Smoking worked for me because I chose to start so I had a reason to join those smoking breaks, and I chose to stop because I knew I wasn’t going to let myself get addicted.
As you probably already figured out, this secret isn’t really about starting to smoke at all. It is about making symbolic choices, though they sometimes may be risky, to control your own destiny.
why you should pick the window seat
How does this idea translate to doing things other than smoking a product which can give you cancer? Symbolic choices don’t always need to be this life-threatening. They can even come from something as simple as choosing where to sit on a flight.
When CNN ran a poll asking business travelers whether they preferred the window seat or the aisle, the vast majority tended to prefer the convenience of the aisle seat.
When you sit in an aisle seat, it is more efficient and takes less time to get off the plane when it lands. It is much easier to go to the bathroom. It is more convenient to be served any meal or drinks. And you can access any items stored in the overhead bins easily. No wonder it is far more popular among business travelers.
Except me. I always choose the window seat.
it’s not about the view
Sure, I love the view—but the window seat offers more than that. In a closed environment, having the window seat offers you just a little control over your in-flight experience.
In the window seat, you choose whether to keep the window shade open or closed. When you need to go to the bathroom (if you do), everyone else gets up to let you out. If you don’t and choose to stay in your seat for the whole flight, no one disturbs you.
Where you choose to sit on the plane (assuming you have a choice!) can change your experience of traveling. This same principle applies to much more than picking a seat for a flight.
How many situations are you just along for the ride but not really in control? It can be easy to feel this way professionally and sometimes even personally as well.
Being empowered is a choice that we all must make, even if it comes in the smallest seemingly insignificant of places … like picking the window seat on a flight.
Ultimately, it comes down to controlling your own destiny … a phrase that we commonly hear from the world of athletics as well.
champions don’t lose their way forward
In every sport that features championships, there are generally two ways to make it to the final rounds of competition. You can beat the teams that you need to beat and earn your spot. That’s the best way. But then, there’s the other way. You can hope that another team loses, back into a spot and accidentally make it by default.
Coaches talk about that in terms of controlling your own destiny. Winning teams earn that control. If they win, they get in. Outside of the sports world, the importance of controlling your own destiny can be equally important. In surveys of workplace cultures, empowerment always ranks highly as something the best workplaces always offer to employees. For many entrepreneurs, this can be a primary motivation for starting their own businesses as well.
how to control your destiny
TIP #1 - Choose to Lead Instead of Follow
Controlling your own destiny from the back seat is tough. Sometimes you have the role you have, and there’s no way around it. Other times, however, there is an element of choice. When I got my first job in Australia, it was a short three-week gig doing programming, and halfway into the project, I realized the real reason they hired me: the project was behind because of bad management. What they really needed was a new project manager. So I started doing that job without being asked. A week later I was officially hired full-time to do it. Sometimes the chance to lead is something that isn’t given to you—but rather something that depends upon your own initiative.
TIP #2 - Embrace Your Fidgeting
In school, we are told that being easily distracted is not a good thing. Many kids take medication to control their impulses at school and be less “fidgety.” Outside of school, though, the fidgeting may actually serve an important purpose. Learning to embrace your fidgeting—whether it is something like playing with a pencil or shaking your leg (or any other annoying habit for the people around you) can offer an unexpected way to help you focus. So buy little gadgets like “fidget cubes” or start doodling on conference calls, or find another way to enable your fidgeting rather than trying to bury it or medicate it. That is creative energy and learning to tap into it in the right way can pay off huge dividends.
TIP #3 - Walk Away
Several years ago the BBC aired a documentary about the inhumane working conditions in multiple factories in China that were building iPhones and iPads for Apple.4 The program described long working hours, cramped living quarters and demanding bosses. What struck me, though, was a moment in the piece where a worker talked about the overwhelming sense of hopelessness that came from working in an assembly line job with the same robotic schedule fourteen hours a day, six days a week. It was the lack of free will that was destroying his will to survive and even causing him to contemplate suicide. Most of us will thankfully never have to endure a job situation like that, but sometimes our jobs or lives might feel like an endless loop. If that feeling lasts for too long, you have an option that most desperate Chinese factory workers don’t. You can walk away and start something new.
chapter 4
Reinvent Your Playlist
the secret: overspend on yourself
Over the past five years, I have probably purchased more than five hundred books. That’s an average of about two per week, but my buying is rarely that steady. Instead, I buy in bursts that usually coincide with some new project or book I am working on.
For me, starting something new inspires me to buy books. But when you buy that many books, there are a couple of inconvenient facts that you are forced to confront. The first is that you will quickly run out of space to keep all those books. The second is that it becomes nearly impossible to read all of them. In my case, the end result is that I’m routinely buying some books that I will never read and probably end up reselling or donating within a year.
Why would anyone buy books they don’t read? It may seem odd but think about the last five non-school-related books you’ve bought (not counting this one!). Maybe you can’t even remember them. But if you can, then how many of them have you actually read cover to cover?
People buy books they don’t read all the time, they just don’t usually admit it. Sometimes it is because they like the cover. Often it is with the best intentions to read them, but then life gets in the way and time gets short.
I see books as an investment, rather than a guilt-inducing reminder of unfinished homework.
I buy them for the ideas buried inside that I hope will emerge at the right moment to help me solve a challenge I have or change my thinking about a topic. And sometimes that moment never comes. Other times, it comes merely from reading the first few chapters of a book and never finishing the rest. I never put pressure on myself to finish every book I start.
why reading books is like building a playlist
Instead, I focus on finding the most valuable ideas that I can apply to my work or that change