Category: Psychology

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Need to Focus on Things that Scale

It’s been a while since I’ve posted! Despite being “the most important thing” to do, this has fallen by the wayside behind more urgent matters like renovating my house and getting renters. Hopefully, once that is out of the way, I’ll be able to post much more regularly.

I’ve realized recently that I absolutely need to focus almost all of my time and energy on things that I can scale and efforts that tend to multiply. And the reason isn’t just because I believe those will lead to more success (though they will), but because I get bored and disinterested otherwise.

When I’m doing 1-for-1 client work, speaking directly with clients, or doing any kind of networking, I tend to get very bored. Because those things are very much even exchanges. I put in effort, I get something back. A little more time and effort means I’ll make a little more.

And when I do it, it’s just hard for to care. It feels like a slow march towards death. It doesn’t make me excited.

Instead, I really need to focus on things that can actually scale and multiply. Where my efforts may not only lead to immediate returns, but continue getting returns for me down the road without additional effort.

Things like blogging and other SEO efforts are great examples of this. If I build up my SEO profile enough, I can effortlessly get new clients without having to lift a finger. Then I can focus solely on running the business.

And I should focus on services that I can actually scale well. Managed WordPress website hosting is one of those services. We do a great job at it so there is very little headache, and every piece of that service, from migration to maintenance, can be made into a process that an employee could easily handle.

But I think it’s just key that I keep all of this in mind all of the time. All of my efforts need to be focused on moving towards this goal. Every day, I need to prioritize activities that have long-term consequences and promote scalable business practices.

Otherwise, I’m just going to burn out.

 

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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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The Power of Setting Attainable Goals — Proven by Video Games

Personally, I have a habit of setting extremely high goals for myself, that may or may not be realistic. Shoot for the stars, and all that.

But lately, I’ve come to see the value in setting things that are much more attainable. And I realized it because of video games.

Somewhat recently I started playing this game called “7 Days to Die”. Picture Minecraft, but a bit more elaborate, and with zombies for good measure.

Ostensibly, you and your friends are preparing supplies, shelter, and weapons so that you can survive a zombie horde every 7 nights. Sound intense? It can be!

So how do most people play this game?

In my experience, most people find some useful specialty, and generally contribute to what the group needs. One person might collect wood and then build an elaborate structure for us to defend ourselves; complete with a spiked moat and arrow slits.

Another might spend his time gathering supplies and equipment for building better weapons. From simple wooden bows to rocket launchers, this person makes sure you have the firepower to take those zombies out.

And what have I busied myself with?

I’m digging an extensive network of mines.

Specifically, I’ve spent most of the time improving my mining skills so I can do it faster. I’m working on building a mine, deep underground, that reaches all the way to a nearby town.

So what is the value of this town? Nothing. It’s already been raided. There are no supplies left there, and really no reason to even go there.

Mining is extremely monotonous. Picture swinging a pickax in front of you, over and over again, in a dark pit underground, for hours at a time in a straight line. The biggest variability is that sometimes you might run in to some iron ore instead of solid rock. But the concept is still the same.

And yet, I can’t wait to get back on and play every week! While I’m doing it, I’m excited.

So why is it that I’m excited to do something monotonous, that provides no real value to myself or others, and just generally seems like a waste of time?

Because I have a goal that’s attainable.

I want to dig a mine all the way to that town. It’s far away, and it takes a long time. But it’s 100% doable as long as I put the time in.

Over time I level up in mining, and my friends build better equipment for me to mine with, so there is also the feeling of accelerated progress. But either way, I’m positive that I will reach this town. There is nothing to stop me!

Somehow that feeling of an impending accomplishment, no matter how trivial (or in this case, pointless), fuels my resolve to complete it and makes me happy to go along with it.

But then that makes me wonder… Do I just like doing things that are easy? Is it just the guarantee of success, given enough time? Or is it just a welcome respite from the poorly delineated progress that’s made each day in the world of knowledge work, where most of the time, I don’t know if I’m really getting closer to my goal, or if I’ll ever reach it.

I don’t think it’s simply that I like easy things. Besides the evidence in my own life, there’s a mountain of evidence that achieving things that are difficult is much more rewarding than achieving things that are easy. So that can’t be it.

I think it might just be that it feels good to take a break for a change. To have a clearly defined goal where the path to getting there is completely known.

In most knowledge work, there are a thousand ways to go about trying to achieve a goal. And unfortunately, you have no way of knowing for sure which ways will work and which won’t until you’ve tried them.

As an analogy, let’s say that you’re at the bottom of a hill, and you want to get to the top and see the view. A simple goal, akin to my mine-digging goal, would be a situation where there is a staircase that goes straight and right up to the top of this hill.

You can see the whole staircase, it’s just as steep at the bottom as it is at the top, and there are no obstacles. You would know exactly what it takes to get to the top, and you can be confident that if you just keep going, you’ll get there.

But most of what I do for a living (and probably most people), is nothing like that. Instead, picture the same scenario, but it’s more like a maze. You are standing at the bottom, and there are 100 different entrances. Some of them lead to the top. Some don’t. Some have untold hardships you’ll endure, and some might not. The point is, you don’t know which is which!

In this scenario, you can still aim high, and try to get to the top. But there is so much uncertainty, that you really don’t know what it’s going to take to get there. You don’t know the right way, and you don’t know what you’re going to face along the way.

Now, in real situations, you can grow your experience and knowledge, and start minimizing the uncertainty. That would certainly help.

In a lot of cultures and even modern psychology, there is this concept of chaos and order, and balance between them is the key. If you get too comfortable and set easy goals for yourself, there is far too much order. You don’t learn and you don’t develop as a person.

But if your goals are too lofty, and the path there too vague, you’re dealing with complete chaos. You have no knowledge of the route you need to take to get there, and that can be debilitating.

So instead, what they argue, is that you need to find that balance, where you’re out of your comfort zone, you’re achieving something difficult, but you come equipped with enough competence to stand a fighting chance of getting through.

My research has led me to believe that what leads to lasting meaning and value in our lives is actually the balance of these two concepts, and not the end result.

In other words, you should choose goals that are difficult but achievable, but it’s not even the achievement of the goals that will ultimately fulfill you. It’s getting there.

 

As a random side-note here that isn’t totally necessary to the understanding of what I’m trying to get across: I think jigsaw puzzles are a good stand-in for my video game.

I never quite understood the appeal of them. The work is somewhat mindless, the process is pretty much the same every time, and it’s something where, if you spend enough time on it, you’re virtually guaranteed to finish it.

Sounds a lot like my goal to build a mine, huh?

I know some say the like the high of finding a place for everything (from chaos to order… sound familiar?), but I think there’s an element of what I’ve been discussing here as well. There’s a comfort in knowing that your goal is something you can accomplish. Maybe it’s just self-empowering, maybe it’s just a desperate need to get something done.

I don’t have all of the answers, I just thought it was somewhat relevant.