All Posts - Page 49 of 51 - Jacob Robinson

How Important are Principles?

Our world consists of various sets of laws. There are laws of nature, laws of government, laws of chess, etcetera. Therefore, one might think there is also, more abstractly, laws of life itself. Of course, we are all unique beings, and so the best way to go about finding these laws of life is not by looking at others but instead looking at oneself.

This, I believe, is the fundamental idea behind having a set of principles. Over the past few months, I’ve experimented by writing down all the things I believe to be “right” about the world and setting them into a single document which I’ve entitled Principles. Each principle is a simple statement of what I believe to be a fact on how to operate in life; making it out to be sort of a manual of sorts. Right now, there is approximately 40 of them, and it is a work that is in constant progress.

Whenever I hit a hard problem or decision I need to solve, I’ve developed the habit of consorting to the principles I’ve written down and thinking: “What is the best next action to take, given these principles?”. And I’ve found that it works. It works really well. Surprisingly well.

The principles aren’t all uniquely my own either; a lot of them have been inspired by things others have said. The entire start of the project was, of course, inspired by the work of Ray Dalio, who I shared quite a few principles in common with. Even more of my principles, however, have come from simply reading what other people have made, or listening to others, and finding nice tidbits from them as well. In total, I get my own unique set of principles by listening to the wisdom of hundreds of other people.

So, now we come to the question of this post: “How important are principles?”. Well, based on my own experience, I certainly think that they help. I would say that principles work best with removing cognitive dissonance and other mental clutter that might result in preventing you from becoming your ideal self. I will certainly be continuing my own experiment with principles because of this, and I do insist that you start to design your own.

I’d also be interested in anyone else’s opinion on principles – do you have your own that you find to be helpful? Feel free to post them in the comments below. You can also (as always) follow my Twitter for more miscellaneous musings.

P.S.: Some astute readers might notice that this post was uploaded on a Tuesday as opposed to the typical Monday release. This is purposeful; I’m changing the release schedule for a few of my projects in order to ensure that they always come out on time. The new permanent (at least, into the foreseeable future) release date for all new blog posts will be Tuesdays instead of Mondays.

Analysis of “Hustler Culture”

hunters-race-408744-unsplash — Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash

It’s true; the key to success is, for the most part, hard work. But there’s a difference between working hard and doing hard work. Just because you devote a lot of time to something doesn’t inherently mean that you’re going to perform well in that category. And yet, it seems that a lot of what the modern “hustle culture” values are long hours and back-breaking work above all.

If you’ve followed any startup community for long enough you’ve definitely come across the hustlers; individuals who are convinced that caffeinated 100-hour work weeks, constant social media blitzes, and product rushing are the keys to success in the modern business world. And while I can see that their heart comes from the right place and that this somewhat holds to be true, what we end up getting is a bunch of people walking around who are much more obnoxious than they are motivational. This is primarily because many of these so-called hustlers go around spewing the virtues of hustling while not really understanding anything that they’re saying.

This, I believe, comes from the commodification of “the hustle” based on individuals such as Gary Vaynerchuk and company. Now, I don’t actually have anything against GaryVee, and I do understand the motivational importance of his videos, but when describing the same five “hustling principles” over and over again without elaborating too much, I believe it can easily confuse people who only take those principles at their surface level without actually looking at all into “Hey, do I really need to spend 100 hours a week working on this project?” or “Hey, is answering five Quora posts a day really helping my business?”.

The problem with this I believe comes from a more intrinsic issue with people themselves. It is easier for people to just have an answer given to them rather than for them to have to say “Well, it’s more complicated than that”. People thrive on simplicity, and so if you tell them “just work a really long and stressful amount of time and you’ll reach your goals”, they’ll believe it regardless of how dumb it sounds. Now, is this innately the “hustler”’s fault? I don’t think so. But something all founders should keep in mind is that there’s no shortcut to success.

Getting out of an Unhealthy Mindset

I’ve spent a lot of time as of late thinking about how to change someone’s mind. Not how to change their mind on a topic, or on an argument, but how to fundamentally change their perspective. I see a lot of people out there with unhealthy mindsets, whether they be depressive, arrogant, or otherwise. I think back in my own experience to how I got out of my unhealthy mind, and I find that it’s pretty incredible that it happened at all.

