TL;DR
One: understanding the distinction between making money and building things is crucial, as they represent different endeavors with unique challenges and approaches. While making money can be an end in itself or a means to enable building, entrepreneurship, in particular, involves the intricate balance of creating something valuable that others want. Two: effective goal achievement relies on well-designed systems that foster consistency and long-term success, mitigating the risks of short-term thinking. Three: adept communication entails recognizing and interpreting signals amidst the noise, including subtle cues and what remains unspoken, such as sarcasm, to extract meaningful insights and enhance understanding..
1. Making Money vs Building Things
Two categories that many people confuse are making money and building things. While there is certainly a degree of overlap, I think they are two independent categories that could each be a means or an end; one could make money for the sake of making money, one could make money to enable them to build things, one could build things with the hope of making money, and one could certainly build things for the sake of building things. Arguably, there could be some end other end goal like getting social validation or there could be other causes in the chain that precede these categories.
The means-or-end relationship between these categories and the specific ordering influences the possibilities and levels of difficulty. People who want to make money for the sake of making money have a completely different set of possibilities open to them, and have it slightly easier than people who want to build things with the hope of making money. Those who want to build things for the sake of building things have clearly the largest field of possibilities and arguably face the least difficulties.
The hardest of such relationships is those who build things with the hope of money; popularly known as entrepreneurship. It is also one of the most confused relationship since the most obvious and popularly embraced constituent category, making money, is hardly understood as the end result of the least obvious category of building great things. The difficulty of this relationship is well captured in the iron rule of the market; specifically that even the best idea/product - the result of building - will fail (not make money), even if no one wants it; not only does one need to build something first, they need to build something that other people want. Recent ways of allocating capital to people who build things with the hope of making money, such as venture capital, have arguably made life much easy. However, just as in the world of sports betting, the house has no stake in the game and is highly diversified, the venture capitalist runs a very diversified portfolio and unlike the entrepreneur who has all their skin in the game, the venture capitalist has all their skin in many games.
Therefore, when looked at from the view point of making money, entrepreneurship is perhaps the most risky approach as it does not allow much latitude for diversification, the great safety net against risk and uncertainty.
I think most entrepreneurs will be better off if they were clear about where they fall in the various possible relationships of the categories. If one is really just seeking to make money and has no accompanying dedication to build something great that others really want, should they be an entrepreneur?
Those who are absolutely certain that they want to make money for the sake of making money have a different set of tools available to them, and those who are absolutely certain that they want to build things to make money have a different set of tools available to them. Conviction is a key attribute that determines ones ability to leverage the tools at their disposable, but so is delineation; one must also be very clear about what they are not trying to do, and guard their legs from straying off unto another lane.
2. Systems vs Goals
A very popular school of thought argues that the journey is more important than the destination, and prefers systems over goals. I have always found that to not be very convincing, as I think that in reality there are more dynamic relationships between the categories of systems and goals thank the static, siloed manner in which they are often portrayed. Having great systems can ease the process of achieving goals; having great systems with no goals seems rather like walking in the wilderness without a map - with walking being the system. It seems to me that we are better off when we have systems that are tied to closely specified goals.
I am pro systems for two reasons; because I believe systems allow us to track and measure performance from a perspective of what we can control, and because systems, if executed carefully, can prevent us from the sin of short term optimization.
In a world that is more subject to uncertainty than we can imagine, a pro-systems approach to life forces us to focus on the things that we can control. Consider the way in which we think of our decisions; is the quality of a decision based on the process and arguments that inspired it, or the outcome of the decision? I have no doubt that the former is the correct response. The same applies to the consideration of systems versus goals; while the ultimate ambition is to achieve our goals, the quality of the entire undertaking is more closely tied to the careful design and execution of systems that ideally should help us achieve those goals. I like to summarize this whole line of thinking by saying that a good undertaking is one that uses systems that increase the likelihood of us achieving our goals in 999 out of 1000 alternate worlds. If the remaining 1 world should actualize and prevent us from achieving our goals, it does not certainly mean that we were wrong to focus on the system; we simply try again, and try, try, till we succeed.
Systems are also better because they guard us from that great sin of short-termism; the tendency to prioritize short term hacks to achieve measures that ultimately undermine our ability to build something meaningful in the long run. During my high school days, my friends and I often told a joke about Bill Gates. It went as follows; always hire the lazy person because they will find the easiest way to get things done - I don’t know that Bill Gates ever said that. To point out how potentially harmful this can be in the long run, think about ChatGPT and the way “lazy” students do assignments these days. Such hacks become very enticing when goals are the sole focus, and their achievement can reinforce the incentives to keep hacking. Systems are more likely to break such cycles as they often emphasize due process.
3. Signal vs Noise
When it comes to listening effectively, it is very important to be able to separate the signal from the noise. It is more of an art than a science, as the signal-to-noise ratio is dependent on so many factors such as the speaker’s communication skills, their intentions at the moment, the topic that is being discussed, and even something as broad as their personality.
Great communicators have the skill to condense so much information into little words, to share so much with so little, and to conclude enormous hours of thinking and refining into what can sometimes look trivial. However, if their audiences are not great listeners themselves then there is a high tendency for communicators to come off as being understated. In some cases, it is in the communicator’s interest to belabor their points.
I have found, though, that one can get a good deal of free learning by becoming a better listener. It seems to me that the essence of good listening is the capacity to differentiate between signals and noise, to identify high signal-to-noise situations for heightened attention, and to relax when the signal-to-noise ratio is considerably low. These are often obvious. The unobvious skill, I find, is the ability to increase the signal-to-noise ratio by identifying what is NOT being said; that involves a lot of situational awareness and the ability to craft, test, and refute hypothesis quickly.
As we increasingly get cautious about the things we say, what we do not say is of significantly more importance than what we say. We are increasingly saying the same things, and given a significant amount of time, what is already known becomes noise. What is not said, then, becomes the signal; the thing we should really be listening to. There is no clear science on how to identify what is NOT being said.
A good place to start is to always look out for inconsistencies in the manner in which messages are conveyed, and the often underappreciated art of identifying sarcasm. Inconsistencies are often easy to identify, but require that we must be doing more than processing the words that are being said; we must be observing facial expressions, tones, levels of conviction, word choices, etc. For example, if a speaker who has displayed other-wordly conviction suddenly starts being so doubtful, it may be time to start connecting dots and trying to identify what is not being said. Identifying sarcasm is to me the most important skill for hearing the things that are not said. I don’t know that one can be taught how to identify sarcasm, but I have a few tips: sarcasm can be very professional and formal, put in the Queen’s English and accompanied by a big smile and a hug, and people who are themselves good at being sarcastic are often great at identifying their fellow travellers. I am not urging you to be sarcsatic (I personally think it is the mark of a moral and character deficiency), I only hope that you can increase the signal-to-noise ratios in your daily interactions, and get more out of your listening.