Living with an internal focus, Don't outsource your thinking, How to find your strengths
Living with an internal focus, Don't outsource your thinking, How to find your strengths
Avthar's Newsletter #1 (5/1/2020)
Welcome to the first edition of Avthar’s weekly newsletter, where I’ll be sharing ideas I’m reflecting upon, experiments I’m trying and lessons I’ve learned, all to help you level up your own life.
Here’s what’s in this week’s letter:
Living with an internal focus
Why you shouldn’t outsource your thinking
How to find your strengths
As well as music I’m enjoying coding and writing to and poems I’m reflecting on. Please enjoy!
Quote I’m revisiting given the chaotic state of the world:
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own . . .” —Epictetus, Discourses, 2.5.4–5
I’ve found that a critical component to living a happy and successful life is living with an internal focus. This means basing your happiness on your choices and actions, deciding for yourself what’s important to you and evaluating your life according to your chosen criteria, not the opinions or expectations of others.
In times like this, whether we’re in lockdown and restricted from living and working as usual, or feeling first hand the impact of COVID-19 on our families and jobs, it’s important that we focus on things that still are in our control: our words, actions, how we treat others, the acts of service we can still perform. We must do our best to live virtuously with the hand that we’ve been dealt.
Read more about how to live life with an internal focus in my post The Internal Scorecard,
Music I can’t stop listening to: Pacho’s Playlist
I’ve been writing, coding and dancing in my kitchen while cooking ever since I heard this mix. It’s a compilation of music from season 3 of the Netflix series Narcos. It reminds me of my living in Costa Rica, where I learned Spanish and developed a love for Latin American culture and music. Definitely listen to the track “Yo No Tengo Pena” by Angel Canales.
Idea I’ve been pondering: Don’t outsource your thinking
Youtube recommended to me what Elon Musk would work on if he was 22 years old today. The video has almost 3 million views. In the past, I would’ve immediately watched the whole video, gotten inspired by what Elon thought were industries important to the future of humanity and then spent a ton of time working on that and telling everyone about it. All because Elon Musk thought it was important.
This is outsourcing your thinking. This trick served me well in highschool and throughout college, but it’s not sustainable for long term success and happiness.
There are two problems with outsourcing your thinking. Continuing with the example of past me, there are things I’m already interested in, have specific knowledge about or possess a competitive advantage in, that won’t be mentioned on Elon’s list. Consequently, the first problem is that I will look down on those things as less meaningful and important and not pursue them, despite my better suitability and chances of success in those areas.
The second problem with outsourcing your thinking is that once the novelty of the problem fades away, I’d be faced with navigating difficulty, naysayers and the friction of creating something new, without an internal compass to guide me toward the correct paths to take. Put simply, Elon Musk isn’t there to talk me through what he thinks the path forward to be. This all stems from the issue that I pursued something, not because I had interest in that thing, actually enjoyed it or thought it was important, but because Elon Musk (or whoever else) thought it was important to work on. And I followed his thinking, rather than thinking for myself.
The reason this is important is because most success in business is having product-market-founder fit, not just about working on what’s world changing or hot. It’s about building a product that solves a burning problem for the right market and being the right person, with the right intuition to bring that product to market, operate that company and delight those customers. Even if you’re working on an important problem, if you don’t have conviction that comes from your own mental models, you’ll get burned when chaos hits. Just ask all the crypto ‘experts’ of 2016/17. It’s better to build something that’s an expression of yourself, rather than something others think is smart.
Outsourcing your thinking is a manifestation of the error of trusting others more than we trust ourselves. Josh Waitzkin talks about how this phenomenon of outsourcing your thinking happens all the time in the investing world:
“If you take investors, there might be an investment, which one from the outside we think is objectively good. But it really isn't objectively good. It has to fit into one's portfolio of investments in a way that emerges from one's own mental models. Otherwise, it is not a form of self expression. Then, when you enter volatility, you're not gonna know what to do with it.” - Josh Waitzkin
Elon Musk is a placeholder for anyone telling you what you should do or think. That could be entrepreneurs or VCs you idolize or maybe your parents (especially true if you’re brown). The reality is that you should not care what Elon Musk or anyone else says is important, you should decide for yourself what you should work on, based on following your own curiosity and interest. Do the hard work of experimenting, exploring and thinking for yourself. Don’t outsource your thinking.
Exercise I’m doing again: The Reflected Best Self
In a world filled with negativity, a world where feedback is synonymous with negativity and faults, identifying our strengths and our positive traits helps us live with more self-awareness. We can use this self-awareness to benefit ourselves and others, by picking work and making life decisions optimizing for our strengths, so that we can use our unique strengths to bring value and happiness to ourselves and those around us.
However, in my own life experience and my experiences mentoring today’s high school and college students, school doesn’t even begin to teach us how to answer the question of “What are my strengths?”.
Enter the Reflected Best Self. If done thoughtfully, the Reflected Best Self is an exercise which helps you zero in on your strengths by understanding who you are at your best. That picture of you at your best is composed from themes surfaced out of perspectives gathered from people you work with, your family and your friends.
I’m currently collecting answers from people I’ve worked with in 2019/ 2020, as well as friends and family. Next week, I’ll publish a post, along with a video taking you through how you can do the Reflected Best Self exercise and reflect on your responses to find your strengths.
Quote I’m meditating on:
This is from Inward, a wonderful collection of poems about the human experience. The author is Diego Perez aka Yung Pueblo (Instagram, Twitter), who “through his writing and speaking, aims to support the healing of the individual, realizing that when we release our personal burdens, we contribute to a global peace”.
That’s all for this week!
If anything from this week’s newsletter resonated with you, let me know by replying to this email or tweet me at @avthars.
You can find more of my work and writing on avthar.com
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