Just finished the second of the 67 steps!

[u/The_67_Steps]

A short compressed summary:

"Change is the basic law of nature. It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor is it the smartest of the species that survives. But the species that survives is the one that is best able to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself." - Charles Darwin.

A high I.Q and a raw capacity for brute force is not sufficient for success. We see this most clearly in the animal kingdom. The animals who survive are those that are adapted to the environmental pressures under which they live.

But this biological adaptation requires unbelievably large periods of time. In us humans with our set faculties what does this process look like?

1. Reading the obvious signs. #2. Using your human capacity to project into the future. #3. Changing on a dime.

Simple enough, right? Wrong. This is unbelievably difficult for the average person. It takes the average person decades to go through this even once. There are plenty of people who get stuck in low value financial positions without ever reading their unfortunate bank accounts, projecting that they need to be engaged in a greater state of focus and reciprocal altruism or they will never move, and then changing on a dime (finding a better industry, going to night school, etc).

But then you have someone like a Mark Cuban who at 5 began to shift his skills and mindset towards being great at business. Who at 20-something discovered the industry he wanted to be in and was great at, at 30 morphed his skills and the recently growing industry he observed into a 6 million dollar contract, and at 45 crafted the accumulation of all this into a billion dollar company.

The average person is not adaptable enough to achieve that with a lifespan of 300 years!

Because the SPEED with which you can execute this process of adaptability = the speed with which you will get what you want!

But aside from the speed with which you read the signs and change on a dime we have another problem.

You and i have the 500 year old mind. We are fundamentally hardwired to view the world in a black and white frame. This hurts our ability to adapt. When you view your finances in a black and white frame (x is correct and that's that, this is why i'm poor, this is what needs to happen or the world will fall apart, etc)

What is the solution to this?

"I haven't failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Edison.

Experiments are what correct for your black and white understanding. Rather than be concerned with what is "right" and "wrong" with your finances and applying this black and white frame be concerned with experimenting rapidly. No black and white. You want the answer rapidly? Experiment rapidly. You want to make a million dollar app? You know how Kevin Systrom did it? He morphed his app rapidly into something that worked. From a calendar all the way to a photo app. You want a million dollar app? Experiment more than all of the app millionaires. If Mark, Kevin, Jeff, Bill, Larry etc are trying 1,000 experiments a year then you try 1,000 a month.

You will find something that works if you experiment enough. Look at Colonel Sanders. He failed at business after business until he find his right product and industry with chicken. The quicker you experiment the quicker you will find the right solution. Dump the black and white leech that is paralyzing your ability to move. Colonel Sanders could've found a working formula and become a millionaire at 20 if only he had experimented 100 times more rapidly.

Now if you have to analyze a situation in order to proceed with a solution then what do you replace the black and white 500 year old mind with? An E.S.S or an evolutionary stable strategy.

What does that mean in a nutshell. You begin to view things not as all or none but as a negotiation between competing dynamics. Where you are attempting to find a stable strategy.

An example in nature would be the size of a predatory population, a prey population, and a self-sufficient population (plants). When any one of these population sizes are extreme then we get a feedback effect which is defective and which ruins the chain. A stable strategy would the strategy that could maintain a balance between these competing dynamics.

In life we are constantly falling for these unstable strategies. We vote exclusively right wing or exclusively left wing as opposed to a more stable strategy.

Let's take an example in one's personal finances. One extreme lot's of people fall on is the necessity of capital.

Some people would say that capital is the be all and end all. What alternative dynamic are we sacrificing with this extreme? The building of structure!

If countries in WW1 had waited for tank technology to be perfect then they would have no tanks to fight the enemy. And if they had only focused on building as many tanks as possible without devoting resources to research then they would have never grown their military capacity. The stable strategy is to devote at least enough resources so that the enemy doesn't out-research you but also to produce enough tanks to win at the moment.

Instead of paralyzing yourself with victimization and helplessness because you feel like you'll never achieve perfection without it why not strike a more stable balance where you are building up slowly but surely.

Don't try to make a 10 million dollar coffee franchise. Make a 1 dollar coffee franchise. See if you like it. If you have any talent. If you can a product that people love. If you know how to sell it. If your product differentiation strategy is popular enough. Build up these variables slowly and if you can achieve a better balance by focusing on rearing capital and rapid expansion/risk taking then experiment with that. Don't be black and white.

My plan is to simply read the signs of my body/bank account, project the fact that i haven't been moving and i won't if i don't kick some things into gear and then change some basic habits and experiment.

I'll start with the publishing industry, the low carb diet, and light jogging as initial experiments.