I walk to the kitchen, nothing.

It's my junior year in high school, and I've signed up for more AP classes than I should have. This week, my solution to surmounting the towering pile of homework is to optimize my sleep schedule, based on the cold hard facts of what sleep pattern is best: one hour naps between one hour work sessions, and repeating until the morning.

I continue this cycle for a week and a half, until one of my friends in calculus looks at me, taking stock of the deep bags under my eyes: "Grant, you look exhausted - are you ok?"

No, I wasn't. Operation optimize sleep schedule had not panned out, and it was time to abort.

It turns out, I had already eaten my pizza earlier that night, in between naps. But I was so out of sorts from my hair-brained sleep plan that I forgot all about it.

It's ok to try new tactics to get new results, but you need to be able to notice how things are actually turning out along the way. I didn't have the self-awareness to see quickly enough that the sleep schedule was a dud. My friend helped me with that.

Better awareness of ourselves, the people around us, and our environment is what helps us learn faster. That's the difference between lightning fast feedback loops that help us learn quickly and grow, and sluggish feedback loops that relegate our learning to a slow trod through mud.

I want to know what's going on quickly, so that I can course correct and get better.

Maybe then I won't reach for pizza that isn't there.

My rest is short-lived. Ten minutes after take-off, the baby drags me out of my nap.

I'm used to the sighs of fellow passengers as they look at babies nearby like they would look at an alarm clock set for a few minutes from now. They don't want it to go off, but they know it could disturb their peaceful perusing of Sky Mall Magazine's latest tech at any moment. I know the parents want nothing more than for their kids to have a peaceful, quiet plane ride. This would not be a quiet ride.

I wake up from the nap I so longed for and can't help myself--I grin ear-to-ear and start laughing.

The baby started it. She had begun to giggle as her mom played with her.

It started quietly, then grew into this cackling fit of delight. For fifteen minutes the baby kept laughing.

This wave of joy spread like a ripple to everyone around the baby. Fellow passengers looked at each other and started laughing. Soon the entire back half of the plane was cracking up, relishing the beauty of a baby's laughter.

Joy is contagious. And if we let our guard down long enough to catch it, it gets magnified.

Catching joy lets it seep into your bones. You let yourself feel the joy in the moment instead of brushing it aside. But it's not just big moments full of anticipation; it's the little ones too. Beautiful flowers on a routine shopping trip you hadn't noticed before. A cool breeze on a warm summer evening. When I notice these little things, I can't help but appreciate the many blessings in my life.

As I disembarked from the plane back in 60-degree Mobile, Alabama, I felt warm, but not because of the weather. I knew that with just a little mindset change, I could look for and find joy not just in big, highlight-reel events, but in countless tiny, everyday moments. Moments that make up this beautiful, messy mosaic of my life. If I looked hard enough, I could now find joy in all of them. 

That’s a beautiful sight.

Thanks to Compound Writing members Steven O, Lyle M, Dan H, Rajat M, Ryan W, Vandan J, and Angelo for reading drafts of this.

I pulled up to this exit and out of nowhere, the entire town of Spanish Fort, Alabama descended upon this 20-square-yard piece of asphalt. Four cars were waiting to turn in and traffic in either direction kept them—and, by extension, me—from moving. 

I immediately thought to myself, "Wow, what a terrible decision! I can't believe I thought I was going to get home in the next hour if I took this route."

This happens all the time with decisions. It may not matter much in low-impact situations like a traffic jam. But in high-stakes situations compounded over the course of a lifetime, it can dramatically impact whether you reach the goals you lay out for yourself. 

You make a decision you think is reasonable given what you know at the time. Then, the situation plays out according to chance, and sometimes things don't go well. It's natural to think that the result determines the quality of our decisions. We assume we made a bad decision and swear off that way of operating. Usually, however, that is wrong.

It turns out, results are not a useful gauge of our decision quality.

You can only judge the quality of a decision by the information you knew at the time you originally made it. When you fast forward in time, your view of the decision can change dramatically. And hindsight bias is the culprit.

Hindsight bias is a natural mental shortcut that swaps the information we know now for the information we knew at the time of the decision. The decision outcome is part of this new information that clouds our thinking about our original decision. If the outcome is good, hindsight naturally steers us toward thinking the decision was good. If the outcome is bad, hindsight steers us toward thinking it was bad.

To draw useful conclusions, we have to contextualize our decisions. We need to look at the broader class of similar decisions in order to judge the quality of our decision.

To improve our judgment, therefore, we can focus on deepening our understanding of similar situations. If you learn how things normally turn out in a scenario with a certain set of inputs, you can increase your chances of making a good decision in that class of scenarios. That's why the best decision makers in any field either have tons of direct experience or they've learned indirectly from mentors or books about how those situations normally turn out.

