Category: Personal

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Maybe we Should Learn Nothing from our Mistakes

This is something I think about so often, I’m shocked I’ve never written about it before.

While you constantly hear people talk about failures as opportunities and mistakes as opportunities to learn, you never hear anybody talk about the dangers of doing that.

What if the lessons you learn are actually detrimental to your progress?

If I were to ever put this in a book, I would cite plenty of studies to show that people learn more indelible lessons from very bad experiences than they do from good ones.

If you burn your hand on the stove as a kid, you might be afraid of the stove forever and never really use one.

But if you cook a really great stir-fry, you’re never going to swear off other forms of cooking and only use that.

And because of that, I honestly think better advice would be, “DON’T learn anything from your failures.” Even just saying that sounds so completely contradictory to everything I’ve ever been told that it sounds absurd. But seriously, I think it’s true.

Now, as a quick aside, I want to make it clear that what I’m referencing here is times when you’ve tried at task or job and been unsuccessful at it. I’m not really talking about moral or ethical failures which should almost universally be learned from. I am absolutely not suggesting that you should keep being a bad person because it might pay off one day. Okay, we can move on!

I think that rather than refining their strategy and constantly improving, most people “learn from their mistakes” and accumulate so many aversions and fears over the course of their life that they eventually reach a point where they don’t take any risks, never learn anything new, and just stay in their comfort zone.

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense. In caveman days, you would have been in constant mortal peril, and it was more important for you to learn about all the dangers and avoid them than it was for you to innovate or master a valuable skill.

An inventor trying to perfect new weapons would have been more likely to get killed by an animal when it failed than actually succeed at creating something new.

I recently had an interaction with an older potential client that I found baffling. We were in the proposal stage of quite a small project. In that proposal, I described our billing schedule which was half of the fee up-front, and half when the project goes live. It is so ubiquitous within my industry that clients often just assume that’s what it will be, and are correct.

He balked at the notion and almost seemed offended. He told me that with that schedule, there’s no way to hold me accountable to doing a good job, and that he’d been burned in the past. He told me he wasn’t interested in working with me.

At first I just had to wonder what he had been through to develop that degree of cynicism. I’ll never know for sure, but it’s obvious that he learned some painful lessons, and I would argue that those lessons are extremely detrimental to his success.

Because if that’s his non-starter, how is he ever going to get this project done? That question is, of course, rhetorical: he won’t. His website has clearly been untouched for probably 15+ years, and at this point it’s never going to happen. He’s not going to find an agency that will perfectly meet all of his requirements without spooking him.

He’s just learned too many painful lessons and is now too afraid to take any kind of risk, even when that risk is minimal.

Now, I’m being partly facetious when I say that you shouldn’t learn anything from your mistakes or failures. If you really, truly mess up and especially when it is definitely your fault, you should definitely learn and not do that again in the future.

And even in other situations, you should of course try to learn lessons, but you have to be careful what those lessons are.

And more importantly: you need to learn to weight those lessons appropriately.

We tend to remember painful experiences much more vividly, and our bias towards avoiding similar situations is disproportionate to the actual risk. And that bias only increases as we grow older.

So I think it’s important to just see things for what they are. Sometimes bad things happen, and it’s not our fault. Sometimes it is our fault.

Sometimes there may be nothing to be learned. But other times it might just be a matter of knowing the risks and learning to watch out for them without becoming unreasonable.

We’ve all traveled with the neurotic family member who has tunnel vision for one specific problem and constantly talks about it despite it not being a big deal.

People do it with their careers, too, and even their lives. Your focus on what could go wrong should be commensurate with the true risk.

It can be extremely difficult to take a step back and determine whether you are letting the fear of something hold you back, but it’s absolutely worth the effort.

“Most men either compromise or drop their greatest talents and start running after, what they perceive to be, a more reasonable success, and somewhere in between they end up with a discontented settlement. Safety is indeed stability, but it is not progression.”
– Criss Jami

 

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Would I Go Back?

So the question today is: if I had the option to go back in time to, say, high school or college, would I do it? And if so, what would I do differently?

It’s something I’ve pondered many times. The answer to the first question is always, “yes”. But the second one is understandably harder to answer.

In essence, I feel that I’ve spent so much time since then on self-improvement. Successfully, I might add. I needed to grow so much to be able to get to where I am now.

Let’s assume that in this imagined scenario, all of the self-improvement I’ve done is lost, but I still remember everything so I know where I ended up, all of the improvement it took to get there, and what methods I used along the way.

In this case, the question then becomes: how can I fast-track the improvement in both myself and and my situation to get there more efficiently? And in the real, non-hypothetical world, how can I use those lessons to fast-track my current development?

