Do You Spend More Time In Reflection or Strategy? | Josiah Igono, Erik Averill | Athlete CEO: Peak Performance #47
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Episode Summary
Living in an “always on” and “permanently connected” world, our everyday experience is littered with a proverbial fire hose of information. We can get any question answered in the blink of an eye on Google, learn how to build a house on YouTube, and keep up with the daily activities of our friends and family on apps like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or TikTok.
It can be overwhelming to sort through this information overload to actually learn something, and even more daunting to carve out space to reflect and grow in this age of constant noise.
We return again this week with another Peak Performance edition of the Athlete CEO podcast with Josiah Igono, founder of All Things Performance. Our Peak Performance episodes with Josiah are all about helping you develop skills that will drive your human capital and performance, as well as help you achieve the life you envisioned.
In this episode, Erik and Josiah look at this problem of improving, growing, and learning in an era of information overload by discussing the importance of reflection, the questions to ask yourself while reflecting, and how practicing this skill set can improve our overall performance trajectory.
Episode Highlights:
(00:57) What is reflection?
(1:49) Do you spend more time in reflection or in strategy?
“One of the interview questions that I would always ask was, ‘do you spend more time in reflection or in strategy?’” - Josiah Igono
“Reflection is the mental review” – Josiah Igono
(3:07) Drowning in information overload
(4:41) The differences between reflection and strategy
(5:17) The questions for reflection
(6:44) Reflection is not Mindfulness
(8:13) How a cow chewing is similar to reflecting throughout your day
(10:47) What are tangible ways to build the habit of reflecting?
“Clumsiness is actually a sign of growth” – Josiah Igono
(13:18) How toddlers are actually better than us at approaching new tasks
(14:57) The scientific benefits of journaling
Stay Connected
All Things Performance: Podcast | Courses
Josiah Igono: LinkedIn | Twitter
AWM Capital: IG | LinkedIn | Facebook | AWMCap.com
+ Read the Transcript
Erik Averill (00:01): Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Athlete CEO Podcast. I'm your host, Erik Averill. And we are having a conversation again with our good friend, Josiah Igono, founder of all things performance. And as you guys have gotten accustomed to, this is actually all about you. Helping you develop skills that are going to help drive your human capital, your performance to help you achieve the life that you envisioned. And I'm excited to jump into the conversation. Today, we have covered so many helpful tools that one of the things we haven't talked about is just reflection. This seems like a word that is so important when it comes to self-awareness that we had talked about in our previous episode. What do we need to know about what it is to implement reflecting as a skill set on our performance trajectory?
Josiah Igono (00:57): Yeah, I mean, I love reflection. So many people fail to take the time to reflect. In our world that has now become a 24 hour interconnected global community people don't reflect. It's all about what can we do here? What can I do next? Or how many messages that I get on social media? How many follows that I get? How many messages on my cell phone? I think some of the research has shown that we're looking at our cell phones, what? 150 plus times a day. Looking for those dopamine hits, you know what I'm saying of affirmation, and I'm doing something right. And this person likes me so I'm affirmed. Affirmation is coming from digital devices and not coming from actual people. It's kind of weird.
Josiah Igono (01:49): But when you look at reflection, I think that we need to spend more time there. When I was helping in the interview process, when we would hire managers, or even when we would sit down with draft picks, right? One of the questions that I would always ask was, do you spend more time in reflection or in strategy? And one of the things that I found was that the majority of people did not say reflection. They didn't say it. And I think it's a lost skill. It's a lost art. Reflection is this mental review. There is so much connective tissue that is happening from a cerebral perspective when we stop and we actually reflect on what has been done, right. I think we lose so much learning, right? Think about this. With the volume of water that we're drinking from this proverbial fire hose of information, right? How in the world can we perform at high levels when we are not even taking the time to reflect? How can we do it? It's impossible.
Erik Averill (03:07): Yeah. I think it's this information overload. We're drowning in it. Right. And instead of being a master, a curator, and apprentice of some of these foundational things, it's onto the next, right? And so it's this false progress. A lot of times that it's, you're a mile wide and an inch deep. And that really hits home. I mean, even you here deciphering the difference between reflection and strategy. Because a lot of us, especially in the business world, what we would think is our downtime is, I'm not in a meeting or talking to somebody I'm sitting, I'm doing strategy. This is reflection. But what I'm hearing from you is reflection and strategy are two different things.
Josiah Igono (03:55): Different. Completely different.
Erik Averill (03:58): And I think of just, we want to be doing work. Somehow something's flipped in my mind that tells me I'm not progressing if I'm sitting still. So even when I get head space, right, like I'm trying to develop a skill of learning, how to be present. And to do some type of prayer or meditation. What's the performance in that? Not reflecting. Can you maybe talk about the nuances, the difference between meditation or reflection, and strategy, and reflecting. Because this is blowing my mind right now.
