James Clear's Blog, page 5

All Models Are Wrong, Some Are Useful

Even the best models of the world are imperfect. This insight is important to remember if we want to learn how to make decisions and take action on a daily basis.

For example, consider the work of Albert Einstein.

During the ten year period from 1905 to 1915, Einstein developed the general theory of relativity, which is one of the most important ideas in modern physics. Einstein’s theory has held up remarkably well over time. For example, general relativity predicted the existence of gravitational waves, which scientists finally confirmed in 2015—a full 100 years after Einstein originally wrote it down.

However, even Einstein’s best ideas were imperfect. While general relativity explains how the universe works in many situations, it breaks down in certain extreme cases (like inside black holes).

All Models Are Wrong, Some are Useful

In 1976, a British statistician named George Box wrote the famous line, “All models are wrong, some are useful.” 1

His point was that we should focus more on whether something can be applied to everyday life in a useful manner rather than debating endlessly if an answer is correct in all cases. As historian Yuval Noah Harari puts it, “Scientists generally agree that no theory is 100 percent correct. Thus, the real test of knowledge is not truth, but utility. Science gives us power. The more useful that power, the better the science.”

Even Einstein’s work was not perfect in all cases, but it has been incredibly useful—not just for increasing our understanding of the world, but also for practical purposes. For example, the Global Positioning Systems (GPS) used in your phone and in your car must take the effects of relativity into account to deliver accurate directions. Without general relativity, our navigation systems wouldn’t be accurate.

How to Make Decisions in an Imperfect World

What steps can we take to make better decisions, given that no single way of looking at the world is accurate in all situations?

One approach is to develop a broad collection of frameworks for thinking about the world. Some experts refer to each framework as a “mental model.” Each mental model is a way of thinking about the world. The more mental models you have, the more tools you have in your thinking toolbox.

For example, here are three ways of thinking about productivity:

The 2-Minute Rule: If something takes less than two minutes, do it now. The goal of this rule is to help you stop procrastinating and take action.
The Ivy Lee Method: Create a to-do list by writing down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow, prioritizing those items, and working on them in order. The goal of this method is to help you work on the most important things first.
The Seinfeld Strategy: Pick a new habit and draw an X on the calendar for each day you stick with the behavior. The goal of this method is to help you maintain consistency and keep your streak of good behavior alive.

Are any of these models perfect? Of course not. But if you combine them, then you have a strategy that can help you take action right now (The 2-Minute Rule), a strategy that can help you plan your day more effectively (The Ivy Lee Method), and a strategy that can help you maintain consistency in the long-run (The Seinfeld Strategy).

You need a collection of mental models because no single framework can work in every situation.

Doing the Best We Can With What We Have

Accepting that all models are wrong in certain instances is not a license to ignore the facts. As a society, we should search for better answers, look for evidence, and strive to increase the accuracy of our knowledge.

At the same time, there is a common peril on the other end of the spectrum. Too many people waste time debating if something is perfectly correct, when they should be focusing on if it is practically useful.

We live in a world filled with uncertainty, but we still need to get things done. It is our responsibility to develop a way of thinking about the world that generally fits the facts we have, but to not get so gummed up thinking about things that we never actually do anything. As Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert puts it, “The world doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for complete answers before it takes action.”

Impartial answers are the best we have. Focus on what is practical and take action. All models are wrong under some circumstances, but the important thing is if they are generally useful.

Read Next

The Beginner’s Guide to Better Decision Making
The Best Decision Making Books
The Four Burners Theory: The Downside of Work-Life Balance

Footnotes

Thanks to Scott Young for originally pointing me toward this quote.

All Models Are Wrong, Some Are Useful: How to Make Decisions in an Imperfect World

Even the best models of the world are imperfect. This insight is important to remember if we want to learn how to make decisions and take action on a daily basis.

For example, consider the work of Albert Einstein.

During the ten year period from 1905 to 1915, Einstein developed the general theory of relativity, which is one of the most important ideas in modern physics. Einstein’s theory has held up remarkably well over time. For example, general relativity predicted the existence of gravitational waves, which scientists finally confirmed in 2015—a full 100 years after Einstein originally wrote it down.

However, even Einstein’s best ideas were imperfect. While general relativity explains how the universe works in many situations, it breaks down in certain extreme cases (like inside black holes).

All Models Are Wrong, Some are Useful

In 1976, a British statistician named George Box wrote the famous line, “All models are wrong, some are useful.” 1

His point was that we should focus more on whether something can be applied to everyday life in a useful manner rather than debating endlessly if an answer is correct in all cases. As historian Yuval Noah Harari puts it, “Scientists generally agree that no theory is 100 percent correct. Thus, the real test of knowledge is not truth, but utility. Science gives us power. The more useful that power, the better the science.”

Even Einstein’s work was not perfect in all cases, but it has been incredibly useful—not just for increasing our understanding of the world, but also for practical purposes. For example, the Global Positioning Systems (GPS) used in your phone and in your car must take the effects of relativity into account to deliver accurate directions. Without general relativity, our navigation systems wouldn’t be accurate.

How to Make Decisions in an Imperfect World

What steps can we take to make better decisions, given that no single way of looking at the world is accurate in all situations?

One approach is to develop a broad collection of frameworks for thinking about the world. Some experts refer to each framework as a “mental model.” Each mental model is a way of thinking about the world. The more mental models you have, the more tools you have in your thinking toolbox.

For example, here are three ways of thinking about productivity:

The 2-Minute Rule: If something takes less than two minutes, do it now. The goal of this rule is to help you stop procrastinating and take action.
The Ivy Lee Method: Create a to-do list by writing down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow, prioritizing those items, and working on them in order. The goal of this method is to help you work on the most important things first.
The Seinfeld Strategy: Pick a new habit and draw an X on the calendar for each day you stick with the behavior. The goal of this method is to help you maintain consistency and keep your streak of good behavior alive.

Are any of these models perfect? Of course not. But if you combine them, then you have a strategy that can help you take action right now (The 2-Minute Rule), a strategy that can help you plan your day more effectively (The Ivy Lee Method), and a strategy that can help you maintain consistency in the long-run (The Seinfeld Strategy).

You need a collection of mental models because no single framework can work in every situation.

Doing the Best We Can With What We Have

Accepting that all models are wrong in certain instances is not a license to ignore the facts. As a society, we should search for better answers, look for evidence, and strive to increase the accuracy of our knowledge.

At the same time, there is a common peril on the other end of the spectrum. Too many people waste time debating if something is perfectly correct, when they should be focusing on if it is practically useful.

We live in a world filled with uncertainty, but we still need to get things done. It is our responsibility to develop a way of thinking about the world that generally fits the facts we have, but to not get so gummed up thinking about things that we never actually do anything. As Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert puts it, “The world doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for complete answers before it takes action.”

Impartial answers are the best we have. Focus on what is practical and take action. All models are wrong under some circumstances, but the important thing is if they are generally useful.

Footnotes

Thanks to Scott Young for originally pointing me toward this quote.

Motivation is Overvalued. Environment Often Matters More.

It can be tempting to blame failure on a lack of willpower or a scarcity of talent, and to attribute success to hard work, effort, and grit.

To be sure, those things matter. What is interesting, however, is that if you examine how human behavior has been shaped over time, you discover that motivation (and even talent) is often overvalued. In many cases, the environment matters more.

Let me share an example that surprised me when I first learned of it.

The Shape of Human Behavior

In his award-winning book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, scientist Jared Diamond points out an obvious fact: different continents have different shapes. At first glance, this seems rather unimportant, but it turns out to have a profound impact on human behavior.

For example, the general shape of the Americas is north-south. That is, the land mass of North and South America tends to be tall and thin in shape rather than wide and fat. The same is true for Africa. The primary axis runs from north to south.

Meanwhile, the land mass that makes up Europe, Asia, and the Middle East is the opposite. This massive stretch of land tends to be more east-west in shape. Interestingly, the shape of each region has played a significant role in driving human behavior throughout the centuries.

The Remarkable Power of Environment

When agriculture began to spread around the globe, farmers had a much easier time expanding along east-west routes than along north-south routes. This is because locations along the same latitude generally share similar climates, amounts of sunlight and rainfall, and comparable changes in seasons. This allowed farmers in Europe and Asia to domesticate a few crops and easily grow them along the entire stretch of land from France to China.

Meanwhile, the climate can vary wildly when you travel from north to south. Just imagine how different the weather is in Florida compared to Canada. Many crops that grow well in warm weather do not grow well in cold weather. In order to spread crops north and south, farmers would need to find and domesticate new plants whenever the climate changed.

