Uncommonly Connected and Compounding

Goals are not picking the best of every possibility in isolation. That is dreaming. You can close your eyes and visit various places instantaneously. You can explore parallel universes where you made different decisions, and outcomes were completely of your choosing. When you open your eyes, you must go from where you are. 

The more realistic goals are tiny. Small nudges from where you are. Shane Parrish suggests, “Ninety percent of success can be boiled down to consistently doing the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time without convincing yourself that you are smarter than you are.” 

You can build scripts, and behaviours, and habits, and flexible plans. You can be micro-ambitious with tiny goals that add up. Goals that are connected and compounding. 

Behavioural Finance looks at the idea of biases. Embodied shortcuts that help (or hinder) us in our decision-making. We don’t (and can’t) have full information, but must act anyway. Understanding your biases can help you tweak your micro-goals. Understanding your biases can help you see what you do for uncommonly long periods of time, rather than getting obsessed over things that come and go, and cancel out.

Give it Time

Beautiful Chaos

Even if you are micro-ambitious, you want to be able to keep momentum in the stuff you do. To be building on what you have done before. Constantly taking iterative steps. Trial and error. Learning, unlearning, relearning. 

We don’t know how the world and our path is going to play out. The information is not there. It is not that there is stuff you don’t know or that someone else knows and they need to tell you. You get to the point where you realise we are all experiencing the world in a different way. That is great. That is something to celebrate. It is okay. 

To empower others, we don’t have to go out and convince everyone to see the world in the way that we do. We do not have the capacity to understand the world. It is too complex. We don’t even experience the whole world. 

We experience a sliver of it. We get different information through touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. It is fun to imagine yourself as tiny or huge, and how the laws of physics would change. Not in their essence, but in how they relate to you... and how you experience and interpret the beautiful chaos.

Turbulence

 

Lightly Held

With lightly held detachment, you still care deeply and are involved, but you carry the sense that “this too will pass”. A single event/ project/ outcome does not define you. You are making a contribution to something that exists outside you. 

There can come a point where you can detach completely. A form of “earned selfishness”. Handing over when your individual part of the story is over and you are able to extract yourself. That is a very yogic approach. 

The yogis talk of life stages called ashramas. The four ashramas are: Brahmacharya (student), Grihastha (householder), Vanaprastha (retired) and Sannyasa (renunciate). At the end, you are connecting more deeply with the permanent part of who we are, when your temporary role has run its course. 

Detachment still allows you to be ambitious, in a micro-ambitious way. Small achieveable goals that add up. Capacity for small projects that you can wrap your head around. That is why we break things down into stories and categories that connect to how we understand. Little problems we can fix and move on to the next little problem. 

The more nimble you are, the more able you are. To adapt and adjust and accommodate the new problems and information that come in. 

Bold because Secure

We see based on the experiences we have had. We build an interpretation of the world. We filter the noise and interact with it as best we can. Which makes a feedback cycle essential. We can not help but constantly make mistakes unless we either don’t do anything, or don’t venture very far from what we know we can hold onto. Boldness is built on nurtured insecurities. Boldness is built on a capacity to not only confirm what you already know. With security and a feedback loop, we can act in micro-ambitious ways. Have a go. See what happens. If you have confidence that you have the capacity to unwind mistakes, depending on the unintended consequences, you can be more adventurous. If you are wrapped in fear, you will seek perfection that doesn’t exist, before you act. You will seek the correct way. If you accept that your way is just an interpretation, you can move. Embrace a sense of wildness, and diversity of attempts in which beauty exists. Where we can be open to the chaos of noise, silent periods, bright colours, dull colours, contrast, light, dark, and in all of that find the bits that resonate with us. 

