Let the Environment Build You

In this episode I discuss the idea that our environment should make the "decisions" for us, when it comes to crafting our lives and the things in it.

Transcript

 Hey everyone, welcome to non trivial. This episode I want to talk about an idea, the notion of letting the environment build the things for you. What do I mean by that? Well, obviously we are, as I talk about all the time, you know, we're creating things in our life. And, uh, and we put thought into the things that we create, obviously, right?

So, we might, you know, whether that's kind of upfront stuff like plans, ideas, uh, you know, even designs, which, of course, I'm kind of against, you know, but we have some notion of what we want to put in place. And, uh, and even if it's as we're building it and as we're discovering, um, you know, we're thinking about it.

We're reflecting on what we do. We're trying to essentially translate ideas in our head into physical things that manifest in the real world. And, uh, you know, I think that's very much part of, you know, what it means to be alive and to find satisfaction and contentment in this life, right? Is to create things, is to build things, is to put things out there.

And, uh, and obviously that is tied into what we think about what we're doing. There's this, this connection. Between ideas and what we build and so, you know, if I were to ask you, you know What are you working on in your life? What are the things that you are building? Hopefully there's a few things in there, right?

Again, whether these are kind of really specific, tangible things like, well, I've got this software product or I've got this,  you know, I dunno, an actual building or sculpture or whatever that I'm building, or maybe there's a program I'm putting together or even just kind of in a more abstract sense of your life, right?

We are crafting our lives. We're trying to Put together the things that we think are important and string those together into a coherent kind of story, right? About who we are why we do what we do and so forth So if I asked you that, you know, hopefully you'd be able to say well here's the kind of the things that I'm creating again, whether those are tangible things are just kind of abstract things  and  But in doing that you would probably say that you are the author of your life, right?

I mean, that's what most people would believe. I mean, maybe you you kind of You You know, if you're a spiritual person, you might kind of say, well, it's not just me, you know, maybe you, I don't know, pray every day and, and you kind of raise that up to a higher power or whatever it is. There might be, uh, uh, you know, or, or maybe you have people that you talk to on a regular basis that kind of help you on your journey.

So maybe you think they're kind of part of your team, but generally speaking, you believe that you are the author of your life. And, uh, and of course that's essentially true, right? At the end of the day, you have to make the decisions. in your life as to what you are going to make happen, try to make happen. 

Um, but there's a kind of flip side to this that I think is really worth  framing life as, as opposed to just thinking of you as being the author, which again is in some sense maybe ultimately true because the decision rests with you as to what actions you take. The flip side of that is letting the environment essentially craft the things that you build, whether those are tangible things or in the abstract sense, it's just your life.

Or anything in between, right? Anything at whatever scale. And so what I mean by this is, if you kind of, uh,  put the onus of the crafting  to the environment. So you're basically saying,  well you know what,  I don't exactly know what I'm trying to do with my life necessarily. I have these high level ideas. You know, I think objectives are important.

I think they, they, it makes sense to have a notion at any given time of what you want to achieve, but how that is going to look specifically is really not up to me. I don't know. Right. So let's use a tangible example. You're working on a, a product that you want to bring to market, let's say, and you're going to sit there and you're going to do the coding or whatever aspect of that product development you do. 

And, uh, you know, presumably that product is based on some kind of mission you have in life. I mean, hopefully it's related to an area that you're passionate about. There's a reason. That you would build an application like that. It's probably not like a random thing because you just want to be a product guy or girl or you just want to be involved in product.

I mean, some people are like that, but hopefully the application that you're creating is tied to who you are as an individual, at least to some extent.  Um,  other than just kind of that very high level goal of how you're quote unquote trying to change the world, you really don't know what that product is going to look like, right?