As a result of these environmental differences, agriculture spread 2x to 3x faster across Asia and Europe as it did up and down the Americas. Over the span of centuries, this had a very big impact. The increased food production in Europe and Asia allowed for more rapid population growth in those areas. With more people, the cultures in Europe and Asia were able to build stronger armies and develop new technologies and innovations.

The changes started out small—a crop that spread slightly easier, a population that grew slightly faster—but compounded into substantial differences over time. While there were other factors, it is not a stretch to say the shape of the continents was an important reason why Europeans rose to power and conquered the native tribes of North and South America, and not the other way around.

The Invisible Hand

Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior. We tend to believe our habits are a product of our motivation, talent, and effort. Certainly, these qualities matter. But the surprising thing is, especially over a long time period, your personal characteristics tend to get overpowered by your environment.

Imagine trying to grow tomatoes in a Canadian winter. You can be the most talented farmer in the world, but it won’t make a difference. Snow is a very poor substitute for soil.

There is no evidence that the farmers of Europe and Asia were more talented or more motivated than farmers in the rest of the world. Yet, they were able to spread agriculture 2x to 3x faster than their peers. If you want to maximize your odds of success, then you need to operate in an environment that accelerates your results rather than hinders them.

How to Design a Better Environment

There are many ways to design an environment that promotes success.

Here are three strategies:

First, automate good decisions. Whenever possible, design an environment that makes good decisions for you. For example, buying smaller plates can help you lose weight by deciding portion size for you. A study from Brian Wansink at Cornell University found that people eat 22 percent less food by switching from 12-inch dinner plates to 10-inch plates. Similarly, using software to block social media sites can help overcome procrastination by putting your willpower on autopilot.

Second, get in the flow. A few years ago, PetSmart changed their checkout process. After swiping their credit card, customers were shown a screen that asked if they wanted to donate to “help save homeless animals.” Through this single strategy, PetSmart Charities raised $40 million in a year. 1

You can apply a similar strategy by designing an environment where good habits “get in the flow” of your normal behaviors. For example, if you want to practice a musical instrument, you could place it in the middle of your living room. Similarly, you are more likely to go to the gym if it is literally on the way home from work than you are if the gym is only five minutes away, but in the opposite direction of your commute. Whenever possible, design your habits so they fit in the flow of your current patterns.

Third, subtract the negative influences. Ancient farmers didn’t have the opportunity to remove the barriers that held them back, but you do. For example, Japanese television manufacturers rearranged their workspaces to save time by eliminating unnecessary turning, bending, and swiveling. You can also reduce the negative influences in your environment. For example, you can make it easier to avoid unhealthy foods by storing them in less visible places. (Foods that are placed at eye level tend to be purchased and eaten more frequently.)

The Luck of the Environment

We are quick to blame our environment when things go poorly. If you lose a job, it’s because the economy sucks. If you lose a game, it’s because the officiating was bad. If you’re late to work, it’s because traffic was insane.

When we win, however, we ignore the environment completely. If you land a job, it’s because you were talented and likable. If you win a game, it’s because you played better. If you’re early for a meeting, it’s because you are organized and prompt.

It is important to remember that the environment drives our good behaviors as well as our bad ones. People who seem to stick to good habits with ease are often benefitting from an environment that makes those behaviors easier. Meanwhile, people who struggle to succeed could be fighting an uphill battle against their environment. What often looks like a lack of willpower is actually the result of a poor of environment.

Life is a game and if you want to guarantee better results over a sustained period of time, the best approach is to play the game in an environment that favors you. Winners often win because their environment makes winning easier.

Read Next

10 Simple Ways to Eat Healthy Without Thinking
The Best Psychology Books
The Beginner’s Guide to Evolutionary Psychology 

Footnotes

I learned about the PetSmart story and the idea of “getting in the flow” from behavioral scientist Bob Nease, who wrote about these ideas in his book, The Power of Fifty Bits.

How to Stay Motivated in Life and Business

It was 1955 and Disneyland had just opened in Anaheim, California when a ten-year-old boy walked in and asked for a job. Labor laws were loose back then and the boy managed to land a position selling guidebooks to visitors for $0.50 a piece.

Within a year, he had transitioned to Disney’s magic shop where he learned tricks from the older employees. He experimented with jokes and tried out simple magic routines on the visitors. Soon, he discovered that what he loved was not performing magic, but performing in general. The young boy set his sights on becoming a comedian.

Once he entered high school, he started performing in small clubs around Los Angeles. The crowds were small and his act was short. He was rarely on stage for more than five minutes. In one case, he literally delivered his standup routine to an empty club.

It wasn’t glamorous work, but there was no doubt he was getting better. His first magic routines would only last one or two minutes. By high school his material had expanded to include a five minute skit and then a ten minute show. At the age of 19, he was performing weekly at clubs for twenty minutes at a time. Of course, he had to read three poems during the act just to make the routine long enough, but still. He was improving.

He spent another decade experimenting, adjusting, and practicing his act. He took a job as a television writer and, gradually, he was able to land his own appearances on television shows. By the mid-1970s, he had worked his way into being a regular guest on The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live.

After nearly 15 years of work, he broke through to wild success. He toured 60 cities in 63 days. Then 72 cities in 80 days. Then 85 cities in 90 days. 18,695 people attended one show in Ohio. 45,000 tickets were sold for his 3-day show in New York. He catapulted to the top of his genre and became one of the most important comedians of his time.

His name was Steve Martin.

Steve Martin performing in Chicago, Illinois in 1978. (Photo by Paul Natkin.)
How to Stay Motivated

I recently finished Steve Martin’s wonderful autobiography, Born Standing Up.

Comedy is not for the faint of heart. It is hard to imagine a situation that would strike fear into the hearts of more people than failing to get a single laugh on stage. And yet, Martin worked at it for 18 years. In his words, “10 years spent learning, 4 years spent refining, and 4 years spent in wild success.” His story offers a fascinating perspective on motivation, perseverance, and consistency.

Why do we stay motivated to reach some goals, but not others? Why do we say we want something, but give up on it after a few days? What is the difference between the areas where we naturally stay motivated and those where we give up?

Scientists have been studying motivation for decades. While there is still much to learn, one of the most consistent findings is that perhaps the best way to stay motivated is to work on tasks of “just manageable difficulty.”

The Goldilocks Rule

Human beings love challenges, but only if they are within the optimal zone of difficulty.

For example, imagine you are playing tennis. If you try to play a serious match against a four-year-old, you will quickly become bored. The match is too easy. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you try to play a serious match against a professional tennis player like Roger Federer or Serena Williams, you will find yourself demotivated for a different reason. The match is too difficult.

Compare these experiences to playing tennis against someone who is your equal. As the game progresses, you win a few points and you lose a few points. You have a chance of winning the match, but only if you really try. Your focus narrows, distractions fade away, and you find yourself fully invested in the task at hand. The challenge you are facing is “just manageable.” Victory is not guaranteed, but it is possible. Tasks like these, science has found, are the most likely to keep us motivated in the long term.

Tasks that are significantly below your current abilities are boring. Tasks that are significantly beyond your current abilities are discouraging. But tasks that are right on the border of success and failure are incredibly motivating to our human brains. We want nothing more than to master a skill just beyond our current horizon.

We can call this phenomenon The Goldilocks Rule. The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right. 1

Martin’s comedy career was a perfect example of what The Goldilocks Rule looks like in the real world. Each year, the length of his comedy routines expanded, but only by a minute or two. He was always adding new material, but he also kept a few jokes that were guaranteed to get laughs. There were just enough victories to keep him motivated and just enough mistakes to keep him working hard.

Measure Your Progress

If you want to learn how to stay motivated to reach your goals, then there is a second piece of the motivation puzzle that is crucial to understand. It has to do with achieving that perfect blend of hard work and happiness.

Working on challenges of an optimal level of difficulty has been found to not only be motivating, but also to be a major source of happiness. As psychologist Gilbert Brim put it, “One of the important sources of human happiness is working on tasks at a suitable level of difficulty, neither too hard nor too easy.”

This blend of happiness and peak performance is sometimes referred to as flow, which is what athletes and performers experience when they are “in the zone.” Flow is the mental state you experience when you are so focused on the task at hand that the rest of the world fades away.

In order to reach this state of peak performance, however, you not only need to work on challenges at the right degree of difficulty, but also measure your immediate progress. As psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains, one of the keys to reaching a flow state is that “you get immediate feedback about how you are doing at each step.”

