Weaponizing Effectiveness - Lessons from the Air

Happy Long Weekend…

I hope you reflected on the water theme from last week. This week we take to the air. As with all of my theme titles, I use them to cheat my way to the actual theme that I want to talk about.

When I think of air I think of flying … and when I think of flying I think about pilots. Pilots get a lot of money for arguably very little work. They take off and they land … apart from that they put the plane in cruise-mode, better known as “auto-pilot.”  Must be nice, eh, to have a job where most of your paid time is when you are doing virtually no work … just coasting as it were.

Actually, I don’t think about this in any cynical or jealous way at all. Actually, I love the concept. In reality, we don’t really pay pilots for all their time … we pay them for getting us safely in the air and getting us safely back on the ground again in a different location that would take too long any other way. In my books, pilots earn every cent: big bucks for the predictable hard stuff and then be ready in case hard stuff happens when you don't expect it. That’s the way it should be.

In fact, that’s the way it should be for life; get an extremely high reward for a hard effort, and the rest is free. I love auto-pilot.

OK, I’m not talking about pilots and planes, but about personal effectiveness and freedom. Wouldn’t it be nice to spend most of our life on auto-pilot and not struggle to accomplish what we need to accomplish? Here’s a question for you: how often do you rely on auto-pilot? And by “you” I don’t me you two personally … I mean people in general. Or how about if I asked the question this way:

What percentage of a person’s behaviour is conscious and self-regulating?  Or the opposite: what percentage of a person’s behaviour is non-conscious, habitual and automatic?  Are you sure you want the truth? Can you handle the truth? I picked up the following from well-documented social science data gathered by performance experts.

You might be asking what this means. Well, what it means is that 95% of your actions and behaviour do not require an act of intervention by your conscious mind. 95% of your actions don’t require a decision to be made. You just do things and behave on some auto-pilot routine that’s running in your head.

I know … you can’t believe it either, right? This just doesn’t make sense. I “know” that I am making decisions all day long and choosing how to behave and what to do. But if you actually take time to really observe yourself and watch/listen to everything you do/say, you will be shocked to discover that this is true. 

Now this is where a paradox becomes evident. We are told our whole life, “pay attention,” or “be alert,” or “be self-controlled.”  From the data we just saw, apparently we only have 5% of our brain available to our conscious mind … only 5% is at our disposal to be as attentive, alert and controlled as we need to be.

You’re probably saying now, “but wait a second … I know lots of people who are incredibly well-managed or self-controlled … and a lot of people who aren’t.” So obviously everyone’s percentages aren’t the same … that 5% / 95% thing must just be an average for all people. And you would be right …. it is an average for all human beings.

Now check out the following. First think of all the highly disciplined people that you know … and now think of all the very undisciplined people that you know. Think of them as two groups … those with great discipline and those with virtually no discipline (the high achievers vs. the couch potatoes). Now take a guess at what the above percentages look like for each of those groups. Give some thought before you read on. If the 5% / 95% is an average for all humans, then do the high achievers have numbers that are more like 10% / 90%?  Do the couch potatoes’ numbers look like 3% / 97%?

And the answer is …. they are still identical …. 5% and 95%. There is no difference in how much of their lives are on auto-pilot.

So what is it then that sets these two groups apart? The answer is actually not all that surprising. The difference is in how each group uses their 5%. The highly disciplined group is intentional in everything they do … they establish a reason for doing what they do and they only do what makes sense according to the reasons that they have given themselves. Those reasons are called, “purpose.” High achievers/performers have declared one or more focal points (purposes) to which they direct their energy, including a substantial amount directed towards changing what their auto-routines look like. They recognize their basic weaknesses, especially towards their natural inclinations to be lazy and indolent (pain-avoiding) and they expend a substantial part of their 5% on establishing rituals / routines that draw them away from those self-limiting, self-defeating and self-destructive behaviours.

High performers don't have higher IQs, they are simply wiser. They know how life works, in particular, their life, and they learn from their mistakes for the purpose of self-correction. They don’t have any more brain-power to work with than the rest of society … they just use what they have in a way that services their mission (because they have one: a mission).

We all have auto-pilot. I watched the two of you long enough to know what your auto-pilot routines look like, and I’ve also watched you learn how to change those routines to something that works better for your life. I encourage you to continue being an observer of your own behaviour so that you’ll make the most of your brain-power: all 5% of it.

Personal freedom for me means being free from the constraints of of the 95%. And since I can't change the percentages, I am learning how to use the 5% to change the auto-pilot from one that does't serve me to one that does. 

Next week I will continue right where I leave off here as we take to the land.

I love you guys.

Dad