You have to  start off very simple, put it out there and let the environment essentially. Create it for you. And what that looks like in the real world is Um, you know letting people kind of smack that product around so to speak and and and say what's wrong with it Say the parts they do like say the part they don't like get into conversations with people And uh, and they kind of say well This would be nice if it did this or I don't really understand why that looks like that And anyone who's kind of into product development probably Gets a sense of what I'm saying, although they might not feel like they are, uh, embodying this, this kind of, uh, ideal that closely that probably we all would rather do this maybe a little bit better.

But it's that notion of putting something imperfect into the environment and letting the environment craft it for you. And this of course is not just in anything like product development. This is very much true of our lives. You know, we all have ideas. We all have a dream dreams. We all have  these kind of high level, uh, you know, missions or just just ideas about what we want to accomplish in life.

But we really have no idea how those are supposed to manifest and in some sense, in some cases, we don't even know if those are really the things we're supposed to focus on.  So where if you only kind of internalize that decision making so that you think it's all on your shoulders, like you're supposed to come up with all the ideas.

You're supposed to come up with everything that you need to do the correct course corrections.  That's going to be really problematic. One, that's really stressful because for that to all be on you,  uh, you know, who are you quite frankly to be making all those decisions? And I don't mean there's some other individual who is supposed to be making them.

Uh, that's actually not what I mean at all. I just mean that,  and I'll get into that, you know, really that comes from a collective thing from the environment. It's, it's nobody else who's supposed to be making it for you.  But, uh, But, but who is supposed to be making the, for you as an individual to be making those decisions, that's kind of crazy actually, right, because we're talking about so much dynamism, so much information, so much uncertainty,  the, the odds of you being able to truly make an informed, rational decision about how your life is supposed to be  Is isn't in some sense kind of nonsense, right?

If you just think about the amount of information you need to pare down and that you need to try to navigate through now again I'm not saying you can't make any of the decisions ultimately you have to but you would need an absolute immense level  Of help for lack of a better word to try to navigate that so where's that help going to come from?

Well, I don't think it's supposed to come from gurus. I don't think it's supposed to come from expert experts Not that there's anything wrong with you know Using people and individuals as a sounding board just to get into the conversation But a lot of those decisions get made by the environment As long as you put yourself out there and you get involved within the mess you throw yourself into the mess of things And you remain open to constant course correction You The environment has a way of actually crafting your life for you. 

And, uh, if you're not too young, you might already kind of know this, because in some sense, this is inevitable, right? Uh, either you crash and burn, or you just accept that the environment starts to kind of craft who you are. So let's use some examples in this episode.  You know what, I already used one related to kind of software development, but this is anything, right?

Anything you're building, and really more to the point, just your life.  Uh, you know, where is your life supposed to go? What direction are you supposed to change? What decisions are you supposed to make? Who are you supposed to interact with or network with? Or who are you not, maybe even more importantly, supposed to network with?

Who are you maybe supposed to avoid? What are you supposed to avoid?  It's just overwhelming. I mean, we all get that. And, uh, and so  how do you navigate that? And how do those decisions get made? And I guess what I'm trying to say in this episode  is,  It's not really about you making those decisions. The only thing you can do as an individual is move. 

Is move. You have to keep the motion going.  And there's lots of ways to get stuck in life and not have the motion going. And, and, you know, you could call this analysis paralysis. You could call this overthinking. Uh, you could call this maybe insecurity. Uh, intimidation. I think there's a lot of ways this could enter your life.

Uh, one of the biggest ways actually,  uh, aside from the ones I just mentioned is,  is kind of, um,  uh, a bit too much hubris almost where you start to believe in, in your own ideas and your own, uh, greatness, if you will, a little bit too much. And it's not that you don't have good ideas. It's not that, that, you know, your mission is not worthy.

It's just that. It, it's kind of like what I think would happen to famous people. So you can imagine somebody goes through life as a nobody and, and they're using their nobody ness to, um, kind of act as though they don't really have much to lose, which in some sense is true, right? When you're a nobody, you don't really have much to lose as you, nobody has placed you on a pedestal.

Nobody is paying attention to you anyway. And this is a really good place to be in terms of taking action because it kind of automatically gives you the constitution to just take action. You tend to care less what people think because you kind of already know nobody's really thinking about you anyway, right?

