130. The Paradox of Less
An iceberg has long stood as an excellent analogy for the disproportionate amount of support it takes to erect an edifice.
It is common to come across stories of successes that come across as simple, easy and natural. Hardly any of these seemingly simple achievements are a result of trivial effort — in fact, anything but.
Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger read for a few hours every day. They read all kinds of stuff — from financial journals to trade magazines to books on psychology and physics. For most of us, I think, reading is fun and perhaps even exhilarating if one reads for an average of an hour or less a day. Any more can get tedious — particularly if done day-in and day-out. However, all the copious reading that Munger and Buffet do, helps them make rather infrequent investing calls — these calls, more often than not, result in recurring returns to them for many, many years,
“Take a simple idea and take it seriously.” — Charlie Munger
Apple is known for only a few products like iPhone and iMac — not for a catalogue full of options. Google is known for its rather simple search functionality and email — not for a plethora of tech products.
Companies such as Google and Apple commit serious amount of funds and efforts to R&D to be able to produce a small number of highly differentiated products.
It takes months and frequently years of effort by a sizeable talented crew to make successful movies with high production values like Mission Impossible, Avatar and Bahubali series, but these movies last just a couple of hours. Impeccable performances by movie stars are usually preceded by an outsized amount of training and practice.
“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” — Stephen King
Many elite runners aim to be in peak fitness only twice a year. After their main events, they typically rest for a few weeks, followed by a couple of months of basic training before doing any race specific training. The key point here is that they reach peak form only twice in a year, interspersed by a good amount of rest. A winning home run takes just a few minutes to hit but years to prepare for.
A mathematician Ittay noted in an article that “India, by adding zero to the positional number system, unleashed the true power of numbers, advancing mathematics from infancy to adolescence, and from rudimentary toward its current sophistication.” A simple, little “zero” led to all this development.
It is not surprising that success generally is the result of a tremendous amount of hard work. But that is not the main point of this article. Successful people make the acts of success look easy, simple and minimal. Typically, behind this minimalism and simplicity is a lot of boring, mundane and what-may-seem-like torturous work. This irony of “less” being a result of a “lot” is the point of this article.
“If you want me to speak for an hour, I am ready today. If you want me to speak for just a few minutes, it will take me a few weeks to prepare.” — Mark Twain
Success generally tends to manifest with simple and almost casual ease. A lot of hard work goes into pulling off this simplicity. Accumulating stuff is easy. In fact, that seems to be our default tendency. Maintaining minimalism is difficult. It requires constant pruning of the old stuff and even more difficult, saying no to a lot of alluring new stuff. Minimalism generally creates elegance. Take writing, for example. Verbose writing, no matter how grammatically correct and how rich with vocabulary, generally puts off readers. Same message with fewer and simpler words creates much better impact. But writers, right off the bat, do not just start out writing simple and elegant stuff. The first few drafts of any work of writing (novel, article, etc) is anything but elegant. It typically is very verbose, strewn around with complex words and self-contradicting and confusing ramblings. Iterations of careful redrafting and ruthless editing convert a large quantity of layered, obstruse work into simpler, smaller, impactful piece of writing.
Bottomline
“It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.” — Mark Twain
If you aspire to build a great career, you will be better off being known for a relatively narrow set of capabilities/skills. If you want to create wealth in capital markets, you will be well served by limiting your focus to a small but sharp circle of competence. Focus is what will get you ahead but, by definition, it is narrow. Make no mistake, these differentiating competencies — while they may come across as “narrow” or “small” — will require a whole lot of effort to develop and maintain. I remember hearing somewhere that Jerry Seinfeld said that he prepares for about two hours for a two-minute TV appearance.
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