Seeing yourself make progress in the moment is incredibly motivating. Steve Martin would tell a joke and immediately know if it worked based on the laughter of the crowd. Imagine how addicting it would be to create a roar of laughter. The rush of positive feedback Martin experienced from one great joke would probably be enough to overpower his fears and inspire him to work for weeks.

In other areas of life, measurement looks different but is just as critical for achieving a blend of motivation and happiness. In tennis, you get immediate feedback based on whether or not you win the point. Regardless of how it is measured, the human brain needs some way to visualize our progress if we are to maintain motivation. We need to be able to see our wins.

Two Steps to Motivation

If we want to break down the mystery of how to stay motivated for the long-term, we could simply say:

Stick to The Goldilocks Rule and work on tasks of just manageable difficulty.
Measure your progress and receive immediate feedback whenever possible.

Wanting to improve your life is easy. Sticking with it is a different story. If you want to stay motivated for good, then start with a challenge that is just manageable, measure your progress, and repeat the process.

Read Next

The Beginner’s Guide to Motivation
The Best Business Books
The Two Types of Inspiration (Are You Using Both in Your Work and Life?)

Footnotes

For those from different cultures, the Goldilocks Rule is named after the fairy tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Business

It was 1955 and Disneyland had just opened in Anaheim, California when a ten-year-old boy walked in and asked for a job. Labor laws were loose back then and the boy managed to land a position selling guidebooks to visitors for $0.50 a piece.

Within a year, he had transitioned to Disney’s magic shop where he learned tricks from the older employees. He experimented with jokes and tried out simple magic routines on the visitors. Soon, he discovered that what he loved was not performing magic, but performing in general. The young boy set his sights on becoming a comedian.

Once he entered high school, he started performing in small clubs around Los Angeles. The crowds were small and his act was short. He was rarely on stage for more than five minutes. In one case, he literally delivered his standup routine to an empty club.

It wasn’t glamorous work, but there was no doubt he was getting better. His first magic routines would only last one or two minutes. By high school his material had expanded to include a five minute skit and then a ten minute show. At the age of 19, he was performing weekly at clubs for twenty minutes at a time. Of course, he had to read three poems during the act just to make the routine long enough, but still. He was improving.

He spent another decade experimenting, adjusting, and practicing his act. He took a job as a television writer and, gradually, he was able to land his own appearances on television shows. By the mid-1970s, he had worked his way into being a regular guest on The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live.

After nearly 15 years of work, he broke through to wild success. He toured 60 cities in 63 days. Then 72 cities in 80 days. Then 85 cities in 90 days. 18,695 people attended one show in Ohio. 45,000 tickets were sold for his 3-day show in New York. He catapulted to the top of his genre and became one of the most important comedians of his time.

His name was Steve Martin.

Steve Martin performing in Chicago, Illinois in 1978. (Photo by Paul Natkin.)
How to Stay Motivated

I recently finished Steve Martin’s wonderful autobiography, Born Standing Up.

Comedy is not for the faint of heart. It is hard to imagine a situation that would strike fear into the hearts of more people than failing to get a single laugh on stage. And yet, Martin worked at it for 18 years. In his words, “10 years spent learning, 4 years spent refining, and 4 years spent in wild success.” His story offers a fascinating perspective on motivation, perseverance, and consistency.

Why do we stay motivated to reach some goals, but not others? Why do we say we want something, but give up on it after a few days? What is the difference between the areas where we naturally stay motivated and those where we give up?

Scientists have been studying motivation for decades. While there is still much to learn, one of the most consistent findings is that perhaps the best way to stay motivated is to work on tasks of “just manageable difficulty.”

The Goldilocks Rule

Human beings love challenges, but only if they are within the optimal zone of difficulty.

For example, imagine you are playing tennis. If you try to play a serious match against a four-year-old, you will quickly become bored. The match is too easy. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you try to play a serious match against a professional tennis player like Roger Federer or Serena Williams, you will find yourself demotivated for a different reason. The match is too difficult.

Compare these experiences to playing tennis against someone who is your equal. As the game progresses, you win a few points and you lose a few points. You have a chance of winning the match, but only if you really try. Your focus narrows, distractions fade away, and you find yourself fully invested in the task at hand. The challenge you are facing is “just manageable.” Victory is not guaranteed, but it is possible. Tasks like these, science has found, are the most likely to keep us motivated in the long term.

Tasks that are significantly below your current abilities are boring. Tasks that are significantly beyond your current abilities are discouraging. But tasks that are right on the border of success and failure are incredibly motivating to our human brains. We want nothing more than to master a skill just beyond our current horizon.

We can call this phenomenon The Goldilocks Rule. The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.

Martin’s comedy career was a perfect example of what The Goldilocks Rule looks like in the real world. Each year, the length of his comedy routines expanded, but only by a minute or two. He was always adding new material, but he also kept a few jokes that were guaranteed to get laughs. There were just enough victories to keep him motivated and just enough mistakes to keep him working hard.

Measure Your Progress

If you want to learn how to stay motivated to reach your goals, then there is a second piece of the motivation puzzle that is crucial to understand. It has to do with achieving that perfect blend of hard work and happiness.

Working on challenges of an optimal level of difficulty has been found to not only be motivating, but also to be a major source of happiness. As psychologist Gilbert Brim put it, “One of the important sources of human happiness is working on tasks at a suitable level of difficulty, neither too hard nor too easy.”

This blend of happiness and peak performance is sometimes referred to as flow, which is what athletes and performers experience when they are “in the zone.” Flow is the mental state you experience when you are so focused on the task at hand that the rest of the world fades away.

In order to reach this state of peak performance, however, you not only need to work on challenges at the right degree of difficulty, but also measure your immediate progress. As psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains, one of the keys to reaching a flow state is that “you get immediate feedback about how you are doing at each step.”

Seeing yourself make progress in the moment is incredibly motivating. Steve Martin would tell a joke and immediately know if it worked based on the laughter of the crowd. Imagine how addicting it would be to create a roar of laughter. The rush of positive feedback Martin experienced from one great joke would probably be enough to overpower his fears and inspire him to work for weeks.

In other areas of life, measurement looks different but is just as critical for achieving a blend of motivation and happiness. In tennis, you get immediate feedback based on whether or not you win the point. Regardless of how it is measured, the human brain needs some way to visualize our progress if we are to maintain motivation. We need to be able to see our wins.

Two Steps to Motivation

If we want to break down the mystery of how to stay motivated for the long-term, we could simply say:

Stick to The Goldilocks Rule and work on tasks of just manageable difficulty.
Measure your progress and receive immediate feedback whenever possible.

Wanting to improve your life is easy. Sticking with it is a different story. If you want to stay motivated for good, then start with a challenge that is just manageable, measure your progress, and repeat the process.

My 2016 Integrity Report

Today I am publishing my 2016 Integrity Report.

This is an exercise I do each year because these reports provide a reason for me to revisit my core values and consider if I have been living in a sincere way. Basically, my Integrity Reports help me answer the question, “Am I actually living like the type of person I claim to be?”

There are 3 main questions that I will answer in this Integrity Report.

What are the core values that drive my life and work?
How am I living and working with integrity right now?
How can I set a higher standard in the future?

As always, you are welcome to use this format to conduct your own Integrity Report (if you are into that kind of thing).

1. What are the core values that drive my life and work?

Below are my core values and some questions that I use to think more deeply about each area. My core values have remained largely the same, but each year I tweak them a bit. My guess is that this will continue as self-discovery is a lifelong process.

I. Growth

Am I learning new things, exploring new places, and experimenting with new ideas?
Am I questioning my limiting beliefs and trying to overcome them?
Am I building habits that lead to continual improvement?

II. Self-Respect

Am I fulfilling my potential?
Am I giving myself permission to be happy with where I am right now?
Am I living like the type of person I claim to be?

III. Grit

Am I mentally and physically strong?
Am I preparing for unexpected challenges?
Am I taking steps to overcome the challenges in my life?

IV. Contribution

Am I contributing to the world or just consuming it?
Am I someone others can count on?
Am I helping to make things better for others?

Some readers like to use the above questions to think through their lives, but you are welcome to develop your own list of core values. If you want to create your own Integrity Report, feel free to browse this list of common core values.

2. How am I living and working with integrity right now?

Alright, time for the good news. Here are some improvements I made over the past year to live and work with more integrity.

Writing about ideas of practical significance. One of my key areas of focus as a writer is to cover ideas and stories that are actually useful in every day life. I can always improve in this area, but I do believe I did a solid job of deliver practical and useful ideas over the last 12 months. Some of the highlights include discussing the science of anxiety and what to do about it, how to stop procrastinating, how to stop buying things we don’t need, how to avoid common decision making errors, and how to analyze the failures in your life.

