Full transcript:
Tracy: Hey, everybody, I'm so excited to introduce you to today's guest, Story Musgrave. I'm not sure what you can't say about Story. He holds seven graduate degrees in everything from Math and Computers to Psychology and Literature. And he's been awarded 20 honorary doctorates. He was a part-time trauma surgeon during his 30-year career as an astronaut and he's had a cameo on Home Improvement. Today, he's in his 80s, he operates a palm farm in Florida and among other things, he gives talks about human performance and raises his young daughter, also named Story. So we asked him how he designed such an incredible life. And he told us he's not sure you can or even should design your life. So however he does it, his perspective and his life story are absolutely fascinating. And talk about the power of design, I was teaching a design thinking workshop and I mentioned I wanted to meet an astronaut and a new friend in the class and hopefully future guests on the show. Katia Veressen said, oh, an astronaut named Story Musgrave just emailed me the other day about an article I'd written on brain hacks for performance so I'll introduce you. And so now we get to introduce him to you.
Hi, how are you, Story? Getting ramped up again with working everything?
Story: Yeah, that's the way it works. I participated in a marathon out on the beach, in Cocoa Beach.
Tracy: Oh, you're near Cocoa.
Story: Well, I'm seven miles southwest of Disney World in Orlando. We went over the beach and I worked the running expo and then gave a keynote address on performance on a lot of people on the night before and then I participated in the award ceremony.
Tracy: What are you focusing on when you say performance, like human performance?
Story: Yeah, Tracy, yeah. I built a presentation just for them. I never do a repeat. I can't do a repeat.
Tracy: What's the fun in that?
Story: I know it's no fun. So I got 500 templates. Parts of a template may fit but then I work it over.
Tracy: Yeah, I'm the same way actually.
Story: You do that? So I look at the crowd. Specifically, I look at the occasion, I look at where the venue because that matters. And then I build some for them. But since it was a people running half and running a marathon and they're performance-oriented people, even if they're not that fast, they're still performance-oriented people. So my presentation was based on designing a life of performance.
Tracy: What were some of the things that you talk to people about?
Story: Well, I just showed them every one of my presentations this story. It starts from the beginning, and it goes to the end. And it does tell a story. But I build a story with scenarios. And so I build a story with a whole bunch of dramatic scenarios. And what are the lessons and principles that I can bring out of that scenario to apply to their case? That is to people who are in the audience? What can I apply to their case? But performance is performance. And I don't care what it's not if we'll the field again, it's the level of perfection and the level of choreography that you do. And so you notice the level of performance that you arrived at? It's not the one that matters.
Tracy: So do you think that's a mindset that you were instilled with early in life? How do you think that came about for you? Like, what do you think drives you to perform, I guess.
Story: I was driven to survive, start at the age of three. So I came into a very sick world, I was driven to survive, I can't say I perform, I got into running farm equipment by myself at the age of nine. That's a form of performance, they don't teach you, they just tell you to do it, while you gotta figure it out. And so figuring stuff out is a very particular form. And I've been figuring stuff out since the age of eight, really, when I started writing, and hay bale is it couldn't tie a knot. And I had to do it by hand. They were very creative on a farm, they put a bench in here, and I did it by hand. But from that point on operating everything, you know, without this figured out and get a job gun and master mow fields by 12, or 13, or keep stuff going when it was broke. So but that's kind of, so I got to perform that performance to survive. And I joined the Marines in 17. I joined them at 16. But I lied about my age, and they called me to join him at 17. I went incredibly fast with the Marines. My farm went under anyway, so no heavy equipment on a bill and Massachusetts Turnpike. For a short time, we finished a pike, I had no high school diploma, I never finished school, didn't have a job, and joined the Marines. Well talk about getting the job done and how to get the job done means we'll teach you how to get the job done. So that's a very particular kind of performance, you want to get a job done, call the Marines. That's a very specific kind of performance. And so the crowd was incredibly ecstatic. So I'm showing them a Marine way, in the Marine spirit and the Spirit is the main thing. It's not just your Marine, it's the spirit. So I bought in the spirit, but most of this crowd understood exactly what I'm talking about. And so, it's multiple domain thinking, it's not their world, there may be some Marines, but they're not necessarily Marines, they're people that run a race. I bought him a whole bunch of scenarios that involve performance. So I went very fast in the Marines because I had to create the farm feeling that discipline, you never touch an airplane, unless you do it by the book, you don't that way you're going to do are you gonna be wrong. And so it is an incredible discipline of being sure you did it the way they taught you or by the manual. That's the only time we ever touch airplanes and maintenance. I went fast at the age of 18. I'm signing off airplanes to go to war, act as coordinator, and last night signed it off, it deserved my ready to go. I did that with one strike at the age of 18. That's called performance.
Tracy: So I'm curious because I had read the article that you'd sent earlier. And it sounded like when you were younger, though, you weren't necessarily following the rules. You were kind of deconstructing and figuring out how to make sense of things.
Story: Yes, the rules? Well, sure. That's exactly correct. But when you touch an airplane, it's by the rules. I am aware of the rules but I know where I gotta go signing off military airplanes for someone to get in and go fly to war. I know what I have to do. You're not creative.
Tracy: No, not in that situation. I wonder if you thought that your experiences when you're younger, where you were allowed to sort of be curious and make sense of why things worked the way they did? made you better equipped later when you did have to follow the rules because you kind of understood the principles that lay beneath it?
Story: You mean younger? You mean before the Marine Corps?
Tracy: Yeah. Growing up, when you're kind of doing it out of necessity?
Story: Yeah, sure. I learned how to survive, and learn how to make stuff happen, figure it out, keep that machine running when it's broken.
Tracy: One of the things that Chris and I talked about, and I mean, it's a design thinking principle really is looking at the analogous examples around you. And that's what I think is interesting about the story you're talking about the marathon is right. You don't necessarily have to have been in the military. But seeing how performance works in these different scenarios, opens your eyes to new ways of approaching.
