1.10 Look at the machine from the higher level.
Our uniquely human ability to look down from a higher level doesn’t apply just to understanding reality and the cause-effect relationships underlying it; it also applies to looking down on yourself and those around you. I call this ability to rise above your own and others’ circumstances and objectively look down on them “higher-level thinking.” Higher-level thinking gives you the ability to study and influence the cause-effect relationships at play in your life and use them to get the outcomes you want.
a. Think of yourself as a machine operating within a machine and know that you have the ability to alter your machines to produce better outcomes.
You have your goals. I call the way you will operate to achieve your goals your machine. It consists of a design (the things that have to get done) and the people (who will do the things that need getting done). Those people include you and those who help you. For example, imagine that your goal is a military one: to take a hill from an enemy. Your design for your “machine” might include two scouts, two snipers, four infantrymen, and so on. While the right design is essential, it is only half the battle. It is equally important to put the right people in each of those positions. They need different qualities to do their jobs well—the scouts must be fast runners, the snipers must be good marksmen—so that the machine will produce the outcomes ou seek.
b. By comparing your outcomes with your goals, you can determine how to modify your machine.
This evaluation and improvement process exactly mirrors the evolutionary process I described earlier. It means looking at how to improve or change the design or people to achieve your goals. Schematically, the process is a feedback loop, as shown in the diagram below.
c. Distinguish between you as the designer of your machine and you as a worker with your machine.
One of the hardest things for people to do is to objectively look down on themselves within their circumstances (i.e., their machine) so that they can act as the machine’s designer and manager. Most people ramain stuck in the perspective of being a worker within the machine. If you can recognize the differences between those roles and that it is much more important that you are a good designer/manager of your life than a good worker in it, you will be on the right path. To be successful, the “designer/manager you” has to be objective about what the “worker you” is really like, not believing in him more than he deserves, or putting him in jobs he shouldn’t be in. Instead of having this strategic perspective, most people operate emotionally and int the moment; their lives are a series of undirected emotional experiences, going from one thing to the next. If you want to look back on your life and feel you’ve achieved what you wanted to, you can’t operate that way.
d. The biggest mistake most people make is to not see themselves and others objectively, which leads them to bump into their own and others’ weaknesses again and again.
People who do this fail because they are stubbornly stuck in their own heads. If they could jsut get around this, they could live up to their potential.
This is why higher-level thinking is essential for success.
e. Successful people are those who can go above themselves to see things objectively and manage those things to shape change.
They can take in the perspectives of others instead of being trapped in their own heads with their own biases. They are able to look objectively at what they are like—their strengths and weaknesses—and what others are like to put the right people in the right roles to achieve their goals. Once you understand how to do this you’ll see that there’s virtually nothing you can’t accomplish. You will just have to learn how to face your realities and use the full range of resources at your disposal. For example, if you as the designer/manager discover that you as the worker can’t do something well, you need to fire yourself as the worker and get a good replacement, while staying in the role of designer/manager of your own life. You shouldn’t be upset if you find out that you’re bad at something—you should be happy that you found out, because knowing that and dealing with it will improve your chances of getting what you want.
If you are disappointed because you can’t be the best person to do everything yourself, you are terribly naive. Nobody can do everything well. Would you want to have Einstein on your basketball team? When he fails to dribble and shoot well, would you think badly of him? Should he feel humiliated? Imagine all the areas in which Einstein was incompetent, and imagine how hard he struggled to excel even in the areas in which he was the best in the world.
Watching people struggle and having others watch you struggle can elicit all kinds of ego-driven emotions such as sympathy, pity, embarrassment, anger, or defensiveness. You need to get over all that and stop seeing struggling as something negative. Most of life’s greatest opportunities come out of moments of struggle; it’s up to you to make the most of these tests of creativity and character.
When encountering your weaknesses you have four choices:
- You can deny them (which is what most people do).
- You can accept them and work at them in order to try to convert them into strengths (which might or might not work depending on your ability to change).
- You can accept your weaknesses and find ways around them.
- Or, you can change what you are going after.
Which solution you choose will be critically important to the direction of your life. The worst path you can take is the first. Denial can oly lead to your constantly banging up against your weaknesses, having pain, and not getting anywhere. The second—accepting your weaknesses while trying to turn them into strengths—is probably the best path if it works. But some things you will never be good at and it takes a lot of time and effort to change. The best single clue as to whether you should go down this path is whether the thing you are trying to do is consistent with your nature (i.e., your natural abilities). The third path—accepting your weaknesses while trying to find ways around them—is the easiest and typically the most viable path, yet it is the one least followed. The fourth path, changing what you are going after, is also a great path, though it requires flexibility on your part to get past your preconceptions and enjoy the good fit when you find it.
f. Asking others who are strong in areas where you are weak to help you is a great skill that you should develop no matter what, as it will help you develop guardrails that will prevent you from doing what you shouldn’t be doing.
All successful people are good at this.
g. Because it is difficult to see oneself objectively, you need to rely on the input of others and the whole body of evidence.
I know that my own life has been full of mistakes and lots of great feedback. It was only by looking down on this body of evidence from a higher level that I was able to get around my mistakes and go after what I wanted. For as long as I have been practicing this, I still know I can’t see myself objectively, which is why I continue to rely so much on the input of others.
h. If you are open-minded enough and determined, you can get virtually anything you want.
So I certainly don’t want to dissuade you from going after whatever you want. At the same time, I urge you to reflect on whether what you are going after is consistent with your nature. Whatever your nature is, there are many paths that will suit you, so don’t fixate on just one. Should a particular path close, all you hav to do is find another good one consistent with what you’re like. (You’ll learn a lot about how to determine what you’re like later, in Understand That People Are Wired Very Differently.)
But most people lack the courage to confront their own weaknesses and make the hard choices that this process requres. Ultimately, it comes down to the following five decisions:
- Don’t confuse what you wish were true with what is really true.
- Don’t worry about looking good—worry instead about achieving your goals.
- Don’t overweight first-order consequences relative to second- and third-order ones.
- Don’t let pain stand in the way of progress.
- Don’t blame bad outcomes on anyone but yourself.
* Source: Principles by Ray Dalio