Apologizing for my mistakes and righting old wrongs. I make a lot of mistakes. Sometime last year, I realized that not only was I making mistakes, I was also responding to my mistakes incorrectly. I would push the situation into a dark corner of my mind, never bring up the mistake in conversation, and just hope that others would forget about it. Once I realized this, I decided to fix things and send apology letters.

Here’s one example: On July 31, 2015 I wrote apology letters to 40 customers who purchased a high-priced course from me that, in my opinion, failed to deliver the value it promised. I took the course down, refunded all of the money, and sent a personal apology to each person. The most important line in the apology was this, “I won’t be perfect in this journey, but when I do screw up I will make things right.”

Here’s what people sent in response to my apology:

“My loyalty to you and your work has just doubled.”
“Actions speak so much louder than words and your actions speak volumes of your true commitment to your mission and your community of readers. When treated right, a broken bone will heal stronger at the point of failure. I think it’s fair to say that you have treated the situation (I won’t call it a failure because it wasn’t to me) perfectly and you will have a stronger reader community for it.”
“You’re a beauty James. Thanks again for your honesty.”

I cannot tell you how relieved I was after this experience. I had procrastinated on sending these apologies for a year. That’s right, an entire year. Twelve months of awkwardness and anguish evaporated in 24 hours. It was one of the best uses of time I can think of. Furthermore, not only was my apology the right thing to do, it also completely turned the situation around.

Here are the two biggest lessons I learned while writing my apology letters:

Don’t justify your actions. When I started writing I had a very strong urge to generate reasons for my behavior or explain away my mistakes. Just say you’re sorry and admit that you screwed up. You don’t need to berate yourself, but don’t water it down either. Just state the facts: “I did X and it was a mistake.”
Give specific examples of how you are getting better. Don’t just tell them that you messed up. What steps have you taken to improve? Show that you care about the mistake so much that you took real action to correct it.

Today I actually feel stronger because I owned up to my flaws.

Sharing the work rather than hoarding the work. I have said this basically every year, but let me say it again: nearly everything I write about, I have learned from someone else. I am building upon the work of others, synthesizing ideas and stories, and sharing what I learn with you. I don’t own these ideas and I’m not worried about “getting credit” for my work. What I want more than anything is for my work to help people. I just want to contribute something useful to the conversations we have about why and how we live our lives. This is why I list footnotes at the end of each article and why I maintain my Thank You page.

Focusing on contribution over compensation. Charlie Munger has a fantastic quote about money, privilege and impact: “People should take way less than they’re worth when they are favored by life… I would argue that when you rise high enough in American business, you’ve got a moral duty to be underpaid—not to get all that you can, but to actually be underpaid.” 1

I love the idea that once your needs are cared for, it is actually your duty to make the world a better place. This is a philosophy that has guided my actions as an entrepreneur so far and I intend for that to continue.

3. How can I set a higher standard in the future?

Now for the hard part. Where am I currently struggling and what can I do to improve over the next 12 months?

Thank people for their help. While I have done a good job of writing apology letters, I have done a terrible job of writing Thank You notes. A few months ago I wrote the article titled, “Make Your Life Better by Saying Thank You in These 7 Situations” as a reminder to myself. There are some Thank You notes that I should have written six months ago that—as I sit here typing away about integrity and responsibility—I still haven’t written.

Return to writing consistently. My business was built on reliability. I wrote an article every Monday and Thursday for three years without missing a beat. When I say I’m going to show up, I show up. And then, my friend Scott passed away, I signed a book deal, I started hiring employees, and suddenly I lost the momentum of writing weekly articles. There was a six month period from late 2015 to early 2016 when I only wrote 14 articles and I should have written at least double that. This is a trend that I would consider out of character and not in alignment with the values I listed at the beginning of this report.

The good news? I’m back on track with a new streak. It took me awhile to adjust to writing books as well as articles and to being the leader of a team. Now I’m publishing every Monday and we’re going to keep that pattern going.

Create a personalized reader experience. JamesClear.com currently receives almost 1 million visitors each month. While that number is almost 1 million people more than I expected to read my work when I began writing, it has created some problems. The biggest problem is that different readers have different needs. I write about a broad range of topics: productivity, creativity, behavioral psychology, strength training, self-improvement, and more. Some readers want exercise tips. Others want scientific research. Still others want time management strategies.

Right now, I just send out ideas as I get them and hope that it hits the mark with most people. I can do better than that. One of my goals for the next 12 months is to create a personalized experience that makes newsletter subscribers feel loved. Yes, you should get new articles when I publish them. But you should also get the most relevant content to your needs and interests. I have a lot of ideas about how to do that and I am excited to raise the bar.

The Bottom Line

My hope is that my annual Integrity Reports help me hold myself to a higher standard and build a business that makes life a little bit better for others. I have made so many mistakes in the past and I am sure I will make many more in the future, but I still find it remarkable how often I can screw up and still make progress as long as I am willing to take steps to improve.

As always, thank you for being part of this worldwide community. I’ll do my best to continue delivering ideas and stories that make your life better.

Integrity Report Archives

This is a complete list of annual Integrity Reports I have written. Enjoy!

My 2016 Integrity Report My 2015 Integrity Report My 2014 Integrity Report

Footnotes

Corporate Governance According to Charles T. Munger by David F. Larcker and Brian Tayan. March 3, 2014.

The Downside of Work-Life Balance

One way to think about work-life balance issues is with a concept known as The Four Burners Theory. Here’s how it was first explained to me:

Imagine that your life is represented by a stove with four burners on it. Each burner symbolizes one major quadrant of your life.

The first burner represents your family.
The second burner is your friends.
The third burner is your health.
The fourth burner is your work.

The Four Burners Theory says that “in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.” 1

Three Views of the Four Burners

My initial reaction to The Four Burners Theory was to search for a way to bypass it. “Can I succeed and keep all four burners running?” I wondered.

Perhaps I could combine two burners. “What if I lumped family and friends into one category?”

Maybe I could combine health and work. “I hear sitting all day is unhealthy. What if I got a standing desk?” Now, I know what you are thinking. Believing that you will be healthy because you bought a standing desk is like believing you are a rebel because you ignored the fasten seatbelt sign on an airplane, but whatever. 2

Soon I realized I was inventing these workarounds because I didn’t want to face the real issue: life is filled with tradeoffs. If you want to excel in your work and in your marriage, then your friends and your health may have to suffer. If you want to be healthy and succeed as a parent, then you might be forced to dial back your career ambitions. Of course, you are free to divide your time equally among all four burners, but you have to accept that you will never reach your full potential in any given area.

Essentially, we are forced to choose. Would you rather live a life that is unbalanced, but high-performing in a certain area? Or would you rather live a life that is balanced, but never maximizes your potential in a given quadrant?

What is the best way to handle these work-life balance problems? I don’t claim to have it figured out, but here are three ways of thinking about The Four Burners Theory.

Option 1: Outsource Burners

We outsource small aspects of our lives all the time. We buy fast food so we don’t have to cook. We go to the dry cleaners to save time on laundry. We visit the car repair shop so we don’t have to fix our own automobile.

Outsourcing small portions of your life allows you to save time and spend it elsewhere. Can you apply the same idea to one quadrant of your life and free up time to focus on the other three burners?

Work is the best example. For many people, work is the hottest burner on the stove. It is where they spend the most time and it is the last burner to get turned off. In theory, entrepreneurs and business owners can outsource the work burner. They do it by hiring employees. 3

In my article on The 3 Stages of Failure, I covered Sam Carpenter’s story about building business systems that allowed him to work just 2 hours per week. He outsourced himself from the daily work of the business while still reaping the financial benefits.

Parenting is another example. Working parents are often forced to “outsource” the family burner by dropping their children off at daycare or hiring a babysitter. Calling this outsourcing might seem unfair, but—like the work example above—parents are paying someone else to keep the burner running while they use their time elsewhere.

The advantage of outsourcing is that you can keep the burner running without spending your time on it. Unfortunately, removing yourself from the equation is also a disadvantage. Most entrepreneurs, artists, and creators I know would feel bored and without a sense of purpose if they had nothing to work on each day. Every parent I know would rather spend time with their children than drop them off at daycare.

Outsourcing keeps the burner running, but is it running in a meaningful way?

Option 2: Embrace Constraints

One of the most frustrating parts of The Four Burners Theory is that it shines a light on your untapped potential. It can be easy to think, “If only I had more time, I could make more money or get in shape or spend more time at home.”

