When we talk about the mathematics of self-improvement, so many people expect a formula that will change their life completely. I wish there would be one that I can give you. But it is more like a concept that you need to own in your mind. One of the main areas I focus on is improving myself is that every year is that when my birthday approaches, I sit down with a good glass of wine and settle the accounts of the previous year. I look at where I was when last year started and where I am now, and from that I make decisions about where I want to be next year. Take your time to analyse the chart below. I will be speaking about this chart in the following chapter in this article.
So what I do is basically break down the “past, present and future” paradigm into small measurable pieces. I have made an old saying of Management Guru Peter Drucker my guiding principle:
“You can manage what can be measured.”
There are things that are difficult to measure, like self-confidence level, anxiety and depression, but things like number of exercises, volume and intensity, and progress in lifting weights, sleep, eating and drinking can be measured.
The reason I find and follow such metrics is to hold myself accountable for my actions. I also found that it was easier to plan many things in advance. It is very easy to fall into traps such as "I'm tired today, I'll go to the gym tomorrow", "I need to work out a little more, but I already worked out for 4 hours yesterday". If you plan everything and make it a habit, you will feel very restless when you don't do these things.
But the main reason I use such metrics is this: If you want to go from A to Z, if you don't keep track of how far you've gone along the way, how will you know you've reached Z? How will you know if you're going astray or even going in the opposite direction? If you don't use measurements, you won't know.
I named this article The Mathematics of Self-improvement because in this article I will talk about mathematical principles that many people misunderstand when it comes to improving their lives completely or in some areas.
Linearity and Continuity
Many people predict the future in a linear way. I can express this situation in a reductio ad absurdum way: "It was like that yesterday, then it will be like that forever." This seems silly, but how many people have you heard say “this is how we saw it, this is how we did it”? It assumes that there will be almost no change in this event or its context. If you go back 10 to 15 years, no one was talking about “online social game” or “online messages”. But these days, these are important issues in the communications community. The game principles have not changed much, but the context of the game has changed a lot.
Similarly, we assume a linear relationship between effort and outcome. I like to use the example “If you start saving 1 Euro a day a year ago, you'll have 365 Euros in your pocket today” to show that seemingly small effort can lead to big results. But many people hate the journey and only love the result. For this reason, they throw themselves into a great but unsustainable effort to achieve results as soon as possible. A friend of mine decided to improve his health as a New Year's promise and decided to immediately quit coffee, cigarettes, processed food and sugar and go to the gym 6 days a week. He was only able to do this for 3 weeks, and at the end of the 3 weeks, he became even more unhealthy than before, indulging in a 2-week “feast” of coffee, cigarettes, processed foods, and sugar. This friend of mine fell victim to the “the more, the better” mentality.
The More the Better
This culture of constant obsessive effort is very common in some groups and communities. It's the same as the culture of "if you don't put in superhuman effort, you're lazy. Wake up at 4 in the morning, exercise for 2 hours, have breakfast, be at work at 7, exercise again in the evening, do your side job, sleep at midnight, wake up early, have fun and travel the world." This is as bad as “too much too soon” because it means restricting things that are vital but not considered productive. These vital things are usually rest and recovery routines, such as sleep. The problem with this type of “constant push” principle is that even though the person is constantly working hard, they cannot find time to adjust and review what they have done.
The advice often given at the time to "hang out with 100 people" was not done to become good at the socialising game, but to overcome social anxiety. It was recommended to first socialize with your partner and gradually overcome the anxiety of talking to a stranger, starting from asking directions or time. Once you got over the anxiety of “coming out” to strangers, you could move on to the real “game.”
Today, "being with 100 people" can be seen as a miraculous number to be good at the game. Just like 5 sets x 12 repetitions is considered the miracle number for increasing muscle mass. The miracle figure is not 5 x 12. Keeping the muscles under stress for 45 to 60 seconds is what allows muscle mass to increase. If you spend 4 seconds on each rep, one set will last 48 seconds. Quick 20 seconds won't work for you again. Likewise, if you hang out with 100 people a day, but at the same time you don't reflect on your hangups and draw conclusions from them, if you don't try to figure out where you need to fix things, you won't develop.
