Replace -have to with -want to (Book 'Achievement Habit')

First of all, who is Bernard Roth?

Bernard Roth is a professor in engineering at Stanford and a founder of Stanford D.School (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford). His famous course ‘The Designer in Society’ is popular among innovators of the Silicon Valley. He wrote this book to spread his thoughts on how to apply Design Thinking to personal everyday lives by making achievement a habit.

Bernard Roth and Design Garage at Stanford D. School

 

And what is Design Thinking? Who is a Design Thinker?

Design thinking is basically a problem solving process with emphasis on *ability to empathize with others, discover and understand patterns, and realize ideas. The typical process of ‘Empathize-Define-Ideate-Prototype-Test’ is an iterative process without order. A Design Thinker is anyone who actually practices the above ability.

 

From this book, I’ve decided to:

1. Be a Doer, not a Talker (be Nike Human!)
2. Keep asking questions to find the REAL problem.
3. Believe in the magic of language:
   (1) Talk in 'Yes, And', not 'Yes, But'
   (2) Replace 'have to' with 'want to'
   (3) Never interfere others
   (4) be an Active Listener.
4. Always remember that I’m in full control of my world.

 

1. Be a Doer, not a Talker (be Nike!)

Like Bernard Roth said, Doing is Everything. Most times (not even sometimes) just doing it helps A LOT. We think that we think and then act upon it, but most times we act and then think about what we did. We are only human and we try so hard to appear rational. If everything is hindsight, why not just think less and move fast? What is more objective than action? I believe ‘learning by doing’ is the best way to learn and succeed. Failures suck. Fast and cheap failures are not only helpful, but also necessary. Thomas Edison even said he never failed, but only discovered ineffective methods.

‘The Experience Loop ♾️’ You learn from experience. No experience is how you thought it would be. (Youtube Channel: Jason Yeo알머리 제이슨)

 

2. Keep asking questions to find the REAL problem

How might we fix this bed? → How might we get a good sleep?

When you can’t find a solution, it’s probably because you haven’t asked the right question. You have to keep on refining the problem statement so that it addresses the REAL problem. The secret is to assume that your problem statement is a solution and think about what benefits you get from that. So with this example, you ask yourself, ‘okay, you fixed your bed. How does this help me? I get a good sleep!’.

A similar life example in the book was:

How can I find a partner? →
I found a partner. I get less lonely. →
How can I get less lonely?

There's another case from Embrace:
How might we make efficient incubators? → How might we keep babies warm?

https://vimeo.com/22342241

they reframed the problem/PoV from ‘making efficient incubators’ to ‘a desperate parent in a remote village who need to get their dying baby a chance to survive’

 

Who is the user and what is his need? What is the setting (Where is the user)? And from that, you form a Point of View.

We write down the PoV on our whiteboard and we always go back to it after prototypes and iteration, and ASK ourselves, “Are we still addressing this PoV?”

 

3. Believe in the Magic of Language

1. Talk in ‘Yes, And’, not ‘Yes, But’. The moment you use ‘Yes, But’ you create a conflict that does not even exist.
2. Replace ‘have to’ with ‘want to’. I have to finish this → I want to finish this.
3. Never interfere others. I either make myself look stupid by saying the wrong things, or make the other look stupid by saying the right things.
4. Be an active listener. Sense when the other person is not asking you to give a solution. Usually the person would go, “I know, BUT…”. Just be present and listen to him/her.

 

4. Always remember I’m in full control of my world

By definition, de-sign means giving signs, or meanings. We live in a world we designed. Because we are only human, we are all incomplete beings and so what we design is inevitably incomplete too. I can decide for myself whether a particular experience means something or not. It is important to live with this sense of control and avoid being helpless.

 

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