Category: Personal

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Success in School (and Life) Probably has Almost Nothing to do with Intelligence

To properly explain my thoughts here, I have to explain the series of thoughts that came to that conclusion.

I’m currently in Colombia, trying very hard to learn Spanish. I took it in high school (and earlier) and even in college, but never really progressed. My first thought was to question why that was.

My immediate answer was that we didn’t utilize our time that efficiently. I remember just pounding away trying to learn grammar rules and would spend an entire class period (or week?) learning how to conjugate one verb in one tense, or learning some other concept that really shouldn’t take that long.

Part of it, too, is that they are teaching at the rate of the kids who need the most time to pick it up. Which, as I’ll get more into in a moment, probably isn’t the dumbest kids, it’s the kids who don’t care and aren’t paying attention.

So I thought: I’m doing about an hour of flashcards per day, which allows me to learn and retain about 40 new cards every single day. In my  case, that’s usually about 8 new verbs, with examples. It’s a fairly rapid rate.

And then, of course, any time spent actually speaking is extremely valuable in getting better.

But then my next thought was, “Well… You learn concepts and whatnot in class, and then you’re expected to actually study and review vocabulary and concepts at home, right?”

Which is fine, but let’s think about this now. Is everybody going to actually study at home? Absolutely not. The kids who consider themselves smart, and who think they are “good” at it probably will, because they feel good about it and believe they can succeed.

And who is not going to study? The kids who think they are dumb, and the kids who don’t care. And, as a side note, I would bet the kids who “don’t care” actually think they aren’t smart or are bad at the subject, and just “don’t care” as a defense mechanism. That’s a separate topic though.

So in a class where it’s expected that you need to study in order to succeed, what happens if one group actually does study, and the other doesn’t? Even if they are just as intelligent, the group that studied is clearly going to do much, much better.

So now the grades come out. The ones who studied scored highly, and they feel good about themselves. They think, “I’m smart, that’s why I succeeded.” Their parents praise them and tell them how smart they are and they truly start to believe it. They continue to take interest in their studies and continue to succeed, creating a virtuous cycle.

But what about the other kids? They get a bad grade. They know they didn’t study, but still… This must be evidence that they are dumb! Their parents punish them. In some households maybe they even call them stupid or had already been doing that.

It wouldn’t take too long before they would feel stupid. The next time, they might put in even less effort, because what’s the point? They believe they won’t succeed anyway so they aren’t going to bother doing everything the ‘smart’ kids are doing.

And in this way, it’s a cycle. The ‘smart’ get ‘smarter’ and the ‘dumb’ get ‘dumber’. And if you’ve been paying attention — to the extent that intelligence is, in any way an actual, quantifiable trait — the so-called ‘dumb’ kids are very likely the exact same intelligence as the rest.

And now they’re going to go through life thinking they are too dumb to succeed. And that seems like a tragedy.

Additionally, in a school-setting, concepts absolutely build off of one another. It’s much easier to grasp something new when you have all of the underlying concepts memorized. Someone who just “instantly gets” something may only do so because they understood all of the preceding material, not because they are “smarter”.

This might be more fit for a totally different conversation, but I think our emphasis on “intelligence” is also way off-base. It’s a terrible predictor of success (at least as measured by IQ), and I think our very focus on it actually leads to poorer results.

If people think that being “smart” leads to success, then they’ll start thinking that their successes are due to their intelligence, and their failures due to their lack thereof.

This is a terrible outcome for two reasons. Firstly, you can’t (really) do anything about your intelligence. It’s more or less inherent and unchanging. So focusing on it cannot possibly improve your life.

Secondly, it completely takes hard work and sacrifice out of the equation. Literally anything that someone has done to get where they are is overwritten by saying that they are just ‘smart’, or even ‘naturally talented’. Research says that ‘natural talent’ is almost entirely a myth, and I don’t think ‘intelligence’ is that far off in the context of explaining success.

So when it comes to school-age children, I think it’s much more important to tell them, “good job, you studied hard and earned that grade!” instead of saying, “you’re so smart!”

One of those things will help them deeply to understand how to succeed, and the other is only helpful as a confidence booster. If people think their success is due to one, inherent and unchanging metric, then they will not take any responsibility for their successes or failures. They won’t truly understand that the actions that they take lead to their outcomes.

Thinking back to when I was in school, I remember always being in the “honors” or “gifted” classes. I think we all genuinely believed that we were much smarter than the kids in the “regular” classes.

