” doing, or perhaps even hoping for?
Just do that thing. Badly, but today. Then better tomorrow.
I’m writing this from a living room full of kids. My three are joined by two of their cousins, and they’re now full of pizza and building magnificent clock towers out of magnetic blocks, arguing about workforce organization (in other words, who the “boss” is), and generally laughing and having a great time.
The ages in this group range from 1 to 12, and it’s amazing how much connection there is. Age-based divisions are bullshit, man. Kids find ways to play no matter what perceived barriers we adults imagine are there.
They’re marvelously creative, capable of solving complex problems (even the one-year-old! Just ask every cabinet he’s not supposed to be able to get into), and kind to one another. The older ones adore sharing knowledge with the younger ones, and the younger ones love soaking it up.
What is a lighthouse, and why do they exist? Why do eggs hatch when they get warm? Why do things fall down when they get too tall? These are the questions I’m getting asked as a natural evolution of the games they’re playing. This is peak parenting gold, right here.
Also, as an aside – there’s a show called “Baby Einsteins,” which is literally just videos of baby toys and art set to classical music. Literally nothing else. It’s heavenly as a background show, lending an air of pleasant calm unlike most shows.
Oh! And speaking of those amazing kiddos, my oldest has requested a guest appearance on today’s entry, so here she is:
“Hi my name is Beansprout. I have a brother and a sister and cousins. I make lots of art for my dad’s wall.” (She does, it’s true!)
And then my two-year-old wants in! Here’s her contribution:
There is a physical component to every emotion, and an emotional component to every physical sensation. Building a barrier between the two can help you control both.
For instance, something may make you sad. That sadness will, in turn, have a variety of physical effects on you – your eyes might water. You might lose energy. Your chest might hurt. You might have difficulty breathing. All of those things suck. But the thing that’s making you sad isn’t causing those things directly, unless the thing making you sad is the fact that you just got hit with some tear gas.
So when something makes you sad, acknowledge it. Recognize that there is an external force of some kind, and it is attempting to solicit an emotional reaction from you. The physical reaction you have is a perfectly rational response, from your body’s standpoint; the goal of your body is to make being sad unpleasant for you, so that you’ll avoid the things that make you sad, because from your programmed-by-survival-instincts body’s point of view, “things that make you sad” is more or less equivalent to “things that might kill you.” Your body’s just looking out for you, man.
So acknowledge it. Say to yourself, “okay, I get it. This is a thing I should avoid. I’ll do that. No need to give me the waterworks, too. Good looking out.” Recognize, and insulate.
You can do the same thing the other way. If you stub your toe, you might get angry. That shit hurts. If you’re already prone to anger, that’ll definitely do it. So instead, insulate. Acknowledge it. “There are a bunch of stimulated nerves sending signals to my brain alerting me to danger. The ‘red alert’ response is because my body has to treat any source of pain as a potential threat to my existence, and anger can give me the strength and speed to fight that threat off. But this isn’t a lion; it’s a coffee table. It’s cool. Thanks for the head’s up, though, good to know you’ve got my back.”
This can take some practice, but it’s marvelous once you get the hang of it. Once you recognize that every physical and emotional sensation you “feel” is just specific sets of chemicals released in response to specific stimuli, you can watch them happen, ride the wave out, and control what happens to you as a result. There are virtually zero situations in the modern world where you’re actually better off as a result of the behavioral influence from negative physical/emotional sensations, so learning to insulate yourself from those influences will help you keep control of your rudder in the storm.
The Art of War by Sun Tzu is a good read, for a lot of reasons. Strategy in general is an interesting topic to study, and strategy in one arena often transfers well to others. The kinds of techniques that improve your capabilities in the boardroom, the battlefield, and the marketplace all have elements that flow into the others. Your life will pass through many if not all of these arenas, and so it can be helpful to have a broad understanding of the concepts.
My favorite concept from The Art of War is the Nine Grounds. Essentially, Master Sun identified and categorized the nine different situations an army could find themselves in, and defined broad strategic ideas for what do to in each.
Each of the nine grounds provides certain incentives to the soldiers on them, and knowing those incentives lets you command most effectively. A key insight here is that people aren’t robots; they can’t be expected to obey commands flawlessly, even if those commands can be flawlessly delivered (which of course, they can’t be). No transfer of knowledge in either direction (from soldier to commander or vice versa) is perfect, and everyone has their own goals that may be separate from yours.
This is even true of an individual. You are different people at different times, and commands you give yourself in periods of low stress and high clarity won’t necessarily translate perfectly when you’re truly in the trenches. You can’t always trust yourself to obey your own orders.
Because of that, it’s good to know your own capabilities and set reasonable expectations, and design your orders to yourself around those facts. Give yourself things to do when your natural motivation is high, and other things to do when it’s low. Align your incentives.
The insights for the Nine Grounds translate well to this. Master Sun knew to look for win/win situations when they were available and not start fights then. He knew when to strengthen a strong position or flee from a weak one. He said to be safe when you’re in trouble, and be bold when the rewards are high. These are powerful lessons everywhere.
One of the grounds he defined was “dying ground.” Dying ground is when you’re in a hopeless situation – you can’t retreat, the odds are hopeless, and defeat is nearly assured. We’ve all been in that situation – and if you haven’t yet, you will be. Master Sun’s advice when on dying ground is profound.