One way to manage this problem is to shift your focus from wishing you had more time to maximizing the time you have. In other words, you embrace your limitations. The question to ask yourself is, “Assuming a particular set of constraints, how can I be as effective as possible?”

For example:

Assuming I can only work from 9 AM to 5 PM, how can I make the most money possible?
Assuming I can only write for 15 minutes each day, how can I finish my book as fast as possible?
Assuming I can only exercise for 3 hours each week, how can I get in the best shape possible?

This line of questioning pulls your focus toward something positive (getting the most out of what you have available) rather than something negative (worrying about never having enough time). Furthermore, well-designed limitations can actually improve your performance.

Of course, there are disadvantages as well. Embracing constraints means accepting that you are operating at less than your full potential. Yes, there are plenty of ways to “work smarter, not harder” but it is difficult to avoid the fact that where you spend your time matters. If you invested more time into your health or your relationships or your career, you would likely see improved results in that area.

Option 3: The Seasons of Life

A third way to manage your four burners is by breaking your life into seasons. What if, instead of searching for perfect work-life balance at all times, you divided your life into seasons that focused on a particular area?

The importance of your burners may change throughout life. When you are in your 20s or 30s and you don’t have children, it can be easier to get to the gym and chase career ambitions. The health and work burners are on full blast. A few years later, you might start a family and suddenly the health burner dips down to a slow simmer while your family burner gets more gas. Another decade passes and you might revive relationships with old friends or pursue that business idea you had been putting off.

You don’t have to give up on your dreams forever, but life rarely allows you to keep all four burners going at once. Maybe you need to let go of something for this season. You can do it all in a lifetime, but not at the same damn time. In the words of Nathan Barry, “Commit to your goal with everything you have—for a season.”

For the last five years, I have been in my entrepreneurship season. I built a successful business, but it came with costs. I turned my friends burner way down and my family burner is only running halfway.

What season are you in right now?

Work-Life Balance: Which Burners Have You Cut Off?

The Four Burners Theory reveals an inconsistency everyone must deal with: nobody likes being told they can’t have it all, but everyone has constraints on their time and energy. Every choice has a cost.

Which burners have you cut off?

Read Next

Life Lessons: Stories to Help You Live Better
The Best Self-Help Books
Getting to Simple: How Experts Figure What to Focus On

Footnotes

I first heard about The Four Burners Theory from Chris Guillebeau, who heard about it from Jocelyn Glei, who read about it in this New Yorker article by David Sedaris, who was told about it by an Australian woman named Pat, who heard about it at a management seminar she attended. If you’re keeping score at home and trying to figure out where The Four Burners Theory originated from, well, good luck. The above quote comes from the New Yorker article by Sedaris.

I’m pretty sure I heard someone else use that fasten seatbelt phrase previously. If you know who it might have been, let me know and I’ll give them credit.

In practice, the opposite usually occurs. In most cases, entrepreneurs spend at least their first five years in business working longer hours and making less money than they would as an employee.

The Four Burners Theory: The Downside of Work-Life Balance

There is a concept known as The Four Burners Theory. Here’s how it was first explained to me:

Imagine that your life is represented by a stove with four burners on it. Each burner symbolizes one major quadrant of your life.

The first burner represents your family.
The second burner is your friends.
The third burner is your health.
The fourth burner is your work.

The Four Burners Theory says that “in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.” 1

Three Views of the Four Burners

My initial reaction to The Four Burners Theory was to search for a way to bypass it. “Can I succeed and keep all four burners running?” I wondered.

Perhaps I could combine two burners. “What if I lumped family and friends into one category?”

Maybe I could combine health and work. “I hear sitting all day is unhealthy. What if I got a standing desk?” Now, I know what you are thinking. Believing that you will be healthy because you bought a standing desk is like believing you are a rebel because you ignored the fasten seatbelt sign on an airplane, but whatever. 2

Soon I realized I was inventing these workarounds because I didn’t want to face the real issue: life is filled with tradeoffs. If you want to excel in your work and in your marriage, then your friends and your health may have to suffer. If you want to be healthy and succeed as a parent, then you might be forced to dial back your career ambitions. Of course, you are free to divide your time equally among all four burners, but you have to accept that you will never reach your full potential in any given area.

Essentially, we are forced to choose. Would you rather live a life that is unbalanced, but high-performing in a certain area? Or would you rather live a life that is balanced, but never maximizes your potential in a given quadrant?

What is the best way to handle these work-life balance problems? I don’t claim to have it figured out, but here are three ways of thinking about The Four Burners Theory.

Option 1: Outsource Burners

We outsource small aspects of our lives all the time. We buy fast food so we don’t have to cook. We go to the dry cleaners to save time on laundry. We visit the car repair shop so we don’t have to fix our own automobile.

Outsourcing small portions of your life allows you to save time and spend it elsewhere. Can you apply the same idea to one quadrant of your life and free up time to focus on the other three burners?

Work is the best example. For many people, work is the hottest burner on the stove. It is where they spend the most time and it is the last burner to get turned off. In theory, entrepreneurs and business owners can outsource the work burner. They do it by hiring employees. 3

In my article on The 3 Stages of Failure, I covered Sam Carpenter’s story about building business systems that allowed him to work just 2 hours per week. He outsourced himself from the daily work of the business while still reaping the financial benefits.

Parenting is another example. Working parents are often forced to “outsource” the family burner by dropping their children off at daycare or hiring a babysitter. Calling this outsourcing might seem unfair, but—like the work example above—parents are paying someone else to keep the burner running while they use their time elsewhere.

The advantage of outsourcing is that you can keep the burner running without spending your time on it. Unfortunately, removing yourself from the equation is also a disadvantage. Most entrepreneurs, artists, and creators I know would feel bored and without a sense of purpose if they had nothing to work on each day. Every parent I know would rather spend time with their children than drop them off at daycare.

Outsourcing keeps the burner running, but is it running in a meaningful way?

Option 2: Embrace Constraints

One of the most frustrating parts of The Four Burners Theory is that it shines a light on your untapped potential. It can be easy to think, “If only I had more time, I could make more money or get in shape or spend more time at home.”

One way to manage this problem is to shift your focus from wishing you had more time to maximizing the time you have. In other words, you embrace your limitations. The question to ask yourself is, “Assuming a particular set of constraints, how can I be as effective as possible?”

For example:

Assuming I can only work from 9 AM to 5 PM, how can I make the most money possible?
Assuming I can only write for 15 minutes each day, how can I finish my book as fast as possible?
Assuming I can only exercise for 3 hours each week, how can I get in the best shape possible?

This line of questioning pulls your focus toward something positive (getting the most out of what you have available) rather than something negative (worrying about never having enough time).

Of course, there are disadvantages as well. Embracing constraints means accepting that you are operating at less than your full potential. Yes, there are plenty of ways to “work smarter, not harder” but it is difficult to avoid the fact that where you spend your time matters. If you invested more time into your health or your relationships or your career, you would likely see improved results in that area.

Option 3: The Seasons of Life

A third way to manage your four burners is by breaking your life into seasons. What if, instead of searching for perfect work-life balance at all times, you divided your life into seasons that focused on a particular area?

The importance of your burners may change throughout life. When you are in your 20s or 30s and you don’t have children, it can be easier to get to the gym and chase career ambitions. The health and work burners are on full blast. A few years later, you might start a family and suddenly the health burner dips down to a slow simmer while your family burner gets more gas. Another decade passes and you might revive relationships with old friends or pursue that business idea you had been putting off.

You don’t have to give up on your dreams forever, but life rarely allows you to keep all four burners going at once. Maybe you need to let go of something for this season. You can do it all in a lifetime, but not at the same damn time. In the words of Nathan Barry, “Commit to your goal with everything you have—for a season.”

For the last five years, I have been in my entrepreneurship season. I built a successful business, but it came with costs. I turned my friends burner way down and my family burner is only running halfway.

What season are you in right now?

Which Burners Have You Cut Off?

The Four Burners Theory reveals an inconsistency everyone must deal with: nobody likes being told they can’t have it all, but everyone has constraints on their time and energy. Every choice has a cost.

Which burners have you cut off?

Footnotes

I first heard about The Four Burners Theory from Chris Guillebeau, who heard about it from Jocelyn Glei, who read about it in this New Yorker article by David Sedaris, who was told about it by an Australian woman named Pat, who heard about it at a management seminar she attended. If you’re keeping score at home and trying to figure out where The Four Burners Theory originated from, well, good luck. The above quote comes from the New Yorker article by Sedaris.

