The good thing about endurance is that it can be improved with practice. I guess this is applicable not only to sports, but also to any sphere of your life that you feel lacks of it.
I read a book last year on high level athlete mentality and how it can be applicable to the workplace. At some point it was written that companies love to hire ex-Olympians because they have a reputation of being extremely focused and determined people, which often leads to greatness (the win!). They do have, most of them, top tier 'won't quit' attitude
Maybe endurance has some permeable quality to it that makes it ripple from the cardiovascular system to another system? If yes, I would be so glad.
It Pays to Win?
When I was young, I enjoyed a high level of competitiveness. I really enjoyed winning, although I like to think I wasn't a jerk about it - I wouldn't step on anyone else just to win, but in a fair match, I'd do my damnedest. Relatedly, I had a high level of "don't-quit". I'd just keep going on something until it was done, or I'd won. Exhaustion or pain wasn't a reason to quit, it was just information that victory was going to be even sweeter because I'd overcome more shit.
I've read that in training for special forces soldiers, they do everything they can to boost the already quite high desire to win. The saying is "It pays to win", and they reinforce this by e.g. letting the winning boat crew sit out the next lap through the surf. The point is, they *reinforce* the idea that putting in effort, extreme effort even, to win, is worth it. The don't-quit of these soldiers is legendary.
Yes, there are many life lessons from games like "It pays to be a winner." I'll point out that it isn't just about trying to incentivize people to win (most people are competitive and like to win), but it's probably even more about seeing what people do when they lose. For IPTW, it can be quite demoralizing to be in the losing group because physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion, and group dysfunctionality compound. I've been in the losing group in special operations training and it tends to get worse as multiday events drag on. However, a key part of being a "winner" is showing the same consistency, determination, professionalism, performance etc every time, regardless of recent events. You see similar comments in elite level sports about "playing like a champion" or "sticking to the gameplan" even when you're down. A short memory, ability to compartmentalize, and ability to hyperfocus on the moment help immensely (although they are not great traits for intimate relationships with other humans).
War, like life, is a marathon not a sprint. Anyone can win when things are going their way, but there will always be times when things aren't going your way. One thing that separates the elite soldiers from conventional is that the elite soldiers can continue to maintain a consistent performance regardless of the situation (sleep deprivation, low morale, death/danger, starvation, etc). There is a balance between going all-out to win and saving something in the tank for the next task because there is always a next task. If you burn yourself out trying to win at one task it might mean failure on the next task.
I read a book last year on high level athlete mentality and how it can be applicable to the workplace. At some point it was written that companies love to hire ex-Olympians because they have a reputation of being extremely focused and determined people, which often leads to greatness (the win!). They do have, most of them, top tier 'won't quit' attitude
For the perspective of the companies, those ex-Olympians are perfect for modern office environments not because they'll likely to achieve some sort of excellence there, but because they'll last there the longest before they burn out... The modern office environments are not places where excellence is possible.
The modern office environments are not places where excellence is possible.
Could you justify this assertion please? I don't get why excellence is not possible in modern office environments. Not that I believe the contrary to be true, I just don't know enough to have an opinion on that. Axel Heyst mentioned his workplace to cultivate a ''It doesn't matter what you do, you're going to not win'' mentality. Do you say that because you feel it is the same everywhere?
Could you justify this assertion please? I don't get why excellence is not possible in modern office environments. Not that I believe the contrary to be true, I just don't know enough to have an opinion on that. Axel Heyst mentioned his workplace to cultivate a ''It doesn't matter what you do, you're going to not win'' mentality. Do you say that because you feel it is the same everywhere?
