Personal Development Training and Motivational Humor from the Motivational Smart Ass!

Ah, the wit and wisdom of Roadhouse...

Sadly, yes, pain does hurt. I learned this last week when my teeth and gums decided it was time to pay me back for a few years of neglect. Were the lessons on business and success worth the pain I went through? You be the judge…

A couple of weeks ago I developed a some tooth pain. One morning I woke up and the upper right part of my mouth just hurt. Uh oh…

I was on the road for some speaking gigs, and had about four days before I could get back to see a dentist. To complicate matters, I didn’t actually have a Philadelphia dentist. Yes, I was still using the dentist I grew up with in NY state, trying to time appointments with visits to my parents. This plan had been relatively unsuccessful (come on! who wants to take time to see the dentist when your are only visiting your parents for a couple of days??) so I hadn’t been to the dentist for a few years. I know, I know, more fool me…

Life lessons from dentistry - who knew?

While on the road, I got recommendations from my Philly friends and made an appointment for the day after I got back with a Philadelphia dentist. Yes, at 36 years old it was finally time to cut the cord and get a local DDS.

I went in to the appointment both nervous and hopeful. Nervous that it would be something serious requiring surgery or a “major procedure,” hopeful that I would walk out of there with my pain gone.

The dentist was a nice man who examined me closely and even took an x-ray. There was good news and bad news.

• The good news: There was nothing major wrong. In fact, it wasn’t tooth pain, it was gum pain, most likely caused by years of accumulated plaque (did I mention I flossed only about once a year…?). I only needed a good cleaning, and the problem would go away.
• The bad news: I would not walk out of there pain free. The cleaning would allow the gum to heal, but it would have to heal on its own. Even worse, the dentist says, “by clearing the plaque, we’ve exposed parts of the gum that were covered up, so they’ll be sensitive. Chances are the pain will get worse before it gets better.” He said it would take about 4 days.

D’oh!

This was unfortunate. I was hoping to walk out of there with a magic cure that would make my pain stop this moment. Instead, I was going to have to be in more pain for 4-7 more days!

And let me tell you, he wasn’t kidding. Three nights later I woke up in the middle of the night with the worst mouth pain I had felt since this whole thing started. And this was after taking two ibuprofens!

I was beginning to wonder if my dentist was a quack. He had said “about 4 days.” Well if that was the case, shouldn’t day three have had less pain? Maybe it was infected! Maybe there was something fa worse wring he had missed!

But no, there was nothing else wrong. each day after that the pain and throbbing got a little less. Today is the one week mark from the appointment and I barely noticed it at all. Turns out the dentist was right: it got worse before it got better, but it eventually got better. I suppose there is something reassuring in knowing that your dentist knows what he is talking about.

This got me thinking about the concept of pain, suffering, and success in other areas as well. There are a few takeaways from my dental ordeal:

Maintenance is Easy; Easy to Do, But Also Easy to Skip

I could have avoided this whole experience if I had done two simple things:

1. Flossed regularly
2. Seen the dentist every six months (heck, even once a year would have staved off this pain)

Is it safe? No, not if you skip basic mainenance...

In life and business, there are many things we can be doing every day to just maintain (or slightly improve) our business, health, relationships, etc. They are easy to put off and seem inconsequential, but put them off long enough and they will bite you in the ass.

The Question For You: What simple day to day “maintenance” activities are you putting off doing that, when you think about it, you know will come back to haunt you?

Disaster is Usually Preceded by Warning Signs

Here’s a confession: I had a similar pain years ago. My dentist told me it was just gum sensitivity and told me to use a soft bristled toothbrush and start using a “sensitive” toothpaste, like Sensodyne. This kind of depressed me as this was the toothpaste my parents used – I had always looked at it as “old people’s toothpaste.” And now I had to use it.

A couple of years later, that tooth/gum area would hurt if I bit down on something wrong. Guess what I did? That’s right, I would think, “hmm, I should see the dentist,” and then proceed to do nothing about it.

I ignored the signs, and I paid for it.

Most things that we see as “crisises” in our lives come with some advance warning. Business starts to drop before it bottoms out, communication gets tough before relationships end, and minor chest pains often precede major heart attacks. We just need to a) notice them and b) do something about it.

And it’s the second one that’ll get ya’…

The Question For You: What warning signs, in your business, health, or personal life are you ignoring right now?

