How to Be Better at Almost Everything
Page 3
To bring it all together, I would say (again) that freedom of indifference is a necessary but not sufficient means for freedom for excellence, and that every government should secure for its people that first freedom so they can attain some of the second. On the other hand, no government has any business getting into our lives and telling us how to be happy because no government could ever possibly know what happiness for all its citizens is—that’s really something for enlightened philosophers like the author of this book to figure out.
All of this, of course, is building to a much bigger point, which is how becoming a generalist can make us not just successful but happy. I believe we all have every right to pursue happiness, but we have no right to expect happiness just because we live and breathe. Because happiness is not something somebody can give us, and that includes our parents, our spouse, and the president. Happiness is what happens when we engage in good activities, so happiness is not only a habit but an act. Happiness is not an outcome; it’s a deed. It’s not like we do one thing like get married or make a million bucks and suddenly we’re happy and that’s it. That’s not what happiness is. Happiness is a state of mind that’s produced over time by doing good things.
Aristotle said the point of humans is to know things, make things, and do things. He said that because humans are rational animals, their goal in life is to seek “the good,” and the good, according to Aristotle, is anything that is spiritually, physically, or mentally productive. Without getting too far ahead of ourselves, Aristotle (and later on, Thomas Aquinas) said the highest good is God, but there are also plenty of other good things on the way to God like art and engineering and pretty much everything God made and wanted us to engage in.
This is where becoming a generalist is important, because if happiness is knowing and making and doing good things, then it certainly stands to reason that we can increase our happiness by engaging in many activities, not just one. And here it’s important to note that our engagement in genuinely good activities is not just about the accomplishment of the activity itself but also about the kind of character we develop because of the things we’re involved in and the reasons why. In other words, by doing good things and—importantly—doing them for the right reasons, we become genuinely good people.
The reason I’m spending so much time laying out the philosophy of happiness is that before we get into any deeper principles of generalism, we need something to orient us so that we actually get better at the things that are worth getting better at, for reasons that align with finding happiness. You mustn’t fall into the trap of pursuing things only because you’re a megalomaniac (all of us are at risk of becoming megalomaniacs, if we’re not careful); if you do so, no matter how many things you get better at, you’ll always be sour and resentful and never feel fulfilled. You’ll become that person with a monocle and a cigar who is incessantly on a quest for power and never satisfied and always finding someone to blame for his inadequacies. I call this person Charles. Charles is the opposite of Brett, the guy with a skullet and an eye patch who lives out of his SUV. As far as we can help it, we want to avoid becoming either Charles or Brett. Charles applies discipline but in the wrong direction. Brett does only the minimum he needs to get by. Both are missing out on the meaning of life.
Obviously, a big part of this book is about making money doing what you love and improving the skills you need to make that happen. But there’s also no reason why this can’t and shouldn’t itself be a genuinely good activity that both pays the bills and fills you with a sense of meaning. For something to be a genuinely good activity, it not only has to have beneficial effects but also has to be done with good intentions. So you have to do things that help people (or at least not hurt them), and you also have to do these things because you want people to enjoy what you create. Even though the goal is to make a nice little profit along the way, it’s the orientation that will determine whether the objective is fulfilling. The point is that none of these things need to be mutually exclusive. But unfortunately, many people sacrifice one thing (happiness) for another (money), when all they need to do to have both is to stop being a Charles. You can make great money with the right intentions doing what you love. But you can also make great money with the wrong intentions doing what you hate.
So here’s why generalism is important. Generalists are people who want to get better at almost everything, because almost everything is of interest to them or useful in some way. Specialists, on the other hand, can’t help but match their identity to an outcome, because when people are striving to be the best in the world, they’ve really put themselves in a tough situation. They’ve built unhappiness into the system, whereas generalists are not overly concerned with an outcome and enjoy engaging in, and getting better at, some genuinely good activity. Of course, generalists are still going to dominate the competition, but that’s more a happy by-product of being unique and good at many things. Generalists, however, never tie happiness to how many people they are doing better than, because generalists aren’t trying to be better than anyone; they’re only trying to be better at things. See the difference?
By its very nature, specialization is set up to produce unhappiness, either because you’re striving to be the best and not succeeding at it, or because even on the .0001 percent chance that you do become the best, it’s next to impossible to stay there. Eventually you’re going to lose, and somebody is going to take your place and say you were never the best to begin with—they were. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been in a few situations where both of these things have happened, and never did I feel particularly keen about it. When I specialized in guitar, I was always comparing myself to others and feeling awful and inadequate, and then as soon as I felt I was doing something special, somebody would swoop in and be like, Nah, dude, you suck, here, let me show you how that should actually be played. But as a generalist I don’t have that problem anymore; I’ve gotten away from wanting to be better than other people, and now I just focus on being good myself.
