[00:01] Katie: Welcome to The Focus B Show, where Katie Stoddart, high performance coach, interviews experts around the world in performance and mindfulness. Now here's your host. Katie.
[00:34] Katie: Welcome to a brand new episode of the Focus B show. I am absolutely delighted to be here today with Pertu Polinen. Pertu is a futurist, inventor and author. He has written, amongst others, the book Future Skills. He's performed the TEDx. What can I get from you and not get from Google? He is the inventor of music clock and in 2018, MIT Tech honored him among the 35 innovators under 35 in Europe. Hi Piertu, welcome to the show. It's a real pleasure to have you here.
[01:09] Perttu: Well, nice to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
[01:12] Katie: I'd like to begin with your I watched your TEDx that I thought was fantastic on what you can get from other people that you can't get from Google. And I know this is one of your key topics around the skills that we need and that we can develop that aren't necessarily technical abilities. And I'd love to hear particularly your insights around courage think courage is a fantastic virtue, and I think there's a lot of misinterpretation around what courage actually means and how we can go about developing courage. It's one of the fundamental traits of leaders, as you know. So really curious to hear for you, how can we develop and improve our courage?
[01:53] Perttu: Yes. Well, let me start with why courage in the first place is important. I think that oftentimes, or maybe more than often, learning comes from when we reflect what we just did. When we try something new, we experiment with something new and then we reflect, what did we just do? That's when kind of the new lesson or the new idea kicks in, so to say. So when we are courageous enough to try new things to experiment, then we have also the possibility to learn something. But if we don't have the courage to try, then we will never learn. Right? So courage is kind of the first thing that we have to have in order to get those important lessons. So it's everywhere. It's not this big thing that we talk in a nice sentences, but rather it's something very mundane, very important for everyday lives. But yeah, courage is important. I have lots of soft skills in my future curriculum, the kind of outline of what skills we need. And I think the challenge with skills such as courage is that it's very difficult to measure them or to kind of evaluate them. And I don't think it's even necessary. Why would we even want to do that? How courageous are you and how courageous am I? The separation or the kind of comparison is not really meaningful. So I think the challenge with skills like courage in the future will be that we will need them. It's clear. But you cannot get a degree or you cannot make a test about courage. So we are required to have a lot of trust and lot of patience. That okay, this is what we should develop. Even though we cannot see the results immediately, and even though we can really get a job by just saying I'm courageous. So it's very difficult to kind of prove it. I think it's important for us to develop it no matter or even though it's difficult to.
[04:10] Katie: Yes, absolutely. I think from what you're saying, that basically taking the initiative on different projects, even being proactive, as Stephen Covey talks about, is really fundamental block of what courage looks like. And like you said, we can't measure it objectively looking at someone else, but I think we can sort of feel it in ourselves. The more we go out of our comfort zone, the more we start new things and take small steps on things that feel a bit awkward or scary, then we know that we're being brave because we're going past our comfort zone in some way.
[04:45] Perttu: Yeah, at least in my experience, pretty much every time I've had the courage to do something new or do something courageous, it has led me to some important lessons. So it's been worth it. And I guess I think that in a way, the most important thing about education, about parenting, is to get a license, so to say, kind of permission to parent, permission to coach. We need to kind of have courage in order to let other people also teach us and let other people guide us, because alone we cannot really do everything. So courage in that way as well is I think, important.
[05:45] Katie: That's very interesting. So the courage to be proactive is the first sense we were saying, but also the courage to let ourselves be guided and learn from others and not think that we have all the answers. How do you feel that this relates with an exponential mindset?
[06:01] Perttu: Yeah, so exponential mindset, I think is all about challenging yourself to think bigger. Oftentimes we're stuck with how to make it 5% better, 10% better. Exponential mindset is this idea that let's try to make it ten times better. And as we know, exponential growth is that it doubles. So one, two, 4816, 32 and so on. So I think it's very important for us to challenge ourselves for the future that is exponential and that is unknown. We can expect many areas, many technologies to develop exponentially in the future. So we have to kind of adapt this new mindset to get ready for something that is not just a bit better than what we used to have, but it's completely different or completely new to what we've ever had before. So I think future requires us to be courageous because it's unknown, there's no degrees or tests that kind of will help us through our lives. So we need to have this mindset of an entrepreneur mindset of person who will find the path for themselves. So in that sense, courage and an exponential mindset, I think they go hand in hand.