Fixing Things Hurt (For a Bit)

Like my dentist told me, “it’s going to get worse before it gets better.” Fixing, or improving things, usually requires some kind of pain, suffering, or sacrifice. Getting in great shape requires sweat at the gym. Starting a business requires cutting back on spending and fun for a bit. Bad relationships require either difficult conversations or painful endings.

Does this mean that all improvement comes with pain and suffering? Not necessarily. Sometimes you find an elegant solution that makes everyone happy, an easy way to get what you want, or a resolution that makes everyone happy. But being willing to suffer if needed gives you the strength and courage to take actions to make things better.

A little (or lot) of short term pain can lead to a lifetime of great happiness. But it may get worse before it gets better.

The Question For You: What are you avoiding doing because you are afraid of the short term pain? How is that going to hurt you in the long run?

Dentists get a bad rap, but not from me! I am no anti-dentite!

And remember to floss your teeth!

We all make awful decisions from time to time. Some people make awful decision more frequently then just “from time to time.” But have you ever thought about why you make the decisions you do and what goes into the decision making process? I was inspired to do this myself after a recent trip to a casino…

I was in Las Vegas for this year’s The Speaking School, and one night we found ourselves sitting at a Three Card Poker table.

Vegas baby, Vegas!
(Photo by Jam Adams)

I’ve played Three Card Poker before, and using the friendly odds information over at Wizard of Odds I knew that in Three Card Poker your best strategy is to stay in on anything better than a Queen-six-four off-suit (don’t worry if you don’t know what that means. All you need to know is that I had researched the statistically best odds of winning – or “losing less quickly,” as it were…)

While at the table, the dealer notices a few of us staying in on these types of “Queen-high” hands. She says, “You shouldn’t stay in with just a Queen.”

My friend replies, “why not?”

“Because the best you can hope for is a push.” (A “push” is basically a tie – you neither win nor lose money)

Now I chime in. “Oh? I thought statistically it’s best to stay in on anything better than Queen-six-four…”

“In my experience, people usually lose when they stay in with queens,” the dealer answers. “I recommend people stay in only when they have King or better.”

Ah-ha! Therein, my friends, lies the crux of this story. “In my experience.” Three simple, powerful, and often incredibly limiting words.

“In my experience,” is just one type of evidence. To be able to make informed decisions, we must understand and evaluate three types of evidence: intuition, anecdotal, and data.

Intuition

This is simply your “gut” feeling. When you are about to make any decision, you probably have an initial immediate feeling as to which is the best choice. Some people put a lot of stock in their intuition. Others don’t value it at all.

Neither one is right or wrong. Just be aware when you are making a decision based on intuition. Where you might get yourself into trouble is when you have a gut feeling and then simply look for anecdotal evidence and data to support your intuition, rather than being objective about it. This happened everyday, especially in “soft” areas such as relationships. If you like someone, you will ignore stories and examples of them acting like a dumbass and focus on their good qualities. Likewise, if you decide someone is a jerk, you will create a mental catalog of all of their dumbass behavior and ignore or explain away their nice deeds.

This is not to say you should not go with your gut. Some of the greatest innovations of our time have come from people ignoring data and anecdotal evidence to pursue what they felt was right. Just know that this is what you are doing. (By the way, history is also littered with many more examples where people ignored data and evidence and failed miserably. We just don’t talk about them as much. So be careful

Anecdotal

Stories can be powerful, but be careful! They can mislead

For most of our small decisions, many of our medium sized decisions, and quite a few of our large decisions, we rely on personal observations and stories passed along from other people. We are shaped by our own experiences, and we make gross generalizations based on a few specific examples.

For example, you have a bad first experience at a restaurant, so you assume it sucks and never go back. A friend tells you Lowe’s is targeted to women and you assume it’s true. You always have nice pleasant conversations with your neighbor so you are shocked when he turns out to be a serial killer.

Anecdotal evidence may be the most persuasive and powerful form of evidence. This is why great speakers use stories. I even wrote a post about how to quickly put together a speech and stressed the importance of stories. We want to trust our gut, and we like data, but we trust what our eyes and ears tell us.

This is what the dealer at the Three Card Poker table did. In her personal experience, people who stay in with “Queen high” lose, so it’s better to stay in on “King high” or better. A card game like Three Card Poker is nice because there is straight statistical data to tell us whether she was right or wrong. In this case her her opinion on optimum strategy was wrong, and that is because there are some problems relying on just anecdotal evidence:

• It’s incomplete – Like in the case of the quiet neighbor who turns out to be a psycho, anecdotal evidence rarely tells us the whole story. Was the person you just met rude because he’s a jerk or because he has a tooth ache, his pet died, and he just got served with divorce papers? Who knows. But relying purely on anecdote, you’ll assume he’s a jerk.