My two thoughts on that now are:

  1. We were foolish and wrong for thinking that.
  2. What does it matter? You can’t pay the mortgage with ‘intelligence’.

 

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What’s the Point of Traveling?

This is a question that I guess I’ve never really taken the time to think through. What is the point of traveling?

If you don’t put much thought into it, you may think you have the obvious answers. It’s fun. It exposes you to new things, new ideas, new people.

But if you think about it, you can get all of those same things without ever leaving your home state. You can certainly have fun, there are always new things to try and people to meet. And with the internet and books, there is never a shortage of new ideas.

So what exactly is it?

An obvious part of it is that it’s more likely to do well in those categories. You’re more likely to have fun, you’re more likely to meet new people, etc. But I don’t think that’s anywhere near the whole picture, and in fact, I don’t think it’s the right answer at all.

While I don’t claim to know the correct answer for sure (or even that there is one), I have an idea.

I believe it’s the depth and impact of the experiences that makes traveling so worthwhile.

Basically, I think you are very likely to have a variety of experience that are likely to have a lasting impact on you. When you think back to your favorite trips, you think of the ones that changed you. You probably had some incredible experiences, did fun things, saw something beautiful, met amazing people, and potentially faced some serious hardships. But after it all, you came out feeling like you bettered yourself, or at the very least, you’ve learned more about yourself.

And that’s hard to come by. You can’t just hand someone cash and have them improve your self-worth or understanding. It comes from genuine experiences and, usually, effort and hardship.

The right trip definitely changes you, and might even become part of your identity. There’s tremendous value in that.

So with that in mind, how can I improve my traveling?

A focus on depth of experiences is definitely critical. Try new things, get out there!

Generally going outside of my comfort zone I think is also necessary. I’ve talked about that quite a bit in the last couple posts but it really is true. If you aren’t a little scared, you probably aren’t growing.

I think I tend to do this naturally, but seeking out genuine experiences and human connection I think is way better than going for cheap thrills. I’m not a big fan of really touristy things (or places) and I think now I know why. They just aren’t that meaningful to me and don’t lead to life-altering experiences.

Those are my thoughts for the night. With almost the entire two months to go here in Colombia, I think it’s good to think about this ahead of time.

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Leaving My Comfort Zone (And the Country)

I’m uncomfortable. I’m traveling abroad alone for the first time, and my plans are virtually non-existent. But you know what’s really interesting to me right now? I feel like this is the first time I’ve really left my comfort zone in a long time.

They say that growth happens completely outside of your comfort zone. That all the best experiences and moments generally happen when you’re doing something that scares you. And I believe it!

Until now, I didn’t realize that I haven’t been doing that. Almost ever. And I’m thinking that’s a problem.

Every time I’ve gone on trips, I’ve gone with friends or family. It’s always been safe; it’s always been easy. Safe and easy…

Safe and easy is comfortable. But I’m not sure it truly allows for growth. I think the vast majority of people cling to “safe and easy” constantly, and I’m only just now realizing that I’m one of those people.

And that’s almost more scary to me.

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Need to Constantly Focus on Improving Habits

When it comes to habits, I’ve had some successes and I’ve had some failures. Giving up the “snooze” button has notably failed thus far. But pounding through emails and working out have generally succeeded.

I believe that building proper habits is the key to… Well, everything! “Motivation” is not really a thing and I’ve learned that I, like everyone else, am regularly completely powerless to fight how I’m “feeling”. It’s fantasy to believe anything else.

Only habit stands in the way of biology.

It’s the one thing I can rely on to get myself to do things even when I don’t feel like. If properly built-up, habits can ensure that I do all of the things that are good for me and will lead to a better life. Because sheer force of will and motivation don’t seem to go very far.

In my reading I’ve learned that it’s difficult to build up more than one significant habit at the same time, and that it’s better to focus on just one until it’s well-established. So what am I working on right now?

Not really anything! Time to fix that.

I’d like to actually break the habit of seeking out mindless entertainment, especially when I’m procrastinating. This means being okay not having anything to do.

Specifically, this means no browsing the web before I get out of bed. No more browsing after eating lunch or during the work day. Any single session of non-productive internet usage should be limited to 15 minutes maximum.

At the moment, this habit-breaking doesn’t necessarily need to extend to replacing this old habit with anything productive. We’ll get there. But for now, I just want to address the real time-waster. As long as I’m not forcing myself to do something less fun in its place, I believe it will be much easier to give up this habit.