I think fundamentally what helped me get out of it was keeping myself open to other possibilities. And yet, if you are in an unhealthy mindset, this can be very difficult; you aren’t going to believe that things will be better if you are in a depressive mindset, because that statement fundamentally conflicts with what you currently believe, thus generating cognitive dissonance.

So how do we avoid this cognitive dissonance barrier and get people out of these states? I believe the best answer is to do it over the long-term and focus on making incremental changes. This relates to how my own progress came about, and so I believe it could be a model that would help others as well. For example, if we instead ask the person in a depressive mindset to think about simple things like cute puppies or a good joke every time they get upset, and then slowly move that over to “well look at all these people who went through the same thing that you are going through, and got out fine” then move to “look at these charts that say the world is getting better” and then maybe, just maybe, you’ll see their mind open and begin to take on better ways of looking at the world.

Now that’s just an example, and I’ll be the first to admit that those specific steps probably wouldn’t work. Finding out a strategy that will work I leave to the reader to consider. Another big caveat (and I’ll mention this since I’ve been focusing specifically on the depressive mindset, though there are many different types of mindsets one could consider unhealthy) is that this will not work with mindsets that are caused by disorders based on chemical imbalances, as those are caused by circumstances far beyond the individual’s control and my area of expertise.

I’d also be interested in anyone else’s opinion on this theory – if you do have one, feel free to post it I the comments below. You can also (as always) take out my Twitter for more miscellaneous musings.

Looking into the Future of Tesla

This is in fact not from Unsplash.

Ah, Tesla. Without a doubt the most controversial company I have seen in my young career. For each person who I’ve seen who is against Tesla, there is another that is for it. For this blog post, I wanted to go over Tesla in detail, discussing both sides of the argument and then coming to conclusions as to which endpoint seems more probable. If you’ve seen my podcast , you know that I’ve already discussed this very much in depth; however, I felt it was appropriate to sit down and compile all the pieces together.

The For Side

There’s no questioning that Tesla is in the hearts of a lot of people as a bastion not only for the automotive industry but for business in general. There is definitely a lot of clamors for Tesla to pull through as a company, and although that can equate to sales, it doesn’t necessarily equate to sales. That said, Tesla has recently pulled through into profitability, with their most recent fiscal report showcasing that the production of cars has finally caught up with demand. This is massive; most companies that move from the negative cash flow stage to the positive cash flow stage tend to go on to be in it for the long run. While one quarter of positive net income doesn’t mean sustainable positive cash flow, it still is definitely something to celebrate.

Another pro-Tesla argument I’ve been hearing has been the comparison of Tesla to early Amazon, where investors and other business-types were bearish on the company ended up being extraordinarily wrong. To be honest, I’m a bit skeptical of this argument. I have a hard time equating an electric car company with an internet e-commerce service. Certainly, both used unorthodox methods of growth, but I don’t know if that’s enough to equate the two. Still, time has yet to tell on this one, and it could easily end up becoming true.

The Against Side

One particularly interesting thing I’ve noticed about the demographics of the two sides of this argument is that the people who are against Tesla tend to have much more experience in finance and business. Does this make them more credible? Perhaps, but before we conclude that we should first consider what they’re saying in the first place.

The first big argument against Tesla is in its lofty goals. Tesla’s overall mission statement and process isn’t really something anyone has ever been able to accomplish before, and so far (with the exception of that recent report) it doesn’t really seem like they’re getting anywhere close to accomplishing it. If anything, its just created a lot of stress for Tesla employees, who are desperately trying to create a market while industry heavyweights like GM and Nissan can easily scoop in with their resources. Sure electric cars are a new market, but it’s not that outwardly of a new market, and veteran players won’t have much trouble in adapting to it.

