The Most Important Things

How do we take action?

Most of time we take action by animal instinct. It is good and bad, but just the reality is so. We can’t change this. Try to be proactive, we can be to understand the mechanism(I don’t plan to talk it, and I assume you have learned the mechanism), then take action. One of the a little bit better ways I think is to find out the most important things. That’s what I am trying to do now.

I first thought of the epitaph which is enlightened by the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. When I imagine my last day in the world, I would review my whole life and all things I have done, what I want to leave to the world? Look back many years from that time point, I think we can find the most important things. And to ask ourselves whether we will care about the things that we are doing now[1]. We must ask this question periodically.

Sometimes, we don’t know what we want, but on the contrary we know what we don’t want. Does it mean we just don’t do what we don’t want is ok? I don’t think so. Because the things we want to do actually are only a super small part of the world. Don’t take action means we just is staying the origin or drifting to an unkown place(the possibility of it’s our destination is almost zero).

This is a quite difficult question and absolutely we need to think about it many times until we get an available answer. Maybe it would change many times after each period of time.

Just now, I am trying to find my own answer.

Skills #

Naval said, 无论处于人生的哪个阶段，努力的目标都是不断的提高自己的独立性，而不是升职加薪。 Our personal competitiveness comes from our unique. Both more advanced skill and more skills we have learned can be helpful achiving this, and then help us survive better. We can choose to expand skills or master one skill. Expanding offers more possibility that we can find and mastering make us unreplaceable. You know master one skill consumes plenty of time and if we move this time to expand skills we can learn a considerable number of skills at normal level.

I think I am young, so I choose to expand, to find possibility. It’s a threat for my current job because it requires me to make progress at a specific domain. A company’s management feature is make employee work beyond their basic level to achive more outcome. It’s not the company’s problem, it’s the competing rule. When a person was promoted, that means his/her comprehensive ability(actually there are only some specific aspects) has been over the average, and he/she has reached the next new level.

Why we endeavor to get promotion? One is money. It’s reasonable. Another one is it’s a proof that proves that we have the ability to support this level, or say it means we are more advanced for the work position. At the current time point, I think I need the proof to prove I can do something more competitive at one aspect(It really doesn’t matter which aspect).

Note: now it’s very late(1:30 AM). I leave the rest part to next week.

Abilities #

Dec 15 append

There are many overlaps between skill and ability, but they are essentially different. Skill is superfacial but pragmatic and useful, ability is profound or say ability is about paradigm. It helps us build mentalities that’s positive or negative. When a person has the ability that is digging deeper, he can master computer programming skill and mechanical engineering if he wants to do. So we can say ability is fundamental and many skills are similiar unless we decide to spend some time to do.

What abilities are most important? I think they are patient, concentrated, reliable and open-minded.

1. Patient: abundant results come from continuous output. After a long time, these results can be composed to a fantastic product. But we don’t know where it sits except it is absolutely very far from us now. If we have planned to take action, don’t mind how long we have spent working hard. And we must endure and accept this kind of no-output anxiety. However, we can split one big goal into many littes things to finish and get the fulfilling. By the way, I have noted:

不定期的做一些过度的事，在半程很难坚持，但要强迫自己做下来，在最后会有非常痛快的感觉。

It may be a different way coping with big task.

2. Concentrated: short-period time is almost impossible to create good product. It’s true that spending a little time every day to improve us. This is an other aspect. a) For one whole day and one whole week, what I actually mean is we shouldn’t split one day too finely. Switching frequently between tasks consumes plenty of energy and makes us neglect the important things. b) Long-period time e.g. one hour helps us dive into one thing even if we aren’t motivated to do it at the begining. After long time involving, we start to understand the thing, find the interest and eventually focus on it.
3. Reliable: a) crisis and difficulty are unpredictable for ourselves and others. When we meet them, we must be able to afford them rather than escape or go away. Once is ok, but it would lead to the fear-difficulty and prefer-escape mindset. Next time we come across emergency, think supporting it at first and see it as a practice. I think it will be helpful for me. b) It also important for cooperation. Ideally, coopperation would lead to the 1 + 1 > 2 effect. When a partner is untrustworthy, it doesn’t work. Do you choose to trust only yourself? It might depends on the condition we encountered a few times before and enviroment around us. But it is not an one-time game, it is many successive games. After many times if we are reliable, that will leave a good impression to others and bring in an looking for cooperation attitude to us from others.
4. Open-minded: Why are we social animals? Human being is a kind of creature that can cooperate high-efficiently. That means one single individual can’t live well physically and mentally. So connect with others is necessary. Kevin Kelly said, “If you want to go fast, go alone; If you want to go further, go together.” Our choice depends on what we want. Sometimes, living in a little world is sufficient if we really want that. If not or we still remain curiosity for the world, open our arms. Two person’s worlds almost have no possibility to be same. As long as one of them is narrow-minded, there would be two isolated islands. More importantly, open-minded actually means we admit we are not perfect, we are willing to listen to others’ perspectives and then polish our cognition. Meanwhile, being open-minded helps us build support from others rather than become a polished commander.

Materials #

Or say resources. There are only two most important materials, they are money and influence. Enough money affords our ideal lifes. Basic money help us live a normal life. Except that, the remaining money set the boundaries in which we play ourselves. Influence is more complex. It includes people around us and social influence. The former requires us to keep connecting with others. First we need to be open-minded, then be reliable. As time goes by, we can aggregate a group of people who are not all our friends. The latter requires us to express ourselves and take responsiblity. Express enables us leave records by which people can recognize whether we are worth investing in. Take responsibility make these records more positive, or say increase our posibility.

Mission and Vision #

Both of them are outside our Circle of Influence(the concept is again from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). Mission is our direction like polar star. Maybe it is hard to be sure now. A compromise is set a ten-year or five-year goal. The main thing is to set a slightly long goal that must have been considered many times.

The limits of language are the limits of one’s world. – Ludwig Wittgenstein

Vision is same. It sets our upper limit. And it is a little like Circle of Concern/Cognition. There are two ways to expand vision. They are communication and read. We get immediately effective knowledge by communication, get various and comprehensive knowledge by read. Communication is more efficient and easier to burst new ideas but cannot be repeated. Read makes us get information without limit when we come up with some sentences, and then think deep and deep. Vision is wider than knowledge. It’s the combination of our judgment for each thing. With a general perspective, vision brings in possibility.

Reference #

1. One heuristic for distinguishing stuff that matters is to ask yourself whether you’ll care about it in the future. Paul Gragrahm