"There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything."
—Hagakure
I'm listening to an autobiography of Octavian, the man who went on to become Augustus Caesar.
What's interesting from the book is that Augustus had more patience than his various rivals of the day in large scale affairs and reforms, but he moved with serious haste—celerity—when there was a situation that could be settled decisively.
Around six years ago, I started paying more attention to business and entrepreneurship and generally success and things like that. I remember coming across a lot of literature that encouraged doing things faster—especially in business. Shaving off the shipping time from 7 days to 4 days. Things like that.
Back then, I didn't understood why there was so much emphasis on speed. I thought, "Okay, obviously you wouldn't want to go too slow, but why go so fast? Why does it matter that much?"
And more recently, the answer has been clicking. It's not that getting your package 4 days from now instead of 7 makes such a big difference in all cases. Much of the time, it doesn't.
But when it matters, it really matters.
Let's say someone is building a new wooden fence, but he doesn't know about finishing fences. So he orders a book on it. If the book takes 3 more days to come, that's 3 more days before he can order whatever kind of sealant or paint or stain he's going to use on the fence.
If the stain he orders takes 3 more days to come, he's now six days behind where he could be on a faster schedule.
On top of that, if he's gotten busy or something else has come up in his life, he might not be able to finish the project right now… the six days could make the difference between it getting done now, or never.
Also, even if he stays motivated and nothing comes up, those six days burn some of his thought cycles. It imposes a cognitive cost on him.
Paul Graham wrote about this as well, in the excellent essay "The Top Idea in Your Mind." If the man is thinking about the fence, he's not thinking about something else. If the fence was built, he could be proud and celebrate for a moment, but then stop thinking about it, which frees his thought cycles to do other things, or just to relax more.
Celerity. Speed. Haste.
When you move faster, it speeds up the rest of the process. Sometimes this is the difference between success and failure. But even when it would have gotten done eventually anyways, going slower means some thoughts are never born that would have been. By moving faster, you can discharge action and get it behind you—either so you can relax with lower cognitive burden at the moment, or get on to the next thing.
Augustus realized this. He was patient until he could move decisively, but then he did—oftentimes, the circumstances that would have allowed for a war or a treaty were very temporary, and would have faded if he didn't move fast. So he moved fast, and he looked to conclude things thoroughly so he could move on afterwards.
Think about celerity. About speed. If you can speed up crucial areas of production, maybe you can get important things behind you earlier? It might take 50 hours either way, but if that 50 hours of production time is done in two weeks, then you're more free to relax or get to daydreaming about your next project after it's complete. Whereas for the man it takes two months, his thoughts are dominated by the unfinished project—he's less relaxed and less open to new things he could do.
Celerity. I'm making it a new mantra of mine.
One of the problems a lot of people have is that they don't fail enough. At this point, for me, I seem to have crossed some threshold where additional unintentional errors and mistakes don't bother me. I'm on the edge of so many things I'm trying to learn that I'm finding myself confused or making errors that were obvious in retrospect fairly often.
And you know what? It's not so bad.
Some errors are embarrassing, some are ridiculous, some are obvious in hindsight. But a lot of things are falling into place too. I still don't like making mistakes, and give the biggest effort I can—but often my biggest, focused effort isn't good enough when I'm pushing the envelope.
But you know what? It's like, not much has changed. My life is the same life I had last month, except now I'm making more errors, and I'm also accomplishing a lot more stuff.
Maybe people don't do this because they make one error, and it kind of shocks them out of normal life. It gets easier. I keep trying to write down six things at the end of every day to do the next day, and then not doing them all the next day. But I'm doing a hell of a lot more than I was. Eventually I'll start going for six for six more frequently.
I'm trying to do some really tricky stuff with my new business where most people in the business have 20+ years of experience, which I obviously don't have. I keep making errors. I mean, I'm not trying to, but there's lots of things to figure out. It's OK though, I'm learning a ton. I kind of dig it. The failure is less making me cringe and more making me shake my head and roll my eyes at myself. It's pretty good.
I'm pushing the boundaries on my writing, getting lots of feedback from people. Trying to find the right mix of entertaining, thought provoking, connecting with people, slightly provocative, not too offensive, etc. Hard mix to find. Before, I would write too timidly, boring and safe. It's gotten a lot more entertaining, but I'm making more mistakes too. But it's not so bad. Maybe it's even good in a way. I kind of almost dig it, all the errors are helping me figure out where the line is. I think most people are miles away from the line their whole life.