Bold

(because you are secure)

 

Feedback Loop

Seek out mentors. Read stories. See what mistakes others have made. Be curious. Add a pinch of salt. Recognise that you cannot avoid constraints. You can only become more aware of them, dismantle some, and choose others consciously. You are not going to understand everything. That is fine. Every decision you make will close doors and open doors. That is fine. There is a balance between acceptance and constant learning. Returning to your purpose, your values, and self-reflection. Working on your feedback loop. Be micro-ambitious. Do stuff. Accept the world, deeply. That does not mean you are not trying to tweak and influence reality. But you need to be able to hold on to what your values are. What are your cornerstones? What is your story? What are your drivers? What are your self-imposed constraints? What are the rules you put in place for yourself to guide your decision-making? Come back to those anchors. Have people you trust that can tell you things that are hard to hear. Make sure you support their ability to tell you those things. Construct an environment in which you can thrive. 

Always Listening

 

See then Nudge

Acceptance is difficult. I have always been a bit of a “try hard”. That was what we called people at school who were constantly doing something. The implication being that you are trying to impress the teachers. Like the idea of a “Teachers Pet” or “Brown Nosing”.

The world is structured towards encouraging activity, and the conspicuous things that we can see. We look for cause and effect, so that we can control our environment. The assumption being that we are the reason for things, and knowledge will allow us to act with dependable outcomes. By acting, we further our goals. Which seems logical, and Cartesian. We think, therefore we are. Think then do. Try.

Through Josh Waitzkin, and his book “The Art of Learning”, I was introduced to the idea of Wu Wei, which means action through inaction. You start by seeing things as they are, rather than living in our minds. Rather than living in how we want things to be. See then nudge. A less anxious way of engaging with the chaos.

Subtle Change

Stilling the waves of money anxiety starts with understanding your relationship with money. With the stories you tell yourself, and the daily practice you create around that. How you wake up. What you choose to do. How you choose to think. What new information you expose yourself to. What areas of embodiment you are exploring. The movement, you are creating. The flexibility, you are creating. The strength, you are creating. The control you have over how you move. Your autonomy. Your transitions.

Understand the situation that you are in, and the situation you want to be in. Understand the path, and the required skills and knowledge. That starts with paying attention to where you are, reflecting on it, and seeing what your choices are. In a way that you are fully present and able to grapple with that with a sparkle in your eye. To see a point in subtle change. To celebrate marginal progress that adds up. That powers small achievable steps every day.

Detail from "The School of Athens" Raphael

Euclid studying Change

In Power or Empower

If you want a problem to be solved quickly, all the decision makers need to be in one room with no distractions, and intimately involved in doing the work. If you want a problem not to be solved, make those doing the work write memos and get other people around a boardroom to make the decisions based on what is on that paper. There is deep irony in the loss of meaning around the word Capitalism. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is effectively a tearing down of the memo factory. Let decisions be made locally by those who they affect. Not in isolated bubbles with oceans between realities. Virginia Postrel vividly describes Tacit Knowledge (the stuff we know but cannot communicate) in the book which completely changed my mind about the desirability of benevolent dictators and central planning (“The Future and its Enemies”). The world is too complicated, ambiguous, and random to concentrate power. The way you build endurance, resilience, and creativity is by creating more decision makers. That means building buffers and engines of capital for everyone. It means letting other people make different decisions to you.

Stand Up

Part of my practice of Yoga has been reining in my inner competitive South African male. Cumulative hours of pre-Rugby match pep talks mean there is enough “Pick Me” and “Stand up and be counted” in my deep soaked scripts to power many Bobby Skinstad commentary sessions. Although the headstand is a big part of the Sivananda style of yoga I follow, it isn’t the point. Aggressively trying to get into postures leads to injuries. Instead, Tim Minchin style “micro-ambition” is better. Small, achievable, sustainable goals that build good habits. One step at a time. Slightly deeper. Slightly more relaxed. Stilling the waves of money anxiety starts with acknowledging where you are. Being aware. Then gradually building a practice.

Powering Creativity

Money is a blunt incentive. A way of getting commitment when you don’t have a deeper connection to the cause. Like salt, fat, and sugar in cooking, it is the easiest thing to grab at. To turn to more as the default answer. My preference is to get to a point where you take money off the table. If you think of money anxiety as temporary waves, used to push us one way or the other, then stillness allows you to focus on what is truly important and worth identifying with. You don’t want to identify with money. You do want to identify with your purpose. This means internalising disciplines. Internalising ambition. Internalising decision making. Creating buffers to absorb the waves, and engines to power your creativity.

