Part 5 of Aaron Swartz’s Raw Nerve series. Raw Nerve on read+reflect.
To understand experts, folks studied them. It turned out that there were two classes of experts: one set that were actually experts and that could prove it to you (like chessmasters, who could show you by beating you), and experts that weren’t actually experts (pundits that weren’t better than “everything will stay the same”, or therapists that weren’t any better than the patient simply talking to someone, anyone).
So why are they different? The real experts engage in deliberate practice, where they do something, get immediate results from it, and change course accordingly. Pundits can’t do that since they’re predicting things over a long period of time, even though they try to attach qualifiers like “this thing I’m punditing will come true if, and if, and if”.
Many ambitious people fall into this trap, by picking huge challenges and chipping away. But over time, it’s kind of a joke: picking a hard problem is actually very easy, because you can put off the illusion of making progress without doing so. “It’s such a hard problem, but I’m making progress.”
So we have to set up small challenges along the way. Can my writing change the world? Start with your friends. Can I write software to change how people think and make money? Start with a few people and make a few dollars.
Self help books are interesting because it’s difficult to convince people to take their advice. It’s hard to persuade people. And when people read the books, they think “whoa, that’s great!” and not change their lives at all. Chris MacLeod calls this “epiphany addiction”, to be addicted to having epiphanies but not learning from them.
“Each time they feel like they’ve stumbled on some life changing discovery, feel energized for a bit without going on to achieve any real world changes, and then return to their default of feeling lonely and unsatisfied with their life. They always end up back at the drawing board of trying to think their way out of their problem, and it’s not long before they come up with the latest pseudo earth shattering insight.”
So pick something that you might fail at, and try to succeed at it.
Reality is painful — it’s so much easier to keep doing stuff you know you’re good at or else to pick something so hard there’s no point at which it’s obvious you’re failing — but it’s impossible to get better without confronting it.
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One of the less to-the-point articles in the Raw Nerve series, but I still think it has some use. The idea about deliberate practice and experts is a fascinating one. I recently read a book called The Inner Game of Tennis, which talks about deliberate practice and letting yourself learn tennis naturally by getting feedback. In addition, there was also an article from the other day that skateboarders are so good at what they do because of the constant feedback they get from learning.
So it seems like Aaron is saying that many people pick big goals and make the illusion of chipping away at them. Yes. And the way we prevent that is to set up smaller goals that are scaled-down versions of what we’re trying to achieve. Double yes. They are milestones that lead us to solidify the concept of “this idea will work” (or not).
And I definitely know where “epiphany addiction” comes from. And how it feels. I did do that for a while. But now I try to apply what I learn to my life, a big one being Zen Habits’ The Intentional Life. It’s one thing to read and learn; it’s a whole different thing entirely to apply.
And read+reflect is a big part of it for me.
Part 4 of Aaron Swartz’s Raw Nerve series. Raw Nerve on read+reflect.
Exercise is painful, and if we set out to simply avoid pain, we’d never exercise. But we keep exercising because we know in the long run that exercise is positive and makes us healthier and whatnot.
That’s a big difference, because this long-term thinking allows us to push through the pain, and the pain almost becomes pleasure—when we encounter pain, we know we are getting better.
Psychological pain is like that too. Things we don’t want to think about, things we don’t want to deal with, the most important ones seem to be the ones we avoid since they’re painful. With those things, the stakes are high and we try to avoid dealing with them.
He quotes Ray Dalio:
It is a fundamental law of nature that to evolve one has to push one’s limits, which is painful, in order to gain strength—whether it’s in the form of lifting weights, facing problems head-on, or in any other way. Nature gave us pain as a messaging device to tell us that we are approaching, or that we have exceeded, our limits in some way. At the same time, nature made the process of getting stronger require us to push our limits. Gaining strength is the adaptation process of the body and the mind to encountering one’s limits, which is painful. In other words, both pain and strength typically result from encountering one’s barriers. When we encounter pain, we are at an important juncture in our decision-making process.
So, instead of avoiding pain, realize that it makes us stronger. And when we encounter pain, it’s another chance for us to get stronger. And when we push through pain, we’re getting stronger.
In agile software development, there’s an idea which is: if it hurts, do it more often. Used herein is the example of merging code in software, where two different people worked on it. If we leave it for last and procrastinate the merge, it’s a huge ordeal which cyclicly gets more and more postponed. Agile says: do it more often. And a hundred micro-merges is less painful than one mega-merge.
So, don’t run from the pain. What really makes us anxious is the important things that trigger a fight-or-flight response. Instead of running from the pain, see it as an opportunity to get better and stronger. See the pain as a long-term pleasure. Start small, and just think about what causes you pain at first, then figure out how to attack it.
Next time you start feeling that feeling, that sense of pain from deep in your head that tells you to avoid a subject — ignore it. Lean into the pain instead. You’ll be glad you did.
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Reflection
Leaning into the pain is an extension of the idea of getting out of your comfort zone. The only way that we develop is when we go outside our comfort zone. And naturally, like Ray says, it causes pain. But the pain should be an indicator that you’re really outside of your comfort zone.