When's the last time you tried something, gave it your best effort, and it fell apart? If it was happening more often, would you also be succeeding more? What do you really lose when things go wrong? Pride? Your will's pretty strong, though, right? You'd survive if you made a screwup, yes? I'm thinking—fail more. It's not so bad. Succeed more too. Succeeding is good.
How Do I Write So Much, You Ask? Well, Glad You Asked
A few of my friends—three friends, to be exact—mentioned to me that I write a heck of a lot on here and they're impressed. I have convinced the ultra-smart Sami Baqai to start blogging, and he just got the holy-shit-this-is-hard-I'm-overwhelmed feeling. Ah, yes, I have been there Sami. Perhaps I can share some thoughts.
First and foremost, I am a huge devotee of the Equal-Odds Rule. As far as I know, I'm the only person talking about it outside of academia. This Amazon review covers it pretty well:
"The equal-odds rule says that the average publication of any particular scientist does not have any statistically different chance of having more of an impact than any other scientist's average publication. In other words, those scientists who create publications with the most impact, also create publications with the least impact, and when great publications that make a huge impact are created, it is just a result of "trying" enough times. This is an indication that chance plays a larger role in scientific creativity than previously theorized."
So I read that, and I'm like—whoa. You know Neo in the Matrix? Whoa.
If you want to make excellent stuff, you need to make a lot of stuff.
If you want to make a lot of stuff, you'll make a lot of crap.
If you want to make excellent stuff, you need to make a lot of crap.
And my personal opinion here:
And that's okay, because you get judged by your best work, not your bad work.
At the risk of being honest, a lot of my writing is crap. I mean, it's okay, it's not totally stupid, but a lot of it is very "meh"—well, by my own estimation. But occasionally I really nail something, and that's what people are going to remember. My essay "A Lot of Victory is Just Walking Around" turned out to be a huge hit and got hundreds of visitors from people Facebook-liking it, when I just typed it up on the spur of the moment. I thought it was good, but nothing crazy revolutionary—I was talking about noticing where businesses are in certain areas, and what businesses are missing that you could potentially build. I talked about putting a premium mechanic shop in an upscale district of Hong Kong I walked through, or opening a coffee chain in Cambodia. People loved that, I got so many compliments and lots of new visitors, many of whom stuck around and are still readers. In retrospect, I guess yeah that was a good essay. But it only happened because I wrote some very just-okay essays too.
Alright, but let's talk nuts and bolts more. Three things we've already covered this essay:
1.) I believe in the Equal-Odds Rule, which states roughly that a creator can't entirely control the quality of their output. In order to do high impact excellent work, you have to do a lot of work, which includes low impact not excellent work.
2.) I think as long as you're not doing life-or-death stuff, it's okay to put out low quality work. Well, not really. I'm kind of a perfectionist. What I actually mean is you're going to be a bad judge of how good your own stuff is, especially if it's creative work. Don't put out anything wrong or terrible or lazy, but if something is okay and you gave it your best, put it out. People might like it, or might not, but you probably won't be able to know in advance.
3.) You'll get judged by your best work. I've written up at least 150 articles over the last four months. If I want to present my writing to someone, I'll link to the best 10-20 and get evaluated on those. If I'm pitching something really important, I can always go edit and polish an even better version.
This is big stuff. This is the mental side of it. I happen to know how good Sami's writing is, because he and I swap emails and share ideas. We connected originally from Hacker News, and he's a super-sharp guy, very multi-disciplinary bright. But Sami obviously has some issues with putting crap out into the world. He doesn't want to do it. Well, Sami, do you want to do great work or not? You're going to have to put some crap out to do great work. I know, it's hard. It sucks. Mind you, I don't want to put crap out. It's just, that's the Equal-Odds Rule, which I am a believer in.
Alright, nuts and bolts for real this time.
4.) I commit to doing it every day, every single day no matter what.
5.) My audience is whoever likes it—the site is written for me. If someone doesn't like it at this point in their life, they're not my audience for now.
6.) Extensive notes/backlog—quotes, stories, pictures, ideas. Lots of this.
7.) I accepted that I'm going to be judged. I don't love it, but I accepted it. It comes with the territory.
