Work & Luck (11/22/20)
Hey Friends,
Welcome back to Sunday School, a weekly newsletter to give you a boost in consuming interesting content.
This week I’m taking a look at a few of my all-time favorite mental models. The ideas included this week feel like some of the most important I’ve ever talked about in this newsletter. They’re core to what I think about every week, if not every day.
I hope you enjoy a few of these ideas as we head into a week many use to reflect and give thanks for the great things in life.
Homeroom
My Essay: The Common Human’s Guide to Finding a Job During a Worldwide Pandemic
For me, writing is a way of unpacking what’s on my mind. The act of spilling thoughts onto a page and then organizing them in the most logical and entertaining fashion is the best way to find out what I really think about something.
Given this, it makes sense that I decided to write about how to find a job during a pandemic. I recently wrapped up a job search that spanned two months of unemployment and learned so much along the way. I wanted to wrap these learnings into a guide that explained my slightly unorthodox approach to finding a job that hopefully adds value to others in a similar spot.
My hope is that this guide will stand the test of time to apply to anyone looking for a job at any time, not just during this pandemic.
For a sneak peek, here’s my 7 step approach:
Be an interesting human (and also a nice one)
Find a job you really want
Find THE person to reach out to
Craft THE perfect message
Have a conversation
Nail your interview
Celebrate
Work & Luck
Consider this image created by Jack Butcher:
There’s a complicated relationship between work and luck.
We know luck exists, and because of that, we go about our lives hoping for moments of luck to happen to us. It may not be a strategic priority, but I’m willing to assume it’s in the back of our minds, or at least buried somewhere in the methodology of the way we operate.
This image above is a beautiful representation of work and luck.
The incredible part of working hard is that growth is exponential, as the image above shows. As you put in the effort, work turns into learning and builds upon itself to create a faster rate of growth.
Take a look at this figure which shows the exponential nature of growth and explains where we often quit along way:
Luck is fantastic, but it’s the illusion of growth. While growth requires learning to create a compound effect, luck requires a fleeting moment of happenstance. It’s great, but ultimately inconsequential.
Independent of work, luck is meaningless.
For me, Butcher’s image above (work vs. luck) falls short of the best representation of this relationship because it fails to combine the two. While there’s no way to create luck, there is a way to optimize for it, just in case it decides to cross your path.
It’s called “expanding your surface area for luck,” and here’s what that looks like:
The way to create the best opportunity in life for luck is a combination of doing and telling.
Because winning the lottery is luck-based, let’s use that as a metaphor. The more you do (that is to say, the more things you create), the more lottery tickets you acquire. Similarly, the more people who are aware of those things you’ve done equates to more lottery tickets. The combination of doing more and telling more creates the highest chance that you’ll hold the winning ticket.
Instead of using the word “luck,” I like to use the word “serendipity.” Optimizing your life to expand your surface area for serendipity is reflective of living a meaningful, productive, relationship-oriented, joyful life.
To me, it’s best when you combine these two, and here’s what I’d imagine it looks like:
If it’s not obvious, luck happens and propels you forward at a faster rate in one instance, but combined with the work, you keep growing forward at the same steady rate before and after the lucky moment.
How to Think
Link: First Principles: The Building Blocks of True Knowledge
I can’t believe I’ve been writing this newsletter for ~5 months and haven’t said a word about first-principles thinking.
First-principles thinking is something I’ve been obsessed with since coming across a frustrating amount of reasoning from analogy in my work over the last few years. The link above provides a solid summary of first-principles thinking, but here’s the idea as explained by Farnam Street:
“Sometimes called “reasoning from first principles,” the idea is to break down complicated problems into basic elements and then reassemble them from the ground up. It’s one of the best ways to learn to think for yourself, unlock your creative potential, and move from linear to non-linear results."
A “first principle” is a foundational proposition or assumption that truly stands alone and cannot be deduced from other propositions or assumptions. Aristotle says it's "the first basis from which a thing is known."
In contrast, reasoning from analogy is using the built-up assumptions and propositions to inform current thoughts.
When I explain it like this it sounds simple, but in practice, the act of uncovering first principles is quite difficult.
My favorite writer, Tim Urban (this is turning into a Tim Urban fan club newsletter), uses the imagery of The Cook and The Chef:
The Chef creates recipes, The Cook makes recipes. If The Cook lost the recipe he'd be in a tough spot, but The Chef understands flavor profiles and how to use specific ingredients and would be just fine.
First-principles thinking isn’t just understanding the "how and the why, it’s understanding the how and the why buried 7-10 layers deep.
The call to action here is to pursue a deeper understanding of everything. Not just what you hear, or what you heard someone heard, but thinking based on the first-principles layers and layers underneath the noise.
How to Think (at School)
Link: The Profile
In this week’s issue of The Profile, Polina Marinova had her husband and one of my favorite writers, Anthony Pompliano guest post.
“Pomp” provided this quote which is the basis of my thoughts for this section:
"Critical thinking skills are moving from a nice-to-have to a need-to-have skill in the modern world. Most people have access to the same information, so how you process that information — and how you apply it — becomes the differentiator."
Schools have always been about building a foundation of general knowledge. How to do a math problem, how to do specific research, sentence structure, facts about history, etc.
Now, all of the information is readily available online. The information itself has become general knowledge that most have access to, and now the most important thing we can learn has become the mental models and first principles thinking that leads to value creation.
It doesn't seem like schools have really adapted to the point of recognizing that students can just Google almost everything they need to know. I haven't seen any classes pop up that are focused on mental models or first principles thinking.
Being valuable is now becoming much more about how you think than what you think. It's important to have a mindset that recognizes that there are endless ways to think about any problem or idea.
I’d love to see schools embrace the fact that general information has become democratized and do a full assessment of the current curriculum with the intent of breaking away from traditional courses. There are enough quality sources of easily accessible information online now for this to qualify as one of the most significant moments in the entirety of human history. Early education has some adapting to do in order to provide the value kids will need for their careers.
Quote of the Week
“The only way to grow is to abandon your strategy of doing what you did yesterday, but better.” - Seth Godin
That’s all this week, thanks for attending!
If you want to share this with someone just forward away or click this button:
See you next week,
-Ryan Mulholland