There is a saying I quite like from Finnish that I haven't heard elsewhere, which translates as, "too busy running alongside the bike, to get on and ride". I heard it again today when I asked why the company I was talking to hadn't done anything about an issue they are having. As it was a friendly conversation, he actually said how embarrassing it is, before he used the phrase.
Just too busy to make it easier.
Not a bad saying.
It comes in many forms of course, like one little one for myself is that I have never found the time to learn how to touch type. I have tried a couple times in my life, but I can type poorly pretty quickly, so I never slowed down to practice enough. Now, after probably ten million words typed on this blockchain, imagine the time I could have saved.
30 minutes a day practicing for two to three months.
And there are many other things of course, where instead of taking the time to learn what I would consistently needed, I would consistently do it the inefficient way instead. It is like carrying rocks one by one, rather than fixing the wheelbarrow with a flat tyre.
In this case, I fixed the wheelbarrow.
But you get my point.
We likely all have things we can think of that we should have learned, but didn't because we didn't want to spend the time upfront, so ended up paying a lot more down the track. But while it isn't possible to learn everything, if it is a skill we need often, shouldn't we own it?
I was joking with the employment coach the other day after mistakenly being sent to her who looks after people with vocational skills instead of the coach who looks after knowledge-worker skills, that I wish I could do the work of a plumber or an electrician. Not because I want to do that work - but I have paid so much for that work to be done in the last five years, I could have saved a lot of money.
But I think why a lot of us don't learn, is because learning is inconvenient. The people who say they "love to learn" would probably love it far, far less if what they were learning was unusable and had no value. Most who love to learn, like what they get out of learning, not the learning process itself. If they loved just learning, then it wouldn't matter at all what they learned.
But it does.
We tend to learn what we want to learn, or have to learn, which means we get something out of it. But more than this, it makes the learning convenient, because we are conditioned to do more of what we enjoy, and forced to do what we must. There is little choice there. However, when we are able to put off what we should learn, but don't want to go through the learning process, we often do put it off.
And sometimes it is like we are running alongside the bike, because whatever we are doing right now takes the focus and resources, so we don't have the time to do what would make it easier. It is a bit like people don't want to learn about how to manage stress, until they are stressed. But when they are stressed, they are not in the right condition to actually learn about it, because that just creates another pressure. It is a catch-22 situation for most people.
Learn about how to deal with stress, when there is very little stress.
My daughter asked me today about intelligence and if it is possible to get smarter. Rather than getting into the complexities of the question, I kept it simple and said, it doesn't matter how smart you are, it matters how you use the intelligence you have. I told her some stories to highlight this in different contexts, like the guy I went to school with who was incredibly intelligent and aced absolutely everything at school, without studying - but ended up doing nothing with his life. Or the other friend who was one of the world's best guitarists, but ended up doing nothing (became a drug addict) with his life.
Some people are born gifted. But gifts can be thrown away.
However, I also know some people who were of normal intelligence, and of normal musical talent, who used their resources well and did do some very impressive things in their lives. But in order to do so, they all had to learn what they didn't want to learn, in order to empower themselves to learn more of what they did want, and compound it against all the other aspects.
The client today said that one of the challenges he faces in his work is that every project feels like a ground-up build, where every decision has to be made each time. There is no standardisation, which means that the lessons learned from the past are less effectively applied in the future. He said that many of the people don't want structure, templates and frameworks, because they want their freedom to make all of the decisions.
It is the wrong way to look at it for the particular kind of work.
Because those templates and frameworks provide freedom to what one wants, with what one wants to work, if used well. A relatively repetitive project could have a template that covers 80% of the decisions in 20% of the time than making a new decision each project for the same thing. That means that the remaining 80% of the time can be used innovating 20% of the project - which ultimately is where the more enjoyable, interesting, and impactful decisions will be made.
This resonated with him and he will carry it forward.
But it also got me thinking about all of the things that I should have learned a long time ago, but didn't, constantly using the excuse that it is too late, and I no longer have the time to do it. Which means, I am not free to do it. It is convenient to put things off. But at a point, they are forever out of reach.
Stop. Get on the bike. Ride.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Although we are human, like robots, we often prioritise urgent but inefficient tasks, postponing the learning of skills that could make our lives easier. It makes me think of how many times I have justified not learning something useful, such as playing an instrument -I have a Quena for decoration- or handling a tool better, simply because it involved an uncomfortable initial effort. Although we know that developing certain skills can save us time and effort in the long run, we tend to avoid it if it is not immediately pleasurable. I recognise that this behaviour limits our personal and professional growth, and that we often prefer momentary comfort to the challenge of moving forward. Paying a third party to do those tasks, heh, heh, heh.
I am guessing we all do it. We avoid discomfort, even if it is in our best interest.
Precisely: "own nothing - not even a skill"
Yep, it is great to have talent, but it is not enough to have it. You have to be able to learn a lot and be very persistent applying your talent and the skills you learned in order to succeed. And even then there is an element of luck involved that determines how much you will succeed. So you kind of have to have all of the above: talent, determination, skills and luck :)
People often underestimate the role of luck in life - especially the successful. The unsuccessful can say it was bad luck though, and it might be true if they did the work. Success suffers from an availability bias.
