More, Better, Different

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: CRITICAL PATH 2024 IS LIVE!

Every year for the past few years, I've taught a pay-what-you-want class about the most interesting or important thing I learned that year.

This year is a doozy: we're diving into the work of Alfred Korzybski, creator of General Semantics.

GS is hard to explain, but...

What if I could give you a set of tools? Tools you could use right away, to improve your life?

Tools to help you think more clearly,

Communicate more effectively,

Solve problems more quickly?

That's what Korzybski taught. GS is practical philosophy, applied directly to your every day life...

And it'll change the way you see the world.

If that sounds interesting to you, join us! It's pay-what-you-want (including free), and if you can't make the live calls you can catch the recordings.

These classes have gotten rave reviews and have been TONS of fun. I still talk to some of the friends I've made from these lectures.

So - don't wait. Grab your spot, and I'll see you there.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

This essay is the third in a series.

In Abstraction Diseases, we talked about how humans abstract the world around them.

In The Horror Of Wanting, we talked about Goodhart’s Law and how it interacts with our tendency towards abstraction.

Summarizing the argument so far:

• Goals often don’t reflect what we truly want.
• We prioritize gaming systems over genuine improvement.
• The result is a pervasive sense of disconnection and unease, as our behaviors diverge from meaningful outcomes.

So what is the alternative?

We can't lie down and die. Improvement of our environment is core to who we are as a species; I want to leave the world better off than I found it.

But goals - arbitrary, measurable targets - distort our behaviors and make us miserable in the process. The entire world drifts off its axis as the things we want, and the things we think we have to do to get them, become less and less predictable, less and less connected to anything in the "real" world.

But there is an alternative, one that allows us to stay deeply connected with the world-as-it-is and improve things effectively.

Let’s get into it.

What's the problem with goals? With arbitrary targets?

Within every goal there is bundled a source of despair, a source of anxiety.

Because every goal implies a lack.

Setting something as a goal means you lack its object, by definition. We don't set goals to have what we already have, in the same way that we only desire what we lack.

Goals are all about a gap between what you are and what you want to be. In this sense, all goals are secretly commands - commands to do something more, to do something better, or to do something different.

The problem is that most people are already doing their best.

Given their current knowledge, experiences, and understanding of the situation they're in, people generally try to do the best they can. They make decisions under conditions of uncertainty and try to muddle through with the resources at their disposal.

Asking someone who's doing their best to do things better, to do more, or to do things differently, often sounds like an accusation. You're lazy! You're stupid! You're not trying hard enough! Whenever one part of us sets a goal, another part of us bristles at the implication.

"I'm already trying my best - and now you expect me to just...do better, somehow?"

If you're an employer, you've had the experience of setting a goal for your team only to meet with frustration or confusion; this is why. If we could do better, we would already be doing better - you expect that to change just because you set a goal?

This is why Goodhart’s Law exists - it’s easier to manipulate the numbers than to actually improve, because if it was clear how to improve we’d have done it already!

Goals create their own resistance, like training an animal by yelling at it. You get temporary compliance, but you also engender resentment that undercuts the process.

How do we create positive change?

Much the same way we train animals: by working with the world-as-it-is, rather than wishing for a different one.

The most powerful way to create change is to work with what is already there.

You'll hear this in different ways depending on the context; for example, you may hear teachers talk about "meeting students where they are." You may hear a business owner talking about "working with what we have."

The insight here is that systems - whether they’re a business, a relationship, your body, the economy, or whatever - do not become the way they are randomly. What you see has an underlying logic. It may not appear logical, but that just means you don't understand the logic, not that it doesn't exist.

I am reminded of "Chesterton's Fence," a parable from G.K. Chesterton:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

We might not know the purpose of something in the world, but that does not mean it has no purpose. The very fact that the world has produced an outcome means that, on some level, it "fits" into the system as a whole.

Imagine that your goal is to lose weight. You have an idealized image of what you should look like; you desire that body. You demand that you do something more, better, or different, whether it be exercise, diet, or cardio, etc.

But unless we acknowledge that the system-as-it-is has produced the body you have and understand why that is the case, we will struggle to change.

In fact, your current status quo likely has utility of some kind. It may bring you comfort. It may help you avoid injury. It may keep you in line with your friends. Whatever the reason, if we fail to understand how the system currently works, we will fail to change the system.

In short: we need to work with the system we actually have, not the system we wish we had.