[07:26] Katie: Yes, I would definitely say that too. I'm curious. So I love this idea of the ten X mindset and thinking bigger because I feel that so many people close themselves down again, coming back to the comfort zone, but also by self doubt and emitting beliefs and they put barriers in place that aren't actually there. I'm curious, what advice would you give to someone, let's say a business owner that's listening to this or watching this interview, what advice would you give them or what sort of questions can they ask themselves to develop this exponential mindset?
[07:59] Perttu: Yeah, well, when it comes to doing something new or developing an exponential mindset, taking a risk, being courageous, it's all about the fear of failure. I guess at the end of the day, we don't want to make mistakes. We are afraid that **** hits the fan. And that's why risk, many people don't want to take a risk. But I would say that risk is essential for progression. We need to every now and then, dare to do new things to gain something new. The answer to how can I be exponential, how can I do big things and think bigger is not to kind of just try to be more courageous because that's difficult to find. That's not something you just cannot push it, right? But rather, I would say that find something that is so important that it's worth doing anyway. Even though you failed, you knew that you did the right thing. So I make a distinction between ambition and passion. And if I asked you what would you do if you knew that you couldn't or wouldn't fail? I think that's about ambition. What would you want to achieve? But if I asked you, what would you do if you knew that you will fail but still would do it? That's about passion, right? And many of the most important things in life, leadership or parenting, education and so on, are worth doing even though you know you're going to fail at that. It's not an easy route. So I think courage is not something that you can teach like you teach grammatics or these types of things, but you have to kind of find it from within and you have to reflect what is so important to me that I should and I want to be courageous about it. So when is it okay to take a risk and when not?
[10:07] Katie: Absolutely. I think that's so well put and I love that question. What would you do if you knew that you would fail? I'm very curious to know, Pete, what's your answer to this? What would you still do or continue doing even though you would know that you were about to.
[10:26] Perttu: Kind of those are the questions I've tried to live with or according to in my own personal life and the things that I'm doing right now I guess are the things that I would do anyway. But I guess one day to be a parent, right, is something that I guess everybody will fail. But if you are kind of afraid and thinking I'm not going to do it because of that, well, that's again the wrong answer. So you should do it. But it's a passion thing and when you are passionate about something you can take some bumps in the road. You don't get down because of those. I think that's one of the things that kind of helps you learn what is important to you. If you get some setbacks, if there are some mistakes that happen or some bad things take place and if you completely lose your motivation because of that, probably that wasn't so important to you at the end of the day. But if you know that you're doing something meaningful, you have a purpose and you have a clear goal. For example, you know what you want to do. You can take some setbacks. They don't slow you well, maybe they slow you down, but they don't stop you from doing it. And I think this is like I think that when we try to achieve happiness and we try to be happy and our societies are obsessed with this idea, I would say that it would be better to achieve fulfillment than happiness because there are many ways to be happy. I can think of 1000 ways. You can buy a new car, new phone, you can go to a vacation, you can sing in a concert. Those things make you happy. But if something happens, you crash the car or the vacation is canceled or you cannot go to concert or something like that. As easy as you get those things, they are also taken away from you. But if you're doing something that is fulfilling to you, you do something that the world needs. Even though some problems occur, occur, you won't stop. So I think we shouldn't try to be happy. We should try to be fulfilled. And where happiness is easy, fulfillment is difficult. I cannot think of 1000 ways to live a fulfilled life. It's much more difficult to find those things. But when you do, you can be much more resilient and perseverant with these things. So I guess that's what I try to live by. That's my goal.
[13:22] Katie: It feels to me like what you're saying is it's more about enjoying the process, enjoying the journey, as they say and less about either the end goal or these sort of spikes, these high spikes of happiness or joys or one time adventures and fun. And you were just saying it at the end and I was going to come to this point, which is how this can help you to be more resilient and persevering. So I was going to ask, do you feel that perseverance drastically improves when you're able to sort of enjoy the process as you go along?
