Improved Productivity Through Lowered Expectations [HD BizBlog 1.2]
“I have not failed. I have merely found ten thousand ways that won’t work.”
~Thomas Edison
The relentless pursuit of achieving our goals can lead to the skewing of our perspective. In order to be productive and Get Things Done we need to get things right. Or do we?
Thomas Edison was one of the most prolific inventors in history, and I believe that he was able to create so many new things because of his low expectations. He did not give up when the first 5,000 light bulb filament experiments failed, nor did he give up after the next 5,000 failures. No, he knew that he would, one day, find the material that would work.
How many people do you suppose would have the patience to experiment with 10,000 different substances in order to create the light bulb filament? Most of us would have written it off as a bad job, impossible to do.
Here is another example, also having to do with the light bulb.
“Years ago [the early 1920’s, ed.] new engineers in the Lamp Division of General Electric were assigned, as a joke, the impossible task of frosting bulbs on the inside. Eventually, however, an undaunted newcomer named Marvin Pipkin not only found a way to frost bulbs on the inside but developed an etching acid that gave minutely rounded pits instead of sharp depressions. This materially strengthened each bulb. Fortunately, no one had told him it couldn’t be done, so he did it.”
(Bits and Pieces, December, 1989, pp. 20-21)
Failure is an option
Pipkin didn’t know that many other engineers had attempted to solve this problem and failed. His expectations were lower, he persevered through several failures, and he finally succeeded. The engineering team at GE had unwittingly changed the context of their experiments. By continually turning the project over to newcomers who did not “know” that it was impossible, they created the condition for it to become possible.
As David Allen writes in Ready for Anything:
“Putting things in a different context can generate unrealized ideas and solutions. Your point of view can change the most drastic of circumstances into the most powerful of positive experiences.”
Take advantage of a challenging situation
Lower your expectations. Exercise your creativity. Try a handful of small solutions instead of attempting to overcome the difficulty in one sweeping movement. You will have lowered your expectations by diffusing the risk. If one of the small solutions fails, no matter, you still have a few more.
Look at the situation from a different angle, don’t try to put a square peg into a round hole - change the peg, or change the hole. Keep in mind that you do not have to get it right the very first time. If you learn from observing your mistakes, your next attempt will be easier, because you already know what doesn’t work. Use your failures as a guide, learn from them, embrace them, and get closer to the solution.
Original post here: Stephen
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