Have you ever had one of those moments where you realize the world is really, really different from how you thought it was?
I just had one of those.
I was reading re-reading Venkat's The Calculus of Grit, and specifically this paragraph --
"There are domains where the boundedness [clear scope of work and skills needed to succeed] is very weak indeed. The upfront visible boundedness is a complete illusion. Marketing is one such domain. You might get into it because you love creative messaging or talking to people. You may discover the idea of positioning two years into the journey and realize that creativity in messaging is a sideshow, and the real job is somewhat tedious analysis of the mental models of prospects. A further two years down the road, you may discover that to level-up your game once more, you need to become a serious quantitative analytics ninja and database geek."
That made some lights turn on. Not the ones you'd expect.
"You might get into marketing because you love creative messaging or talking to people."
I just realized that that's how a heck of a lot of people pick their vocations.
My model for choosing what I do is somewhat different. I sit and think about what is true about the world and try to get the most accurate picture (which is almost always very badly flawed when still thinking theoretically for the first time about a topic).
Then I think about what my ethics ought to be, given that picture of the world.
Then I think about how to put those ethics into practice most effectively at the current moment.
Then, I try to do that.
It always goes in an interesting fashion after that -- and, if in a brand new domain, often goes somewhat poorly in my first attempts at doing something. Why? Not so much because my ethics were flawed in the abstract, but usually because my map of the world was flawed.
That flawed map is simple enough to understand -- Venkat talks about how people might think marketing is about "creative messaging and talking to people," only to find that "the somewhat tedious analysis of mental models of prospects" actually must precede all such creative messaging. And then, to really excel, there's a discovery that you need advanced analytics and statistics.
My checkpoints on decisionmaking of how to approach the world is thus something like --
1. What is true?
2. If that's true, what should I be doing?
3. What's the most effective way of doing that?
4. Do that.
5. Observe what happens; adjust #1 accordingly; repeat.
It never really occurred to me that anyone was doing anything else. I mean, I knew I spent a lot of time thinking analytically, planning, reading history and science, discussing life and various domains and actions with people I respect, etc -- but I never considered what an alternative model would like that. Venkat suggests it's something like --
1. Feel a personal affinity towards something a person likes doing, i.e., "creative messaging and talking to people."
2. Do that.
3. Get disillusioned and unhappy when it turns out that doesn't come together the way you want.
if you're starting from, "What is true?" and "If that's true, what should I be doing?" -- and you're ready to change your mind if (when) you're wrong -- then being wrong isn't a big shock. I spent enough time in marketing to get into creative messaging and talking to people, the tedious work of positioning (it is somewhat tedious), and analytics and numbers (which are wonderful).
But never was I disappointed at needing to make a shift in learning and skills -- it's like, "Oh, if I need marketing skills to accomplish what I want to do, I guess I need to figure out this personas and positioning stuff." Personal affinity doesn't enter the equation, except as gauging my skills and abilities under "What is true?"
This is no declaration of smartness -- just the opposite. It's a declaration that I just realized I was ignorant for a long time, both in how I saw other people's decisions, and in communication.
It also explains something I never seriously understood: why people get so broken up when a career choice turns out to poorly suit them. Well, under a model of personal affinity, they now need to enter a new search space for things they'd potentially like to do, and who knows what results will come from that?
Whereas, with a "What is true? If so, what should I be doing? How best to do it?" model, your decisionmaking doesn't go through seismic shifts very often. It only happens when you get radically new evidence or insights that the world is very different than you previously thought.
I'd argue that, while slower, the "Start with what's true, then ethics and broad categories, then actions derived from that" model is a heck of a lot more robust, because any individual error in action just means you need to make some upstream adjustments to your map -- and that'll near automatically produce new actions to do without suffering much identity damage or confusion.
But this isn't about that -- I'm not advocating for that way of decisionmaking. I'm just putting it down on paper that, I'm rather shocked that in almost 29 years on the planet, I just barely figured out that many people make broad life decisions after starting from, "What do I like to do?" as the first question.