Things Of Note #27

Full-Effort Half-assing

Hey Everyone,

This week we are looking at half-assing things.

Specifically, on today’s newsletter:

I) Notes on Half-assing

• Why we should be looking to half-ass with full effort

• The Pareto Principle as a guide to half-ass

II) Notes on Brave New World

• Brave New World and the Tyranny of Pleasure.

• Quick comparison with 1984.

I)

Half-assing it with everything you’ve got

Nate Soares | 11 mins

We generally don’t have a good opinion on “half-assing” things. We think (or have been conditioned to think) we should “give it (y)our best”. Half-assing seems wrong. However, when faced with a task, especially one imposed by an authority figure, our inclination is to either become a “slacker”, aiming to coast along or a “tryer” giving it our best.

Say we are given a graded assignment in school. What it means is that we are being told we should care about the quality line as measured by the grade.

People generally react to this coercion in one of two ways. The first group (the "slackers") rejects the implication that quality=preferences. These are the people who don't care about the class, who complain constantly about the useless pointless work they have to do, who half-ass the assignment and turn in something that either barely passes or fails entirely. Slackers tend to resent the authority forcing them to write the paper.

The second group (the "tryers") are the ones who accept the premise that quality=preferences, and strive ever rightwards on the quality line. Tryers include people of all ability levels: some struggle as hard as they can just to get a C, others flaunt their ability to produce masterpieces. Some try to curry favor with the teacher, others are perfectionists who simply can't allow themselves to turn in anything less than their best effort. Some of them are scrupulous people, who feel guilty even after getting an A, because they know they could have done better, and think they should have. Some are humble, some are show-offs, but all of them are pushing rightward.

In this essay, Nate argues there is a third, better path: half-assing but with full effort. What it means is to remember what you’re fighting for (what your goal is) and aim to get there with minimum effort, with no wasted motion.

What “slackers” and “tryers” are both missing is that they should be thinking about their own goals instead of fighting or accepting an externally defined quality measure.

The slackers fail to deploy their full strength because they realize that the quality line is not their preference curve. The tryers deploy their full strength at the wrong target, in attempts to go as far right as possible, wasting energy on a fight that is not theirs. So take the third path: remember what you're fighting for. Always deploy your full strength, in order to hit your quality target as fast as possible.

Things “too important to half-ass”

Given any project, we should always aim no higher than the quality target, and always strive for minimum expenditure of effort.

Still, sometimes we do want the quality target to be very very high. Say, a surgeon performing a surgery. They certainly should push as far along the quality line as possible.

However, even here expending minimal effort, having no wasted effort is desirable.

Things “not worth doing”

What about things that seem to not even be worth half-assing? Say, you are taking an online course and there is an assignment you dread and have been putting off for a while now.

Nate suggests treating the optimization problem—”How do I achieve my target here with the minimum effort?”—as the interesting challenge. So doing the assignment might not be fun but doing it efficiently could be fun.

But if that still doesn’t seem worth it? Then we should just drop the task.

Battling Perfectionism

Another way we might sabotage ourselves is by aiming to do things perfectly. Even when our target is to just get an A, we might put in more effort just to make it a bit better, pushing it along that asymptotic quality curve, aiming for a perfection we can never achieve.

To counter it, Nate suggests channeling the perfectionism into doing the task efficiently, which can actually be a more challenging task:

Attempting to hit a quality target with the least possible effort is, in a sense, a much more difficult task than pushing as far right on the quality-line as possible. One always could push further right on the quality line with more time.

What not to do

• Half-assing this way isn’t about going for the worst outcome we’d grudgingly accept as our target. It’s about not climbing the wrong hill (in both the micro and macro things we do). It’s about truly thinking about what we want.

• Even when we have a good vision of our target, we can fall for The Planning Fallacy. So, we need to account for that.

Closing Highlights

Most people seem to have two modes of working on problems: the slacker path-of-least-resistance "coasting" mode, and the tryer make-a-masterpiece "overachiever" mode. When faced with a problem, most people either put in the minimum effort necessary to scrape by without pissing off the relevant authorities, or else they pour their heart and soul into the task.
…
Very few people seem able to pick a target in the middle and then pursue it with everything they've got. Very few people seem capable of deploying their full strength to hit "mediocre" as efficiently as possible.

That should be our goal: to hit the “mediocre” target as efficiently as possible. To “succeed, with no wasted motion”.

My Thoughts

This piece struck a chord with me because I am afflicted by this exact dichotomy whereby either I’m not putting enough effort as I should or putting in long hours into things I shouldn’t care so much about. I seem to either care too little or care too much.

The essay leads to two follow-up questions:

i) How can we determine our own quality targets or goals in all the things we do?

ii) How can we do it with “no wasted motion”?

I don’t have a good answer for these. For the first, I think it’d have to be something personal. After all, the idea itself is to determine what you want the goal to be. I suspect it could relate to Goal-Setting but that’s a whole different topic.

For the second too, I think the answer can be wide and varied and probably overlaps with a lot of productivity ideas. After all, being effective and efficient is a pretty generic and common goal.

One way to go about it could be think Pareto.

Understanding the Pareto Principle (The 80/20 Rule)

BetterExplained | 6 mins

I think a lot of people are familiar with this principle—whether explicitly or implicitly. Still, it’s worth looking at it and specially its implications.