I’m pretty sure I heard someone else use that fasten seatbelt phrase previously. If you know who it might have been, let me know and I’ll give them credit.

In practice, the opposite usually occurs. In most cases, entrepreneurs spend at least their first five years in business working longer hours and making less money than they would as an employee.

The 3 Stages of Failure in Life and Work (And How to Fix Them)

One of the hardest things in life is to know when to keep going and when to move on.

On the one hand, perseverance and grit are key to achieving success in any field. Anyone who masters their craft will face moments of doubt and somehow find the inner resolve to keep going. If you want to build a successful business or create a great marriage or learn a new skill then “sticking with it” is perhaps the most critical trait to possess.

On the other hand, telling someone to never give up is terrible advice. Successful people give up all the time. If something is not working, smart people don’t repeat it endlessly. They revise. They adjust. They pivot. They quit. As the saying goes, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” 1

Life requires both strategies. Sometimes you need to display unwavering confidence and double down on your efforts. Sometimes you need to abandon the things that aren’t working and try something new. The key question is: how do you know when to give up and when to stick with it?

One way to answer this question is to use a framework I call the 3 Stages of Failure.

The 3 Stages of Failure

This framework helps clarify things by breaking down challenges into three stages of failure:

Stage 1 is a Failure of Tactics. These are HOW mistakes. They occur when you fail to build robust systems, forget to measure carefully, and get lazy with the details. A Failure of Tactics is a failure to execute on a good plan and a clear vision.
Stage 2 is a Failure of Strategy. These are WHAT mistakes. They occur when you follow a strategy that fails to deliver the results you want. You can know why you do the things you do and you can know how to do the work, but still choose the wrong what to make it happen.
Stage 3 is a Failure of Vision. These are WHY mistakes. They occur when you don’t set a clear direction for yourself, follow a vision that doesn’t fulfill you, or otherwise fail to understand why you do the things you do.

In the rest of this article, I’ll share a story, solution, and summary for each stage of failure. My hope is that the 3 Stages of Failure framework will help you navigate the tricky decision of deciding when to quit and when to stick with it. It’s not perfect, but I hope you find it to be useful.

Stage 1: A Failure of Tactics

Sam Carpenter became a small business owner in 1984. Using $5,000 as a down payment, he purchased a struggling business in Bend, Oregon and renamed it Centratel.

Centratel provided 24/7 telephone answering service for doctors, veterinarians, and other businesses that needed the phones to be answered at all hours, but couldn’t afford to pay a staff member to sit at the desk constantly. When he bought the business, Carpenter hoped that Centratel “would someday be the highest-quality telephone answering service in the United States.” 2

Things did not go as expected. In a 2012 interview, Carpenter described his first decade and a half of entrepreneurship by saying,

“I was literally working 80 to 100 hours a week for 15 years. I was a single parent of two kids, believe it or not. I was very sick. I was on all kinds of antidepressants and so forth…

I was going to miss a payroll and lose my entire company. If you can just imagine a nervous wreck, physical wreck, and then multiply that by ten, that’s what I was. It was a horrible time.”

One night, just before he was about to miss payroll, Carpenter had a realization. His business was struggling because it completely lacked the systems it needed to achieve optimal performance. In Carpenter’s words, “We were having all kinds of problems because everybody was doing it the way that they thought was best.”

Carpenter reasoned that if he could perfect his systems, then his staff could spend each day following best practices instead of constantly putting out fires. He immediately began writing down every process within the business.

“For instance,” he said. “We have a nine-step procedure for answering the phone at the front desk. Everybody does it that way, it’s 100% the best way to do it, and we’ve taken an organic system and made it mechanical, and made it perfect.” 3

Over the next two years, Carpenter recorded and revised every process in the company. How to make a sales presentation. How to deposit a check. How to pay client invoices. How to process payroll. He created a manual that any employee could pick up and follow for any procedure within the company—system by system, step by step.

What happened?

Carpenter’s workweek rapidly decreased from 100 hours per week to less than 10 hours per week. He was no longer needed to handle every emergency because there was a procedure to guide employees in each situation. As the quality of their work improved, Centratel raised their prices and the company’s profit margin exploded to 40 percent.

Today, Centratel has grown to nearly 60 employees and recently celebrated its 30th year in business. Carpenter now works just two hours per week.

Fixing a Failure of Tactics

A Failure of Tactics is a HOW problem. In Centratel’s case, they had a clear vision (to be “the highest-quality telephone answering service in the United States”) and a good strategy (the market for telephone answering services was large), but they didn’t know how to execute their strategy and vision.

There are three primary ways to fix Failures of Tactics.

Record your process.
Measure your outcomes.
Review and adjust your tactics.

Record your process. McDonald’s has more than 35,000 locations worldwide. Why can they plug-and-play new employees while still delivering a consistent product? Because they have killer systems in place for every process. Whether you’re running a business, parenting a family, or managing your own life, building great systems is crucial for repeated success. It all starts with writing down each specific step of the process and developing a checklist you can follow when life gets crazy.

Measure your outcomes. If something is important to you, measure it. If you’re an entrepreneur, measure how many sales calls you make each day. If you’re a writer, measure how frequently you publish a new article. If you’re a weightlifter, measure how often you train. If you never measure your results, how will you know which tactics are working? 4

Review and adjust your tactics. The fatiguing thing about Stage 1 failures is that they never stop. Tactics that used to work will become obsolete. Tactics that were a bad idea previously might be a good idea now. You need to be constantly reviewing and improving how you do your work. Successful people routinely give up on tactics that don’t move their strategy and vision forward. Fixing a Failure of Tactics is not a one time job, it is a lifestyle.

Stage 2: A Failure of Strategy

It was March of 1999. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, had just announced that his company would launch a new service called Amazon Auctions to help people sell “virtually anything online.” The idea was to create something that could compete with eBay. Bezos knew there were millions of people with goods to sell and he wanted Amazon to be the place where those transactions happened. 5

Greg Linden, a software engineer for Amazon at the time, recalled the project by saying, “Behind the scenes, this was a herculean effort. People from around the company were pulled off their projects. The entire Auctions site, with all the features of eBay and more, was built from scratch. It was designed, architected, developed, tested, and launched in under three months.” 6

Amazon Auctions was a spectacular failure. Just six months after launch, management realized the project was going nowhere. In September 1999, they scrambled to release a new offering called Amazon zShops. This version of the idea allowed anyone from big companies to individuals to set up an online shop and sell goods through Amazon.

Again, Amazon swung and missed. Neither Amazon Auctions nor Amazon zShops are running today. In December 2014, Bezos referred to the failed projects by saying, “I’ve made billions of dollars of failures at Amazon.com. Literally billions.” 7

Undaunted, Amazon tried yet again to create a platform for third-party sellers. In November 2000, they launched Amazon Marketplace, which allowed individuals to sell used products alongside Amazon’s new items. For example, a small bookstore could list their used textbooks directly alongside new ones from Amazon. 8

It worked. Marketplace was a runaway success. In 2015, Amazon Marketplace accounted for nearly 50 percent of the $107 billion in sales on Amazon.com. 9

Fixing a Failure of Strategy

A Failure of Strategy is a WHAT problem. By 1999, Amazon had a clear vision to “be earth’s most customer centric company.” They were also masters of getting things done, which is why they were able to roll Amazon Auctions out in just three months. The why and how were handled, but the what was unknown.

There are three primary ways to fix Failures of Strategy.

Launch it quickly.
Do it cheaply.
Revise it rapidly.

Launch it quickly. Some ideas work much better than others, but nobody really knows which ideas work until you try them. Nobody knows ahead of time—not venture capitalists, not the intelligent folks at Amazon, not your friends or family members. All of the planning and research and design is just pretext. I love Paul Graham’s take on this: “You haven’t really started working on [your idea] till you’ve launched.”

Because of this, it is critical to launch strategies quickly. The faster you test a strategy in the real world, the faster you get feedback on whether or not it works. Note the timeline Amazon operated on: Amazon Auctions was released in March 1999. Amazon zShops was released in September 1999. Amazon Marketplace was released in November 2000. Three huge attempts within 20 months.

Do it cheaply. Assuming you have achieved some minimum level of quality, it is best to test new strategies cheaply. Failing cheaply increases your surface area for success because it means that you can test more ideas. Additionally, doing things cheaply serves another crucial purpose. It reduces your attachment to a particular idea. If you invest a lot of time and money into a particular strategy, it will be hard to give it up on that strategy. The more energy you put into something, the more ownership you feel toward it. Bad business ideas, toxic relationships, and destructive habits of all kinds can be hard to let go once they become part of your identity. Testing new strategies cheaply avoids these pitfalls and increases the likelihood that you will follow the strategy that works best rather than the one you have invested in the most.