[13:55] Perttu: I would say so and obviously when you don't forget the motivation like why are you doing this? It helps you when times get rough. Of course, so many times when people are tired or they feel stuck with what they're doing, it might not be that they need to change their place of work or they need to change their careers, but they might have just forgotten why they started this thing in the first place. And that kind of has to just be reminded to them. And then maybe we will find new strength. I think really that if you want to achieve anything great in your life you need to commit. You need to commit to long term process, long term gains. And if we change every time that we don't feel like it, we obviously won't achieve depth in whatever we do. And in this time, especially when our services, our apps, our environments have been designed to give us whatever we want instantly. And instant gratification is a big thing. We want to get prices. Like everything is not supposed to be easy and kind of quick. And if that becomes our kind of standard and normal that we have learned from the apps and services and the world doesn't work that way. There are things that take years for you to learn. There are things that take half your life for you to learn. We need a lot of experience. A lot of experience to become friendly. We need a lot of experience in life to become compassionate. And there are things that take very long time to learn. So we kind of have to acknowledge that and not be freaking out if for one year or two year, we don't feel like we've gotten anywhere. It's a long process. The best things in life at least they take time.
[16:11] Katie: They do. And I'm curious as a multifaceted person that you are even polymath you could say you're a composer, you're a speaker, you're a futurist. How do you succeed in going in depth in all these different areas and learning all these things that take time when you have so many different hats, right?
[16:30] Perttu: Well, I've actually noticed that those different things, even different domains I'm at they help each other or how to say it. The most important lessons about entrepreneurship I've actually gotten from my composition and Silicon Valley and being there has affected me most in my art and these things I believe in cross disciplinary activities and thinking and it's not so know it's different but rather those different activities strengthen me I guess, in whatever I do. So as an example in my thinking, in my world composing music or writing a book or giving a speech or innovating new product or starting a company they're exactly the same thing. You start with nothing, you just have an idea or a vision and then you start to iterate. You get the first initial idea or a melody or anything. But then you start to iterate and you start to kind of work and you have a vision, you have to have a goal, something that you're trying to achieve and then you try to get there. And when it comes to speaking, writing, composing, it's all about how do you tame attention, how do you give something that is relevant? How do you give something that people can kind of can't be too new, but if it's too old and mundane, then it's interesting. So it has to find the right balance. When I make music, I need to think that, well, how can I keep this person in the hook? Like, how can I give something that makes it refreshing all the time? When I write a book, I have to think how can I write this sentence so that the person will want to read the next sentence? And how do I write this chapter so that he or she has to continue to the next chapter? And the same with presentation. If you're giving a keynote speech of like 1 hour, there has to be structure, there has to be a starting point, middle, the end. So I don't feel like dabbling is a bad thing. I don't feel like being mediocre or doing many things is kind of away. I only think that being a generalist is a good thing. So I'm not kind of ashamed of that at all.
[19:14] Katie: I'm glad. I feel exactly the same way. It's nice to have a divergent opinion from the majority. I feel that think that you have to specialize in something very narrow and niche and like you said, the link between so many different fields and how they influence and impact one another is so fundamental and so interesting. I'm super curious. I keep saying I'm curious because I am. I'm a very curious person and I'm curious about the people I interview and I love everything that you're saying. I'm very curious to hear what is your motivation? Because you were talking earlier about it's important to sustain this motivation, to have a clear purpose. What's your big why, what makes you continue do what you are doing?
[19:55] Perttu: Yes, well, I wouldn't say it has changed over time, but I guess I have learned more about it over time. So I think what is very common for me and probably for all, I mean, this doesn't have to be unique is that I want to give something meaningful to people and I want to enrich their lives. I think of myself as a colorer, a person who adds color and adds nuances to pictures. And if there's something that's very black and white, I try to bring on the shades of gray there. And whether it's with music, with speech, with text, I want to add colors to people's lives, to their experiments, experiences. I mean, I think that's who I am. But when I was starting out, I was a composer first when I studied that, I felt like music and art is the best way to really touch somebody. I can give them something that is very profoundly moving and touching. And I felt like, this is why I want to do it. But when I started my first company, when I went to Silicon Valley and got more influence in business, I started to feel like, well, I also want to know who I have touched and affected. Because if I make a piece of music, I don't know who is listening to it, I don't know where it is. Is anybody touched at all? I don't have any control over how is it doing. But if I'm building a company, if I make an app, I know exactly how many times it's been downloaded. I know exactly what they've done in what page. I can control everything. And I kind of fell in love with the fact that I know that I'm making like I have data over it. And it didn't change that. I wanted to bring something to people's lives. But when I'm giving a talk, I know I see the people who are listening to me, and I see how many times some radio program has been listened to. And this way it hasn't changed. It just has a new form, I guess. So I've learned that for me, I actually like to know the results of my work, and that kind of matters to me. But it's been a know when Michelangelo, I don't know how you pronounce it in know when he was asked, how were you able to make this incredibly beautiful statue of David? How were you able to do that? The story goes that he answered and said, well, it was very easy. I just erased and took off everything that was not David. So at the end of the day, what was left was this David. And in a way, I think, well, maybe our lives, maybe our careers are the same. So we do things to notice, well, this wasn't me, actually, and we take kind of parts out. And the more we do that, at the end of the day, what is being left is, well, this is me. This is what I am, and I think I will be on that journey forever. But it's good to kind of also learn what was not my thing. And that's equally important to know what you don't want to do in the future. And when you have a lot of experience, then you narrow your options down.
