Revealing the Unseen Forces That Guide Your Life
My favourite failure in my 20s has actually led me to discover something called “The Unseen Forces” that guided my life. I was nervous all the time. Going to an important business presentation, I always try to back out at the last minute. I am scared right before every meeting and will probably skip.
Even in the middle of the meetings because I was too afraid to take the lead and speak.
Personally, the kind of failure I experience is more about assumptions. Being a “minority” who is paid to think, teach and write, I’m underestimated by a lot of people who know nothing about my work. That perception of potential failure is a kind of fuel for me especially in my 20s into 30s and I’ve learned to be grateful for it.
The most important kind of failures are ‘near wins’ because of the propulsion you get from coming just shy of reaching a goal. Which can be a source of learning. Because once you assign that word of “failure” to “learning”, it can become useful to you.
I made the mistake of taking things too seriously, and this is what I do now to “trick” myself into confidence. It’s often hard to tell whether I’m trying to do the impossible, or whether there are reasonable behaviours or business ideas I haven’t thought of trying, or if I’m trying the right business idea but without enough skill.
What city you live in. Who you date or marry. Which job you choose. What clothes you wear.
We all think we make these choices ourselves. It certainly feels like we’re in full control. But it turns out that our choices — both in our startups and in our lives — are more constrained than we think.
The unseen hand in them all is the networks that surround us and the powerful math they exert on us.
Working with network effects in my group of 1000+ traders makes it impossible not to notice how the same mechanisms and math that create near-destiny for part-time traders, entrepreneurs, even trust fund babies create near-destiny for us as individuals. It’s mind-blowing once you see it.
These constraints are highly determinative of how your life will turn out, guiding us inexorably down one path or another in ways that are both quite predictable. Yet these forces are typically unnoticed.
This article outlines how we see network effects impacting nearly every aspect of your life. With that lens, it lays out a perspective on how to make the 7 most important decisions of your life. It will hopefully help you make decisions that are more true to the kind of life you want to lead.
#1) Network Force: The Unseen Hand
The other day I read Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations published in 1776. Half way through, I felt asleep and almost knocked my head against the library’s table in LA.
In it, he envisioned markets with thousands of individuals pursuing their own independent self-interest as creating an “invisible hand” that unintentionally promoted the good of society. This “free-market model” allowed him to point out the math and mechanisms behind the emergence of large-scale social order.
In short, the networks of human connections in your life create a force that guides you down a path not always fully of your intention, through the mechanism of 100s of small interactions.
Further, this “network force” compounds over time. The longer your relationships, cliques, and communities persist, the more they shape your destiny.
#2) Zipf’s Law and You
I don’t want to be depressed. And I don’t want to be anxious. No matter what people say. Did you know the frequency of the words you use are determined by an underlying mathematical pattern?
This mathematical pattern is a power law known as Zipf’s Law. It was first noticed as a principle of language. About 100 years ago, physicists and linguists discovered that the second most commonly used word in English is used one half as much as the most used word. The third most used word is used one third as much as the most used word, so forth down through all the words in a given language.
My brain was like in the middle of this intense game of life chess, looking 25 moves ahead in the worst direction over and over.
I was up to an insane amount per day.
Related to your life, an even stranger implication of Zipf’s Law is that unconscious network forces will act on anyone or any company that gets to be an outlier in one or more of these distributions. Bringing you back in line — or bringing another person or company back in line to make room for your new numbers — will happen without any conscious or intentional force at play.
This is a bit spooky. It means that the number of inhabitants of Kuala Lumpur constrains and influences the number of inhabitants of Saigon, Bangkok, Singapore and all South East Asian cities in some unseen way because they are all part of the network of South East Asian cities.
Even though we are each making what feel like independent decisions about where to live, it seems that we are part of this network unconsciously influencing people to keep major Asian cities on the Zipf distribution line. I am one of those people being pushed around. And so are you.
If math is underlying all this, what else in my life is being affected by the larger social order?
#3) What Does Your Network Want from You?
You are not just the recipient of value from your network as written by a famous VC in Silicon Valley James Currier.
The people and nodes in your network want and expect an exchange from you, too.
They want you to validate them and support them.
You are in a dialogue with the network force.
As Obi-Wan says about The Force in the original Star Wars movie:
Luke Skywalker: You mean it controls your actions?
Kenobi: Partially, but it also obeys your commands.
The network force is similar. You don’t always see it, but it is exerting itself on you.
It wants something from you. Your network force proactively guides you down a path. So be careful which sub-networks and people you add into your network.
When you start to see that dialogue between you and your network, the push-pull, you see it everywhere. The chaos of the world diminishes a bit and becomes more understandable and predictable. And you understand more why things are the way they are and why they stay that way. Hopefully, it will also give you insights as to where you can push to change things that should be changed, not just about you, but about your company, your city, and your world.