Revise it rapidly. Strategies are meant to be revised and adjusted. You’d be hard pressed to find a successful entrepreneur, artist, or creator who is doing exactly the same thing today as when they started. Starbucks sold coffee supplies and espresso machines for over a decade before opening their own stores. 37 Signals started as a web design firm before pivoting into a software company that is worth over $100M today. Nintendo made playing cards and vacuum cleaners before it stole the hearts of video game lovers everywhere. 10

Too many entrepreneurs think if their first business idea is a failure, they aren’t cut out for it. Too many artists assume that if their early work doesn’t get praised, they don’t have the skill required. Too many people believe if their first two or three relationships are bad, they will never find love.

Imagine if the forces of nature worked that way. What if Mother Nature only gave herself one shot at creating life? We’d all just be single-celled organisms. Thankfully, that’s not how evolution works. For millions of years, life has been adapting, evolving, revising, and iterating until it has reached the diverse and varied species that inhabit our planet today. It is not the natural course of things to figure it all out on the first try.

So if your original idea is a failure and you feel like you’re constantly revising and adjusting, cut yourself a break. Changing your strategy is normal. It is literally the way the world works. You have to stay on the bus.

Stage 3: A Failure of Vision

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Massachusetts in 1803. His father was a minister in the Unitarian Church, which was a relatively popular branch of Christianity at the time.

Like his father, Emerson attended Harvard and became an ordained pastor. Unlike his father, he found himself disagreeing with many of the church’s teachings after a few years on the inside. Emerson debated heavily with church leaders before eventually writing, “This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it.” 11

Emerson resigned from the church in 1832 and spent the following year traveling throughout Europe. The travels sparked his imagination and led to friendships with contemporary philosophers and writers such as John Stuart Mill, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle. It was later written that his travels to Paris sparked “a moment of almost visionary intensity that pointed him away from theology and toward science.” 12

Upon returning to the United States, Emerson founded the Transcendental Club, which was a group of New England intellectuals like himself who wanted to talk about philosophy, culture, science, and improving American society.

Emerson’s deep questioning of his life and values, which began with his work as a pastor, intensified during his international travels, and continued with his Transcendental Club meetings helped him realize the desire to become a philosopher and writer. He spent the rest of his years pursuing independent ideas and writing essays and books that are still valued today.

Fixing a Failure of Vision

A Failure of Vision is a WHY problem. They happen because your vision or goal for what you want to become (your why) doesn’t align with the actions you are taking.

There are three primary ways to fix Failures of Vision.

Take stock of your life.
Determine your non-negotiable.
Navigate criticism.

Take stock of your life. People rarely take the time to think critically about their vision and values. Of course, there is no requirement that says you must to develop a personal vision for your work or your life. Many people prefer to go-with-the-flow and take life as it comes. In theory, that’s just fine. But in practice, there is a problem:

If you never decide on a vision for your life, you’ll often find yourself living someone else’s dream.

Like many children, Emerson followed the path of his father to the same school and the same profession before opening his eyes and realizing it wasn’t what he wanted. Adopting someone else’s vision as your own—whether it be from family, friends, celebrities, your boss, or society as a whole—is unlikely to lead to your personal dream. Your identity and your habits need to be aligned.

Become of this, you need to take stock of your life. What do you want to accomplish? How do you want to spend your days? It is not someone else’s job to figure out the vision for your life. That can only be done by you. My suggestion is to start by exploring your core values. Then, review your recent experiences by writing an Annual Review or doing an Integrity Report. 13

Determine your non-negotiable. Your “non-negotiable” is the one thing you are not willing to budge on, no matter what. One common mistake is to make the non-negotiable your strategy, when it should be your vision. It’s very easy to get fixated on your idea. But if you’re going to get obsessed with something, get obsessed with your vision, not your idea. Be firm on the vision, not on this particular version of your idea. Jeff Bezos has said, “We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.” 14

The key is to realize that nearly everything is a detail—your tactics, your strategy, even your business model. If your non-negotiable is to be a successful entrepreneur, then there are many ways to achieve that vision. If Amazon’s non-negotiable is to “be earth’s most customer centric company,” they can lose billions on Amazon Auctions and Amazon zShops and still reach their goal.

Once you are confident in your vision, it is rare to lose it in one fell swoop. There are so few mistakes that lead to the complete annihilation of a dream. More likely, you failed at a strategy level and felt demoralized. This crippled your enthusiasm and you gave up not because you should, but because you felt like it. Your emotions caused you to turn a Stage 1 or Stage 2 failure into a Stage 3 failure. Most of the mistakes that people assume are Failures of Vision are actually Failures of Strategy. Many entrepreneurs, artists, and creators get hung up on a particular version of their idea and when the idea fails they give up on the vision as well. Don’t develop a sense of ownership over the wrong thing. There are nearly infinite ways to achieve your vision if you are willing to be flexible on the details.

Navigate criticism. Criticism can be an indicator of failed strategies and tactics, but—assuming you’re a reasonable person with good intentions—it is rarely an indicator of a failed vision. If you are committed to making your vision a non-negotiable factor in your life and not giving up on the first try, then you have to be willing to navigate criticism. You don’t need to apologize for the things you love, but you do have to learn how to deal with haters.

The 4th Stage of Failure

There is a 4th stage of failure that we haven’t talked about: Failures of Opportunity.

These are WHO mistakes. They occur when society fails to provide equal opportunity for all people. Failures of Opportunity are the result of many complex factors: age, race, gender, income, education, and more.

For example, there are thousands of men my age living in the slums of India or the streets of Bangladesh who are more intelligent and more talented than I am, but we live very different lives largely because of the opportunities presented to us.

Failures of Opportunity deserve an article of their own and there are many things we can do as individuals and as a society to reduce them. However, I chose not to focus on them here because Failures of Opportunity are difficult to influence. Meanwhile, your vision, your strategy, and your tactics are all things you can directly control.

A Final Note on Failure

Hopefully, the 3 Stages of Failure framework has helped you clarify some of the issues you’re facing and how to deal with them. One thing that may not be apparent at first glance is how the different stages can impact one another.

For example, Failures of Tactics can occasionally create enough havoc that you mistakenly believe you have a Failure of Vision. Imagine how Sam Carpenter felt when he was working 100 hours per week. It would have been easy to assume that his vision of being an entrepreneur was the failure when, in fact, it was merely poor tactics causing the problem.

Sometimes you need a few tactics to create enough whitespace to figure out your strategy or vision. This is why I write about things like how to manage your daily routine and how to figure out your priorities and why multitasking is a myth. No, these topics aren’t going to create a world-changing vision by themselves. But they might clear enough space in your calendar for you to dream up a world-changing vision.

In other words, you might not be walking the wrong path after all. It’s just that there is so much dust swirling around you that you can’t see the path. Figure out the right tactics and strategy—clear the dust from the air—and you’ll find that the vision often reveals itself.

Footnotes

This quote is typically attributed to Albert Einstein, but there is no evidence that Einstein actually said it. For now, the original source remains unknown.

Work the System by Sam Carpenter. Page 28.

All quotes in this section are from the Mixergy interview with Sam Carpenter unless otherwise noted. Recorded on February 9, 2012.

Equally important, make sure you measure the right things. Don’t make the mistake of succeeding at the wrong thing. What is the metric that matters most to you?

Press release: Amazon.com Launches Online Auction Site. March 30, 1999.

Early Amazon: Auctions. April 30, 2006.

Comments made at the Business Insider Ignition conference in New York, NY. December 2, 2014.

Fun side note: my first entrepreneurial venture was selling used college textbooks through Amazon Marketplace. So, if we feel like stretching this, we could say that in a roundabout way Jeff Bezos bought me a few beers in college. Here’s to you, Mr. Bezos.

Amazon.com 2015 Letter to Shareholders.

The Surprisingly Long History Nintendo by Tegan Jones. Gizmodo. September 20, 2013.

The Lord’s Supper by Ralph Waldo Emerson. September 9, 1832.

Emerson: The Mind on Fire by Robert Richardson. 1995.

I write my Annual Review each December, but obviously you can do this any time of the year.

How Jeff Bezos’ long-term thinking paid off big for Amazon by Devindra Hardawar. September 9, 2011.

The Evolution of Anxiety: Why We Worry and What to Do About It

Let’s pretend for a moment that you are a giraffe.