Turbo Generator

Frogs Who Pay Attention

Leap-frogging is when you skip a step. Following Best Practice is when you look around the world, see who is doing well and who is doing badly, and pick the best way. When there are 7.8 Billion people on the planet, being obsessed with uniqueness is going to severely limit your options. If you are building a bridge, you don’t want a Contrarian Engineer. When you are stuck with a problem in a particular context, the world now offers natural experiments of every shape and size if you pay attention. What happens if you change the story? Micro-ambition is small, achievable goals. A Daily Practice is the habit of connecting incremental progress. Pay attention to other people’s stories. Listen. See. Not as a form of comparison. Instead as Bruce Lee said, to “Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.” Wealth and knowledge compound. But much of that knowledge is freely available to frogs who pay attention. Then jump.

Pay attention to leaping frogs

On Loop

I enjoy the series Westworld. It fits with my sense of how we live in “controlled hallucinations” at different levels of awareness. How much of our experience seems impacted by our founding stories, driving ambitions, and ingrained habits. Our loops. When my wife asks what I am doing today, I often respond that I am “On loop”. As a creature of habit, I really like the idea of micro-ambition. Building a daily practice I have confidence in. Where I feel like each day is a nibble forward. Not towards a specific goal. The world is too complex, ambiguous, and random for that. I don’t like the idea of the destination being more important than the journey. I prefer a process of story enrichment. Adding feedback to my loop. As quickly as possible. So today, builds on yesterday. Building endurance to create space for time. Building resilience to manage and thrive off the risks. Building creativity to gradually compound learning. Building my loop.

           

Möbius strip

Cornerstone Events

Autonomy and Consent are core values of mine. I believe we all have Cornerstone Events that colour the way we view the world. I was born in Apartheid South Africa. I was 14 when it ended. At the same time, my parents (and those of many in my school class) got divorced. My work life didn’t progress on the path I wanted it to, till I made a stab at self-determination. For the last four years, my wife and I have been going through Fertility Treatment. I had two surgeries to confirm that I have no soldiers. We had three unsuccessful IVF treatments with donor sperm. Huge existential questions about kids, no kids, adoption, risks, money, success, expectations. The degree of Righteous Indignation and Saviour Complexes I carry with me stems from these Cornerstones. How do you get to the point where you feel you are living life rather than life living you? Part of Autonomy and Consent has to be Acceptance and Surrender. Some things just are. No reason. No sense to be made. Then tweaked. So that every day carries some agency. Building on the day before. Building towards the next morning. Making meaning.

Fifteen Years

I am not afraid of hard. Hard is an incredibly sustainable competitive advantage. The first step of financial security is finding an income. To do that you need monetizable skills and knowledge. If someone promises you this in just 6 months, I’d take it with a pinch of salt. More realistic is probably 5 years to develop the skills and knowledge, five years to build a buffer and some Capital, and another 5 years for that Capital to just start learning to walk. If you have 6 months, I’ll have a beer and a moan with you. If you have 15 years, then we’re talking. What I am afraid of, is gambling. Hard, with the odds stacked against you. Hard, where you can have put the 15 years effort in and still be nowhere. That is why I prefer micro-ambition. Learning a little each day. More endurance. More resilience. More creativity. Developing a practice that you can have confidence in. Breaking hard down into little chunks. Then connecting each day to the next. Making a life out of those connections.

