The journey to Goodenoughia — Part 3

Part 3: Let’s get concrete!

How else are we going to build the road there?

See, I am planning to build a road, a road I will use to get stuff to Goodenoughia easier in the future. And the concrete part, that is meant to be a play on words, my aim is both to get a bit more concrete in the sense of less abstract by providing some practical tips, and also alluding to concrete as in the asphalt concrete used to build roads.

Yeah okay, maybe it is not as fun as I’d like it to be, but I think it is a good analogy!

Imagine if you had this road that you could take all your ideas and works along that made sure to lead them all to Goodenoughia, as long as you just followed it, you could not fail, how great would that be?

I have invested quite some time developing this road in theory, and it has worked somewhat well, but I haven’t really put it together yet, so this will be my attempt of doing so.

The reason that I will only be focusing on getting the concrete here is that I believe that the specifics of how to build the road is something that very much comes down to each individual to figure out. Goodenoughia is as I have said earlier a place in your own head, so I can’t tell you where to go or how the terrain looks, but I’ll show you how to create the concrete that I believe is always needed to build these kinds of roads and leave the rest to you.

So, here is where I will get concrete.

Why am I doing this?

Where am I going?

Non-perfect reminder:

I’ll explain why I believe these elements to be essential for cooking up some good concrete:

1: Explain why.

This is in many ways what makes up the actual concrete, if you have this down to a tea, you do not even need the other two, but I would still recommend them. I genuinely believe in Simon Sinek’s advice and think you should always start with why. But I’ll add some more layers in this case, define your why in terms of the micro, middle and macro whenever you are doing something. The reason you should do this is to make all these align. There is a concept called vertical coherence, it states that if there is a coherence between what you are doing in the now and what you aim to do at large in life, you will be happier. I for one believe this also applies and helps a lot in becoming more productive.

This works best if you have all three, so aim for that, but only two works as well and might be easier to start with. The Micro and the Medium should be knowns for almost everyone, the micro being the task itself, it can be producing a function in programming, writing a chapter in a book or creating a PowerPoint for a meeting. The middle is a somewhat distant and larger goal, like making the whole program, the book or finishing the actual product that you are pitching. And the macro is the big picture, like, what do you really want to do or accomplish in life kind of big. The problem with having all three is of course, that this demands that you figure out your biggest life goal, and this is, as you may or may not know, quite hard.

2. Where do you want to go?

One important thing to realize is that Goodenoughia is a giant place. There are subsections, and each of these subsections each have their own neighborhoods. Therefore, you have to plan how much concrete you plan to produce with this fact in mind. So, where in Goodenoughia are you going?

The first part that you need the least amount of concrete to reach is called Just-Goodenoughia. This is where you stop when you are carrying things such as the “really not so important report that you do not want to do but have to do”, or the preparation you write for the “seminar about the totally uninteresting topic that you need to attend in order to pass the class” and so on. Basically, all those things that you do not want to waste any extra time or energy doing, but still have to make sure they are good enough.

Then there is the central city, Goodenoughia itself, it is where you should aim to get most things most of the time I suppose. Getting here requires that you at least put in some time and effort. There are signs to look out for telling you when you are there so don’t worry. The signs to look for are the “When you at least feel somewhat proud over it” but also the “When you realize that you could do it better if you had more time and energy”, when you see these, you are there.

Finally, if you go through the whole city, after long stretches of the tougher terrain you will find the second more posh suburb called Definitely-Goodenoughia, and to get stuff here, you must learn to enjoy some pain, reaching here will require you to are very hard on yourself (and your team if you happen to have one), it also demands that you have a lot of time and energy to produce all the concrete needed. Simply put, this place is much harder to reach, but some works just need to get here.

Some examples of the crazy ideas that need to get here are the following: If you want to make a global payment system rivaling billion-dollar banks, if you are working on putting humanity on Mars, if you are going to build autonomous cars or if you want to stick computers into people’s brains.. Yeah, some people seem to have set their aim at this place only. So, if this is your goal you should read the biography of these people, some examples, that also happen to have great biographies written about them would be: Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin or Elon Musk, as alluded to above.

