In All My Hobbies I’ve Opted to Nominally Do One Hard Thing – At the Expense of Fundamentals

I always hated “fundamentals”. I always wanted to just jump to doing the really difficult, impressive stuff so that I could prove I was good at something.

I remember with skateboarding, I always struggled with some core stuff, and instead of just perfecting each thing one at a time, I would spend all of my time trying to land – for example, a 360 flip. It’s a very difficult trick, and every so often – only from a standstill – I could land it.

It looked bad and I could never really get the hang of doing it consistently, but sometimes I could do it. And that made me feel like I was good at the sport.

I wasn’t though. I was just ignoring all the small pieces that were required to get good.

Or on the trampoline. I did get good at basic flips, but then I started doing backflips with a full 360 in them. Once again, it wasn’t pretty. But I could do it. And it impressed people and made me feel like I was really good at it.

And then guitar. I never practiced with a metronome, I didn’t learn any music theory, my rhythm was bad, and just so many of the fundamentals were totally foreign to me.

But I could play one of the more complicated Stevie Ray Vaughan licks. Not very well, obviously, but I could play the notes and I could do it quickly.

I think with all these things, there has been sort of a desperate thread to prove (to myself?) that I’m good at something. I skip steps to just get to the hard stuff because otherwise I feel like I’m just not that great.

And I also just get bogged down in the details of things and it feels overwhelming. I’d rather just go to something cooler and more showy.

I never put any of this together until just recently. The irony is that, in my quest to prove I was good at things, I neglected the very fundamentals which would have enabled my actual success.

It’s sort of frustrating looking back now and seeing how counter-productive it was. I should have drilled in the fundamentals and mastered them so that I could proceed from there with a good base.

Even now, I’m just realizing I do it with weight training, too. I’ve neglected all stretching and all core stability exercises. Instead, I’ve focused hard on obvious measures of success like my bench press numbers.

And then just the other day I injured my back again, ostensibly as a result of not building up core strength. In this case, I got burned by not building up a literal base of stability from which to expand my strength.

In work, I’d much rather take on major acquisitions than slowly build up my client base with strong business fundamentals.

So the question is: what do I do now?

The first step is obviously what I’m doing here: acknowledging the issue. Now that I’m actually aware of it, I can watch out for it going forward. I can pay attention and notice where it might be counter-productive.

I’m really going hard at the guitar again, and it’s important that I do things differently this time. I actually have been focusing a lot more on the fundamentals this time around, so perhaps I have already started to improve. But I do really need to dial that in and realize that being rock-solid on the basics will make the harder stuff way easier.

And I should obviously apply that elsewhere, to. Particularly with my business. I need to look for all the ways in which I’m neglecting some of the basics and really start to work on them. I already sense that there are tons of areas in which I need to improve.

I Need to Totally Recalibrate How I View and Experience Things – Especially Being Alone

I’ve often mentioned here how I’d like to sort of get away from all social media and all silly entertainment, and I finally feel now like I’ve pretty much done that. YouTube had long since been the holdout, but I’ve been using the Screen Zen app and it has successfully gotten rid of the habit.

It’s not that I don’t ever use YouTube now, but the app basically just bugs me to get off it, and I do. So I went from averaging probably almost 2 hours per day on YouTube down to maybe 10 minutes per day. Which is great!

But I feel like a lot of wiring in my brain is being reworked.

I’ve been practicing a ton of guitar and reading a lot. And… Not much else, beyond work and normal, in-person socializing.

What I spend my time on has seen a massive shift away from mindless entertainment and far more onto productive practicing and reading in other languages. Both are things I’ve wanted to prioritize, and now I am.

But I think it necessitates a recalibration of many things. Some of this will happen naturally, and some I probably need to put some thought into.

Historically, almost any time I found myself home alone on a weekday (or worse: weekend), I found myself feeling very lonely and itching for some kind of distraction.

And I always found that distraction: mostly in mindless entertainment.

Over the years, any time I felt that tinge of restlessness or loneliness, I would just turn to YouTube or just watching movies or shows, and I could successfully ignore it.

But now I’m not doing that. The feeling is still there, but I’m channeling that energy into practicing things and reading.

Whereas in the past I never saw those as pleasurable activities, I feel like they are slowly becoming so as more and more time goes by and I get away from any social media or entertainment addiction.

