RETHINKING LIFE (AND WORK) ONE MOMENT AT A TIME

Impatience versus Intelligence -- What if our "normal" thinking is all wrong?

Some of life's answers are right before our eyes! Yet, instead of concentrating on them, we usually drown them out in a mix of anxiety, social media, texting, and mind-numbing pop culture.

I just read an absolutely OUTSTANDING article by Ogilvy UK 's Rory Sutherland in Behavioral Scientist , derived from a talk he gave at Ogilvy's Nudgestock 2024! Sutherland says: "We’ve sometimes allowed the urgent to drown out the important. The short-term consideration drowns out the long-term consideration..."

Or, how about this one:

"If you try and break up your day into lots of little chunks of time, your productivity is massively destroyed even though the time available is pretty much notionally the same."

How many times have you felt this way in the course of the day? How many colleagues have bemoaned the endless array of meetings...

It could just be that most everything we think about business, leadership, and work itself is incorrect...or more to the point...we're not thinking broadly enough about it, taking the "easy" math equation answer Sutherland explains, instead of tackling the complex challenges that cannot be "solved" via one outcome. People are complex animals...

Sutherland: "Instinctively, people love to codify things, and make them numerical, and turn them into optimization problems with a single right answer. Because the second you acknowledge ambiguity, you now have to exercise choice. If you can pretend there’s no ambiguity, then you haven’t made a decision, you can’t be blamed, you can’t be held responsible. And what’s the first thing you remove if you want to remove ambiguity from a model? You remove human psychology, because human psychology, particularly around time, is massively ambiguous."

My mentor and friend Phillip Sipiora , a noted film and literary scholar at the University of South Florida urged this type of thinking when he asked students to interrogate and explicate texts, focusing the search broadly for context and meaning...but not the single meaning. There isn't an answer, but rather a rich tapestry of ideas, influences, and impulses that weave in and out of focus, but should be examined with vigor. The goal -- really, let's be honest -- deepen and strengthen that muscle between one's ears to become a better human being.

There isn't an answer, but rather a rich tapestry of ideas, influences, and impulses that weave in and out of focus, but should be examined with vigor. The goal -- really, let's be honest -- deepen and strengthen that muscle between one's ears to become a better human being.

Much of what Sutherland discusses in the article is the antithesis of the "go-go" mentality of always on and always multitasking American. And, if the plundering of the education system has demonstrated anything, it is that there is little tolerance for deep thinking when a trade or skill can be pushed. The powers that be have decimated education and the hard work that ultimately results in some form of wisdom.

Yet, Sutherland's call for a different mentality will appeal to those people--I call them "quiet leaders"--who are the undercover agents of sustainable success in life and organizations all over the world. Some might say they are the backbone of society, simply doing their best work without the need to jump into the spotlight or promote themselves at others' expense.

One thing I know for sure is that people at the top value those who think, have (and can articulate) a vision, and demonstrate a bit of intelligence when faced with pressing concerns or obstacles.

"I think there are things we need to deliberately and consciously slow down for our own sanity and for our own productivity," Sutherland concludes. This is much-needed wisdom anyone can put into place today...but there's no rush, think it through!

I've written a book called The Authentic Leader : The Power of Deep Leadership in Work and Life that addresses the kind of outlook Sutherland advocates.

Read Sutherland: https://lnkd.in/e2sSxfDP

The Authentic Leader: https://amzn.to/3BkHhuo