James Lim uses the "Ollie the Octopus" method to break ambitious goals into small, low-risk experiments called tentacles. Start with one micro action, gather data quietly, and move fast. A client named Fran switched careers through informational conversations alone.
Chapters
How do we get moving when a fear is paralyzing us from taking any action? Step one, how to make your first steps feel easy. I'm introducing you to a concept I like to call Ollie the Octopus. This is a client favourite, so I want you to imagine we've got an octopus here. His name is Ollie. He encounters an obstacle. He's wondering about his day and he has this little obstacle in front of him and he's trying to get over it. And what does he do? What's the word? Maneuvers his tentacles across the one at a time and then slowly levers himself over to the other side. Hooray, he's made it. So what's going on here? Why have I used this? Ollie has used. It's a way to move forward and get an over an obstacle without risk. It's systematic. We're going to break this down, but first I want you to imagine an octopus moving like this. So just to, just to remind you, it goes one tentacle first, two tentacles, kind of goes over the body is still kind of on the, on the front side of it. And then as it goes across it, then there. So just remember that. Now you might be wondering, am I just making this up or is this actually what they do? Do they really move like this? So I want you to look at this. So we've got an octopus who is, who's put in this box and there's a door here. Now I want you to watch what happens. You can got these tentacles, it's just swinging around. Watch what happens. Focus on the tentacle. Can you see on that little image that's outside the box, what do you see? One tentacle figuring out what's going on. Then the other tentacles and then the body. And then there we go on the other side. This is what an octopus does and it really does this. I, I went down a YouTube hole when I was doing a lot of research on this. Yeah, it is pretty amazing that they really, really do do this. You, I'll permit you to do some, some, some, some research or not on octopus videos. Not to procrastinate too much, but go and have a look and you'll see that this is how they do it. It is amazing. It's very systematic. What are they doing exactly? Let's break this down because this is going to help you build a system for yourself. One tentacle first. It's low risk, but it is gathering data. Then you see progression. The second tentacle as it's. It has one tentacle to kind of lift the Door and the second one to kind of help its way over. Meanwhile, the rest of the body is remaining safe. All the tentacles are here and the head and the brain and the whole body is here. So if anything goes wrong here, it can still survive and eventually it goes over. But here at this point, there is a combination of safety and progress. This is really important to recognize because this is where a lot of people go wrong. They either stay in safety mode and don't make any progress, or they try and jump completely without remaining safe. Both, I would say, are usually suboptimal. You want to try and create a situation like this. Now there is an element of commitment eventually. So what are the lessons? They don't jump in. They move steadily, constantly moving. And they are data gatherers. They use their tentacles to feel around constantly. Learning only takes place when the tentacle reaches out. Notice they're always moving. The octopus is not, is not on the other side of the box. Think ruminating about what it should do, right? Look, you could see it was trying to constantly move around all the time. Minimum exposure, maximum data. So you're looking for this kind of ratio, right? You're trying to keep as safe as possible while gathering as much data as possible. There's this balance. So when one tentacle can't gather any more data, it starts to use second one. A negative experience in this case, it would still survive. The net result, it allows the octopus to explore new paths and opportunities while keeping potential risk down, maximizing chance of success. And it moves at a very quick pace. If you've ever watched one move around, it just constantly does this until it, it gets to where it wants to go. How can we adopt an octopus approach? So first thing, step one, think of your progress as a tentacle. So you're looking to try and gather some data. What's the smallest, safest thing you can do that gets you a little bit closer to your goal? And usually the first step is kind of a data gathering situation. But in a practical sense, the trick, be cautious and small, not overwhelming. In practice, this could be reaching out into your network to have a conversation with. Let's say you're trying to switch career or you're looking at new opportunities, speaking to someone in that domain. Step two, create a micro action plan. Keep it really simple. So it might be outreach. Get in touch with these people and then have that conversation and then see what you'd like to do after you've gathered some of that data. Step three, execute that first tentacle quickly. So once you've Created that plan. Go out and do it. I'll talk about how long things take and how quickly you should do things. At the end of this module, your goal is to gather data and to start learning real world feedback. You actually remember the octopus is not sitting in its room watching YouTube videos, right? About how to escape a box. It is just moving the tentacles around trying to escape the box. Okay. So you have to engage with the real world. So here's a client example. We'll call her Fran. Career transition from corporate role to conservation. Struggled to see success without qualifications or credentials. Felt totally paralyzed. We focused on the first tentacle conversations with people in industry. This is a very common first tentacle I've had for lots of career changes. We just start to have conversations with real people. A lot of people have preconceptions about what these industries, you know, what you need to get in these industries. The reason I usually do this with so many people is because all of those, all of those preconceptions are often. Many are wrong, many are wrong, what credentials you need, what you need to get in, what qualities you need, etc. Okay. The goal here was to gather data quickly dispel these preconceptions which I just mentioned. And this was like qualifications. Did you need to go to university to study four years to. To have the right qualification to get into it? We found out that was not necessary. Keep safe, little to lose and done quietly. Just want to touch on these. Safe. What does that mean? Well, we didn't want to rock the boat with her current situation so we didn't want to announce it to her work or on social media or anything like that because it puts a lot of pressure on. So there's very little to lose. Well, if you have a conversation, you know, what have you got to lose? Yeah, there was no kind of invested energy there. We just had to find a way to have some conversations and done quietly keeping the spotlight offer. She felt very prone to just feeling that pressure. So we, we did it in what I call stealth mode, which I will talk about later. This was, this is really important. It's something that works really, really well for me. It opened doors to opportunities and next steps. I mean this was such an exciting, this client I'm talking about here. It was such an exciting period because it really, really opened up doors for her. And then this happened. This has happened so many times actually with, with other people and it's so, it is so exciting because they. So many preconceptions were, were blown out of the door and we saw new ways to enter and we could create new strategies. Fast forwarding. She's actually now in the space and has. Has made that career transition, which is awesome because we really didn't think it was possible. Well, she didn't think it's possible. Okay, so back to the octopus, the worksheet. If you are struggling making the first few steps, I've created a simple to use template to guide you through the thought process. So we'll talk about how to, how to kind of ideate how to create these first tentacle steps. It's quite difficult. We'll kind of work through it. Check it out in the resources section. Again, we've got the, we've got the different versions of.
