Lessons

Lesson Info

Personal Methods for Productivity

It's helpful to understand when working with ourselves that there are ways that we can think in a way that makes us more productive and there are certain ways that we naturally tend to think that can cause us to make big mistakes right? And so this is an example of in an inversion right that we were talking about earlier right? What are the most common mistakes that we can make in working with ourselves and if we know what they are we can do things to avoid making those preventable mistakes so this is an area of psychology called cognitive biases ways that are thinking tends to systematically mouth function and ways that we can kind of understanding, overcome and work around some of the limitations that are very, very old minds are uh are saddled with we're running you know, the metaphors we're running very, very very new software on ancient ancient ancient hardware and so we kind of have to work around these really old systems in our brain and body sometimes to get good results and th...

e first one is an idea called excessive self regard tendency this is the tenant when you have very little information about something we tends to be way more confident in our ability to actually do that thing then is probably rationally warranted right which in a certain perspective is awesome right? Because it it leads us to jump into new things that we I don't have any understanding of without really paying attention to all of the potentially bad things that could happen, so we learn a lot in the process. The problem is in areas where there are very real risks, um, or the danger of going too far in and producing damage, that excessive self regard can get us into some bad situations very quickly, right? So if you've never been rock climbing before, for example, you just look at people who have been doing it for long times like, no problem, right? You know, and you start climbing without training without understanding what you're doing without safety equipment, without all of the things that keep it from being a bad situation, you can find yourself in a bad situation very quickly. So there is a certain amount of value in humility, understanding what you're getting into before you're starting, making sure that if there are safety considerations that you're paying attention to them or common failures, that you're avoiding them, so pay attention to in the early parts of a process, gathering information and being a little bit humble about what it is you're going to be able to do right at the very beginning that's a very, very constructive habit t get into confirmation bias is the idea that people tend to look for information that supports their beliefs. That supports the conclusions that they have already come to and so we tends to really gravitate to the things that proves their case because we like to be right and we tend to ignore or undervalue or demean the things that prove us wrong in a certain sense. And so this is a natural inclination that most of us most of his experience because the the experience of being wrong and feeling stupid for being wrong is not a comfortable one, right? So we prefer to avoid that if if at all possible, the challenge is when you're when you're working on a project, for example and, you know let's say your this is a project that's really intense you're spending a lot of time you're spending a lot of energy, you're spending a lot of money if it's not gonna work for some important reason that you can't control you want to know that sooner rather than later so you can do something else or you can adjust your approach or or fix that challenge right? So we need to have some check step in most of the projects, particularly business projects that we undergo because those tend to be much longer than things we do in our personal life looking for information that indicates that this is not a good idea that it's not going to work that there's some challenge there that needs to be thought about or overcome right and this is not done in a fatalistic sense as and if you find something the entire project is doomed forever more right? You just want to know that as quickly as it possibly can. So one of the things we talked about in part one of the course but we'll talk about it again now project management methodologies like you know, the big one the lean startup methodologies that are being taught right now the whole point of the methodology is you need to test the core assumptions behind your business and if there's bad information to be found you want to know that bad information as quickly as humanly possible so you could do something about it right? If it's not going to work you can stop doing what you're doing and start doing something different. So the takeaway from confirmation bias is take a moment and this is a great checks checklist item for pretty much everything right look for if you have a theory about what's going to work or not spend just a little time looking for information about why it's not going to work or why it's not a good idea and pay attention use that information to make plans to route around that if it all possible okay make sense but it's something you have to consciously do because your brain's not going to do it for you right your brain will show you the good stuff any suggestions on how to kind of train yourself to be aware of your own bias? I mean, it's one of things where it's it's hard to correct because you're not aware that it's happening unconsciously that's the tricky parts all of this kind of device stuff is, you know, we, um the computer analogy is our software is running on untrusted hardware, right? We don't we cannot be trusted to make a lot of these things yourself, this these air where colleagues and advisors and coaches and people who are not you can ask you questions about this