What Makes Money

Income and money operate at a very explicit level. Pay for what you see. Fully acknowledging what makes money and what doesn’t, and not using force to get your way, allows you to go deeper and wider. 

You can shift to embodied learning. To things we can’t explain. To the tacit knowledge that is held by people on the very front lines with zero distance from decision making. Knowledge built through immediate and repeated feedback cycles and real wrestling with real problems. Understanding that is impossible to pass up the chain. 

Research and development can take a lot of time and become a part of you. Where the payback is hidden. 

Competitive advantages I like are ones you can do in the open. In “The Art of Learning”, Josh Waitzkin talks about his jiu-jitsu teacher publishing his training videos. This surprised people, because he was freely giving away his secrets. His answer lay in his confidence that if you were concentrating on what he was doing, he would be a step ahead, because he had gone deeper. 

If you have to safely guard a secret, it’s not really a competitive advantage. It is a fragile wall. 

With an enduring advantage, you can tell people what to do, but the time, commitment, and effort will scare them off. Particularly if that mastery doesn't make money. They will head towards the six easy steps to financial freedom in six months. Not the life of hard graft that will set up the next generation.

Time - Commitment - Effort

Effort Before Appreciation

Poetry is obscure to me. I know little of classical music. I try with football every four years and fail. My knowledge of history of art has faded. I speak only English fluently. I can't tell the difference between beers, wines and coffees. I don't know how to play Bridge or Scrabble. My chess is at about the level of a half interested 10 year old. There are lots of things where I haven't put the initial effort in required to derive the pleasure that those who love these things do. I suspect that many of these things aren't as difficult to get the point where the 'mist disappears' as we think. While it may take 10,000 hours to be world class at something - perhaps that isn't the point. How many hours of effort does it take before something becomes fun. Purposeful practice usually isn't fun. The person aspiring to be world class is often driven by something else other than simple pleasure. Often these pursuits are the key to knowing someone. If you can understand and enjoy the pleasure someone gets from a pursuit, and share that with them - you have a foundation to connect. Life will have more flavour. Rather than 10,000 hours... how far can you get in 100 hours? Far enough to see the beauty?

Arbitrary Rules

Arbitrary rules can be powerful. They help overcome Inertia.

Seth Godin writes a blog post every day. That is an arbitrary rule. Does it really matter if he misses a day? Probably not, but it forces him to write every day. Eventually it becomes a habit... so it doesn't feel like force.

I am writing far less regularly than I would like. I realised this. I also realised that I had still written at least one blog post a month for quite some time. Hardly enough to form a habit, so fair to say that it doesn't compare to Seth's rule - and so is more arbitrary. But it was enough to force me to write one yesterday.

I used to use arbitrary rules to help me get through my studies. If a subject took 300 hours, I would break it down into the hours necessary per week and then plan how many to do each week. I would try stick to that. Again, maybe that is not arbitrary as it let me get to the end without any panic. The arbitrary part was that I would break it down into segments - study for 50 minutes, 10 minute break, repeat.

Why 50, why 10? No particular reason. It just seemed to help me get through.

Now, if the arbitrary rule gets in the way of something that is not arbitrary. That can be a problem. But otherwise, if it helps you get off the couch...

The Creative Process

'You see the crossings out, you see the agonies this man went through'

- Leonard Bernstein on Beethoven

Reading Nancy Duarte's 'Resonate' led me to search for a video of Leonard Bernstein as an example of a great communicator. Here he is talking about about Beethoven.

I imagine what he says is true of most aspects of greatness. The end product looks clean. Every note is exactly where it should be. It all makes sense.

Behind that is the toil. Behind that is the ten thousand hours. Behind that is the head clasped in the hands in shear desperation that leads to that moment when you are finished and smile.

Perfect.