Short Takes #25: Live Up To Your Expectations
Fritz Perls | A Managee's 1:1 Guide | Think Small | Never Invented
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine.
| Fritz Perls
…
I am reading a fascinating book, The Art of Logic in an Illogical World, by Eugenia Cheng, and she reintroduced me to some common logical fallacies, such as one possible misinterpretation of Fritz Perls statement above. Reread it. It may seem implicit that someone — maybe everyone — is in the world to live up to their own expectations, even if not having to live up to others’. But you can’t surmise that from Perls’ line.
To reach that conclusion, you need an additional, independent statement: we are in the world to live up to our own expectations, and not those of others. But that is an emotional response to Perls’ aphorism, not a logical one, Chang shows us. Her example is the statement ‘when you tell students they have to work hard in order to do well, and then they think that if they work hard they should automatically do well. Working hard is a necessary but not sufficient to doing well. It is not sufficient because you also have to work hard in the right sort of way, and if you think otherwise, you are making a converse error.’
But Perls may not have been implying anything about living up to our own expectations: it may just be us inferring that, driven by emotion rather than logic.
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A Managee’s 1:1 Guide
I am always a bit dubious when senior managers give advice to managees, especially when couched as ‘what top performers do differently’, so I confess I read Polina Russell’s The Employee’s Ultimate Guide to 1:1s - What Top Performers Do Differently with trepidation. But after a quick scan, I returned to the top, very intrigued by her practicality, and I gave it a deep read.
I agree that managees (or ICs — individual contributors — in her dialect) should prepare for 1:1s, considering the purpose and problems inherent to close interaction with managers. (The subtext is the relational and political matrix in which everyone at work is embedded, which Russell mostly leaves unstated. She spent 14 years at Amazon, which is a jungle.)
One of the most helpful parts is the section What not to do in a 1:1. For example:
2 Do not use 1:1 as therapy
4 Don’t write an essay
5 Don’t give your manager action items
Her conspiratorial tone in the final paragraphs is a bit arch, but work relations are not tiddlywinks. Remember, there is a low-scale war underneath it all, between managees and their bosses, and between managees, upwardly striving:
If you apply this guide to your 1:1s consistently, you will stand out. Most people don’t do this. Which is good news for you.
ICs (individual contributors): keep this as your edge. Don’t share with anyone.
Managers: remove that edge and send it to your team.
Everybody keeping everybody off balance, at every turn.
Think Small
Talya Minsberg reports on a study of athletes that shows focusing on ‘process goals’ — ‘small objectives that were more in my control’ — than ‘outcome goals’, such as her efforts to run her fastest time ever in a marathon.
The rationale is that while big goals can be motivating, the reality is that a great deal of what makes big outcomes big — like winning a race — are out of our control:
Many people naturally gravitate toward ambitious goals that are the traditional markers of success, like landing a dream job or winning an award.
These kinds of targets can be highly motivating, said Ayelet Fishbach, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. But, she cautioned, whether you actually achieve them is usually at least partially out of your control.
That’s not all bad. Outcome goals can get you off the blocks, she said. But if you miss your target, she said, falling short can be profoundly disappointing. Had I been singularly focused on running a certain time in Boston, for example, “Well, that may be your last marathon,” she said.
Experts recommend instead focusing on your own performance, building a plan to improve, without ‘normative comparison’, which is measuring yourself against others. She cites the advice of Charles Duhigg, the author of Supercommunicators and The Power of Habit:
“A goal is only useful inasmuch as it helps develop a plan for you,” said Charles Duhigg, the author of “Supercommunicators” and “The Power of Habit.”
If done correctly, he said, once you have a plan in place, you won’t think too much about the goal.
Duhigg used the example of writing a book, which, as he knows well, can be daunting if you try to take in the whole picture at once. But the smaller goals — writing the opening of one chapter, and then the middle of another chapter — are what get you there. “If you just spend enough time sitting there doing these little bits and pieces, you end up with a book,” he said. “The book is the natural byproduct of the plan.”
So, frame your goal as a plan, not as an outcome.
Never Invented
A 2024 Harris Poll survey of about 1,000 Gen Z adults in the US found that almost half of respondents said they wished social media platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, and X (formerly Twitter) were “never invented.” And 21% said they wished the smartphone had never been invented.
