Category: Workflow

Recently, I have come across many discussion of hacking a certain process or system – achieving significant results in unconventional, often more efficient, ways. One of the observations about the hacker mentality that I particularly like is that “innovation” means not accepting the current norm. I like it because it seems that in the academic community, the term innovation is currently over-used, often without a clear idea of what it actually means.

The hacker approaches to problems, such as learning new skills, are often based on the Pareto principle, often referred to the 80/20 rule, which has been discussed by many authors (e.g. Tim Ferriss in his hugely popular “The 4-Hour Workweek“). The idea is that 20% of work produces 80% of the results, so in principle, one can become fairly proficient, or al least well above average, in a certain activity (e.g. speaking a foreign language, painting, taking photos, playing a musical instrument, etc.) in a relatively short amount of time.

The idea of hacking the life-long learning is appealing, but I cannot help but think that something is missing if the “hacker mentality” is taken at face value. I just saw a documentary about top sushi chefs in Japan called “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” and I think there is no shortcut to the level of excellence comparable to that, which requires an apprentice chef to work on less important tasks for ten years before he is allowed to cook rice. It seems that the 99-th percentile is infinitely far from the Pareto’s 80-th, and the price for this part of the journey is very high, but perhaps, you do get what you pay for.

On a dark and cold Saturday morning, I walked to a local cafe only to find it closed – the guy, who was supposed to open it, did not show up. While my original motivation for these Saturday morning walks was to break my usual morning routine, in other words, to deliberately have no defined pans, it turned out that looking forward to a hot cappuccino is itself a plan. Not surprisingly, unmet expectations are not fun.

It is well known that fear of not meeting one’s expectations often prevents us from trying new things. It turns out, though, that the so-called “worst case scenario,” in many cases, is not that bad in the big scheme of things. In the trivial case of the closed cafe, for example, I ended up having a (probably better) cup of coffee at home together with my wife.

Stoic philosophers like Seneca (whom, by the way, some consider to be a bit of a hypocrite, because he was a very wealthy person, despite his stoic teachings) recommended practicing coping with worst case scenarios as an effort to face one’s fears. They would pick certain days, during which they would limit themselves to the most basic food, clothes, etc. The idea is that if one learns to be content with the worst conditions, he (Romans were not politically correct, so they probably did not think that any of this applied to women) would be more confident in handling typical daily challenges.

So, if one can deliberately experience poverty or shame, can the same be done with spontaneity? I don’t see why not. I think it would be quite useful to anticipate that at some point in a project things will not go according to plan, and anticipate that it would be necessary engage intuition and creativity to the maximum. In fact, I sometimes engineer these creative or technical challenges by imposing constraints on my photography workflow. …Ok, sometimes, I just don’t plan ahead well enough, so the challenges arise naturally. Still, I’d like to think that treating the challenges as opportunities for learning is what the stoics would do.

“It is just this ability to stand alone, and not feel guilty or harassed about it, of which the average person is incapable.”

– Henry Miller, “Wisdom of the Heart“

In photography and knowledge work, such as academic research, as well as in  martial arts, feedback from others (mentors and teachers, friends and family, peers, training partners, models, audience) can be tremendously useful and can save enormous amounts of trial and error, which ultimately translates to time. However, if the goal is excellence, the actions must, at some point diverge from the those of the majority of other people. This not being different for the sake of being different, although there is some value in that too, especially for artists. Instead, it is a function of confidence that is earned through humble practice.

I come across this concept of balance between receiving advice and ignoring it all the time, often through my work on the editorial board of a scientific journal. Recently, the same idea came up in an interview that I listened to during random fragments of time last week. Dr. Peter Diamandis, who has been named one of “the world’s 50 greatest leaders” by Fortune Magazine and who wrote several influential books, including “Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World,” commented on the common traits of the illustrious modern entrepreneurs that he had an opportunity to work with, such as Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Larry Page. He pointed out, that despite their very different backgrounds and personalities, these people have a common tendency to “think on their own.” They built their successes by being themselves rather than emulating someone else.

I am wondering if this self-confidence is a inherent trait or a product of environment and practice. In other words, can nurture help nature in developing this ability to think and act truly independently of the opinion of the majority? If the answer is positive, as I suspect it is, an even more interesting question would be whether the majority (or indeed, everyone) has the ability or should practice this skill. Wouldn’t it re-define what “majority” is, if everyone becomes an exception?