I think from now on, I should also track my habit-building progress on here. I should always be building a habit and tracking how it’s going. I think the more good habits I have, the easier life will be and the more effective I’ll be in all areas.

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Must Fill “Free Time” With Activities I Value

I need to always commit to filling “free time” with valued activities.

Now, I don’t mean “free time” like, any time I have that doesn’t have some scheduled activity or where I’m home or not working or anything. I’m referring to periods of time where I could be doing something but my options are very limited, such as when I’m driving a car.

These are times when I have a choice between doing something productive such as listening to Spanish lessons and educational audio-books, something mindlessly entertaining like listening to the radio, or nothing at all.

As a quick side-note: while writing this, I realized that I should be filling ALL of my time, without qualification, on things I value. That could be a whole other blog post but it’s actually more profound of a thought than I had originally imagined.

But for something like driving a car, it’s time where I’m already just sitting there doing nothing, and I could be productive. I could be learning and improving. And over the course of my life, I’m going to drive a lot most likely.

It’s worth mentioning here that I do not value mindless entertainment very highly. It’s extremely easy to access anywhere, anytime, it isn’t fulfilling, and barely does anything for me even in the short term. Therefor, it’s not something I should be doing a whole lot of.

While driving a car, I need to be doing valuable things. At the moment, that means learning Spanish. In the future, it could mean lots of other things.

I think there are a lot of these “free times” when I could be productive. Maybe I’m waiting for something to start or get done, I’m traveling, or I simply don’t have motivation to do anything else.

It’s worth noting, too, that I don’t think I need to have a high burden on myself for these things. I don’t need to necessarily commit to extreme attention and active listening. Attention and focus are limited resources, and if I always require 100%, I know I’m just not even going to do it.

But even having a Spanish disc on and passively listening to it is likely to be beneficial. At the very least, it will be much more beneficial than listening to the radio! So I need to do it.

I think that focusing heavily on this will have significant benefits long-term. Compared to most people who will never do anything productive while driving or in these other “free times,” I should be fairly far ahead of the curve.

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Pragmatism, not Idealism

As someone who probably tends to be overly optimistic, especially when it comes to my ability to do things or general predictions for the future, I think I’ve always had a propensity to focus on idealism. Whenever I’m making decisions, I basically make them assuming that I’m going to be perfect in every relevant category.

Having trouble focusing and getting stuff done consistently? Not a problem! I’ll have the perfectly solved with my elite-level self-control in the near future. Weak in some business-related skill? Not to worry! I’m sure a year from now I’ll have read 100 books on the topic and will be an expert.

Now, I don’t intend to make this a lengthy discussion on the value of optimism. I believe there are myriad ways in which being unrealistically optimistic can help you out. It helps you move forward when things are hard or unlikely to succeed, makes your more likable, and just generally helps out.

But if you define “optimism” as being more positive than can be justified by the evidence, then there are certain areas in which it can be quite pernicious. Self-improvement and self-management, for instance, is quite ineffective if you’re overly optimistic or idealistic.

I think I need to adopt a strategy of strict adherence to a pragmatic policy. If something isn’t working, I need to change it up. If I’m relying on unlimited willpower to get things done, it’s simply not going to happen. At the end of the day we’re still just really smart apes and we have powerful limits on motivation and desires.

Ramit Sethi talks a lot about being “brutally honest” with yourself. You need to look in the mirror and admit when something isn’t working. Beating yourself up for failing at perfection isn’t only pointless, it’s actively counter-productive.

I’m going to fall short, and I’m going to fail. The question is: how can I move forward from that? What is a realistic solution that takes into account the world and myself as we are, and then proposes steps that will produce real value and improvement?

For me, the biggest takeaway from this post (and the thing I’d like to keep in the back of my mind) is to constantly be shifting my mindset towards pragmatic solutions. In everything I do, I need to be honest with myself, fix what’s broken, and avoid the trap of thinking that I’m going to somehow succeed where everyone else (including myself) has failed because I can just power through and git’r’done.

What next?

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These Blogs are the Most Important Thing

It’s been something like six weeks since I last posted. And yet, I’ve already mentioned how I think these are the most important thing when it comes to both my business and, probably, my life. But I haven’t been doing them!

Sure, I could say that I’ve been busy, which is true. I’ve also had other things going on in my personal life that have caused me to be both busier and less productive while working.

But if something is truly “the most important thing,” shouldn’t it come before literally anything else?

The answer is clearly ‘yes’.

Maybe I should revisit why it’s the most important thing. Let’s make a list, shall we?