Story: Because I presented them at least 50 different scenarios, but I went from my stuff there. I went onboard aircraft. If I showed him that, and I showed him my monitor de carrier Amala, color-coded people. I told him all his signals, the absolute dance that the people are doing for the airplane, and 01 hundred 80 miles an hour in two seconds, I showed him what that's about. That's called performance. And the way that carrier operates is that it ranges by CD, they just adored it. They understood that, yeah, understood what that performance was.
Tracy: And they wonder in these scenarios, I mean, we talk a lot about the individual and individual performance. But I would imagine in the military, as well, as you know, when you're in the, as an astronaut working with other people, what are some principles for performing as a group? How do you gel together? How do you learn to rely on each other? In a way?
Story: Why do you rely on each other, that's a range of things, it's a scale, some people, you can rely on a line, some people you cannot. So it's not teamwork. So teamwork and team leadership is part of that game. And then the skill set, now it's efficient you are in whatever job is required at the moment. And so whatever the team got to do in life, that's going to range to what's true, and NASA, it's true, I don't care where you go in life, it's going to be a group effort. It's hardly any solo business anymore, anywhere. Life is a big system, you know, the whole thing is a system, you got to work in a system. And that's one of the lessons that I learned very early on systems thinking as a systems engineer before they even had them. And so I'm a little bit I'm not off-topic that far. But do you want to get the job done, you want to get this job done, when after I get the job done? You got to identify all the variables that affect the outcome. And that's all I am. I'm 100% that that's who I am. That is to identify, I get dropped. I've been on a 100 playing field, I get dragged on a new playing field every week. And I gotta, you know, figure this thing out. What are the rules of this game? How do we get a finish line? What do these people want in the general? I mean, to ask me to do stuff, I don't know how to do it. That's going to give presentations on stuff I don't know anything about within the best client I got. Because they pushed me so hard. The homework I got to do, you know, to talk to 300 people, a global research, the best and the brightest. I got to talk about stuff I don't know anything about anyway, that's life.
Tracy: I would say though, that I would argue that you do a great job with that. And that a lot of people struggle in the world to figure out how to do that. Well. And so do you have any go twos when you're prepping? How do you do that?
Story: Go through the details. It's a stupid detail. It's one of the variables you got to manage to get to the finish line. But I just do my homework. So of course, I want to actually do a topic I don't know about. Turns out, I didn't know a lot about that topic. I just thought I didn't but you just got to work the details. And so whatever the topic is, you work the details, every single topic that you're trying to get to the finish line, we dropped on some playing field and so I've read your past, the past eight or nine people spoke on your program. Fascinating. But you get dropped on some playing field, and what are the rules of this game? And what are the objectives? What am I trying to get done on this playing field? What is the finish line? What are the objectives? And now thinking as a system? What do I have to manage? What factors, what people, what hardware or software, what details have I got to manage within a certain range that will allow me to get to the finish line and ask the system and the configuration and needs to be in that will satisfy my objectives. That's why I got into it. I was doing that on the farm. And in the morning, when I got to college and found that there's a quantitative way to deal with it called multivariate statistics and calculus of complex variables as, my god, here I got a man to deal with this stuff. And I've done it ever since. I've done that ever since. So that was my freshman year in college. I got into that stuff. It's weird stuff. But it's no, it's a way of thinking.
Tracy: And that was at Miami or Ohio?
Story: That was Syracuse University. Miami was honorary degree.
Tracy: Okay, but I wondered, so kind of what you're talking about reminds me of sort of the engineering process. And you'd mentioned that you consider yourself an engineer. I mean, you're many things. That's one of them. And another thing that you are is a designer. And so I wonder how do those two processes work together in your own world?
Story: Yes, of course, you get to the semantics. You really semantics right away and semantics are nasty. They're always nasty. I don't do semantics. So I do it faster as it happens, every concept that comes up. And that means while it's got some word processor sitting there, I'll throw the word of the concept in review festers and look at all the various ways you can express that tool, then you move the other word, the sub-word up in the meantime work, and then you do another level. So you've been here a second time. It recesses now. And I'll take it down to where it becomes irrelevant. But if I want to really pursue some concept, that concept for me is an entire eight by 11 page of words, semantics, you know, is pointing at the user, worded, pointed at something. It stuffs it in a box, it puts a label on it in linguistics, and it stuffs in the box and I don't deal in boxes. See, I don't like boxes. I don't deal in boxes. So but engineering? Yeah, I'm an engineer. But I think a little bit different to engineering is engineering, maybe more driven by requirements, in terms of what is this thing got to do? Those are the requirements that it must do. So you're working in a more linear fashion to say, what is this thing got to do for me, and then you come up with some kind of specifications, and you come up with project management that will lead you in an organized, not linear, but well, may be linear, semilinear and organized fashion to the end, where you have something which meets the specifications you thought would be the right one, so the system will perform to meet the requirements as opposed to a design that works differently. I think design works, it doesn't know where it's going to go. I think engineering tries to find out where it wants to go a little earlier than a designer, although they're very similar. They're very similar in designing and engineering, and they should be similar. I think a designer is more attuned to the fact they don't know where they're going. She doesn't know what the answer is. So she's gonna play with it and come up with a bunch of prototypes. And so designer prototypes incredibly fast. So the company I work for applied minds today, and also my teaching Art Center College for design. You notice I'm a design professional. I'm an engineering professor.
Tracy: I know, I noticed that that’s why I was curious.
Story: It's where I belong. But we don't know the answer. And we don't know where we're going. And so I think it's incredibly important, even for engineering, or straight-line project management, that you not fix requirements too early, I think requirements that are up for grabs along the way, too. So you've got to get into something to find out what you really wanted to do for you. That may be a different way than this thing is going to perform for you than you anticipated once you get into it. But I think a designer is more open to the fact they don't know where they're going. And so it's rapid prototyping and sees what was this do we continue on this path or notice is not working or shows you a fork in the road, or you go off someplace different? So I think those are maybe that's maybe a little bit the difference between engineering and design.
