The Art of Stretching: What Do You Have in Your Hands Right Now?

The American Dream carves out a very narrow path to well-being. It sets expectations and shapes behaviors in ways that convince people to chase after things they might not need or want, while overlooking the costs of this pursuit.

—Scott Sonenshein

In his book, Stretch, Scott Sonenshein contrasts two opposing mindsets that guide life and business for many Americans: chasing and stretching. As we all generally tend to fall into one of these two approaches for achieving success, the former approach appears to be the most common.

Chasing

Chasing is characterized by four foundational conventions: social comparison, functional fixedness, mindless accumulation, and resource squandering.

Social comparison can be understood in the classic terms of a “Keeping up with the Jones’s” or “The grass is greener on the other side of the fence” mentality. Sonenshein explains, “upward social comparisons make people feel dissatisfied with their lots and motivate them to go seek out more.” Social comparison is what drives successful marketing campaigns and consumer capitalist societies.

Functional fixedness is the psychological phenomenon of viewing resources as being fixed to specific uses, a rigid “inability to use a resource beyond the traditional approach.” In other words, a gum wrapper is for holding gum, a paper clip is for holding papers, and a belt is for holding your pants up—unless you’re Angus MacGyver, the 1980s secret agent TV character who could resolve virtually every impossible challenge with these mere household items. MacGyver’s success as a secret agent was rooted in his ability “to transform every day objects into a versatile set of tools.” In short, chasers see resources as always being fixed to specific uses.

Mindless accumulation is not necessarily a proclivity towards hoarding in the reality TV sort of way the term might seem to imply. Rather it is the constant accumulation of as many resources as possible, even if they are currently unnecessary, simply because they are available and attainable. It is the “I couldn’t pass up a good sale” or “I might need this one day,” or “all the big successful companies own these resources” mentality.

Resource squandering is a misstep that is technically the effect of mindless accumulation. The relentless accumulation of resources almost always results in myopia concerning the responsible and efficient use of those resources. In other words, by fixating on accumulation, one typically fails to consider how to use those resources in a productive manner. Additionally, relentless accumulation creates the false illusion (i.e., delusion) that the resource supply is endless.

Chasing might best be exemplified by the Silicon Valley’s “get big fast” attitude during the dotcom boom and bust era at the turn of the twenty-first century. Sonenshein highlights Pets.com as the posterchild of the era, a company that spent nearly $12 million on advertising to make $619,000 in sales, more than a million dollars on a Super Bowl ad, and after squandering $300 million in less than a year, closed out on the NASDAQ at 22 cents per share before liquidating.

Stretching

Stretching, on the other hand, is a much less popular approach. In its most extreme expression, stretching might be exemplified in Daniel Norris, the Major League Baseball pitcher who spent his summers living in a van parked behind the dumpsters at Walmart.

Norris wasn’t without money, however. The 21-year-old millionaire could have afforded nearly any home he wanted to buy. But Norris, fearing the money would distract him from his passion for playing baseball, asked his advisors to allocate to him $800 per month for living expenses and then to invest the rest. That way, he could continue to appreciate what he had while stretching himself to use what he had to be a better baseball player.

Stretching is characterized by learning to appreciate what we already have, recognizing the inherent value of those resources, and creatively making them even more valuable by stretching their potential uses.

I personally recognized the principle of stretching in a question my wife frequently asks when we need to solve a problem and our resources are wanting: “What do we have in our hands right now?”