stuff, um, that's the value of working with other people in a business context if you're working by yourself. Andi, I work on a lot of my own projects, I may have collaborators, but I'm the guy doing the stuff I use checklists for this, so when I'm thinking about a new project, I have a checklist of things that I go through to figure out ok, am I thinking about all of the things that I need to think about to make sure I'm not missing anything important? Also, I think, also, like, you know, lincoln's team of rivals, you know, the idea of just surrounding yourself with people who disagree with you. Yeah, so that that way you're always aware of those like, you know, I go on facebook and I'm like, oh, this person doesn't it's constantly posting stuff that I don't like that I disagree with. I mean, well, maybe I should keep him around because they're actually continually wook spat in my confirmation bias. Yep, absolutely. Okay, so that's confirmation bias related to confirmation bias is hindsight bias, so when we're doing something in a business context or in a personal life that doesn't work, we have a tremendous, uh, pre disposition to kick ourselves for not having known it was not going to work, and we did it anyway, right? So I should have known I should have known this was not going to work. I should have known this was important, I should have known I should have had this information, and the tricky part is if you had the information that you had now, when you made the decision to do it, you wouldn't have done it right, but you didn't have that information, so if you knew then what you knew now what you know now, you wouldn't have done what you did. All right? You didn't have that information when you made the decision, and so it's really easy to spend a lot of time ruminating about all the bad decisions and things that haven't worked out the partnerships and the ideas and all the things that did not provide a good result when really hindsight bias, says it's waste of time, you didn't have the information before you acted, and so you made the best decision that you could make it this at the time didn't work out, you have more information, we have more experience, you have things that you'll take away from that and you could just drop it and move on, right? So hindsight bias is a way of forgiving yourself for past mistakes and moving on to focus on what actually gets you positive results, which is focusing on the next thing that you're working on right now, instead of spending all your time and energy kicking yourself for being stupid in the past. Well, it's, funny, because our dear evelin here is actually hosting for as a lead host for the first time on monday. Yeah, you know, I've been training her and helping around, and I basically been telling her, you know what, you're going to screw up there that's, okay? You are going to screw up and it's totally cool, we don't we don't worry about that, but I also know that at the end of the day, she's going to kick yourself for the things that she did I've been thinking about that throughout this course work, you know, I'm going out that's a good little thing to use that also, you know, and it's, a lot of the stuff is just really simple reminders like we're not perfect, we make mistakes, that's, okay? And and as long as your mistakes literally, don't kill you, it's going to be fine, because you just take that, and it becomes information that you used to try again and do again and do better. So this is one of those things it's it's, something that you want, you have to remind yourself in the middle of something bad happening. I did not know it was going to go this way when I made the initial decision that's ok, do the best you can, and then do it better again next time performance load performance load is the cost of overwhelmed when you have five hundred items on your to do list, and you feel like you have to be doing all of them at the same time, or you're going to be a miserable failure, you're going to let everyone down, and you get so bogged down in all the things that need to be done that it's hard to really focus on doing anyone think this is actually, uh, coming out of came out of research in both behavioral psychology in organizational management type things because they would do studies in business is tracking the number of things that a person was responsible for in the actual amount of output that that person was able to produce in the business and what they found was a very direct relationship right up to a certain point when you have nothing to do and you just keep adding things up to a certain point everything that you add means that person is doing something additional something extra more is getting done yeah that's a great thing beyond a certain threshold you add something to somebody's played and their productivity goes down you add one more thing and the productivity goes down and on and on and on until they're not really getting anything done right? So performance load is there's a limit to how much you khun try to do at one time and still maintain a certain level of productivity there is also this is the case for keeping part of your day unscheduled unstructured because if you're already overloaded there is a guarantee which is unexpected things will happen to you in your personal in your business life and you're gonna need to deal with it if you're already overwhelmed all of the random parts of life to get added on top will just make their push your productivity down for everything else but see you need to keep some slack time we'll talk about slack in the context of systems tomorrow, but this is the idea you can't be overbooked all the time. You need to keep some time and energy and reserve, right, because it'll be used. Speaking of energy is an idea called energy cycles, and the whole idea is a lot of us think, you know, in