I guess as a starting point, I should determine the positive things all of that development has led to. Upon self-reflection, I don’t think very much of it is really personality-based. Reading has taught me that personality-focused self-improvement efforts are generally not very effective and creating real change. I think it’s mostly because it’s difficult, if not impossible, to artificially alter your own personality.

The answer I keep coming back to is ‘habit’. I’ve developed good habits that have enabled any success I’ve had and generally explain all of the parts of myself that I feel are improved over what they were in my younger days.

Sure, my knowledge is greatly increased in a huge variety of areas. Some of that is just experience which comes no matter what. But perhaps an even larger portion has come from reading non-fiction books, which is a habit I’ve cultivated over the course of years.

Another large chunk comes from intentionally studying and practicing certain topics and fields.

And yes, I’m much more “mature”, but many elements of what make up maturity have been developed through intentional effort. It seems evident to me that not everyone develops much emotional intelligence beyond college.

While it’s hard to judge myself in terms of how I compare to others in this area, I can say without a doubt that my emotional intelligence is worlds better than it was in college. And that has come through habits like really listening to people, looking for subtle clues about how people are feeling, and generally putting effort towards real empathy.

I think the biggest thing I would do to improve more rapidly would be to immediately acknowledge that I had a long way to go and that immediate, deliberate, and constant improvement was necessary. I wouldn’t say that I thought I didn’t need any improvement, but I also wouldn’t say that I recognized the need to put a great deal of effort into improving either.

So that’s what I would do. Acknowledge what’s needed, recognize my own deficiencies, and then put consistent, deliberate effort in towards improving them.

Something tells me I can apply those same lessons to myself right now, too. I’m certainly more focused on improving myself now, which is great, but I’m sure more can be done.

It might be worth it to really dig deep and outline the areas in which I really want to focus now. It might even help to imagine what I’d like things to be like down the road, and try to figure out how I can get there.

Perhaps that’s a good topic for a future post.

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I Need to Always Be Improving One Thing

So I just read a rather depressing but very honest and introspective post from myself from February this year. In it, I explained how I felt like I hadn’t really been trying all that hard. But I felt like I had rounded a corner, and that 2020 was going to be nothing but good things!

Putting the soul-crushing irony of that belief aside, while the post did bring up some great points and present a good overall picture of where I was (am) at, it didn’t really provide any real strategies for improvement.

As much as I wish it were, “start trying harder” is simply not an effective strategy, no matter what anybody tells you. And neither is anything dealing with “motivation”.

So what do I do?

I’ve talked a lot about the “One thing”, the thing I need to focus on most in my business (or life!) to improve at any one moment. While I’m not strictly saying that I should just, “do that”, but focusing on one area is, in fact, what I’m saying.

I need to always be focusing on improving in one area. I’ve written at length about habits, and how I want to be building one new habit at all times, etc.

As strange as it is to say, the one habit that I need to be building, more than any other is… Building new habits constantly.

So… I guess to start, I’ll need to be building two habits at a time!

But that seriously needs to be it. Even if I’m doing a bad job building whatever habit it is I’m working on, I just need to be doing it. I need to focus every single day on it, and aggressively enforce what I’m doing.

And the reason for this goes beyond “habits are good”.

If I want to get to where I feel like I’m “trying hard”, it’s going to take a lot of work building up the habits and resilience that it takes. It’s going to be improving things, one step at a time.

I’ve written about sleep habits extensively, and so far have just been plagued by failures with those. Maybe that’s a good place to start and just double down on fixing that.

I’m taking a month-long break from alcohol and so this seems like a good time for it. I’ve tried to do just one piece at a time, but maybe I need all of the following to be in sync for this to work:

  • Going to bed early
  • Waking up at the same early time every morning
  • Not using the snooze button
  • Not napping

I have so many years of bad habits with all of these lined up, I may just have to do it all. I might be exhausted initially, but that exhaustion will help me sleep earlier and get better sleep, which will then help with not needing to snooze or take naps, and over time I should even start waking up at the same time.

So… I just need to focus on this, and then the next thing, and then just keep improving.

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Light at the End of the Tunnel

For the first time since the pandemic started, it feels like we’re finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Pfizer today announced that they would likely be distributing vaccines to the public in December.

It’s been about six months since the lockdowns started. I feel like everyone has basically gotten used to all of the restrictions. But there’s still a constant longing for things to be normal again.

I may be one of the people least-impacted by the pandemic, and yet I still just want everything to be normal again. I want to be able to go to concerts, to bars, to just feel part of society and groups of people again.

You don’t really know what you’ve got until it’s gone. “Crowds” certainly wouldn’t be something I would have listed as among my favorite things pre-pandemic. But it’s amazing how isolated it makes you feel when you can’t interact with strangers anymore. Sometimes just being among large groups of people makes you feel… Part of something bigger I guess.

I think if we can go into 2021 with vaccines going out, the economy strong, and potentially fresh, new leadership for the country, it’s going to be incredible just how much things change.

