Studio Non Troppo

In Seth Godin’s post today, he uses an example of a fuel conservation problem to illustrate the practical limitations and pitfalls of coming across logic (in this case, arithmetic):

A simple quiz for smart marketers:

Let’s say your goal is to reduce gasoline consumption.

And let’s say there are only two kinds of cars in the world. Half of them are Suburbans that get 10 miles to the gallon and half are Priuses that get 50.

If we assume that all the cars drive the same number of miles, which would be a better investment:

• Get new tires for all the Suburbans and increase their mileage a bit to 13 miles per gallon.
• Replace all the Priuses and rewire them to get 100 miles per gallon (doubling their average!)

Trick question aside, the answer is the first one. (In fact, it’s more than twice as good a move).

We’re not wired for arithmetic. It confuses us, stresses us out and more often than not, is used to deceive.

I’ll focus on the “trick question” part and leave the math to the reader (Seth also includes a couple links in his post with demonstrations of the arithmetic.)

In all likelihood, the best answer to the problem would be c) none of the above. Replacing the Suburbans with 50 mpg Priuses – or even with cars that get just 20 miles per gallon – would be far better than either of the alternatives. And that’s obviously only one of many alternatives, including radical ones such as “walk!” These aren’t answers Seth is unaware of; he was just making his point about arithmetic, confusion, and deception.

The point I want to make in this post is this:

Optimizing a bad choice rarely gets you ahead of where you could be if you made a better choice.

Photo: Tambako the Jaguar

Looking across a fence, we perceive ourselves differently than we would without the fence there. “The grass is greener” has always been a story about us, not about them, right?

Enjoying a slow stream…

What’s that feeling called when you’re on vacation, but the people around you aren’t? Or when you take a moment to smell the flowers while simultaneously being aware of others not smelling them?

Wondering about the fast stream…

And how are these things related to the pressure we sometimes feel to be caught up, not left behind, fluent in the newest, latest, fastest happenings?

I don’t know if some people manage to stay in one of these streams, the slower or the faster, long-term, essentially continuously, in a sustainable way.

I know I don’t. I switch from one to the other, sometimes gracefully, feeling good (or relieved, or excited) about the switch. Frequently, though, I feel I’m just reacting to outside or self-imposed pressures.

I think the various feelings we can experience when we’re in one stream and aware of the other are all related to the “grass is greener on the other side” phenomenon. Much of the time, as the saying most commonly suggests, we just think it would be better to have that which we don’t have.

But sometimes, for a little while, we’re able to feel ourselves being out of “this” world and inhabiting the “other (greener)  side.” What I don’t know is whether that’s an error of perception, an error of perception that cancels out a failure to be satisfied (two wrongs making a right), or a gift.

Photo: Redvers

Several years ago, and shortly before reading a Douglas Adams essay in which he mentioned the very same oddity, I saw for the first time the highway sign outside of Albuquerque that warned (or was it philosophizing?), “Gusty Winds May Exist.”

It’s an accidentally beautiful sign that can be found in at least three places in New Mexico. Despite its poetry, I do feel warned to put down my cellphone, soy extra vanilla latte, and electric shaver and put both hands on the wheel.

Recently, I’ve started seeing highway signs that purport to be warning signs but which actually have the effect of sending my mind off in confusing loops and starting my head shaking side to side in an unconscious statement of “no!”

Here’s the text of the diamond-shaped, orange sign:

Guardrail Damage Ahead

OK, so what am I supposed to be warned to do? Not crash into the area where the guardrail is broken? Or “yes, driver, if you’re about to crash, please pick this already damaged spot so we don’t have to make two separate repairs?”

Some things, like road signs and test results and department meetings, should be actionable. If there’s nothing I can really do in response to them, please take them away!

Photo: greefus groinks

If there’s one thing that’s easy to do these days, it would be to sell exclusive information on how to make money online. There are a few requirements:

1. a good sales letter

OK, so maybe there’s only this one requirement. [Cue the laugh track]

Now, chances are you are not currently selling exclusive information on how to make money online.  Instead, you may be interested in setting up a business to make money online.  If this describes you, and if you’re considering purchasing a book or program to help you set up such a business, caveat emptor!

But let me elaborate.

You generally don’t have to worry that you might be swindled, that your credit card will be charged and you won’t receive anything in return. This really isn’t a common problem, especially if you’ve done your homework and looked at what people have to say about the products and companies you’re considering.

No, what you need to beware of is this: the product you purchase will probably have a lot of accurate, hard-won, insightful information, but you will feel overwhelmed by the prospect of actually implementing it.

You know intellectually that if it were really that easy to be making an income online, everybody would be doing it, so it can’t be that easy.  But a well-written sales letter can suspend your reservations, making you want to believe its claims.  In addition, if you go ahead and purchase the product, you may be convincing yourself in a mysterious, semi-conscious way that it will be easy for you to implement the program and that your success will be immediate.

But it won’t work out that way.

Instead, when faced with the twin realizations that 1) the product you paid for contains valid information, and 2) you don’t have immediate (read “instant”) success, you may decide it’s not possible for you to make money online, leading you to give up.  You’ll find yourself rationalizing that this project is just too hard.

That’s the emptor I’m talking about: you thought this was going to be easy (you’re not thick, after all!), but now you believe it’s too hard, and you are disheartened.  This feeling is really what you have to beware of.

What to do?

Consider this important, but often overlooked psychological truth: other people’s achievements can seem impossible to replicate when you are not privy to the individual steps they took to get there.

Social psychologist Ellen J. Langer describes this effect in her book Mindfulness:

Our judgments about the intelligence of others can be distorted by an emphasis on outcome. In an informal inquiry, my students and I asked people to evaluate the intelligence of scientists who had achieved an “impressive” intellectual outcome (such as discovering a new planet or inventing a new drug). When the achievement was described as a series of steps (and virtually all achievements can be broken down in this way), they judged the scientist as less smart than when the discovery or invention was simply named. People can imagine themselves taking steps, while great heights seem entirely forbidding. (p. 76)

The task before you was claimed to be easy but then felt impossible. By looking at it afresh as a process requiring a series of steps, and by using failure well, you can regain the confidence you need to get to work.

Photo: L.Brumm Photography

We all know that advice is overrated (except our advice to others, which is unheeded). It’s just hard to acquire wisdom through advice-giving.

We also all know the “other person’s shoes” idea, how experiencing something from another point of view can bring insight.

I’m not going to give advice in this post; I’ll just tell a (short) story.

My day job for years has been as an educator. Educators are fond of talking about how a good teacher is always learning. I’ve heard myself say this many times, I believe it, and I thought I was practicing it, too. It’s funny, though, that it was only recently that I signed up to take a course, the first college-level course I’ve enrolled in since 1997.

It’s an art studio course, and wow is it hard work!

Only now do I remember what it feels like to be a student.

The instructor explains something, and I think I understand, but I can’t put it in to practice.

Or: I’m thinking about what she just said, and I realize I’ve just missed the next four things she said.

Or: My classmates easily pick up some techniques I find nearly impossible, and I find other techniques straightforward and see my classmates struggle.

Or: I know I’m there to learn and not for a grade, but I feel the pressure of the imminent grade.

Or: I go through frustration, despair, impatience, perseverance, more despair, and then relief over the course of a single homework assignment.

The class is an extended interaction, more than a survey form or a role-play or an experiment that I set up, control, and evaluate.

Now we’re cooking with gas!