I’ve heard a lot about “dopamine resets,” which may be largely nonsense as a concept. But while there may be no way to “reset” things in one go, I think that if I can avoid all of the mindless entertainment as an ongoing state that it will greatly increase my enjoyment of good, healthy things.

Since it’s all still kind of new, I don’t know for sure, but that certainly feels like how things are going.

So I’ll keep paying attention to that and see where it gets me.

I’ll also work on avoiding giving into any temptation when I feel that boredom or loneliness or… Whatever.

I think being bored is a gift. Maybe nothing productive or healthy sounds fun in a moment, and that’s okay. Maybe I should just be bored for once.

I don’t need to be stimulated every second of every day.

We’ll see how things go in the future, but I’m hopeful they will keep improving in this area.

I Should Approach My Life Like I Just Woke Up as a New Person

Since starting on CPAP, I’ve often mentioned how things feel very different and how I’m starting to question a lot of long-held beliefs about myself and my life. My perspective on just about everything is rapidly changing.

Which sort of made me think… Maybe I should approach my life from now on like I sort of just found myself in someone else’s body and have to decide what to do from here.

Everything that I’ve done up until this point is basically a sunk cost. I can’t get back any of the time I’ve already spent.

But what I can do is take a radical approach and plan things going forward as if I’m literally a new person.

Almost like if you were to buy an aging business. You would audit everything and take stock of how things are going and what opportunities there are, and then make changes – potentially drastic ones – to maximize performance going forward.

That’s what I have to do.

So many things that I used to cling to are falling away and I can see forward much more clearly. I think it’s time to take stock of where I’m at and what I actually value and care about.

One challenge at the moment is that I’m not entirely sure what I want. Just, generally. A lot of that I’m still figuring out.

But I think it’s important that I view my life going forward as a fresh start, and behave accordingly.

It feels a bit freeing to look at things this way. I can just sort of move past anything I’ve been stuck on and start from scratch.

I’m not sure how it will go but it’s never too late.

I Shouldn’t Dismiss Things that Lack “Research Evidence”

I feel like it’s easy in today’s day and age to live and die but we call “science”. While I’m a whole-hearted believer in science, I think that it’s really important to acknowledge its shortcomings and recognize that we are often applying the results of studies far too broadly.

Nowhere is this more pronounced than it is in long-term studies of health and wellness.

At least how it’s done today, these studies aim to follow huge groups of people with diverse backgrounds and see whether a given aspect of how they live is beneficial or not.

But here’s the problem: everyone is different. What works for one person may not work for another. Some things that may be useless for one person may be life-changing to another.

Much of the time, we have no way of seeing behind the scenes to understand what’s going on or why some things work great for some people but not others.

But I’ve had an example lately where that’s not the case.

I’ve seen YouTube videos that champion the idea of “mouth taping” at night to force people to breath through their nose. Proponents claim that their live was completely changed by this simple thing.

Now, I suffer from obstructive sleep apnea. In my case, I stop breathing whether I’m breathing through my mouth or nose. Simply taping my mouth closed is not going to accomplish anything.

Likewise, many people have no problems breathing only through their nose at night, even without taping their mouth shut.

I suspect that the only people who would benefit are people who:

  • Suffer from mild sleep apnea but only when breathing through their mouth
  • Can tolerate mouth-taping

I would venture a guess that this is not a large group of people. And anyone outside of this narrowly-defined group would probably see little-to-no benefit from doing this.

If they were to do studies on mouth taping, I suspect that they would find that it’s ultimately quite negative overall and they would say that you shouldn’t do it.

And yet, some people would get significant benefit from it.

Or let’s say they did a study about diet and concluded that grains are bad for you and decrease a number of measures of health.

It may be the case that many people truly are intolerant or allergic to gluten and that these people are weighing down the results. If you were to exclude them, you may find that the remaining participants in the study are actually far healthier eating grain.

I’ve generally heard that vegetarians tend to be healthier overall, but I suspect there are variables at play that either can’t be adjusted for, or aren’t even known.

For example, it might be that many people who become vegetarian and stick to it actually have some problem digesting meat. I had a roommate that claimed even a tiny amount of residual meat on clean dishes would make him quite ill, and would insist on using only his own dishes and never mixing anything.

