Expose your ignorance

I'm reading about how to be a successful entrepreneur. 

It's stuff I've heard before -- about making mistakes, about learning by doing (as opposed to learning and then doing)... about just doing.

And one line that hit me was "Expose your ignorance".

I think that's one of the things that just holds us back so unnecessarily.  We have this image of perfection that we want to uphold.  An immaculate reputation.  An unattainable ideal.

So we hold back.  And plan and analyze and research and get stuck in a vortex of confusion and uncertainty and second guessing.  Analysis paralysis.

We're afraid to do anything until we know it's going to be perfect.

But we can't know it's going to be perfect.

In fact, we know it's not going to be perfect.  Because we're not perfect.  Nothing in this world is.

So rather than aim for something unreachable and set ourselves up for disappointment, we can just do.  And be.  True.  To who we are.

"Expose your ignorance"

Writing and learning

I struggle for hours sometimes, trying to think of something to write.  I don't know why I find it so hard.  It's not for a lack of things to say.  I've got tons on my mind.  I think the problem is that I want to get it right (the first time, of course!).  So, if I don't think I can get it right the first time -- if I can't think through the whole brilliant piece that I want to write from beginning to end -- then I don't even try.  I don't even start.  Not a word is written.  It's ridiculous. 

I think this is my manifestation of the fixed mindset that Carol Dweck writes about.  The fixed mindset says that you are born with as much talent or ability or intelligence as you'll ever have.  So, if you have a fixed mindset, you're afraid of failure because you feel it will be a damning indictment on you -- on your intelligence, on your abilities, on your potential for success.  And you get so afraid of failure, that you don't even try.

The alternative is a growth mindset.  Those with a growth mindset believe that talent, ability and intelligence are built through effort.  They see failure as milestones on the road to success -- as building blocks and learning opportunities.  You need to make mistakes because that's how you learn.

That's what I'm trying to do with in writing every day.  No, not the mistakes, but the learning.  And I know that to learn, I've got to try and practice.  And I'll make mistakes.  But that's how I'm going to learn.

A matter of effort

One of the biggest things I learned in graduate school is that, for all but the most trivial of projects, there is a positive correlation between results and efforts.  It seems rather simple, yes, I know.  The more effort you put into something, the better the results are likely to be.

But in all my years of education up until graduate school, this wasn't what I learned from experience.  Maybe the assignments and projects were too easy.  Or I just enjoyed the work so much that I didn't notice that I was putting a lot of effort in to get the results I got.

By the time I got to graduate school, I had made an art of putting the minimum amount of effort into something to get the maximum result.  I saw it as a matter of efficiency. Since efficiency is output over input, reducing the amount of input required to produce a given output increases the efficiency. So, if the grading scheme is such that an A+ is anything between 85%-100%, I would aim for 85% and no more.  I would actually submit assignments, knowing that some of the answers were wrong, calculating that the amount of effort it would take me to get those right wasn't going to impact my letter grade. 

I cringe now, remembering this.

Anyways, unfortunately (or fortunately, when you think of the bigger lesson I learned), this strategy didn't work when it came to research in graduate school.  Unlike school assignments, where you can't get more than an A+, there's no ceiling on the positive result of a research project.  Every week, the brilliant people all around me who were putting their full effort into their research and presenting their results were putting the results of my efficiency strategy in stark relief.  It became clear that holding back on the effort was a flawed strategy.

It took me some time to accept this, though.  Replacing a habit acquired through nearly two decades of life experience isn't going to be instantaneous.  In addition to that, this habit was grounded in a pervasive belief in my schools growing up that if you're really smart, you don't need to try that hard.  Dr. Carol Dweck calls this the fixed mindset.  And it's not helpful.  I needed to acquire the growth mindset, that says that you can effectively make yourself smarter by trying harder.  Or that effort leads to result.

Anyways, inspired by Seth Godin's blog post, I'm going to apply this hard earned lesson and start writing regularly and publicly in my effort to become a better writer.