I Will Not Die

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I’m not going to try to impress you with some startling revelation about the solution to the contradiction in the title of this article. You’re much too smart for that. The contradiction is solved the moment we realize that we’re talking about the difference between distance and time. When in pursuit of our personal goals, we are all wired to take the shortest path. However, we’ve all at some point or another, found that the shortest path in terms of distance sometimes takes longer than we’d like and we’re always left wondering whether any number of much “longer paths” would have taken us less time to get where we were going. This “wondering” is the cruel joke of a world where none of us has perfect or even remotely close to complete information. In other words, we can never take all the paths beforehand and know which one is best before we the take the path we take. But, because we are (mostly) rational beings, we can take some pretty kick-ass countermeasures. I fully expect some objections to at least some of these countermeasures. In fact, I had some objections of my own while I was writing about them. Recognizing this in advance caused me to want to address these beforehand. However, all of the objections will be similar in that they each detect that the countermeasures are not always palatable, or fully desirable. In other words, we might object because the solution isn’t what we want. But, in each case (”in a perfect world”), what we might want is so distant from reality that we can hope all day long for solutions that are in harmony with our perception of “goodness” and we’ll ruin every opportunity we come across because the solution we wanted never came our way. In other words, if for some strange reason you simply despised breathing oxygen, you could stop if you really want to, but the world just doesn’t work that way. You’ll die trying to avoid the natural fact that we must all breath the same kind of air.

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Tom is an accountant for a firm who has a position open that Tom feels he is qualified for. The position would be a significant promotion for him. He is one of the hardest working people at his firm, he shows up on time every day, has fully developed accounting skills, has a good relationship with his superiors and has, time and again, proved himself by demonstrating initiative. In between now and when the promotion is to be filled two months from now, he continues to try to impress his boss, he works particularly hard on his assignments, and he reflects on his traits and how they will benefit his appeal for the upcoming position. What Tom is doing is attempting to take the shortest route. There is a job in front of him and he examines, with brilliant scrutiny, the most expedient way to that job. He doesn’t get the job. Tiffany, that @!#%! blond eye-candy, who applied last-minute and who took no time in preparation, gets the job because she has a terrific backside.

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Margaret is running for election for mayor in her hometown. In her mid-forties, she has a long history of business leadership experience where she was able to demonstrate her skills as a prudent and effective manager. She also has a long history of demonstrable financial management successes which show she can effectively manage public funds. Late in the election, a previously unknown candidate enters the race. This cocky kid in his late twenties is swept into office because of a shiny new law degree, polished teeth and grandiose promises made to the local citizens. His margin of victory is so great that her campaign ends as an embarrassing disgrace. Margaret, like Tom, saw the goal and took the shortest path but was blindsided by a completely unanticipated failure that went against all reason.

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Robert, a very simple rural man, has always had a dream to own his own business. Over the course of many years, he has steadily grown his business’ market share, revenue and profit margin. It’s taken a significant portion of his adult life to achieve the many successes he has gotten so far and he is almost at the point where he can quit his “day job” so he can pursue his dream completely unfettered. All his planning and many efforts, all the sleep-deprived nights and all the sacrifices are about to finally pay off. He is almost completely free. All he needs now to secure his hopes decisively is a medium-sized business loan that will ensure his long-term business survival. But every single bank denies him. They are all leery of him because he has little formal education and cannot articulate his business plan in a way that can make them feel he is low risk. They all get the impression that he has a child’s mind and couldn’t possibly have the kind of business acumen that would make for a solid, low-risk investment. Robert, like the others, saw his goal and moved directly in the direction of that goal, but didn’t see the cliff between the two.

*****

In each of these cases, we see the same kind of stunning and seemingly inexplicable turnout of events that makes us gnash our teeth at life. These are the moments when life “just isn’t fair” or “doesn’t make sense.” It also really pisses us off. These are the moments when, contrary to all our arithmetic, two plus two turns out to be five. But we know it should be four! The good news is that the turnout of events is always explicable. When the turnouts seem inexplicable, it always means we simply did not have enough information. Sometimes the best qualified people do not get the promotions because sometimes people responsible for making hiring decisions would rather look at a nice piece of tail than have the most competent person doing the job. Sometimes charisma wins elections, because well, er, people who vote, like that sort of thing. And sometimes bankers judge risk by looking someone up and down instead of looking only at the numbers.

