Infinite doesn’t include everything

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I thought this was a fascinating bit of a thought experiment. I was reading a thread where people we debating the idea of a “multiverse”, the idea that our universe is just one of an infinite number of universes out there, thus explaining how life could be possible.

Whether you believe that theory or not, the idea of infinite universes raises some interesting concepts. If there are infinite universes, that means literally everything has happened somewhere, right? For example, maybe in one universe everything is the same except I became a movie star instead of Brad Pitt? Not likely.

0-1 doesn’t include 2

To explain the thought as to why every scenario isn’t possible, even with infinite possibilities, a user in the thread simply said this:

There are infinite numbers between 0-1, but 2 isn’t one of them.

It kind of blew my mind. If you understand math, they are correct that there are literally an infinite number of digits between 0-1 (“0.12”, “0.32234”, “0.4”, “0.567”, etc), but none of them will ever be the number 2. Just because you have infinite set of numbers doesn’t mean that every possible number is included.

The same goes for the multiverse concept, or almost anything else with infinite possibilities. The idea of infinity is hard to comprehend, so it makes sense to just include everything in there, but you can actually have infinite possibilities even within hard limits.

If the multiverse theory is right, there are undoubtedly an infinite number of universes where Brad Pitt isn’t a movie star (and many more where he doesn’t exist at all), but that doesn’t mean that I necessarily got to take his place in any of them. You can have an infinite number of results, but still not necessarily include every possibility.

I love tools that have a clear ending… usually

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I have a variety of tools that I use everyday to help with my learning, and they can essentially be broken into two groups:

  • Those that have a clear objective each day, and can be finished.
  • Those that are open-ended and you can use as much (or as little) as you want.

For example, I’ve been trying to use Duolingo every day to start learning Spanish, and so far I’m on a 37 day streak. With Duolingo, you can go in and study as much as you want or as little as you want. If you just do a quick two-minute session, that’s enough to keep your streak alive. When I come back the next day, I can just pick up from there.

The same goes for reading. I try to read every day, but there is no set limit on how much or how little to do, and I can just continue on the next day.

Clear objectives can pile up

Generally speaking, though, I prefer tools that have a clear set of tasks for the day so I can finish them and be done. The two main ones that fit into this group are Anki and Feedly. They both have a set number of items in them (flashcards in Anki and websites in Feedly) and when I finish, I’m done for the day! It’s great.

The problem is when I get busy and don’t hit the bottom of those lists. With Duolingo or reading, I can just continue on like normal the next day. With Anki and Feedly, the next day’s worth of stuff is in there plus the items I didn’t finish the day before. It can quickly spiral out of control. I know a few people that have used Feedly for a while, but watched it just accumulate too high and simply bailed on it. It’s understandable.

I’ve done two things to help combat that:

  1. I try to take care of both of those first thing in the morning. Because they have a clear ending, I can work them to the finish and then not worry about them again that day.
  2. I try to limit what I put in them. I’ve removed a lot of sites from Feedly (including great ones like TechCrunch and Lifehacker, which put out a ton of content) and that makes it much easier to keep up with.

The last year has seen a lot of shuffling in my daily learning routines, and I suspect more is likely to come. I think a key to all of it is to be able to look forward to the next day, and not to be scared of how much has piled up. If I can keep the daily routine at a healthy size, I should be able to keep it going for years to come.

Great ideas can come from either “side”

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I know that right off the bat, some of you will disagree with the premise of this post because certainly someone from “that side” could never have a solid idea. That thought is quite common, and is likely holding many of us back.

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In his book “Thank You For Being Late“, author Thomas Friedman posits five “killer apps that have immediate application to governing today“. His fifth one is this:

The ability to approach politics and problem-solving in the age of accelerations with a mind-set that is entrepreneurial, hybrid, and heterodox and nondogmatic—mixing and coevolving any ideas or ideologies that will create resilience and propulsion, no matter whose “side” they come from.

Whether it’s huge political ideas that could change the world, or a way for your local deli to make a sandwich a bit more efficiently, great ideas can come from everywhere.

I’ve said before that the smartest people I know follow both sides of the political aisle, and often are more willing to change their minds.

