Brian Johnson uses a chess conversation with his son to explain why you hit plateaus when mastering anything. The WOOP framework (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) helps you anticipate what will stop you and prepare to push through it.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. In our last plus one, we spent some time with me and Emerson on a recent drive to the Austin Grandmaster Chess Academy for a Saturday tournament. As we discussed, the moment we drive out of the gate on our property and hit the road, I always start every drive with the exact same question me. Hey buddy, what do you want? Then we always have fun systematically walking through how to make his dreams a reality while I explain things like the science of hope and confidence and making your dreams a reality. Now, today I want to chat about another facet of our chat we didn't have time to talk about. As part of our discussion about woop and my concern that he might quit when it gets hard, I talked to him about the path of the master and the fact that on our journey to master anything, we will inevitably hit spots where we stop getting better. We hit what George Leonard calls a plateau in his great book Mastery. In fact, we often not only hit a plateau and stop improving rapidly or at all, but actually go backward. Now, if you look at Emerson's Chess.com rating curve, you'll see exactly that steady improvement, then a plateau, then a diminution in performance, then a massive gain. It's somewhat surprisingly, been the same cycle over and over and over again. And I actually taught him this stuff the first time it happened, and I have repeated the lesson, reminding him of this wisdom every time it happened again. Now he knows that hitting obstacles, plateaus, rough spots is a normal part of the process of mastery, which is one of the reasons why he was able to endure what was his longest rough patch to date and come out of it by doubling down on his training protocol to make huge gains. So I told him about my concern that he might give up when it gets hard and said that unfortunately, most people don't plan on things getting hard and hitting those inevitable plateaus. And I asked him, what do you think most people do when they hit those plateau obstacles? Emerson says they give up. I say, yeah, that's why we want to anticipate the obstacles so we're not surprised when they happen. We know we will face challenges. Then when they inevitably arrive, we smile and say, there it is. And then we keep on working our protocol plan to move through them. And that, I tell him, and you is why whooping our goals is scientifically proven to work. Wish outcome obstacles, plan Today's plus one. Have you whooped your wildly important goals lately? It's day one. We're all in. Let's go hero.