I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback in some e-mails about the little phrase I recently threw out about Harvard in this article (which went something like this): Harvard doesn’t increase your chances of becoming wealthy, being wealthy increases your chances of going to Harvard. That hit a lot of people just how I wanted it to. For some people, it was a nice little illumination on the fact that wealth breeds wealth. It was a scalpel which revealed the bare truth about things, even though we all would want to believe that the best students deserve the best institutions. Reality does not always confirm that desire. It doesn’t mean that we should throw up our arms and give up on the world, the world is what we make it, but it does remind us that we have to work with what we have. Even if what we have is bosses with sex drives, smiling but unskilled politicians and banks that lend money based on the suit you wear and the story you can tell.

So what does all this mean? It means that we are wired for two plus two but life is a complex multi-dimensional calculus with regions so complex that when we try to understand it comprehensively, we end up distilling out half of the useful information. Two plus two makes sense to us because all of us, when doing math on that scale, have perfect, undeniable information. We have everything we need to know to make a perfect choice. But as we get more complicated, we have to dismiss more and more until eventually, the choices we make are based on very incomplete data. We lead ourselves to believe that he who has the best skill set should get the job, and forget that hiring managers are animals. Two plus two equals five for those who missed the one.

So when I talk to people, and I hear stories of disappointment where failures similar to the illustrations I provided earlier abound, I try to remind them that there are fully rational reasons for the outcomes we all witness. How this is related to each of us is this: in the world, the real world, not the ideal world, but the one that’s really here, people who succeed in life succeed often because of many more reasons than we’d like to think. A bitch? Yes. Certainly. Vehemently. Manageable? Definitely.

Here’s how to “accidentally” guarantee that you succeed

You’ve probably noticed that some people who succeed seem to do it effortlessly. And no matter how hard you try and push and pry, even when you do succeed, it feels harder to you than it looks to them. We need more information. Sometimes people succeed even when they don’t look like they’re trying, as if their successes are a string of fortunate accidents. There are no accidents; we just need more information. That information comes to us in the form of remembering that in the wholly human world, we have to acknowledge all things human. In a perfectly rational world, the best person should get the best job, but in our world, the person who gets the best job is the person who is perceived as being someone who will do the best, and that perception can be way out of sync with your rational expectations. And sometimes that has nothing to do with the technical feats they can manage. I encourage you to look at it this way: let’s say we have two people, one who is technically proficient, but lacking other traits, and another the opposite, who lacks technical prowess, but has other human traits that allow him to succeed. There may always be perfectly acceptable “battles” being waged between these two. The first can always say that they “know” what they are doing, the second that they can handle people better. And they would each have a good point and they would each deserve to succeed but for different reasons. But what if there was really a third person who could do both? That’s my challenge to each of you. If you can gain many of the various “soft traits” of this world and combine those with as many “hard traits” as possible, you would be a force to be reckoned with. It would be astonishingly difficult to fail at anything you set off to do. You would be a wrecking ball on two legs smashing your way along to your dreams. You would be the mix of accidental success and precision guided missile.

Technical skill set

Don’t have one? Oh God. Start here then. Get extremely good at something. Anything. Become a good writer, get good at math, lurn how to spell, learn a programming language, foreign language or learn about accounting or how to teach kids or fix cars. Something. You do not need college necessarily. Yes, it helps, but start with the local library. Free. Free. Free. Put down the remote. Spend less time reading blogs. Oh wait, er I mean, other blogs.

Appearance

None of us wants to be a model. (Ok, maybe I want to be a model ). But you definitely don’t need to be one. But, if you look unkempt, those technical skills won’t help you much. Dress good enough so that you feel good about yourself. Out dress people around you. Press your shirts. I’m not sure what Americans are thinking sometimes, but I’m really astonished at how sloppy we can dress. The joke used to be that you could walk into a Wal-Mart at two o’clock in the morning and see people in their pajamas. Now you can see them at noon. If you cannot afford a brand new spanking wardrobe, or don’t want to (and I’m both of these), you can find extremely high quality clothing on the cheap in two primary places: clearance sections of retailers’ websites or if you’re not “above” them, thrift store like Goodwill. I buy $60-80 slacks there for about $3-4 bucks. Keep your hair cut and get a little sun.

Education

Most of the people who read this blog are generally well educated (especially the Europeans, Canadians and Australians who stop by), so I won’t elaborate on this too much. But even if you’re well educated (again, like me) what are you doing to further that education? Are you reading more useful books? Are you gaining new knowledge every chance you can? Again, you don’t necessarily need college here, but you can buy the textbooks if you’re looking for specific material. I’ve done this in the past with mathematics, and it’s helped keep my analytical neurons firing even when I’m not steeped in some kind of challenging subject matter.