Things have been pretty dark up until this point, but I’m hoping the night really is darkest before the dawn. With a little luck, we may just turn the corner within a few months.

 

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Additional Thoughts on Having Systems in Place

In my last post, I talked about the need for some kind of system in my business to keep things going forward. After deeper thought, I definitely think that’s a must!

I just read one of my old blog posts here where I essentially described this blog as my “system”. It was the only place where I was reading over old thoughts and goals and it was the only thing I had that resembled accountability of any kind.

But the problem is that it’s totally informal and has no real rhythm to it. I read old posts whenever I have time, and they all get the same amount of attention. That’s not really a system.

So I need something in my business that can prioritize tasks, keep them top-of-mind, and make me accountable to them. It also needs to have some timings built-in that ensure things are continually addressed in a systematic fashion.

But I’m also thinking now that maybe I need better systems for other areas of my life, too. I’m always trying to develop new habits and improve things, but there is no real system to it. I try to develop a habit until it works, or sometimes I fail, and then just… Keep going?

Maybe I need to put a schedule together and record results for new habits. Once something is established, I can move on. I should probably review it and record the results at least once a week, or maybe even more often. That would keep me focused.

With the unprecedented and continued success of my weight training “system”, it has made me even more confident that this type of success could be applied everywhere else in my life if I can just develop or find the right systems.

So in the coming weeks, I’d like to work on searching for or developing new systems for myself. From there, I think I can really improve rapidly!

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The Power of Having a System

I’ve started seeing rapid gains in my weight-training. After something like 7 or 8 years of little-to-no progress, that really is something!

And you know what really changed?

I have a system.

Historically, I’ve always chosen a handful of movements, and basically just lifted until I couldn’t anymore. Next week I would try again, and hopefully be able to do more reps.

It worked great in the beginning, when it’s easy to grow your untrained muscles. But within a year or two, it stalled almost completely. And I had no system to get me through roadblocks.

But now I have one! It tells me how much weight to lift each week, how much to add for the next workout, and what to do if I fail. It anticipates those failures and outlines a systematic plan to alter the weight I’m doing, grow stronger, and then break past barriers.

And it has been wildly effective. In a month or two I’ve improved more than in the last several years. It really is incredible.

It turned out that the problem wasn’t lack of effort, diet, sleep, form, or any of the other tiny details that can be totally overwhelming. It was just that I needed a system.

Of course, once things start going well, you tend to do everything else right, too. I’ve been eating better, getting enough of the nutrients needed, and being much more consistent in my training. The success is extremely motivating and it’s easy to do the harder things when you know they are going to be successful.

But now I’m thinking: where else can I apply systems to my life to have these kinds of impacts? How can I apply it to how I’m running my business?

I mean, what is my system for improving my business?

That’s a rhetorical question. I obviously don’t have anything remotely resembling a system to improve my business. And that’s bad!

In fact, I think I’ve been relying on this blog to be my “system”, which is almost exactly like how I used to weight train. I have a lot of good ideas, things that can really help. And I’m trying things here and there, hoping something sticks. But ultimately, they don’t lead to results.

Maybe the one thing I’m missing is just a system to guide my actions and hold me accountable. I’m at the tail-end of many months of essentially doing nothing to improve my business. Maybe I just need some structure.

I know I’ve read plenty of books that outline specific systems for doing exactly what I’m describing. I think it may be time to dust those off and take them more seriously.

Because while things are actually going decently in my business (all things considered), I’m really not improving right now. And if I could replicate the success of my weight training with my business, I think it would be extremely motivating and actually lead to even more success.

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Successes Within the Last Year

I think I need to take a step back and acknowledge the successes I’ve had over the last year that maybe I haven’t really mentioned here too much.

Too often I only focus on the failures and things that need to be improved, while rarely pointing out all of the things that have gone well. That should change!

So here are some successes I’ve had over the past year or so:

  • Drastically reduced or eliminated time spent on social media
  • Drastically reduced time spent browsing the news
  • Eliminated non-productive time on my phone
  • Replaced it with productive activities
  • Learned the name, location, capital, and flag of every country in the world
  • Learned the name, capital, and location of every state/territory in Canada, the US, and Mexico
  • Learned every US president in order, including the years they served, their party, and their presidency number
  • Grew my English vocabulary by about 300 words
  • Put on a significant amount of muscle and figured out a new workout routine that is yielding consistently positive results
  • Got into the habit of running, and reduced my one-mile time from over 8:30 to nearly 6:30
  • Have greatly improved the time in which I get up every morning, and minimized how late I sleep when not using an alarm
  • Started drinking less
  • Played drastically fewer video games
  • Greatly improved Spanish skills with drills, continued practice, and watching Spanish-language television instead of English shows
  • Learned a lot of history from reading and watching documentaries
  • Finished renovating my house and rented out the bedrooms
  • Paid off student loans, all credit card debt, and a business loan
  • Purchased a company and successfully migrated all of the clients to my services
  • Started investing money for the first time ever
  • Improved my yard and lawn considerably and harvested my first black raspberries
  • Caught the biggest snapping turtle I’ve ever caught

Honestly there are way more things than I thought there would be when I decided to make this list! That’s why it’s good to do it, to really get a sense of where you’re at and what’s going right.

