The last lecture (11 page)

T
OO MANY
people go through life complaining about their problems. I’ve always believed that if you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you’d be surprised by how well things can work out.

I’ve known some terrific non-complainers in my life. One was Sandy Blatt, my landlord during graduate school. When he was a young man, a truck backed into him while he was unloading boxes into the cellar of a building. He toppled backwards down the steps and into the cellar. “How far was the fall?” I asked. His answer was simple: “Far enough.” He spent the rest of his life as a quadriplegic.

Sandy had been a phenomenal athlete, and at the time of the accident, he was engaged to be married. He didn’t want to be a burden to his fiancée so he told her, “You didn’t sign on for this. I’ll understand if you want to back out. You can go in peace.” And she did.

I met Sandy when he was in his thirties, and he just wowed me with his attitude. He had this incredible non-whining aura about him. He had worked hard and become a licensed marriage counselor. He got married and adopted children. And when he talked about his medical issues, he did so matter-of-factly. He once explained to me that temperature changes were hard on quadriplegics because they can’t shiver. “Pass me that blanket, will you, Randy?” he’d say. And that was it.

My favorite non-complainer of all time may be Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play Major League Baseball. He endured racism that many young people today couldn’t even fathom. He knew he had to play better than the white guys, and he knew he had to work harder. So that’s what he did. He vowed not to complain, even if fans spit on him.

I used to have a photo of Jackie Robinson hanging in my office, and it saddened me that so many students couldn’t identify him, or knew little about him. Many never even noticed the photo. Young people raised on color TV don’t spend a lot of time looking at black-and-white images.

That’s too bad. There are no better role models than people like Jackie Robinson and Sandy Blatt. The message in their stories is this: Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.

Y
EARS AGO,
I dated a lovely young woman who was a few thousand dollars in debt. She was completely stressed out about this. Every month, more interest would be added to her debts.

To deal with her stress, she would go every Tuesday night to a meditation and yoga class. This was her one free night, and she said it seemed to be helping her. She would breathe in, imagining that she was finding ways to deal with her debts. She would breathe out, telling herself that her money problems would one day be behind her.

It went on like this, Tuesday after Tuesday.

Finally, one day I looked through her finances with her. I figured out that if she spent four or five months working a part-time job on Tuesday nights, she could actually pay off all the money she owed.

I told her I had nothing against yoga or meditation. But I did think it’s always best to try to treat the disease first. Her symptoms were stress and anxiety. Her disease was the money she owed.

“Why don’t you get a job on Tuesday nights and skip yoga for a while?” I suggested.

This was something of a revelation to her. And she took my advice. She became a Tuesday-night waitress and soon enough paid off her debts. After that, she could go back to yoga and really breathe easier.

I
’VE FOUND
that a substantial fraction of many people’s days is spent worrying about what others think of them. If nobody ever worried about what was in other people’s heads, we’d all be 33 percent more effective in our lives and on our jobs.

How did I come up with 33 percent? I’m a scientist. I like exact numbers, even if I can’t always prove them. So let’s just run with 33 percent.

I used to tell anyone who worked in my research group: “You don’t ever have to worry about what I’m thinking. Good or bad, I’ll let you know what’s in my head.”

That meant when I wasn’t happy about something, I spoke up, often directly and not always tactfully. But on the positive side, I was able to reassure people: “If I haven’t said anything, you have nothing to worry about.”

Students and colleagues came to appreciate that, and they didn’t waste a lot of time obsessing over “What is Randy thinking?” Because mostly, what I was thinking was this: I have people on my team who are 33 percent more effective than everyone else. That’s what was in my head.

W
HEN I
have to work with other people, I try to imagine us sitting together with a deck of cards. My impulse is always to put all my cards on the table, face up, and to say to the group, “OK, what can we collectively make of this hand?”

Being able to work well in a group is a vital and necessary skill in both the work world and in families. As a way to teach this, I’d always put my students into teams to work on projects.

Over the years, improving group dynamics became a bit of an obsession for me. On the first day of each semester, I’d break my class into about a dozen four-person groups. Then, on the second day of class, I’d give them a one-page handout I’d written titled “Tips for Working Successfully in a Group.” We’d go over it, line by line. Some students found my tips to be beneath them. They rolled their eyes. They assumed they knew how to play well with others: They had learned it in kindergarten. They didn’t need my rudimentary little pointers.

But the most self-aware students embraced the advice. They sensed that I was trying to teach them the fundamentals. It was a little like Coach Graham coming to practice without a football. Among my tips:

Meet people properly:
It all starts with the introduction. Exchange contact information. Make sure you can pronounce everyone’s names.

Find things you have in common:
You can almost always find something in common with another person, and from there, it’s much easier to address issues where you have differences. Sports cut across boundaries of race and wealth. And if nothing else, we all have the weather in common.

Try for optimal meeting conditions:
Make sure no one is hungry, cold or tired. Meet over a meal if you can; food
softens
a meeting. That’s why they “do lunch” in Hollywood.

Let everyone talk:
Don’t finish someone’s sentences. And talking louder or faster doesn’t make your idea any better.

Check egos at the door:
When you discuss ideas, label them and write them down. The label should be descriptive of the idea, not the originator: “the bridge story” not “Jane’s story.”

Praise each other:
Find something nice to say, even if it’s a stretch. The worst ideas can have silver linings if you look hard enough.

Phrase alternatives as questions:
Instead of “I think we should do A, not B,” try “What if we did A, instead of B?” That allows people to offer comments rather than defend one choice.

At the end of my little lesson, I told my students I’d found a good way to take attendance. “It’s easier for me if I just call you by group,” I’d say. “Group One raise your hands…Group Two?…”

As I called off each group, hands would go up. “Did anybody notice anything about this?” I’d ask. No one had an answer. So I’d call off the groups again. “Group One?…Group Two?…Group Three?…” All around the room, hands shot up again.