Diminishing Returns and Mathematics of Self Improvement
In most areas where you invest effort, you sooner or later reach a point of diminishing returns. Diminishing returns mean you have to put in more effort over time to get the same return. This fact is hidden by using rates instead of exact numbers, for example in the bond market. For a bond's value to increase by 10%, its market value must increase by 10% (share price x number of shares). If a company's market cap is $1 Billion, a 10% increase is $100 Million, but if the company's value is $100 Thousand, a 10% increase is $10 Thousand. The increase in both is 10%, but generally the labor required for an increase of 100 Million is much more than the labor required for an increase of 10 Thousand.
Diminishing returns are often a function of time and progress. Malcolm Gladwell explained that to master a field, it is necessary to work ten thousand hours concentrating on that field.
But in many cases we can argue that 80% of the return can be achieved in the first 20% of labor, and the remaining 20% in the last 80% of labor. I've simplified things a lot here, but the main idea is this: when you start something, no matter what it is, you develop very quickly with relatively little effort in the beginning, and as you master that thing, the effort you need to put in to progress further increases rapidly. In other words, over time, the effort you will put into a job will increase, but the progress rate you will achieve in that job will decrease.
Therefore, you face an extra opportunity cost and you have to make a calculation whether to progress further in what you are currently working on or to start something new and progress at it.
Limited Resources and Opportunity Cost
In everything you learn and want to improve, time is the first level cost. If you want to sleep an hour more a day, you'll have 7 hours less per week to spend on other things. Time is a fixed resource, you have a certain amount of time and a day is 24 hours for everyone.
Depending on the field you want to pursue, you will need money to buy the necessary things for that field, and this should be calculated in hours. Let's say you decide to go to the gym 3 days a week. In this case, the cost is not only the time you spend to enter the gym and exercise, but also the money you pay for the gym, sports clothes and travel. Therefore, you need to add to the time you spend how many hours you work to pay for them. These are variable costs because if you can increase your income and reduce your expenses, you can free up time by working less to maintain your lifestyle.
In economics, opportunity cost refers to the gains you give up to do something. A few years ago, I thought about what I could gain by transferring the time I spent in the office to other areas. I thought about what I could gain if I cut back on working 60 – 80 hours a week and devoted the remaining time to writing, sports, and other things.
What led to this decision was that I realized that the extra 20 – 40 hours I worked in the office did not give me much extra benefit. Cutting down on this time had little impact on my career. In other words, it was between “no loss but no gain” and “there is gain but no loss”.
Summary of Self Improvement
My purpose in writing this article was to show the 4 main areas where people make mistakes when trying to improve themselves.
The first mistake is trying to do too much too quickly. This often comes from trying to fix mistakes that have been made for years in just a few weeks.
The second is to try to compensate for the defeats of the first mistake by wasting even more time. This leaves no time for the person to reflect on the process and find and correct mistakes.
The third is failing to see that the path from novice to master is not linear and getting stuck in the quagmire of diminishing returns.
The fourth and final mistake is not paying attention to resource requirements and the fact that the benefits of things given up through choices are also costs.
The common things in all of these 4 main headings are cost, expectations and results. When I do my annual life review, I pay particular attention to the relationship between cost and outcome. If I see that putting more effort into it isn't optimal, I'll choose between investing more in that area next year or just investing enough in it that it won't regress and spending that time on other things. For this reason, over time, even if I enjoyed doing it, I often stopped doing an activity when I realized that the time I wanted to spend on it would not be enough to achieve the mastery I wanted in that activity. For example, I stopped playing chess 10 years ago because I realized that to be as good a chess player as I wanted to be, I would need a lot of time that I would have to sacrifice other things.
This is unfortunately something that is overlooked in the community of people focused on self-improvement. Okay, you have to exercise, you have to improve your financial situation, you have to pay attention to your food and drink, your style, you have to learn the game, etc. but you have to do these things in an achievable and sustainable way. You cannot fix decades of bad life management in three months, even by working very hard. You need to put the things you need to do in order of importance and effort required. Only you can decide which areas are more important to you. Then, you must decide the success you want to achieve in these areas. Finally, you should consider whether you can maintain this.
Once you've considered the answers to these questions, you can get to work creating parameters to plan and measure progress.
Disclaimer: None of my advices are professional advices. Consult your expert in case of a need of professional help.
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