Pretty much, yeah. Modern companies are in a state of constant disarray. The ever-present firefighting and general clusterfuck are just not conducive to any sort of excellence - on the contrary, companies pay their employees very well exactly to have them perform the trick of delivering anything at all, in spite of being in environment not conducive to productivity. I think the business owners figured out that it's better to keep organizations in this state of c.f. and overpay people to endure this, rather than trying to bring the organization into some sort of order. The latter would require more slower, deliberate action and, well, sanity, and that would hamper the growth - which, ultimately, is the only thing that matters. So, it's better to just keep hiring people, pay them well and burn them out.
So, yeah, I don't really believe in sane companies, at least not in my sector (software engineering). Not after seeing mostly the same story in the 10+ jobs I've had so far.
Yes, my understanding is that a modern knowledge-work company where it’s reasonable to expect to be able to excel is the rare exception. Places certainly exist (e.g. Basecamp, if the book “It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work” is true), but not many. For someone in your position, Jupiter, certainly worth it to take a *very* hard look at the companies giving you offers when you get to that point and trying to find the least bad ones on offer.
@whitebelt thanks for the thoughts on how to lose well… someone incapable of handling failure I imagine is in some circumstances a worse liability than someone who lacks drive to win.
Could you justify this assertion please? I don't get why excellence is not possible in modern office environments. Not that I believe the contrary to be true, I just don't know enough to have an opinion on that. Axel Heyst mentioned his workplace to cultivate a ''It doesn't matter what you do, you're going to not win'' mentality. Do you say that because you feel it is the same everywhere?
I suspect that salaryman work is not the ideal place for someone who is committed to "winning" with two exceptions: 1) commission/sales work and 2) impact work (in which financial compensation is not a primary motivator). If you want to feel like you're "winning" then you may want to explore traditional workingman or businessman (entrepreneurship especially) structures. The more layers of abstraction between your individual performance and output/outcome, the less likely you will benefit from putting in anything beyond "check the block" effort. Most jobs, especially in knowledge-work, are BS jobs that are deliberately obfuscated lest someone points out that the emperor has no clothes.
Yes, there are many life lessons from games like "It pays to be a winner."
I'd like to expand on my earlier post. At first glance, my observations fit very well with the common advice about the importance of process orientation vs goal orientation. However, I think it's a bit more nuanced than that.
When dealing with dynamic real-time situations (life, team sports, war), it's critically important that one is able to be both process oriented and goal oriented. Process orientation is key for preparation and longevity; it will keep you focused on growth and perseverance even when you don't "win". Goal orientation is an important tool for motivation ("I want to win") and for remaining adaptive in real-time situations. I think the motivation connection is pretty straightforward, as it's well documented that creating goals can provide structure and motivation for individuals.
The ability to adapt (semper gumby**) is less discussed outside of circles that spend a lot of time interacting with dynamic, messy situations with incomplete information. In war, it's not sufficient to resign yourself to "Oh well, we aren't winning this battle but at least our process is solid." Fuck no, you need to figure out how to win at any cost because that absolutely matters, especially in life/death situations where TINA. This may require you to entirely throw out your previous framework/process to try something novel. Being too process oriented and getting your ego wrapped up with your process can be a hindrance to such a pivot. Many people would rather fail conventionally than succeed unconventionally (even in life and death situations). You can read a variety of survivor memoirs to see that dynamic in action.
Another analogy is traders who blow up their entire portfolio and completely re-invent themselves in order to succeed again (not just changing what they think, but how they think; in the process destroying previous identities). In trading, making money is what matters. All else comes second. You have to be able to grok that while still grokking the importance of process orientation. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Maybe this is all common knowledge and I'm just rambling.
No - I really appreciate the nuanced thinking about this stuff. And I’m very interested in the topic of adaptation, obviously - I didn’t smash the word into my podcast title on accident. Okay um, the rest of this post might be 80% cutting and pasting in notes on Boyd I’ve taken over the years (mostly from Frans P Osinga’s book).
