I AM JUST FIVE DAYS -- five days -- away from the golden "100 days" mark. For those who don't know why that mark is important, please return to the first page of this blog. I have been asked by a dozen of friends, "What are you going to do once you get to the hundredth day?" I actually have not thought about that.
I am thinking of two options: Going back to my previous posts and revise them (as in, "re- broadcast" or "radio replay"), and keep going beyond the hundredth day. As of now, I prefer the first option a bit more because I feel the urge to go back to my previous posts to read about my childish and immature thoughts. My hope is to use my humility to answer whether or not I have changed from those childish and immature days.
So, for the next five posts, I want to write about some the "key ideas" that make me who I am today. I, however, will skip those you already know from my previous posts, such as rebelliousness, lateral thinking, and morality. Oh, and probably romance and sex as well. I will probably come back to these at some points, but for the last 5 posts of the first 100 days, I want to talk about something less subjective, and more scientifically proven to be the case for self-development.
Let's start with the first one: I believe in consistent and gradual change, one step at a time. Some may call it "incrementalism." I hold this principle dearest because it has been the single most important principle that has so far positively changed my life. In my previous post, I wrote about those 5,000 hours over 6 years that "got" me into learning from English textbooks.
Long story short, I didn't have any friends when I was in college; so, by default, I had to find other way to spend my time when I wasn't in classes. I ended up spending hours every single day for 6 years reading books in the library -- since books could not really say whether they would like me to be their friends (I should say "a friend," rather than friends, during my first year in college because I managed to finish only one book during my freshman year).
Yep, I didn't become a serial reader right away (now I can't stand not reading something awesome everyday). Back then, I didn't write a single word. It's simply because I could not even construct a simple grammatical sentence in English (e.g., "Me loving you," which sounds like what Cookie Monster would say). During the entire first year in college, therefore, I only managed to read just one hundred-page-long book. Yes, just one book for the whole year during my freshman year.
In 1999, it took me about three days to get through a page, on average. It was that slow. But the process was not as annoying as I thought it would be. I still remember the joy of flipping through my old paper dictionary looking for words. That's what happened when you had to look up every single word in a paper dictionary. But bit by bit, I was able to speed up my ability to comprehend what went through my eyes.
Incrementally, bit by bit, one step at a time, I became faster at reading. Six years later, in 2005, I could finish a book in a week. "Little by little" is the meaning of "incrementalism." Just for one task -- the task to learn how to read in English -- it took me six years to do it. In 2018, I can probably read a book a day. I have come quite a long way from then -- little by little.
But I am already at least some 20 years away from those days (I graduated college in 2004), so "incrementally," I could reduce my reading time from one year to one day. That's 365 times faster -- but over the course of 20 years. This year, for instance, I hope to finish about 200 books. It's still not 365 books because I have other things that I'd like to do as well.
In fact, the author Rolf Dobelli writes in The Art of the Good Life that we should be more selective in how we read according to science. We're reading wrong. We're reading neither selectively nor thoroughly enough. We let our attention off the leash as though it were a dog we're happy to let roam, instead of directing it toward its splendid quarry. We fritter our most valuable resource on things that don't deserve them. Read a book twice? Why not?
In music we're used to listening to a track more than once. And if you play an instrument, you'll know you can't master a score on the first attempt. It takes several concentrated iterations before you can hurry on to the next piece. Why shouldn't the same go for books? The effect of reading twice isn't twice the effect of reading once. It's much greater—judging by my own experience, I'd put it at a factor of ten.
If I retain three percent of the content after one reading, after two readings it's up to thirty percent. So don't start stamping your reading ticket until you're about thirty, but be ruthless thereafter. Once you hit thirty, life's too short for bad books. Since I am already 36, perhaps I should listen to Dobelli. Yes, I think the remaining time my life is too short for bad books (and bad people, bad news, and every bad thing in general).
I guess what I am trying to say here is that my goal to read 200 books this year (and not 365) is because it's not about "how many" books that matter. Just because I can read fast doesn't mean I have to read a lot. I can spend more time doing other things, read the same book twice, and so on. [gallery ids="4834,4835" type="rectangular"] Researches have shown that incrementalism is actually what makes great minds.
