Author: alearningaday

If every discussion around success included questions that probed how we measure it and the trade-offs involved, there would be fewer discussions. It is hard to isolate cause and effect in an issue as complex as success – however we define it.

So, in a world where publishers and advertisers make their money off your attention, it makes sense that everyone skips the nuance. So, we see articles within 500 words or less that tell you –

• 3 things that successful do in the morning
• 1 trait that all successful entrepreneurs have
• 1 trait that explains Elon Musk’s success

and so on.

This could also be a playbook for any content you create. Pick an interesting subject, strip away all the nuance, pick a pretty picture, choose a catchy title, share it all over social media – and, voilà, with a bit of luck, you’ve gotten yourself a winner.

But, is that really winning?

Such narratives are generally unhelpful and often plain dangerous. But, that aside, what of us? Why do we write?

Writing can be many things. It can be a medium with which we drive change. It can feed our soul. With every piece of content we share, we decide whether we want to raise the standard of discussion or lower it. And, we do all of this by putting a piece of ourselves out there.

Some might say that we owe it to ourselves to keep the nuance and discuss those hairy, complex issues.

Others will say you ought to just shoot for the clicks and the temporarily popularity.

As always, our choice.

Life is always challenging and often difficult. It doesn’t matter who you are. Affluent people have some aspects of life easier than others. But, as long as you do everything that humans do, you’re going to experience challenges and difficulties.

The big question, then, is – what do we do? Or, more specifically, do we react or respond?

When we take responsibility for our lives, we learn that there’s a space between what happens to us and what we do about it. That space between stimulus and response is where wisdom and maturity lie. Maturity and our ability to respond to situations, not just react to them, go together. Maturity and this ability to respond bring perspective. And, perspective, in turn, changes how we see these challenges and difficulties.

I’ve often wondered if there’s a shortcut to perspective.

There isn’t, of course. Not in the way we think of shortcuts – life doesn’t deal with narrow alleyways.

But, keeping a sense of humor is a trait I’ve found particularly helpful in ensuring perspective. Humor has a magical ability to bring perspective to any situation.

I am not naturally pre-disposed to humor as I grew up taking things very seriously. But, years of perspective and being surrounded by a couple of people who looked for the humor in the situation has slowly changed me. I’ve realized over the years that we all take our thoughts too damn seriously. Nearly everything that happens to us isn’t a matter of life and death.

So, we should relax, find reasons to smile and, in that process, get perspective.

I still don’t naturally find humor in most situation. But, I’ve begun looking for it. That’s been a game changer and I’m hoping I continue to do that.

When we hear someone was involved in something with a bad outcome, our default question tends to be – “What did he do?”

Our default assumption is that what someone did caused the bad outcome.

But, more often than not, it is how we do things, not what we do, that causes issues. Bad performance is more often a result of questionable attitude than questionable skill.

When in doubt, look at the “how.”

Just as you are getting out of bed, consider spending an extra 2 minutes doing the following –

1. What are you seeking to accomplish today – at work and in life? (this generally involves a visual)
2. What is one learning you’d like to keep in mind as you go through the day?
3. What are you thankful for?

Most folks love the extra couple of minutes in bed (thank you, snooze button). Hopefully, this adds value to those extra minutes.

We are the questions we ask. And, a quick 2 minute exercise to ask these questions, or others that you find energizing, can go a long way in getting the day started right.

Yuval Harari’s Sapiens is a fascinating book. I’ve been making slow progress over the past 3 months as there is so much to absorb.

One of the more fascinating pieces (in my opinion) is his analysis on science. In Yuval’s words, “the innovation in modern science was to admit ignorance.” It is a simple and, yet, profound idea and speaks to continuous tension between religions and scientific inquiry.

Here’s an interesting excerpt about how the act of admitting ignorance shaped the world we know –

The crucial turning point came in 1492, when Christopher Columbus sailed westward from Spain, seeking a new route to East Asia. Columbus still believed in the old ‘complete’ world maps (see below). Using them, Columbus calculated that Japan should have been located about 7,000 kilometres west of Spain. In fact, more than 20,000 kilometres and an entire unknown continent separate East Asia from Spain. On 12 October 1492, at about 2:00 a.m., Columbus’ expedition collided with the unknown continent. Juan Rodriguez Bermejo, watching from the mast of the ship Pinta, spotted an island in what we now call the Bahamas, and shouted ‘Land! Land!’

