Do you look busy?

I’m not asking if you are. I’m asking if you look busy. People’s perception of output is so heavily affected by what they perceive as input, it’s wild. If you tell someone you labored over a painting for five hundred hours before they see it, they will see it and be amazed. If you tell someone you slapped together something in twenty minutes and didn’t try very hard, they will think the painting is low-quality. Even if you show them the exact same painting.

So much of life’s output is subjective. There aren’t hard metrics for a lot of things – or there are, but they’re only measurable in the very long-term, and we need to evaluate whether our work is effective far before that time horizon has arrived.

As a result, humans do this odd dance. This “productivity theater.” We look busy not only to avoid having more work heaped upon us, but also because it so often improves how other people evaluate our own work.

It’s totally false, of course. We proved Marx wrong a long time ago; how much effort you put into something might be correlated with the output value, but it in no way determines it. If I work ten times harder on something and as a result produce something better, great. But if I can work 10% as hard and the output is the same, then it doesn’t decrease in value.

But hey, realizing that humans have flawed reasoning processes doesn’t change them. What it does change is how you can act, and how frustrated you can get. Recognize that you won’t get anywhere by trying to explain to people that you don’t need to work hard to produce something incredible. Like it or not, people absolutely take how hard you appeared to work into account when evaluating your work. Even back in school, don’t you remember turning in an absolutely garbage paper and the teacher being lenient on your grade because “I can tell you worked really hard on it?” Or maybe a less lenient teacher telling you or one of your peers that your paper got a low grade – do you remember the first line of objection most people utter in response? “But I worked so hard on it!” We say that because we instinctively know most humans respect that line of reasoning, however absurd it actually is.

So the point is – look busy. If humans were robots, you wouldn’t have to. But they aren’t. So communicate how hard you worked. One small trick that does seem to work – if you don’t want to lie about having worked hard on a thing directly (and I don’t), then you can comment on how hard you worked in general to get here and that tends to do the same thing. When someone says “Oh, this project proposal is fantastic!” you don’t have to say “Thanks, it took twenty hours and I haven’t slept,” when it actually only took thirty minutes. You can say “Thanks, I’ve put a huge amount of effort in over the years to get good at this, I appreciate you noticing.”

People respect the work, and you should give the people what they want.

Sometimes we have these extremely important, formative moments in our lives. They say “you can’t go back again,” but that isn’t always true. The arrow of time only points in one direction, but you can do a lot of looping around if you care to.

One particular way of circling back that I find very meaningful is to re-read the most influential books of my past. I have always been deeply affected by books. For a while I thought that might have only been an artifact of my youth, but even as an adult I’ve found certain books can just utterly change my core.

When I re-read those books, an interesting thing happens. I time travel. I find an earlier version of myself walking around the same labyrinth I’m lost in, and we can talk for a time. I am not him and he is not me. I am shaped by things he has not yet experienced, and he still has things that I have lost, for good or ill. I am not an upgrade over him, but nor am I him, deteriorated. We are just different. The one advantage I do have is that I can learn from him, even though he can’t learn from me.

Doubling back through the maze, using those books as the string and breadcrumbs to retrace my steps, I can find him. We can talk for a while. We can experience the same thing, overlapping for a moment or two or however long it takes for me to read those same words again. I can both feel the the emotions they caused in him and the ones they cause in me. I can catch glimpses of how those words might have changed in meaning if they’d found me for the first time at another first time altogether.

After this meeting, we’ll both go back to wandering about in the labyrinth. I know he’s going back to looking for a way out. He wants to defeat the maze, he’d knock down the walls in passion and fury if he could, he’d cheat and rage and find his exit, straight & fast, just to prove that nothing could hold him if he didn’t want it to.

I choose the labyrinth. I’ll find new hallways and I’ll find old ones anew. I’ll find other people who are lost and other people who don’t mind. Crooked & slow, I’ll meander.