Simply put:

The Pareto Principle is the observation (not law) that most things in life (effort, reward, output) are not distributed evenly – some contribute more than others.

One note: It doesn’t have to be 80-20 exact or even numbers that sum to 100 (as they are in different units—input vs output). E.g. Could be 30% of the input creates 90% of the output. So we shouldn’t get hung up on the numbers just be aware of the input-output effect not being evenly distributed.

So what are the implications? A few:

• We generally start seeing diminishing marginal benefits. It’s easier to go from nothing to okay than okay to good which in turn is easier than good to great. Of course, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes there can be a big hurdle to get up and running. However, we if we identify the components that bring in most of the results, we should be able forge a path that pulls most of the output-producing inputs towards the front of the sequence.

• We need to be thoughtful of what our goal is and how much effort we should put into it. Sometimes 80% is all we need. It’s okay (in fact, optimal!) to put in the 20% work and call it a day.

I think the Pareto Principle can be one of the foundation for half-assing well.

On another note, this thinking can be applied very generally too. Some questions to ponder from How to 80/20 Your Life by Mark Manson:

What are the 20% of your possessions you get the most value out of?
What do you spend 20% of your time doing that gives you 80% of your happiness?
Who are the 20% of people you’re close to who make you the happiest?
What are the 20% of the clothes you wear 80% of the time?
What’s the 20% of food you eat 80% of the time?

II)

I read Brave New World this week. It’s a pretty short book and the plot itself isn’t too long. It essentially feels like a long thought experiment. And a fabulous one at that.

Without giving too much away, it features a Dystopian (Utopian?) world that has no suffering, no pain, illness, even senility. There is no concept of family (people are created in factories) and Love (“Everyone belongs to everyone else”; promiscuity is sanctioned and encouraged by the state and society). Thus there are no complicated feelings—of desire, envy, resentment—that they espouse.

You are also conditioned to enjoy the life you lead and the work you do. In essence, everyone is happy, always.

And if you want/need you can always take soma—a drug that can give you a “holiday from reality”, a world of your own choosing. And without any side-effects (no hangover).

I found it to be such a thought-provoking read. Some thoughts/quetions:

• How important is Happiness? (Also briefly touch upon in ToN #25 - Happiness)
  What things are worth more than happiness, worth suffering and pain?

• Are things like art necessary? Do we need it the way we need food?

• If necessary, what can/should the individual give up for the collective good?

• If we are conditioned to believe something, to like/dislike something, do we really believe and prefer those things? Is it okay to do this? Are we not conditioned anyhow by all of the things around us (the time, society, family)?

It had some immediate effects in my day-to-day too. It has made me more conscious about the soma of our age—smartphones, social media, etc.

Every time a character (desperately) reached for it in the book, to get away from the tedium and unease of being, I thought about my own desire to check my phone. It was almost funny.

I also thought about using conditioning on myself to get myself to do and enjoy certain tasks. A funny thought indeed. I guess it could relate to ToN #01—the idea of shaping our tools/environment to shape ourselves.

Aldous Huxley and Brave New World: The Dark Side of Pleasure

Academy of Ideas | 9 mins

We live in a world filled with pleasurable distractions and are perhaps becoming (or are already) a populace conditioned to want them above all else, to wilt away our days in infinite scrolling and fleeting pleasures.

Of course, it doesn't seem like it’s the doing of the state. More so, this drugging of the masses seems to be driven by rampant consumerism. Still…

Oh brave new world, that has such people in it!

George Orwell and 1984: How Freedom Dies

Academy of Ideas | 8 mins

It has been great consuming comparisons between Brave New World and 1984 (another of my favorites!).

Interesting to learn that Orwell believed Capitalism was on its way out and saw the imminent rise of Collective Ideologies centered around group goals instead of individuals. He feared the eventual rise of Totalitarianism instead of the Democractic Socialism he hoped for. This prompted him to write 1984.

In terms of comparisons, Neil Postman in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, perfectly captures the essence:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumble puppy.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists, who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny, “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

In 1984, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.

Chills. Gives me chills.

Is the modern world more 1984 or Brave New World?

Of course, it’s a false dichotomy. The modern world has parts of both and parts of none but I’m inclined to think we are leaning more towards BNW’s depiction, a society controlled by pleasure, individuals ruined by our desires.

However, interestingly, as mentioned in the second video: Orwell was aware of Huxley’s depiction when he was writing 1984. He believed a Hedonistic society ruled by pleasure will eventually lead to or allow a more stringent totalitarian rule…

I guess, we just watch and see.

// Poetry

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in His heaven—
All's right with the world!

~ Robert Browning in Pippa Passes

🎵 Music

• Been getting into some Classic Rock. A bit of an uplifting tune…

• Explored Janis Joplin’s music this week…

• Mercedes Benz is so catchy!

// Wholesome

Eyes On Cinema @RealEOC

Behind the scenes of Cuba Gooding Jr. winning an Oscar, 1996

• Always great watching someone doing their job well and loving it.

That’s it for this week.

Have a great week ahead!

With Love,
Bijay

(P.S: If you like these, please consider sharing it with friends who might like it too).