That's freaking hilarious. Love it XD and very accurately describes so many situations I've seen. "Why don't you just [do this thing that would make this thing you're doing about a hundred billion times quicker and easier]?" "Don't have time".
I'm on the other end of the scale, I will spend so much time learning and tooling that it will regularly feel like a waste of time that would have been infinitely better spent just getting on with it and getting the work done even if in an inefficient manner. And sometimes this has proven to be the case (the techniques I was attempting to learn don't work for whatever reason but yay now I know they exist I guess? And every now and again they come in useful for something later) and other times it has paid off (the couple of months I spent creating and porting my new notes systems for my projects, work and roleplaying has made finding/organising things a hell of a lot quicker and easier for example).
Ah - this is the other end of the scale for sure! This is often where the engineer types are - never knowing enough to get the job done, even though they know enough to get it done well enough.
Learning is never really a waste if learning things that can be used to compound, or lessons that can give guidance. But, I think it still takes some thought as to where time is best spent. maybe a pareto 80:20 for learning too - 80% of the time on what is likely to help - 20% of the time on what might not help, but is interesting to know :)
If I could go back and do it all over again, I might have chosen to be an electrician or an HVAC technician. They always seem to be in demand. That and plumbers but I don't think I would want to do that. I can barely clean a clog in our sink without gagging!
One of my brothers is a mechanic by trade first, and then went into engineering after. It gave him a fantastic background on the reality of things, rather than just the theory of it.
I might be the same. But if getting paid for it, would I be different? :D
I don't know the smells and texture would still be there no matter how much you are getting paid. I do it for my wife because I love her and you would think that would be more motivation than money, but I still gag!
There are two kind of intelligence, one fluid and one fixed. But how I explain usually to other people, the ability to create using intelligence has two components, hard work and fixed intelligence. if you give both a value between 1 and 10, you can see why hard work sometimes trumps intelligence as potential. Imagine someone brilliant with 10 intelligence, but 2 effort => 10x2=20. While someone with 5 intelligence, but 8 effort => 5x8=40. So average hard working intelligence is twice better than unused potential. How is that looking for you? This is my Explain Like I'm 5 version.
Can you explain it like I am 4? ;D
Nah, I get it. It is a good heuristic. Thinking about it, I am probably 5 and 4 - because I think I am average intelligence, but only put in the effort (sometimes quite a lot) in some areas, but ignore others. It reduces my potential a lot.
My motivation is going up and down in some kind of cycle. I have periods of awesome focus mixed with periods of just relaxing and not doing much.
I can relate with this article, yeah, truly is relatable! I totally get that "running alongside the bike" thing. It is like when I have a ton of work to do, like filing my business tax and even forget to register my book of accounts which may lead me to get a penalty. Yeah, instead of making a schedule and time management, I always keep doing all these last minute. Like my taxes, I plan to pay it on deadline, April 15.
And that story about the smart guy who did nothing? That is kinda horibble. It is like my wife always telling, "It is not just about being smart, it is about working hard too." I guess even if you have some talent, you still have to put in the effort.
I really liked the part about templates and frameworks. It is like, if you have a plan, you can use your brainpower for the fun stuff! Like, if you have a recipe, you don't have to figure out every ingredient every time you bake cookies. You can just focus on decorating them!
This post made me think about all the things I should probably learn, even if they're a little boring. I guess I need to stop running and get on the bike!
I try to tell my daughter (and wife) that never plan to be there on time, always plan to be early. Because inevitably, life happens and slows things down. Even on the trip to the gym which takes about 5 minutes for us, my wife leaves so she will be there on time, but there is often some traffic issue that makes her late. There is a penalty for not signing into the classes on time on arrival.
Absolutely. A well planned life isn't boring at all - as long as the plan is to have say 20% unplanned with some fun things to do :)
I agree, maybe I will make planned to sort things out.
I think it is very cool that some elderly people learn to drive or use a computer at a old age. It lets me hope that if I will get old maybe I will not be a senile old fart who doesn't remember anything...
I just wish that Hive would have existed when I was younger and that I would have taken part of it from the start. It would be far more useful than most things I learned at school(and later forgot).
What have you been putting off learning until old age?
And yeah. I started a year after it started - and I felt very behind! :D
I am not sure. Perhaps flying with hot air balloon/ jumping with parachute would be cool. But when again I spend most of my time at home. So maybe that would be going too far out of my comfort zone. For now I am happy just having my binance account verified. I was delaying it for a long time. and buying Hive was a pain in the ass- I was buying credits in splinterlands> buying cards>selling cards> selling DEC in hive engine. Now buying Hive is simpler. Today I added 900HP. A small victory that feels good to me.
The point you've made is crystal clear. So many times, I’ve put off learning something that would make life easier just because it felt like too much effort at the moment. Then I waste way more time doing things the hard way. Just like an elderly person once told me, if you fail to learn from me, you'll learn the hard way