I’m quite incredulous of that claim, mostly because I saw him on numerous occasions using my knives or other dishes that had just been used on meat, and he was fine. Nevertheless, it’s likely that many vegetarians do truly have problems digesting meat, and may see huge benefits to their health by remaining vegetarian that others would not have.

Weight loss is an interesting category. “Studies” have shown that aerobic activity actually makes people gain weight, and that “diets” don’t work for losing weight. Not all studies have shown that, of course, but taken with the populace at large, these things supposedly are not effective.

And yet… They work. If you hang around weight training and bodybuilding circles, there is no mystery whatsoever about gaining or losing weight. If someone expressed doubt that reducing their caloric intake would result in losing weight, they would be laughed at and mocked.

And what they are saying is not only true, but most people in this space don’t seem to have too much trouble gaining or losing weight.

So where’s the disconnect?

I’d argue that the average person has little to no agency in terms of affecting change in their life. They follow a script and rarely deviate from it. They do what they feel like.

You can’t tell them to just “eat less” because they won’t.

Someone who is a bodybuilder has probably already demonstrated that they do not fit this mold at all. They are capable of doing difficult, even painful things in order to improve themselves. For them, eating a little less is no great challenge.

These are all just examples. They may be flawed in parts, but the main point I’m making is that just because some research has determined something doesn’t work, doesn’t mean that it should be discounted entirely.

Obviously pseudo-science and outright falsehoods abound, but I suspect there are tons of things in this world that are not supported by consensus in the modern scientific community, yet may be tremendously beneficial for specific individuals.

Or if you look at people who are top performers in just about anything… It’s easy – especially when looking at high-earners – to simply point to survivorship bias. To say that they didn’t do anything to get there, and that the vast majority of people doing what they did failed.

We may look at their habits and routines and point to evidence that says those things do not work, and it would be supported by evidence.

But what if a given routine just doesn’t work for most people? 

The vast majority of people could not handle most of the tactics bodybuilders don’t even think twice about.

I have to believe that there are tons of things that would be tremendously beneficial to individuals either of unusually-high intelligence or self-discipline. I think I need to be completely open to that possibility, and not write-off things just because the previous studies haven’t found them to be beneficial among the general population.

The general population isn’t capable of tons of things that are helpful. I may find considerable value in places others have written off.

I Need to Think of Myself Like a Plant

This post is basically just a rehash of my post from a week or two ago, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot more and it really feels extremely relevant.

Basically, I need to think of myself like a plant.

What does that mean?

Plants don’t think or feel. They simply do their thing. Some are far more successful than others, and it’s all a combination of the right conditions that allow them to thrive.

And I’m realizing more and more that we are more or less the same.

We think we’re so smart and can will our way through anything, but at the end of the day our output is almost exactly correlated with our inputs.

None of my most productive days have ever come after a terrible night’s sleep, when I’m hungover, or when I’m sick. And more than likely nearly all of my best days have followed a period of sobriety, great sleep, and low stress.

It may feel in the moment like bursts of energy and creativity are totally spontaneous, but they aren’t at all. They come when all of your inputs are optimized and you’re feeling good as a result.

I honestly feel really silly for never realizing this before.

I once wrote that it’s arrogance to be too idealistic or optimistic about yourself or your abilities; especially regarding your willpower. While calling it “arrogant” feels like a bit of a judgement, the fact remains that thinking you can still be at your best even when you’re feeling terrible is simply false.

I feel like now that I have this understanding, I need to strive to maximize my inputs as much as possible. I need to get everything in place and do just about everything right on a consistent basis to maximize my output.

Throughout this blog I’ve spoken about weight training, and one thing that I like about it is that it provides objective feedback about how I’m doing. Whereas tracking a subjective measure of how I’m feeling may not always yield valuable results, the objective nature of weight training can’t be biased and is often far more useful.

I’ve started really focusing on giving myself the correct inputs to improve at weight training, and it has started to pay off. I’m rapidly approaching the strongest I’ve ever been. I can almost immediately tell that my efforts have paid off.

These results directly prove my idea. If I eat well (and enough), provide adequate rest and recovery, and don’t drink too much or otherwise sabotage myself, I can put in a great effort in each session and the next time I’ll be able to lift more.

It doesn’t really matter how much effort I’ve put in during the workout. At least not the “conscious” kind of effort requiring me to push myself uncomfortably hard.

If all the conditions are met, I will push myself the correct amount and I will immediately be rewarded with tangible results.

