The Humble Mr. Counter

Entry question: How do we make sure we actually apply our techniques a lot?

The Humble Tool

One of the major Technique Traps is that we don’t actually apply the techniques we have. We just coast on the sugar-high of superiority. That stops right here.

I present to you the Greatest Invention in the History of Productivity:

(drumroll please)

.

.

.

… a simple Counter!

We will count - actually, empirically - how many times we have used a technique.

No fooling around. All too often, we complain that our techniques fail us. We’ve put in lots of work into it, we say, and got nothing in return. It feels like we use it all the time. Not any more. You’re not allowed to talk about a technique unless you’ve actually used it a hundred times, as demonstrated by your Counter.

A Measure of your Mastery

Measure your understanding of techniques by keeping track of their counters.

Think: how often have you actually used your most “powerful” techniques?

Here’s a partial list of my techniques with usage counts (rough):

What the f*ck am I doing even writing about these topics? I barely reach a dozen uses for most of them over my entire lifetime!

The Counter List makes it obvious over time which techniques I actually know and which ones I don’t. Building circuits in your brain takes repeated action. Doing something a measly 3 times hardly qualifies. I need to take more action. A lot, lot more action. Over time, I need to use these techniques hundreds and thousands of times if I want to get great results.

Make a list of your own. I guarantee a few nasty surprises.

Counter for Writing

In the same vein, maybe I should apply a technique at least 25 times when I write an essay on it.

I shouldn’t claim to understand a technique unless I have executed it several dozen times. It was fine when I was blinded by Naive Realism, but it’s almost disingenuous now. We all know how easy it is to fall into the Technique Trap - I might fool myself with the “understanding” I gain from writing.

The question isn’t whether I can do that sustainably for each essay. The question is whether I can write an essay in good conscience when I have zero empirical evidence.

As Richard Feynman said, the imagination of nature is greater than the imagination of man. You’ll find more interesting things by looking at the world than you could ever produce just by thinking.

– Paul Graham, The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn (emphasis mine)

And, if you write down your empirical examples, your reader can use them to build up his own technique!

So, if I write about defeating Naive Realism, I should actually use the proposed technique 25 times and report my findings. Most probably, it will change my understanding (and thus the essay). If I write about Bayes Theorem, I should first go and apply it 25 times in real life (no artificial examples). Same goes for an essay on the allegedly greatest invention in the history of productivity ever (this essay, if you were wondering). No Empirical Examples, No Right to Talk.

Counter for Reading

Wait a minute! Why only test yourself empirically when you write? Why go easy when reading?

Apply some technique 10 times when you’re reading or learning from some resource. Don’t move on otherwise.

Seems a bit strict, doesn’t it? Well, what is the point of just reading the instructions (i.e., the learning material)? That does nothing to increase your performance. Instructions != Technique. You have to actually take action to get benefits.

If you really want to improve in that area, use the Counter and take action! If not, why are you even reading it? No, you won’t be able to use those “ideas” for “innovation” or “creativity”. They’re just words on the screen. To build up the actual ideas, you have to interpret those words and test your interpretation against empirical examples. Our mediums of communication aren’t rich enough to convey the full technique itself.

If you’re not going to use it 10 times, don’t read it. If you are going to read it, then use it 10 times.

Corollary of Counter for Reading: Write your own stuff (essays, notes, etc) such that it’s easy to use it 10 times right then and there.

When you’re reading it after a month, you can test yourself right away and refresh those circuits in your brain.

Just like… a textbook!

Coventry all over again. The wheel turns, nothing is ever new.

– Sherlock, A Scandal in Belgravia

Notes

Appendix: Use the Counter technique 25 times

What does that mean?

The Counter technique says that I should keep track of how many times I use each Technique. So, to use the Counter technique itself 25 times, I need to collect a list of 25 Techniques and their usage counts.

June 01, 2015: I’ll create a list of techniques with their counts starting at zero today and update as I go.

The particular rules for counting don’t really matter as long as they promote action. The number should increase over time and become huge - that’s all.

By default, the number represents how many times the technique was used.

List of Techniques (in alphabetical order, till June 01, 2015):

Yes, it sucks right now. But, hopefully, there’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne.

Created: June 1, 2015
Last modified: August 6, 2015
Status: finished
Tags: Naive Realism, techniques

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