Mind-Manual

Being good at something “naturally” vs having to work hard to get good at it

August 13, 2010 on 10:51 am | In Culture, Self-awareness | No Comments

In moments when I’m not feeling as good about myself, I wonder if I’m not as good as someone who does a lot of the things I’ve learned to do “naturally”. For example, I’ve learned amazing ways to study less and now get great grades by spending much less time studying than I used to for worse grades. However, in those moments of weakness I confess I’m envious of people who are naturally calibrated to spend even less time than myself and do well. Do you ever feel that way?

Another example is that I’m not “naturally” an entrepreneur but I am becoming one. I read books like Howard Shultz’s Pour Your Heart Into It (story of Starbucks) and he writes as if he never had any doubts or periods of thinking, “Am I crazy? Maybe I should just give up.” I reckon I’ll get to a place where I have that much confidence in myself (or the ability to edit my memory of low confidence moments :p), but I won’t have gotten there “naturally”. For some reason, I feel that being naturally calibrated is better than to have to that calibration through conscious hard work. I don’t really know why. It just feels less genuine and less real. Perhaps this is a consequence of our society’s awe and deification of natural ability over hard work, though it seems like both are necessary for success. To be fair though when I’m feeling down on myself, I’m not appreciating the things I AM naturally calibrated to do, such as pursue improvement, or being naturally happy.

I don’t really have a resolution for this yet. Just throwing this out there in case you feel similarly.

Edit: Perhaps this is just the feeling before a quantum leap.

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Work-Life Balance is a Lie

July 20, 2010 on 11:48 am | In Culture, Life Management, Lifestyle Design, Self-awareness | 1 Comment

“Work-life balance” is a completely useless and perhaps destructive term. Where I work part-time, I constantly see employee development courses on maintaining a “work-life balance”. Screw that. That implies two terrible things: first, that there is my work and then there’s the rest of my life and they should have equal priority, and secondly that “balance” usually implies some sort of equality.

The first point assumes that all of the other roles we play as friends, partners, parents, lovers, children, siblings, human beings and many others go up against the one role of being an EMPLOYEE. My life includes work, but is not going to be balanced out with work, because “work-life balance” implies there is some sort of balance to be achieved. Balance usually refers to somin being equal. If I was to do that, out of every 24 hour day, I should spend 12 hours working and try to cram the rest of my life such as sleeping, working on personal projects, and hanging out in the other 12 hours. That just seems idiotic.

I prefer Tim Ferriss‘ take on the idea of work-life balance. He says there should be “work-life separation”. I still have some qualms about this term, but this at least gives the possibility of reducing the time and attention you give to work, possibly working less than the fabled 40-hour week.

BTW, I’m using “work” in the sense of a job and being an employee. I personally use the broadest sense of word “work” in my life: that of anything that I’d like to do, including job stuff, personal stuff, relationship stuff, humour stuff, personal projects for love not money, etc.

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