So, when making a decision about where you want to work, instead of asking:
- Will this give me the work I want to do daily?
- Is this the best offer I got in terms of income?
- Does this company look good on my resume?
- Does this company let me take as much vacation as I want, have free catered lunches, and a fancy office?
#4) Where you Live and Work
Committing to a geography and developing a network increases your access to all the experiences and resources you might want.
Where to live is powerfully impacts the relationships and direction of your life, in ways you may not even realize. When coming out of college, this is even more important to your life than your choice of job.
Where you live largely determines who you know. Who you know largely determines the richness of your life and your access to wealth and information. Your network is a form of wealth. It brings you friends, career opportunities, or a spouse.
It’s certainly the most common life advice I give to people. Pick your city first. Everything flows from that. Your job, spouse, friends, income, and other opportunities flow from that core choice. The reason is network forces.
It’s important to note that your “choice” of city may be greatly influenced by the network force from the earlier networks you’ve accumulated. Take note of that and steel yourself to have the courage to make what sociologists call a “major move” if you decide that move makes sense. (Hint: it most likely does).
It could be that this dependence on location-based networks is changing thanks to the internet and telecommunications in general, since it’s now easier to maintain and form networks in spite of geographical distance. And that’s why I chose to work from anywhere all around the world, like writing this article from a cafe in Mission District, San Francisco. People are able to use the internet to find, build, and maintain human networks- usually around a niche or interest like investing for me.
#5) Surrender
When I go on stage to present on some new ideas, they put you behind this dark room with other upcoming speakers. Four cameras facing you, there’s a thing in your ear. They whisper,” Move to the left a little.”
They say, “ 45 seconds”
Then you stand there on stage and within two seconds, a few thousand people might be looking at you offline and online or worst, retweeting the live stream. I don’t want them to retweet me. So I start to get scared.
Will I forget what I wanted to say? Do I even know what I am talking about? (Answer almost always: no).
This is what I do: I surrender.
I say to myself: I have no agenda, I just want to help people. Please let me do or say whatever will help the most people.
Who am I asking this to? I have no idea. I’m not pretending to talk to anyone. I just say it.
It’s like I surrender. Whatever is going to happen will happen. But I trust that some other part of me will make sure the best thing happens.
Right before I take the leap, I surrender.
#6) A Beginner’s Mind
In places like Silicon Valley, where conventional wisdom might not be an advantage and things are always in a constant flux, the idea that naivete can be a competitive advantge. PayPal’s founders said that the fact they knew nothing about the credit card industry gave them the edge in disrupting the finance industry.
The notion that ignorance is a strength is likely to lead to stumbles in a new era of innovation and disruption of major industries.
I ask questions.
Whenever I am on someone else’s interview or important business meetings, I ask questions. If I learn one thing, then it’s a win for me.
Whenever I am meeting someone for the first time, I ask questions.
I am more confident asking questions and learning than I am answering them.
Coming from a finance background, knowing something about investing is likely to be helpful perhaps instrumental- in figuring out how to make hedge fund investing accessible to the masses, in figuring out how to push forward, and having the credibility to get things done.
I recently spoke with the a the CEO of of cutting-edge nonprofit supporting high-impact entrepreneurs worldwide, Endeavor Global, and she’s dubbed from Tom Friedman as the world’s “mentor capitalist.”
Her New York Times bestseller Crazy is a Compliment: The Power of Zigging When Everyone Else Zags and one of the paragraphs worth revisiting :
“If you’re not called crazy when you start something new, then you’re not thinking BIG enough!”.
Domain expertise is likely to also be imporatnt in Fintech (Finance Technology), as understanding the culture of asset management is going to be important.
Or in Fintech, to be sure what you’re building can really help average investors have better control of their financial future. Of course, there will be examples of this working, but going it alone will not work as well when it’s not just about the app., it’s the 3 things I mentioned above.
Sure, Uber was successful in ignoring regulations and just plow ahead. But most innovations in sectors like health care require approval by authorties. If you launch a drug or medical device without getting approved, you won’t be getting very far. The same goes with driverless cars on the roads and drones in the sky.
To engage with policymakers, partners will likely be needed, and, indeed, it WILL be influenced by the above , they could be pivotal.
There’s a proverb that will become increasingly important in todays seamless digital age: “If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, you must go together.” The next generation of entrepreneurs could very well emerge as the mantra of the Third Wave.
It’s easier to say, “I know nothing. I am confident knowing nothing. The world is mine to explore. So let’s begin now.”
And I am like Lawrence in the desert. It’s hot, it’s vast, it looks the same in every direction. I can take one step at a time, and move forward and eventually get to the other side.
I’m confident I can do that.
Plus… people want to talk to the person who wants to listen.
And the above’s the 5 things I’m pondering when facing life’s questions.