Lawyers review case studies, precedents and persuasive rhetorical technique to improve their ability to argue cases. Engineers study scientific first principles to understand how the systems they engage with react most of the time (skyscraper foundations, chemical plants, microprocessors). This study coupled with experience equips them with an internal probability distribution they can leverage to make better decisions in their fields. And they can add color to and sharpen the topography of this mental map over time as they learn more.

Lots of the feedback we get from decision outcomes just isn't helpful. It doesn't provide clear insight to improve our future decisions. And there's no perfect guide to tell you when it's good or bad. It's up to you to hack through the feedback thicket with your cognitive machete.

What you shouldn't regret

“Good judgment is the result of experience and experience is the result of bad judgment.” -- Mark Twain

If you have relevant foundational knowledge and carefully apply it to your decision, you shouldn't regret the decision after a bad outcome.

We regret a decision because we think we could've made a better one. We play out in anguish alternative histories in our head. This is hindsight bias at play. Hindsight keeps us from showing ourselves compassion after a bad outcome1. We treat ourselves more harshly—scolding ourselves like we should have known—even though we couldn't have known at the time.

Based on your experience, you made the best decision you could. The subsequent outcome was out of your control. You can regret careless decisions, but not considered ones.

After realizing the part in your control—the decision—was executed to the best of your ability, there's no reason to feel angry or to feel bad for yourself. You simply tell yourself, "Alright, I was careful in my decision and this is how it shook out this time. I accept that. Let’s see what I can learn to do better next time."

And that's the only game we can ever effectively play. The game where we look for the highest probability decisions and make them.

What if we don't learn to do this?

What happens if we don't learn to judge the quality of our decisions by only our knowledge at the time of the decision?

We prime ourselves for a life of inefficient learning. A life where we have to be slapped with the same feedback ten times before we learn the right thing and get better. 

It’s like you’re navigating a ship. You have a far off destination, and want to arrive there as fast as possible. With only a map and the stars, you course correct every so often as you reorient yourself. However, the exhilaration of sailing quickly with the ocean current and wind blinds you to the fact that you’re headed far off course. You get caught up in the result of getting there quickly, and forget to learn and adjust course.

If we don’t learn how to adjust our heading based on what our guideposts—the stars and map—tell us, we have little hope of reaching our destination. We have to sense and properly interpret what feedback we’re getting so we can change directions and reach the destination we’ve set for ourselves.

It's up to you to track what you know at the time of your decisions and base a judgment of quality on that. You’ll sidestep unnecessary inefficiency and reach your destination faster. Your future self will thank you.

When I pulled up to that middle parking lot exit, I immediately thought I had made a terrible mistake. A few years ago, I would have stewed in my annoyance while I waited for the traffic to clear. But this time I caught myself. I realized that I made my decision—which exit to use—based on data I had at the time. I could not have known that this would be the busiest exit now. I couldn't have made a better decision.

So instead of sitting there upset, I leaned back in my chair and sat there peacefully. No regrets. I even noticed the freshly planted pink flowers on the median beside me and smiled, considering what else I miss when I regret things I shouldn't. When it was my turn, I pulled onto the road and made my way home, my blood pressure a little lower than it would have been a few years before.

Thanks to Compound Writing members Ryan Williams, Halle Kaplan-Allen and Chris Angelis for reading drafts of this.

Let me know what you think in the comments below. If you liked this post, like and subscribe to receive every new post in your inbox.

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My scream echoed off the outer brick wall of my high school as the hot, August, Indiana sun beat down on me.

I had just lost a set at a critical juncture in a match. I needed to pull myself together and close out this next set to win it for my team.

My coach called me over to the fence to talk. He said, "Grant, I know it's hot, I know you're tired. But as long as you're focused and mentally resilient, the human body is capable of incredible feats. You can do this." I walked back to my bench, and considered these words. I wouldn't understand their implications for my everyday life until several years later.

It turned out, my mental toughness was failing me up to that point in the match. I didn’t encourage myself as well I could have under pressure, and as a result found myself in a difficult spot.

Mental toughness is something that can affect every area of our lives. Training your immediate response—your mental reflexes—in a high-intensity, low-risk environment (such as sports) enhances your ability to handle whatever life throws at you when you’re in an intense, higher-risk environment like an interview for your dream job or a high-stakes presentation at work.

