Process: it's importance & how to create one!
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As humans, we all have goals we set out to achieve. Whether it's to shed a few pounds (kilos) or whether it is to acquire a new skill or to get better at something etc. Often times, we fall short of achieving these goals for various reasons. It could be that we might lose sight of the goal, we might pivot from the original goal but in the process not define the new goal, we might feel overwhelmed or anything else.
After multiple failures, I spent time introspecting on why I failed & in some cases why I succeeded. I thought to myself that if I can come up with a process from my past failures, maybe I can increase my chances at achieving what I set out to achieve.
Please be mindful of the fact that this is purely my perspective and we're all unique. As long as we find a thing or two useful, it's a win-win.
To be successful in anything, we have to be disciplined in our efforts. In layman terms, we should build a process and execute it relentlessly.
proc·ess1
/ˈpräˌses,ˈprōˌses/
See definitions in:
1.
a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.
Process for achieving something is an extension to the above definition. It needs to be repetitive & scale-able.
Repetitive because no goal is achieved overnight and we have to work towards the goal till we achieve it and beyond. The other way to look at it is being disciplined in our work ethic. The flip-side to repeatability is monotony which brings us to #2.
Scale-able because the process shouldn’t be overwhelming due to the challenge nor too easy to lose motivation. It has to have just the right amount of challenge to keep you motivated.
Let’s dive deeper into why we need processes and how I create them for myself. There are a few ground rules which aid in perceiving everything about a process.
10000 Hour rule
Marathon
Mapping the landscape
Compounding/Snowballing Effect
Environment
Embrace - Uncertainty & Failure
Evolutionary
10000 Hour Rule
According to the rule: to master anything, we have to spend 10000hours on it - learning, making mistakes , unlearning - all of these on repeat. 10000 hours? Assuming we spend an hour a day, we would master a skill in roughly over 27years. Make it 2 hours a day, we bring the timeline down to 13.5years.
If we take 10000 rule in literal sense, most people , me included, would look at that timeline and give up immediately. Instead, let’s extract the essence of the rule.
Learning is timeless, it is a continuous process. Nothing comes easy and we have to put in the effort over a period of time to start reaping results.
During the process, we might have multiple failures. As long as it’s a mix of success & failure, there is belief left to march forward. The real challenge lies when we hit multiple back-to-back failures. We start losing belief in ourself. What do we do then? To answer that, let’s look at next component of the process.
Marathon
Life is a marathon and so is learning. When we zoom out of the multiple back-to-back failures mindset, we realize that we have been making progress, albeit slowly. It is important to remember the following
Process is timeless, understand that we will face setbacks. Sailing smoothly doesn’t prepare us for a storm.
It’s better to “Know why we failed” than “Not know why we succeeded”
Failures teach us our shortcomings and inadequacies.
Broadly, we could be at different stages of the marathon
Start: If we’re just picking up the skill or if we’re trying to change something about our life
Intermediate: If we’re starting to feel the momentum ( reap small benefits for our efforts)
Expert: We’re on autopilot and we feel the flow in what we do.
Depending on what stage we're in, we have different challenges. What remains constant is whether we're making progress in the right direction.
Mapping the landscape
There are different choices/paths we can take to achieve our goals. Think of all the paths we can take to, say, become a Hardware Engineer. One could opt to go to a grad school, enroll in an online course, attend a boot-camp , learn by building something etc. Go one level deeper into each path and think of the intricate details of each path - it's branches – that's what I call "Mapping the landscape".
We have to evaluate a path that best applies to us as individuals. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.
In order to figure this out, it's always a good practice to look at our past and introspect on our success and failures. These experiences provide insights into what worked or didn't work for us.
Some people have the appetite to dive right in! For example, learning to program by building something. It’s the goal of building something that motivates the person to learn.
A few would prefer a more structured degree – maybe their goal is to glean as much as they can.
Others might want a little bit of background into the subject before diving in.
