A Simple Framework for Success

The Equation for Success

For a long time I have mistakenly held the belief that success comes to those who are fortunate: to those who either happened to work hard enough or to those born with some innate ability to get what they want. Recently, I have discovered the error in that belief; and, during a quiet afternoon walk, I developed a framework, in the form of a simple equation, of how someone (anyone) can be successful.

Now, as when beginning any new discussion, it is important to define our terms; in this case, that is success. Although there are, no doubt, numerous meanings of the word, I would like the term success to simply mean the attainment of ones goals – that is, one is successful when her mission is accomplished, be it large or small. In a broad sense this implies that, like beauty, success is in the eye of the beholder. With this I would agree, and I would argue that an objective, universal meaning of the word simply does not exist.

Nonetheless, the creation and attainment of a personal goal is central to success. Without a goal, one cannot succeed; he has sought after nothing and therefore has achieved nothing. When one seeks nothing, anything he may attain is a consequence of the unfolding of events in his environment. He did not cause them; they happened to him. They did not originate from within, but from external circumstances. This is not the basis of success, but, rather, of privilege. 

With this in mind, I would like to share a simple equation for success. Take a moment, and work through the effects of manipulating its three variables: drive, workload, and competence.

First and foremost is drive. Drive is motivation; more specifically, drive is desire. Drive is the fuel from which all goals are accomplished. Put simply, if you are to achieve something, you must first want it. If you desire nothing, you will succeed at nothing. This may be a very simple concept, but it is also a very profound truth.The old adage "where there's a will there's a way" holds much more weight than one may realize.

The second variable is workload. Workload is the basic requirement toward achieving your goal. Workload is the uphill battle, the struggle, the obstacle that needs to be overcome. In other words, it is simply what you have to do to get what it is that you want. Hence, workload functions against, and competes with, drive. Still, additional factors influence the degree to which workload opposes ones drive-force.

It is here that competence comes into play. To fully explain competence, I will divide it into three component parts: skills, knowledge, and resources. Skills are the capacities an individual possess which aid in her performance of a particular task: the things she’s good at. Although skills are often acquired implicitly throughout ones natural course of life development, it is imperative to realize that skills can also be learned. If one believes he cannot be good at a particular task, he is simply mistaken. It is not that he cannot do it; it is that he has not yet learned how. (I cannot deny the limitations of major genetic abnormalities on development; however, most skills that one perceives as impossible to be attained merely require intermediate, prerequisite skills. Once learned, these skills lead to the development of further skills).

Secondly, knowledge contributes to competence. Knowledge is the roadmap that guides you toward your goal. While ignorance may be bliss, knowing is empowering; hence the value of education. And nowadays, education comes in many forms. With the amount of freely available information in the 21^st century, the ability to learn no longer equates to sitting in a classroom listening to an instructor’s sermon (as alluded to in Casey's previous blog post). In this sense, learning has become less dependent on the school you attend and more dependent on your curiosity to know. Thank Google, information is everywhere and can be harnessed for your success. Even the knowledge that comes just from reading this blog post will increase your likelihood to succeed, should you choose to listen.

Additionally, resources factor into competence. Resources, such as financial assets and social networks, is the sole external factor that aids in success, if needed. As an unfortunate consequence of nature, resources are not evenly distributed; and therefore some individuals are better off in this sense than others. It is important to realize, however, that resources can be cultivated, which I will mention below. Furthermore, it is important to realize that, as a whole, competence (skills, knowledge, and resources) modulates workload. With greater skills and/or greater resources, the perceived workload is reduced. Thus, with an equivalent amount of drive, a previously unconquerable workload may be overcome, which will lead to success.

In sum, success is realized in the attainment of goals, fueled by desire and accomplished via competence. The single, most important factor in the entire equation is the very first, the one without which nothing can be achieved: drive. Competence acts as a buffer to workload, by modulating the amount of drive necessary to become successful. In the absence of all competence, success is impossible; the workload is essentially infinite. However, even in the absence of well-developed competence, success is still obtainable; one needs only enough drive to overcome workload. But again, one must recognize that competence itself is not fixed, but rather variable based on changes made by learning and personal growth.