Tracy: I think that's spot on. And also I wanted to talk about this just for my own sake. But story, I actually worked at Disney World for a semester when I was in college. And so I wanted to at some point, talk about your Disney Imagineering experience.
Chris: Yeah, amazing. So Story, maybe one thing to ask you is, when do you look at the world? What do you see? Right? I'll give you an example. Tracy and I have had the privilege to work with some very bright engineers at IDEO. And it's just fun going on a trip with people from different backgrounds. So if we walk out in the world, with an anthropologist, they're just constantly curious about people, social interactions, engineers are looking at the buildings wondering how many bolts would it take to keep that thing standing? And the traditional kind of artistic designers are looking at the colors, right? When you walk around the world? What's in your head? What are you looking at? Tracy told me a little bit about optimization. So I'd love to hear I know, it's an odd question.
Story: No, it's not odd. It's right on target. So I'm moving amongst context, you know, different contextual, and my explorer exploration of the world and my perceptions of the world. And they're contextually driven. So but if there's an insight there, I'm going to go and make friends with a bug first, if there's any form of a creature that will dictate my attention, if there's any form of creature that will drive me that will focus me to the exclusion of most other things until I have made friends with the creature. And so I'm very in nature, I'm very cosmic driven, and the creatures are part of the cosmos. So I think I'm very cosmic driven in terms of the stars and the water and the vegetation and the creatures. And so you know, say you what is my view of the world when you walk with different people in the world? And you see how they look at it. I think I would start with biology, and then move to geology, geography, and astronomy. I would move down my pursuit of nature and then move into other realms.
Chris: Very interesting. It's so how do you design your life? How does it, what's it like if we were to see your life? What's it like?
Story: That's fascinating, Chris, I don't think you can or should design a life. The light of my life now is my nine year old and that's little Story Musgrave. I'm big Story Musgrave. She's my center point. She's my anchor, she's what I lived for but you said that I designed that. No, I didn't design that. I didn't plan on having children, I'm 80, I didn't plan it. And you might not play that you might think it doesn't fit. It's the most perfect thing I have ever done. It fits absolutely perfect. It's just the most delightful thing to do things with her and come home to her. And to have someone at this point in life, it's absolutely perfect. Well see, that's one example. I didn't design it and I could not have designed that. And no one would have thought, but life happens. Now life is one endless fork in the road. But now you can if you're stable, if you get a stable, stable occupation, stable social life, stable everything, then you can sit there and that's where you sit. But if life for you continues to evolve, you don't know where you're going. People always ask me. Well, when you were a child, did you want to be an astronaut? That's a key question. Because children tend to want to be firemen, or maybe astronauts. No, I know, they asked me, they're forgetting in the 1930s, I didn't want to be an astronaut and so it happened. I get my first PC, I'm 48 years old. How could you possibly be so primitive, Story? I wasn't. I got a Commodore 64 as soon as they came out. So what I'm saying is, is life happens, technology happens and for you now, if you're reinventing yourself, and you're evolving with new technologies, new social structures, you have not designed that much. So what I do is and what I do teach personal and professional development, all-around at the college, too. It's one step at a time, to your passion and your dreams and your curiosity at the moment for what you jump into. But you jump into that, and then you synergize then with everything 100% of everything you've done in the past, you synergize with that. And that all then come together as a skill set that you have to solve some particular problems. I don't think you can design a life. I think you do have an operating system. Yes, I absolutely have an operating system. But the operating system has to work with different apps all the time. It has new inputs all the time. There's no question. I have an operating system and there since age three and changed since then, really? So I think it's a can, I'm not sure you can? Sure you do.
Tracy: So when you're talking about kind of life is a series of forks in the road. And then you take it one step at a time, the way that I've been thinking about, like, if somebody asked me what is design? To me, it means decisions. And sometimes those decisions are made for you. And sometimes you make them intentionally and so I guess my thought of designing life is saying that when you come to those forks, you don't know where you're gonna end up. But you either let other people or habits sort of making the decisions, or you intentionally make them yourself. And I wonder, I think my hypothesis is that people don't realize how much control or opportunity they have to make those decisions themselves.
Story: Yeah, I think, well, one, you answered it. It's exactly like that. Sometimes you get thrown into. You get dumped onto this playing field but I got two big things, you know, what is this? And what am I going to do with it? And so those are my driving and they come from me, they came from Galileo 3 Communications Corporation. So you should change the title to your presentation. What am I going to do with this? And I say, yes, ma'am. I've changed it already. That's the title from now on of this particular presentation. And so you enter a new fork in the road, and you got new experiences. And so your future, your future is the native talents you start with. And that's maybe we get down to nature, nurture, the way the trite way of looking at our person is who they are. It's their native talents and experience in total experience and education starting in the womb, it makes them so it's a combination of those two things, but your future is your native towns, the total experience in education, but it's your passion and your dreams, your passion, your dreams, your heart, your emotions, and your curiosity, then that drive you into the next thing. And so that gives you the energy of pursuit. Without that, you simply don't have the energy of pursuit and we spoke about having to deal with all the details, it takes for the new playing field, begin on a playing field and get to the finish line, the rules of the game, the proficiency to skills, manage the variables to get to the finish line. And so, but the passion and the dream and the curiosity and awe and the wonder, that gives you the energy of pursuit. So here you say on December 1, you say, Well, what about tomorrow? But another key element is this, what windows of opportunity will open for you. Life is not always fair, some may deserve for this door to open this door may be accepted into some industry, some job acceptance and some college see. So I look upon life as a series of doors. But again, it's native talent. It's the total experience, education skill set you bring in. It's two days, passion, curiosity, today's heart, and intuition, which drives you to the next step, the next mountain to climb. Now, what doors open? What targets what opportunities arrived, given who you are at this moment? And what are the meaningful challenges and that's the reward. If those opportunities have meaningful challenges, that's the way it goes.