A few tactical thoughts:
8.) When you have a good idea, write it down. I have a "shorttermblog.txt" on the desktop of my laptop, and there's at least dozens of ideas written down in there. Sometime or other I'll talk about how Roman Emperor Septimus Severus made a huge mistake making his two sons Caracella and Geta joint-Emperors. Dude, Septimus, that never works…
9.) Have fun. I mean, really have fun. When I wrote an essay titled "Arguing With Peasants Shows a Lack of Self-Discipline," I thought to myself, "Do I really want to write that?" Am I going to get asked on some news interview sometime, "So, you think you shouldn't argue with peasants, do you?" in a really sanctimonious, judging tone that makes me look bad? I don't know, maybe. Probably? Whatever. It's actually how I think. I read some insight from economist Vilfredo Pareto about how the peasants never actually take control of the government, instead one elite uses the peasants to kill off the other elite, but the peasants themselves never take power. Reading that, a lot of things clicked. I said, "Ohhh, I shouldn't argue with peasants who believe they can really take power." A lot of peasants are backing their team—well, have fun in your new worker's paradise Socialist Soviet Republic. Idiots. Will I catch flak later because I shared my honest opinion about this? Maybe. But whatever, it's how I think. This is a relatively new feeling for me, in the past I always tried to be diplomatic, and now I'm more and more just saying what I'm actually thinking. It's actually really enjoyable.
10.) That leads me to the final point, which is you gotta remember, this is all a circus. Life is really a circus. Are you such a big deal that you can't be embarrassed, or make a mistake, or do something wrong? No, you're not. You're not a big deal. At least, I'm not a big deal. I'll say some stupid shit at some point, and get embarrassed, and look bad. Oh well. If things break the right way, I'll also found branches of science, inspire people, build amazing businesses, found charities that actually work, make art, fund art, fund science, build a virtuous international dynasty, and all sorts of other stuff. But if I try and fail? Well, whatever, I'm not such a big deal. I can be embarrassed. It's okay if I get something wrong or say something stupid. Most of what we obsess over is going to turn to dust anyways.
My favorite poem: Ozymandius,by Percy Bysshe Shelley:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
This is all coming down, man. Turning to dust. Life's a circus.
Now, some people have this attitude of, "Well, all this doesn't matter, so I'm just going to party, or do nothing, or whatever." Me? No way! I think, "Well, most of this doesn't matter, so I might as well found branches of science, do great works, build amazing things, make art, write, fund things, build things, fix things, serve people, and otherwise do amazing stuff."
I mean, why not, right?
On the tactical level, I'd strongly recommend committing to writing every day. Every single day, write something. Even something small. People liked "Sun Tzu says—Make It Look Easy" and that was just a short quote I picked up listening to the Art of War.
Look at my early posts, if you like. A lot of them aren't very good. But you start doing it every day, every single day, and you get better pretty quickly. You start noticing what people like, and tweaking your works, and it'll come. Just accept that your early work is going to suck, and even later some of your work is going to suck, and cherish every visitor. You'll suck and make crap for a while, and then you'll do good stuff, and in not-very-long you'll do some awesome stuff. Tone is hard to get, but it comes with time. Every single day is the way. Something, even just a quote. You'll find the theme later. Now, get started, eh?
The work you just completed is never your best possible work.
I had a wonderful evening tonight—a reader of the site visiting Saigon reached out to me, and we spent five hours having coffee and discussing philosophy, writing, history, traveling, government, business … amazing guy. Great conversation. Really enjoyed it, the time flew.
Now, I tell you—this is a guy with amazing creative ability and insights. He's spent a lot of time thinking about and researching and learning interesting things. He has a lot to share with the world.
Yet, he hasn't released most of the writing he's done. He's a writer, and I'm guessing quite a solid writer—he reads a lot, writes a fair bit, and is a clear thinker, and that combination lends itself to solid writing. I'm almost certain he can at least write well enough that the writing doesn't get in the way of the good insights, and he definitely has good insights.
But, he said to me—he's looking to create timeless, masterpiece-level work, like the literature he really admires most.
I think that's a tough thing to do, because of what I'm going to call "the creator's curse" -
The work you just completed is never your best possible work.
Doing anything of significant magnitude means you'll get better at your craft in the process. That means, as soon as you complete anything significant, you'll notice how you could have done it better.
This seems to hold true of anything significant.
Some endeavors mean you can't agonize after you finish. If you're putting on an event, it happens at a fixed time and place. After you throw the event, you realize all the things you could have done differently to do a better event, but you can't agonize over them—you just have to throw another event to put those ideas into motion.