We humans are built to crave exciting story, so we like to hear stories that are dramatic and magical. The author Malcolm Gladwell has written the whole book about it in Outliers: The Story of Success (which I have written about on this blog). But the truth is, as Gladwell points out in his book, even Bill Gates, Thomas Edison, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the members of the Beatles needed those 10,000 hours to make them great -- incrementally. The author Stephen J. Dubner writes about incrementalism.
What do Renaissance painting, civil-rights movements, and Olympic cycling have in common? In each case, huge breakthroughs came from taking tiny steps. In a world where everyone is looking for the next moonshot, we shouldn't ignore the power of incrementalism. So, hey, let's do these three things. First, let's enjoy what we are doing on the daily basis -- learning things incrementally. The key here is to be consistent. Since there's no moonshot, one has to keep pacing.
If you want to read well and write well, for goodness' sake just read and write every day whenever you can -- on the bus, while waiting for the doctor, etc. These two words: Be consistent. I still remember during my time as an architecture student, I had a mantra which I strictly follow: " Never live a day without a line." I find that, if you are living in the presence, this process of learning incrementally is actually quite enjoyable if not liberating.
That's how all great artists, experts, minds becomes who they were/are. Second, since the way our brain learns is incremental, incremental learning is almost the only way to learn anything to be great. So, let's not kid ourselves that any of us can be great at anything by being born into it. According to science, hard work inhabits us with the habit(s) that allow(s) us to naturally navigate activities in our lives. To put it simply, if you ain't working hard enough, you ain't going to be good or great.
The next question is: What do you want to be? If you want to be good, then you just learn incrementally. As you learn, you'll be more skillful at the task you're learning. It may take weeks, months or years, but undoubtedly you'll become better at that task. You can even slack off from time to time (we all have a job, right?) If you want to be great, however, you have to push yourself to be consistent about learning incrementally.
You might have to quit your other jobs to focus on learning incrementally on what you want to be great at. You may have to devote 10,000 hours (that's about 10 years of your waking hours) mastering that skill. It won't be easy but it will be fun. There's no other way around, according to science at least. You'll be better than good -- you'll be great, but there won't be any guarantee that you will get the results or praises.
Again, you may not confuse being great at what you do (as in, better than yourself the day before) and being at the top of the world (as in, getting all the accolades). As a Stoic might advise, you can control how great do you want to be, but you can't control how great others think you are.
So, if you choose to take this route, you must also take a Jordan B Petersonian attitude of "Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today"; Third, perhaps we can also learn to lower our expectations. Since our brain allows us to learn in small increments, we might be able to save ourselves from disappointments when expecting ourselves or others to improve drastically. Only a month ago, I couldn't stand being on a treadmill for more than 20 minutes. I found it absolutely boring.
Today, I can do one hour (with a 2 minute break in between). Come on, it's a great achievement for me, okay? I gradually increased my time on the treadmill by an increment of 5, so I began with 15 minutes, then 20, 25, 30, and so on. I am a cycling freak so I used to have to drive for one hour one-way to a dedicated cycling lane (which wasn't great for the environment) in order to ride for an hour.
Now I can just do that at the comfort of the fitness center in my apartment compound. Incrementalism rocks! Now, what else? Let's say, since I said in the beginning of this post that incrementalism has undergirded my life. Here're the top few. Finance: From an ATM, I always withdraw a bit less than I want. For instance, if my plan is to get $100, I would just get $90.
Since, to me, I don't see a lot of difference between $100 and $90, but after ten withdrawals, those $10 will accumulate to a hundred. It's like getting a $100 cash back every tenth withdrawal. Isn't that kind of nice? This goes with my saving plans and so on.
Incrementalism is great because you don't even notice it (and that's one of the argument that got the founder of the field of behavioral economics Richard Thaler the Nobel Prize!) Food consumption: That too, I always eat until I was about 70% full. Since, to my sensation, there's not much of a difference between being 100% and 70% full. Yet, those 30% is another massively tiring hour on the treadmill. I also cut back the same way on red meat, processed food, MSG, and so on.
The great thing about incrementalism is that it's so tiny that I can barely notice it, so, psychologically, I have the full control in managing my behavioral change through it. Love and relations: I think the kind of love and relations among people that will last is the one that is consistent. Many might think that it's good enough if it doesn't decline over time. We humans tend to want to seek more stories from newer relations, but that's because we think that stories have to be new. They don't.
They can be something that is built up over time. We all have great stories to tell, brag and regret, about our own personal development. It's the same. Writing a blog: One day at a time.
In Praise of Self-Improvement