This “juncture in our decision-making process” that we encounter when we encounter pain is essential: it is the fork in the road where we decide whether or not to go through with it all. When we feel a bit of the pain that accompanies the pursuit of the task at hand.
I’ve been trying to adopt this idea for the past six or seven months of traveling. I think that we have to have a balance of facing pain and enjoying pleasure, but we should be leaning in one direction or another. I picked facing pain. And here and there, now and then, I decide to go to that city that I’m a bit scared of going to. Do that 6-hour hike that I know will wreck me. Go and socialize when I’m not feeling totally there.
And it’s such a huge part of why I’ve been so happy with my travels: because those things that were painful to do have also turned into the most fulfilling things that I’ve done.
Pain is an indicator that something outside the ordinary is going on. When you’re pursuing something new, it indicates that you’re stepping outside of your comfort zone. And we should be making a habit out of recognizing when we feel this pain and accept it, and even let it push us forward.
In general, I think we should cultivate a habit of being more accepting of pushing forward. We don’t have to do it every second of every minute of every day—we lose comfort, which I think is important—but we should also make sure that we are actually regularly moving forward. And maybe then, if we do that, and if we lean into the pain, we can spend time becoming better people instead of running away from the important things we don’t want to face.
Part 3 of Aaron Swartz’s Raw Nerve series. Raw Nerve on read+reflect.
Semmelweis, a doctor’s assistant in Vienna, introduced handwashing as a way to reduce childbirth mortality rates—as much as 18% to 2%… to 0%. Yet, he was attacked by doctors and people published works against him, leading to him going crazy and being committed to a mental institution, while mothers were dying due to the terrible hygiene he was trying to change.
People don’t like to hear bad news of themselves. We do things and then we justify those things that we did, even if they were bad. “We hate hearing bad news about ourselves so much that we’d rather change our behavior than just admit we screwed up.” Our friends don’t give us bad news either, worried about the social repercussions of doing so.
But to improve ourselves, we need to look at ourselves objectively. What if those doctors admitted their wrongdoing? Instead of being ridiculed and disgraced, they would be respected for doing the right thing. (And killing less people is indeed the right thing.) Aaron cites examples from different sources, from Oprah to JFK, to your own boss.
We are more satisfied when people are true to us. A boss taking responsibility instead of blaming others; a doctor fessing up than covering it up.
But we don’t naturally want to see ourselves objectively. We like to accentuate the good and hide the bad under the rug and rewrite our histories. The thing is, we only know our own realities, our own histories. We see exactly what we do and the results, and we justify those results from what we do. But, when we see others, we just see the results.
Because of this, and because we know our own history and context, it’s difficult to look at ourselves objectively since we always try to justify the things that we did.
When we screw up, it’s for a reason. When other people screw up, it’s because they’re screwups.
Aaron’s methods for looking at oneself objectively:
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Reflection
Looking at yourself objectively is critical. We all like to kid ourselves and do exactly what Aaron mentions: being a revisionist and justifying everything that we do. It’s hard to get out of this mindset, but it’s essential.
When we look at ourselves objectively and honestly, we stop cheating ourselves and thinking that we do everything the right way or that our reasons are sufficient for what we did. We identify what we really are, and allow ourselves to change. If we think we’re all perfect, we can’t change at all.
Maybe another way is, when we think we did something correctly, simply consider the case that we didn’t. This might lead to lots of OCD-like thinking, but it’s something that might work.
We should be doing this regularly. We should have a practice to constantly see ourselves objectively. And maybe we should work this in our life, so that we can perhaps automatically see ourselves objectively. (But that might be taking it too far.)
Related: The idea that it is positive to be honest with everyone and confess everything when you’ve screwed up is an interesting one. That means that we have a certain disposition to honesty, a quality of honesty that we see as important. And even when people let us down, like, say, Oprah and her incident with defending James Frey, their actions show us that they are honest and we can trust them in the future. They make mistakes like us, but the underlying fact that they were trustworthy and honest about it is incredibly important and respectable, since that honesty would underlie their actions, whereas mistakes are just things that happen at times that we are all susceptible to. Whereas, if Oprah refused to believe she was wrong, her reputation would be damaged because that suggests that she has a disposition to not be honest and not accept the cold, hard facts, breaking our trust with that person. Just an interesting thought.
Part 2 of Aaron Swartz’s Raw Nerve series. Raw Nerve on read+reflect.
Carol Dweck, in a study, gave children puzzle after puzzle to solve, increasing in difficulty. The subjects fell in two categories: kids that weren’t successful in solving them, who said that they were too hard and gave up, and kids who were successful, who loved the failure they were experiencing, and kept going at it.
Dweck called the group that gave up fixed mindset individuals, and the group that persisted growth mindset individuals.
In the fixed mindset, success comes from proving how great you are. Effort is a bad thing — if you have to try hard and ask questions, you obviously can’t be very good. When you find something you can do well, you want to do it over and over, to show how good you are at it.
In the growth mindset, success comes from growing. Effort is what it’s all about — it’s what makes you grow. When you get good at something, you put it aside and look for something harder so that you can keep growing.