To Boyd, the ultimate purpose of strategy is to improve your ability to adapt to unfolding circumstances through time (and, in the theater of conflict, to reduce adversary's ability to adapt to unfolding circumstances). Winning is the art of adapting faster and more accurately than adversary - he famously put it that “winners can invent snowmobiles; losers cannot, or cannot fast enough.” Updating your orientation in realtime, to maintain as tight a match between orientation and reality, is the essence of winning (the schwerpunkt). A goal or a process written down becomes a static thing, but environment keeps changing through time. A static goal is like shooting an arrow at where a target is right now; a rigid process is like continuing to drill in standing formation when your foe just invented machine guns.
He wrote that The Strategic Goal of an Organism is "To diminish adversary's freedom-of-action while improving our freedom-of-action so they can't cope while we can cope...". I’ve long thought of “to increase own freedom-of-action so I can cope with unfolding circumstances” as a good enough overarching principle of action for my own life - the language about adversary isn’t terribly relevant to my particular lifestyle design.
"He who is willing and able to take the initiative to exploit variety, rapidity, and harmony - as basis to create as well as adapt to the more distinct more irregular quicker changes of rhythm and pattern, yet shape focus and direction of effort - survives and dominates."
Making decisions under uncertainty is the whole game here, really. It's the ability to act under uncertainty as accurately as possible. This is where the perspective of rapid looping and synthesis/analysis is so imperative: if one holds to a linear/rigid model of the world, you'll quickly become overwhelmed as the world is very fluid. If, however, you expect the world to unfold rapidly through time, you never are grasping after some "arrival" state of perfect Planning and strategy, and you become comfortable with the conceptual spiral - you understand that the conceptual spiral *is the path,* and you life comfortably there, continually improving your ability to act/react. This is critical because *not becoming overwhelmed*, or maintaining your ability to cope, is key to survival. Dancing seems an exellent metaphor. The aim is to keep dancing, and to draw delight from the creativity and spontaneity of the moves.
While reading some papers on intrinsic motivation, I dug up the concept that humans have an “intrinsic motivation function” because it conveys adaptive advantages (which is sort of obvious: most of the things we’ve inherently got have to convey some sort of advantage for the species - but the particular mechanism here is really interesting):
[[Intrinsic Motivation]] drives humans to explore, create, learn, seek novel experiences and challenges, and expand their capacities. It is easy to see how the more humans do these sorts of things, the more they are going to be able to adapt to unfolding circumstances (Boyd!). First, their "default" explorations will likely lead them to develop diverse methods and competencies that could serve them in the event of changing future circumstances (e.g. they're bored with hunting woolly mammoths, so Grog's side hustle is building hare snares. When the mammoths die off, Grog just switches to eating bunny rabbits). It also suggests the ability of intrinsically motivated humans to "lean in" to the challenge of adapting to unfolding circumstances in realtime.
The dopamine systems appears to subserve observed mammalian drives for competence, the furthering of one's capacities, and autonomy, or "the sense that one's behaviror is authentic and self-organized". In other words, humans *enjoy* getting better at stuff that they feel volitional about. This establishes a neurological structure for why [[Intrinsic motivation flourishes wAutonomy and Competence]].
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Okay, so, one limited way of framing what winning is, is “winning” = “an adaptation to unfolding circumstance that relies upon and results in continued or regained individual autonomy and competence”. Which has hardwired reward structures built in to the brain. To me, this starts to make sense of
1) *why* it’s fun to win,
2) What winning is and isn’t (and how to tell when winning has become “winning”, e.g. environment has shifted but you’re still acting like it was ten years ago). In other words, if I can’t connect the dots between a specific goal or process and “…and this is how it improves/protects/regains freedom-of-action and ability to cope”, then that’s a red flag my goal/process is obsolete.
3) Frames winning in terms of adaptation, which if kept front of mind really helps to not cling too tightly to static goals or processes.
For SF and athletes, the difference between winning and losing may come down to out-enduring the competition by a iota. In hockey, getting to the puck first or breaking away comes down to your ATP system (good for about a 2 second sprint) vs theirs. If you can push 10 steps and they can "only" do 9, you won. Often the barrier whether one can "get that extra rep" is not conditioning (every competitor has similar conditioning) but rather mental. It's just that some people have the mindset and some don't.
