philosophy – Vague Direction

There’s a very valid time for quitting and walking away, and there’s a very valid time for sticking to your guns and ploughing on. I think more often than not, ploughing on is probably the best approach.

The right or wrong decision is something that is obvious when you look back and connect the dots, but it never seems as clear as that at the time. So when things go wrong, when mistakes are made, when everything falls through, when you don’t get as far as you wanted to get within the time you set – all this freakin’ messy collateral of mindache can be frustrating and upsetting and annoying, and it’s easy to fall into a trap of discouragement or wallowing or defeatism.

So if or when that happens, and if you’re having a bad day, read this:

“The slaves received the whip with more certainty and regularity than they received their food. It was the incentive to work and the guardian of discipline. But there was no ingenuity that fear or a depraved imagination could devise which was not employed to break their spirit and satisfy the lusts and resentment of their owners and guardians – irons on the hands and feet, blocks of wood that the slaves had to drag behind them wherever they went, the tin-plate mask designed to prevent the slaves eating the sugar-cane, the iron collar.

Whipping was interrupted in order to pass a piece of hot wood on the buttocks of the victim; salt, pepper, citron, cinders, aloes, and hot ashes were poured on the bleeding wounds. Mutilations were common, limbs, ears and sometimes the private parts, to deprive them of the pleasures which they could indulge in without expense. Their masters poured burning wax on their arms and hands and shoulders, emptied the boiling cane sugar over their heads, burned them alive, roasted them on slow fires, filled them with gunpowder and blew them up with a match; buried them up to the neck and smeared their heads with sugar that the flies might devour them; fastened them near to nests of ants or wasps; made them eat their excrement, drink their urine, and lick the saliva of other slaves. One colonist was known in moments of anger to throw himself on his slaves and stick his teeth into their flesh.”

[An extract from The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C.L.R. James]

Suddenly the little things don’t seem that important, and it’s certainly not worth allowing them to pull us down too far for too long. The chances are slim that someone’s gonna pour burning wax on our arms, or fill us with gunpowder and blow us up with a match. It’s all a game of perspective. Everything is a game of perspective.

Things could be worse. Tomorrow is a new day. We are lucky.

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There have been a few of moments on this trip of mental battles between having a goal versus being content in the present. Some research says that having goals means you’re more likely to be unhappy (thanks to Jim for pointing this out), whereas other research says goals encourage happiness.

A week or so ago I locked up the bike in a Winnipeg basement and was invited to Silicon Valley for a couple of days for the Evernote Conference, and there was a moment that came close to nailing one side of the goal/contentment dilemma on the head. A point that applied to something much wider than the technology context it was set within. It was about being driven by a grand, epic mission.

For reference, watch this recent video of Louis C.K. talking about emptiness. Louis talks about a moment when he realised he has a massive empty feeling inside. Forever empty – a moment of realisation that, really, we’re all alone and this life doesn’t really mean anything, because we’ll be gone soon. Louis is hilarious and it’s obviously lighthearted and comedy, but kind of gets to something heavy and depressing in parts too.

At the event, Evernote’s CEO Phil Libin talked about what his fuel is. What gets him out of bed in the morning and provides focus, motivation and drive. And it’s the polar opposite of Louis‘ thoughts. He expressed the view that there’s no reason to have that emptiness if you choose a mission that’s sufficiently epic. You never have to be forever empty if you’re confident that you’re on the path to making a sufficient dent.

His specific example of epic was the company motto – helping everyone “remember everything”. Of course an epic mission doesn’t have to mean a goal of ubiquity, but it’s impossible to argue that a hundred year plan that strives to reach everyone is anything short of epic.

An ambitious mission potentially keeps us hungry, humble, and improving, because it’s not going to be finished anytime soon, we’re always learning, and we have to get better to have any kind of chance. For the above example, there’s 75 million people using the app. Sounds like a lot, but put it in context of the mission, and it’s really small – there’s 6.9 billion people who haven’t been reached. Suddenly it seems there’s a hell of a lot of work to do. And that’s awesome, because having such a huge goal can bring a team together, trickle and permeate through a culture, is a driver of progress and a provider of fire. There’s work to do, and it’s not going to be done for a long, long time.

Possibly most of us could learn from this kind of ambitious thinking if we experience Louis-type emptiness. Maybe we should stop putting off the epic things because they’re hard, and consider them because they’re hard.

Look at some notoriously difficult missions – from the D-Day Landings, to reaching product ubiquity, to walking on the moon. These kind of missions don’t always work, and there’s bound to be a lot of grand goals that failed which we never heard about, but the ambitious ones – the ones that appear nearly impossibly out of reach – are the same ones that do become meaningful. They’re the ones that make a dent and change how we do things.

Perhaps having an epic mission should be as much a personal driver as a company one. But one that isn’t a project but an overall outlook that takes time. Having no goals seems like a copout, but maybe total achievement of the goal isn’t actually the most important part – rather it’s what we get from working towards it. Either way, doesn’t it seem like something is broken if we stop being ambitious?