BOOK SUMMARY 91 The Achievement Habit
·
Summary written by: Zach Rubin
"Achievement can be learned. It is a muscle, and
once you learn to flex it, there’s no end to what you can accomplish in
life."
- The Achievement Habit, page 5
Bernard
Roth’s The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing and Take
Command of Your Life shows the reader ways they can improve their
thinking and the world around them so their goals are achievable. The title of
the book may give the impression that it is a step by step primer of some kind
which isn’t really the case. Rather, Roth provides a smorgasbord of ideas that
all relate generally to the idea of “achievement” in the broadest sense. The
book touches on everything from spirituality to engineering so expect to absorb
a lot as you read across many disciplines.
The Golden Egg
Design Thinking
"Design
thinking is a set of general practices a group of us has developed over the
years that are effective in solving design challenges. A design challenge can
apply to just about any kind of product or experience. It’s not just about how
to build a better mousetrap (though that’s part of it); it’s also about things
that are not physical objects: how to improve the wait time at a popular
amusement park, how to clean up a highway, how to more efficiently get food to
needy people, how to improve online dating and so on."- The Achievement Habit, page 11
Design
thinking is a different way of thinking about problems than is traditionally
taught. Roth notes that design thinking has “empathy” at its core because
design has to be focused on who or what you are designing for rather than
yourself.
Beyond
empathy is the idea of defining the problem specifically and checking to make
sure the “problem” is really the issue that needs to be solved rather than a
symptom of a different problem. Once the problem has been correctly defined, a
design thinker generates as many solutions as possible and tests the best ideas
on real people, while collecting feedback. With that feedback they can then
generate more ideas and repeat the process until they are satisfied with the
solution.
It may
be most helpful to contrast design thinking with what often happens in
organizations:
1.
A problem is identified and given to a group
of senior managers to develop a solution.
2.
The group immediately goes about “solving”
the problem without talking to anyone else.
3.
The first reasonable idea from the most
senior manager is agreed to and then a lot of time and effort is spent to
implement the idea across the organization.
4.
Finally, when the “solution” fails to solve
the initial problem, everyone decides the issue is intractable and the
organization will just need to “live with it.”
Design
thinking helps to avoid these pitfalls and many more in our personal life and
the organizations we work in.
Gem #1
A Gooood Reason
"When
we stop using reasons to justify ourselves, we increase our chances of changing
our behavior, gaining a realistic self-image, and living a more satisfying and
productive life."- The Achievement Habit,
page 42
Roth
notes that we often justify our behavior with “reasons” that, for the most
part, don’t actually explain our behavior. A common example would be that we
are “too busy” for something, when the truth is we simply don’t want to make
that thing a priority. Stopping ourselves from simplifying our thoughts to a
few trite reasons opens the door to better understanding the true limits we
face.
Roth
encourages us to catch ourselves when we are providing reasons (especially
reasons to ourselves) and imagine a chorus of people sarcastically announcing
“that’s a gooood reason.” In fact, Roth has his workshops and
classes do exactly this whenever someone provides a “reason” something can’t be
done.
Gem #2
A Bias Toward Action
"The
best way forward is embedded in the design thinking methodology: manifest a
bias toward action and don’t be afraid of failure."- The Achievement Habit, page 53
We are
all faced with countless options each day and throughout our lives. It is
impossible to know what the outcome of those decisions will be so, in most
cases, the worst thing to do is wait to decide. Roth believes “it serves people
best in life to accept that decisions are part of the process of moving
forward, and that there are so many variables that it’s a waste of time to try
to see the endgame. Once we realize that most decisions are not life-or-death,
we can make them without undue stress.”
If you
have a big life decision you’ve been putting off you can just ask yourself
what’s the best choice I can make with the information I have and then… act.
The
Achievement Habit provides far more insight than this
summary can offer because it covers so much ground. The book’s thesis might be
something along the lines of how to use design thinking to improve your
life but the nebulousness of that idea demands more thought than even
this book can provide. If you’re looking to challenge some of your existing
assumptions about the world then this book is certainly a good read. On the
other hand, if you want a simple framework for achievement then this book is
likely to leave you with more questions than answers. Perhaps that’s how it should
be.
How
can you use design thinking in your own life to better solve problems?
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