Chapter Three
BECOMING AN EXPERT GENERALIST: FIVE KEY PRINCIPLES
So far we’ve talked a lot about why specialization is often a snare and what to do about it, and hopefully you’re starting to see some of the advantages of becoming a generalist, such as being successful without hating every step along the way or having any special inheritance, genetic or otherwise.
Often people pick up a self-help book looking for tactics or strategies (Just tell me what to do so I can get on my way—I’ve got a meeting to attend), but to me that is totally the wrong way to go about it. What people need first is a foundational understanding of a general concept, before getting into any of the finer details.
For example, when it comes to weight loss, one of the principles is caloric control. Often people are concerned with specific diet plans, though, and since they don’t understand that any diet can work so long as it reduces calories, they wind up hopping from one diet plan to the next, never knowing why all of them fail. But the reason plans fail (or work initially and then stop working) is that the dieter hasn’t understood the theory of thermodynamics or how metabolism works. Once you understand those theories, you can then figure out the most appropriate diet plan by determining which one is going to most effectively get your calories to where they need to be while taking metabolic adaptations into account. Fasting—not eating for a while—is one good example; it’s a topic I’ve written a lot about. Some people think it’s the greatest thing on earth, which sometimes confuses me. Indeed, fasting works for a lot of people, but it’s important to know that it works because it takes large swaths of calories out of a person’s diet. Sometimes fasting doesn’t work, though, because it makes people so hungry that they wind up binging on foods they otherwise would have declined, and then they’ll come to me and say, “Hey, so I tried your stupid fasting plan and it caused me to gain ten pounds, so what gives? WTF?” Which is when I’ll tell them—as delicately as I can—that they should have taken the
time to read the principles section before they got started with the plan; that way they would have known to modify the fasting schedule so they wouldn’t get to such a point of overwhelming hunger.
This is true for generalism. Because as we continue throughout this book, we’re going to present a framework that shows how you can go about developing skills. Before we do so, however, you need to understand the principles of what we’re talking about, the principles behind getting better at getting better at things.
These principles are as follows:
1.Skill Stacking > Specialization
2.Short-Term Specialization
3.The Rule of 80 Percent
4.Integration > Isolation
5.Repetition and Resistance
Let me give you a brief explanation of each principle, and then we’ll see how they would apply toward getting better at something probably all of us are interested in: fitness.
Skill Stacking > Specialization
Simply put, it’s better to be better (than most people, at most things) than to be the best at any one thing. Skills in combination are more powerful than individual skills by themselves, even if they aren’t as fully developed. This is the fundamental advantage of being a generalist. But it’s not enough to acquire skills. You must also learn to combine them. For reference, I’m using the “greater than” (>) sign to mean “better than.”
Short-Term Specialization
Being a generalist doesn’t mean you try to improve at everything at once. Good generalists are really just short-term specialists in the sense that they focus on one or two things at a time, and once those things are developed up to 80 percent (but never beyond—see the next principle), they then turn their attention to something else.
The Rule of 80 Percent
The Rule of 80 Percent says that if 100 percent is best in the world, then never go beyond 80 percent at anything, because that’s specialization territory. Eighty percent, believe me, is still masterful, so you can safely assume that if you’re 80 percent good at something and still not getting ahead in life, then that something is not your problem. It’s time to acquire another skill.
Integration > Isolation
This principle states that you should practice only the things you need to get good at, as they pertain to the task at hand. This may seem obvious, but often people focus too much attention on techniques or skills that make no sense for what they want to achieve. For example, there’s no point in a guitarist who wants to play AC/DC songs learning a B♭13 chord since AC/DC never uses B♭13 chords.
This principle also states that as far as possible, any technique should be practiced in the context of whatever outcome you’re hoping to get. Again thinking of the guitarist who wants to play AC/DC songs, that guitarist should learn just the chords needed to play those songs and preferably in the context of the song itself. Specific practice produces specific results, so practice only the things you need and nothing more.
Repetition and Resistance
Finally, if you want to get better at something, you need to not only practice that something but also find ways to make it harder on yourself. It’s not enough to simply do something; you also need to make that something difficult for yourself.
FITNESS AS A METAPHOR
I think one of the best ways to explain these five principles would be through the example of fitness, and even though not many people think of fitness as a skill, they most definitely should, because what is a skill if not the ability to complete a task, and what is fitness if not exactly that? It seems to me that being able to do a pull-up is hardly different in theory from being able to play a guitar solo, since both activities require the use of Repetition and Resistance. The only actual difference is the kind of skill a person is performing; neither activity is any less of a skill.