On the other hand, it may be a situation where the reward is proportional to the effort. This was a huge problem in early part of industrialism. People would only show up for work when they needed money and when they'd earned enough, they'd go home.
Anyhoo, ... what really matters is the reward(effort) response-function. Like a Bayesian network, we come in with priors (thanks school-system) and then each feedback (rewards, the lack of reward, punishment, the lack of punishment) teaches a lesson that updates our expectations.
I think in a lot of modern(ist) work environments the reward(effort) response-function is multi-dimensional. This leads to stuff like the Gervais principle.
If you figure it out, you can start gaming it. This is good for you but tends to be bad for others and possibly bad for the company too. An example are those who have figured out that maximum salary comes from changing jobs frequently as that is almost the only way to get a material raise anymore. <- Simplistic example.
If you haven't figured out the response-function, you'll be controlled by it. Likely repeating the behavior you were conditioned to in the schooling system where there was a fairly clear cut connection between effort, skill, and grades. (Although looking back, my grades from one teacher dropped across the board after some of us came very late to class one day wanting to finish a recess soccer game. Not like I became dumber overnight.) In this case, applying a "work hard and thou shalt be rewarded"-matrix can only last so long until it's reconditioned. Eventually it becomes clear that your "human resource" is simply being extracted at which point you either find your inner sociopath or your inner loser.
Apathy sets in insofar the response-function seems random. Random is a good assumption whenever "someone has no idea about how a system is working". Within operant conditioning random punishments or rewards results in a fast decrease in personal effort. Why bother when bothering doesn't make a clear difference to the person who bothers (or used to bother).
All this to say ... this [above] is not the only way. I like to associate the emphasis on external rewards on immediate effort on agriculturalism... farming. You do more "simple" work, you get more food. Contrast this with hunting or gathering. (For example, active investing is a lot more like hunting than farming ... but if one enters it with a farming mentality, it's going to be uphill dissonance all the way...)
My point is that there are different reward systems for different environments. I think transitioning from "salaryman" to "renaissanceman" requires rewiring one's reward system. For the renaissanceman-type, the innate playfulness and inner drive of a child (before creativity was trained out). See https://earlyretirementextreme.com/a-me ... ement.html or the Pearsall quote (see WL8) about not making a distinction between work and play.
In my experience this [innate drive] is pretty hard to recover once it's been damaged or destroyed by [OC] turning play into work.
Hence a pox on external reward-systems!! I can see how they'd get otherwise unmotivated people to do stuff, but insofar internal motivation is inherent, external rewards (operant conditioning) can really *fuck* with that system. One-size-does-not-fit-all.
They had a large segment on this topic in the most recent Jocko Podcast episode. One of the things that Jocko frequently puzzles about is what makes guys quit from SF training (specifically BUD/S in this case). Especially now, the candidates that make it through selection are often all around top athletes: swam competitively in college, high level MMA training, extremely fit etc. Yet it's often many of these same guys that end up ringing the bell before anyone else. They were discussing how it pays to win, but how it also pays to know how to lose. Losing builds resiliency, the ability to know what to do when you get dealt a shit hand or have to go back into the cold surf for the umpteenth time while the winning group sits on the beach relaxing. Many of the winners who were used to having things go their way couldn't/can't cope when all the cards come crashing down for the first time, end up being overwhelmed and quitting. Winning is good, but so is knowing about losing and knowing how to bounce back from defeat or difficult circumstances..