But if you're writing, painting, programming, composing, designing, anything like that—you could keep refining your work and never release it, and the work would keep improving. Every time you do significant work, you learn lessons and see how the work you created could be better.
This excerpt from "Art and Fear" on codinghorror.com has burned the phrase "Quantity Always Trumps Quality" into my mind:
"The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot—albeit a perfect one—to get an "A".
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work—and learning from their mistakes—the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."
The answer, I think, is to stop comparing your work to the standard of perfection—which you'll never reach. Instead, start comparing your work to what else is potentially available. If what you're working on potentially fills a need by people that isn't totally fulfilled, then release it and let people start benefiting from it. You can make your next work better.
The work you just completed is never your best possible work.
It can't be your best possible work, because doing anything significant means you just learned new lessons. But that'll be true even if you go back and do it from scratch again. Release your work into the world, imperfect and all. Let it start fulfilling people's needs. Keep improving, and make your next work even better.
High Upside No Downside Has Practically *Zero* Risk. Why Don't We Do It? I Don't Know.
What are some suggested books on taking a risk?
Well, okay, for doing bigger projects read Getting Things Done by David Allen. That's probably the most important one. There are books that are more specific to whatever, but that's got a very solid general mix of how to break projects into things, get on top of everything, etc., etc., etc. If you're looking to do any kind of selling or anything where you face personal rejection, I'd recommend Brian Tracy's The Psychology of Selling audio which has some excellent insights.
But let's step back a minute, shall we? Let's look at risk.
There's no real risk to trying a high upside no downside endeavor.
I emailed Steve Jobs once. No reply. I emailed Larry Ellison once. No reply.
I admire both those guys a lot. So I sat and put together an email, took about 15 minutes of thinking what I wanted to put down, and I sent it.
No reply.
What'd I lose really? Nothin'. Nothing at all.
So why don't I make a habit of writing letters to people I respect and do it all the time?
Hell, I don't know.
Gandhi used to do that, even when he was a nobody. I read once that he frequently wrote 60+ letters per day. He wrote to anyone and everyone significant.
I could do that. Why don't I make a list of like 1,000 people I really admire, and write to three of them a day? I bet I'd connect with only a small fraction of them, but it'd be a lot.
But I don't. Dunno why.
There are tons of web services that offer free or near-free technology. You could start a blog for free, you could buy a cheap camera and start trying to build a photography portfolio almost for free, you could start a newsletter for free, you could open accounts at popular discussion sites for free and start contributing, you can get a free email account and reach out to people you admire, you could volunteer for civic organizations that are doing things you admire, you could start organizing some kind of local cultural event, you could put up a basic webpage offering some sort of consulting at some bargain rate with an explanation of why it's so cheap and then go hustle to get that work, you could volunteer to become a tester of some cool new technology that's understaffed, you could … .
You could do a lot of things. None of those have any real risk, except for wasting your time. But I bet you waste a hell of a lot of time doing stuff you know is pointless and know won't bring you any satisfaction and know won't advance you closer to the things that are meaningful …
… and yet …
I don't know, man. I wish I could tell you. I still grapple with it. You want recommendations? Alright, check out Getting Things Done and The Psychology of Selling. Also, Derek Sivers's book reviews (http://sivers.org/book) are all excellent—that's probably a good place to start if you're looking for business/social psychology/motivation/execution books.
But let's be real clear here. The risk? There's no risk. It's just … it's … no, I don't know, sorry. I wish I could tell you. The fact is, there are tons of projects that have basically no risk. In fact, shifting your time from watching random TV to trying to do something creative is almost a guaranteed win, because you would have just avoided having your mind rotted for however long. Even if you get no results, just attempting to do anything meaningful pays higher dividends than aimlessly channel surfing.
I don't know. I wish I had more answers. It's about identity or something. I don't know. I still grapple with it.
What about motivation?
Motivation is fleeting, but a general, slow trending upwards gets you there. There's no magical potion, you just kind of scrap and scratch and claw forwards, get a little better regularly, and that translates to being a lot better in not-too-long.
I'd like to be more expansive and prolific. I'm still not. But I guess you keep working at it, and eventually get there. Remember this though, at least intellectually—there's practically no risk. We all spend plenty of time with activities that give us a guaranteed zero.
Shifting that time to attempting something with a chance of zero or a chance of something fantastic is no risk. No risk. Remember that, at least intellectually. Emotionally seems to take longer unfortunately, but it's worth pursuing.
How to Become a Faster Decision Maker
How do you become a faster decision maker?