Physical reflexes vs mental reflexes

Consider first our physical reflexes. When someone throws a ball at you from close range, you don't have time to think about where it's going, calculate it's likely final position and move your hand there to catch it. You just react. Your body's reflexes act before you can think and your hand suddenly moves to try and grab the ball mid-air. These physical reflexes can be trained and improved over time. You can practice to get better at catching point-blank pitches.

Your mental reflexes work the same way. When something happens to you—your buttons are pushed—you have a knee-jerk mental response. In those moments, do you beat yourself up? Or do you encourage yourself? You would never (I hope!) call it acceptable to verbally kick someone else while they're down, so why is it acceptable to do that to yourself?

My time with tennis

My 18-year journey playing and watching tennis has taught me the importance of developing these mental reflexes.

I began playing tennis when I was in third grade. I practiced diligently, playing weekly into my middle school years, with tournaments on the weekends. I went on to play on my high school team, with daily practices and frequent matches in the fall semester.

Through this practice, I developed the physical skill necessary to compete at a high level, but hadn't quite cultivated the mental skill that was the hallmark of the best players in high school tennis. I was easily upset during matches and would sometimes let those minor mess-ups derail the rest of my match. Some of my opponents even knew this about me and would use it against me.

The match was no longer me against them. It became me against me. I began battling myself.

If exploited in a match-up with even physical skill, I would often lose. When I lost a critical point in the match, you wouldn't just see it in my face, you would hear it 50 yards away. Eventually, I figured out (a little late according to my coach) that this habit of mentally derailing was holding me back from reaching my potential. I just needed to learn from someone better than me. And why not learn from the best? I soon realized a certain Swiss tennis player was a shining example of peak mental skill.

"Golf is a game of inches. The most important are the six inches between your ears." - Arnold Palmer

As a kid, I would start playing a sport for a variety of reasons. My siblings may have played it, I may have thought it looked fun, or I may have admired the professionals in the game. In tennis, Roger Federer is fun to watch because he puts together combinations of shots that mock the laws of physics. He is the Michelangelo of the court, and his racquet is his paint brush. He floats around the court during points and after them rarely seems to need to catch his breath. In spite of the spectacle of his game, it's what you don't see that stands out most—his mental skill.

Federer remains in complete control of his emotions and attitude throughout 5-set marathon matches, even under the dazzling lights of a grand-slam final. He can lose a critical point in the match and by the look on his face, you'd guess he was casually thinking about what to order for dinner later that night. Zoom out, however, and consider his current context—defending a major grand-slam title—and you realize the enormity of what's on the line for him. All-time records, millions of dollars, the expectations of his family, friends, fans and the piercing scrutiny of the media.

It's a huge weight to manage. But he does it with grace, and I believe it's a key reason for his long-term success.

Fast-forward 5 years in my (amateur) tennis career, when I began playing recreational tennis after college. I decided to play it not just because I enjoyed the game (I did), but also to sharpen habits of mind that I realized had significant implications for other areas of my life.

Hopefully, most of the time life isn't intensely stressful. But there are times when something comes up out of nowhere and pointedly presses a button you didn't want pressed. Your reflex here, what happens the instant after this button is mashed, can have a direct impact on your success going forward. And that reflex can be nurtured in sports or other activities that simulate an intense environment without the risk many real-life situations carry.

In order to stop reacting as I did in high school and before (loud as I was!), I needed to sharpen my mental reflexes.

It can be easy to get derailed into a spiral of distracting, negative thoughts. If you can sidestep those periods of unproductive thoughts, you can get back to contribution and happiness more quickly. And it isn't just naively telling yourself everything is going to be sunshine and roses. It's you telling yourself: "you can do this. It may be tough. You may have to change directions. But you will figure it out and make it through." Exactly what you would tell a close friend.

Just like my high school tennis match, you can begin to battle yourself in these situations. However, this is where you most need to call a truce and default to kindness.

So be kind to yourself. You will make mistakes. Everyone does, and it does no good to spend energy lingering on them. If you can learn from it, do so quickly, incorporate the lesson into your habits, and move on.

It's inevitable that something will go against you in a tennis match, so I began using tennis to sharpen my mental reflexes. There can be over 200 points played in a close, 3-set match. There will be times when a break doesn't go your way. I decided that my goal for the match would not necessarily be to win, but to win as long as I kept my cool even in the points that I lost from purely bad luck. Winning with negative self-talk or while making a fool of myself would not count on my personal scorecard.

So what did I do to improve? I cultivated my awareness of how I felt after a bad point. I would notice the feeling, try and delay a response, and gradually get better at responding to myself with encouragement.

It started out not working very well. I would still get upset and lose focus for several points. But over time, I noticed improvement in my ability to respond positively to setbacks right away. Another example is when I'm exhausted at the end of a long run and want to slow down. That's when my mental reflexes matter to help me encourage myself and push through. When it becomes second nature to respond with encouragement, you've created a massive advantage for yourself.