  1. It focuses my mind and efforts on productivity, growth, and improvement.
  2. It reminds me of past goals, thoughts, methods, and efforts which helps those things contribute more to improvement.
  3. It’s about the only time and place where I really work through difficult problems in a clear, productive, and concrete way, and then holds me accountable to my conclusions.
  4. It clears up what I need to be focusing my time and efforts on in order to achieve my goals.
  5. It makes me more productive, even in the short term (such as that day).

It seems to me that without this, I’m simply going day-to-day, performing routine tasks as they come up without any guidance or thought. Honestly, I suspect that’s how the vast majority of people live their lives.

But I don’t want to do that! I’m still young, and any investments I make in self-improvement now will pay off over the course of the majority of a lifetime. It’s more important that I do them now than ever.

It really is critical that I do this regularly. Even to the point where I can be neglecting other responsibilities and projects to do it. If it is the most important thing, then it needs to come first, or else everything else ultimately suffers.

And realistically, it’s not very hard or all that time-consuming, and it makes me feel better to do it. So there’s no reason not to!

 

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Second Most Important Thing?

Recently I posted in this blog about the “most important thing” being these blog posts, where I have some reflection and determine all of the things I need to improve. It’s still quite possibly the most important thing I do every day.

But in the past, I had always considered the “most important thing” to be self-improvement through education and learning. Mostly it has taken the form of reading books on a variety of topics.

Is that, then, the second most important thing? For now, I’m going to say yes! Things like, focusing on improving the business are important too, but none of them are as far-reaching and critical to my long-term success as improving myself through learning.

Reading has given me a huge list of improvements, both short-term and long-term. In the short-term, I feel empowered and capable. Learning something new makes me excited to try new things and general sense that I’m improving and my situation is going to constantly improve.

And long-term, it’s basically everything. I makes me more effective. It improves my decision making. It helps me focus on what’s important and ignore the rest. It literally makes me better at everything. Knowledge is power, as they say.

These are all things that will serve me well for my entire lifetime. The more knowledge I can acquire while I’m still young, the more valuable it will be over the course of my life. Just like making an investment early. Exactly like that, actually.

I need to redouble my efforts to constantly improve myself. Whether that means reading books, taking courses (online and off), trying and improving in new things, learning a language, or even just meeting new people and hearing their thoughts. It’s absolutely critical.

Without that learning, it’s easy for things to feel stagnant. Like nothing is going to improve, and that I’m not getting better at anything. I think one of the most important things in life, in terms of feeling fulfilled, is to always be improving. And I need to do that.

Lately I’ve maybe not been as focused on it as I should have been. I’ve gotten carried off in different directions with work, and I’ve been spending more time on other, unrelated activities in my spare time. I’ve even got a handful of books I’ve only partially finished! I need to finish those up.

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Time to Be More Disciplined

I’ve decided I need to be much more disciplined with my work.

Today, for example, I feel like I got almost nothing done despite having been home all day and working relatively long hours. I had important things to do but I kept putting them off.

Why do I do this? Probably just human nature I guess. A lot of it is rationalization. “If I go upstairs immediately after lunch, I can play a quick game before starting work again!”

And then throughout the day you find yourself browsing Google news for the 10th time, looking at pointless articles.

Part of the problem is that I see that I have a lot of things to get done during the day, and I just procrastinate on the difficult ones. In reality, I think if I condensed what I was doing down to just a small time frame, and just focused on it, I could get all of that done and more.

Maybe I need to just actually have a timeline, and say that I’ll only work for, say, 6 hours per day at most. And then just agree to work really hard and focus hard during that time.

But that’s not to say I haven’t improved in this area. One of the first website I built took months, and it was basically my only client. I would spend the whole day playing games or distracting myself in other ways.

I’ve made large strides over time to improve it, but I realize that nothing ever came all at once. It’s been slow progress. Every year is just a bit better. But the last couple weeks, at least, I feel like I have not been very disciplined. And I need to improve that.

If I want to work on the business and change a bunch of things in my business, I need to finish the other things first. And that won’t happen on its own.

(Note: this article was originally private and I’m not sure why. Upon reading it years later, I have made it public.)

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Time to Write Every Day

I’m thinking that I should start writing here, literally every day, for at least ten minutes.

My initial thought was, “how valuable is thinking about my own business towards its future success?” And I think the answer is, perhaps clearly, ‘extremely valuable’.

And yet, how often do I actually do it? I have lots of little thoughts here or there, but it’s almost never organized, and often no action comes from it anyway.