This may not be as obvious in other areas of life simply because I don’t have an obvious, objective measure. But I feel like there’s no question that it’s there. The impact is likely far greater in my life more broadly than it is just for weight training. After all: while there is a limit to how much I could conceivably lift (and I’m already a good chunk of the way there), there’s no limit to how “successful” I can be.

So this may be a nearly identical re-hash of the other blog post, but I’ve just continued thinking about it and felt I needed to expand upon it a bit more.

Armed with this understanding, I may have to change many things in my life.

 

There is a HUGE Difference Between Constructive Criticism and Criticism Intended to Hurt

I’m sort of frustrated that it took me until 36 years old to really appreciate this, but there is absolutely a huge difference between constructive criticism and criticism intended to cause pain and lower self-esteem.

I think so much of being a young man and spending time around other men is giving each other a hard time. When everyone is doing it in good faith, this can be fun, and also can be a low-stakes way to bring up genuine criticism without actually cutting the other person down.

And of course, more straightforward criticism can also be very helpful, without hurting the other person.

I think my problem is that I spent a lot of time around people whose criticism was intended to cause harm that I couldn’t really differentiate between them.

There aren’t many people left in my life that do the latter, and as a result it is much easier to identify when it’s more problematic. In general, I have cut out of my life the people who intend to hurt me.

The difference is not always incredibly obvious, though I’ve found it tends to feel a similar way, and there are usually a handful of associated aspects of how its done or the person doing it that make it clear this is what’s happening.

Genuine, constructive criticism is almost always given tactfully and with sensitivity to feelings. An emotionally intelligent individual will also typically present the criticism with some restraint, as if they are unsure that the criticism is valid.

In this way, it comes across as a mere idea, which you are free to consider and accept or dismiss. This is generally much easier for the receiving party to deal with.

Even when people are being more direct with each other and giving one another a hard time, it can still be done without the intent to cause harm or truly cutting down the recipient.

One notable characteristic of this is that the one giving the criticism is usually giving the criticism cheerfully. They may be laughing, they are probably being playful. All of this takes the edge off the criticism, allowing the recipient, once again, to accept it or dismiss it as a joke if they are more comfortable with that.

It is never done with a negative, annoyed, cutting tone.

And that brings me to the number one characteristic of criticism intended to cut you down and harm self-esteem: it is done with a negative, annoyed, cutting tone.

It’s sort of hard to describe, but there’s something incredibly specific about it. Because it’s not true exasperation. It isn’t like they are just disappointed in something you did and are just trying to help at this point.

It’s an attack.

They sense weakness, and they pounce. Their tone and words convey not that you need to fix anything, but that you should feel bad about yourself.

Here are some other things that tend to be associated with it:

  • The thing they are attacking is often a more general failing as opposed to something you can actually fix
  • They often will happy and positive and then flip a switch with startling speed, increasing the impact of their attack
  • If they do criticize something that could actually be fixed, its often something quite broad as opposed to one specific thing that you could fix right away
  • Generally the type of criticism given makes you seem foolish, stupid, reckless, or careless and makes them seem intelligent, controlled, or cool by comparison
  • The criticism is chosen carefully; it’s never about something that you clearly are more competent in
  • The criticisms may or may not be rooted in some truth, but most of the time they are in response to something that isn’t truly representative (e.g. a momentary lapse of judgement or skill, or brain fart of some kind)

At the end of the day, I believe that the cause of this type of criticism is always insecurity on the part of the attacker. They feel insecure and have found that attacking others and trying to bring them down makes them feel better about themselves.

Thinking about my past, I’ve realized that some of my friendships were characterized by tons of this type of behavior. So much so, that I actually started to internalize some of the criticism and think that it was legitimate.

But it wasn’t.

Some of the worst perpetrators even seem to go out of their way to build you up in private and give you lots of complements, but then bide their time and wait for the perfect moment to attack you to inflict the most damage. Often, this is when you’re in a larger group setting and most vulnerable, or perhaps before an important event where you could easily be thrown off.

I really got to thinking about this because I spent more time than usual with a friend lately, and while things were good at first, eventually some of this behavior came out. He started to randomly attack me.

It made me realize that I hadn’t really experienced that in a while. And I hated it.