terms of being an uber productive person, we have this image of ourselves in our mind getting up in the morning and being full of energy and going, going, going, going, going, going, going all day long, until, like, two thirty in the morning, and I'm going to sleep and waking up in the morning and doing the same thing and never having any sort of dip from that high energy state energy two cycles say, and basically everything in human biology supports that human beings do not work that way. We're not robots, they were biological beings, and we have cycles. We have parts of the day where energy is naturally high and we it's easier to focus. We get a lot of things done, and there are parts of the day where energy tends to dip, and we need to relax, we need to rest, we need to recover, and after a certain period of time, the energy level goes back up. Again um author tony tony schwartz has written a number of books about this particular idea um and his research indicates and in a lot of other research indicates that the cycle for most people all is about ninety minutes give or take so energy goes up we're able to sustain that level of energy for about ninety minutes and then naturally intends to come back down and then after a period of science tends to come back up again so there are two ways of tape taking this particular information you can either try to fight the energy cycle which is what most people do all right I'm getting tired so I'm gonna grab a coffee or grab a soft drink that contains caffeine I'm going to try to push through this going to try to focus right or you could work with it and so what tony schwartz has been doing is testing both approaches to see what actually works and lo and behold if you work on europe cycles and you rest on your down cycles you end up getting way more done and you feel way better then if you try to push through and maintain the iron g all day every day so working in periods so the ninety minute increment is actually really good planning thing so and you contract just pay attention to over the course of the next couple days keep a notebook and note when you're feeling really good feeling on top of it getting a lot done and just take a note of of when you feeling kind of tired and need a break right? You have a couple of cycles and over a period of a couple days you'll see when you're high and when you love and then this helps you plan your day right work on the up cycles rest on the down cycles go ahead terra de too bad most lawyers don't structure work times on that uh any suggestions or thoughts you know it's this is the type of thing where at least prevailing culture in most countries in the world is you're going to be up all day every day button chair hands on keyboard like getting stuff done right some employees air better about employers are bitter about this than others I think the biggest thing is if you know what your own cycles are you have even in large companies you have a lot of latitude of how you plan your day right? So if you for example need to write a reporter do a presentation or something that requires concentration put that time in your schedule first so if somebody asks can you meet me for a meeting? You can say no because I'm doing something else right there ways that you can manage this in most context right? The ideal situation is working for yourself so you get to decide what you do and when so are the down cycles also ninety minutes roughly yeah and it's it's different for pretty much everybody but um you can take um you could take a nap you know lunch if if that kind of coincides with that go a little bit earlier go a little bit later um yeah it's even types of things like reading is a really great thing to do during a down cycle right? Because it's not energy intensive on your body it's it's it's just focusing on learning something new um and so you know planning those those really active activities and really you know low energy activities and having a mix that's that's what gets you the best result if you thought about doing one of those from nine p m to five a m actually you know it it's funny I found my writing productivity goes up wave late at night and so when I'm working on a big writing project it tends to be much later in the day and I just adjust everything else you know the time it goes down for you usually goes down around three o'clock in the morning so my my most productive writing times start at seven p m and go until about nine or three a m give or take now so it's just it's tracking is paying attention and writing this down and trying to plan what works for you now with energy cycles um similar idea stress and recovery right? So the idea that you can be so overloaded with all sorts of things to do without having adequate recovery time total myth you need to be able so so think of working like an athlete, right? You're not going, going, going, going, going without any sort of break, you sprint for a while and then you rest and recover and then you sprint again and then you rest and recover that's a way more effective way to work, then trying to run a marathon like you're running one hundred meter dash right after a while you just get tired, your body needs a break and so you can plan for those stress and recovery types of types of things. So for example, when I was writing both of my books a very intense period of stress in terms of lots of focused energy and attention going into writing this thing, getting it done by a certain date with a certain level of quality and then planning that, at least for a couple weeks after I'm going to be worthless and I'm not going to get very much done because I need to recover from this very intense exertion, right? That type of structure is really valuable same thing I've actually been on the road quite a bit recently since the book is coming out and I've been traveling