Procrastination is fear wearing a schedule. What a usable goal actually looks like, what practice really is, and the formula that says success gets measured by other people, not by you.
Source · The Simon Learning Method
Forgive me — another clumsy title
— Reflections on The Simon Learning Method
Part Two: Fear, Goals, and Practice, and the “Success Formula”
At last we can talk about success.
But allow me first to add a supplement to the discussion of “goals” in the previous installment — which is also a reflection on, and a correction of, the detours I have walked.
In the last piece I said that I had once mistakenly used “possibility” to explain my hesitation over which direction to take.
Looking back now at that hesitation, I suspect the cause was fear:
“The essence of procrastination is fear” — and was I not procrastinating?
1. Expectation. I will not here distinguish whether the root of high expectation is biological or social. Whatever the source, the fact is that I — and perhaps we — all hold rather high expectations of the future.
On this I joke that “we seem to be turning, rather quickly, into the very people we used to look down on.” This presumably arises from the gap between our expectations and the reality we anticipate.
I am afraid of failing to become the person I dreamed of; I am afraid of failing to accomplish the things I imagined. Turning it over, I find I fear a startling number of things.
2. Comfort. Beyond fear lies our reluctance to part with our present condition, and our attachment to it.
The adaptability we are born with is honed continuously through socialization. We have long since grown accustomed to adapting to the life in front of us; whether we change ourselves or change our circumstances, comfort is the reward of adaptation.
But as I said in the previous piece — the wheel of history rolls forward; the tide of the age surges without pause. We will not meet a tomorrow identical to yesterday again. As The Order of Time has it, the only unchanging thing in the world is change. For those of us in the habit of clinging to the present, this is perhaps unfortunate.
I am reminded of a passage from The Three-Body Problem: Sha Ruishan attempts to replicate every trajectory of his life, down to his speech and conduct, purely in order to observe the flickering of the universe a second time. He is a doctor of science; I mean no irony toward his credentials. It simply struck me that this fragment — with its flavor of carving a mark on the boat to find the sunken sword — coincides rather too neatly with my own life.
Apprehension and attachment interweave without pause, and bind us.
I fear not only the dejection of failing to realize my ideals, but also the prospect of never returning to a comfort like the present one.
We are indeed afraid. But where does the fear come from?
Lack of confidence in ourselves? Insufficient understanding of ourselves?
Let us change the angle and look at it again — from Newton’s angle.
Recall the classroom friction demonstration: a cart is dragged across a towel, and the longer the towel, the sooner it stalls. Is it possible that the towel of our expectations is too long, and the cart of reality cannot cross it?
If so, there are two remedies:
Both amount to the same thing: change the expectation — make the goal more attainable.
The Simon book suggests enlisting the SMART principle when setting goals [figure: SMART criteria].
Continuing from the previous installment’s advice to study along a main line at which you are strong — perhaps we can set several goals around that same line, provided they rest on roughly adjacent bodies of foundational knowledge and on the strengths you actually possess.
I have not, for the moment, given explicit consideration to prioritizing among these goals — that is, classifying them by the Eisenhower principle (importance against urgency).
Thomas Sowell observes in A Conflict of Visions that facts divorced from theory or vision are merely isolated curiosities.
I would say that goals or expectations divorced from practice are just b\\\\\\t — forgive the asterisks, impolite but apt: a small venting on behalf of my departed and ignorant youth.
Practice, like goals, seems to exist in a binary relation of theory and application.
We often say that effort in the wrong direction is wasted, and that choice outweighs effort. True enough: effort without direction is pitiable. But having found a direction and still failing to work is contemptible.
This may read like a pep talk, but reality does in fact set two roads before us:
All roads lead to Rome — and you don’t have to go to Rome. Whether your destination is the ends of the earth, Mars, or the Moon, it comes down to one word: work.
Small problems: work hard at them. Large problems: break them into small ones and work at those. When you can’t work anymore: rest, then work again.
