The Law of Average Joes

"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake;
you are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.
We are all part of the same compost heap; 
we are the all singing, all dancing crap of the world."

- Tyler Durden (Fight Club)

I call it The Law of Average Joes:

On average, you are average.

You may have a very discintive nose, or a distinctive thought process, or a distinctive emotional pattern... but on average, you're just like everybody else.

On first glance,  this can seem rather offputting... almost insulting.  In a culture where individuality is prized above all else, the notion that there are more similarities than differences between us can seem like an attack.  

"But my differences are what make me, ME!"

-Anonymous

Anonymous has a great point, and I don't think his/her words are necessarily false or untrue... but I don't think what I'm saying and what anonymous are saying are any different.  However, what I am saying, is that I think that in our quest to be individual, we've lost sight of our similarities.  And, far from it liberating us, I think that we've ended up making things harder than they should be.

What am I talking about?

Well, let's say that someone wanted to figure  out how to change a habit.  They might start out with brute force, just trying to stop cold turkey.  If that didn't work, they'd try a variety of different techniques, whatever made sense to them, until they finally found an effective way to change the habit.  But what if they decided that before they tried to change the habit, they would first start with The Law of Average Joes.  Rather than starting from scratch, they would start out trying to find other people who succesfully changed habits, and find, on average, the techniques that seemed to be most effective.  Even better, they might try to find someone who has done Research on how the average joe changes a habit. Again, not every technique would work perfectly for them, but, on average, most of the techniques would.

Seems pretty common sense, almost not worth making a post about... except I think we often discount The Law of Average Joes in the name of uniqueness and individuality.

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."

-Douglas Adams

As Mr. Adams 
eloquently points out, we often fail to use many of the great resources at our disposal to take advantage of The Law of Average Joes, such as "recorded history," "scientific research," and (probably the most frequently discounted of all), "advice."

To illustrate this point, lets take an example that isn't quite as neutral as changing a habit... happiness.  Surely, happiness is a personal and individual thing... surely no two people have ever become happy in quite the same way.  While this is true, The Law of Average Joes still holds.  Turns out, that while the specifics are different from person to person, on average, people who are happy are happy for similar reasons.  If being happy is one of your goals (and isn't it on most people's top tens?) you may want to check out some of the cool and relatively recent research being done in positive psychology.

The fact that "on average, you are average", leads to some other very liberating conclusions.   Of course, this law does not discriminate... it applies to everybody.  When you then apply it to the comparison of two people, you arrive at what you might call The Second Formulation of The Law of Average Joes:

You have as much in common with any given person as you have differences with them.

So why is this liberating?

"So, let us not be blind to our differences - but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved."

- John F. Kennedy

Because it means you can find common ground with ANYONE.  When you realize that you have more in common with someone than there are differences, you realize that there's no such thing as "Us and Them"... there's just Us.  And that my friends is a very liberating thing to realize.  By focusing on and finding our similarities first, we can then have common ground through which to work through our differences.

So now that we know that The Law Average Joes applies to both groups and individuals, the next logical step is to ask how we can raise the odds.  We know that things that work for most people on average should work for us too... but how can we get those odds to be ABOVE average?  The answer lies in what we'll call The Law of Similar Differences:

For every time that an individual or group deviates from average in the same way you do, this will increase your chance of success.

So in practical terms, how would one use this law?

Well, in the 1960's, researchers needed to use this law to fix the problem of malnourished children in third world countries.  They started out using The Law of Average Joes... asking themselves what the average joe did to keep their children nourished.  Unfortunately, they ran into a stumbling block.  The techniques the average joe used to keep their children nourished required money... money that their target joes just didn't have.

This is when they turned to The Law of Similar Differences... they started to look for households in the same countries, at the same poverty levels, which against all odds had properly nourished children.  They then found the common behaviors among all these households, not present in the malnourished households, and found the right behaviors to teach the malnourished households.  In Vietnam, Save the Children used this method to reduce malnutrition by nearly 80%.

On a personal level, I used The Law of Similar Differences to find a time management and planning system that worked for me.  First, I took a look at what the consensus was online... what worked for the average joe.  I found Getting Things Done, which seemed to come highly recommended.  I used it, and many things definitely worked for me, but there were a few areas that I felt were a little off.  So I went to someone I knew online who was planning and managing many of the same things I was, but was doing it way better than me.  He recommended Zen to Done and I haven't looked back since.

So there you have it, The Law of Average Joes and it's derivatives.  Tools for figuring out what works.  Do you agree with The Law of Average Joes?  Disagree?  Leave a comment and let me know.

-Matt

Further Reading:

Influencer, the Power to Change Anything (Amazon Affiliate Link)

Stumbling Upon Happiness (Amazon Affiliate Link)

Change Project: The Hearth Model(Webpage)

Creative Expression: The Forgotten Skill

Creative Expression is IMO a sorely underdiscussed topic in both the self-help and seduction communities.  Creative expression can roughly be described as anything that is not direct communication which conveys who you are.   In the video, I give some basic principles and steps to take when learning to creatively express yourself through a new medium, as well as examples.   Below, I'll give a quick outline for those of you who like reading more than watching.  I understand that the video is sucky... I'm still new at this vlogging stuff :).

1.Start With First Principles

Start with those most basic rules which have been developed for your medium, which apply to everyone who is a master... you must work WITHIN those principles to express yourself.

2.Find a Role Model that You Connect With

Once you have found the first principles, the next step is to find a role model who's style of expression resonates with you.  Straight out imitation is okay at this point, as you'll become more unique as you go through the next stages.