around doing interviews and talking with people intense stress in terms of energy output, so for the next couple weeks I'm going to relax and recover and recover that energy in a way that will prepare me to go do the next project, right? But if you keep pushing and keep pushing and keep pushing, you're going to find yourself burning out very quickly, so plan for the recovery as much as you plan for the push testing testing is the idea that if you never try anything new, you can't five better ways of doing something right there's a lot of I don't think people invest as much thought and attention into trying new things in new ways as his product productive and warranted, right? So if you always do the same thing in the same way, there may be a way to do that ten times more effectively or ten times more efficiently, and you're never going to find it because you're never trying anything moved all right? So doing little bits of experimentation it doesn't have to be big doesn't have to be involved doesn't have to be complex, but every once in a while just trying things in a little different way that's how you find the improvements that and we'll talk about this as we talk about systems later, small improvements accumulated over a large enough period of time produce absolutely astounding uh, changes in in results, right so for example, if you're going out and you're trying to get better at selling to people, right, a little tiny change in how you how you approach a prospect or how you present an offer or how you answer objections, all of the little tiny parts of the sales process if you just try it a little bit of a different way and you do that experimentation over and over and over again, you do that for long enough, and you become really, really good. All right, so that's what? Testing it's for lots of small changes if it works. Great. Keep doing it. If it doesn't work, fine. Stop doing it. Start doing something else, right? Lots of small changes over a long enough period of time produced really dramatic results. It's a test and keep track of your tests. Mystique. Mystique is the idea that mystery makes things more appear more attractive than they actually are. All right, so this is something that we cognitive bias, that we have when something looks really good. We don't have really much information about it. We just know that it looks like really super cool. All right, so good example of this is everybody, you know, going back to the james bond example earlier with the association with watch right everything's to think everybody thinks it would be super cool to be this international super spy right not so cool in the moment when the bad guys are chasing you trying to kill you right there's a certain amount of mystique there that is very attractive until you consider the reality of what that position sometimes entails right? Similar everybody thinks it would be super cool to be a movie star right or a professional athlete and very few people take a moment to consider that those people when they go out in public have zero privacy or in our mobbed everywhere they go and that can be very often about things all right everybody thinks it would be cool to be the ceo of this super large company but doesn't necessarily account for the stress of a board of directors breathing down your back and hundreds of thousands of employees scrutinizing your every move and you know and like all of the not so great things that are part of the price you pay for doing certain things in certain ways they're part of the job in some instances right? And so when you're looking at doing something new it's important to look at it both for the good things that it can that can come of it and also to collect as much information as you can in advance about the not so good parts and what that allows you to do is make a really conscious decision you can have anything you want in this world if you're willing to pay the price and before you start paying the price it's really valuable to understand what the price actually is and how much it's actually going to cost before you get there, right? So for example, for me, I love researching I love going out into the world and learning cool stuff and turning that into something that other people can use book of course ah seminar all of those things I love it right? There's cost and that cost is one star amazon reviews right? There are people who read a book and don't like it and will publicly trash you everything you stand for your mother I mean, people are really brutal about this stuff, right? And so if I want to keep doing what I do and this, you know, this is not comfortable stuff, right? I hate reading that stuff, I don't like it when people don't like what I have to find it to save valuable, but if I want to keep providing value in this way in this format that's a cost that's something I'm gonna have to put up with something that I'm going to have to pay attention to ah price, I'll have to pay in order to keep doing this and I'm willing to pay the price and so I'm going to keep doing it right, but it really helps. Before I went down this path, I talked to people who had done it before and got a really clear picture of what were the good parts and what were the not so good parts right? And some costs I'm willing to bear and some cost I'm not so for example, a lot of people who are authors make their money by going out in you they call it speaking on the circuit right? They travel all the time and, you know, make their money by speaking to large organizations, they get paid an enormous amount of money and they're almost never home, right? And for me, the whole reason that I'm doing this in the way that I'm doing it, I want to be home with my kids, right? I want to see them and so part of this whole thing is there's a price if I want to do it in that particular way and I'm not