Josh Waitzkin, a chess GrandMaster and World Champion martial artist, discusses this in his book, The Art of Learning:

In every discipline, the ability to be clear headed, present, cool under fire is much of what separates the best from the mediocre. In competition, the dynamic is often painfully transparent. If one player is serenely present while the other is being ripped apart by internal issues, the outcome is already clear. The prey is no longer objective, makes compounding mistakes, and the predator moves in for the kill. (Waitzkin 172)

It has reached the point that I now look forward to playing any sport not just for the fun and exercise it provides, but for the opportunity to strengthen my mental reflexes. I'm now grateful for the opportunity to practice extreme patience and mental toughness in an environment with nothing critical at stake (I know, I know, bragging rights are nice sometimes).

Whatever your field of endeavor (non-sport included), train yourself to notice what feelings come up the instant after you realize you’ve made a mistake. Are they feelings of shame and disgust? Or of acceptance, compassion for yourself and determination to improve next time? Practice delaying or eliminating your negative reactions and accelerating the encouraging ones.

This strengthened mental reflex can spill over into every area of your life that has a potential source of stress. We use mental reflexes far more than our physical ones, so why don't we give them more attention? When something goes wrong at work or an endeavor you care about, you can immediately pivot to focus on what's within your control instead of worrying about what's not.

Don’t work out just to train your body. Use it as an opportunity to train your mental reflexes. Once you break through mental barriers in sport, you start to question yourself: in what other realms of life do I have imaginary mental barriers that are keeping me from my potential?

I ended up narrowly losing that match back in high school, but what I learned from it has helped me ever since.

Thanks to Compound Writing members David Burt and Steven Ovadia for reading drafts of this.

What's an area of your life where your mental reflexes serve you well? Where do they get in the way? How else do you think we can practice improving our mental reflexes? Let me know in the comments below!

It turns out, it was your first time in an American restaurant, and you had no idea that tipping was customary. Menu price was not the actual cost. You beg your waiter's forgiveness, ask your friend to bail you out this one time, and escape the barricade, head hung low.

The problem is, in life, menu price is rarely the actual cost. But we stroll along believing it is. This applies to countless—equally in non-financial—areas of our lives, where if we planned ahead, we could avoid "barricaded-restaurant-exit" situations.

What we need are better buffers. A buffer is simply slack, the amount of room you have to mess up before reaching an undesired consequence. A better buffer comes from designing the appropriate amount of efficiency into our plans, based on the situation.

Why it matters

We need better buffers because too much efficiency is dangerous. 

Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman talks about how creating a buffer for error is the appropriate response to crises, not just maximizing efficiency around the diagnosed problem. Here is a quote from Kahneman in an interview on the Masters in Business podcast a few years ago:

Hindsight is a big deal. It allows us to keep a coherent view of the world, [but] it blinds us to surprises, it prevents us from learning the right thing, it allows us to learn the wrong thing — that is whenever we’re surprised by something, even if we do admit that we’ve made a mistake or [you say] ‘I’ll never make that mistake again.’ In fact, what you should learn when you make a mistake because you did not anticipate something is that the world is difficult to anticipate. That’s the correct lesson to learn from surprises — that the world is surprising.

The problem is, the range of possible outcomes is almost always wider than we can account for.

If we decide to not add buffers to our lives, what are we implicitly saying about the situation? Could it be a) I know everything is going to go perfectly, so I don't need to allow for even an inch of flexibility because I won't need it, or b) I have so little clue of how this realm of activity actually works, that I'm effectively blindly throwing a dart at a distant target. (Ok, yes you could add a third category of predictable events: the physical world, well understood scientific phenomena, etc. There is very little uncertainty there. For this discussion, I want to think about the big, meaningful, complex issues out there: relationships, dynamic work environments, cultures, engineering problems, and others.) It would be an act of hubris to assume perfect outcomes. Some things, you just can’t know.

Planning for the Unplannable

When I was in middle school, I played a lot of tennis, and my older brother would practice with me sometimes. When you warm up in tennis you usually start from the baseline at the far end of the court, and after a few minutes one of the players will come to the net to practice volleys while the other remains at the baseline. I was feeling aggressive that day, and wanted to "win the warmup," so I decided to get as close to the net as I could and cut off my brother's shots. The only problem is that by getting closer to the other player, you lose time to react to the ball coming at you.

