I Couldn’t Stop Watching His Hands

A friend sent me the video clip going around of a man fishing in a canoe, with an octopus grabbing his face.

It wasn’t on his hand or part of his face. His whole face.

Looking at it, I was thinking most people watching probably focus on the octopus, but I just keep staring at the man and the fact that he didn’t panic.

He was definitely working hard to get it off. Peeled a tentacle off his cheek, and it reattached. He peeled it again, and it found his jaw. He kept going until he got the octopus completely off and back in the water.

Calm and methodical the whole time.

Me? I was cringing the whole time watching it.

It was for sure a testament to staying calm under pressure. But I was wondering if I had the causation backward.

Maybe he wasn't calm and therefore able to act. Perhaps it was more like he was able to act, and that was what kept him calm.

Give a frightened person a task, and the fear has somewhere to go.

Each reattaching tentacle gave this fisherman another small, obvious task, and a mind full of tasks has little room left to narrate a catastrophe.

We’ve kind of built whole professions around this without saying it out loud.

For example, a cockpit checklist does something quieter than manage the aircraft. It manages the pilot, handing her the next action so fear never finishes its sentence.

Of course, this doesn't mean the fear wasn't there. But fear and action can share the same body. Action is what keeps the fear from hardening into panic.

And if that's right, if panic really does grow in the gap where there's nothing to do, then the most useful thing I can do isn't getting better at staying calm. It's deciding my next move before I ever need it, so the gap is already filled when it opens.

By now, you've probably written enough checklists to know they're never really about paper. They're about preserving good judgment when the room gets loud.

Said another way, they're really about removing one decision.

I've felt that myself in my own work. The meetings I dread aren't the ones where I expect disagreement; they're the ones where I haven't decided what I'll do first if the conversation turns.

When the pressure is on, the first move can't be something like "regain control."

That's an outcome, and outcomes are exactly what I can't reach for when my pulse is in my ears. It has to be something my hands can do while they're still shaking.

So the question I settle in advance is a narrow one: what is the first thing my hands will do?

For me, that's as small as putting my pen down and asking the person to say more. The man in the canoe didn't strategize; he peeled one tentacle. One small move, small enough that there's no rattled version of me that can't manage it.

The catch is that the move only works if I've worn it in.

A first move I've only ever imagined isn't there when I reach for it under pressure. It has to become boring first, and the only way I've found to get it there is to run it before I need it: I say the hard opening out loud in the car, walk through the drill, and hand it to someone who will push back, so the first time I do it for real isn't actually the first time.

That's the part I think we miss about the people who stay composed. They aren't necessarily braver than the rest of us. They've just run this one first move so many times that reaching for it costs them nothing, or they've made so many first moves over the years that they can pivot to a new one on the spot.

Both are earned the same way, in reps.

And when it finally hits, I try to narrate the next action and nothing else. Peel this one. Now this one.

I coach archery, and the first thing I work on with a new archer, long before they're any good, is calling each step of the shot in their head. The moment their mind jumps to the score instead of the step, I watch the shot come apart.

I've come to think it works the same wherever the pressure is.

When I can keep my attention on the move right in front of me, the catastrophe loses its microphone, because my attention only fits in one place at a time, and I would rather spend it on my hands than on the ending.

Calm was never the price of admission. It's what you're left holding once your hands have somewhere to go.

I want to be careful not to oversell this, though.

You can't script a real emergency, and a notecard doesn't turn a hard moment into an easy one. Some people genuinely are steadier by temperament, and there are crises no rehearsal ever reaches. But those are the exceptions we like to point at so we can excuse ourselves from the preparation the rest of the time.

My experience has been that when something goes wrong in a room, people turn to whoever moves first and seems to know what comes next.

I know that there is a level of influence that comes from my position. But often in the moment, most of it comes from something else: being the one with a next move while everyone else is still working out what just happened. And I don't decide that move in the meeting.

I decide it beforehand, on some quiet afternoon, when I settle what my hands will do first.

Instead of asking myself, "How do I stay calm?", it's become more about this:

When the thing comes for my face, what have I already put in place for my hands to do?

I'm pretty sure the fisherman didn't have a special nervous system. He had a first move, and then the next one, and his hands stayed busy enough that the fear never got hold of the microphone.

So I've mostly given up on trying to build my nerve. I try to build the card instead: I pick the moment I can already see coming, find one small thing my shaking hands could actually do, and wear it in before I ever need it.

If you've got a first move that's carried you through something before, hit reply and tell me what it was.

Thanks for reading. Be easy!