Josiah Igono (04:41): So no, it's a great... And I don't want start splintering off into multiple different topics and podcasts, but yeah, there's a difference, right? When you are reflecting, right? You are doing an inventory of what has happened. What has happened? What happened today? What happened this week? What happened this season? What happened? Right. And there's so much gold in taking the time to reflect that it's mind blowing.
Josiah Igono (05:17): So when you reflect, because I want to answer all of your questions when you reflect, I give a formula, if you will. And I can't take credit for it because it's been around longer than me, did well, do better. For words, did well do better. What did I do well today? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. List them out. What could I do better? I could've done this. I could've done that. I could have done those. I can do. That's a formula that I've used for years. I used to use it with my team of guys that we used to work with on the performance team, mental skills. And we would break down every classroom that we had in front of our athletes. What do we do well today, guys? We did this. Bam, bam, bam, bam. Okay. What could we have done better? Notice I said, did do better. I didn't say, what did we suck at? What was terrible? Where did we fail? No.
Erik Averill (06:12): Lexicon.
Josiah Igono (06:13): Lexicon, baby. Vocabulary. What can we do better? And what happens is you are in essence, taking inventory of what has happened, and you're affirming what you did well. And you are in essence, preparing and making a plan for what you're going to do next time. And what happens is, if you continually do this, you'll start to see that there's a shift in your list. And it is awesome. Now to your next point about meditation, right? I think you were talking about meditation,
Erik Averill (06:43): Yep.
Josiah Igono (06:44): Maybe mindfulness, right? Some of these terms are being thrown around. Reflection is active. It's something that's active. It's intentional. When you look at something like mindfulness, Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the foremost people in that space, right, who did a lot of work with monks and whatnot. Mindfulness is basically taking in thoughts, giving them no judgment, not fixing any type of judgment, and just accepting them for what they are. Right. And there is research that affirms it, questions it, the effects of mindfulness and things like that. But it's a big deal right now. Right. And it works for a lot of people.
Josiah Igono (07:23): And mindfulness is just taking in thoughts. Okay. Those are clouds. Great. Wow. It's a white wall. That's awesome. And it helps you to be present. I feel angry right now. Oh, okay. I have a tightness in my lower left lumbar. Okay. Mindfulness is just taking it in, not of fixing any type of judgment to it whatsoever. Right? When you look at something like meditation, I love to go back to some of the original origins of these words. When you go and you study the Hebrew, right? And you look at meditation, a lot of people think meditation, hum, you know what I mean? They get these like grandiose visions of some old dude with a long white beard on top of a mountain meditating. And all these powerful in mystic things are happening. And that's not the case.
Josiah Igono (08:13): So when you look at the word meditation, it comes from like, you know when a cow chews, a cow has four stomachs. Humans only have one. So when a cow chews food, his digestive system is different than ours. He chews it. It's almost like he swallows it. He spits it back up, and then you chews it again. And you look at cows, they're always fricking chewing something dude. Cows are always chewing something like, dude you haven't eaten grass in like four hours, but you're still chewing something. But that's what they're doing. That's where that word comes from. It's like this recycling and this constant dwelling upon something.
Josiah Igono (08:54): So when you're meditating, you are taking in these thoughts that you learn, these concepts, these precepts, and then you're chewing on them. You're digesting them. You're bringing them back up during the course of a day, during the course of a week, during the course of a season. And you're just dwelling on them. Right. And that's another form of reflection. Right. And so all of these things activate our mind. They are things that help calm our mind. And as we've stated in previous podcasts, help us in this battle for clarity.
Erik Averill (09:26): Wow. Hey, I had no idea that cows had four stomachs that's wild. But just the visual makes so much sense. Right. Of bringing it back up, of chewing on it in that reflection. I love that of, what did we do well? And what are we going to do better? And I reflect, especially in today's just information age. And I know a negative side effect of COVID once again, to add to the list, is like these zoom meetings. You literally hang up and you click onto the next one that you don't even provide that space to physically walk from your office to the next meeting. Or that next interaction. That we are shrinking our capacities and straining ourselves. And in a previous podcast, here's the crazy thing. Time doesn't speed up. It's the same 168. It's the same 24 hours. It's still the same 60 seconds.
Josiah Igono (10:25): Yep.
Erik Averill (10:26): Yet, we are destroying ourselves in the way that we're operating of not providing that reflection and that retention of information too. What are some of the things that, obviously it's easy. Jocko Willink would say is just reflect.
Josiah Igono (10:44): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Erik Averill (10:47): But how do we build habits? How do we build a skillset? Where we, very candidly, I've got three young ones at home, I've got a new born. I own a business. The holidays are coming. How do I actually make progress when it comes to reflecting?