Chris: That's great. I'd love to hear how this played out for you using the astronaut example. And I'm curious, can you talk us through the theory you're describing now? Actually, not theory, really. It's a fact for how it's played out for you. But can you talk us through how what you're describing manifests itself through you going from one day I'd like to be in space to actually manifest itself?
Story: Yeah, I'm always fast. So I was a farm kid. I drove every piece of equipment at age nine. I tied in knots on the bales I wouldn't tie the knot today, I fixed it. I kept it going at 12 or 13. Never finished school. I'm offering the Marine Corps I'm an airplane mechanic. I'm an incredibly good mechanic, the creativity of what's wrong with it, but never created. So I'll fix that. According to the book, you know, in Korea, I don't care to watch, I do that with airplanes. Okay, I'm a college student. I got Mathematics down at college and mathematics and multivariate statistics, how to deal with the probabilities, how to deal with risk, but I missed my Marine Corps day. So what am I doing? I'm driving tanks. I drive tanks with the Marines on weekends. So not only did I drive the tanks, the tanks don't fly by 810 horsepower V 12. So how can a 20 year old farm keep complaining by air and 10 horsepower? Well, my tank broke, I fixed it, I fixed it for him to fill out the paperwork. And so life went from there. I did have construction equipment and helped pay for the way I had a Corvette at the time. But a Corvette forces you to go under the hood and forces you to drive it. And so yeah, and I took appliance, I'm into multiple airplanes, and all the rest of that stuff still maintains my skills as a mechanic, airplane mechanic, because that's why I understand airplanes. I understand it by taking apart putting back together, not just by flooding. And so your timer certificate people see all that stuff. While these are little forks in the road. But now when I got into big computers, I went from math and I was a mathematician and went to UCLA got the biggest computer in the world IBM 709. I got into that, but in the house, the biological intelligence work, if you can call those computers intelligent back then they weren't but they did smart things. And so I got interested in biology and how the brain works. My guy has a huge fork in the road about computers. okay, it's off to medical school neurosurgical research. I'm doing neurosurgery, headed for neurophysiology, but the space program now happens. So, my God, they put an announcement now for scientists, astronauts, well, my God, who else is a Marine, who else is an airplane mechanic, who else is a surgeon, you know, you add up the total skill set I had acquired at that point, it was absolutely a mess. But it was just leaping off and was just following my passions, you know, along the way. But in 1975, you're going to put a big telescope in space. Who needs to design that and go fix it when it goes bad? Well, who has nobody, nobody has a skill set. I had no one near the skills that I had to be able to figure it out to be able to see ahead of time the problems it's going to get into getting a line item. if this fails this what I'm gonna do about it. There's the path. Lucked out. Yes, I lucked out. I lucked out because that job came along if you'd have the door of opportunity that came along and it rescued me. It was able to pull together everything I've ever done in life.
Chris: It's amazing. I feel like he just described four different people's lives. But yeah, you're saying, right, where you acquire these skill sets are unknowing how they were going to eventually totally multiply.
Story: Totally unknown. Design a life for yourself, I'm not sure about that.
Chris: Yeah, I actually think Tracy and I have recognized that our liberal use of the word design makes it sound as if the way you're hearing it and I think a lot of people do is that we're suggesting you have a lot of control over it.
Story: There's no question, Chris, you do design it right. But you don't know where it's going to design it. Because like you said, you do make decisions.
Chris: Right.
Tracy: But you also said with the definition of design is you kind of start without knowing where you're going. Right?
Story: You don't.
Tracy: So kind of a goal.
Chris: But what I did hear you say, which resonated in your complete story there is, you certainly kept on the pursuit of what you knew you want to do like your passion was a consistent theme there where your passion was driving you at some times, I'm sure that passion maybe didn't make a lot of sense. Maybe it wasn't the most lucrative but you just kept following that curious trail.
Story: Yes, it was absolutely a curious trail, but I am a radical pragmatist. I'm an empiricist and a pragmatist. And if I can apply pragmatics is something man, that's it. And that's my approach. It's a pragmatic approach comparison.
Chris: Right. And I think listening to you, that's what I find really inspiring is you're going from tractors to a Corvette to tanks. And ultimately, that's you're unraveling that thread.
Story: The rockets came in later.
Chris: Right, exactly. But I think a lot of people don't deal that intuitively, that sort of hard string getting pulled? They'll deny that in a way that you did not.
Tracy: Yeah, because I was just gonna ask, at what point did some of the more traditional responsibilities fall upon your shoulder? Well, you're following your curious trail. So I know that you have kids that are older. And I'd imagine at some point, you're having to make decisions about how I put food on the table? How did that all rectify itself for you at that point?
Story: Well, I had that all the time. I had accountability, responsibility all the time. If you're gonna play in multiple fields, and if you google Story Musgrave polymath, it's outrageous what you run into. But that's a strange semantic word. If people don't understand it, you can get lost in the semantics, you can talk about the Renaissance person, you can talk about universal person those things. The key thing is if you're going to live in multiple worlds, you decide how deep you're going to go in each one of those worlds, you may take the whole thing on and you may be accountable and responsible for actions there. That is your ultimate level of expertise, that you are accountable and responsible for the outcome, or you just bite off whatever you need within that other or the multiple platforms.
Tracy: How did you juggle those for yourself? What were the ones that you feel like you went less deep in?