willing to pay it right? And so I don't do it. And so there are certain parts of the job that I could take advantage of if I really wanted to, and I've decided to give those up because it's not worth the price, so if you know more about what it is that you're trying to actually do you can make the cost benefit analysis in a way better way right? What do I get? What am I going to have to give up to get it? And is it worth it to me or not? And if it's not don't do it makes sense now hedonic treadmill his idea that things that are pleasurable to us tends to fade over time right? So imagine buying a new car right? You get the new car brand new it's really nice you appreciate everything about it you go out into the driveway is like this is such a nice car right it's a very conscious experience of pleasure a week later you walk out to your car you don't even think about it you notice nothing about it it is totally background that same experience of pleasure and no longer exist that's the hedonic treadmill things that we experience is pleasurable. If they continue to exist, we acclimating to them over time we don't get the same charge that we used to get out of it and this happens in all areas of our life, right? Our material possessions the experience of having a certain amount of money in your bank account the experience of having a certain amount of fame or status or renowned within a particular subgroup all of those things are very pleasurable when they increase and then the pleasure fates and so it's important to understand that if you've ever read the paper and read about somebody who has an enormous amount of money and keeps working to make more right or an enormous amount of fame that keeps working to become more famous you ever ask yourself the question why do they why did they do that because you are dude you already have twelve billion dollars do you really need twelve billion dollars more in the answer is from a from a pleasure context yeah maybe because if they're working for that emotional experience of achieving something, what they have right now doesn't count right this happens at all for all people in all levels of life so it's important to understand that this happens right and so if you want to be happy and successful long term if you want to have this experience of doing well in your life it helps to understand that things like dollars in your bank account money, fame, status, power all of those things are not long lasting achievements that you can base happiness and a sense of personal satisfaction on for very long right? Because they fade it doesn't fade health, family friendships and interests write things that you love doing for the sake of doing it right all of those are things that you can continue to invest time and energy and developing and growing that don't wear out in the same way as the's pleasurable things do so knowing that you can prioritize your time and energy on investing in the things that will actually give you happiness and satisfaction over a longer period of time and usually that looks very different from the ways that we have been trained to recognize success in our world, right? Not about dollars in the bank account, not about how many people, uh, revere you as a movie star, right? It's about much simpler things that actually are way easier to achieve so great news for all of us. The comparison fallacy is the idea that you are not other people. Other people are not you. And probably the best succinct explanation for this idea actually comes from fellow author and he's actually cartoonist hugh macleod. Anybody seen his stuff? Yeah, um, I had a really nice little witty phrase which has never compare your inside versus somebody else's outside. A lot of times we look into the world, we see people doing these amazing things and we start to get that little pang of jealousy like, uh, wanna do that that's so awesome, right? Everything is going really great for them when really we have a lot of information about how we're doing, how we're feeling, what our particular life situation is and we're comparing that really deep source of information with a very superficial outside look at what another person's life looks like we can spend an enormous time amount of time feeling envious and jealous of other people's positions without really understanding the full scope of what it is that actually looks like and so the whole idea of comparing yourself versus another person and saying you were doing better this person is doing better or different than this person you just really can't do that it's an apples to oranges comparison the on ly thing that's really productive is looking at where you are right now versus where you would like to be in the future if everything goes your way and trying to figure out how you get toe from where you are right now to where you want to be in his direct a manner as possible that's it so life is not say comparing yourself versus other people in a in a race to get to the top ranking whatever that looks like it's a process of improving yourself as far down that path as you can get a few more days locus of control locus of control is the idea that there are some things in this life you can change things that you can influence things that you can control in a way that says I don't like that how this is doing and you could do something directly to make it a different right there are a lot of things in this life that you can not control all right can't control the weather, we can't control other people, how they react, what they do or do not do we cannot control very often the results that we get from a certain amount of effort where a certain amount of of working you're focusing on something we can influence it by working mohr we can influence it by working smarter, but we can't control the absolute result we're going to get sometimes I