[23:18] Katie: That's a fantastic analogy with the statue. I really like it because I feel that we often look at what we want to do or need to do, and we don't often look at what can be eliminated, what can be outsourced, instead of all the things we start to add onto our pile. So I like the analogy with the statue. I think I'll remember that too, and think, okay, this is a matter of fine tuning what feels right and what is right for me. And also.
[23:44] Perttu: I think ending things or stopping things or removing things is also a skill. We also talk about the culture of experimentation and culture of doing new things and trying three new things every day. And whatnot and I would say, well, how about the culture of removing things from your everyday life? Try to erase the habit or try to erase whatever it is. And if you can live that way, well, take it back then. But try and test what is really essential for your life and what's not. So I would also say that unlearning and getting rid of things is equally important. It's a skill that is probably quite undervalued right now.
[24:31] Katie: Absolutely, I would definitely agree with that. I think it is highly undervalued and I think it's because people have a tendency, when something is wrong or off or doesn't fit, they have a tendency to want to add they want to add this super tool. They want to add this new strategy. Do more, do it differently, try something new. And I think instead of just pausing, looking at the whole overview of their life or their business and thinking, wait a minute, how can I just simplify everything so I have more mental space? And then with this mental space, maybe try something new or create. But that's the first step. You want to declutter before you add stuff, right?
[25:06] Perttu: Achieve more. First you need to slow down. A yes.
[25:11] Katie: Yes. If you want to achieve more, you need to slow down. Absolutely. I can't believe it's already been half an hour. Petu, this has gone by so quickly. I feel we could touch on so many different topics. Before we finish, though, I'm very curious. Again, I need to use a different expression. I'd love to know more about your Futurist, and I'd love to know more about what you're working on right now. So what are your key projects at the moment?
[25:34] Perttu: Yes, well, my book Future Skills was just published in the US. I mean, around the world in English. So that's been very interesting because I've written two books, first in Finnish, and now they've been translated. There's one translation in Turkey and in Korea, and who knows where it goes, but I'm very curious to see how it's being taken, like what people think about that and what kind of ideas they get. Because what I have in Future Skills is twelve modules, or twelve skills, and I go through each one of them. Why do we need perseverance in the future and how can we develop it? Why do we need stories and creativity and moral courage and whatnot? So I'm really curious to see what it sparks in people who read that. But obviously then I'm doing a lot of keynotes. I'm from Finland, so mostly here. But now that the world is doing more remote and online events. It's easier also to talk, you know, entrepreneur. So this is everyday life. Every day is different, but I enjoy that. So works for me.
[26:37] Katie: Yes. That's the most fun of everything. I agree with you. Every day is different and fun. Thank you so much, Petra, for being on the show. It was a real pleasure to have you here today. Thank you for tuning in. Where can people find you if they want to be in touch or find out more about your work?
[26:52] Perttu: Well, I have a tricky name, so I don't know, maybe I should spell it by my name is well, I cannot even say it in English, but how you spell it is P-E-R-T-T-U-P-O-L-O-N-E-N. So my website, my Instagram whatever. I guess my website would be the best way to find material, but very curious. I mean, I always encourage people to write to me, and really, if they get any ideas, any thoughts, it's together, how we develop the kind of scenarios for the future. So I also want to encourage people to start a discussion with somebody.
[27:30] Katie: Absolutely. 200% yes on that. Okay. Thank you so much, Pierce, for being here today. Fantastic conversation. We touched on so many topics. Thank you so much.
[27:39] Perttu: Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you.
[27:44] Katie: Thank you for listening to the Focus B show. We would love to hear your feedback. Let us know in a review how this episode inspired you. Keep buzzing.