So, so if you think about it, a lot of people prior to their fame, um,  As long as they weren't elevated artificially or it wasn't nepotism or anything else that put them there. If they're a real person that just achieved something, uh, they're probably, maybe without knowing it, really leveraging their nobody ness, right?

Because they weren't anybody, they had nothing to lose, and they were just kind of taking risks maybe that other people wouldn't take. But then once they become famous,  I think this happens to a lot of people,  Now they're kind of in this fragile position, right? Now they have this reputation, they have these expectations around them.

Maybe it's agents who are working with them and getting them rules. If they're, I don't know, like an actor or a musician or something like that. Um, it could be, you know, rising the ranks in a company and now they're upper management or CEO. And you really have to kind of tiptoe and walk on the eggshells because if you offend anybody or you say the wrong thing, you might jeopardize your position, uh, or it could be the public.

Image is not just about you now, now the whole company is writing on your public image, and so forth. There's all these kinds of things that, if you kind of take the modern definition of success, tend to fragilize the individual in that modern definition of success, right?  Well, I think we can all, uh, we all kind of run into this, actually, on a regular basis.

Not in the fame sense, obviously, most of us are not famous.  When you get a bit of success in your life, then you start to kind of put that on a pedestal and it has a way of kind of fragilizing you because you don't want to lose it. You think you've got this good thing. You think you figured it out and now you kind of lock yourself into this corner, quite frankly, um, that might feel a little bit secure, but over time you start to realize it's actually working against you because you don't have that beautiful state.

That you were in when you were a nobody, right? Even though you in some sense might I mean nobody's a nobody but you know what I mean when I say that like You know you in some sense. We're all a nobody if you know, we don't have large platforms You don't we're not famous. We don't have a ton of people looking at us And uh, and so when we start like that, we have nothing to lose but then we get a bit of success and all of a sudden, you know, even if it's just a really little bit like Among your friends or something or you know, you're getting noticed because you solved something it immediately kind of fragilizes you You And or makes you more prone to just getting locked and not making progress from that point  on because  Again, now we want to hang on to the success.

We don't want to lose what we've we've we've got Maybe we figured out we think we figured out a kind of recipe  And so we want to latch on to that recipe and repeat it  And it really just has a way of working against you because the best place to be  Is totally open and totally acting as though you had nothing to lose, you know, and and maybe that's  a tad exaggerated.

I mean, I don't think you should always be acting as though you totally have nothing to lose, right? Yeah, you know, if you have a family, you don't want to be acting like a crazy person all the time, whatever, but You know, you do want to be very open, and you do want to be able to take risks, and you do, in many ways, want to act as though you didn't have much to lose.

Uh, if you've ever been in a business meeting, and maybe,  I mean, this is different for everybody, maybe you got a little bit, uh, angry once, and then you really spoke up, and then it, in hindsight, ended up to be a really good thing, because when you spoke up, as though you had kind of less to lose, because maybe in this case you were a bit angry, uh, someone noticed you, and someone listened to you, and hopefully you didn't  totally blow your lid and become a toxic individual.

But it pushed you forward more than you would have otherwise because for maybe just a brief moment in time you felt like you had less to lose  and uh, and you acted out a little bit and all of a sudden it led to something. There's probably moments like that in your life or maybe you've noticed that again as long as you didn't, you know, push that dosage too high. 

So what does this have to do with what I'm talking about? Let it, you know, let the environment build the thing.  You have to be very open like that. You kind of have to always be a nobody if you will. And, uh, and again, I don't mean that in the ultimate sense. I don't, you know, you shouldn't, you know, don't get a bunch of low self esteem because you're a nobody.

I just mean in the, in the best way possible, act like a nobody in the sense that you're not getting fragilized by any kind of success, even if it comes, because whatever comes to you, it's a rollercoaster, right? Sometimes it's successful in that same thing, two weeks, a month, two years later, it might not be that successful because the market changes.

