How to "start" one thing properly
1/5, unable to start
Recently, when I was preparing for the "Wealth New Thinking Circle of Steel University", I listened to the opinions of many readers, and there was a very classic question, many people asked me whether it was worth spending time if I hadn't read a book seriously for a long time, or if I had always wanted to study economics, but I didn't know where to start.
In this issue, I will not talk about the content of economic and financial investment for the time being, and return to the theme of personal growth, which was most often analyzed by the official account before.
Modern people's time can be divided into two parts, one is the time you sell to the company and the customer, and you basically can't decide what to do, and the other part is the time when you can decide what to do. While most of your income and fulfillment comes from the former, it's the latter that determines the value of those previous hours, as it includes a portion of what time management calls "important and not urgent."
It's never really a wasted time, and you're either spending it on games, walking, reading a book, trading stocks, or learning a new skill. So, the so-called "no time" is just that you can't stop what you're doing and do what you've always wanted to do – in short, "can't start".
When I was a child, I always liked to use "a good start is half the battle" in my essays, but "starting a thing" is not as simple as we think, you can understand it as a project in the company's business behavior.
Initiation is important because the company has limited resources to work on many projects at the same time, and similarly, you can't successfully "start doing one thing" precisely because you failed to "start a lot".
So, how do you properly "start doing something"?
2/5. Be cautious about "starting"
One of the most important design principles of modern products is that people start using them without thinking about it, and they can't stop using them after using them. In this era of surplus goods, if consumers are given a calm and rational thinking period, they will hesitate and give up in most cases, so the return rate of live broadcast sales is 2~5 times that of normal shelf e-commerce.
In order to deal with your rationality, try to make you "start immediately", such as short videos, which will make you feel like you are just using a few minutes of garbage time, and feel like you can end at any time, in fact, a few hours will pass before you know it, or classes, disguised as "it only takes ten hours, you can XXX" and "there are still 10 places left".
The biggest temptation in society now is to make you subconsciously start one seemingly simple task after another, so that you have not been able to start something truly meaningful.
For those things that are "important but not urgent", the time you spend is always divided among the following three proportions:
1. The ratio of time spent "deciding to do something" to "doing something".
2. The ratio of time spent "doing low-value things" to "doing high-value things".
3. The ratio of time spent "giving up halfway" to "finishing".
The first ratio is the old saying "sharpening the knife does not mistakenly chop firewood", which determines the quality of the last two proportions, and the cost and benefit of doing one thing are determined by half at the moment you choose, and then whether your judgment is right or wrong, it will take a period of "sunk cost".
To paraphrase Warren Buffett's analogy, you should think of "starting something" as making a wish to Aladdin's magic lamp, and with only three chances, you will be cautious about the beginning of each one, and spend part of your time thinking about "whether you should start".
Of course, "deciding to do something" doesn't require a large chunk of time, mainly information gathering, cooling-off periods, and repeated comparisons, which take up fragmented time. You can gather enough information from various sources when you need it, but don't rush to judgment and leave time to think, but don't take too long to lose motivation.
The basis for judging is the latter two ratios, which can be summarized into a formula:
The amount of value of the task = importance * probability of completion / time to complete
However, before we do this analysis, we need to define what "one thing" means.
3/5、SMART目标体系
To evaluate the value of A/B, you can't talk about the same thing, you can't compare the apple with the table, you must first divide the things you often face into three categories:
1. Daily affairs that can be completed in a short time without difficulty, such as three meals a day, daily transactional work, etc.;
2. You can determine the time or frequency of completion, but you can't determine the difficulty of completing a book, such as reading a book that seems a little difficult or completing a work;
3. It is impossible to determine the completion time or difficulty of completing things, such as learning a course.
The first category is the necessary costs for your life to last, there is no "beginning" and their value does not need to be compared.
The second and third categories are to be compared, and the reason why they cannot be compared is the uncertainty of time, for example, reading a new biography of Musk and reading "Principles of Economics", there is no comparison, the latter is actually a systematic study of a course, whether you have studied economics before or not, it is unpredictable time.