Part of the reason a lot of people never reach their fitness goals is that they don’t think of fitness as a skill; they think of fitness as a habit. And while building a habit is important for building a skill, it’s not enough to just get into the routine of doing something without also finding a way to progress within that routine. Putting yourself in a routine will make you only marginally better at that skill; it will make you better than the people who don’t do that something at all, but it will hardly make you great at it. For that, you need these other principles.
So how about I talk you through this from the standpoint of a gym instructor, because wouldn’t that be fun? We’ll imagine I’m addressing a bunch of mealymouthed middle schoolers who are timid about exercise—essentially my former self. I want to do this because I feel like when I was in school, I got the worst impression about fitness imaginable since I was always forced to do it without understanding why, and then I’d get embarrassed because of how terrible I was. I’m sure some of you can relate.
Now, let me grab my whistle and put my gym shorts on. Ready?
All right, children, gather ’round. Today is your first day of gym class, so there are a few things we need to get across before we subject your tiny bodies to the rigors that await. First, it’s important to understand that fitness is no different than music or math in the sense that all we’re doing is learning a skill. But instead of keeping time or adding integers, we’re practicing physical things like pushups and pull-ups. And while some people may be more inclined to be musicians or mathematicians, others may be more inclined to do pull-ups. That doesn’t mean, however, that people who aren’t inclined to do pull-ups can never be good at pull-ups. (By “inclined,” I mean just naturally good at something.)
Fitness, for example, is considered a skill because you get better at what you practice. This is known as “specific adaptations to imposed demands,” and it applies to literally everything you can think of. You don’t get better at softball without practicing hitting or pitching. You don’t get better at making burritos without folding tortillas. You don’t get better at the guitar without playing guitar, and you don’t get better at push-ups without doing push-ups. Fitness is really a collection of skills, now, isn’t it? Or at least we think it should be. Are people really “fit” if they can do a thousand sit-ups but can’t run a mile or climb a rope or do a push-up? It doesn’t seem to me like they’re fit at all; they’ve just got one ability. That seems like a specialist, or somebody who’s good at one thing but bad at everything else. This class isn’t about building specialists; it’s about building generalists. Our goal is to create what’s called “general physical preparedness.”
Children, I want you to be capable of, and ready for, almost everything. I want you to be able to climb a rope and run a mile and lift heavy things. I don’t want you to worry about being the best at any one of these gym class activities. We’ll leave that for the specialists. Our goal is to get as fit as we can across a very broad array of activities. GPP > SPP is our motto: general physical preparedness over specific physical preparedness.
Why? Well, a couple of reasons. First: the competitive advantage. Surely you will not beat specialists at their specialty, but you will beat them at most anything that isn’t. You won’t outlift a powerlifter, but you should outrun them and have more flexibility and speed. You won’t outrun a triathlete, but you should lift heavier weights and have more muscle tone than they do. And so on and so forth. Your generalism will give you more advantages, so if there were ever a fitness Olympics with all kinds of different tasks to complete, you might not take first place in any event, but you might take first place overall. That’s kind of what we’re going for.
But also this: fitness and health are not the same thing, and this is something you really need to understand. As we said, fitness is the ability to complete a task, but health is something like the ideal interplay between the organs and bodily systems. The problem with specializing is that you can actually take fitness to the point where it destroys your health. You can try so hard to be the best at some physical thing that you blow out your back in the process or cause your kidneys to fail. These things do happen, and
detriments to health are all too common a price to pay for wanting to be the best in the world at something involving fitness. Just think of most football players or powerlifters or gymnasts. Nobody would deny that a person must be very fit to achieve greatness in any of those sports, but I also doubt anyone would deny that they take a heavy toll. The football player winds up concussed, and the powerlifter winds up in need of new vertebrae, and the gymnast winds up with seriously deformed elbows. This is the price of specialization. There is no escaping it.
But the generalist doesn’t have to suffer any such ills since they don’t care about being the best at anything. The generalist—and that’s you, children—doesn’t have to put fitness and health at odds, and in fact does exactly the opposite. Whatever we do to increase our fitness should at least not cause harm to our health and should preferably improve it. This means that if we are getting fit in one sense, we’d like to see an increase of health in a similar sense. Fitness is a foundation of health, and health is a foundation of fitness.
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GENERAL PHYSICAL PREPAREDNESS: ONE-PAGE EXERCISE PROGRAM