A final dimension to this framework arrives when one broadens his perspective on goal setting and the ease at which he can accomplish these goals. That is, success will come easily when a goal is matched relative to competence. In other words, when an individual’s level of competence is suitable for his goal, he will flourish. When ones competence is inadequate for his chosen goal, he will need to work harder; but still, overall success is obtainable. In fact, to succeed, he may simply set the achievement of a prerequisite goal as the workload of a larger goal. In this manner, a seemingly impossible goal can be achieved through the realization of intermediate goals. This concept was already discussed in reference to skills, and it also holds true for knowledge and resources. This new dimension of success is demonstrated in the following equation, wherein the attainment of a prerequisite goal (in parenthesis) is substituted in as the workload of a larger, subsequent goal. Consequently, in theory, if someone can achieve at least one goal, then she can achieve any goal, limited only by her own drive:

 One could argue that genuine success is not about being the best compared to others.

It’s about doing the best you can with what you’ve got.

And continuing to work from there.

The "Value" of a College Education

This is an idea I've been kicking around for a while, but only recently was able to structure into a concrete idea that could function as a blog post.

Ever since the end of World War II, conventional wisdom has stated that getting a good education is key to being successful in life. This initially meant an emphasis on finishing high school and subsequent technical training, but this line of thinking has now expanded to mean that a college degree is critical for being able to make a decent living. And to the naked eye, this seems like common sense. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that in 2009, the median annual income for people between the ages of 25 and 34 with only a high school diploma was $30,000, while those with a bachelor's degree earned about $45,000 - a statistic that seems almost beyond question.

Unfortunately, this is a complete oversimplification of the case. For example, those numbers only apply to those who worked full time over the previous year. They ignore those who were unemployed or underemployed - a common fate for recent college graduates. A recent poll shows that 85% of new grads will move back in with their parents, largely because they can't find a job. Even worse is how deceptive an "average" number can be, whether it's calculated by median or mean. The variability within the category of college graduates can be enormous, which brings me to the most important part of this discussion: All degrees are not created equal.

What exactly do I mean by this? Consider the following statistics: In 2009, the median starting salary for a chemical engineer was $64,900 (source - Bureau of Labor Statistics). By contrast, the median starting salary for a graduate with a political science degree is only $36,000. Communications? $31,000. What is particularly worrisome is that these are some of the most common majors. Last year, social sciences, psychology, and communications collectively comprised over 20% of all bachelor's degrees awarded. So a significant fraction of young Americans spend another 4-6 years in school and take on an immense amount of debt to earn a degree that isn't necessarily helping their career prospects.

I know college is about more than the degree you get at the end. It is a significant life experience and has become somewhat of a rite of passage for young Americans. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't question the sense of someone borrowing $100,000 to attend a small liberal arts school to major in anthropology, just to move back in with his or her parents after graduation and take a job at the local Applebee's. We as a country need to start thinking critically about what kind of education we want to encourage, or we're going to have a whole generation of people who spend twenty years trying to pay back the money they borrowed just to pay for that fancy piece of paper.

Those poor little animals :-(

Recent thoughts that ended up being a one-page paper for my class ...

***

Life forms, particularly those of the animal kingdom, come into existence without an understanding of the world around them. However, although an organism needs to learn about the world in which it lives in order to survive, it does not need to learn how to sense, to feel, and to suffer. Such experience is inherently granted to those with a nervous system capable of such biopsychological computations.

More than any other, the human species has an intellect capable of learning about world in which it lives. With this intellect and their senses, humans use scientific methods to understand and manipulate this world. Thus, it is through the research process that humans learn how to take control of their experiences in effort to live a better life. In biomedical research, humans take control of treatment and prevention of a major source of their suffering: disease.

Thus, because of their intellect, humans have been granted the capacity to investigate how to relieve suffering. A problem arises, however, in the means by which humans carry out these biomedical investigations. In order to learn how to cure a disease, experiments must be performed on individuals with the disease, and these experiments may, and often do, cause suffering in themselves.  Thus, “more suffering” becomes the means to the end of “less suffering”.  Humans have found this means to an end unacceptable, and, not wanting to suffer more, have replaced their role in biomedical questions with those who can provide somewhat equivalent answers – with animals.

Although humans have resolved their problem of suffering, they have created a new problem: the suffering of animals. In the process of biomedical research, animals of diverse species are subject to manipulation, pain, neglect, and death: all experience humans want to avoid. It is at the cost of animal suffering that humans gain life without (or with less) suffering. Of course, efforts could be made to minimize cruel and unnecessary harm to animals, a maxim currently emphasized in biomedical research. Nonetheless, the human must ask herself, would I be willing to undergo the same experience as my research animals? If not, then how am I justified in carrying out my experiments on them?