Or the people around you change, or your interests in life change, and so forth. You never want to be locked into that thing. You have the ultimate truths in your life that you, that are stable, the things that are most invariant, the things that seem to appear true no matter how much you change. But that doesn't mean you don't keep yourself open to the change.

Because the only way to battle test the things that you believe in and the wisdom that you think you have, Is to keep moving and remain open and to have that humility to know that no matter what you believe it could be wrong It could be wrong So let's keep testing it and if it continues to hold true if it continues to remain invariant despite you moving  Uh, that's where the wisdom really comes from That's how you know Something that you believe in seems to definitely be true But you always have to have that humility and the way you do that is you kind of act like a nobody all the time You open yourself up you let the environment You know Um, constantly try to poke holes in the things that you put forward and, uh, and, and there's a very,  you know, it's, it's a beautiful thing to do, uh, when you learn to have the constitution to do this.

You know, it takes a bit of, I don't know what the word is, bravery, maybe a kind of courage. I don't know. And that's not to make yourself feel better about what you're doing. It's just, it does. You have to put yourself out there and know that at any given time you could be wrong with what you're building, with what you're believing, with what you're saying, with what  And uh, and and you have but the part that's on you And this is what I think is so interesting is not the analysis.

It's not the so called smart decision making. The part that's on you is the moving.  You have to keep moving.  If you can keep moving, if you can keep yourself open,  uh, to, to criticism and to also the opposite of criticism, to, to the praise. Sometimes, sometimes people are saying, yes, that's great. I love, I love what you did there.

I think that's exactly what we need. And then a lot of other times, no, I don't get that. No, I don't understand it. Um, what about this? And what about that?  And, and it, I think a good way to think about that is the environment is always there to help you craft your life, whether, again, those are the specific tangible things you are creating as part of your art, as part of your science, as part of whatever, you know, your, your, your craft, your vocation, or just the broader, more abstract, you know, Totality of your life, right?

Uh, your your life gets sculpted by the environments you join  Um, you know, it's kind of like if  you literally wanted I guess to kind of sculpt your body if you will Well, the best way to do that would be to join a gym and not even just join a gym But maybe a group of people who are working together to regularly go to the gym or do something outside the gym Maybe even better right?

You know ultimate frisbee or football or soccer just something where you get involved in the group You And, uh, it's not about, well, when do I join and how much do I do and what should my workout be? That's not what it's about. It's just about joining the group. It's just about getting involved. It's about getting integrated into a complex environment, which is constantly going to battle test you and you are either going to survive or you are not.

And as, as long as you keep the humility and the openness about you, you know, you, you have evolved to be an adaptive creature. So you will adapt. And you will find what works. And it's not for you to, to, be super smart with your decision making. Uh, it's not for you to, to take credit for all the great things that you're accomplishing.

I'm not saying it's for anyone else to take credit either, it's the environment, it's nature. You  have to allow nature to mold you.  So,  uh, you know, I said at the beginning, um,  we, we, you know, we go through life and, uh, and, and we're, we're crafting our own lives. We're crafting things within our life. You know, it happens at all scales. 

And it's easy to think that that all comes down to our decision making our own analysis, our own reflection of what's happening.  Our own way of trying to make sense of it. And of course, that's still true. That's not going to go away. Um, you know, it'd be ridiculous to just do things mindlessly and never reflect on them because again, you want to pay attention to those most invariant parts, those things that seem to survive. 

But the real critical part is not those decisions. Those decisions are constantly changing. You're constantly evolving. The most critical part is to open yourself up to the environment and, and move and think of it as the environment doing the decision making the environment coming at you. And, and, and that's where you'll get lots of different, you know, ideas, and, and notions, and concepts, and, uh, insights, and epiphanies, and all that.

They just keep coming from the environment. And, and it has a way of course correcting automatically. And I think that's kind of the take home message here. Is so much of life is actually automatic.  And I've touched on this before, the way the mind is able to do things automatically, whether that's in learning or, or other aspects of performing,  but this is really good news, right?