I think it would benefit me hugely to just organize my thoughts on a regular basis here. I’d like to outline just some of the ways that I think it will help.

1. Focus

It will help me focus on what’s important, and also to keep any pressing tasks or goals top-of-mind. By thinking about these things every single day, and in an organized manner, they will be more likely to actually stick and have an impact on my actions.

2. Time Analysis

I’ll be able to analyze what I’ve been spending time on and what has actually contributed to my success. If none of the things I did contribute much to my actual goals, I’ll have to ask myself why I’m doing them.

3. Organization and Clarity of Thoughts

By writing things out, I am clarifying my thinking and organization my plans and analysis. Once it’s on paper it will help me think about it more. Since there are a million things I could be doing at any given point, it’s nice to narrow that down.

4. Improved Writing and Communication

Simply by writing every day, I’ll get better at it. Better writing is useful virtually everywhere, so this can only help. It is likely to even improve in-person communication I think.

5. Last-Minute Blog Posts

It’s likely that there will be value in some of these musings to others beyond myself. In a pinch, I can always revise one and make it a blog post!

6. Goal and Progress Tracking

I’ll be able to go back and read previous entries and see where I was at. This could help me see where I’m stuck, and also to track how I’ve come along on priorities and goals.

7. Posterity

This could be a great collection of writings at some point. Maybe I’ll want to look back at it for myself, maybe I’ll want to make some kind of compilation. Who knows!

8. Conscious Effort Towards Business Thinking

This is a concrete step I can take to spending more time thinking about my business and how I can improve. It could start a chain reaction of improved business planning.

 

Thought of the Day – Not Spending Time on Most Important Activities

We’ve all heard the Pareto Principal, also known as the 80/20 rule. But what if you’ve identified your 20 but don’t actually focus on them anyway?

Right now, I have work extending out for months on my waiting list. I need to find additional help to handle that. It’s like we’re ready to grow, I just need more help.

In one of my recent posts, I talk about how I need to change what activities I’m involved with in the business, and pursuing that will certainly give me more time to find that help. So I would say that concentrating on delegating and removing responsibilities from myself is certainly part of the 20, and an overall process to simplify my business and establish processes is critical for scaling as well.

But not everything I’m doing right now has anything to do with that. For instance, I’m spending a fair amount of time preparing for an event I’m hosting along with Kari Switala and others.

From a business perspective, what is the purpose of this event? Almost exclusively marketing. Getting new clients.

And is that a priority right now? No. Not at all. In fact we have too many!

I obviously can’t back out now since I made the commitment. Plus it’s coming up soon, so I would never do that anyway. But I think it’s important to recognize that it isn’t furthering my goals a whole lot.

The real issue is that it’s a short term marketing effort, which is specifically what I don’t need right now. Long term efforts such as BNI and blogging/SEO for my own website are still important, because I need to keep growing well into the future.

But the short term ones, I should be saying no to until I actually need them. There are way better ways to spend my time.

How Should I Spend My Time?

I thought I would sketch out a rough outline of how I think I actually should be spending my time, because I should be putting conscious effort in to that. Note that I attempted to include emails relating to these things in their respective categories

Long Term Time Spend Goal (6 Months)

20% Working on business, developing processes
20% Working with employees, hiring initiatives, training
15% Sales, Proposals, etc
15% BNI
10% Project Management
5% Admin Work (Billing, Invoices, Deposits, Accounting, Etc)
5% Writing Blog Posts / SEO for myself
9% Other
<1% Actually doing work on client sites

Short Term Time Spend Goal (6 Months)

15% Working on business, developing processes
10% Working with employees, hiring initiatives, training
10% Sales, Proposals, etc
15% BNI
15% Project Management
5% Admin Work (Billing, Invoices, Deposits, Accounting, Etc)
5% Writing Blog Posts / SEO for myself
10% Other
15% Actually doing work on client sites

Where I Think I Am Now

1% Working on business, developing processes
1% Working with employees, hiring initiatives, training
15% Sales, Proposals, etc
18% BNI
18% Project Management
10% Admin Work (Billing, Invoices, Deposits, Accounting, Etc)
2% Writing Blog Posts / SEO for myself
15% Other (Things like this upcoming event)
20% Actually doing work on client sites

There’s a lot to think about when looking at those numbers! The two most important long-term tasks (most likely), are ones I spend a combined 2% of my time on now. That’s terrible! I definitely need to work on that.

I think it might also be time to read “The One Thing” again, as it really goes over all of this, and is fantastic.