I’ve come to realize that, even when you aren’t totally aware that it’s happening, it still makes you feel a certain way. You sort of feel confused, and self-conscious. You might feel immediately angry at the person who’s attacking you.

But it’s hard to retaliate, because – after all – it was you who made the mistake, right?

Right?

I feel like it’s easy to simply be defensive in these situations. It’s generally reasonable to point out that it was just a brief lapse.

But they’ll just double down and attack you even more if you try to defend yourself. Because it was never about logic, it was always about ego and power.

And that might leave you feeling even more confused, because deep down you know it wasn’t that big of a deal yet you are being attacked for it anyway.

I’m not totally sure what the appropriate response is. Not being friends with that person anymore might honestly be justified.

I don’t think I’m going to be able to help myself but to call it out directly the next time it happens. I don’t know how that will go. And it certainly won’t solve the original cause: the attacker being insecure. In fact, it will likely accomplish the opposite.

I suppose I could try more or less ignoring it, and then talking to them about it privately.

Since I’ve never really tried either, I don’t know how they will go.

More recently I’ve turned it back around on the attacker and pointed out how they are being whiny about stupid things that, in general, have to do with favors I’m doing them. It makes them seem petulant and unreasonable. Which, again, doesn’t solve the root cause. But at least it gets them off my back for a bit.

Either way, I won’t tolerate this behavior from people around me anymore. And fortunately, most of the people that are still in my life don’t do it.

So I don’t have to worry about it too much.

I just wish I had realized all of this like… All the way back in high school. It would have gotten me away from the wrong people far sooner, and also would have prevented much of the damage that they did.

 

If I Have the Right Conditions, I Thrive – What Feels like Self-Discipline Often Isn’t

I’m currently dealing with my second bout with covid. Even so, today I got up early, I got my studying in quickly, I got all my work done and was productive there, and I even added in a weight training session and a sunset walk around the neighborhood.

Many of these things – especially the physical activities – weren’t really planned. I kind of just did them.

And it made me realize that a huge percentage of my behavior is really just based upon having the right conditions. I like to believe that I’m a free-willed being that strategically uses discipline and willpower to do exactly what’s needed at any given moment.

But in reality, I’m starting to think I have more in common – day-to-day – with a hamster that just needs to have enough food, water, clean bedding, and a wheel.

I think back to times when I’ve been super productive and even gone above and beyond on extra projects, and I’m realizing that it wasn’t any extraordinary effort or careful planning or anything like that. I just… Did it. I finished all my normal tasks, and still felt like accomplishing things, so I did.

And then I think about times when I wasn’t nearly as productive. And often it’s just the case that I got to the end of the day and just had nothing left in the tank. No desire to get anything done.

Now that I’m stating all of this, it seems so incredibly obvious. And yet I feel like I’ve almost never expressed in this blog before how critical it is that I get these conditions right.

Maybe it’s because I’ve so infrequently done it, so I never really knew.

Either way, I now believe that there is almost nothing more important than setting up the right conditions for myself to thrive. These are things like:

  • Getting adequate, quality sleep (treating sleep apnea is obviously key here)
  • Not drinking much or at all
  • Keeping up with exercise (both weight training and cardio)
  • Eating well
  • Staying hydrated
  • Staying on top of work
  • Keeping my home well-maintained
  • Keeping personal relationships in order and an active social life
  • Keeping up with hobbies

Of these, the first two are probably by far the most important both short and long-term. As long as those are good, I should generally have the energy to handle all of the rest.

Now clearly, self-discipline still has its place. And energy should still be used strategically, especially for things like building effective habits. But those are all multipliers.

I feel like establishing these conditions is really the base of my productivity and well-being, from which all success – in all areas – springs. Habits, willpower, and just about everything else – including productivity “hacks” – are really just going to be multipliers beyond that.

But 0 times 1000 is still 0. So if you don’t have the base established, you’re still going nowhere.

And either way, it is far easier to establish a new habit or stay on track if all of these conditions are met. When I’m well-rested and everything else is in place, it feels like I can do anything easily. There’s far less need for discipline or “willpower”.

While improvements from treating my sleep apnea haven’t come quite as quickly as I had hoped, I’m realizing now that many of them have absolutely have come.

Before treatment, it felt like I was exhausting all my willpower every day just to do the bare minimum. I didn’t have these conditions met, and so every day was kind of a struggle.