Depending on where you are going, you will have to adjust the limitations for each time. But you have to make sure always to have some in place in mind, otherwise, you will never get it done.

I have found that word limits are great when it comes to a post, while time limits, deadlines and reread limits are also good. It can basically be any number of things related to whatever it is that you are doing, so write some down and try them out!

A great perk with having a fixed deadline is not having to worry about what Parkinson’s law states:

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

And this is also what makes the cases where no time limit exists so dangerous and elusive. Most bigger things we want to do or accomplish in life often lack these and will, therefore, keep expanding indefinitely if we do not put some limits in place ourselves.

A key thing here is to make sure to be strict on these limits!

Although it sucks, having these limits is very necessary to get things done. If you do not know these, you will be standing there, creating more and more and better and better concrete, daydreaming about Perfectally and never really doing anything.

Mini side story to get the point across:

This kind of was the case of Spinoza’s Ethics, which is now considered to be one of the most important works in western philosophy. He died not having completed this book! So if it was not for the fact that a friend of his managed to get a hold of it and realizing it was f*cking brilliant, it could have been lost forever. See, Spinoza was clearly dreaming of Perfectally..

3: Accept your flaws.

Because you won’t do it perfectly, ever, as just mentioned above.

One of my friends has a quote that she repeats a lot that I have very much come to live by it when it comes to my learning:

“Repetitio est mater studiorum”

Meaning “Repetition is the mother of knowledge”, this holds true for all kinds of learning, including instilling the knowledge about your own limitations and flaws. For science geeks that do not care much for old quotes, I will point you to the Hebbian theory, one of the most fundamental and well-backed theories in Neuroscience that says the exact same thing.

Therefore, whenever you are planning to do something you have to repeat a short mantra to yourself, saying that it will not be perfect.

And this shit is important, I do not care that you dislike mantras because the word sounds so wishywashy! If you chose to neglect to do this part, you would not learn it, and if you do not learn it, you will always be standing there stirring your concrete, once again dreaming of Perfectally with a half-finished road.

Write out the phrase:

I will never be completely satisfied with this, and I am okay with that.

Learning to trust yourself and remembering the fact that it is okay not to be great is hard work. So even when you have followed these steps, you and you alone will be the one taking your idea along the future road, so if you do not see it as worthy of Goodenoughia, it will not make it there.

I kind of see this as a reminder you always have to set, a reminder telling you when the concrete is done, and even if this should be covered by the previous step, that is not always the case.

Minicomfession to get the point across:

As much as I believe that these steps do help, as I am now starting to come to the end of this process myself for the fourth time and I am beginning to feel queasy about the whole thing. Not only with the posts quality but also with its structure and this is making me want to scrap it. Just as expected with other words, so this is an excellent time for me to remember the mantra!

Me applying this process in the case of writing this:

Why am I doing this?

Micro: I am writing this post is because I think it is an interesting topic and because it would be nice to come up with an outline that I can start to use when I am writing, and also it is good practice.

Middle: I know I want to become a better writer and eventually write a book, and practice like this is the only way to get there.

Macro: My grand goal in life is that I want to make people's life a little less shitty, not great, not amazing but just a little less shitty. This is something I’ll go into at depths writing about in the future, but for now, I can say that I see writing and being able to articulate my thoughts as being an essential step to reach this goal.

Where am I going?

I am going for the middle part of Goodenoughia, I want it to be somewhat nice, but not so nice that I will allow it to take up more time than I have.

I had a deadline for finishing it by yesterday, March 15th, which I failed.

I had set a word limit at 2000, which I managed to stay under after cutting a lot at the last edit.

I had set a reread limit/rewrite limit at three times, which I failed.

Non-perfect reminder:

I will never be completely satisfied with this, and I am okay with that.

I will never be completely satisfied with this, and I am okay with that.

I will never be completely satisfied with this, and I am okay with that.

I will never be completely satisfied with this, and I am okay with that.