You live on the grasslands of the African savannah. You have a neck that is 7 feet long (2.1 meters). Every now and then, you spot a group of humans driving around on a safari taking pictures of you.

But it’s not just your neck and their cameras that separates you from the humans. Perhaps the biggest difference between you and your giraffe friends and the humans taking your picture is that nearly every decision you make provides an immediate benefit to your life.

When you are hungry, you walk over and munch on a tree.
When a storm rolls across the plains, you take shelter under the brush.
When you spot a lion stalking you and your friends, you run away.

On any given day, most of your choices as a giraffe—like what to eat or where to sleep or when to avoid a predator—make an immediate impact on your life. You live in what researchers call an Immediate Return Environment because your actions deliver immediate benefits. Your life is strongly oriented toward the present moment.

The Delayed Return Environment

Now, let’s flip the script and pretend you are one of the humans vacationing on safari. Unlike the giraffe, humans live in what researchers call a Delayed Return Environment. 1

Most of the choices you make today will not benefit you immediately. If you do a good job at work today, you’ll get a paycheck in a few weeks. If you save money now, you’ll have enough for retirement later. Many aspects of modern society are designed to delay rewards until some point in the future.

This is true of our problems as well. While a giraffe is worried about immediate problems like avoiding lions and seeking shelter from a storm, many of the problems humans worry about are problems of the future.

For example, while bouncing around the savannah in your Jeep, you might think, “This safari has been a lot of fun. It would be cool to work as a park ranger and see giraffes every day. Speaking of work, is it time for a career change? Am I really doing the work I was meant to do? Should I change jobs?”

Unfortunately, living in a Delayed Return Environment tends to lead to chronic stress and anxiety for humans. Why? Because your brain wasn’t designed to solve the problems of a Delayed Return Environment.

The Evolution of the Human Brain

The human brain developed into its current form while humans still lived in an Immediate Return Environment.

The earliest remains of modern humans—known as Homo sapiens sapiens—are approximately 200,000 years old. These were the first humans to have a brain relatively similar to yours. In particular, the neocortex—the newest part of the brain and the part responsible for higher functions like language—was roughly the same size 200,000 years ago as it is today. 2

Compared to the age of the brain, modern society is incredibly new. It is only recently—during the last 500 years or so—that our society has shifted to a predominantly Delayed Return Environment. The pace of change has increased exponentially compared to prehistoric times. In the last 100 years we have seen the rise of the car, the airplane, the television, the personal computer, the Internet, and Beyonce. Nearly everything that makes up your daily life has been created in a very small window of time.

A lot can happen in 100 years. From the perspective of evolution, however, 100 years is nothing. The modern human brain spent hundreds of thousands of years evolving for one type of environment (immediate returns) and in the blink of an eye the entire environment changed (delayed returns). Your brain was designed to value immediate returns. 3

The Evolution of Anxiety

The mismatch between our old brain and our new environment has a significant impact on the amount of chronic stress and anxiety we experience today.

Thousands of years ago, when humans lived in an Immediate Return Environment, stress and anxiety were useful emotions because they helped us take action in the face of immediate problems.

For example:

A lion appears across the plain > you feel stressed > you run away > your stress is relieved.
A storm rumbles in the distance > you worry about finding shelter > you find shelter > your anxiety is relieved.
You haven’t drank any water today > you feel stressed and dehydrated > you find water > your stress is relieved.

This is how your brain evolved to use worry, anxiety, and stress. Anxiety was an emotion that helped protect humans in an Immediate Return Environment. It was built for solving short-term, acute problems. There was no such thing as chronic stress because there aren’t really chronic problems in an Immediate Return Environment.

Wild animals rarely experience chronic stress. As Duke University professor Mark Leary put it, “A deer may be startled by a loud noise and take off through the forest, but as soon as the threat is gone, the deer immediately calms down and starts grazing. And it doesn’t appear to be tied in knots the way that many people are.” When you live in an Immediate Return Environment, you only have to worry about acute stressors. Once the threat is gone, the anxiety subsides. 4

Today we face different problems. Will I have enough money to pay the bills next month? Will I get the promotion at work or remain stuck in my current job? Will I repair my broken relationship? Problems in a Delayed Return Environment can rarely be solved right now in the present moment. 5

What to Do About It

One of the greatest sources of anxiety in a Delayed Return Environment is the constant uncertainty. There is no guarantee that working hard in school will get you a job. There is no promise that investments will go up in the future. There is no assurance that going on a date will land you a soulmate. Living in a Delayed Return Environment means you are surrounded by uncertainty.

So what can you do? How can you thrive in a Delayed Return Environment that creates so much stress and anxiety?

The first thing you can do is measure something. You can’t know for certain how much money you will have in retirement, but you can remove some uncertainty from the situation by measuring how much you save each month. You can’t be sure that you’ll get a job after graduation, but you can track how often you reach out to companies about internships. You can’t predict when you find love, but you can pay attention to how many times you introduce yourself to someone new.

The act of measurement takes an unknown quantity and makes it known. When you measure something, you immediately become more certain about the situation. Measurement won’t magically solve your problems, but it will clarify the situation, pull you out of the black box of worry and uncertainty, and help you get a grip on what is actually happening.

Furthermore, one of the most important distinctions between an Immediate Return Environment and a Delayed Return Environment is rapid feedback. Animals are constantly getting feedback about the things that cause them stress. As a result, they actually know whether or not they should feel stressed. Without measurement you have no feedback.

If you’re looking for good measurement strategies, I suggest using something simple like The Paper Clip Strategy for tracking repetitive, daily actions and something like The Seinfeld Strategy for tracking long-term behaviors.

Shift Your Worry

The second thing you can do is “shift your worry” from the long-term problem to a daily routine that will solve that problem.

Instead of worrying about living longer, worry about taking a walk each day.
Instead of worrying about whether your child will get a college scholarship, worry about how much time they spend studying today.
Instead of worrying about losing enough weight for the wedding, worry about cooking a healthy dinner tonight.

The key insight that makes this strategy work is making sure your daily routine both rewards you right away (immediate return) and resolves your future problems (delayed return). 6

Here are the three examples from my life:

Writing. When I publish an article, the quality of my life is noticeably higher. Additionally, I know that if I write consistently, then my business will grow, I will publish books, and I will make enough money to sustain my life. By focusing my attention on writing each day, I increase my well-being (immediate return) while also working toward earning future income (delayed return).
Lifting. I experienced a huge shift in well-being when I learned to fall in love with exercise. The act of going to the gym brings joy to my life (immediate return) and it also leads to better long-term health (delayed return).
Reading. Last year, I posted my public reading list and began reading 20 pages per day. Now, I get a sense of accomplishment whenever I do my daily reading (immediate return) and the practice helps me develop into an interesting person (delayed return).

Our brains didn’t evolve in a Delayed Return Environment, but that’s where we find ourselves today. My hope is that by measuring the things that are important to you and shifting your worry to daily practices that pay off in the long-run, you can reduce some of the uncertainty and chronic stress that is inherent in modern society.

Footnotes

I first came across this distinction between Immediate Return Environments and Delayed Return Environments in The Mysteries of Human Behavior by Mark Leary. I found the whole course fascinating and definitely recommend it if you are interested in psychology and human behavior.

Interestingly, for millions of years the human brain expanded in size, but evidence suggests that our brain size has actually decreased slightly over the last 25,000 years.

Research has shown that the ability to delay gratification is one of the primary drivers of success. Isn’t it interesting that delaying gratification is both the opposite of what your brain evolved to do and the skill that matches the Delayed Return Environment we live in today? For millions of years, humans survived because we were wired for immediate gratification (eat now, take shelter now, have sex now), but today the opposite strategy helps us achieve “success.” I doubt we will know in my lifetime, but it will be interesting to see if delaying gratification is merely a tactic favored by our current society that will fade away in the long-run or if it is a sustainable long-term pressure that will shift the course of our evolution.

It has been pointed out to me by Tucker Max (and others) that many wild animals do face chronic stress. For example, baboons and other mammals experience stress related to social status and rank within their tribe. I’m not an expert on these matters, but I’m reading more about them. If appropriate, I’ll update my thoughts in a future post.

Even many of the acute problems we face today are very different from the acute problems of Immediate Return Environments. Consider turbulence on an airplane. This is an immediate, short-term problem that makes many travelers feel stressed and anxious. Unlike acute problems in the wild, however, there is nothing you can do about it except sit there. When you saw a lion in the grass, you could at least run. But our environment has changed so much that many of the acute problems we face, we can no longer take action on. We can’t resolve the stress ourselves. We can only sit and worry.

Yet another reason to focus on the system and not the goal.