Our approach depends on what our goal is and which path aligns the best with our personality. Thinking about this will help in making the best choice for ourself. Note that I said "best" and not the "right". Best choice because it positions us in the best possible way to achieve what we wish to achieve. Right or wrong choice is always in retrospect.
The following cartoon rightly captures what I'm trying to get to. We don't have to adhere to a standard process because we might do things differently and get better results.
I don't expect myself or anyone to have everything sorted out on day1, it's highly unlikely and impossible that we'll have all of this figured out. It’s a journey and sometimes we might take a step back in order to make bigger strides in future.
Compounding / Snowball Effect
Compounding is a very important tool in the process of learning. Atomic Habits by James Clear rightly summarizes the power of compounding using a graph shown below.
At the start of learning a new skill, we tend to feel like we’re lagging behind the expectation curve. In most cases we expect to strengthen our skill without grasping the nuances of the skill. The reason is simple - Compounding hasn’t started fetching results just yet. But before we see the benefits of it, we have to put in some hard yards. It’s like creating a few dots in the landscape - although we don’t quite know how to join them - just yet
Steve Jobs famously said “ You can only join the dots looking backwards” referring to his interest in calligraphy and how it inspired him to start Apple. The point I’m trying to make here is to do things without expecting returns. But once we’ve spent some time creating what I call enough “dots”, we can form patterns with those dots that start making more sense.
Environment
Unlike in a Marathon, the path taken to the eternal goal of getting better at something can be unique. But the detail lies in what we make out of the landscape. In a scenario where we are trying to get better at our job but the environment isn’t really giving us the right opportunities. The environment can be broadly classified into the following
When we put in a lot of effort, but things aren’t going our way - Head winds / Resistance
When we put in little effort , but things are working out great - Tail winds / Assistance
When there’s nominal effort and we get what we expect – No winds / Equilibrium
It’s important to be aware of our environment at all times. Have a mechanism to ensure we’re not
over-confident when things are working great but we don’t know why that's the case
over-whelmed when we feel like we're doing everything but nothing seems to work.
In the entire process, we will sail through these phases multiple times and it’s important to know that it’s not the end. As long as were stepping in the right direction, we are making progress.
Embrace - uncertainty & failure
No matter what we plan for , there’s always going to be an element of uncertainty. In sports, a younger/fitter athlete could replace an older athlete. In the corporate world, we could lose our job or bypassed for an expected promotion. Anything can happen and it’s important to know that things are not always under our control and they won’t always go according to plan. Sport is a classic example. In a given match, every players wants to win but at the end of the day, there’s only one winner. Does this mean, one team / sportsman isn’t on the right path? No.
There could be multiple reasons for failing on a given day.
Conditions are not conducive for a win
Opponent is better prepared
One team weren't at their best on a given day
One person/team is at a different stage of building compared to the opponent.
Injury ( in sport) or an experienced team member found a better opportunity etc.
Regardless of what the reason is, there will always be setbacks and uncertainty. What’s under our control is how we we handle uncertainty, and how well prepared are we to embrace the failure.
Then the question arises: Has my process failed me?
Process in evolutionary
Process will continuously evolve based on where we are relative to what we want to achieve ( where we wish to be). We have to keep updating the process with respect to changing demands of the goal as well as the evolving environment. In some cases, even the goal can evolve from time to time.
Adapting to the changes will require setting up an entirely new process or chipping and chopping the existing process to match the demands of the goal.
It's always a good practice to measure where we are with respect to where we wish to be - I call this "checkpoint". Checkpoints are where we evaluate the process based on a certain set of indicators to prove that we’re on the optimal path to achieve our goals. Checkpoints can also act as guardrails to ensure we adhere to the process at all times. With the process evolving, these indicators/checkpoints will also need to evolve.
P.S:
All the images I used were sourced on Google. I take no credit for any of them
Few books I found useful:
The Compounding Effect by Darren Hardy
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Atomic Habits by James Clear