How to Make a Quantum Leap?
I really admire A R Rahman for his amazing music. It is interesting to see how he grew in his career by making "quantum leaps":
Orbit 0: In his childhood, he played keyboard to help his father. Later he started playing keyboard for bands and well-known musicians.
Orbit 1: He started composing jingles for advertisements.
Orbit 2: He started composing for movies, starting from his award-winning music for the film "Roja".
Orbit 3: He composed for Bollywood and Hollywood movies and won numerous awards on the way (including Oscars).
When you carefully observe the lives of numerous achievers, you could see that they make "quantum leaps" in their career.
What is a "quantum leap"?
Here is the concept from Physics described in simple terms. Electrons circle around in an atom in certain orbits or energy levels. An electron can jump from its current orbit to the higher orbit(s) when its energy level increases, or to lower orbit(s) when its energy level decreases. When an electron makes a jump, it could emit photons (light). When an electron gains considerable energy, it can break from the bonds of the atom and become a "free electron".
During college days, I read an interesting book titled "Quantum Leap Thinking" (James J. Mapes, Dove Books, 1996). Here is the description of quantum leap from this book:
"A quantum leap, no matter how infinitesimal, always makes a sharp break with the past. It is the discontinuous jump of an electron from one orbit to another, with the particle mysteriously leaving no trace of its path. It is the instantaneous collapse of a wave of probabilities into a single real event."
The book was interesting to me because it made the connect between quantum leap in Physics to the one in our personal and professional lives.
Since a quantum leap is making a leap from one energy level to the other, we have all experienced it or observed it. Here is an example from our experience (we means our organization "CodeOps technologies" here).
Orbit 0: We organized weekend training programs for professionals.
Orbit 1: Expanded our reach by organizing meetup groups on various topics ranging from Java to building bots.
Orbit 2: Expanded further by organizing our first conference.
In other words, we made two quantum leaps in a short period of time (less than a year!) - an amazing progress for a start-up.
Insights on quantum leaps
Though I like the book "Quantum Leap Thinking", I wish the book had done a better job on analyzing this concept at a deeper level so that we can apply the concepts more effectively in practice (and hence this article). Here we go:
- Making a leap can make us uncomfortable. When we are at a particular energy level, we get used to it. Getting to the next level requires conscious effort at gaining more energy. It requires us to push our boundaries and that makes us uncomfortable. The solution: Get comfortable being uncomfortable!
- Quantum leaps often attracts attention. Just like an electron could emit photons ("light") when it makes a quantum leap, when someone makes quantum leap it can gain public attention or can even generate "news items". When it is to the higher orbit, it is a positive news - so it can give us a moral or ego boost. When it is to a lower orbit, if it attracts public attention, it can be demotivating or frustrating. Strive to detach yourself from the positive attention you get from making a higher quantum leap - try doing it for your own sake, for growing. When you happen to go to a lower orbit, strive not to worry about what others would think of you.
- People take different amount of time to make a leap. We call someone a genius when they are at a higher orbit. Child prodigies make quantum leaps faster than rest of us and quickly touch outer orbits. Just like different trees take their own time to grow, different people take their own time to realize their full-potential. Hence it is not wise to try to push ourselves "too hard". Getting amazed at genius performance should be for inspiring ourselves; it is not for comparing ourselves and getting frustrated with ourselves. We may be traversing in an orbit for months, years, or even decades - the important point is to keep growing and trying with the clear objective of making the leap.
- Go in your own pace. The world is full of people who want immediate gratification. It takes time, effort, and learning to make a quantum leap. The world belongs to those who believe in "delayed gratification". Seeds that grow in to huge trees take hundreds of years to grow and they stay strong and live for hundreds of years. The ones that grow "too fast" also also tend to be weak and die "too fast". Take away: It is okay to grow slow and make quantum leaps in our own pace.
- Stretch yourselves. We have to set intermediate goals to make quantum leaps. When we aim too "low", the goal does not not have power to motivate us. On the other hand, when we aim "too high" to make many quantum jumps at a stretch, the immensity of the task can deter us from making progress. Hence, strive for "stretch goals" - the ones that are neither too easy nor too hard to achieve.
- Way power is better than will power. In my early days, I put too much faith on "will power". Using excessive will power over long periods of time can in fact drain our energies! Rather, use "way power". Here is an article that I have written earlier on this topic that can be useful for making a quantum leap.
