Jargogled Impressions.

Shouldn’t everyone take at least a few shots at achieving greatness in our work? By shots, I don’t mean the run of the mill effort we make in our day to day lives, running along with the job at hand, or the chores at hand, or the responsibilities at hand. Instead, what I am interested in, is the actions that can lead to non-linear results and are, by definition, a long shot but one that, if successful, can elevate your strata from wherever you are to wherever you want to be. Or maybe just help you aim your compass in the direction you would want it to be.

I kept that last part intentionally vague because it really is subjective on where everyone wants to be. And given that we do not have any moral obligation to be useful in this world, it means that we can all have our own concepts of what success looks like.

Whatever it is though that you call your success, there are still different levels contained within it and what level you aim for determines what level you end up with. And it can also determine the decisions you take to get closer to it. There is this oft shared graphic from Tim Urban’s Wait But Why blog which shows the trajectories we could have taken to get to the present, and how a similar branches of paths open up for us as we look at the future, only we are sometimes so fixated on the past that we forget that there still is a wide variety of options available to us as we stand in the present, the here and the now. Powerful stuff and fodder for those new year resolutions. Our decisions to this point is something we cannot go back and revert, but if we have a compass to point towards the general direction we want to go, then we can still take decisions in that direction, the actual path may not be in our control and that’s okay but you must know that there is not one path to the goal you have in mind, there are many. This is especially true for the goals that we humans commonly possess which transcend the earthly goals of success, fame, popularity, etc.

I have a working theory that all of our actions on this planet is basically a way to eliminate boredom. And yes, I am talking about the current age primarily. Maybe during the stone ages or the bronze ages, or even the industrial ages, there was a more primal motive for our actions – that of survival. But once you have taken care of that, the bottom tier of the Maslow hierarchy that is – then all other actions, from our basic instincts to our lofty thoughts to our socio-political actions to everything in between – all of them are basically a response against boredom and the creepy ways in which boredom seeps into our existential life regardless of who you are.

Reading Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk and understanding how he goes into the ‘surge mode’ made me realize that even the most brilliant and industrious amongst us fall prey to this. Sure, with Musk he can cloak this into slowing pace of human progress or the slowing pace of inter-galactic travel timelines, etc. but it’s effectively boredom against the tides of mundanity and of mediocrity and of a relentless urge to break things and make a move and generate momentum.

So, if boredom is the arch nemesis, our efforts, as lowly simpletons should address this if we are to carve out a life for ourselves that is satisficing. Some do this through their work – their job, their business, their startups. This is the macro modal. Others do this through their relationships and through exploring and venturing deeper into human emotions. This is the micro model. And most of us lie somewhere in the middle, trundling along, pattering around with all things sundry.

It’s interesting how things can be summarized so neatly so often through these dichotomies. Similar to the quantum and the cosmological realms, there are depths you can probe (quantum, emotions) or the expanse you can explore (cosmos, human progress). While I have a bias towards these neat categorizations because nature does not seem to wear these dichotomies, they are useful mental models regardless.

Another interesting phenomenon that falls into this macro/micro model is that of travel. You can travel the world or you can sit by a pond and spend an eternity observing the infinite variations possible in that same small pond. As Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan in the amazing book by Italo Calvino – Invisible Cities, “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice”.

We are either living or dead in this world. And our ‘grand’ efforts, so long as we are alive, may lie either closer to the macro (thinkers, tinkerers, daydreamers, futurists, influencers) or the micro (doers, operators, agents, pragmatists, bloggers). When we are striving to do great work, we are aiming for super-linear returns from our efforts. And for that to happen, as Paul Graham points out, the work needs to either have the potential for a) exponential growth, or b) a step change.

Macro efforts are closer to step change, because they are aiming for a state change from a to b. Micro efforts, in most cases, are aiming for exponential growth, for they are relying on the known and the familiar to herald some form of greatness. When you are aiming to be an influencer then, it’s important to bring something novel or distinct that can separate you from the herd playing as you are the numbers game. A distinct voice, experimentation, personal stories, unexplored edges are structurally novel. On the opposite end, when you are aiming to be a solid operator driving great results at work, you are playing the growth game. So, momentum and speed become key as it eliminates the noise that is common at this stratum of operations.  

It’s important to note that the greatness in question here is that of the work or the output, not of the agent bringing it about. Great work happens almost always in ‘deamon mode’ and almost never as an egotistical endeavor although there are certainly exceptions.