It wasn’t immediately obvious because I wasn’t “dropping the ball” on anything critical just to keep going, but long-term I think it manifested in lack of growth and other long-term initiatives stagnating.

But now… Even while recovering from covid, things are easier than they were. I can finish everything and still have energy left for more projects.

Obviously it’s better when I’m not sick, but the point remains that I didn’t have this before. It’s very subtle in that I don’t actively “feel” super different, but my behavior is totally different. I can get so much more done, my thinking is way more clear, and really it’s just all better.

Going forward, I need to prioritize getting these conditions right nearly all of the time. That may even entail near or total teetotaling. I’ve intentionally not really placed any limitations on myself in that area since ending my year-long break, just to compare. But the results seem to be clear: the benefits do not outweigh the cost.

I haven’t made any firm decisions yet, but either way: I will be much more conscientious going forward about making sure all my conditions are met to maximize my success – in all areas.

People Dig In Once they’ve Stated an Opinion, and the Internet Makes this a Terrible Thing

I had the realization that people tend to commit to a thing once they’ve actually said it aloud or typed it. It’s as if they trust themselves that they’ve fully thought through something by the time they are willing to actually state it.

This is helpful to realize, but also demonstrates some areas in which this is absolutely a terrible thing.

First, I want to point out that, in general, people tend to be a lot more careful with what they say in person. People are likely to react immediately if someone says something stupid or totally out-of-line. And in-person, if you get scolded or called-out, you tend to care more.

But online, people will say whatever comes to their mind. They don’t fear the consequences. They don’t care if someone calls them out. They have anonymity to shield them if what they said is stupid.

Not to mention the fact that they are likely to post in places where everyone is bound to agree with them anyway. It would seem that the method of choice by social media networks to avoid hostility and toxicity is to separate everyone into silos of people that already agree.

In person, people are far more likely to listen, to think, to gather information. Only after they’ve done those things are they comfortable giving an opinion.

And that’s a great thing!

They’re also more likely to change their opinion. If someone they respect and value is explaining something to them, they will be way more likely to listen with an open mind and work to find common ground.

Online, people just dig in. And when they inevitably fail to change any minds, they just go back to their silo and say the same things with people they know already agree.

As a result, people are more divided than ever, but just don’t talk about anything in person. They come to conclusions quickly and never have their ideas questioned. They then seek information that confirms their existing beliefs, and things just get worse.

I really hope that the newer generations that were raised on the internet can see through these things clearly, and that they are able to develop strategies to combat these things. Otherwise, I’m not exactly sure how humanity is supposed to recover.

It does seem like there is hope though. The boomers – who obviously had no experience with the internet and social media until they were already middle-aged, seem to be the least equipped to deal with this, and it shows.

Younger people do seem to be inherently tuned-in to these problems and as a result, might be able to avoid the worst of it.

It’s hard to say. I just hope things improve, because I don’t think the world is in a good place right now.

A Missing Factor: When Outcomes Aren’t Determined by Inputs

This post is pointless, in the sense that I don’t know that it will have a firm conclusion.

Instead, I just want to bring-to-light a concept I’ve been thinking about lately.

Essentially, that sometimes the outcome is not at all determined by the inputs that go into it.

Some obvious insights from this are more or less extensions of the post I wrote about being careful what lessons you learn from failures.

First, let me explain exactly what I mean with some examples.

What made me think of this is disc golf. There are tons of examples of this.

The most obvious ones are where your throw your disc and it ends up with a fluke roll that ends up far from where it landed.

Now, at the elite level, you are always considering the possibility of these types of outcomes and doing what you can to prevent them. But even then, they will happen sometimes.

So let’s say, as is often the case, that you’re playing a hole in which most of it is blind. You only see the early portion of the flight path.

You throw the disc, and you think it’s looking good. However, once you get down there, you realize that the disc actually ended up a good 100 feet beyond the pin.

“I guess I’ll just throw it way less hard next time,” you say to yourself. You’ve come to the conclusion that you threw it way too hard this time, and you need to compensate for this next time.

The problem is, you didn’t. You actually got a fluke roll, where the disc landed, popped and perfectly on to its side, and then proceeded another 100+ feet beyond.

But since you couldn’t see this happen, you only know your inputs (how you threw it) and the outcome (where it landed). You don’t have the full story of what happened in the middle.