- What got you to the current level won't get you to the next level. Consider a fresh engineer working in an IT company. She may get promoted to levels of manager or architect because of individual performance (i.e., performing her assigned tasks exceeding well). At her next orbit, she has to rely on her team for getting results to grow to higher levels - that requires a different strategy. The strategies she has to follow is different at higher levels. When she gets promoted to a CEO, she has to provide a vision, focus on excellence in execution, and get results as an organization. Finally, she has to leave a legacy for her future CEOs. Making quantum leaps at these different levels require different strategy, approach, and maturity levels. That is the reason why "continuous learning" is the key to sustained growth.
- Failure risk is inherent. Making a quantum leap is inherently risky and hence the possibility of failure is high. It is okay to fail in our attempt to make a leap. However, we should not give up - the fear of failure (and letting others see us fail) should not deter us from trying. In fact, by learning from the experiences and mistakes, we are in a better position to try again and succeed.
- When you spiral to lower levels, strive to leap forward. Events are beyond our control. Accidents or mishaps can happen any time and that can pull us towards a lower orbit. Misfortune may strike, or failure in trying to make a leap may plunge us to a lower level. What is important is to leap forward or bounce back with more enthusiasm than ever before. Give yourself permission to try and fail. Look at it as a god sent gift! It is hard to believe but it is true: difficult situations can unravel your creativity; crisis situations can unleash the genius within you.
- Breaking free is "self-actualization". When an electron gains considerable energy, it can break away from the bonds of the atom around which it is orbiting. Such an electron is called as a "free electron". In the same way, when a person gains considerable energy, she can go on to higher orbits or even "break free" from any attachments to results or goals. There are many terms for this state - I call it "self-actualization". In this state, a task is performed exceedingly well just for the joy of performing it well - and not for any rewards or recognition. We may be moving towards higher orbits with the objective of gaining rewards or social recognition. However, keep the ultimate objective in mind - it is to fly free and realize our fullest potential.
Why you should make quantum leaps?
Most people want to continue living in the same orbit. It is understandable because it is safe and cozy to be in "the comfort zone". To make a quantum leap is to exert more, take risks, learn and grow. What is the problem in leading our lives like this? Because it results in a boring, mediocre, and stagnated life. What's worse, it is possible to dissipate energy, lose interest in life, and get depressed. The worst that can happen is the death-bed regret of not living up to our fullest potential!
I know that you are different and that you want to grow. How? The fact that you have read this article so far means that you are genuinely interested in learning and growing. When we learn and grow, when we come out of our comfort zone, when we take risks and expand ourselves, we move towards living up to our fullest potential. Hence, striving to make quantum leaps is essential to happy, satisfied and gratifying life.
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Director - Engineering @ Ericsson Software | Leadership
7yGood one, Ganesh! On reading your article, I could relate it to the book by Jim Collins, "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Other's Don't". In his book, he sites , "...In each of these dramatic, remarkable, good-to-great corporate transformations, we found the same thing: There was no miracle moment. Instead, a down-to-earth, pragmatic, committed-to-excellence process—a framework—kept each company, its leaders, and its people on track for the long haul." He says how change doesn't just happen with a story.. "Picture an egg. Day after day, it sits there. No one pays attention to it. No one notices it. Certainly no one takes a picture of it or puts it on the cover of a celebrity-focused business magazine. Then one day, the shell cracks and out jumps a chicken. All of a sudden, the major magazines and newspapers jump on the story: “Stunning Turnaround at Egg!” and “The Chick Who Led the Breakthrough at Egg!” From the outside, the story always reads like an overnight sensation—as if the egg had suddenly and radically altered itself into a chicken. Now picture the egg from the chicken's point of view. While the outside world was ignoring this seemingly dormant egg, the chicken within was evolving, growing, developing—changing. From the chicken’s point of view, the moment of breakthrough, of cracking the egg, was simply one more step in a long chain of steps that had led to that moment. Granted, it was a big step—but it was hardly the radical transformation that it looked like from the outside. It’s a silly analogy, but then our conventional way of looking at change is no less silly. Everyone looks for the “miracle moment” when “change happens.” But ask the good-to-great executives when change happened. They cannot pinpoint a single key event that exemplified their successful transition."