sit down to write and I spent three hours writing and I have nothing, nothing good, at least to show for that, right? I can't control the absolute result of the things that come out of my head, I can't control sitting down and opening up the project and focusing right can control that. So the whole idea of locus of control is if you spend too much time trying to control everything in your world trying to influence things that you really can't influence that's an enormous waste of energy far better to let some of that stuff go and focus on the things that you can't control focus on the things that you can influence because those are the things that are actually going to move forward. This is a super old idea was actually one of the core of the ideas and a group of philosophers called the stoics right, so all the way back to ancient greece, ancient rome uh it's an idea that's been around for a long time focus on the things that you can control or influence leave everything else alone likewise similar concept attachment so being set on a certain outcome reduces your flexibility because if you don't get that outcome that you want it's really tempting to really ruminate on that really obsessed over not getting this thing when really it didn't work you're just getting lots of information about what works and what doesn't write if you can let that thing go in approach it in a different way probably get the result just in a different way, right? So the more attached you are to doing things in a certain way the less flexibility you have and so this is a skill you can actually you can focus on getting better at letting certain things go when they don't work out the way you expected to and redirecting that energy into testing doing it in a different way that actually provides the result makes sense so locus of control and attachment go together focus on what you can control if it doesn't work let it go focus on something control thing that you so you focus on something and then you have to know way let it go so the thing is how do you know when it's time to let something go? You know if if you find yourself really getting um wrapped up or focusing or ruminating on something and that energy is not producing any forward momentum and you stay in that state for for a good period of time so you know, let's let's say um let's go back to the sales call example, right? You go in and you talk to a prospect and you know, we spend an hour with them do your best and they don't buy right? You have a couple options you could kick yourself for not knowing, you know, not being able to close the sale, not knowing what to do blowing the sales, call all of those things and get really wrapped up in the I tried this approach and it didn't work and I suck because it didn't work right non productive, but there are different ways of looking at that situation, right? What you can control is whether you go back and talk to that customer again how you approach that particular call in terms of what you emphasize and de emphasize, and there are certain parts of the process that you take with that customer in the process that you take with somebody else he can influence that you can't control um if you notice that your particular sales process isn't working, being attached to using that particular process for everything that you do is probably not serving you well right, throw it away and try something else so a lot of it is just noticing when you're spending a lot of energy and you're not getting the payoff that you're looking for there's probably an attachment thing there that you can examine and consciously choose to let go and it really is a conscious type of thing al mcbride does attachment go backto asking your fivefold wide so you can move to different outcomes? I'm glad glad to cut that that's that's exactly it right so when you're really wrapped up in in some and usually attachments or like process type things right doing things in a particular way and you can ask yourself the question like why don't why don't I really care about doing it this way? Is this a good reason or not so good reason um if it's something that you can choose to experience with a different way of approaching things absolutely and you can decide to ask yourself the question why I don't want to do with this what could I do it some other way and get a much better result all right so ninety called personal research and development so large company companies very famously spend tens sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars doing wild and crazy stuff trying to figure out new things that work right most individuals don't necessarily apply that particular process to their own life right? How much of the of your income every month and every year are you re investing in yourself to improve your capabilities to make you a better person, to make you more capable of running your business, to make you more skill, that something that matters to you, if you choose to invest a certain amount of time in a certain amount of energy and a certain amount of money in your own development every single month, every single year, the benefits of that compound tremendously, right? So personal research and development is spending time and money improving your own skills and abilities. And, you know, I think it's really helpful to consciously set aside a budget for this, right, and you can peg it between five and ten percent of your income. If you can manage mohr, by all means, absolutely do it. All right, I know people who invest around fifty percent of their income into developing themselves and making themselves better business people and more skilled at whatever it is that matters to them. The more you invest in your own abilities, the more things you can do, more things you do, the more opportunities you have, the more opportunity you have, the more