This concept of starting with what's there, of taking the time to listen to and understand the system-as-it-is, is what W. Edwards Deming called the Voice of the Process.

All systems have natural ebbs and flows, natural tendencies. They make accommodations, take shortcuts, and conserve their energy, just the same way that water naturally flows downward. Over time, grooves and etchings appear, further channeling the water; in the same way, our behaviors are emergent and adaptive, even when they seem problematic.

You can wish all day for the water to flow somewhere other than downhill; at the end of the day, wishing is all you will accomplish. Thus, true improvement always starts with the Voice of the Process, understanding how the system-as-it-is actually works, rather than how we wish it to work.

This is a practice of profound connection with reality. It is a struggle to remove our expectations and biases from the equation, to see things, not in the light of our desires for more, better, and different, but just as they are.

Once we have listened to the Voice of the Process, we can begin to think about how to shape it.

The metaphor of running water is a powerful one; water has its own inherent tendencies, physical rules that dictate how it behaves. It is impossible to channel water without understanding these tendencies. Once we comprehend them, we are capable of incredible things.

Take, for example, the Dujiangyan, a Chinese irrigation system built around 256 BC that is still in use today:

Originally, the Min [River] would rush down from the Min Mountains and slow down abruptly after reaching the Chengdu Plain, filling the watercourse with silt, thus making the nearby areas extremely prone to floods. King Zhao of Qin commissioned the project, and the construction of the Dujiangyan harnessed the river using a new method of channeling and dividing the water rather than simply damming it. The water management scheme is still in use today to irrigate over 5,300 km2 (2,000 sq mi) of land in the region[1] and has produced comprehensive benefits in flood control, irrigation, water transport and general water consumption.[2] Begun over 2,250 years ago, it now irrigates 668,700 hectares of farmland.

Note that the very first step of the construction was listening to the process itself:

During the Warring States period, people who lived in the area of the Min River were plagued by annual flooding. Qin hydrologist Li Bing investigated the problem and discovered that the river was swelled by fast flowing spring melt-water from the local mountains that burst the banks when it reached the slow moving and heavily silted stretch below.

Once we have listened to the Voice of the Process, we can begin working with it, rather than against it.

The key here is that we are not aiming for some arbitrary target - we are not specifying what weight we want to hit, how many sales we want to make, etc.

Instead, we are aiming for real improvement over the baseline.

That's it.

That's all.

ANY improvement over baseline performance of the system is significant, beneficial, and should be celebrated. These improvements, even if only minor, compound over time, leaving us far better off than before.

They also never end.

What happens when we actually reach a goal?

Two things:

• either we begin to slowly backslide (gaining weight back over time, for example), or,
• we feel depressed.

By making continuous and never-ending improvement our aim, rather than an arbitrary target, the process is never finished. It becomes a way of life, a way of being in tune with reality, of working with ourselves and our surroundings, rather than against them.

The question is not "where do I want to be?", but rather, "where am I right now, and how can I improve?"

I cannot express to you how profound this shift can be.

Truth is, the vast majority of things we try don't work. Failure is common and inevitable. But because our "goal" is now to understand the systems around us and to work with them, failure is not a setback. Instead, failure becomes a way of learning, of bringing our mental maps closer to the territory.

The appropriate cliché here is Edison inventing the light bulb. Edison famously failed over 1,000 times to create a working electric bulb. When asked how these failures impacted him, he replied, “I didn’t fail 1000 times. The lightbulb was an invention with 1000 steps.”

The journey of improvement never ends. It is a lifetime pursuit. In the process, we learn, grow, and develop a deeper understanding of the world around us. I view this process as almost spiritual: a life-long dedication to coming into the closest possible contact with reality, of becoming deeper and deeper enmeshed in the beauty, wonder, and unfathomable complexity of our universe.

There is so much to know, so much to understand. We will never approach even a fraction of it.

And as far as we know, we are the only beings in the entire universe who get the chance to try, the only beings gifted with the possibility of seeing things as they are.

This is not a universe we should force ourselves upon. We should not dismiss what is in favor of the imaginary, of the ideal, of the "what-could-be"s.

Why not listen to the Voice of the Process instead?

Why not seek to channel and sculpt, rather than demolish or reinvent?

Why not seek out a NEW way of improving ourselves and the world for those to come?

This year, I am throwing out my goals and dedicating myself to listening to the Voice of the Process.

I hope you will join me.

Yours,

Dan

SOMETHING I'M READING:

A well-written and quick reminder that sometimes the simplest interventions are the best.