One could argue that animals, due to their simpler nervous system, do not have the as great of a capacity for suffering as do humans. In the sense that animals may not have hopes, dreams, and future goals, this may be a valid argument. There is no evidence that animals have such capacities. Thus, to use animals in research would not rob them of such experiences, whereas to use humans would rob them of such experiences. However, there is behavioral evidence that animals show signs of and avoid pain, and neuroscientific evidence that animals have very similar brain capacities to experience pain, stress, fear, and anger as do humans.¹ Therefore, animals do suffer to an comparable extent when subject to biomedical research as would humans.

Despite the notion that animals suffer in the research process, those who support the use of animals often maintain the mentality that “it’s better them than us”. Humans are, after all, the greatest of all species; they have higher intelligence and more control of their environment than any other species. From this perspective, these advocates presume that humans have a greater inherent value than animals. However, arguing for such a position makes one, in the words of Richard Ryder, a ‘speciesist’. The speciesist argues humans are greater than animals in the same way that the racists argues black people are greater than white people and in the same way that the sexist argues women are greater than men. In the context of the use of animals in biomedical research, speciesism is a problem because both humans and animals share the capacity to suffer, and to choose to make animals suffer instead of humans does not reduce the total suffering caused by the research process.

If the goal of biomedical research is to reduce suffering, humans fail to achieve this goal when they use animals in their investigation. By subjecting animals to experimental manipulations, humans cause an alternative source of the suffering they are trying to eliminate. For this reason, animals should not be used in biomedical research.

1. Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation, 2nd edition, New York: Avon Books, 1990, pp. 10-12, 14-15.  

***

... the funny thing is, I don't actually buy my own argument. If you do, feel free to puff it up and elaborate. If you don't, feel free to tear it to shreds. It's a pretty interesting debate.

Ciao.

Can I Buy an Engineer?

I was recently watching a rerun of Real Time with Bill Maher, and I was reminded of a very interesting point made by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson during that episode. Tyson, a prominent astrophysicist, questioned the wisdom of a political system that contains a disproportionate number of lawyers - 57% of the Senate and 38% of the House by his count. His main points can be summed up quite succinctly: In our legal system, what is "right" is determined by who argues best. Does that sort of thinking result in the best solutions when applied to government? Does the presence of so many lawyers foster the kind of combative partisanship that pervades our politics today? (Tyson's remarks can be found here)

It's obviously an overstatement to blame lawyers for all of the partisan bickering we see coming from Congress these days. In fact, Congress has been composed of mostly lawyers since its inception, so one should be wary of drawing a direct connection between political polarization and the shape of our legal system. But this line of thinking does prompt some interesting discussion. What would our government look like if it were filled with engineers and scientists rather than attorneys and "career politicians"?

At this point, I'd like to direct your attention to some examples in the 112th Congress to illustrate my point. Unfortunately, the few scientists and engineers currently serving in the legislature of our great country are fairly obscure and haven't made enough waves to even be worth mentioning, making this little more than an intriguing thought experiment. But when it comes down to it, isn't that a reflection of why there aren't more engineers and scientists in Congress in the first place? Lawyers know how to put on a show. They know how to yell and wave their hands, and they sure know how to tell people what they want to hear. So when it comes time for "The People" to choose their leaders, the guys from MIT are left staring at their shoes while the Harvard Law grads clean house.

We don't have much evidence to know whether some technical folks would be able to turn the ship around. But it's probably a safe assumption that they couldn't make things more dysfunctional than they already are. So the next time you're contemplating your choices at the ballot box, give some thought to the candidates who've spent some time in a clean room instead of a court room.

Super-healing plants and stuff

Suppose, hypothetically, a medicinal plant is discovered on a remote island in the pacific that would cure any disease known to man. When ingested, all conditions such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, would no longer exist. The plant is readily available and easy to grow to the extent that it became virtually free. This would undoubtedly be approved by all societies and considered one of the most remarkable discoveries in mankind.