They had a large segment on this topic in the most recent Jocko Podcast episode. One of the things that Jocko frequently puzzles about is what makes guys quit from SF training (specifically BUD/S in this case). Especially now, the candidates that make it through selection are often all around top athletes: swam competitively in college, high level MMA training, extremely fit etc. Yet it's often many of these same guys that end up ringing the bell before anyone else. They were discussing how it pays to win, but how it also pays to know how to lose. Losing builds resiliency, the ability to know what to do when you get dealt a shit hand or have to go back into the cold surf for the umpteenth time while the winning group sits on the beach relaxing. Many of the winners who were used to having things go their way couldn't/can't cope when all the cards come crashing down for the first time, end up being overwhelmed and quitting. Winning is good, but so is knowing about losing and knowing how to bounce back from defeat or difficult circumstances..
Keyword is grit!
One seminar from academia I remember particularly well was a professor trying to recruit fresh meat^H^H^H^Hnew students emphasizing that the required qualities were something like "reasonable intelligence" but more importantly "high frustration tolerance". Much of the educational system sorts for intelligence but since it's using closed-end problem-sets that can usually be solved within an afternoon or evening, it does not prepare students for actual research. Research is the art of trying and trying and trying yet again coming up with new ideas for months (typically 3--12) with the reward of being the first human to uncover something new. Even if the discovery remarkably irrelevant, you're still the first human ever to see/know it.
However, admission criteria for a research apprenticeship is often set by the standards of being able to solve afternoon puzzles and so it's not too uncommon for new grad students to quit after a few months because they're just not used to a situation where gratification is often delayed by months or possibly forever (because of taking a wrong path). The Peter Principle is still strong. Civilization does not have stable patterns that move people onwards and upwards.
Really interesting stuff. The task of rebuilding a destroyed desire to win or eroded grit strikes me as a critical skill in learning to ERE/FIRE/anti-consumerism properly. I'm going to look at people who reinvented themselves midlife and think about this.
The above points around grit (or lack thereof) certainly resonate - in the MBB consulting world, it's gotten to the point where we clearly and transparently tell new hires during intake training that they will NOT be good at their jobs, they WILL get a ton of corrective feedback, and they WILL feel like they are floundering and failing. This is completely expected and normal.
Before we started doing that, it was annoyingly common to have newbies basically break into frustrated tears on their first project or two and require heavy intervention. They've never failed. They were great at school, great at hobbies, great at sports, whatever. They landed this super elite "prestige" job and they expect to keep doing great - but 90% of them slam into a brick wall. It's one reason the burn rate is so high at the 2 year mark.
I'm not sure if its eroded grit, or if it just never developed in the first place
Lies, Damn Lies, and Accounting:
Jan Actual Expenses: $2,400
Jan CoL: $796 (a bit higher than usual, due to a few hundred miles of atypical driving).
TTM Actual Expenses: $21,600
TTM CoL: $10,800
I spent a fair amount on builds this year, although about $4k of that TTM Actual Expenses is now in accounts receivable, as I'm going to get reimbursed for one of them, and another $4k went to my surgery. Whatever: I'm keen to close the gap between actual and CoL expenses this year. Permatraveling for the next twelve months should help keep me from the siren call of "capx" builds, but provide more tempting options for spending on CoL.
Since September my CoL spending target was <1jafi, which I had pegged at $8,500. It was useful as a concrete goal to aim for. I'm now letting go of that and have scrubbed jafi from my 'sheets (also, 1 jafi is now something like $9,432...). I've got $5k TTM Actual Expenses as a target in mind, which is going to take a while to hit but I think is doable.
On the topic of builds and money - I've long desired to do ultra low cost builds, but I keep getting into builds with significant time pressure, which is terrible for getting up the S-curve. I'm hoping that with the studio build I'm ~finishing up (~$4k), I'll have gotten enough relief from urgently needing more space that the next build can be slow and done ultrafrugal. An earthbag dome with bottle wall fenestration, for example.
Another aspect of major builds is that they're big time sucks. Not as bad as having a j*b, but it's a significant hole of time and design-thought that I'm resultantly not spending on smaller scale projects that fill out my WoG - everything from learning to make chili, or hummus, or having the bandwidth to find cast-off furniture or equipment and fix it up, learn more about investing or geopolitics...