Story: Well, Delta Airlines, I teach Delta Airlines to the whole world. Now it's not that I teach Delta, I could teach American, United, Southwest, Cathay Pacific, that's not the issue. The issue is Delta Airlines got 15 million flights without a catastrophe. They got 2 billion passengers without a catastrophe, you're talking nine decimal places. That is an outrageous number. And it's called the R-word. It's called reliability. So commercial air, for me, is your ultimate, your ultimate measure of reliability, you simply cannot be nine decimal places. And I know how they do that. I'm sort of an insider, because I have enough, you know, 18,000 hours of flying experience. That does not make me an insider to commercial air, because I don't do commercials there. But I understand it enough to dissect it. So when I talk about bringing people to multiple domains, I will look at what they need. And I will dissect them and see where my lessons and principles could fit. And then I go dissect a platform, a different domain over there and see what I can transfer you can carry across. So if you want the R-word if you want reliable, don't you absolutely cannot ignore commercial air. But what I want to dissect someone, I can dissect more precisely, instead of dissecting the whole industry, I will dissect one company, how is it that they can do 15 million flights without a catastrophe? It's an impossible number, except getting it up. It's 6000 flights a day, multiplied that times days in the year, and how many years since the last accident? It's outrageous. So there is one example I am not commercial air, I don't run a thing. I don't fly with them. I'm not part of them. I will dissect enough out of them to get the lessons and principles. And I will bring those to some other company that's interested in reliability.
Tracy: Spoken like a true design thinker.
Story: Is it? Yeah. When I'm asked by oil exploration companies, how do I improve what they do on an offshore drilling rig? They want what's about the leadership, the teamwork, the expertise, the safety in the whole thing? I bring them commercial air. I bring them a NASCAR pit crew. I bring them Mission Control, NASA mission control. What's the difference? I bring in aircraft care operations. You know, in terms of reliability, the safety of perfection, there is no difference between aircraft carriers and a drilling rig. Not for me, because I see the synergies. I'm always working synergy, yeah. And the cosmos. You know, it's only humans and stuff thinks in a box, there are no differences. The cosmos is one. So all disciplines are essentially one. And the synergies are there, and you can count on it being there. So I bring aircraft carrier operations, which I know something about because that was there. But I bring that to the drilling rigs. Of course, they're the same. So that's multiple platform thinking. And so back to I think I answered your questions. But in this, you take on my level of expertise that you want to for context, so you do a contextual dissection?
Tracy: Yeah, I think that that really, I mean, as I said, it sounds spoken like a true design thinker is usually similar in the sense that we work across multiple industries. And so I worked on projects for genetics, and I worked for food and beverage companies, and I worked in the healthcare space, and you are the one who kind of comes in with that multidisciplinary view. And you provide the value because you're not so deeply in the weeds of the industry itself. And that's what's fascinating to me because then I think that that allows you the flexibility to solve problems that nobody else really can.
Story: Your solution is unique. There's no question. No, I'm not against I'm not saying I do not say that it's superior to hyper-specialization.
Tracy: No, no, it's just different.
Story: At times, you need hyper-specialization, right?
Tracy: Yeah, nobody wants me doing brain surgery on them. Because I've, I've worked for a beer company.
Chris: Story, you've got a number of years behind you as well. You do a lot of speaking in different areas. And you do a lot of advising now, and you've accomplished so much, what kind of themes Do you see what patterns where people you've accomplished so much? And I think a lot of people would look to you saying, wow, he's done so much in his career, I was just looking at your hobbies, chess, flying, gardening, literary, poetry, criticism, literary criticism, my computers parachuting, photography, reading, writing, scuba diving, and sorry, you're a pretty busy guy. And I'm curious, and you've accomplished a lot. What patterns and themes do you see that frustrate you, may perhaps, but where can you help others that say, wow, I want to accomplish three-quarters of the amount that Story did or even half the amount that story did?
Story: Are you talking about a company or an individual and they are very similar.
Chris: Yeah, this sort of back to your point is like, perhaps they're all one thing. But I'm more curious, I guess, for individuals. But I would love to hear your company example as well.
Story: Well, you can look at a company as an individual. I think we've covered that. I think it's one step at a time. I think it's where your curiosity, energy, your passions, and your dreams and where your heart is today.
Chris: I was wondering where you see that? Where do you see people get stuck in that? I think that makes sense to a lot of people. But where do you see them? Where do they get stuck?
Story: Yeah, because they don't take that step. Because they don't follow their dreams. They're stuck, because yeah, they're stuck. And so there's not a next mountain to climb? There's not a curiosity, then I am driven. I don't know where the drive comes from. And people, my biographer did one heck of a good job. And she was after, and I don't think she found it. And she couldn't find it, because I haven't found it. So where's the energy for adventure and exploration? Where'd it come from? I don't know where it came from. I don't know where it came from. But I just think that's a good point. Do you have the energy for exploration? More adventure for the next thing and x mountain to climb? The next curiosity? Is your curiosity still running? You're still in the game? And right, you know, it's December 2, what you're going to do on December 2?
Chris: Exactly. It sounds like what's true for you has also been true for us where there's also sort of a momentum that's built where if you start picking up rocks because you're curious, you only want to pick up more because it becomes so interesting and engaging. Yeah, so it's a little bit of unlocking that feeling of being stuck. And then if you don't know what it is just start picking things out of passion. Is this the pursuit of passion? If you're not sure what the passion is? Yeah, that said, I've never operated on anybody.
Story: But I'm fortunate today cuz I got a great set of clients that drive me. They drive me into new stuff, they always want new stuff. And they drive me so I gotta come across. I'm in a drop manner. The playing field is what we want. I was paying attention to the objectives while I'm going in, what am I gonna do for them? What is the take-home? What's a call to action? And number perfection? Is that providing them exactly that?
Tracy: I was just wondering how that translates to how you raise little Story. How do you serve her?
