Productivity On The Pale Blue Dot
“We are made of starstuff.” - Carl Sagan
When was the last time you looked up at the stars? Or the moon, if you’re living in an urban area where stars are in short supply.
Carl Sagan Day is November 9, in honor of his birthday. If you’re not familiar with him, he was an astronomer who popularized science as a way of learning and knowing about our universe. He talked about science in a way that anyone could understand what he was talking about, so you didn’t have to be a math genius to understand basic truths about the universe.
So many people think science is scary (and certainly there are some scientific fields that either require mind-twisting mathematics or lead to outcomes we can’t even really visualize.) But science itself isn’t, really. Science is simply a way to investigate things we don’t know about the world.
The scientific method itself is not complicated. You have a hypothesis, or an idea about how a certain thing will work, and then you design an experiment to test if your hypothesis is correct. Then you run the experiment. When you have results, you might submit them to a relevant journal for peer review.
Science, expertise, and knowledge may not be valued by the current regime… but science and Sagan definitely have some principles that business owners can use to their benefit.
What’s necessary for science is also necessary for business owner productivity
Sagan died from a chronic condition in 1996, so he wasn’t around for the era of smartphones. (Lucky man, at least in this sense!) And while I can envision him guesting on podcasts, and possibly even having his own podcast to get the information out to the masses, I doubt he would have been as attached to the phone as so many people are today.
Because science requires focus. When you’re designing an experiment, you have to think through how you’re going to isolate the one issue that your test is designed to work on. A lot of the easy stuff has already been solved, so problems are more complex and have more than one facet (variable) to them.
And when you’re running the experiment, you need to take careful notes and in some cases watch the timescale. True, you can probably use the help of AI if you’re just babysitting an experiment while it runs, but other tests might require your involvement.
And you don’t want to be checking your phone if your test is going horribly wrong.
Many business owners use the scientific method, whether they realize it or not
What is market testing a new offer if not an experiment on whether or not the offer works? The offer is essentially your hypothesis: you believe the offer will be successful. You let prospects and clients know about this offer, for purchases and referrals; whether or not the expected number of people buy your offer is the experiment.
Same with agile project management. Your MVP (minimum viable product) is your hypothesis and you test it by throwing it out to your market. You could consider market feedback a kind of peer review as well.
If it sells, you’ve got your answer. If it doesn’t, you probably don’t throw the whole thing out and start fresh. You look at all the aspects of your experiment to see if you can determine what went wrong. Was it truly the product/service? Or was it the marketing message? Did you aim it at the wrong market?
Then, once you’ve figured it out, or have a likely reason why the experiment didn’t prove your original hypothesis, you tweak whatever seemed to be the problem. And again you run your experiment. Lather, rinse, repeat.
There are some differences between business and scientific experiments that I didn’t get into here, but this is the gist for both.
Productivity improvement draws on a body of scientific knowledge
In science, peer review is important. No, it’s not always done correctly, but scientists are human too. That way, we humans can accumulate knowledge on a subject. This is especially true in neuroscience. As the instruments get better, and we can see more and more of what’s going on inside the brain, we understand better and better how it works.
We already know, for example:
People are distracted by their phones even when they’re turned off and on their face – as long as it’s visible to you, it is distracting
Decisions, even the tiniest ones, drain the brain’s energy
Trying to do more than one thing at a time, if at least one of those things is difficult for the brain (think number-crunching, spreadsheets, strategizing) is physically impossible. The brain just switches back and forth really fast, so no multitasking actually happens
Switching tasks is fatiguing for the brain
The left brain/right brain dichotomy actually isn’t a thing
“Learning styles” are also not actually a thing
Sleep deprivation has serious consequences
Given that as a business owner, your brain is your strongest asset, it seems pretty silly to ignore the science of the brain.
I mean, yes, we see idiots on social media (some of whom are almost definitely bots anyway) claiming the moon landing was fake, earth is flat, and germs don’t do anything. You might laugh or cry, depending on your mood, but you know that’s nonsense. (I hope.)
So… why ignore the science when it comes to your brain? Your brain needs sleep, nutrition, exercise, and fun in addition to all the difficult thinking you want it to do. In fact, if you want to be at peak performance, the only way you can get there is to be good to your brain.
No one knows how long they have to live on this pale blue dot
When you’re in space, that’s what Earth looks like: a pale blue dot. As far as we know, we’re the only planet in our immediate environs that has carbon-based lifeforms on it. (My own personal opinion is that there is life out there, it just may not be carbon-based.)
As Sagan said in his TV show Cosmos, ““The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
That’s all of us. No matter our skin color, religion (or lack thereof), sexuality, gender, whatever, we’re all made of the same materials. It’s kind of awe-inspiring when you think about it, to look up at the stars and know that your atoms, my atoms, my cats’ atoms, and those of the stars are all the same material.
Here’s another Sagan quote, this time from A Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark, published in 1995:
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”
Sound familiar? (That quote is from 1995. YIKES.)
Well, what are you doing with your starstuff? Grinding it out day after day, never allowing yourself to have fun because you always have to check email or your “social” media feeds? Missing daily routines with your family because of work?
There are better ways to exist on this pale blue dot. Ways that work with your brain instead of against it. Ways to have fun with loved ones and favorite activities in addition to a thriving business. Ways to make an impact, make an income, and avoid burnout.
Let’s honor our starstuff instead of wasting it on meetings and emails and scrolling.
What do you say?
Recap (tl;dr):
We celebrate Carl Sagan both as a scientist and a science communicator. Many business owners use something like the scientific method, and understanding brain science can make you more productive.
Want help implementing the science of productivity in your small business? I’m here to help; just click here to schedule your free Laser Focus Acceleration Session.