We are often guilty of having a rigid and limited definition of what we think an advantage is.

The challenge is to think and act like the underdog. Not to accept dominance but to challenge it, often and with conviction. Like your life depends on it. Think David and Goliath.

Go toe to toe with dominance and you are likely to lose.  Be an underdog and reinvent the rules. Change the game that you are playing. 

Don’t be invested in the establishment. Don’t care what they think. Make an enemy. Create tension. Even if it does not exist. Create it. And then rage against it.  

Embrace the maverick, the underdog. Everything to gain and nothing to lose. Beware of the possibility effect and leverage loss aversion. 

Class Sizes

When the governor of California announced sweeping plans to reduce the size of his state’s classes, his popularity doubled within three weeks. Most parents would want their kids to be in schools with small class sizes. 

77% of Americans prefer the idea of dropping class sizes to paying teachers more. 

The smaller the class the more attention your kid gets. Right?

Studying elementary schools in Connecticut where the class number varies year to year. There was no link between class sizes and how the kids perform. Nothing!

Money and parenting

Having no money is exhausting. But the relationship between money and good parenting is not a linear one. The argument that the more money you have the better you are as a parent does not hold up.

So what is the point at which money no longer makes parenting easier?

Research suggests that the point of diminishing marginal returns is around $75,000. After that point, you might have more money, but you might not be any happier. Could that also be true of parenting?

But there is also a second point, above which parenting gets harder again. James Grubman coined the term “immigrants to wealth.” 

If you have learned the hard way about the value of money. How do you pass that lesson on when you are rich?

The kids want for nothing and have no way of learning the same lessons you did. Their environment is different. 

The wealth-parenting graph is actually an inverted U curve. And the same is true of class sizes.

On the left side of the U shape curve. Having more and doing more makes things better. Then there’s the flat middle bit. And on the right side of the curve, things are getting worse. 

It is good to be big and stronger than your opponent. But not so big and strong that you are a sitting duck.

Here is Malcolm Gladwell’s father’s description of a U shape curve. 

1. Footing: linear 

2. Flagging: linear relationship has flagged, diminishing marginal returns 

3. Flat: extra resources have no effect on the outcome 

4. Falling: more resources are counterproductive. The land of marginal gains. 

Class numbers really depend on where you are on the curve. The mid-range is ~ 18-25 and that explains the Connecticut research findings. Classes varied but within the median range. 

Get a class size too small and the kids act like they are in the backseat of a car. 

Competitors for attention or allies in the adventure of learning? 

Little Fish in the Big Pond or Big Fish in a Little Pond?

The definition of advantage held in our heads is not accurate. 

Small ponds are welcoming places to develop; the apparent marginalised outsider turns out not to be at a disadvantage at all. 

By contrast, being a  Little Fish in the Big Pond can feel competitive. Comparison is the thief of joy. Relative deprivation. How we see ourselves is relative to our group. 

Our subjective reality “self-concept” matters. It is a crucial element in our motivation and confidence. 

The rate of Harvard drops out in science matches that of Hartwick in NY. It’s not just about how smart you are, it is about how smart you feel relative to others in your classroom.

The top students in economics publish a similar number of papers regardless of university standings.

In the 80th percentile in Harvard or Yale, still high calibre students, since getting into Harvard or Yale requires higher SAT scores compared to other universities, students publish papers at the same rate as students from “lesser universities”. They underperform. 

If you are going to be cannon fodder, find an alternative avenue of fulfilment. The happy bottom quarter policy of Harvard was about finding students tough enough, with outside classroom interests able to survive the stress of the Small Fish in Large Pond effect. 

Authority

Nathan Leites & Charles Wolf. Rebellion and Authority. Their belief was that a population would behave rationally.

Influencing behaviour requires neither sympathy nor mysticism but rather a better understanding of what costs and benefits the individual or group is concerned with, and how they are calculated

Fundamentally a maths problem. You don’t have to worry about how people feel, just that they need to think twice about the cost of their actions. 

In contrast, those that give orders are acutely vulnerable to the opinions of those whom they are ordering about.

Principle of legitimacy

1. If people speak up they can be heard
2. Law has to be predictable
3. Authority has to be fair

People who are asked to obey authority have to feel heard. Authority has to be predictable. The rules today are the same ones we will use tomorrow. Authority has to be fair. You can’t treat one group differently to the other. How you punish is as important as the act of punishing

What can I do that is interesting that will stop you misbehaving? 

People must have hope. It is not a behavioural problem but an engagement problem.

What do you do as a coach to establish legitimacy? 

Disagreeable difficulty

Not all difficulties are negative but they are difficult. 

Think of the quotation by Hazrat Inayat Khan. “I asked for strength and God gave me difficulties to make me strong.”

You get skills out of necessity. It helps if you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. 

Dyslexics use the right side of the brain, the wrong side for precise and rigorous tasks, during reading compared to “normal” readers. Listening and asking good questions often replace reading. 

Often Dyslexics read so slowly it interrupts their reading fluency and impairs reading comprehension. By the time they have read to the end of the sentence they forgot the point at the start of the sentence. 

Dyslexics have difficulty hearing and manipulating sounds. The difference between bah and dah is a subtlety in the first 40 milliseconds of the syllable.

Listening: Listen for when the pace changes. When questions or the situation become hard often the pace will change. People become uncomfortable and use obscuring words in an attempt to mask the situation.  

Capitalisation learning; Adding to what comes easy.

Compensation learning is difficult. Learning out of necessity. It’s difficult but if you can do it. It has a significant upside. 

George Bernard Shaw “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.” 

Innovators need to be disagreeable. Willing to take social risks. Skills out of necessity might just make you a force to be reckoned with.

Personality is measured across: 

Neuroticism

Extraversion

Openness

Conscientiousness

Agreeableness

The near-miss

Villains and heroes have the same backstory it’s how they react to their pain.

I won’t let this happen to anyone else.

Or

I’m in pain and you will pay.

In the book The structure of Morale, Canadian Psychiatrist JT Mac Curdy argued that when a bomb fell it divided the affected population into three groups: 

The first group: people who died.

The second group: near misses. They survived but were deeply impressed. A powerful reinforcement of the fear reaction in association with the bombing.

Third group: near misses. The consequences for this group are the exact opposite of the near misses group. They survived and the emotions associated with the attack are excitement with a flavour of invulnerability. 

A near miss leaves you traumatised. A remote miss makes you feel invincible.

“ We are all of us not merely liable to fear, we are also prone to being afraid of being afraid. The contrast between the previous apprehensions and the present feeling of relief and feeling of security promotes self-confidence that is the very mother and father of courage.”

You would be forgiven for thinking that the traumatic effect of being bombed would have the same effect on everybody and that is simply not true. The same event can be profoundly damaging to one group while leaving another better off.

Courage is what you earn when you have been through tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.

Often we are simply afraid of being afraid