There’s lots of really good advice out there, on just about any topic. If you want to do something – anything – well, the instructions are there. It won’t be perfect, of course. Learning to take advice is a skill all on its own, but the information is out there in one form or another. Given that all this wisdom exists, I’ve often wondered: What’s the reason so few people take it?

In my experience, people rarely take the time or put in the effort to become exceptional at anything. I used to think it was primarily because humans are lazy, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. Humans are lazy, sure. But they’re also greedy – and greed usually overcomes laziness. So why don’t more people take what seem like obvious steps to better themselves?

Modern society tells people a lot of lies. I don’t necessarily think it’s malicious in nature, because I know there isn’t some secret cabal of supervillains deciding what “society” tells people. It’s just the natural emergent property of the way civilizations with hundreds of millions of people evolve and all the competing self-interests that go into them. Society lies to you about what foods are healthy and lies to you about who you should be attracted to and all that. But those aren’t the biggest, worst lies.

The biggest, worst lie society tells you is this: “If you follow the standard playbook for life, your life will be exceptionally good.”

Pretty much by definition that can’t be true, now can it?

From a shockingly early age, you get fed a sort of “play by these rules” standard operating procedure for life. And this isn’t presented to you maliciously, but the message you get is: “Don’t think too hard about life strategy. It’s all right here. Just do these things and you’ll get the nice house and corner office and attractive mate and respect of your peers and society and everything else you want.”

So people don’t put the effort into critically cultivating skill and wisdom because they’ve largely been told they don’t have to. It’s a waste of effort! Just get good grades and color inside the lines and all the best stuff in life will just come to you on a conveyor belt.

My father instilled in me two deep, core beliefs about the world that in combination provided a blueprint for my life strategy that I think has served me very well.

The First Belief: “Absolutely anything is possible, the sky’s the limit. You can do or have or achieve anything, there is opportunity everywhere, and the world is full of treasures.”

The Second Belief: “Absolutely nothing will be handed to you, nothing is guaranteed, nothing is automatic, everything is vulnerable, and the second you take anything for granted you’ll lose it.”

I see a lot of people, I would even say most people, who have one of those beliefs but not the other. It forms the core of their worldview. People who hold the first belief but not the second are the ones who end up following the “standard playbook” and expecting all the things in their life to just fall into place. The majority that don’t get lucky enough for that to happen end up disappointed, confused, and frustrated. Then there are those who hold the second belief but not the first; they become jaded cynics who put no effort into anything because they don’t believe anything can happen even if they do. They say “the system is rigged” and take that to mean that they can’t ever succeed at anything, no matter what.

But if you hold them both? Truly internalize both? Now that’s motivation. I’ve achieved things I’m tremendously proud of, but my head’s on a swivel. I don’t think it’s a house of cards ready to fall at any moment, but I know it can be threatened, and I know how easy it is for the winds to change. I know that I may have to rebuild absolutely any or all parts of my life tomorrow, so I keep my tools in working order. If my industry went away tomorrow or someone in my family got sick or my house burned down or any of these potential disasters, I wouldn’t say “Woe is me, I followed all the rules!” I would bear down and keep going, because I know – I always knew – that this was on the table. It was one of the possibilities, always. And it doesn’t mean I’m ruined forever, because I still have The First Belief. Even after succeeding there can be disaster, but even after disaster you can still succeed.

You’re the one driving it all. No society will replace that for you effectively. Only you can make your life extraordinary.

Whenever you’re building something complex, it’s helpful – nay, essential – to have a guiding principle. An underlying mission statement that keeps you pointed in the right direction when things get confusing. Without that, it’s easy to fall into the trap of doing things for the sake of doing them, instead of because they’re essential to that main mission.

You need clarity of vision, and often you have to be relentless about it. Ruthless, even, if you want to get something done. But ruthlessness in pursuit of a single mission can be dangerous. If I ruthlessly pursue “enrich my children” as my central value, then eventually I’ll start robbing my neighbors.