Columbus believed he had reached a small island off the East Asian coast. He called the people he found there ‘Indians’ because he thought he had landed in the Indies – what we now call the East Indies or the Indonesian archipelago. Columbus stuck to this error for the rest of his life. The idea that he had discovered a completely unknown continent was inconceivable for him and for many of his generation. For thousands of years, not only the greatest thinkers and scholars but also the infallible Scriptures had known only Europe, Africa and Asia. Could they all have been wrong? Could the Bible have missed half the world? It would be as if in 1969, on its way to the moon, Apollo 11 had crashed into a hitherto unknown moon circling the earth, which all previous observations had somehow failed to spot. In his refusal to admit ignorance, Columbus was still a medieval man. He was convinced he knew the whole world, and even his momentous discovery failed to convince him otherwise.

(A European world map from 1459 (Europe is in the top left corner). The map is filled with details, even when depicting areas that were completely unfamiliar to Europeans, such as southern Africa – thanks Erenow.com)

The first modern man was Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian sailor who took part in several expeditions to America in the years 1499–1504. Between 1502 and 1504, two texts describing these expeditions were published in Europe. They were attributed to Vespucci. These texts argued that the new lands discovered by Columbus were not islands off the East Asian coast, but rather an entire continent unknown to the Scriptures, classical geographers and contemporary Europeans. In 1507, convinced by these arguments, a respected mapmaker named Martin Waldseemüller published an updated world map, the first to show the place where Europe’s westward-sailing fleets had landed as a separate continent. Having drawn it, Waldseemüller had to give it a name. Erroneously believing that Amerigo Vespucci had been the person who discovered it, Waldseemüller named the continent in his honour – America. The Waldseemüller map became very popular and was copied by many other cartographers, spreading the name he had given the new land. 

There is poetic justice in the fact that a quarter of the world, and two of its seven continents, are named after a little-known Italian whose sole claim to fame is that he had the courage to say, ‘We don’t know.’

A fascinating story. How often do we admit ignorance?

Here are a few things you can easily compare:

• The status conferred by your role or company or degree
• The number of products you shipped
• Your car
• The amount of press you’ve received
• The size of your home
• The number of likes you receive on your social media shares

Here are a few things you can’t easily compare:

• The strength of your closest relationships
• Your sense of self worth
• The amount of undivided attention you’re able to give to the folks who matter to you
• How much you have learnt about topics that matter to you
• Your self awareness and thoughtfulness
• The impact you’ve had – both in terms of breadth and depth
• The amount of time you are able to dedicate to deep, uninterrupted work

We are wired to compare and compete. We compare and compete because we tell ourselves the story that winning in these things matter.

But, they don’t. The trophies we collect from these are fake and the joy they bring disappears in a few hours – like leprechaun gold.

In the long run, it is the things that we can’t easily compare that bring us meaning and happiness.

When in doubt, index on what you can’t easily compare.

There’s a few simple principles I’ve come to appreciate when it comes to spending money. The latest edition to that list is the idea of Dollar per use.

Here’s what my list roughly looks like –

1. Frugal and proud. :)
2. Spend on experiences (e.g. a wonderful vacation) versus things. Thus, money spent to treat friends and family is generally money well spent.
3. Don’t overthink spending on learning or fitness. These are the most important investments you will make.
4. For items that can be given away (such as clothes), make sure you give an item away for every item you buy.
5. Consider dollar per use. If you are going to use a shoe every day, for example, it is worth investing in a good one. 

I’ve pushed frugality too far in the past and skimped on everyday items. But, no more. The dollar per use idea will hopefully set that right.

In the 1950s, Biologist Joseph Connell ventured from California to Australia to understand what causes the biodiversity in coral reefs and rainforests. In particular, he wanted to understand why some landscapes exhibited vast biodiversity, with hundreds of species living side by side, while other landscapes only a few miles away exhibited homogeneity, with a few species dominating.

It seemed as if nature’s creative capacities depended on some kind of periodic disturbance  –  like a tree fall or an occasional storm  – that temporarily upset the natural environment. But, the disturbance couldn’t be too small or too big. It had to be just the right size. ‘Intermediate disturbances are critical,’ said Connell to Charles Duhigg when he interviewed him for his book “Smarter, Faster, Better.”

Within biology, this has become known as the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, which holds that ‘local species diversity is maximized when ecological disturbance is neither too rare nor too frequent.’”

This has lots of interesting parallels. For example, during the ideation process at Disney/Pixar, they make sure they create small disturbances within the team (e.g. changing the team leader) when there’s a feeling that everyone is stuck. Similarly, brainstorming sessions work well when you change things up a bit – move to a different location, use a different format, etc.

There’s a wonderful life lesson in here as well – a little bit of disruption every once a while keeps us fresh and creative. So, if you’re not looking forward to an upcoming disruption of your usual weekly or weekend routine, just remember that it is likely better in the long run.