My clever tactic backfired as he crushed a ball right at me. I couldn't react in time, and the ball hit me squarely in the nose. There was blood everywhere. (For those less familiar with tennis, amateurs aren't good enough at aiming to pick off peoples' noses. No suspected malice here.) You can imagine the look on my mom's face when we walked up to her and said we were ready to go! That day, I learned a lot about the risks of standing too close to the net (and a tiny bit about pain).

What could I have done differently? I could have stepped back from the net. Because I had no idea how hard he was going to hit it, I could have allowed myself the room and time I needed to properly react to his shot. I could have given myself a better buffer to help plan for the unplannable. Too much efficiency became dangerous.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” - Benjamin Franklin

The size of the buffer depends on the situation. Different situations call for different amounts of buffer. Appropriate efficiency is key. Whether you’re in a situation with no time to react or you have no emergency savings fund and you're one car breakdown away from a personal finance crisis, not designing appropriate efficiency into different areas of your life can bite you when you least expect it. 

I know, sometimes buffers are a luxury we can't afford. We're forced into a corner and it's do or die. That's reality. But if at all possible, try and consider clever ways to build buffers into your plans. Remember, menu price is rarely the actual cost.

Appropriate amounts of buffer enable us to perform our best and direct all our focus toward our goals and highest point of contribution. Our brains aren’t distracted by the looming prospect of failure and we can enjoy the present. So, how can we be intentional in building buffer into the important areas of our lives so that we can thrive in them? Through practice. 

Here’s a quick way to do this. Right at the beginning of a plan, ask yourself these three things:

1. First, what’s the obvious, first-glance menu price of this action? 

2. Second, what costs beyond that could I be missing? 

3. And third, who knows more about this topic than I do and can advise me? 

This 30-second, top-of-mind habit can help you build better buffers and save you from trouble down the road. If we add even a small amount of buffer in areas where we need it, we would stay in the game long enough to learn to become great.

We want to keep playing the game. To have endurance over perfect efficiency.

And if we trained ourselves to use better buffers?

Maybe then we could leave a restaurant in peace, no barricades needed.

What buffers do you use in your life? Let me know in the comments below! If you enjoyed this, please like and share!

Thanks to Compound Writing, Chris Harvey, Yishi Zuo, Ergest Xheblati and Steven Ovadia for their help with drafts of this.

As I was thinking about goal-setting recently, it struck me that the cold water on hot ceramic is a helpful analogy for setting goals that maximize our achievement without discouraging us. Here's what I mean.

What actually happens that causes the ceramic dish to shatter? When the ceramic heats up in the oven, it expands ever so slightly. It's not noticeable to the naked eye. When the dish is back on the counter cooling down, it slowly, imperceptibly shrinks back to its previous size. When I put the hot dish in the sink and ran cool water over it, I fast-forwarded the cooling process. But only on one side. That one side cools quickly and contracts, while the other side stays hot. This stress between the slightly expanded and slightly contracted sides of the dish increases enough that it cracks into a mini-mosaic in the sink. Who knew breaking my parents' dishes could be artistic?

When you set overly ambitious goals, you’re—perhaps unintentionally—trying to fast forward to the results. But we know you can't do that. Without the diligent work required to accomplish something meaningful, you can't get there. The question becomes, how do you set goals that cause you to grow?

We've all set goals that seem super exciting, but when we actually try to figure out a plan to achieve them, we're overwhelmed. They're so far beyond what we think we can do that we end up discouraged and don't make the effort required to achieve them.

In 2013, I worked on the staff at Keewaydin Camp for boys in Salisbury, Vermont. The leader for my camper age-group was studying for his master's degree in Mind, Brain and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education at the time. He shared the following idea about how to help our campers grow:

Anyone can grow to meet a challenge as long as their perceived support structure and resources are greater than their perception of the difficulty of the challenge ahead.

This was a precious mental model when designing programs to help young boys grow into mature young men. It also has a lot to offer someone wanting to grow in any area of life. Let's see how we can use it.

There are two main dials to turn up or down.

The first dial is the perception of the difficulty of the goal. The second dial is the perception of the resources available to you.

Perceived Difficulty

First, the perceived difficulty. If we think something's too easy, we won't be motivated to stretch ourselves to grow. No new skills are needed, so we'll jump into solving it, none the stronger on the other side. If we think it's too hard in the time we have, we'll be discouraged from trying because we don't see a path to success.

Challenge comes from deadlines. If you want to build a great business, the difficulty changes dramatically when you give yourself ten years instead of ten days. Your deadline must be realistic to be helpful.