If you want to insist that good ideas can only come from your “side”, that’s absolutely your right. At the end of the day, though, people that can accept good ideas and feedback even from people that they often disagree with will generally end up ahead.

Get rid of busy and leave productive

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When it comes to your workday, it’s often filled with two types of work:

  1. Things that keep you busy
  2. Things that are productive

I was recently talking to someone that had brought in a consultant to help them streamline their manufacturing, and he dropped a great quote on me. Their goal was to become more “lean”, and he described it like this:

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Lean gets rid of busy and leaves productive

The more lean you can make your team (and yourself), the less busywork you’ll find yourself doing and instead you’ll have more time to actually do productive work.

Busy can feel appealing at times, because it seems like you’re getting a lot done, but we all know that true productivity is something different. Work to be more lean, drop as much “busy” as you can, and leave the “productive” in your schedule.

Wider study can help in a narrow field

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In many situations, going deep in a specific field can be very advantageous, if not essential. However, there is a lot of evidence to show that having interests and activities outside of your chosen field can actually make you much better at what you do.

As shared in the book “Range“:

Comparing Nobel prize-winning scientists to other scientists, the figures show that Nobel laureates are a full 22 times more likely to be an amateur actor, magician, dancer or performer.

It’s not that Nobel-winning scientists are 20% more likely to do those activities, or twice as likely — it’s 22 times more likely. That’s just a mind-blowing number, and seemingly counter-intuitive. On one hand, you have scientists that are focused in their field, and on the other hand you have scientists that are also actors, magicians, dancers and performers. Why does that help?

The basic idea is that having a greater variety of interests will help you to see things from a wider vantage point, often opening up new ideas and approaches. Author David Epstein has another quote that can explain it better than I can:

“Modern work demands knowledge transfer: the ability to apply knowledge to new situations and different domains. Our most fundamental thought processes have changed to accommodate increasing complexity and the need to derive new patterns rather than rely only on familiar ones. Our conceptual classification schemes provide a scaffolding for connecting knowledge, making it accessible and flexible.”

Having varied interests is a huge advantage in almost every field. Of course, you still need to be able to dive very deep into your specific area of study; those Nobel-winning scientists were certainly brilliant in the lab. The best ones also spent time outside the lab exploring other interests, and that well-roundedness is an advantage we can all learn to copy.

15% of all searches on Google are still brand new

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Over the years, Google has frequently shared that a large percentage of the searches on their site are for phrases they’ve never seen before. This is heavily related to search queries getting longer, which I first talked about 13 years ago and continues to progress to this day. As of right now, 15% of all searches on Google are phrases they’ve never seen before.

The 15% stat is amazing to me on two levels.

  • First, it’s fascinating that Google can usually give fantastic results for something they’ve never seen before. They can take a brand new query, compare it to billions of possible results, sort them in the perfect order for that session, and do it all in a fraction of a second.
  • Secondly, though, is just how crazy it is that 15% of searches today are new. Google sees around 8.5B total searches every day, meaning there around 1.3B new searches every single day. This is after we know that Google has already seen somewhere around 30 trillion searches since 1998.

Google has seen 30 trillion search queries, and yet we still give it 1.3 billion new unique searches every single day.

This is also why we encourage our clients not to get too hung up on particular rankings. Sure, ranking well for an established keyword can do great things, and we don’t shy away from that.

However, our main goal with every client is to avoid confusing Google. When Google gets those 1.3B new queries each day, they immediately provide results to the searcher. The better Google can fully understand your site, the more times you’ll show up in those results.

(via Search Engine Roundtable)

Manage your time or your energy

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I’m a big advocate of time management, and have well over 100 posts on here about productivity of various forms. When you get down to it, though, your time isn’t what you need to manage — it’s your energy.

In the his book “The Personal MBA“, author Josh Kaufman puts it this way:

Here’s the problem with “time management”: time is not what needs to be managed. No matter what you choose to do, time will inevitably pass. The implicit assumption of time management systems is that every hour is fungible—equivalent to any other. Nothing could be further from the truth: all people are created equal, but all hours are most definitely not.

I’m sure you’ve experienced it; you managed your time carefully so you’re able to set aside a few hours to work on that big project, but it’s at a time when you just don’t have much energy to put into it.