Story: So you saw that Steam Journal article? Well, that's the way I raised little Story. Little Story is always part of my final message when I'm talking about personal professional development. And so the only reason little Story is because it's always a nice thing to finish up the story. And I always tell a story, storytelling is massively important. It's the way humans communicate. And so I have a story that's read once in the beginning and it read once it starts in my childhood, and it ends up in her job. And so you do tell a story. But the story is made up of a whole bunch of scenarios. But I'll finish with her because it's human, but also she is an empty tabula rasa, an empty slate. So you start inquiring, and then the environment starts making a difference in the womb, but a child has a much more empty slate than an 80-year-old. And so what do you want to put in that slate? You know, of course, tabula rasa, right? So it's empty. It's empty, pretty empty to start with. Now, what experiences do you want to give her because the things you do as childhood are critical? You're asking a champion skier when you start skiing up today before I could walk? And you got the answer when you take up the piano when my hand is big enough to reach the keys h4. I see that's the way it works. When you're getting wired. It matters. When you acquire skills. When you get wired like I'm a mechanic, I have mechanical skills, but for little Story, I just think of the balance of experiences. So okay, she's massively digital, that just happens. That just happens. You got all these machines all over the place. And she does that. But for a lot of kids, that mechanical ride all-terrain vehicle, or driving tractors or that kind of stuff, I had a drive in a car the other day. And so that's the mechanical part of things, but the creatures and getting out in brown water, her love of creatures is outrageous. It's just incredible. And so she knows on its own, it bites, and they're nasty, because if you get near their nest, you know, they're gonna bite. You can't help but it's just their genetics, but they bite. They're nasty. I squatted down the swimming pool the other day, and it can't fly out of the water. So I said I got it. And she says, wait a minute, dad, she went and got a cup. She washed it out, I watched her, she carried it out and put it on a flower. And you don't swap cockroaches in this house. You don't. You catch them and carry them out. Her respect for the wigglies should go into this brown water. And all the wigglies are nibbling on her neck kind of stuff. Well, okay, she's into the dirt, she's into the mud. She's into the muck. She's into nature depths, that part of the world. And her artistic or arts and crafts table is here in the center place, it occupies the center place in the living room. It's not back, it's not in the basement, it's not in the attic. And it's not in the back somewhere, it's front and center. And so that means she does not have to go to the backroom and be unsocial to do arts and crafts. It means everyone has arts and crafts in their mind in front and center in the living room. And so you know, there's always the emphasis you paint, you're doing pool paint as I was painting everywhere. And so I just look at the total experience, and of course, reading the reading stories going to bed. And so you just look at the total experience that you give her, whether it's Mother Earth, whether it's wildlife, whether it's digital, mechanical, art, and you just look at all those things.
Tracy: Just going to say what I think is lovely about that is that you've set up a space or your life or her life for exploration and creativity. And when you were talking earlier about asking, when did you start playing piano or skiing or doing these other things. What I've noticed in the education space recently and with parents is that there's almost a drive to pick the one thing that your kid is going to do and with the goal that they are going to be the penultimate at that one thing. And what you're talking about is sort of laying everything out for her integrated into her life so that she can let her curiosity lead her to what's interesting.
Story: Yeah. I'm not saying it's better though. Because I have toyed with, I have toyed with creating the grand champion. I toyed with Anna and did we do that or do we don't do that? Do we see some unbelievably native talent that we get to run with? And that's okay, there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with being a champion.
Tracy: Have you decided against pushing for that? Or was there a reason for?
Story: I have in her case? Yeah, we didn't take that course. I don't know, default. You do know it is a course and you do know if you're going to take that course there's a focus and concentration on the hyperspatial but that's fine. It's absolutely fine to take that course.
Tracy: Do you think if she'd exhibited some sort of like she's just a master artist or something that would change your opinion?
Story: Well, last on outrageous native talent and her passion. You know if she had a passion, yeah, run with it.
Chris: Well, Story, I know everyone asks you but you have to tell us because not many have done it. But how did being in space influence you? What was it like?
Story: Well as a three-year-old in the forest alone at night, I had already arrived. So space is very tame. You do understand what a three-year-old in the forest alone is at night? Do you know what that's like?
Tracy: I imagined it would be terrifying.
Story: Yes, not. But it's faith. No, you have the faith that whatever there is friendly to you because you want it and you have the faith. But in the Leyland pine forest, other than the branches scratching you, there is nothing awful. And a pine forest is soft, it's temperate, the pine needles are soft, the temperature is soft, everything is soft, you know, a pine forest is soft, it's the most beautiful caring thing possible. So there isn't any harm, except if you can't see anything, you have to read with the arm so you don't get scratched. But I'm saying a three-year-old in the middle of the night in a forest is impressive. It's more impressive than being in space. So you are out there, you are way out there and you know, you got the sky and you got the stars and you could get lost you don't because you feel the bark of the tree, the bark leaves you in the bark leaves you out, because, in Massachusetts, the north side of the tree has never seen the sun. And so the bark has a very different texture than the bark that sees the sun on. Now moss, that's cheating. Mosses is to lobbyists. So you can be more subtle than that. But I just feel a bark on a cloudy night. Well, I can't see the moon the size, I walk in the forest and they come out, I know where I am by feeling the bug. And that's further out in spaceflight. And if I built my own raft and went down the river, you just lie on the back and you watch the raft, you sort of know where you are because you see the leaves and the trees overhead. So spinning around, you know, so but in terms of being out there, I had already been through that. That transcendental experience and already been through that. So spaceflight expands your horizons, certainly, you're seeing, you see geography, you see geography is only one way to see it. And you get incredibly good flight after flight, you get very good at sea, and you get very subtle about what you can see, it's unbelievable, how good you get in what you can see, and your practice and you work on that. But it's not that transcendent experience. It's just big and it's beautiful. The scale, you know.