Notice that I say perception of resources and challenge, not the actual resources and challenge. We don't experience the world as it is. We experience the world according to our senses, our experience, our expertise. Just like a child may see wind as mysterious, cooling gusts, a meteorologist sees wind as a series of constantly fluctuating pressure gradients. We're looking at and experiencing the same thing, but perceiving it far differently. These lenses inevitably color our view of the world. Take time to understand yourself, then leverage that knowledge to set achievable goals with the time you have.

Perceived Resources

The second dial governs the perceived resources available. These are the mentors, books, articles, and people cheering you along in your pursuit of the goal. If you sense you have a network of support, you're much more likely to try something that requires you to venture beyond your existing expertise.

Think about a time someone expressed their belief in you. Belief that you could accomplish more than you thought you could. In that moment, it's possible you felt a surge of belief in your ability to reach a goal. But you didn't suddenly transform into Einstein or Michael Jordan. The hidden paths available to you were simply illuminated. Your perceived set of resources expanded, and therefore increased your ability to achieve your current goal or an even more ambitious one.

Understanding reality helps us accurately identify obstacles to success and deftly avoid them. However, once we learn a lot about something, including the base rates of success, it may show that our chances of success are low. So why do we continue? We continue because we care. [1]

And a dash of delusion [2], driven by our desire to serve, is sometimes needed to pursue an endeavor with uninviting base rates of success.

Properly set goals can be catalysts for personal growth. Design them improperly though, and you may be discouraged (the ceramic may crack) or not challenged enough to evolve. To find the right challenge, you need to know yourself well. To dial in your perceived resources, learn from as many people (including their writing) as you can.

Here's to setting goals that make us better, and to keeping our parents’ dishes intact.

Notes:

• [1] I will write more about this in the future.

• [2] Optimists (those who pursue ambitious dreams in spite of the base rates and naysayers) play a disproportionate role in shaping our lives. They're the ones willing to take risks to innovate. Idea from Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. By delusion I mean the act of ignoring base rates. Choosing to not see probabilities quite as they are.

Thanks to my amazing wife Abby Nice, Abram El-Sabagh, and Steven Ovadia for reading drafts of this.

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Charles Darwin first visited the Galapagos Islands in 1835. Because the islands were 560 miles away from the nearest major landmass (South America), he observed peculiar qualities in the wildlife there. The type of island environment he used for discovery is one we can use for ourselves to become more thoughtful and wise - without leaving home.

Darwin noticed that similar types of wildlife developed different physical adaptations based on the specific island environment they were in. He is now famous for observing birds in the finch family on multiple islands, but with striking physical differences between the birds on each island. On one island, he found finches with large, strong beaks that made it easy to crush the larger, harder nuts on that island. On another island, he found finches with smaller beaks that were better suited for catching the insects found there.

Darwin used this data to develop his groundbreaking theory of natural selection. Natural selection occurs when useful adaptions are selected to be passed on to the next generation because they enable a higher survival and reproduction rate. Members of the species without the useful adaptations die at a higher rate, and are less represented in future generations.

But how was he able to figure this out?

It turns out, islands taught Darwin something groundbreaking specifically because they were islands.

They were small and isolated with large hurdles to move elsewhere. The Galapagos islands provided data not readily observable on expansive continents where wildlife could freely relocate.

In the same way, we can learn more about ourselves by spending time away from the deluge of noise that modern technology (social media, work email on our phones) floods us with.

Michael Harris describes the idea well in his book, The End of Absence:

This reminds me that real thinking requires retreat. True contemplation is always a two-part act: We go out into the world for a time, see what they've got, and then find some isolated chamber where all that experience can be digested. You can never think about the crowd from its center. You have to judge from a place of absence. (Harris 133)

By unplugging, even if for just a few hours at a time, we can pause and reflect on what makes us happy. What we're excited about. What we're worried about. We can reflect on what we really want in life, without someone else deciding for us. Then write it down. Our brains have a nasty way of making us forget how we used to think about things.

We do these things, so that instead of standing like a straw-man, buffeted by the wind and outside influence that surrounds us, we stand strong with clear intent, knowing not just what we want out of life, but how we want to journey through it.

I've stepped on a lot of feet. I've stepped into feet. To my horror, I've injured feet. Most women's ballroom dance shoes are open-toed, which makes the dance floor a minefield to a beginner like me when I started several years ago. One swift step on the wrong spot (my partner's toes) and boom--the dance is over.

Drawing from my time in ballroom dance, here is what I've learned about fluency, why it matters and how it can help us lead more satisfying and resilient lives.

