We live in a world with lots of buttons. Elevator buttons, television buttons, vending machine buttons, even people have buttons. Every button you push does something but it’s not always clear what happens when you push a button. When you push the elevator’s UP button because you want to go up to a higher floor, the UP button lights up until the elevator arrives. This is helpful because it tells you that the elevator heard you. It noticed that you pressed the UP button. Imagine if the light behind the UP button was broken. You press the elevator button and the elevator hears you but the button doesn’t light up because the light is broken. What would you think? You wouldn’t know what to think. You would be in the dark. You wouldn’t know if the elevator heard you but the button light was broken or if the light was working fine but for some reason the elevator didn’t notice that you pressed the button. Maybe you should press it again. Maybe you don’t need to. It’s a minor problem but it’s a terrible situation. You don’t know whether you should take the stairs or just wait. This is the type of situation that you want to avoid in life.
Some situations are just better at giving feedback than others. When you press any letter key on a computer keyboard, you will see the letter on the screen appear almost instantly after you press the key. That’s great. But not every situation is like this. When a camel’s back breaks because you’ve put one too many pieces of straw on it one piece at a time, nothing happens for the first several thousand pieces of straws that you put on it. After a while, the camel’s legs may begin to tremble but there is only one point at which the camel’s back breaks and only one straw that does the breaking. If you don’t notice the camel’s legs trembling, then you have performed thousands of actions, pressed a button thousands of times, without seeing anything happen. How awful would it be if an elevator worked like that? If the trick to getting an elevator to work was pressing the button not once but twice, or ten times, or a thousand times, how many people would figure it out? Why would you press a button that appeared to do nothing a hundred times?
When people talk about banging their head against the wall, this is what they’re talking about. The thing that people dislike about banging their head against the wall isn’t that it hurts their heads. It’s that the wall doesn’t move. Feeling ineffective is a terrible feeling. Feeling powerless is a terrible feeling. Feeling ignored is a terrible feeling.
What does all of this mean for everyday life? Well, it means that you should choose activities that offer more regular feedback so that you can feel and be more productive and so that you can learn how things work. If one teacher gives grades every day and another gives them only once a year, then choose to be taught by the one who lets you know how you’re doing everyday, not just once at the end of the year. If you don’t know exactly where you’re going, then you want to be checking the map as often as possible.
I’ve worked at small companies and big companies and I’ve worked for myself. I bet you can guess which working environment was the one where I felt the effects of every single one of my actions. Working alone for yourself feels completely different from working for a small company or for a big company. A big company is like a big cruise ship. If you jump up and down, nobody notices. The ship doesn’t move. You don’t really notice either. It feels like you’re on land. You can’t feel the movements of the water beneath you. If you jump up and down on a small boat, you will rock the boat and feel the water beneath you. But with several other people on board, your weight and actions won’t matter as much as they would if you were by yourself in a kayak or on a surfboard. On a small surfboard, you could tip yourself over just by sneezing. When you swim in the ocean by yourself, you will feel yourself rise with every inhalation and fall with every exhalation because of the air that is or isn’t in your lungs. Every breath you take makes a difference.
This is why no one likes watching paint dry. The difference between paint that’s 50% dry and 100% dry may be so small that it is unnoticeable. And the reason that it feels so rewarding to paint something is that with every brush stroke, you see that you are that much closer to your goal.
The good news is that you can create environments that will give you more feedback to keep you on the right track and encourage you as you get closer to your goal. When I swim backstroke at the pool, if I look up at the ceiling, then it seems like I’m moving very slowly. But as I near the end of the pool and look up at the string of flags that tells me that I’m almost done with the lap, it seems like I’m moving very quickly, even though I am moving at the same speed. With a closer point of reference, I seem to be speeding along instead of puttering along. If the whole pool were lined with these low-hanging flags, then I could focus on them and see in greater detail how every stroke that I took made a difference.
Once when I was running a marathon, a well-meaning supporter shouted, “You’re almost there—only 4 miles left!” This was meant to encourage me but it had the opposite effect because 4 miles sounded oh so far away. Yes, I had run 22 miles already and yes I was 85% done with the full distance of a marathon but 4 miles sounds like an awful lot of miles to someone who has just run 22 of them. I wish she had said something more like, “You’re doing great, you’re almost at mile 23!” When the goal seems too far off, you’re much more likely to quit or to not even begin in the first place.
So celebrate every small victory on the way to your larger goal. If you’re losing pounds, get a digital scale and count the half-pounds. If you’re running a marathon, count the tenths of every mile. Work for yourself or at a small company if you can, or if you work at a large company, find the best way to be and feel effective there. If you are one stone in a castle entrance made of many stones, try to be the keystone. You should know what happens if you put in the effort or if you don’t. Put yourself in environments that best allow you to feel the realness of this truth: Every little thing you do makes a difference.
You might also like:
- Be optimistic.
- Decide what is important to you and spend your time accordingly.
- Always ask yourself, “What is the worst thing that can happen?”
Next free chapter is coming soon. Sign up below to receive it by email.
Like it? Share it. Thanks!