Sometimes, you have to resort to cheesy theatrics to break through to students, especially on issues where they think they know everything. So here’s what I did:

I kept going with my attendance drill until finally my voice was raised. “Why on earth are all of you still sitting with your friends?” I’d ask. “Why aren’t you sitting with the people in your group?”

Some knew my irritation was for effect, but everyone took me seriously. “I’m going to walk out of this room,” I said, “and I’ll be back in sixty seconds. When I return, I expect you to be sitting with your groups! Does everyone understand?” I’d waltz out and I’d hear the panic in the room, as students gathered up their book bags and reshuffled themselves into groups.

When I returned, I explained that my tips for working in groups were not meant to insult their intelligence or maturity. I just wanted to show them that they had missed something simple—the fact that they needed to sit with their partners—and so they could certainly benefit from reviewing the rest of the basics.

At the next class, and for the rest of the semester, my students (no dummies), always sat with their groups.

T
HIS IS
beautiful advice that I got once from Jon Snoddy, my hero at Disney Imagineering. I just was so taken with the way he put it. “If you wait long enough,” he said, “people will surprise and impress you.”

As he saw things: When you’re frustrated with people, when they’ve made you angry, it just may be because you haven’t given them enough time.

Jon warned me that sometimes this took great patience—even years. “But in the end,” he said, “people will show you their good side. Almost everybody has a good side. Just keep waiting. It will come out.”

M
Y DAUGHTER
is just eighteen months, so I can’t tell her this now, but when she’s old enough, I want Chloe to know something a female colleague once told me, which is good advice for young ladies everywhere. In fact, pound for pound, it’s the best advice I’ve ever heard.

My colleague told me: “It took a long time, but I’ve finally figured it out. When it comes to men who are romantically interested in you, it’s really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do.”

That’s it. So here it is, for Chloe.

And as I think about it, some day it could come in pretty useful for Dylan and Logan, too.

…
TRY, TRY
a cliché.

I love clichés. A lot of them, anyway. I have great respect for the old chestnuts. As I see it, the reason clichés are repeated so often is because they’re so often right on the money.

Educators shouldn’t be afraid of clichés. You know why? Because kids don’t know most of them! They’re a new audience, and they’re inspired by clichés. I’ve seen it again and again in my classroom.

Dance with the one who brung you.
That’s a cliché my parents always told me, and it applies far beyond prom night. It should be a mantra in the business world, in academia, and at home. It’s a reminder about loyalty and appreciation.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
That comes from Seneca, the Roman philosopher who was born in 5 B.C. It’ll be worth repeating for another two thousand years, at least.

Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.
That is from my cliché repertoire for incoming students.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
I’d say that to students as a reminder not to focus on little issues, while ignoring the major ones.

I love a lot of pop culture clichés, too. I don’t mind when my children watch
Superman,
not because he’s strong and can fly, but because he fights for “truth, justice and the American way.” I
love
that line.

I love the movie
Rocky
. I even love the theme music. And what I liked most about the original
Rocky
movie was that Rocky didn’t care if he won the fight that ends the film. He just didn’t want to get knocked out. That was his goal. During the most painful times of my treatment, Rocky was an inspiration because he reminded me: It’s not how hard you hit. It’s how hard you get hit…and keep moving forward.

Of course, of all the clichés in the world, I love football clichés the most. Colleagues were used to the sight of me wandering the halls of Carnegie Mellon tossing a football up and down in front of me. It helped me think. They’d probably say I thought football metaphors had the same effect. But some of my students, female and male, had trouble adjusting. They’d be discussing computer algorithms and I’d be speaking football. “Sorry,” I’d tell them. “But it will be easier for you to learn the basics of football than for me to learn a new set of life clichés.”

I liked my students to win one for the Gipper, to go out and execute, to keep the drive alive, to march down the field, to avoid costly turnovers and to win games in the trenches even if they were gonna feel it on Monday. My students knew: It’s not just whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the cliché.

E
XPERIENCE IS
what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

That’s an expression I learned when I took a sabbatical at Electronic Arts, the video-game maker. It just stuck with me, and I’ve ended up repeating it again and again to students.

It’s a phrase worth considering at every brick wall we encounter, and at every disappointment. It’s also a reminder that failure is not just acceptable, it’s often essential.

When I taught the “Building Virtual Worlds” course, I encouraged students to attempt hard things and to not worry about failing. I wanted to reward that way of thinking. So at the end of each semester, I’d present one team of students with a stuffed animal—a penguin. It was called “The First Penguin Award” and went to the team that took the biggest gamble in trying new ideas or new technology, while failing to achieve their stated goals. In essence, it was an award for “glorious failure,” and it celebrated out-of-the-box thinking and using imagination in a daring way.

The other students came to understand: “First Penguin” winners were losers who were definitely going somewhere.

The title of the award came from the notion that when penguins are about to jump into water that might contain predators, well, somebody’s got to be the first penguin. I originally called it “The Best Failure Award,” but failure has so many negative connotations that students couldn’t get past the word itself.

Over the years, I also made a point of telling my students that in the entertainment industry, there are countless failed products. It’s not like building houses, where every house built can be lived in by someone. A video game can be created and never make it through research and development. Or else it comes out and no one wants to play it. Yes, video-game creators who’ve had successes are greatly valued. But those who’ve had failures are valued, too—sometimes even more so.

Start-up companies often prefer to hire a chief executive with a failed start-up in his or her background. The person who failed often knows how to avoid future failures. The person who knows only success can be more oblivious to all the pitfalls.

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.