things will work in a way that gets you the results you're looking for, right? So consciously investing in yourself, setting aside the money, saying, I'm going to use this to buy books by courses, by tools. Set aside the time that I need to learn how to use those tools to develop skills all of those things are probably the highest impact investments that you can ever make in anything right? So if you need to make a choice between contributing to a retirement account and contributing to your own personal growth, there is no that's not even a decision right you will get a way bigger return from investing in yourself than pretty much anything that you can ever possibly do personal and e last thing limiting belief ah limiting belief is any belief that's a barrier to your goals or your states of being right it's anything that is up in your head that is keep that is holding you back from something that you want to be able to do thousands and thousands of limiting beliefs they come in all shapes and sizes here's a common one I'm shy all right? I'm not out going in front of people you know um any other limiting beliefs that you can think of way we're talking about it at lunch? Yeah, sure right I write as a hobby and way to enjoy writing it goals I've set for myself that I haven't achieved yet but when it comes time to read or present my writing to other people I go oh man, this is terrible this this is just awful I can't you know when you do that that thing and it limits you from moving forward absolutely yeah. So other examples of limiting beliefs I always is to think I'm very introverted and then I saw started reading we're talking about it at lunch the chris gullible uh blogged and then he says that on there and I thought oh really there was an introvert and I was quite quite stunned about that so yeah then I started thinking differently about what does that mean to me? I say that I'm introverted so what does that really mean so my yeah yeah seriously quite talking you know, the interesting thing about um introversion extra version particularly so there's nothing to do with whether or not you like people has nothing to do with whether or not you're confident in social situations it has to do with where you get energy right? So if you replenish yourself if you get more energy by being quiet and reading doing things on your own you know all of those you know, quiet centered activities right? You're probably an introvert I am totally an introvert right when I want to recover I need to be in my own space and I would preferably be reading a book folks on the extra version side of the scale get energy from interacting with other people and so being in social situations and meeting people and talking with people all of those things are things that fill them up whereas if you're on the introversion side of the scale it tends to exhaust on deplete you over time, right? So god given example how maybe some people may feel like being very successful means not having time doing the things that you really love there you go yeah other limiting beliefs common ones guba who says I don't know enough or I'm not experienced enough yeah yeah yeah it's a big one regina d also just not being good enough yeah um I was gonna say not having a degree yeah I'm not qualified I'm not certified um I'm not an expert at that you know they're all of these things that the doubting parts of our mind kind of throw up a cz barriers to us actually using something um the thing is most of these beliefs are really not true or their interpretations that are, you know, going back to the interpretation reinterpretation thing that we talked about a little bit earlier there patterns that we're noticing in ourselves there just being interpreted in a way that is preventing us from taking a particular action, right? So the best thing that you could do with a limiting belief is ask yourself a question is that really true? Self solicitation questions go a really long way here the other thing that you can do is go through that reinterpretation process too transform that question or belief into something else right so on the skill acquisition side of things really, really powerful way of reinterpreting that right, I'm not good at that, yet years at the yet to the end, right? If I work on it, I'll get better um, in scale a quiz in particular there's a really common limiting belief, which is you're good at something or you're not. You're either talented at something or you're not, and if you're not talented at it, there's, nothing you can do your you're never going to be any good. So I try extremely, extremely common belief about what humans are capable of learning and what's what's very clear based on the research is that belief is not true if you pay attention, if you focus, if you invest energy and becoming better at something and you will get better at it, right whole set of research by dr carol dweck of stanford university that talks about the way she frames it is your mind is like a muscle. The more you use it, the more it grows, the more it grows, the more you can do, and if you spend time strengthening it, you can learn how to do pretty much anything you want to do, right it's a way more functional way of viewing what it is you're capable of, then you're either talented or you're not so the trip with limiting beliefs is understanding when you're probably coming up against one and mentors and advisors and other people are really great, because these things can be super big blind spots for most of us, having somebody to call you out when you, when you say something that is probably not true, is very valuable, right? And when you know that it exists, you can do something about it, right? You can reinterpret it. You can think about it in a different way, and that helps you overcome it. Actually act in a way that it will get you what you want.