  The Three Card Poker dealer’s evidence was incomplete. She wasn’t paying attention to the value of playing for a “push.” While the chances of “winning” are incredibly low, playing for a “push,” helps you lose money less quickly.

• It’s selective – You can’t observe everything. You may observe hundreds of cases every week of BMW drivers driving nice and cautiously. But when one cuts you off, you suddenly have anecdotal evidence that “all BMW drivers are jerks.”

  The dealer probably dealt many hands where a “Queen high” pushed, and even a few where it won. But when it came to decision time, she forgot or ignored all of these.

• It’s biased – As mentioned above in the section on intuition, if you already have an idea in mind, your brain may start looking for stories to support your point while ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

  Through the course of the rest of the night, the Three Card Poker dealer was quick to point out the cases where staying in on “Queen-high” lost. I don’t think she noticed or cared when it pushed.

Be very wary of making decisions based purely on anecdotal evidence. These are often the ones that bite you in the ass.

Data

Data is simply information. In card games, data comes down to straight statistics. Looking at data is easy if you are talking about card games (and are a statistician. Frankly, number crunching like that eludes me. I took four semesters of calculus in college and I still can’t wrap my head around probability and statistics!)

For non-statistical stuff, data comes down to research: surveys, focus groups, sales numbers, etc.

Data is wonderful, but not infallible. Here are some limitations of data:

1. It’s limited to the sample set – Data may seem like a great way to figure out what people want, but in reality you are often only getting data on the people surveyed! What that means is that you may think you are getting a cross section of the market when in reality you are not.

   If your customer feedback forms say, “service was great!” well, your service may be great. Or it could be that the few people who took the time to fill out a feedback form liked the service, whereas the vast majority who hated the service left without saying or doing anything.

2. It relies heavy on the questions asked – The way a question is asked can heavily influence the answer you get. There’s a frequently cited study (I read about it in both Predictably Irrational and Super Freakonomics) that demonstrates this:

   A large group of people were given $300 and then told that they could a) get an extra $100 or b) flip a coin, and if they won they would get an additional $200, but if they lost they would get nothing. About 65% chose option a.

   Then, in a similar situation, a large group of people were given $500 and then told that they could a) have $100 taken away from them or b) flip a coin, and if they won they would keep their money, but if they lost they would lose $200. In this case, about 65% of the people chose option b.

   Interesting, no? The two outcomes are exactly the same. Pick option “a” and you get $400. Pick option “b” and you have a 50% chance of getting $300, and a 50% chance of getting $500. The only difference is in how they options were setup, and it resulted in very different responses.

   I won’t go into the psychological ramifications of this study. But when it comes to data, it shows how biased “objective” data can be based on word choice.

3. It keeps us in the world of what we know – Data is great, but only lets us measure what we know. It’s hard to gather data on innovative ideas, because they don’t yet exist. After Apple’s flop with the Newton PDA, data may have indicated that there was no interest in a portable device that served as your phone, email system, music player, video player, game system, and total life manager all in one. And yet, now we have the iPhone (which is awesome!
4. It may not tell the whole story – Gathering data is one thing. Understanding and analyzing it is quite another. You launch a promotional campaign and see sales numbers go up. The campaign must have worked, right? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe a tour bus happened to stop in front of your establishment one day which jacked up your numbers. Maybe word of mouth hit the tipping point. Maybe you got lucky. It can be hard to tell, which is why very deliberate tracking of activities is so vital.

   Smart people understand that there is a difference between causation and correlation. Dumb people make assumptions.

So which one of these forms of evidence is best? None. Or all.

Unless you are engaging in a purely statistical activity (like Three Card Poker) you need to weigh all three forms of evidence in your decision making process.

Buying a home? Listen to your gut, but also talk to people in the area and look up some data on crime rates, school ratings, etc.

Want to start a business? Do some market research, talk to both people in the industry and to potential customers, and then listen to your intuition.

Gambling at a casino? Ignore the dealer and trust The Wizard of Odds. Sorry, had to be said – besides, those games are straight stats!

Whichever decision making route you take just be aware of which strategy you are employing and why. Doing that one simple thing alone may help you make better, less disastrous, more “Smart Ass” choices!

Attribution: I want to give credit where credit is due. I first came across the “intuition-anecdotal-data” idea on decision making while at a National Speakers Association event. Stephen Tweed was the nice and smart gentleman who taught me this process. Thanks Steve!