The fact that it's so automatic because we get stressed about what am I supposed to build? What am I supposed to put into the market? What am you know, what am I supposed to say when I show up at the meeting? What am I supposed to be doing? What should be on my website? What is my mission? Who am I supposed to connect with?

What is my job? How much money should I be, should I be making?  And what I'm saying is so much of that is actually just automatic. It's just done for you. As long as you keep putting yourself out there and moving and open yourself up to what the environment will tell you.  Uh, because people, as long as you keep putting things out there, it'll get judged, it'll get critiqued.

It'll also be met with a good deal of silence, which is kind of really painful. That's worse than critique, because you don't really know what the silence means. Often, there's people behind the scenes that love what you do, but they just don't tell you. Or there's people behind the scenes that hate what you do, and they just don't tell you.

So it's really not constructive. But silence can be its own type of constructive critique,  because you're not triggering something from the environment, you're not getting it out there, you're not getting the response you need to  be crafted by the environment, if you will. So I think that's a good message, I think it's important to see it like that.

It alleviates a lot of I think, you know, the stress that we tend to pile up on ourselves when we think that we have to keep making the right decisions in life. And I don't think that's what it's about. The decisions tend to get made for you by the environments you place yourself in. So just try to put yourself into the environments that look like things you want to become.

Right? Maybe it's a market you want to compete in. Maybe it's a group of people that are doing things that you'd like to do. Maybe it's physically fit people. Maybe it's whatever. Right? Artists, scientists.  You know, you, you, the only a real decision  is to put yourself into the environment and to keep yourself open to that environment so that it can keep making decisions for you. 

Again, it will be you who makes the, you know, the decisions, but there's so much,  one easier to make and two more effective, uh, to make when you are, are actually tapping into the information of your environment.  You know, if if you just internalize everything  and you don't open yourself up and you and you and you kind of put the responsibility of decision making squarely on your shoulders, not only is that pretty stressful, it's it's actually kind of stupid, right?

It's not a good way to do it because you are  isolating yourself from the overwhelming amount of information that you need access to. And that information is, is highly opaque. You, you don't have any face value direct access to it. The only way to actually get the access to it is to enter into environment, environments and to poke nature and to have nature mold your life for you.

You know, it's kind of, you know, we think so much about choosing our own destiny, choosing our own lives. In some sense that's true, but a lot of it is letting life choose you. Um, life will, uh, latch on to the things that you are actually good at. Life will notice things about you that you might not even notice about yourself.

That you're really, really good and that you really excel at. And, and other people will notice. If you enter groups, they will notice things in you. Uh, they will elevate you. They will, uh, bring you into opportunities. Even though they might not consciously be trying to do that. That's just, you know, they happen to be part of a group.

And they happen to be connected to certain people. You know? And then they happen to notice something about you, and it's not like they're trying to matchmake you, they just naturally involve you in something because you would, you know, it seems like you would be good for that. And so, again, that's just the environment,  uh, naturally making decisions for you, molding you, bringing you into opportunities, and allowing you to  automatically Uh, create, uh, quite a bit of success in your life, whatever, by, by any definition of success.

And I say that, it doesn't have to be monetary, it could be contentment, it could be some level of happiness,  it could be a spiritual success, you know, it could be a financial success, it could be a recognition success, it could be  An obscurity success, right? Maybe you really don't want to be recognized and you love the beauty that comes from obscurity.

That's also, whatever. Again, again, that's not really for you to decide.  If the world wants you in the spotlight, it'll put you in the spotlight because that's what you're meant to do. If you're not, you know, and that meant to do is very cliche, but not, you know,  I don't mean it as a cliche, I mean it as quite literally, let the environment choose what you're supposed to be doing, but you have to show up, you know, you have to meet that environment halfway,  uh, you have to keep yourself open, you have to keep trying different things, and you have to put things out there so that they can break, you have to put things out there so that the world can smash it, and it can critique it, And you'll see which parts are worth putting forward.

