My greatest professional accomplishment of the year: I got my exec & manager teammates saying "point positive," a term from whitewater rafting and kayaking.
Meaning: when facing hazards, point people toward where to go/what to do, rather than drawing attention to everything to avoid.
People just naturally start to go toward where you draw their attention, whether they want to or not. 🤷🏻
Might as well pick something good to point at.
This lesson has many applications right now.
@eanakashima Ha, didn't know boating people used that as well - motorcycle people are told "do not look at the tree" (or more generally, look where you want to go, not what you want to avoid).
The Wikipedia page is disappointingly terse, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_fixation .
First rule of tree skiing (skiing through aspen groves or other timber):
"Look and aim between the trees."
Whether it's someone else pointing, or you pointing, pointing where to go indeed matters.
@david42 @tab2space @eanakashima Latvian folk heroes tend to be more on the strong/agile side (Kurbads, Lāčplēsis). The larger one I recall, Lielais (Big) Kristaps, was more into crossing rivers.
My first association of somebody using trees for skis was with the Estonian Suur Tõll, probably because of the great sculpture they have on Saaremaa (coudn't find my own pictures, though).
@richlv @eanakashima "Target fixation" is the term I'd heard in conjunction with motorcycle safety training
It's a surprisingly accurate pattern of behavior when any sort of fear or panic takes over
@richlv @eanakashima heh, from a boating/sailing perspective I learned to always point at the person who fell off. That way you don't lose track of their position.
I was confused by this image at the start. :)
Interesting to read about the application of this thinking to rafting, kajaking, motorcycling and skiing (in a other replies), wasn't aware of this.
With "Solution-Focused Coaching" there is also a whole school of thought that is based on related ideas. And it originated from a specific form of #psychotherapy (Solution Focused Brief Therapy #SFBT).
@eanakashima Had a CEO once who announced new things by talking about all the ills of whatever necessitated the new thing, then added a "oh, by the way, this is the new thing we will do" - I ended up tuning out whenever he was talking, until he started to sound like he were starting to wind down.
It's an atrocious communication style.
This is the context where I learned it. As soon as I identify a hazard, I need to immediately shift my focus to the safe part of the pavement and my front wheel just goes there. An instructor at motorcycle school told me.
I first learned this in a "regular" (not whitewater) canoe course. Important for survival there!
I can totally see the transfer to business and other spheres - thanks for sharing!
God, I went through independent discovery of that idea long time ago I suddenly realized if I wanted to avoid crashing into something I needed to look at where I had to go rather than the thing I was about to crash into
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @eanakashima
When I was a young lad getting to mild mountain biking someone said "what you see is what you hit"
@eanakashima I think I'd heard this phrase but didn't know it came from rafting and kayaking. Thanks for the background!
And I sure do have to keep reminding people “tell people what to do, not just what not to do”…
In the vein of not focusing people's attention in an unwanted direction, I'm reminded of this bit from the 1987 edition of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (second paragraph):
@boredzo on a tangential note, I like the last section: "Design in black and white" (and add colours later)
Some of the reasoning may seem outdated, as it initially did to me even though I am currently reading this on a black-and-white e-paper monitor 😅
I learnt a similar concept as a drawing style from Hergé who always made sure his illustrations worked in black and white, where it would sometimes stay unless colour was added as a bonus on top. Works wonders for xeroxable art 😇
@eanakashima The benefits of this are obvious to me when facing immediate threats where there's no time to orient and plan a path to safety. Sharing common language so that you can get to safety with a single glance is huge.
Bringing this to the office, where emergencies are rarely this immediate, seems to be little more than applying the name to preferred behaviour where we want people to do more than just point out problems.
Is that assessment correct, or is there more to this?
@eanakashima @praveen society is not immutable. If you just avoid conflict, always take the way of least resistance, never fixing things, never identifying obstacles and problems to address everything will stay bad for everyone forever.
If your job is like a death ride on a wild river reconsider your life choices, if you have enough privilege to do so.
Its a matter of the sequence:
Looking for the bright spot on the horizon first enables us to assess which rocks are worth dealing with, because they're in our pathway.
Looking around for all rocks first, we never have any time for determining what we want more of, or a path leading to it.
The trouble is that you get problems for free, in unlimited numbers. And the time for lifting your head and looking around is available only in small doses.
Hence we become experts in things that we want less of, and we keep struggling with even building a bit of expertise of what we want more of.
@eanakashima I did a skid course some years ago and the first and foremost thing they tell you is "never look at obstacles, instead look at where you want to go".
It's honestly kind of magical, but if you just keep your eyes focused on where it's safe to be, then you're most likely to end up exactly there.
I knew the concept from motorcycle (and bicycle) training, but not the term "point positive" which is excellent, thanks, TIL. :-)
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