Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…he neighbors to my right came over to the house and had a cookout, the first one of the year. And that was a day when I didn't find anything in the day. I had one moment, which is very unusual for me. And I remember thinking, "Really, all you got is you had a cookout with the neighbors, that's the best you got?" It's not even really a story. But it was the best I had so I wrote it down and I moved on. About four months later, the neighbors to our left announced they were getting divorced. It devastated us. Because they have two kids. We've got this big communal backyard with the three houses. Three boys to the right, two kids to the left, friends. Couldn't believe it that they're getting divorced. Known each other since high school. We just never saw it coming. One day later, neighbors to the right announced they're getting divorced. Left and right within a day of each other. And it becomes a story about how you never understand what's going on in a marriage unless you're in that house. But I don't have that moment in May when there were three couples on a porch, one of them was happy. I thought all three were happy. I don't get that moment unless I'm doing Homework for Life, and I write it down, and now I see a trajectory of a story. I have the opposite. Now I actually have an opposite moment which is I'm serving hot dogs to people I think are happy, but they're only pretending to be happy for our sake. And then they're returning to their homes, to discord and eventually to disillusion of a marriage. So Homework for Life gives you all of that that you don't normally have in life because we tend to live day by day, and we leave that last day behind. I got tingles listening to that story. For someone that's now motivated to try this. I know there's a template that we'll link to in the show notes where you give people, it's very simple, but I think seeing it will be helpful. But what's something someone could do tonight to start on this process and maybe set a habit to do? How do you actually go about doing this? Well, they have to start Homework for Life. And I have a TED talk about it that I go on for 17 minutes about. So I suggest watching it because you'll just get more than what I just told you and I think that's important. And you have to decide to do it every single day, even on the day when the best you have is a cookout. If that's all you got, that's what you got, and you write it down. You have to have some faith too, that it's going to happen over time. Remember, I started with 1.8 and now I'm up to 7.6. And that's over more than 12 years it takes for me to make that jump. So in the beginning, you're not going to be very good at it. You're not going to see the right things, and that's just the way it is. If I go back to my original Homework for Life, I see myself looking for stories. And you're not really looking for stories. You're just looking for moments that touch your heart, touch your mind. That's all you're really hoping for. And some of those will become stories. So you've got to start Homework for Life right away. And then if you can just find some people who are willing to listen and begin telling some stories, that's really helpful because most people are unwilling to listen. There's not a lot of good listeners in the world. Everyone says they're a great listener, but active listening is a skill that most people do not possess in any way whatsoever. But if you find people who are willing to listen, you got to start telling stories. You got to start practicing in meaningful ways. And your first stories aren't going to be great. But the good news is most people's stories are terrible. Most storytelling in the world is not very good. So if you put a little thought into what you're about to say, you're going to be better. Because storytelling is not about facility with the language or your vocabulary. It's all about decision-making. That's all it is. Storytellers are people who think before they speak. They make strategical tactical decisions before they speak. And ultimately, they make enough good decisions to entertain people. Ultimately, no matter what you're doing, whether I am teaching a fifth grader how to behave better, or presenting a new product for a large company, or helping someone deliver an all hands, the first and most important thing you have to be is entertaining. You have to entertain or people will not listen to you. So you got to practice, you got to get reps.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.