Dr. Andrew Huberman has a fantastic podcast that digs into topics like these, and actually published one last year that hits it precisely. In his “Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools“, Andrew walks through a typical day and explains how he gains more energy when needed, and how he plans his day around those peak energy times. It’s roughly a 90 minute show, but it’s fascinating and well worth your time.

Managing your time is an excellent thing to do, but you’ll gain even more if you can manage your energy as well.

You can subscribe to his podcast here, or watch that particular episode in the video below:

Externalization leads to clarity

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I’ve shared some of my reasons before why I think that blogging is more beneficial than journaling, but journaling certainly has its place. If you’re taking the time to journal regularly, even if you never publish your writing for others to see, there are huge benefits to it.

A big benefit is likely to be externalization, which you’ve likely experienced before. Josh Kaufman summed it up like this in his book “The Personal MBA“:

Speaking—to yourself or to another person—is another effective method of Externalization. Vocal Externalization explains why most of us have had the experience of solving our own problems while talking with a friend or colleague. By the time you’re done talking, you’re likely to have more insight into your problem—even if your listener didn’t say a word.

Many times, just speaking (or writing) about a particular problem will help you find the solution on your own. If you can develop a consistent habit like a journal or a blog, those benefits will appear frequently. In my case, taking the time to work through a concept or issue and refine it to the point of being comfortable publishing it often leads to increased clarity for me.

If you don’t have the time or desire to blog/journal, then taking the time to simply chat with a friend can help lead to some great insights, even if that friend isn’t able to directly offer any guidance. If you’re that friend for someone else, encouraging them to continue to dig deeper into the question might help lead them to the answer.

Assume good intentions

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As digital communication continues to expand into different formats, it can be increasingly difficult to determine the intentions of the person you’re talking to. Of the various common ways that we might communicate, I think intention becomes more difficult to discern as you work down this list:

  • In person
  • Video call
  • Phone call
  • Email
  • Text message

On the other hand, you can essentially flip that list around in terms of the amount of attention that needs to go into the communication. As you go down the list, you are less invested in the moment. It’s not a coincidence that both vague intentions and invested attention go hand-in-hand.

The more you’re invested in a communication (you’re unlikely to be watching a YouTube video on the side while meeting with someone in person), the easier it is to determine their tone and intention. With any communication that isn’t in person, though, intention can be hard to grasp — even if you’re focused. So what can you do? Just assume the best.

In her book “Digital Body Language“, author Erica Dhawan simply says:

If tone’s the problem, assume the intentions were good and respond with facts.

Maybe you misread the tone and it came off sounding aggressive. Or maybe the tone was aggressive, but you aren’t sure. Assume their intentions were good, respond with facts, and keep things moving.

If you’re with someone and you often find yourself assuming that their intentions are bad, why are you spending any time with them in the first place? You may be forced into some of those situations (a chat with your boss, perhaps), but in most cases you can just walk away. If you can’t bring yourself to assume good intentions during a conversation, it’s time to evaluate why you’re having a conversation with that person in the first place.

What does success really mean?

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When people are asked to define the word success, the responses are often a bit too high-level. They might talk about things like just being happy, which is a fine answer but it’s still rather vague.

In his book “The Personal MBA“, author Josh Kaufman put it this way:

Instead of using complex States of Being like “success” and “happiness” as decision criteria, it’s far better to decide what these states actually mean to you. For example, I define “being successful” as “working on things I enjoy with people I like,” “feeling free to choose what I work on,” and “having enough money to live without financial stress.”

Together, these States of Being provide a much more useful definition of success—if that’s how I’m experiencing the world, I’m “successful.”

The same goes for “happiness.” Instead of being a single State of Being, “being happy” is a combination of “having fun,” “spending time with people I enjoy,” “feeling calm,” and “feeling free.” When those States of Being describe my experience in the present moment, I’m “happy.” Breaking down “happiness” into its component parts helps me ensure I’m doing things that will help me experience it more fully and more often.

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If you’re able to break down “success” into the pieces that really matter, it becomes much easier to make it happen. You might find that you are happy when you’re hiking with friends, or working to restore an old car, or simply relaxing and having a drink.

It’s much easier to find a way to “go hiking with some friends” then it is to simply work to be “happy”. Define what success really looks like, and then go chase those tangible results.