I emphasize practice here, but this does not mean practice is everything, nor that practice can be narrowly confined to the single word “work.”
After practice, a great deal remains to be done: retrospection and review, drawing lessons, consolidating experience, sharing experience, soliciting advice, reconstructing one’s understanding. None of these is a minor matter.
I trust you can now see why this piece is titled “Goals, Fear, and Practice.”
Fear is the chasm between goals and practice. It sits directly between them.
Whether we adjust the goal or dissolve the fear, the purpose is the same: to let us actually begin to practice.
At a family dinner over the New Year, an uncle at the table offered a few remarks that still echo in my ears. Roughly:
“Either read ten thousand books or walk ten thousand miles. Whatever you do, it’s enough that you do it.”
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“Can it be brought to ground? Has it been brought to ground?”
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“Find your strength, do it well, do it better than anyone.”
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“Don’t set limits on yourself — especially at your age. Why would you limit yourself?”
Borrowing the argument of Wealth, Poverty and Politics — that restriction is the principal cause of today’s differences in the distribution of wealth, whether that restriction is man-made or naturally endowed —
we often say that being yourself is what makes you irreplaceable. I suspect this is incomplete. Bringing your own advantage to its fullest expression is what makes you irreplaceable.
The foregoing can be summarized as:
Find a main line where you have an advantage + set one or several SMART goals + practice + (retrospect and review, draw lessons, consolidate experience, share experience, solicit advice, reconstruct understanding).
The Simon learning formula in the book brought to mind Barabási’s The Formula, which I read earlier this year — the book my classmates jokingly call “success literature.”
So here is the second half of this piece: the Barabási × Simon “success formula.”
Success = (right direction, positive motivation × effective learning method × time invested × good ideas) × social fitness
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S = (Q × r) × SF = (D^HAS × r) × SF, where Q = D^HAS
The formula has two components. Its underlying frame comes from the two formulas in The Formula.
Success (S) = the ability to convert (Q) × good ideas (r)
The Q factor inevitably led me to connect this with the Simon learning method — for a single reason, namely the line in the Simon book that learning is not mere memorization, but the practice and extended conversion of knowledge.
To my mind, this also contains the meaning of the Q factor: the ability to convert a good idea.
I therefore expand Q as Q = D^HAS.
(1) D: Direction.
As I argued in the previous installment — find the main line of your life. And in those familiar maxims, effort in the wrong direction is wasted and choice matters more than effort, one detects a society gradually coming to recognize the significance of directional choice for success.
Here I would cite the career development curve model Lin Chao sets out in Kaiqiao: depending on the type of career trajectory, those striving on their respective curves diverge further and further over time in the worldly success they accumulate.
(2) HAS: the multiplier on D. (HAS = Herbert Alexander Simon.)
I prefer to place HAS in the formula as an exponent on D, because I believe that knowledge accumulated in the right direction ultimately compounds along the time dimension.
Perhaps this is only my own hopeful wish — but there may well be some self-fulfilling-prophecy effect at work in it.
So what constitutes a “right” learning method?
Here we can draw on the three components of the Simon learning formula:
On the r factor, I would offer three thoughts:
What we generally regard as good ideas are the successes we have seen with our own eyes; but the factors bearing on success are not confined to r and Q. Productivity determines whether we can realize a good idea, and age affects only our productivity — physiological aging reduces physical capacity, which reduces productive output. Suppose that in youth we have the stamina to realize N good ideas. As we age and our physical capacity declines, our productive capacity to realize good ideas is gradually outrun by the rate at which ideas arrive. And the rate at which good ideas arrive may itself increase with accumulated life experience.
Therefore:
S = Q × r = D^HAS × r
The basis of success lies in good ideas multiplied by the ability to convert them —
and that ability to convert derives from sustained effort in the right direction, by the right means.
In this formula Barabási introduces the time dimension — future and past. It is not hard to see that he treats success as the mother of success.
