Andrew Skotzko

Psychology

Permission to Fall

In life, I regret the things I didn’t do more than the missteps I made along the way.
– David Stanley

For the last three months, I traveled throughout South America. Despite what my Instagram photos may suggest, for the first month I was on the road, I was not enjoying it. Everything was new and stressful. There were no familiar places or friends to fall back on. The lack of regular schedules shot all my routines to hell. I felt lonely without my friends, and had no idea what I was doing. I drank too much, and exercised too little.

Searching, far from home

I had gone away to get out of the tech scene for a while, for a change of pace and scenery. I had recently left Chill, where I’d driven myself at a maniacal pace for almost three years. I needed time and space to think, refresh, and get some perspective.

But I was 6,121 miles away, and it wasn’t working.

On the night of December 21st, I remember calling Matt from my apartment in Buenos Aires. I’d talked myself in circles, about whether this crazy trip was still a good idea.

Should I just go back to California and take another job? Should I scrap the idea of trying to build something of my own? I was minutes away from booking a trip back to the USA so I could spend the holidays with friends and family.

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Charlie and The Zealot

Have you met The Zealot lately?

He’s the bombastic preacher who blasts all other forms of worship.

He’s the chess player who is entirely reliant on memorized gambits to win or confound his opponent, and is upset when it’s not enough.

He’s the middle manager who insists that This is How It Must Be Done. Why? Because this is how it must be done.

What do these zealots share? Circular logic. A vague malaise. A low sense of their ability to create or adapt to new ways of doing things. An inability to improvise, because they have not grasped the deeper principles of their chosen framework and integrated those principles into an overall seamless flow in decision making.

On the other hand, there’s Charlie.

Charlie Munger is a billionaire and philanthropist who is the cofounder of Berkshire Hathaway. Charlie is famous for giving speeches, and being able to think very deeply about a wide range of problems.

Here’s the difference between Charlie and The Zealot: dependence.

Charlie knows that every framework has a point of view that can be useful.

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Buddha on the Court: the Art of the Inner Game (Part 1)

On Friday, November 10th, 2006, Lawrence Jackson was running out of time. The All-American defensive end for the USC Trojans had yet to register a sack in his junior season. Coming into the season, Jackson had his sights on a national title, a Bednarik award, and possibly a first-round pick in the coming NFL draft.

But so far? Eight games in. Zero sacks.

Jackson obsessed over it. It was all he thought about. As Jackson saw it at the time, even if he was playing well overall, without sacks, he was invisible.

But by midnight on Saturday the 11th, Jackson was the star of USC’s victory over Oregon—a nationally televised, primetime game with major implications on bowl bids. He accumulated three sacks, ten tackles, and one tackle for a loss—a landmark game by any standard.

So what changed in a mere 36 hours?

His approach to the game.

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Beginner’s Mind, On Demand

Two months ago, I was scared. Scared I wouldn’t be able to keep up the course I was on. Scared my progress would grind to a stop. Scared I wouldn’t be able to deliver on the commitments that I’d made. Scared that I couldn’t cut it on the new level I was playing at.

See, about five months before that, I’d decided to go full time into product and software engineering with very little background in it. It was an incredible opportunity: join one of the best software product teams in the world and learn from, and with, the best. My answer was yes, almost without thinking, when I got the chance.

That was the end of last April. True or not, I believed that to rapidly get to a level where I could really contribute, I’d have to make an almost Faustian bargain: I would have to drop everything else in my life to learn what I needed to in such a short period of time. Social life, hobbies, most everything that I did for fun, gone. Note: there was no explicit deadline looming, but I always feel the clock ticking in my head. One of the curses of my brain. But to me, this deal was a no-brainer.

Pulling it off damn near broke me.

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Why Do It, Then?

I came across as someone who was driven to succeed. Many told me so. I thought that as well until I loved myself. Then, one day, I woke up to a spotlight shining on that belief, except the truth was a slight twist: I was driven to not fail.

Kamal wrote that in a powerful vignette he just published. And it punched me right in the face. In a good way.

I realized that a lot of my motivation, historically, has been not to fail. Everything was wrapped up in my ego. A lot still is.

I wondered, could something take its place? Could something else be as powerful a motivator? After all, fearing failure has given me a lot of mileage. Could there be an equally powerful, sustainable, and bottomless motivation that is more positive?

I thought about that and racked my brain for hours. Held on to hope there was something else I could tap into. Then, as I was drifting off into a delicious nap, it whacked me.

It’s so simple. It’s just like being ten years old on a bike again, exploring the vastness of my neighborhood for the first time and feeling absolute wonderment at the most mundane things, just because they were there.

So if not to not fail, why do it, then?

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Mercenaries

Yesterday, I couldn’t stop thinking about someone who hurt me badly a few months ago. I hadn’t thought of this person in at least a month, and then BAM, I’m in it.

I know where this train of thought leads. It is not a happy place. My defenses tell me to ignore the memory. I listen. I try. I fail.

The memory comes roaring back, stronger than before. This repeats. It’s not as simple as just “ignoring” negative thoughts. How come?

Energy is the currency of my psyche. My attention is the bank distributing it. And my thoughts are gluttonous mercenaries whose martial art is judo. They feed on any energy routed to them by my attention, swelling up and working for or against me in direct proportion to how much they receive.

They are insatiable. It doesn’t matter whether they are useful or not.

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I Surrender

All of a sudden I was stretching farther and deeper than I ever had. For the first time, in that moment, it was easy. Something had changed and I’d crossed a threshold I wasn’t previously aware of.

On June 30th, I woke up early and did yoga. It was cold and dark in my apartment. I was half asleep, feeling creaky. Soon enough, I came upon the one “basic” yoga pose that still challenges me every time: triangle pose.

Every time I get to triangle pose, I literally feel pushed up against an internal wall of resistance and it’s like my own body is blocking me. There’s this persistent tension in my hips and upper chest/back that I get locked into and can’t seem to get relief from. I always try to push harder, to stretch farther, to go deeper into the pose. But it never works.

When I finally broke through that wall, it wasn’t by doing anything in particular. In fact, it was by not doing something that I progressed. Rather than trying like I always do, I just stopped. I surrendered. I heard this impulse say, LET GO. It kept repeating until I did. And then, for a few molasses seconds, everything was better and nothing existed but a detached fascination.

It made me think that we are all working so hard to maintain this illusion of control. It’s part of our culture, the American religion. But it’s a lie we’re all telling ourselves and representing to each other with fake smiles and overconfident assurances. The only thing we can control is what we do in this moment. Our actions, and with more practice, our thoughts and feelings. I can’t control the world or force things to go my way. I can’t control who is going to launch what product or when, when someone I care about is going to be gone, or if the pretty girl is suddenly going to stop being interested in me and not want me anymore. It’s largely out of my hands. All I can do is focus on this moment and give everything I’ve got, right now, trusting that outcomes will work out in the end.

I think back to that cold, early morning moment a lot. And now every day has become triangle pose.