The second argument is probably the biggest one that Tesla is currently facing; it’s the investigations. A few months ago the SEC began a civil probe into Tesla after Elon Musk claimed that funding was secured to take the company private at $420. This probe ended up being cut off short, as Musk took a generous civil settlement which lobbed both him and Tesla with a mild fine and kicked him off the Board of Directors for three years. This seems like the razing of a bullet if anything; depending on the board’s current disposition for Musk, they are likely just to put a stand-in in his place. Shortly after this occurred, however, an FBI criminal investigation was started which appears to have been heating up recently. As of last week, this investigation expanded past the take-private case and into the scrutiny of the production goals and numbers given in earnings reports in the past. From this, numerous former Tesla employees were questioned, as well as appear to still be being questioned. The fate of the FBI case remains uncertain.

Conclusions

Naturally, I hedge on the side of caution. I do believe that there is more fundamental evidence on the side opposing Tesla, but at the same time, I do find it hard to believe that such a large company could collapse solely due to missing a few production quotas. However, that belief only stays assuming that the investigations go nowhere, as there are plenty of large companies that have fallen overnight due to criminal investigations. So, I think as of now it’s a relatively 50/50 shot that changes based on that very investigation. It is one hundred percent true, I believe, that Tesla right now is at a crossroads that will decide its fate as a company; if it could make it past this then it can make it past anything, but if it can’t, then its likely that we aren’t going to be hearing too much from it anymore in a few years.

Have your own Tesla argument that wasn’t mentioned in this post? Feel free to post it in the comments below. Like this post? Then I encourage you to follow the blog as well as my Twitter, where you can keep up to date on all my new stuff.

Getting Past the Bump

asdrubal-luna-485688-unsplash — Photo by Asdrubal luna on Unsplash

I wanted to talk about something that I noticed in both of my previous projects: the 100DaysofCode and Startup Challenge. It’s about the Bump.

The bump goes something like this: you’ve decided to learn a new skill. As you always do, you check out the tutorials for it online. Things go very smoothly. This thing goes there, this goes here, and it all fits. You can even apply it to! It actually works outside the tutorial! Wow, this is fantastic; you feel productive, valuable, all sorts of… wait… what the hell? What is that thing? How are you supposed to do that? Is that even possible? Well, what if you put in… nope, that didn’t work. It’s not how to learn, but you can always copy and paste from the tutorial and … oh my. This is not an error that the tutorial mentioned. And looking it up in google gives zero results. Wow. This sucks.

Everyone’s had to deal with the Bump at some point. Perhaps not like that specific example, but the same idea applies. I’ve been dealing with the Bump when it comes to programming for quite a while now, in various shapes and forms. I know that programming isn’t my strong suit; at the same time, I recognize programming as an essential skill for the future. So, how do I get past the Bump?

For the most part, I’ve found the one thing that’s been the most helpful to also be the most ironic: brute force. Trying out as many problems, tutorials, etc. that I can find and trying to complete each one until I hit a point where its truly impossible to complete. Still, I’ll be the first to say that this isn’t the best strategy to go for. Building up momentum for a short while only to have it all collapse again can make you demotivated to finish the job as well as further lower your opinion of your own abilities. So, post-100DaysofCode, I’ve decided to draft up a new theory when it comes to tackling the Bump.

The first thing is this: execution matters above all. I now believe that it matters less that you spread out on a bunch of different tutorials and learn bits and pieces from each. When you hit a roadblock in a project and then actually get past that roadblock¸ it feels INFINITELY more rewarding and grants you with much more knowledge. Instead of avoiding roadblocks, you should focus on tackling them head-on. Make the goal less of finishing the project, and more of beating the roadblock. Once you realign your focus on the challenge like this, I hypothesize, you’ll come in with a much healthier mindset.

A second major piece of it is that just because you struggle doesn’t mean you can’t come out the other side. I think programming is one of the most notorious things out there in terms of the struggle. I see a constant stream of posts on Medium, Reddit, etc. about people banging their head on the wall because they just can’t get coding. This makes me feel a lot better about my own position. What also makes me feel good is recognizing that, when they stuck to it, the majority of these people successfully ended up making it to the other side. And if they can do it, why can’t we?

Overall, I’d still say that my level of programming mastery is novice. I left 100DaysofCode disappointed in expecting more progress, but at the same time I got a new goal out of it: to break past the Bump and get on to the next level.

That’s all for now. Feel free to follow this blog or my Twitter if you wish to see more. New posts should be up every Monday!