Hello! Believe it or not, I’ve had a lot of thoughts within the past year and a half. Yet I have written up nothing. There have been a number of ideas that I’ve wanted to write up, but I have been held back by the feeling that I needed to have them fairly thoroughly ideated, or that the next one had to be a big one to justify me coming out of my blogging retirement.
But here I am now! With just a bunch of random, assorted thoughts from my last year and a half of life. This is probably gonna be a lil messy because I’m prioritizing getting my thoughts out there over having something perfect (as if perfect was my standard for previous posts though haha).
Revelations
- Idealism vs realism
- Passion is transient
- Quantity over quality / bias for action
- Explore/exploit tradeoff
1. Idealism vs Realism
I’ve always had a tendency in life to perceive life through the lens of idealism. Like, in theory, I should be able to have a strong enough will that I use every moment of the day to be productive and that I should be able to change any of my personal mindsets that I think are problematic just through sheer willpower. And that I should also be able to be happy regardless of circumstances (again, through a feat of mental will), by making myself more grateful for what I have or looking at the bright side.
However, pinning all of my burdens on my willpower makes my willpower quite overwhelmed, and I end up not only falling short on all these objectives, but also being upset with myself for this.
Realism allows for better results
While maybe these objectives are achievable in an ideal world, the truth of the matter is that we do not live in an ideal world. Therefore, I should take my realistic limits into account too.
Therefore, I’ve started to approach life in a way that prioritizes what I am actually capable of instead of what I think I should be capable of, and this has eased my mind a lot and enabled me to actually produce better results, because I am able to adapt my plans to reality.
This is my biggest revelation
This revelation has almost certainly been the biggest of my recent years, and many others have spawned off as an extension of this one (like revelations 2 and 3 here).
2. Passion is Transient
Right now, I really want to write my thoughts up and send it out into the world. But now is not the write time to do so. I really need to work on job applications, eat my first meal of the day, and get to other tasks before rushing off to hang out with friends in less than an hour.
What I should do is save this idea and get back to it once I have free time.
Two issues with delaying passions
But there are two issues with this:
- When will I ever have my life 100% put together?
- My desire to pursue this will not always be this strong
Life is chaos
Putting things off until you are done with everything else is a guarantee to never do those things. Life will never be that orderly, and every decision in life is a triaged decision against the backdrop of countless other priorities.
Passions fade
In the rare instances where I finally get my life together enough to where think it is appropriate to pursue these passions, I rarely still have the passion or the energy to follow through. Even if I waited 30 minutes, it’s quite likely that I wouldn’t want to as much.
For this reason, it is essential to leap onto a passion as soon as it pops up, or it may never resurface with the same urgency.
Reduction of Willpower Expenditure
“But Kevin, don’t you still have to do those other things you mentioned? By writing this up instead, you are missing out on tasks that are essential?”
Well, yes and no. It is true, this takes time and it means I will be theoretically able to do less. However, the things I need to do will still fall into place. I still “have” to do them, therefore they will be done with a sense of urgency that requires no willpower. This may be a slight exaggeration in this scenario, but let me defer to an anecdote:
You have a bunch of work to do. The final deadline is tomorrow morning. You must do this work by then. It is currently 10pm. What do you do? You have no choice about what to do, so you do the work, without even thinking about if you should.
This poorly written anecdote illustrates how procrastinating is lowkey a good thing for getting other stuff done, because it takes less willpower to pursue passions then do required work than it does to muster up energy for work and then hope there is enough remaining energy to pursue passions.
This idea comes from idealism/realism
It is ideal to wait until you have time to pursue passions, but realistically, this won’t happen.
3. Quantity over Quality / Bias for Action
Not to throw an Amazon value into here, but a bias for action is very important for actually getting things done. And this also means prioritizing quantity first, and then sifting through to find the quality, as opposed to just hoping the first thing you do is of high quality.
Writing this better than not
It is better that I am writing up this post than if I were to keep it as a draft until it was flawless and perfect—because then it would be a draft forever and never make it out into the world.
Photography study
So if I were a good blogger I’d go find this and make sure what I’m saying is actually accurate, but time is running out, so you will have to deal with the possibility that I am a sneaky liar.
There was a study where they created two versions of final projects for a photography class. In one, the students had to submit one really good photo. In the other, the students had to submit 50 photos.
In the end, those that had to submit a bunch of photos also ended up having better photos. By just trying stuff out and being willing to be more creative, the students produced better results.
Planning things in the group chat
Most of the time in giant group chats, nobody really wants to say or plan anything. You can say, “where do people want to eat”, but likely you will be met with silence. It is better to push things towards a resolution. Even if you push for a resolution that is not the group’s favorite, it is quite likely they prefer, for example, having actual dinner plans as opposed to nothing happening.
Again, this goes back to idealism/realism. In an ideal world, everyone would be open about their thoughts and share them, but in the big bad real world, everyone stays silent.
4. The Explore/Exploit Tradeoff
Restaurant hypotheticals
Hypothetical 1: you’ve just moved to a new city with a bunch of neat restaurants. You are hungry. Where do you go?
Hypothetical 2: you’ve been in a city for 42 years. This is you’re last day here. Your favorite restaurant is that Chipotle tucked away in the back of a sketchy alley. You are hungry. Where do you go?
In the first scenario, going to Chipotle, which you already know and love, is not the right decision. There are countless options, and if you find one that you like better than Chipotle, you’ll be able to reap the benefits of that knowledge for the whole time you’re living there. But if you just stick to Chipotle, you’ll never be able to find anything better.
In the second scenario, it’s the opposite. You know what you want, and there’s no future benefit of finding someplace better because you’ll be gone. Therefore, you should play it safe and go with your established favorite, even if it is a bit questionable to prefer a restaurant chain located in some random alley.
Explore while young
When you are towards the beginning of your life, it makes sense to highly prioritize exploration. This is true for hobbies—trying all different sports, try skydiving, try knitting, just don’t get too complacent. But this is also true for the career.
The first year of college should be classes from a variety of fields (which is how I ended up switching from Mechanical Engineering to CS). And the internships you do are more informative if they are in a broader set of fields.
Don’t get too settled, but also do get too settled
Have a tendency to go out and explore at the beginning of things. The ideal ratio is basically 100% exploration when you are put in a new situation, which is likely more exploration then people do.
However, once you find something that you know you really like, don’t be too afraid to stick with it. The greater tragedy would be to lose out on an activity that is perfect for you by never committing to it, which also brings me to the next point.
Exponential returns and a Word of Caution
Many rewards of an activity come after significant investment. If you are just starting to DJ, you aren’t gonna be making money at big EDM festivals. But once you get to that level, you’ll be getting gigs all the time. Prioritize exploration, but also acknowledge that as humans, there are many things we can derive equivalent value out of and that the aforementioned bias for action is also essential so that we can push through and see these exponential returns on investment.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this unproofread dump of my thoughts. Despite me wanting to write about twice the number of revelations and much more thoroughly for each, I hope this gives a little backdrop into what’s been on my mind these past couple years!
Let me know your thoughts (assuming you’ve also had some past 1.5 years)— but also let me know your perspectives on any of these revelations 🙂
Peace!
-Kevin
Kevin's Cyclopedia 