3. Find Moments of Brilliance

The next step is to take the baseline style that you have created, and look for places where you go ABOVE your current level.  Artwork that you think is better than anything you've done, clothes that you like more than anything else in your wardrobe, etc.  Extract personal principles of expression from these, and apply it to new pieces of art, new clothes, etc.

4.Increase Detail

Now, you use the same three techniques above but with increased detail. Instead of just the basics, you're starting to layer things together in ways that are uniquely you.

5. Add Flair

Now you add the finishing touches.  Those tiny little details that tie everything else together.  At this point, your expression should be completely unique.

6. Upgrade

Now it's time to start at the beginning again.  Look at your original baseline for even deeper moments of brilliance. Then do the same thing for detail, then for flair.  Remember not to skip anything here... you don't want to upgrade your flair, only to find that it doesn't fit with your upgraded baseline.

New Blog

For those of you who haven't noticed, I've split my blog into two.  Halffull's Journey (the new blog), is going to be for daily updates, personal goal setting, etc., such as the organization updateI promised for today. If you've been interested in those posts, you should Head On Over There and subscribe.

This blog is more about the big picture, it will contain only the big insights and articles gleaned from the smaller day to day stuff.  I've you've been skipping over the todo lists and organization updates, to focus solely on the articles, then this is where you want to be.

In other news, my new digital video camera should be arriving soon (buying a digital video camera was on my six month dreamline).  When it arrives, I think I may try my hand at vlogging.

Stay tuned.

-Matt

Cool Article by 10pin at "It's Just Talking to Girls"

The Eagles' Guide to Pimping: Check it Out.

Two Powerful Thoughts: Competitions of the Heart, and False Dependencies

Just got back from beating myself up at the gym... it was suprisingly energizing.  When I walked into the room, the energy was dull, low, and unfocused.  When I walked out of the room, I could feel the intensity.  The experience really exemplified two powerful thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head the past few weeks: Competitions of the Heart and False Depencies.  Once I fully embraced these two concepts, the energy just began to build and build, not just in myself, but in everyone else present as well... so how did this transformation happen?

Competitions of the Heart

Competitions of the Heart was a concept that I began to think about in it's current form as I was helping to coach my old middle school wrestling team.  I noticed that there was a certain type of competitive spirit that was completely non-destructive, which pushed everyone to their limits but brang people together instead of pushed them apart.  I began to refer to these situations in my own mind as "competitions of the heart".  A competition of the heart looks something like this: Everybody is going along, doing their own thing, at a certain level of intensity and drive.  Suddenly, someone comes along and kicks it up a notch.  You can see it in their face, a slight bit more of intensity, a higher level of focus.  

At first, people around them will try to make it a competition of the body, trying to match their speed or strength... then they'll realize that the challenge was not a challenge of the mind or body, but of the heart.  Suddenly, you'll see THEIR faces begin to change, with that same slightly more intense, more focused look.  This will begin to spread around the room, untill one of the competitive people decides to kick it up ANOTHER notch, and the process repeats.

The interesting thing about competitions of the heart is that they only take one person to grow. It only takes one person who challenges people not to be as good as him, but to be the best THEY can be.  In doing so, it creates a synergystic effect around the room... causing EVERYBODY to be better.  The question still remains though... if it's a competition, how do you know who's a winner, how do you measure it?  The answer is to count false dependencies.

False Dependencies

When I first began thinking about false dependencies and competitions of the heart, I didn't connect the dots between the two.  The notion of false dependencies came to my attention from one of the mentors I have enlisted to help me with my weaknesses.  He's an expert on the issues of organization, productivity, focus, and attention that I'm working on right now.  I was discussing with him the fact that my planning system had been falling apart for the past week, and I hadn't been able to get much done because of that. 

He pointed out to me that just because I hadn't been putting things into my planning system as per usual, did not mean I couldn't do them.   The notion came as a shock to me, not because it's a big huge notion that's earth shattering, but because I genuinely hadn't been thinking in those obvious terms.  I had created a false depency between my planning and my doing, that had caused a literal halt in my productivity.

This experience caused me to begin thinking about where there might be other false dependencies in other areas of my life.  I began to find them all over the place, and as I eliminated them one by one,  my productivity began to skyrocket.

Me being strong depends on me exercising, me exercising depends on me having exercise equipment, me having an exercise equipment depends on me going to the gym, me going to the gym depends on me having a car.

I began to notice some patterns of false dependencies

• Something Scary depends on Something Tedious.
• Execution depends on Planning.
• Something Hard depends on Something You're Waiting For.
• Something New depends on Gathering More Information.

then I began to take it deeper, realizing just how deeply the false dependencies ran.

Getting up depends on having arms and legs.

As I began to take it to those deeper levels, I realzied that competitions of heart were nothing more than competitions to see who could eliminate more false dependencies.  Eliminating everything false depenedcy until the only dependency left was heart, until you were running on sheer willpower alone.

I should clarify, I 'm not suggesting that you get rid of incentives, tools, and tricks, I'm merely saying that you learn to be able to live with out them, so that when you encounter a situation in which they're not there, you can still press on.  Do you really think a prize will matter when you're beginning to feel pain from pushups? Do you think pain will matter when you literally don't feel like you have the strength to continue?  Do you think thoughts will matter when you ACTUALLY don't have the strength to continue? As these false dependencies fade away one by one, you get closer and closer to relying on heart alone.    The winner is the one who gets closest.

By consciously examining your life for false dependencies (paying special attention to the patterns I mentioned  above), you can begin to develop your own heart.  The, put yourself in situations where you can have competitions of the heart, and push your heart to the limits.  IT's worth it.

If you liked the article (or you didn't) please leave a comment and let me know why, I'm trying to create content which is tailored directly to my readers.