And, and of course, this is always everything, ultimately,  of any complex,  real world, non trivial value is going to be part of the evolutionary process. You have to have a lot of diversity, a lot of variation in what you do. It has to iterate many times and then the best parts have to get selected for it.

That can't happen if you're not putting things into the world on a regular basis.  So if, if you want to do content creation, you should not just be doing a little bit of content. You should be doing a lot of content, not because everything you have to say is so wonderful, but because you have to inject it into the real world.

You have to put it out there and let it get smashed around a bit. You have to get critiqued and also applauded sometimes, right? So you can select forward the best parts. And I think at the end of the day, it's, it's not about.  Oh, isn't what I released into the world so wonderful? I think it's that you got to be part of that journey.

You want to talk about really bringing meaning to your life. That's the journey you're looking for, the journey of learning, the journey of education. And there's no better education than that which comes from a real complex environment that you put yourself into.  Uh, you know, I think it's hard these days.

Uh, you know, in, in modern life, you got lots of business books. You got lots of people trying to sell you the recipe on things. Follow my system. Do what I do. Isn't, isn't that wonderful?  Uh, you know, that's not what I'm saying here. I'm saying, you know, don't, you don't have to listen to me. Listen to someone else.

You can listen to whoever. But the real listening has to come from no specific person or no specific group or institution. It comes from nature. It comes from the environment. Put yourself into the environments that you want to adapt to. Become that. And let those environments make the decision for you. 

You know? And again, this happens at the smaller, minutiae kind of scale of the specific things you build, but also the grander, broader perspective here is just, this is how you craft your life. It's not even you crafting your life. It's the environment will craft the life for you.  And it's not something that just kind of dissipates into nothing.

If you keep yourself open, things will converge. There, there is invariance there, there is structure there, but you have to discover that structure. It has to emerge naturally,  not by your designs, not by your so called smart thinking and deep analysis, not that there aren't times for that. And there's definitely times for reflection, but you have to reflect upon the structures that emerge naturally. 

So I hope that made sense.  So,  Look, we're all doing this, you know, we're all in this together. I don't, nobody's immune to this. Nobody has it all figured out. You know, I think if you go on social media, it looks like a lot of people have things figured out where, you know, even the people that have run into great financial success, they're still trying to find meaning in their life.

They're still trying to build the next thing. They're still comparing themselves to the, to, to, to the Joneses, so to speak. You know, in some sense, it's never enough. We're all trying to  get that kind of stable structure that, We look upon and say,  that's me. I'm doing the right thing.  That's my mission.  And, uh, and I really think the way to do that is  think less about you being the person to make all those decisions  and, uh, and make it the environment that makes the decisions for you. 

The people, the things, the stuff that you run into, the critiques, the automatic error correction that happens in things and in life when you open yourself up and you put yourself out there to make that happen.  So that's it for, uh, this episode. I hope you got some value out of that. Hey, if you, uh, are not already, you want to become a member of non trivial beyond just, you know, this free content that I give you, you can get some premium content at non trivial podcast.

com all one word  head on over to there. It opens a lap, you can sign up, you get all the usual content like this, uh, but you also get premium content. And, uh, you know, I call those deep dives where. You know, I talk a lot about the patterns right in life that I think are important. They're part of nature, they're part of science, they're part of life.

And, uh, the better you are able to, uh, store and recall those patterns in your life using techniques, then the more you're going to be able to implement them. And that's what premium content is all about. I'm in the process of loading a lot of that premium content now,  but I'm trying to build a community.

I'm trying to, to grow this. Thanks so much for all the people who have joined already and, uh, and your patience as I start to build this. But I think it's going to be really worthwhile for those who want to go beyond just what I'm saying here and learn to, to implement, uh, you know, these patterns in their life as techniques.

So go ahead and become a member at nontrivialpodcast. com today. Okay. Thanks so much for listening, everyone. Until next time.  Take care.