I think the best way to do things is to create a sort of “Dual North Star” made of one positive value and one negative value. I.e. “Enrich my children as much as possible” (the positive value) “while never violating the rights of others” (the negative value).

If you make it more complex than that, then chances are you can go a layer deeper for your true mission. Less complex, and you can lose your moral compass. But that framing can help tremendously to get yourself on exactly the right course.

We remember and mark our first time experiencing many things. Many people remember their first kiss with fondness, others look back with great nostalgia at their first car or first concert. Even in the moment, there is a thrill to a “first” of anything, an anticipation before and a satisfaction after.

Lasts are marked as well, but differently. Sometimes it’s with great relief – our last day of school when we finally graduate, or the last signature needed to buy your (first?) house. Other times, it’s far more melancholy. The last time we spoke to a loved one before they left us.

When something is the first time, you know it. You’re aware of what came before, so you know your first dance is your first dance. But you rarely get to know you’re in a “last moment” while it’s happening. I’ve heard once: “At some point, your parent picked you up for the very last time.” When that happened, it probably passed without much notice to either party. Only far later does the realization have meaning and weight.

On occasion, you can cheat these – should you? My oldest daughter is 12. She’s quite tall, and I haven’t picked her up in some time. I still pick up my two younger children on occasion, but far less frequently than I used to. Without deliberate intervention, it’s possible that the last time I’ll ever pick up my oldest has already passed. But I could intervene; I could pick her up today, awkward and funny as it might be, if only to mark the occasion and know with some measure of certainty that it was, in fact, the last time. It would be odd and unnatural to force such a thing – but is that better or worse than having not marked it at all?

Every day you probably do something for the first time and something else for the last time – perhaps even the same event is both. Not all are worth marking, of course. Every moment in your life is special, but we don’t get the privilege of knowing that during most of those moments. For all I know, I could drink my last cup of coffee today. I may have seen my last sunrise, even if I live another fifty years. No eye can see the future.

I’ll mark what I can along the way. I’ll pick up my daughter. Not all moments are noteworthy, but if I believe anything, it’s that I get to decide.

My father would have turned 70 years old today.

There are few things as relieving as the sudden influx of fresh time. We drown ourselves by inches and minutes, but sometimes relief comes in days and yards. Enjoy it, and remind yourself not to tighten your own noose.

Confusion is a very difficult mental state to work through. It’s an insulator against good experiences. It’s the opposite of confidence, and confidence is often what we need to enjoy ourselves.

In any circumstance, we can take in more of what we’re experiencing and experience it in the way we want if we’re navigating that circumstance with self-assurance. If we have no idea what’s going on, we’ll retreat to safety practices and shyness, and most of the enjoyable aspects of the experience will be lost to us.

In new situations, it’s easy to feel much more confused than confident. That makes us enjoy new experiences less, which can drive us to associate “new experiences” as a general category with unpleasant emotions. That’s a very dangerous spiral.

Try this: let the confusion wash over you. Remind yourself that you don’t care about the outcome, especially in a new environment. It’s your first time in the new office? So what? You may get lost a little, forget which conference room you’re using today, or need to ask where the bathroom is. You can’t do any of those things badly enough to get fired. So be confident in the confusion – it’s a natural state! And if we worry about it less, it goes away faster.

Minor tweaks in direction and size. Help a few more people or pull back a bit for your own energy. Change a slight aspect of what you’re doing. Don’t remain still. This is the real meaning of “going the distance,” because you can’t win a race if you never turn, never alter your speed. The real way to the end is to flow.

“How” is a much better word than “what” in front of “…do you want to be when you grow up?”

Identities aren’t as important as values. Vocations aren’t as vital as philosophies. The ethics of how we behave and the mentality that motivates our work are essential. That’s what we need to demonstrate, not the elevation of one job over another.

Not just for children, either. For all of us.