Diplomacy

How do act in public? Are you gracious? Do you consciously afford conversation time to those you converse with, even if you don’t like what they’re saying or where they’re taking the conversation? Do you hold doors for people? Do you always smile in public? Do you think somewhat carefully about what you say to your audiences, and what their reactions might be? Do you have an obnoxious voice or laugh or other trait? Become a good diplomat. This will win you friends and allies.

Financial Might

Are your personal finances a wreck? If so, fix them. If you’re broke, it’s extremely easy to identify the cause, but it’s extremely difficult to admit that cause, which is why so many people endure the agony for so damned long. You either want things you cannot afford, and so are miserable, or you borrowed money to get things you couldn’t afford and, now faced with paying them back, are miserable. You must either make more money (second job is the fastest) or sacrifice things you want (and that goes for either the ones you want now or wanted that you already got and now owe for). The biggest problem for people is usually that they wait a very long time to just admit the error. Accept the error and take correcting actions. If your finances are rock solid, are you making them even better? One good litmus test is this: are they good enough that you’d brag about them to others? If not, try to get them there and see what happens. You’ll probably brag a little about them. You don’t have to be a jerk about it, but if you make it known that you’re doing well, you will gain stature and respect from people. You will appear to be successful and people will instinctively gravitate to that success. Here is a great example of where success breeds success. Do you get it? Your kids might be going to Harvard…

Health

Are you an invalid? I hope not. If you are sedentary, you probably look it. Again, not to bash Americans here, but we’ve long since begun to enjoy the success train in the wrong ways. I can’t blame people in other countries for being aghast. I mean damn, I’m aghast. Again, with this one, it’s best to be as rational as possible. Just accept the fact that we are all wired from birth to demand food. We were wired this way in a time period when we could all die from starvation. In the presence of an abundance of food now, we tend to overeat. It’s just a fact. Accept the fact and decide to acknowledge that we have to now fight our instinctual demand for food. Try a fast sometime. I’ll do more soon (and have some statistics this time). Also, are you exercising? Are you active? Do you weight lift, bike, run and have lots of sex? If not, this one’s easy too. No daunting obstacles like college tuition to overcome. Just step outside and move. Once your body is in shape, think how you will look to other people. Again, the rational route here is pretty telling. We evolved in an environment where we ran, hunted and worked all damned day every day. Now we spend hours in cubicles. Not so good. Ideally, you should have little fat on your body and be muscular (if male, of course). How will people treat you in an interview when faced with someone fit and energetic?

Ambition

Have you set out attainable goals that you feel so passionate about that you wake up every day with a fire burning? Or do you wake up dreading the commute and next month and next year. You must find your passion. If you expect only to wake up, work, sleep, eat and poop, what do really expect you’ll get in life? Instead, if you set your eyes on a prize you really, really want and you want it so badly every day, and you’re actively working toward that end, you’ll wake up every day eager to keep on going. For me, I so strongly want to contribute to an academic field that I have that passionate vision which guides me and calls to me all throughout each day. Like a love affair beckoning. Can you guess how I feel? Do you think I’m eager?

Cosmopolitan

Are you cosmopolitan? Are you almost equally comfortable in many different settings? Are you “at home” rubbing elbows with the executive staff at your work, and could you, ten minutes later, drop some beers over a pool table with a friend from college? If you can develop an innate sense of the chameleon, you will be acknowledged in more places. You can expand your territory and your comfort zones. You can do business everywhere you travel to.

Self-confidence

Do you have self-confidence? You never need to work on this one directly. I promise you that. Because, if you’re a technically proficient, good looking, well-dressed, well-groomed, educated, diplomatic person with good finances who has a well formed body, an ambitious gleam in your eye who can navigate to any corner and be at home, I’m willing to bet that you’ll feel pretty damned good about yourself.

Now try to get that promotion. I’d like to stress that these traits are not all encompassing, but rather, just some I got to thinking about for this article. And we all probably have some of these traits to some degree or another. But the important thing I suggest is to persistently ask yourself, everyday, “What am I doing to improve my skills, appearance, education, etc?” If you constantly pay attention to and try to improve on, these traits, then when you choose your path and get going, you won’t likely be asking yourself if you might have missed something. I hope you enjoyed this article, and as always, feel free to invite your friends to become members of our community.

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Dereck :: Jun.11.2008 :: Motivation :: No Comments »

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