I can’t help but feel like, while I did all of these things, there are many other things I should have been doing but didn’t. And while there is always room for improvement, it doesn’t all have to come at once. I think most of these fall into the category of self-improvement which I firmly believe will roll into improvement in all areas.

So I think I just need to keep it up, and good things will come!

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Working Out Earlier in the Day

Okay, so not every post here has to be deeply profound. I’m all about improvements, no matter how small.

Lately, out of necessity, I’ve been pushing many of my workouts to early in the day instead of in the evening when I usually do them. And I’m realizing there are huge benefits to doing so.

Historically, I would basically get all of my important work done, and only then would I do a workout. This typically has meant not working out until 6, 7, or sometimes even much later.

But the problem with that, I’m realizing, is that when you put something so physically demanding at the end of the day, it acts as a sort of barrier, like a magnet facing the wrong way.

It is hard to get through the work you need to do, because you know you’re going to need all of that willpower to do the workout at the end. And that’s a problem.

Now that I’ve been doing it earlier in the day, I’ve noticed that not only is it easier to get going on the workout itself, but also that you feel much freer afterwards. You’ve already done the hardest thing for the day, so everything else is easy. You just finish the rest, and you’re set!

So I need to focus on doing the workouts early consistently, I think. I’ll get a lot more done, and probably be more consistent, too.

That’s just my thought for the day.

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What if We Never Stopped Playing?

All mammals (and even many other animals) play when they are young. It’s how they learn.

When they aren’t afraid to try new things and fun with new experiences, their brains (and bodies) develop and they are able to grow to where they will be successful adults.

And then, in animals just as in humans: it stops. Instead of investing in more growth, they stop playing and they focus on survival and raising young.

From an evolutionary point of view, it makes sense that they would only spend so much time developing and then, when ready, would devote all of their time to raising new copies of their DNA.

But let’s say your primary goal wasn’t just to pass on your genetic material, and you weren’t simultaneously facing all of the challenges of caveman life. Is this really the best way to go about life?

Of course it’s not.

Life is very different now, I’m likely to live much longer than a caveman, and my priorities differ greatly. I think it’s extremely obvious that development should continue long past our mid-twenties.

Now, I’m well aware that primary brain development stops around 26, and that seems to coincide closely with when most people stop “playing” much. I’m not sure to what extend it’s possible to keep learning like a child beyond that time.

But my gut tells me that if you approach new experiences and challenges with child-like enthusiasm and interest, you are very likely to learn new things and develop yourself at any age.

So while I know the “grown-up” thing to do as one ages is to become more serious, stop trying new things, and to focus strictly on production, I just don’t think that’s for me. I think it’s a huge shame to stop playing and trying new things. And it might just be halting development that could easily continue, too.

It may even be possible that the rate of development and improvement enjoyed by children and young adults could by matched long into more advanced ages. It seems to me that if you managed to do so, you would have an incredible advantage over your peers by the time you were middle-aged.

So I think I’ll keep playing!

 

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It’s Amazing that I Still Don’t Have Time

I barely leave the house, and yet I still feel like I barely have any time to get things done at all.

My experience makes me feel like I have nothing in common at all with other people. Maybe it’s because  actual hobbies have become a dying pastime.

But I’ve been filling all of my days with work, learning/studying, exercising, socializing, house/yard work, and of course other hobbies like kayaking, disc golfing, etc.

And I feel like I’m really productive, but at the same time, there still just isn’t enough time. I’ve found that I’m never even close to bored, I’m never sitting around doing nothing (or even just watching TV for fun), and I rarely finish everything I set out to finish for the day.

And the bigger problem is that I’m not finishing some of the very most-important things I’m supposed to be doing. There are major, long-term projects in my business that are critical to my future success that I’m not getting done.

Maybe I just thought that with everything shut down, it would be easy to get all of these things done. But obviously that won’t be the case for me.

So now I’m left wondering if I need to start cutting some things out or limiting certain activities more, even if they are productive.

Or maybe it’s just a case of needing to delegate more in my business. I think that, along with the sense of “having more time”, I’ve started to take on more of the development work myself. That’s time that could fairly easily be freed-up by delegation.

Maybe the answer really is that simple. I guess I’ll have to think more about that.

Either way, it truly is important that I figure out how to get these important long-term things done. My career depends on it!