While this discovery may seem certainly good, there’s another side to consider. The health care industry in the United States employs roughly 15 million people and is considered one of the highest growing industries. The new medicinal plant would be so effective that it will nearly eliminate the health care industry by 95% (not entirely assuming injuries and other conditions still occurred). Additionally, companies, such as Pfizer, would be completely out of business because there would not be any need to invent or manufacture drugs. Health insurance companies would become extinguished. Even the FDA would be reduced. In essence, we now have more than 15 million additional people unemployed.

Not good. This means the entire wealth of the country would drop, GDP would fall, and economic growth would falter.  We could clearly be worse economically.

The point to understand is that the well-being of individuals in a society may not correlate with economic success. In fact, in can be the exact opposite as in this case. What we consider as a “strong” nation actually means more sick and dying people. We really need to reassess what we value and organize our societies in such a manner.  The notion of creating jobs actually has no bearing if people are happy or not. This also can be said about the condition of the environment. The more people there are employed in health care the sicker we are. The question becomes why we are in an economic system that is counter to what we actually need to value and what we can do about it. It’s something to think about.

The more the merrier?

Good afternoon everyone,


I’ve been running into quite a bit of information on human population over last week so my first post is going to be geared in that direction.

While we are generally living longer and healthier than ever in human history I’ve never given much thought of how many people can actually exist on earth at a given time. The first piece of information that brought me some insight was a graph I found depicting population over the last several hundred years.  Give it a look (it’s the white rectangle on the page).

Surprised? You should be. Population has been growing linearly until the last hundred years or so we’ve seen an exponential increase. So what’s the cause of this? The advances in medicine, cheap and abundant energy (coal, fossil fuel), and transportation technology have allowed for communities to flourish unlike ever before. Cities like Las Vegas, which is built in a desert, have been completely constructed and sustained due to modern technology. This may seem for the better on the surface but if you dig a bit deeper there is an impending problem. How do we feed billions of more people in areas where we can’t even feed them now?

The problem with the graph isn’t necessarily that we are multiplying so rapidly but rather the steeper the slope the sooner it will peak. There will be a time where the death rate surpasses the birth rate. However, with the way we can control food production and where people live, it may be a good idea to organize where and how many people we can sustain.

The point is to start thinking about how to manage populations and find what a sustainable amount of children to have is in places where food supplies are low. This is going to happen sooner or later regardless of technological utilization. Until then starvation and nutrition related deaths will become even more prevalent. There is a finite amount of resources on the planet and to allow people to have as many children as they want is foolish and dangerous.


Leave some thoughts.
Cheers.

When we don't know what we don't know ...

"One of people's biggest problems in life is that they don't know what they don't know."

About a month ago this was my status on Facebook, to which my cousin appropriately replied: Is there any other way it could be, could you not know what you do know? That's a really good question, because this 'not knowing' business can seem a bit confusing at first.

If you don't know what you do know you more or less are just forgetting. Perhaps you could say, deep down you actually know it (whatever), but superficially you have forgotten it and you think you don't know it. Alternatively, you could be suppressing it (an undesirable memory, a traumatic event). On the other hand, if you do know what you don't know, you're probably making something up (fabricating, confabulating). You essentially have a false belief.

Of course there's more to say about all that above, but that's not the point of this post. My point concerns when you don't know what you don't know. Put simply, this is when you are ignorant (lacking knowledge or information) about something, and you aren't even aware of your ignorance. Let me illustrate:

Two groups of student are prepping for a test that has two review sessions the day before. Group Win studies well but still hasn't figured everything out. The students come to their review session, and when the teacher asks for questions, all delighted people raise their hands! On the other hand, students of Group Lose don't study at all, hoping to learn everything at their review session (funny how common this actually is). And, when the teacher asks for questions, they all just sit there and twiddle their thumbs. Now, would the teacher be correct to assume Group Lose students must know everything? No way. In fact, they know so little they can't even formulate a question! They can't ask about the things they need to learn, because they don't know what they don't know.

I think this ignorance of igorance perpetuates so many problems because it fosters a false sense of security and psychologically traps us in complacency. We think we understand, when in fact, we may not. And with this attitude, we're self-restrained from the opportunity to grow and develop. We first must realize what more we have to learn. Then we need to learn it.

So ...

Simply, learn.

Learn about anything.

And everything.

Expand our minuscule world.

Just begin somewhere.

That may be the essence of this blog.

"I am the wisest man on Earth, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."  -- Socrates

Just a few thoughts.

Peace.