Josiah Igono (11:04): That's a great question. I think, you start with the small steps. Everything is always most difficult in the very beginning. Anytime you are trying to establish a new habit, it's always most difficult in the beginning because there's no roadmap. There's a lot of errors. It's just like when kids learn to walk. I think a toddler falls, I think as research has shown us, that a toddler falls about, they say about, I think it's between 17 and 20 plus times an hour when they're first learning to walk.
Erik Averill (11:33): Oh my goodness.
Josiah Igono (11:33): But they get up and they keep doing it.
Erik Averill (11:35): Yeah, they do.
Josiah Igono (11:35): They keep doing it. They keep doing it. And then very soon we're like, hey man, get over here. They're running circles around us. You know what I'm saying? So everything is always most difficult in the beginning.
Josiah Igono (11:46): Clumsiness is actually a sign of growth. When a horse is born, right, a horse within the first 90 minutes of birth, most of the time, they will start running. They look clumsy as heck when they come out. But within the first 90 minutes, it's like, [inaudible 00:12:01] It's the funniest thing you've ever seen in your life, but they start running. And then when a horse is fully grown and they're running, it is one of the most majestic creatures that God has created that just runs on the planes. It's unbelievable. So in terms of how do we start? I would get a journal, right? So whatever your profession is, if you are a speaker, if you're a teacher, if you are a coach, if you're an athlete, whatever your profession is, if you're a chef, a musician, get your journal out.
Josiah Igono (12:33): After every performance, after every practice, after every session, write down, take a notebook, split it in half. Did well, do better. What did I do well today in today's competition? In today's practice, in today's demonstration, what did I do well? Write them all out. What could I do better? Be honest. What could I do better? Write it out. And then you reflect. You spend time and you just study that list. And then what happens is your did well, or your do better side becomes your plan. It becomes your action item for the next day.
Erik Averill (13:12): Yep.
Josiah Igono (13:12): And it's this revolving cycle of just excellence.
Erik Averill (13:18): Two things that stick out to me as you're sharing those analogies, especially if the toddler, you know what we also don't do? The toddler, doesn't have some false belief that the very first time they get up, that they're going to start sprinting. That's why they keep trying again. It's this progress yet? We do ourselves a diff service that it's like, I've got to be perfect out of the gate. And if I'm not perfect, then it's not worth it. And the other thing I think about as a parent, as somebody, as a support role in somebody's life, when Olivia stumbled for the first time or fell, I didn't say like, Oh, she's an underachiever. She just doesn't have the skill set or you suck. Those things didn't come. Yet, a lot of times, our expectations of our teammates, our employees, our clients, is perfection out the gate.
Erik Averill (14:19): Instead of to your point, how many negative thoughts are already running through our heads? We're already our biggest critics. So talking about, hey, walking along, somebody on that journey as they're pressing through being comfortable with being uncomfortable? Right? And so I love that mentality of just start the process. Journal. And I mean, I don't have a PhD in this, but I'm guessing there's some benefit of the physical act of writing the words on the paper as well.
Josiah Igono (14:51): Yes.
Erik Averill (14:52): In addition to just, you know, reflecting. So choosing how to do that.
Josiah Igono (14:57): Yeah. The kinesthetic addition of just making those notes is so huge man. Think about this. I want you to think about this, right? Jason Selk, Dr. Jason Selk. I love his work. And when I first started this path in performance psychology, I read a lot of his work. And he's the one who was basically, he's sharing the research about how many thoughts we have per day. And how many of them are so negative. I don't even know how they're measuring this stuff, dude. I have no idea how they're measuring thoughts. Right. And they're like clouds, like, all right, how many clouds are in the sky? How do you measure that? And my thing is, if it is 50,000 or it is 60,000, right, if I can take... And that's a lot, 50,000, 60,000 of anything is a lot, right?
Josiah Igono (15:51): If I can take one, two, 10, 20 of those thoughts that are powerful of things that I've done well, or things that I can do better, or great things, and I can capture them so to speak and put them on paper, how powerful is that? I mean, I'm capturing these things that are floating around in my mind and I'm putting them on paper. That's powerful. I carry a notebook with me everywhere.
Erik Averill (16:18): Yeah.
Josiah Igono (16:19): If you go to my house right now, I will open up a bookshelf and I will show you decades, literally decades worth of notebooks.
Erik Averill (16:28): Yep.
Josiah Igono (16:28): And it's not because I'm smart. It's just because I listened to smart people and I try to capture what it is that they're saying.
Erik Averill (16:35): Yes.
Josiah Igono (16:35): And when you can capture it, and you can reflect, and read, my goodness, man, the type of neural connections, and the learning, and how you can just circumvent just years of frustration and failure is huge, man. And that's what reflection does for us.
Erik Averill (16:56): Yeah. Well, thank you for that. I know for myself and for the audience, right, that those are powerful words and habits to form of the did well, do better framework. And the process of reflecting. And I encourage you start tomorrow. We all have the journals. We already have the fancy pens. It's just providing the space to reflect. And so until next time. Stay humble, stay hungry, and always be a pro.