I could give you some tactical guidelines on this question—how do you become a faster decision maker?—but that's probably not the real question we're grappling with.
Is that the real question though? Make sure the underlying issue is not that you are afraid of failing.
No one likes failing. But intelligent people are sometimes terrified of it. So much so that they don't even realize that's what's going on.
I'm not being metaphysical here. I don't believe the universe vibrates things to you, or any such stupid nonsense shit like that. I'm talking plain old cause and effect behavioral things. I bet you don't want to look stupid, so you spend an extensive amount of time doing everything you can to not look stupid, and that's why everything takes so long.
Recently, I did something like 5x or 10x my productivity. Really, my logs of things I'm accomplishing now have around between five times and ten times as many entries in them. My everything has improved tremendously.
I'm also doing stupid shit about 3x more often than I used to. So, I'm accomplishing 500% to 1000% more stuff—life's amazing right now—but I'm making 300% more errors, mistakes, blunders, and feeling stupid.
Note, my error rate didn't go up 300%. My error rate actually went down. When you move fast, your decision making actually gets better, because you're constantly immersed in action. You pick up trends and patterns a little faster, and you wind up repeating processes that work. I'm doing stupid shit less often as a percent of my overall work. And yet, I'm doing 300% more stupid shit than I was before I sped up.
And you know what? It's arguably a net-emotional-drain. I feel worse about the mistakes I make than I do the gains I make. I feel worse at the blundered pitch than the successful sale. Isn't that silly?
I think that's most people. I overcome it with logic. I figure the quality of my life will rapidly trend upwards, and eventually the primitive emotional system that I've got will catch up with my high-level logical decision making and reasoning.
So that's the most important underlying thing:
1.) You decide to go faster because you'll do more meaningful things in your life.
2.) You accept that you'll make more errors overall if you do more things.
3.) You know that'll feel bad for a while, because humans are usually more loss-averse than gain-oriented.
4.) You realize that your error rate will actually go down.
5.) You figure that your emotional system will eventually catch up. And hey, if it doesn't, you'll at least have a ton more money you can go spend on hookers and things like that to make yourself feel better after a particularly tough day.
So that's the philosophical, high level of getting there. Some tactics would be in order, as well:
1.) Whenever you're doing something, define "adequately complete"—then ask, "What's the fastest way to adequately complete?" Then do that.
2.) After adequate, there's a whole no-man's-land of "slightly better but still not amazing"—don't bother going there. Get to adequate ASAP, and then either decide to go to the top of the game (like Apple's hardware) or just keep moving. "Slightly better" often takes twice as long, for 10% more gain.
3.) Consult, advise, or work for other people. It's damn near impossible to evaluate your own projects correctly—you get emotionally attached, you get stupid, you get blindsided. This still happens to me. I'll probably do consulting forever, just so I'm working with other people and can be more clear-headed than when I'm doing my own thing. Whenever you give great advice to someone else about how much time to put into something or their decision making choices, write a note in your journal or diary and refer to it later when making the same decision.
4.) Additionally, this is why executives and big companies hire consultants. So someone less emotionally attached can tell them what to do. It doesn't always work, but that's a big part of why they do it.
5.) You can get a free version of consulting by laying out your requirements and choices to an intelligent colleague, and asking what you should do. Then just do it.
6.) Increase your schedule or move up your deadlines so you must get things done faster, and you will. This quote from the "You and Your Research" talk by Richard Hamming at Bell Labs, 1986, is relevant:
"I am an egotistical person; there is no doubt about it. I knew that most people who took a sabbatical to write a book, didn't finish it on time. So before I left, I told all my friends that when I come back, that book was going to be done! Yes, I would have it done—I'd have been ashamed to come back without it! I used my ego to make myself behave the way I wanted to. I bragged about something so I'd have to perform. I found out many times, like a cornered rat in a real trap, I was surprisingly capable. I have found that it paid to say, "Oh yes, I'll get the answer for you Tuesday," not having any idea how to do it. By Sunday night I was really hard thinking on how I was going to deliver by Tuesday. I often put my pride on the line and sometimes I failed, but as I said, like a cornered rat I'm surprised how often I did a good job."
So, them's some tactics. But again, you've just got to become comfortable with failing more often. Your failure and error rate will actually go down if you become a faster decision maker, but the total number of errors will obviously go up, so you accept that. It's the price to moving 5x to 10x faster in your life. But man, it's amazing moving so fast, even if failing feels bad in the moment.