Therefore, we need to "separate" these two types of events into events of similar time periods, and the specific principles are twofold:
1. Cut the long time into an executable time of less than one month
2. Divide the grand pursuit into specific goals within a month of time
Here again, it involves the difference between the meaning and the goal of doing something.
If you want to study economics, the meaning is to improve your investment ability, this meaning does not include a clear goal, just like a master of economics, you will also bring a few books or the latest papers, and enter the learning state anytime and anywhere.
And the goal is different, if you studied economics in college, but forgot about it because you used it very little, and now in investing, you find macroeconomics and finance very valuable, then, for you, the really clear goals are:
A quick review of macroeconomics prepares you for the macro analysis framework you need to use in investing.
This goal can correspond to a definite period of time, such as one month.
There is a well-known "SMART goal system" in the field of time management, that is, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timeline.
When we unify the time dimension and the measurability of the goal, we can directly assess the value and difficulty of the two things.
4/5, something more worth doing
To summarize the previous content, the value of a thing should be "cut" to include the following three points before being evaluated:
1. What is the significance of this matter?
2. What is a clear goal that you want to achieve in a month?
3. How much is the goal finally achieved and the probability of giving up?
How do you compare the value of two different goals?
It is a pity that the value of life must be subjective, subjective things can only be felt, not measured, listen to the inner voice, rationally analyze the difficulties faced, but the result must be clear, can only be "do X and give up Y", "do A first, then consider B", just be sure to give yourself a cooling-off period.
Of course, there are two personal experiences:
First, there are two types of things that are particularly worth doing
1. In a field that you don't know anything about, you find that as long as you master some basic knowledge, you can have a magical effect of 1+1=11 with the experience in your professional field;
2. In a field that you are proficient in, you have discovered a new method, cutting-edge knowledge or super skill, which can push your ability to the limit;
The former is characterized by less effort and greater growth, but you need to be a person who is good at touching and transferring knowledge;
The latter is to pay more and have little room for improvement, but it can get great benefits, because in any field, there are very few top competitors, but most of the resources are concentrated.
If you find the above two types of things that are particularly worth doing, you will win directly with PK.
Second, we should consider the divisibility and scalability of tasks
All the work should be cut into a "executable task unit" with a clear goal of less than a month, but many events are not highly sequential, because you don't necessarily know what the most suitable task unit is before you go deeper, so those things that you can clearly know what will happen and how to do it in the future can be prioritized.
"Scalability" is a more important potential space criterion, and things like "re-reading macroeconomics and building an investment framework" are usually more valuable than "reading an economics book that interests you" because it is more extensible.
There is a typical "scalability", which is to first select those seemingly impossible events of grand significance, and then cut them into the next reasonable goal according to the SMART principle, and lead yourself step by step to complete the impossible cause.
Also, if you can naturally think about "how to start the next thing" when you are doing one thing, such a task can get a higher priority.
5/5. Stop loss
No one can guarantee that their decisions are 100% correct, and for those who are unsure, it is good to be 60% right. So don't finish a book just because you've already started reading it, and don't wear a piece of clothing just because you've already spent money.
There is a concept of "sunk cost" in economics, which refers to the unrecoverable effort that has been invested in half of the work, such as time, money, relationships, etc., which should not be the basis for your decision to "continue or not".
To put it simply, the way of thinking of "coming and coming" is wrong on top of wrong.
After starting a thing, in addition to doing it well, you also need to evaluate whether your original judgment is correct, whether things are as you expected, and how meaningful it is to continue.
This is known as the "time stop". There is nothing shameful about giving up, what really shouldn't be is to start one thing casually, and give up in a hurry, such people are always giving up, and in the end, in order not to give up, they become afraid to choose, which is the problem at the beginning -
"I've always wanted to study economics, but I don't know where to start, is it worth the time?"
First published on the WeChat public account of "People and Gods (ID: tongyipaocha)", look at economic phenomena and read wealth passwords.