Crawling

Usually I don't injure my partner too badly and we keep going. Sometimes in the beginning, I would step on her feet badly enough where she would have to stop and sit down (it says a lot about how much my wife loves me that she still agrees to be my dance partner). In the latter (albeit less frequent) case, it's important to stop and apologize, figure out why it happened and be careful never to repeat that mistake. However, there are smaller mistakes I make more frequently. I miscount a step. I turn the wrong direction. I fail to properly lead my partner and she gets lost. These mistakes are minor, but can impact the remainder of the dance if you allow them to bother you.

This was my crawling stage in ballroom dance. After several months of practice, I started to walk when I was able to dance among larger groups.

Walking

You're only as good as your toolkit. In ballroom, as with any skill, you begin with the basics, and then build on those to develop fluency that you can translate to live music and a partner other than your instructor. But knowing the fundamentals is critical. Each dance lesson, you rehearse them until they are ingrained habits that don't require thought. Then each lesson you can add a new move or modification of a previous move to expand your options on the dance floor. This is what transforms a basic slow-slow-quick-quick foxtrot step into a dynamic, artistic display.

Waltzing

Few people love dancing with someone who half-heartedly counts the steps, but it's a blast to dance with someone smiling and attacking the dance with energy and fervor. It's the same with teams. It's the same with relationships. Go all-in.

It's easy to tell the difference between someone attacking each move with energy (in a cha-cha, for example) or sustained grace (in a waltz) and someone plodding through a slow-slow-quick-quick as if they're walking through mud and would rather be at home. How much better would our lives be if we leaned in to building our relationships? If we pursued them with vim and vigor? What if we were attentive to every subtle signal when listening to someone (instead of formulating what we want to say next or looking at our phones) to go beyond just hearing their words? Those are the interactions and relationships I want more of. That's when I begin to waltz.

When you're spinning around in a room full of couples waltzing, there is a lot going on. You're focused on yourself, including the cadence of the song, what series of moves you want to do next, and leading your partner (if you're the man). But you're operating within a larger, constrained context -- the dance floor with fifteen other couples. You can't leave the floor and you're --apparently-- not supposed to bump into anyone while they dance around you.

This is part of why the waltz is my favorite dance. The couples are like slow-spinning tops, gliding gracefully around the polished wood floor. It's exciting to weave your desired routine through the ever-changing web of people around you. You have a plan and then someone turns in front of you - bam, you change course seamlessly because you have the necessary tools to do so. It's not a big deal that you haven't done that exact sequence before; your fluency lets you adapt. You're excited about the plan you have, but thrilled at the opportunity to employ on the fly skills you honed in a lesson. On the other hand, rigidity in a waltz leads to collisions. Take it from me, that's not the best reason to be the talk of the party.

You may be thinking: doesn't waltzing around describe someone who is careless with the time and feelings of others? A traditional example might be, "he waltzed right in just like he owned the place, even though he was 30 minutes late to the meeting." Yes, that is Merriam-Webster's definition. However, the definition of waltz I use here is truer to the grace and nimbleness of the dance, and a helpful way to think about life.

A true waltz is graceful not from overconfidence, but from tranquility and a belief that the dancer can handle whatever comes at them. It's a commitment to self-control and not letting others get to you, no matter the circumstance. A great example is Roger Federer on the tennis court. He shows no reaction when an extreme variety of circumstances occur in the fifth set of a major championship final. He knows those circumstances are part of the game and has no expectation otherwise.

We all have activities we're fluent in. Activities in which we can let go and experience the moment for the joy it brings us. We forget about the recipe, about the technical details of how it's done.

Just like fluency in a language allows you to inhabit a new culture, fluency in any given realm allows you to inhabit a new creative space you can flourish in.

Fluency unlocks flourishing.

What if, instead of walking through life, we endeavored to waltz through life? How much more beautiful could our lives be?

It just might help our dance partners' feet too.

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1. Thinking in probabilities–instead of absolutes—is useful for decision making.

2. Compounding, whether in character, habits or money is immensely powerful. It helps to understand it and use it. “The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” – Warren Buffett

3. It doesn’t cost anything to be kind, but your kindness can change the day someone else is having. Compounded over your lifetime, this default habit of kindness can have a huge impact.

4. Life is too short to make small plans and settle for less than your best. Make big plans for yourself that make you want to jump out of bed in the morning to work toward. “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die…” – Daniel Burnham, 19th century architect

5. Remember what really matters and be intentional about not mixing up priorities. It’s best to remind yourself frequently to prevent a gradual slide toward prioritizing the wrong things. I’m reminded of the quote: “When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.”

6. The best way to learn about something is to write about it to others.

7. Everybody you meet has something to teach you, but It takes humility to be able to learn from anybody.

8. If you want to get better in life, you must be able to change your mind when presented with facts. You may have a beloved idea that is difficult to discard even in the face of evidence, but to hang on to it is to delay reaching your potential.