I feel that the time spent on the larger builds is a necessary part of my system - gotta live somewhere, and the normal-house-mortgage thing isn't how that's going to happen for me - but I'm looking forward to being able to spend my time in smaller, more diverse chunks and have a freer sense of play/exploration.
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T-minus three weeks till we fly to Portugal. I'm feeling a bit stressed to get the studio buttoned up, my truck fixed up and sold, and everything else sorted before we go. I'm spending almost no time thinking about actually being there - I'm just focused on getting out of this country as gracefully as possible. The loose plan is to get an airbnb for the first month to get our bearings and shake off the states, then jump into the workaway thing and head approximately and slowly east. We keep saying we're doing it for one year, but we just say that because people want a number. We have no idea how long we'll be.
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It occurred to me that what I'm trying to do is reach that nonconsumer, "money is on tap when needed", "little distinction between work, leisure, and play", lifestyle/mindset/reality, so rapidly that I can sort of skip the whole FI thing. The approach is:
1) Get a stash
2) Crowbar expenses super low by whatever means necessary so that liquid stash ~=5 years. I happen to have ~15yrs in IRA accounts on top of that - not sure if this is necessary, but it sure is cognitively reassuring. My primary method of crowbarring expenses low is living in my cargo trailer on free land, and then NoBuyX. I'm quite fortunate to have access to the family land, but there are other methods.
3) Focus intensely on building out skills and mindset so that $ becomes an incidental yield in excess of use... before the liquid stash runs out.
I'm working on (3), haven't achieved it yet. It somewhat comes back to the builds I keep whinging about. If I wasn't spending so much time on the builds, I'd be spending some of that surplus time on building stuff other people might like to buy, or other ideas I've wanted to do for a while that are remunerative in nature. I haven't been earning any income because I haven't been trying to explicitly make any money, *and* because I haven't been doing any activities that have $ as a potential incidental yield. (The excursion to @mooretrees' place is the notable exception.) I'm not worried about it, I'm just aware of the fact that I can't continue on my current trajectory indefinitely.
I'm also aware of the fact that I might be making this way more complicated than it needs to be, and I should just go get a j*b for a couple years and then call it and not have to worry about incidental $ yields. But.... I really *like* the idea of proving this approach can work, although I recognize it's not as slam-dunk foolproof an approach to financial freedom as tradERE. One of the things I like is that there's no easy way out. Anyone with a "good job" and no formidable headwinds (health issues, family issues, etc) can crank out a FI-level stash in 5-10 years, get CoL quite low, and call it.
But then - there's no forcing function to achieve those high level nonconsumer skills and mindsets. FI yes; howlie - not necessarily. And for a host of reasons, I'm far less seduced by the idea of being FI than I am of being a howlie - someone who has truly and thoroughly broken the cognitive traps of consumer mindset and wandered off to the fringes of acceptable society to do... whatever it is I'll decide to do there. The mystery of what I'll want and how I'll think then is part of the allure. (I know, I know, chop wood, carry water...)
So for now I'm going to stick with this approach and course-correct as I go.
Oh man you've got some great thoughts here. I feel stuck in a similar position. Able to see the possibilities that arise from the howlie life, where you can reap the fruit of your diverse skills and community. But I still lack the adequate skills. You can be lazy with an approach to FI by means of just cutting a bunch of frivolous spending, moving to a smaller abode and then cruising until you hit your number while your money compounds. There's no cruising with the howlie approach. It's inherently active and requires constant practice to be able to attain it. You can't just lie around, staring out the window and hope that your "portfolio" of skills compound (because skills always go up! ). That's probably part of the reason that howlies are so notable. Most people aren't willing to do the work.
If yes, I would be so glad.
). That's probably part of the reason that howlies are so notable. Most people aren't willing to do the work.