I recently realized that I underestimated the importance of what people think about in the shower in the morning. I already knew that great ideas often come to mind at this time. Now I will say more: it is unlikely that you will be able to do something truly outstanding if you do not think about it in your soul.
Anyone who has worked on complex problems is probably familiar with this phenomenon: you try your best to figure it out, fail, start doing something else, and suddenly you see the solution. These are the thoughts that come to mind when you are not trying to think purposefully. I am increasingly convinced that this way of thinking is not only useful, but necessary, to solve difficult problems. The problem is that you can only indirectly control your thought process. [1]
I think most people have one main idea in their head at any time. This is what a person begins to think about if he allows his thoughts to flow freely. And this main idea, as a rule, receives all the benefits of the type of thinking that I wrote about above. This means that if you allow an inappropriate idea to become the main one, it will turn into a natural disaster.
I realized this after my head was twice occupied for a long time by an idea that I did not want to see there.
I noticed that startups manage to do much less if they start looking for money, but I was able to understand why this happens only after we found it ourselves. The problem is not the time spent meeting with investors. The problem is that once you start attracting investment, attracting investment becomes your main idea. And you start thinking about it in the shower in the morning. This means you stop thinking about other things.
I hated looking for investors when I was running Viaweb, but I forgot why I hated doing it so much. When we were looking for money for Y Combinator, I remembered why. Money issues are very likely to become your main idea. Simply because they have to become one. Finding an investor is not easy. It's not a thing that just happens. There will be no investment until you allow it to become something you think about in your heart. And after that, you will almost stop making progress in everything else you are working on. [2]
(I've heard similar complaints from my professor friends. Today, professors seem to have turned into professional fundraisers who do a little research in addition to raising money. Maybe it's time to fix that.)
This hit me so hard that for the next ten years I was able to think only about what I wanted. The difference between this time and when I could not do this was great. But I don't think this problem is unique to me, because almost every startup I've seen slows down its growth when it starts looking for investment or negotiating an acquisition.
You cannot directly control the free flow of your thoughts. If you control them, they are not free. But you can control them indirectly by controlling what situations you allow yourself to get into. This was a lesson for me: look more carefully at what you allow to become important to you. Drive yourself into situations in which the most pressing problem is the one you want to think about.
Of course, you won't be able to completely control this. Any emergency will knock all other thoughts out of your head. But by dealing with emergencies, you have a good opportunity to indirectly influence which ideas become central to your mind.
I have found that there are two types of thoughts that should be avoided most of all: thoughts that crowd out interesting ideas like the Nile perch crowds out other fish from a pond. I have already mentioned the first type: thoughts about money. Receiving money, by definition, attracts all attention. Another type is thoughts about argumentation in disputes. They can also captivate, because they skillfully disguise themselves as truly interesting ideas. But they have no real content! So avoid arguments if you want to be able to do the real thing. [3]
Even Newton fell into this trap. After publishing his theory of color in 1672, he became mired in fruitless debate for years, and ultimately decided to stop publishing:
I realized that I had become a slave to Philosophy, but if I freed myself from the need to answer Mr. Linus and allowed him to oppose me, I would be forced to break with Philosophy forever, with the exception of that part of it that I study for my own satisfaction. Because I believe that a person must either decide not to express any new thoughts in public, or involuntarily come to their defense. [4]
Linus and his students at Liege were among his most persistent critics. According to Westfall, Newton's biographer, he reacts too emotionally to criticism:
by the time Newton wrote these lines, his “slavery” consisted of writing five letters to Liege, totaling 14 pages, over the course of a year.
But I understand Newton well. The problem was not the 14 pages, but the fact that this stupid argument could not get out of his head, which so wanted to think about other things.
It turns out that the “turn the other cheek” tactic has its advantages. Anyone who insults you causes double harm: firstly, he actually insults you, and secondly, he takes away your time, which you spend thinking about it. If you learn to ignore insults, you can avoid at least the second part. I realized that I could, to some extent, not think about the unpleasant things people do to me by telling myself: this does not deserve space in my head. I'm always happy to discover that I've forgotten the details of arguments - which means I haven't thought about them. My wife thinks that I am more generous than she is, but in reality my motives are purely selfish.
I suspect many people are not sure what the big idea is in their head right now. I myself am often mistaken about this. Often I take for the main idea the one that I would like to see as the main one, and not the one that actually is. In fact, the main idea is easy to figure out: just take a shower. What topic do your thoughts keep returning to? If this is not what you want to think about, you may want to change something.
Notes
[1] Sure, there is already a name for this type of thinking, but I prefer to call it “natural thinking.”
[2] This was especially noticeable in our case, because we received funds quite easily from two investors, but with both of them the process dragged on for months. Moving large sums of money is never something that people take lightly. The need to pay attention to this increases as the amount increases; this function may not be linear, but it is certainly monotonic. [3] Conclusion: do not become an administrator, otherwise your job will consist of resolving money issues and disputes. [4] Letters to Oldenburg, quoted in Westfall, Richard, Life of Isaac Newton, p. 107.For the first time it was Egor Zaikin and saved by me from oblivion from the web archive.
Source: habr.com