Think Smaller

Diversification is a recognition that there is both a good chance you are wrong about any decision, and a good chance that there is so much noise that whether or not you were right will never truly be known. There are Economies of Scale and Diseconomies of Scale. There are costs and benefits of Globalisation, and of Localisation. Advantages to detachment and broad framing, and details that are missed without focus and true commitment. No decision comes without unintended consequences. Micro-ambition is the idea of having small, achievable goals, that add up. Wu-Wei is the idea of action through inaction. That the true starting point is acceptance, and understanding, of how things are rather than how we want them to be. Nudging from there. Rather than arguing with people about finding one solution, in a theoretical imagined world, maybe we should start by finding the 5% of what they care about that we can support. Finding 5% of a potential solution ourselves, while allowing for a 95% chance that other people’s reality is not the same as ours. Creativity within substantial buffers, and with a foundation in the way the world is now.

Complex Web

What you see is not all there is. Even if you know more than the average bear. No one understands. No one can. We live in a complex web of relationships, where every action has knock-on effects and unintended consequences. In a pass-the-parcel economy where we live hand-to-mouth, there is reduced capacity to pause. The strength of a business to survive isn’t evident in the size of their offices, and the image of success presented by their sales staff. You have to look at the Balance Sheet. The Cash Reserves. The Cash Flows. The Pipeline of Sales. The endurance and resilience of their suppliers, customers, competitors, and regulators. The laws can change. The technology can change. The people involved can change. Sustainable Creativity doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It starts by shifting from a consumer mindset to a custodial one. How do you maintain awareness of a complex environment? Gentle trial and error with fire breaks and retreats for when you misstep. A balance of conserving what you love and chipping away at obstacles that aren’t completely understood.

Know you Know

Tacit Knowledge is the stuff we know without even necessarily knowing we know. It is near impossible to communicate, because it is embodied rather than conscious. We may even tell ourselves an incorrect story about why we are able to do something. Knowing how to do something, and knowing how you know how to do something, are different skills. Being able to put that into words that someone else understands and can replicate is, again, a different skill. “The Future and its Enemies” by Virginia Postrel was first published in 1998, but remains a timeless explanation of why decisions should be made where the knowledge is, and not around boardroom tables. The “Postrel Problem” meant when I was still working for a salary, I spent a large part of my time writing memos, emails, and justifications. I have loved been freed from my inbox. Free to experiment and learn, in a micro-ambitious trial and error way. Thinking big can forget the power in small. Thinking big is imposing. Thinking small is empowering.

Tell my Wife

Micro-Ambition

Micro-ambition may feel like giving up. There is less wow involved. It can appear almost like inaction. Micro-ambition is action through inaction. It starts with a complete acceptance of things as they are. With curiosity, patience, listening, questioning and engagement. Things do change all the time. Micro-ambition means you are deeply involved in that change because things change from where they are. Add time and allow the small to compound. Bill Gates says, “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years”. Work on your endurance so you improve the chance of having more time to have an impact. Work on your resilience so that things that matter don’t get knocked off track by things that don’t. Then add a little creativity to every day… every day.

Change a little

Add Time

Micro-ambition is the idea that we should have very small, very achievable, goals that add up. Sustainable change starts from where you are. Sustainable change compounds. Far more important than grand ideas is a real understanding of what is going on. An acceptance. An awareness of what the options are. Working on your Endurance is always important whatever happens. For change to compound, you need to ensure you stay in the game. Working on Resilience is always important *for* whatever happens. Any plan is made without knowledge of a future that is complicated, ambiguous, and random. An approach to micro-ambition is to develop a Creative Daily Practice. Always be learning. Always be doing something of value. Then add patience and time and the magic will happen.

Strength in Now

We often start with the destination in our planning. Dreaming of the type of future we want. Life has thrown me too many curveballs for that to be my approach. I am a bigger believer in strengthening the position I am in now. Strengthening my ability to (1) stay in the game for the long term, and (2) respond to the unexpected in a positive way.  Work on my endurance. Work on my resilience. That puts me in a better position to build a creative daily practice. Micro-ambitious plans that dream, but dream fuzzily. Dream in multiple directions. Dream without fixating. Constantly be learning, adapting, unlearning, building, and rebuilding. Bill Gates says, ‘most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.’ I believe that comes down to a little bit of creativity every day. Consistently compounding.

"Wanderer above a sea of fog"

Caspar David Friedrich