I do not deny that failure may also be the mother of success; but success is the more likely mother.
(1) PS: Past Success.
Initial success brings us both methodological and psychological experience of succeeding. (I will not address here the question of how far past experience of success bears on future success; I will save that topic for A Conflict of Visions.)
Barabási argues that initial success also confers success within the social network — priority in establishing links with other nodes. I understand this, in simplified form, as what marketing calls pioneer advantage.
When we think of high mountains, we are most likely to think first of Everest, because it won the contest of altitude against the other peaks.
Once we have achieved success in a given field, the social network operating near that field will recognize and acknowledge us preferentially, which raises the probability of our next success.
Nor is this confined to that field. Because social networks have their own dynamism, and because people’s social identities are diverse and complex, the layered overlap of the networks we inhabit gives our success the opportunity to propagate outward from the original network.
(2) SF: Social Fitness.
This connects to the point above: success brings us experience while simultaneously granting us priority in linking to network nodes.
Barabási’s concept of social fitness refers to the degree of attention an outcome, product, or service commands relative to comparable ones.
Consider Coca-Cola and “some other cola” placed side by side on the same shelf. Even if we do everything possible to treat the other cola equally — even if we place it in the most conspicuous position and attach the most attractive discount — Coca-Cola may still command more attention. That is attention won by comparison against like products.
Social fitness has a dual character, of both process and outcome — it is not only the result of success but also an input to achieving it:
Social fitness is both the fixed cost of achieving success and the inevitable reward of having achieved it.
(3) FS: Future Success.
Barabási attributes future success to the joint action of past success and social fitness. On first encountering this formula I felt some perplexity — time develops; future and past are relative; what exactly do “future” and “past” mean here?
Having just worked through the relationship between initial success and social fitness — in which success and social fitness are reciprocally cause and effect — I suspect this awkward circularity leads us gradually toward a wall we cannot avoid hitting: which comes first, success or social fitness? A chicken-and-egg problem.
To express a relationship this indeterminate, I think Barabási’s device of joining the terms with a multiplication sign is the most fitting available. As Rovelli argues in The Order of Time, a rigorous scientific formula need only express the mutual relations among two or more variables; the time variable is unnecessary. This is in any case a highly subjective and conceptual formula — for which I ask your indulgence.
Allow me here one assumption: relative to what has not yet happened, success always points toward the future.
In the end, then, the formula for success becomes:
S = (D^HAS × r) × SF
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Success (always future-directed) = (the ability to convert × good ideas) × social fitness
Every success arises from the joint action of three things — the ability to convert, good ideas, and social fitness. Success requires not only a good idea, and not only sustained accumulation of converting ability in the right direction, but also the establishment of commensurate social fitness.
This has something of the flavor of Munger’s lollapalooza effect.
But — how does one build social fitness?
As the book says, social fitness is bound up with initial success. So how does one obtain initial success?
I suspect this connects back to the first half of this piece: accumulate small successes continuously in the right direction, or put your head down and conquer a large success as early as you can.
Finally, I would share with you a passage from Chapter 41 of the Tao Te Ching:
The bright Way seems dim; the Way forward seems to retreat; the level Way seems rough. The highest virtue seems like a valley; the purest white seems stained; abundant virtue seems insufficient; established virtue seems furtive; what is genuine and true seems to change. The greatest square has no corners; the greatest vessel is late in completion; the greatest sound is faint; the greatest form has no shape.
Perhaps the greatest vessel is meant to be late in completion…
If any view in this article has prompted a thought or a judgment of your own,
you are welcome to leave your reflections or comments below.
Thank you for the inspiration and the corrections you bring.
See you in the next installment.
A brief announcement: below is the “One Book a Week” reading group I founded, intended to hold each other accountable in building a reading habit and to share what we take from our reading. If this appeals to you, and you believe you can sustain the goal of reading one book a week, you are always welcome.
I only answer from what is written on this site.
Type a few words — I will show you where it says so.