9. Don’t work out to just get fit, but also find physical activities that allow you to build mental toughness. Once you break through mental barriers in sport, you start to question yourself: in what other realms of life do I have imaginary mental barriers that are keeping me from my potential?

10. Not many things are more beautiful than seeing someone passionately pursuing their calling, fully engaged in an activity they love.

11. Travel can open your eyes to what other cultures and countries are like, and empathy is an important quality to develop. Travel helps put into perspective the immense blessings I have just living in the US.

12. Perspective. You can never have enough. Learning from as many people as possible about their perspective in an endeavor and how they reason through decisions is a great way to become a better decision maker.

13. I fell in love with the idea of mental models a few years ago. The idea is that you collect many, multidisciplinary frameworks (models) for decision making that allow you to view problems from several different angles and minimize your chances of making bad choices. I like to think of myself as a mental model collector now. More good choices = a better life. Charlie Munger, the 60-year investing partner of Warren Buffett and a person of very high integrity, says: “Wisdom acquisition (that is, acquiring a robust set of mental models) is a moral duty.”

14. Singing can make a good day great and a bad day better.

15. Be kind to yourself. You will make mistakes. It’s important to understand that everyone does, and it does zero good to spend energy lingering on past failures. If you can learn from it, do so quickly, incorporate the lesson into your mental models, and move on. Train yourself to notice what feelings come up the instant after you realize you’ve made a mistake or failed. Are they feelings of shame and disgust? Or of acceptance, compassion for yourself and determination to improve next time? Practice delaying or eliminating your negative reactions and accelerating the positive ones. I really like the illustration of the concept this golf coach uses with his student.

16. Life is easier if you know who your heroes are. When faced with tough decisions, you can just think: “what would they do?” and go with that.

17. Ballroom dance can be playful, thrilling, and good exercise. It helps when your partner is way better than you (mine--my wife--is).

18. Life is more interesting when you are curious about the people and the world around you. Ask the question. Who knows what interesting thing you might learn?

19. Peer group matters. Seek out people better than you and who want to lift you up. Don’t tolerate negative relationships.

20. Golf is a wonderful game. It puts you in nature for several hours, always provides a series of challenges, and recovering from bad shots is an opportunity to demonstrate levelheadedness.

21. Reading is the best way to learn the best of what has already been discovered. It allows you to learn from the mistakes of others and make new mistakes, not old ones when pursuing excellence. There are million and billion dollar ideas in $15 books. Who wouldn’t take a deal like that?

22. Leadership is about serving others, seeing their potential and calling out that potential in them. Not many things are more rewarding than seeing someone achieve something they once did not believe possible.

23. Find a fun activity you can immerse yourself in. By having a creative outlet outside of work, you can be more productive at work and have a more interesting life with your hobby. This is not to say work cannot be interesting – it can and hopefully is.

24. Pick something (a goal, career, etc) to work on and run with it. Often, having backup plans can waste energy you need to pursue your true calling. Better to make it a mile in one meaningful direction than an inch in fifty different directions. (Idea originally from Joel Sampson, and then formally written about in the book “Essentialism” by Greg Mckeown.)

25. Words are to thinking what colors are to painting. The more colors a painter has, the more options she has to portray the perfect image she is thinking of. So too, with vocabulary. The more words you know, the more detailed and precise your thinking, writing and speech can be. The book 1984, by George Orwell, paints a picture of how you could minimize complexity of thought and dampen imagination by vastly reducing everyone’s vocabulary. Take advantage of the opportunity we do have to learn and seek to expand your vocabulary. One way is to read books that are just beyond your current ability. I love how this idea is expressed by Fred Kofman in his “Systems Journal,” as reprinted in Donnella Meadows’ book, “Thinking in Systems:” “Language can serve as a medium through which we create new understandings and new realities as we begin to talk about them. In fact, we don't talk about what we see; We see only what we can talk about. Our perspectives on the world depend on the interaction of our nervous system and our language --both act as filters through which we perceive our world ….the language and information systems of an organization are not an objective means of describing an outside reality --they fundamentally structure the perceptions and actions of its members to reshape the measurement and communication systems of society is to reshape all potential interactions at the most fundamental level. Language …as articulation of reality is more primordial than strategy, structure, or ... culture.”

26. Cookies and cinnamon rolls are always worth making well. That said, if someone offers you your fifth cookie, you might want to say no. Moderation is important.

27. Goals are great, but enjoy the journey and appreciate the special moments along the way. Any experience in life is more meaningful if you can share it with someone you love (family, friends).

Here's to another year of learning and getting better.

--Grant

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