Tracy: I was just gonna say I wonder what would happen if you put a three-year-old up in space
Story: Well, they need to. That's a shame that has not had that imagination, and nor have they flown creatures in space. So and you say yes, they have they've never flown a creature that had the freedom to pursue the freefall condition. I call it freefall. It's not zero gravity, it's freefall. They have never flown a creature and let the creature explore the zero g convention. So I came up with this whole study, I would have done, a menagerie, and what kind of experiments I would do with each one of them. Until you don't really know that until you've watched creatures pursue that. When does a squirrel leap off? When does a squirrel you know, how does squirrel orient? How do they like their gravity? What's up and what's down for them? And so they are probably orienting you, but when do they push off? Okay, they run around away. They do it pretty much three-dimensional creatures are seen as 100%, three-dimensional creature dogs are two dimensional. But when does the squirrel push off and go flying from one side to the other? And if you're in a sphere, and homogeneous sphere, which is lit the same way and has absolutely no indication of the upward down direction, what did the creatures do? And what do humans do? When there's no gravity orient?
Tracy: Where can somebody find this?
Story: It doesn't exist. We've never done it.
Tracy: Oh, I thought you said that you wrote up this paper with you, the experiments that you do.
Story: I've just pursued it myself. It's a personal thing. And I've tried to make it happen and never happened. It hasn't happened yet. We've been in spaceflight for 15 years.
Tracy: I'd never thought about that before until you just said that.
Story: I've never seen a creature in zero g.
Tracy: I know. But now I want to see it. Who can we talk to to make it happen?
Story: Well, I'm all good. I tried to make it happen.
Tracy: Well, maybe this podcast will help.
Story Well, it will but you get to think about it. You know what it might be like? I did. I flew with a bunch of rats. And that was for you in order to go and do scientific studies, throw up there in space and then do something when they get home. See what it did film then study that when they go home. My boss called me in and he said, Story, you have rats on your flight. I do, sir. Your rats are going to stay in the cage. Now that I've told you, you get on the phone and call the big boss. I call the very big boss. Mr. Musgrave, you got rats on your flight yesterday. They should stay in the cage. So you see what they're doing to me? My rats are gonna stay in the cage. Well, it's my last line. It shouldn't have been my last line, but they told me it's gonna be last should not have been my last. But if it's my last, they got no control over me. So I went to the cage and the cage had two padlocks on and all the screws and bolts that held together were on the inside of the cage, not on the outside. They knew what they were doing. I can't get into the cage. So the rat stayed in the cage. But I would have had a field day. All inside my coveralls had to put velcro booties on him, they'll go booty so they could have clung on to my cover off, how to put some power, vocal power on my cover off and they had to hook velcro on their part. And you just see this tiger, 20 rats, and me. It's just outrageous. But to the excitement of that kind of video with me playing in some closed space with 20 different rats in zero g. Now my goodness.
Tracy: I can't even imagine that.
Story: But here you guys space station and you've never seen a creature in zero g. We promote them, but they have been attached to the hardware, or they've been in a cage. And already we were not allowed to photograph. So there you go.
Tracy: Well, this has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for taking time to enlighten us with your experience and your point of view and just your own passion and curiosity for life.
Story: Yeah, it was an incredible thing to Katia. What kind of fate was it going to be?
Tracy: Yeah, I know she did. But see it took you being the one to reach out and being open to possibilities. You don't know anything about to even contact her in the first place.
Story: So well. That's why I ran into her too. Oh, yeah. Let's see. That's what the world you'd be surprised if you network. You'd be surprised by some of the mutual things that happen and enriches your life. You know, it's new people.
Tracy: I agree.
Story: Yeah.
Tracy: I hope this isn't the last time that we speak.
Story: Okay. I hope not, too.
Tracy: Okay, thank you a lot.
Chris: Wow, Tracy, rats in space, that should definitely happen. And I'm pretty much feeling like the greatest underachiever that ever lived, having talked to Story.
Tracy: Yeah, I was telling you recently, all these amazing people that we've been talking to. I'm starting to get this complex of like, how, how are you making all of these things happen? Right. Do you not sleep?
Chris: Just perhaps he doesn't need sleep?
Tracy: Yeah, I mean, some people don't. But then I think that that glorifies not sleeping, which is something that most people do need in order to achieve anything that they want to on a regular consistent basis.
Chris: Here on Results May Vary, we do not condone the use of no sleep in order to achieve your ultimate state.
Tracy: That you should get more sleep probably if you want to do that.
Chris: Yeah, but what a great guy and I just, I find it a privilege to talk to anybody who is 80 plus, about anything.
Tracy: I agree.
Chris: Let alone Story. And here, you just have a guy that I just wish we could ask him 100 things because it felt like we were just getting started. I loved his rapid storytelling from tractors to tanks to the Space Shuttle. It's fun to listen to talk, is it just to him? It's just so obvious that that's why it happened. But as an outsider, it's like, wow, that's a pretty wild chain of events.
Tracy: I know. It's like, it's obviously a story that he is, you know, that just lives within him. But you're right, it was fun to listen to. Because it's just that's one way to tell that story, just as though, yeah. And then this other thing happened. And then I found myself in space.
Chris: I also loved the pressure he put on really questioning the notion of design, how intentional can you really be in your own life? And what I heard him ultimately saying is you the motivation, right is he was putting this sort of very complex piece together around. It's a blend of your passion and motivation, and then some happenstance, it really is a blend of things. But the idea which I don't think we've ever promoted, though, we haven't done a great job explaining is that we're not suggesting you control your life. But you can put some intention behind it using some creative tools. And that's what we're trying to do on this podcast. And when I hear him talk, that's exactly what he's doing, in some ways, in other very complex ways, that certainly we can't just claim as Oh, You're obviously designing your life. He's got a phenomenal perspective about life, in which design can be inspired by what he's saying.
Tracy: Well, I thought a really great example of how he's designing life was how he's helping to design his daughter's life.
Chris: Yeah, that was a great question.
Tracy: Yeah, it's a great question. He's completely set up an environment for her to explore all different facets of life and to get proficient with them or to just have fun and find joy in it. And so yeah, I thought that that was, I mean, all parents do that to a certain degree. But then that's where I think, to your point just earlier is that the intentionality comes into it.
Chris: And was interesting that did not push the heavy achievement pursuit for her, which I thought was a great question to ask is what you know, why not? And, yeah, I think that that is a really good question.