Fixed-mindset people feel smart when they don’t make mistakes, growth-mindset people feel smart when they struggle with something for a long time and then finally figure it out. Fixies try to blame the world when things go bad, growthers look to see what they can change about themselves. Fixies are afraid to try hard — because if they fail, it means they’re a failure. Growthers are afraid of not trying.
Growth mindset folks found the problem as an opportunity to learn, develop, and improve themselves. And Dweck found this in many different realms, like in love, business, and sports.
And Dweck found that we could change our mindset, by focusing on what we did rather than what we were: “Even small interventions — like telling students they were doing well because they tried hard, rather than because they were smart — had huge effects.”
Aaron, when he read this, already knew this. But he also realized that there are things that he is also has a fixed mindset about. His main one was the introversion/extroversion problem, where he identified himself as an introvert. But really, growth can be made there too.
But as I’ve grown, I’ve found that’s hardly the end of the story. I’ve started to get good at leading a conversation or cracking people up with a joke. I like telling stories at a party a story or buzzing about a room saying ‘hi’ to people. I get a rush from it! Sure, I’m still not the most party-oriented person I know, but I no longer think we fit into any neat introversion/extroversion buckets.
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Reflection
The dichotomy between the fixed minset and a growth mindset is a real one. I think we all subconsciously understand this: that we sometimes do want to go outside our comfort zone and develop, but we’re held back by the fixed mindset. Sometimes we know this is happening. Sometimes we don’t.
But it bears repeating that you’re neither only a fixed mindset or a growth mindset person. We have different mindsets for different things. Introversion, for me, is also something that I previously saw as a fixed thing, but throughout the past six months of traveling, I know that’s not the case. I changed that, and changed for the better. Relationships, for me, is something that I’m still stuck in a fixed mindset on, but it’s slowly changing.
What we need to do is know when we’re having a fixed mindset about something, and persuade ourselves, if it’s the right time, to adopt a growth mindset about it.
I think we can do that by changing our mental script1 when we give up. When we feel like we want to give up on something or just accept things the way they are, we should inject the idea of “well, maybe I’m having this fixed mindset about this, and I should be focusing on growing. Should I take this opportunity to grow instead?”
I wonder how well that mental re-scripting might work. I think I’ll try it.
(Fascinating thought: do we actually have these subconscious fixed mindsets? That we avoid doing things because we don’t think we can do them, but we don’t even consciously acknowledge our decision to avoid them? Can this method fix that?)
1 In true CBT form. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that CBT doesn’t change the underlying problem, but it’s somewhere to start. And perhaps adopting this script, in this situation, could lead to a change in the root cause, which is a tendency to have a fixed mindset.
Part 1 of Aaron Swartz’s Raw Nerve series. Raw Nerve on read+reflect.
It starts with the idea that people are decision engines. We take a situation, apply what we know and our experience, and then make a decision and move forward. We make decisions on what to do during the day, who to talk to, whether we should eat well or not, and many other things.
Aaron then realized that, instead of making decisions at the micro level, we should be taking a step back and making them more at the macro level. Making new options, instead of choosing between some. Fixing the underlying problem, instead of deciding to avoid it. (Kind of like root cause analysis and then solving the underlying problem, using methods like Five Whys. —M)
The technique of taking a step back was useful. What other techniques are out there to make our lives better?
Self-help and self-improvement aren’t very useful to tackle the real problems (though there are some resources that are really good—rare, but out there —M) and blogs that try to do life-hack type material that isn’t very insightful (also disagree, see Leo Widrich’s blog —M).
So, Aaron wants to start puling together some life betterment things from various sources and writing about them in his series Raw Nerve.
Reflection
I’m in full support of the examined life, to think about what we do every day as we live and how we can improve it.
As a programmer and startup founder, we are constantly improving our code and our businesses to better meet what the world needs. Why aren’t we constantly improving ourselves to be more effective at work, socializing, health, and study?
There is a growing body of knowledge in ‘life improvement’—something that still needs a name that isn’t tacky and burdened through time like self-help—that seems to be starting to be developed through independent blog posts. Some of my favorites include Leo Widrich’s blog, which talks about his experience and efforts to improve his life through habits and techniques; Ribbonfarm, which attempts to study how we behave as humans in various situations, like society; and Less Wrong, which aims to make us into more rational people, affecting our decisions and how we conduct our lives.
Yet, there is not yet any central place where we can talk about these things, like how we can improve our lives. This ‘movement’ of sorts has grown out of the lifehack category, but lifehacks have been burdened by overuse of tools and programs to improve our lives.
I think tools and programs aren’t the primary way we will improve ourselves. I think the underlying thing is a purpose or reason, or an understanding (such as ‘better health leads to a better life’) on top of which we can build habits and techniques.
I want to build a central place to discuss the idea of improving ourselves and optimizing our lives, but it’s not so much a technical problem as a conceptual one: what is this whole idea of improving ourselves? Can we articulate the idea to people who haven’t encountered it before?
Life is the only thing that is constant during our time here on Earth. It’s why I’m building Ambition, to allow us to track our progress in life, with our habits and goals. It is essential to study it and make ourselves better at it, so we can enjoy it and lead a more fulfilling life.