On dying ground, fight.
When you’re almost certainly going to lose, but there’s no escaping, fight for all you’re worth. Master Sun even said it was good to put your soldiers on dying ground in some instances, because that’s when you’ll get the absolutely full measure of your soldiers’ capabilities. If you can’t surrender and there’s only a 1% chance of victory, you’ll fight like hell for that one percent.
If not fighting means losing it all, and fighting means even the slightest chance you won’t, you’ll do amazing, incredible things to win. And even if you lose anyway, you’ll lose as a warrior. Head held high, on your feet, with your boots on.
I truly hope that in most of your life, you find yourself on solid ground and your life is good. But it won’t always be. And sometimes that’s good, too. When that happens, remember – all is never lost. Fight.
I dislike stuff. My goal is to have as few physical fetters as possible without giving up my ability to navigate the modern world and all it has to offer. My general philosophy is the “car trunk” principle: I should be able to fit everything I physically own inside whatever car I own.
Going by just my own stuff, I’m wildly successful in this regard. (I say “my own stuff” because my children pointedly do not live by this principle – though my oldest child has adopted it mostly, and I love her for it.) This is easy for me while it’s hard for so many other people simply because for me it isn’t a sacrifice – I actually hate stuff. Clutter. Junk. I have zero sentimental attachment to objects. I throw greeting cards away as soon as they’re read. Presents from my kids put up a noble fight, but I explain to them the temporary nature of all things, and how objects are meant to serve a purpose for a time, and then we grow out of them. Very few things are permanent.
Therefore, I have certain criteria when it comes to new objects entering my life. The following kinds of objects get a pass, and in fact are even welcome:
Objects that eliminate 2+ other objects. Things that have many purposes and can thus allow me to get rid of even more stuff are quite welcome.
Objects that increase my overall freedom. I like having a car for this reason. If it were viable for me to own and maintain a plane or boat, I’d probably do so.
Objects that are especially durable, and thus serve their purpose for a long time without me having to think about them. Unobtrusive objects. I’ve owned the same pair of excellent boots for sixteen years.
While I absolutely believe that what is right for me is not necessarily right for anyone else, my experience has taught me that almost everyone has too much stuff. You could pick one object you have – a shirt you don’t wear, something in a drawer, a gadget you haven’t used in ages – and ditch it, and your life would be better. Every object has a cost – not just to obtain, but to keep owning. A cost in space, a cost in freedom. You could always do more with space and freedom.
There are discrete pieces of information, but how those pieces interact is also a separate kind of information.
If you know A, all you know is A. But if you learn B, now you know A, B, and AB.
It’s like ingredients. If you own bread, then you can eat bread. But if you get cheese, now you can have bread, cheese, or a cheese sandwich. You only gained one new thing, but the number of options increased by more than just one.
Now if you get some ham, you can have bread, cheese, ham, a cheese sandwich, a ham sandwich, or a ham-and-cheese roll-up (which is totally a thing, ask my kids) as two-ingredient options, AND you can have a ham-and-cheese sandwich as a three-ingredient option. So you went from one ingredient -> one option to three ingredients -> seven options.
I know I’m explaining a pretty elementary mathematical concept here, but that’s because people don’t necessarily realize the impact this has on their ability to explore the wonder of the world.
Think of yourself as one discrete data point. You know what you know. But if you open a real connection with another person, you not only know what you know, but now you also have access to what they know, and that in turn gives you both access to all the new information can come from combining those two sets.
And because you know (presumably) more than one thing, and so (presumably) does the other person, you’re really getting this compounded many times. Add in even one more person, and the sheer number of successful ideas can boggle the mind. Add in twenty more, and you’ll never run out of new ideas.
The best part about this, is that the other person doesn’t have to know that they can give you more ideas. They might not even know what you want to know. You might be A, they might be B, but what you want to know is in AB. That’s why you shouldn’t always try to seek out people in a very specific way. If you’re looking for a new job, you don’t have to only try to talk to people that have a job opening or know of one. Lots of different “info combos” can lead you to your next awesome thing.
Connecting to nearly any new person will do tremendous things for the level of information you have access to. Try it – and tell me what you learn!
Excitement is a powerful feeling, but it can be difficult to harness. If the excitement comes after the planning, it can be great! You’ve crafted an action strategy and now you’re getting hyped for the action itself.
But if the excitement happens before the planning, it can actually really get in the way. Excitement is by its nature omni-directional. It’s like heat. It will push you in every direction, giving you a thousand ideas a minute before you can act on any of them – or even plan to do so.
That can be challenging to wrangle! How do you tell your brain not to have ideas, and to stay focused on the task at hand?
One avenue that has worked for me is to make sure I always have somewhere to “put” those ideas. An evergreen Evernote, a specific Slack channel, a blog, a notebook. Somewhere you can add things quickly but then leave them behind. Scratch the itch in your brain, and then circle back later.
The benefits are twofold – give your focus a chance to execute through the storm of ideas now, and later during a dry spell when you’re lacking in excitement and creativity you can dip into the vault and make yourself excited all over again. The strongest ideas will have aged the best. They’ll excite you as you plan and you can start all over again.
The Opportunity Machine 