Tracy: Yeah. And I think the morality around it too, like he was saying, it wouldn't have been wrong to do it the other way. And, and it's certainly not, um, I guess, part of me feels like in the current landscape of child-raising, and I'm saying this is somebody who does not have a child. So take it with a grain of salt. But I get the sense that there's much more pressure on kids to start things early and to specialize early. And I think that as you grow up and get older, it just shuts you off from the amazing complexity of the world. Yeah, and he can be.
Chris: That's right. I remember interviewing on an idea project, the coach of the Stanford swimming team, what was very apparent is that these athletes were highly, highly accomplished. And a disproportionate number of medals go to the Stanford swim team in the Olympics. But what I was watching was one lane, literally, in this case, one swim lane, without a worldview yet without really an exploration and other categories, which I found to be a little bit sad. Well, on one hand, I felt like I was watching a set of tiger parents seeing their vision come to life. I see. And not necessarily a whole person that has fully chosen this as their path. Right. But that said, what's not sad about it is you see many people, not unlike story where they simply take that learning and then go and reapply it. Yes. The next thing they just reapplying and reapplying it and then that discovery just happens in a different fashion. Yeah, versus kind of the artist’s kid that just does everything and anything, finds it in a different way.
Tracy: Yeah, I think that's you really, you really hit something there to me, which is the allowing then the transition to something else, and knowing how to take the applicable skills and apply them elsewhere. Versus feeling like this is the end all be all of your life. And you get to a certain point, I mean, athletes especially or, you know, like models or something here, your physiology starts to break down. And if you don't have the ability to make those analogous leaps, then your entire self-identity is tied.
Chris: Yeah. Yes, that's right. And we see that all the time. There are some great examples of that. But I think there's just so much wisdom in this thing. I think his tractor metaphor is really applicable to people in their adult life too is like if you want to know how to become an astronaut, start driving a tractor, and working on it. I mean, like applying our thinking to him that was his v1, right? Like that was it these things as adults can seem really daunting. And it's, especially people more like a midlife crisis level, which is like, I never, I never really pursued my rock band career or whatnot. But that definitely doesn't mean that you couldn't do open mic night. Right? Do you know what I mean? So I think this idea of like, what's the one, the version one of tractor fixing to become an astronaut?
Tracy: Yeah, I mean, if, if he, he talked about when he was three sorts of being put into a position where for survival purposes, he had to start doing things that most kids wouldn't have to do. And so by the time he was nine, and I started to get older, those were inherent skills that he had. gathered out of necessity. And I wonder, you know, obviously, it would have been a lot different if his parents decided at age three, instead, you're going to become an astronaut, which I don't think even existed, then, but they would have tried to groom him in a way that might not actually get to the outcome that they want. Because they're so specific.
Chris: Yes, that's right. Yeah, tons of learning in that. And I did really appreciate him. Like, he didn't know that either. It's not like you saying, I'm doing this to become an astronaut. That's why I love the blend between, you have no idea what these skill sets are going to mean. You just need to keep going.
Tracy: Well, and he went because he was curious about them. As he said, he was working in this mechanical world. And then it was sort of a not that big of a leap to the biological world and trying to make sense of how the brain works. So he's just following this natural progression of interests. And then it happens that his unique skill set is exactly what's needed for this mission.
Chris: That's right. Yeah, that's right. And I think people all over the world have these eclectic blends of skill sets that may manifest they may never manifest into a combined something. But I think about even you and I and our own individual curious pursuits, they may look really random, like home improvement and mountain biking, long distances and health care and design, like what's that mean? I don't know. And they may form something, and maybe they don't. And that's kind of the pleasure of life is to just do them. Do them all maybe not concurrently? Do you pursue them? And then perhaps they do create something? Or you may actually have an intention around them, which is, you know, yeah, both ways work. Where you might be realizing that you see the stepping stones that are going to get you to that thing, or you just keep doing them. And maybe by happenstance, someone says, hey, have you ever thought about combining those things?
I think with some people, people like to put other people in boxes that they don't feel pertain to themselves. And so I, I hear you say that and I'm like, yeah, we should all you know, we should all have that flexibility to explore things just out of sheer curiosity. But it's funny, because I just feel like we then point to people and say, Oh, I know you are this, you will always be that to me. We just make it hard for each other to move beyond.
I know, our our pegging and stereotyping each other is the worst, right? That's funny, because you do that to your spouse. I mean, do you unintentionally do that all the time, to people you love. You sort of, you've got the kind of pegged. And you might even be pegging them in a way that you think is wonderful. Like, oh, I love your art and your mathematical mind in your career is great. And not even knowing your boxing.
Tracy: I would venture to say that we do that to moms, especially, you know, like, but good point. You're, you're supposed to be here for me when I XYZ, and yeah. And mom is like, guess what, kid? I'm my own person.
Chris: I think you're right. I think you're right. And sadly, a lot of times, I don't think we realize that until you become a mom or you're an adult. And you can finally see that
Tracy: Yeah. Thanks, moms.
Chris: Thanks, Mom. This has been the mom show.
Tracy:
Somehow this turned into the mom show. Cool.
All right. That's a wrap. Thanks so much for listening. Our dream is to build a community of people who can create and take advantage of any opportunity that interests them. To do this really well. We'd love for you to participate. Try out and share back your own life design experiments. Or if you've already got a great story of how you've designed your life, we'd love to hear from you on our Facebook page, or resultsmayvarypodcast.com. Our website is also where you'll find show notes and links to all the things we mentioned in the episode. And if you wouldn't be so kind, subscribe to the show and share your favorite episodes with friends. that'll add even more people to start designing their own lives. A big thanks to the folks who helped us make the show possible. composer and filmmaker HP Mendoza for the Results May Vary theme music, Graphic Designer Annessa Bryamer for our logo, David Glazier for sound mixing and team podcast for editing, and of course, thank you so much for listening to Results May Vary.