This result is essentially noise. Using it as a learning experience will be actively detrimental to you. As you play more, you may start to sense better when things are flukes, and not learn from them. But in the short-term, they may actively hurt your ability to progress, as you test out different inputs and seemingly get random results.

As another example, I was playing with my friend Zac and, a couple times, he let loose what was actually a perfect throw. Form was great, release was great, and the disc was launched perfectly.

And it went terribly.

The disc just barely clipped a tree and bounced deep into the woods.

Now this case is actually a bit different, because he had far more control over the inputs and actually could fix this.

The problem in this case is that he’s likely to learn the wrong lesson. Despite throwing with perfect form, the feedback that he got is that he did a bad job. He is likely to change his throw going forward.

Now, there is probably a correct lesson to be learned in this case, and it’s that he should aim ever-so-slightly more to one side to avoid that tree. But instead, he may very well blame the other aspects of the throw.

So really these are two different – but related – concepts.

In the first example, the input really was almost completely disconnected from the output. In the second, they were connected but the wrong input was likely to be blamed.

In other areas in life and business, this is likely to happen almost constantly. It’s extremely difficult to identify exactly what makes you successful in most areas. And in both successes and failures, you are quite likely to blame the wrong input for them and proceed accordingly.

It’s like when a lottery winner outlines their “strategies” for success, when they obviously were totally irrelevant. The only factor that mattered was actually dumb luck.

If I had to come up with some kind of conclusion, I would just say that it’s incredibly important to:

  1. Recognize when the results of something are caused primarily by factors outside your control
  2. Be sure not incorrectly identify which of your efforts actually caused a success or failure

I think part of what makes experience so incredibly valuable is that these things start to come naturally to you. You’ve had enough data points that you know when something is a fluke, you know what should work, and you can start to pick up what you did wrong if it really was your fault.

I think about my own business and the work we do, and how I can approach almost any situation – including ones that I haven’t directly worked on before – with way more confidence. I have an intuitive sense of what will work and what won’t, and know that I can figure most things out without messing anything up too badly.

And that comes from experience. I’ve done it all before. I’ve done a new thing for the first time thousands of times, and so I know what the process is like.

I remember when I was first starting and I would often be forced to just try things blindly without having any sense of how they would go. But that’s how I learned and gained experience. And with that experience comes wisdom.

In disc golf, I’ve noticed the more I play (especially when replaying certain courses), that I am able to sense when things are a fluke. Sometimes my disc will end somewhere and I’ll conclude, “okay that definitely rolled there, because there’s no way it went that far on the fly”. And that helps me learn going forward.

Again, I don’t have a firm conclusion for this, it’s just a concept I wanted to formally write about because it may have big consequences in many areas of life and business.

Why am I More Emotional about Imagined Situations than Real Ones?

I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon, and it is that I tend to get more emotional about imagined scenarios than real ones.

So, for example, maybe I imagine ahead of time what it’s going to feel like to see a friend for the first time after being apart for a really long time. I may actually tear up imagining the situation.

But then, when it actually happens, I don’t feel that emotional.

What gives? Shouldn’t a real situation be more moving that an imagined scenario?

I think one obvious explanation is that almost as nothing is as enjoyable or moving as we think it’s going to be. It has been well-documented in studies that most experiences don’t live up to people’s expectations for them.

Funny enough, though, I believe their recollection of those events may actually be more consistent with their original expectations, even though their experience in the moment didn’t live up to them.

I don’t think that’s the full explanation, though. For one thing, just because you have high expectations for something, doesn’t really mean that you’ll feel the full effect simply imagining it.

I think a major component is probably that I’m a lot more inhibited when I’m with people. That may very well be everyone.

I’m realizing more and more, though, that specific people may also make you particularly inhibited. Especially if they have some negative influence on you. For example, I suspect that most of my experiences spent during bad stretches of failing relationships were probably not nearly as enjoyable as I had hoped, because I was emotionally numb as a result of the tension with that other person.

But like most people, I suspect I am more inhibited with anyone than I would be alone. I think that’s mostly normal.

It would be nice to be a lot less inhibited with people I trust, though. So that might be an area I can explore a bit more.

I don’t think that I’m necessarily all that inhibited in my words or actions, but I do think there’s a strong emotional inhibition. I’m not exactly sure why that is, but I think it’s something I will definitely explore in a future post.

I’ll think more about that and write about it!