Home of Emanuel Ferm

Here’s a graph illustrating a model of the relationship between doing a lot of stuff, and the amount of fun it results in:

With stuff I refer to anything productive and rewarding, such as a course at school, a qualified job or a project of your own. And with fun I refer to the feeling of satisfaction and purpose that is the result of doing meaningful things.

So, what can this model tell us?

• Do more, create something, engage in productiveness and a great feeling will follow.
• Eliminate wasted time to give room for more personal projects, sports or arts.
• Being overworked removes all the joy from what you’re doing.
• Make sure to find out your personal “maximum workload constant”, to know the feeling of when there’s simply too many things going on. You’ll never want to end up getting burned again.
• Remember where your limit is, and carefully balance your workload to stay just below the threshold.
• The “maximum workload constant” is not constant: it can be extended to allow for an increased capacity.
• Having too little to do is far better than being overworked.
• When you have “almost too much to do” it’s really just the right amount of work!
• If you’re engaged in stuff you like, and you are filling your time with it, you’ll hopefully experience flow.

Or as the Ruby hacker _why said:

when you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create.

After all, it’s a thousand times more interesting to talk to someone that fills his time with interesting work and projects of his own, rather than someone completely defined by his music taste or belief. Experiences come through interaction with the real world, and they don’t create themselves — they need to be obtained through hard work. And a few leaps of faith.

Following the progression of historical epochs, the intelligence of people has increased approximately linearly. However, when time reached the industrial revolution the world met a tipping point: collective intelligence began to increase exponentially.

This is truly interesting. A child thirty years ago would be considered retarded today; increased life quality leads to a higher IQ, which is embodied in the brain (the Flynn effect). But what does it really mean, an increased collective intelligence? What are potential consequences?

The industrial revolution essentially brought the possibility for alternative occupations to the common man, a shift from purely life-sustaining labour to self actualization. Universities were founded, wealth created and life expectancy increased. Concepts such as “choice” and “spare time” were invented. The upper half of Maslow’s pyramid was given existence.

But the industrial revolution is history now. Instead, another social revolution is emerging — a natural next step for the development of the grassroots. It has to do both with information, and the distribution of it. I think the next lifestyle changing development will emerge from a world with a more evenly distributed intelligence, and thus a much greater aggregate. A smarter mob.

To reach it, there are two often overlooked concepts that need to be reconsidered:

1. The importance of “everybody”
No matter how superior the west (and Asia) could be over, let’s say Africa, it is of no worth whatsoever. Not until everybody is on the train, can the population evolve further. Why? Simply because the dependence of a poor nation and a rich nation goes both ways — the rich nation can never truly excel until the poor nation is brought out of poverty.

2. The importance of development
In many places in China, you won’t get a decent job unless you have a PhD. In India there are engineers working in call centers. There is an inflation within education. “Too many are too well educated”. Yes, all this is true, but the positive aspects of it are overlooked. This situation is new, but when it has matured I strongly believe that a much greater set of problems will be possible to address. Simply because more people know more, giving way to more solutions to more problems. Also, if there is one thing the world can not have enough of, it’s knowledge.

Any argument against development will always break. History taught us this.

Therefore, it is of great importance that more people educate themselves. That internet remains free from regulations and corporate interests. That access to internet is given to every person on the planet. That governments increase transparency and thus opening up for crowd sourcing. And especially that the poor nations once and for all can work for increased life quality, instead of sustained life. The answers exist, see for example Copenhagen Consensus.

The fantastic heights of which today’s well-developed civilization has reached, is much due to an aggressive playing of the Prisoner’s dilemma. Great advances at great costs. Short-term thinking in favor for long-sightedness. However, in reaching the next level game has to be played cooperatively.

All of the above boil down to one question: what will happen when the collective intelligence reaches its tipping point? What happens when information is even more integrated into even more people? What happens when 99% of earth’s population can solve mathematical equations in minutes, and look up facts in seconds?

What happens when we reach the point of a social singularity?

There are certain skills that are applicable to an almost infinite amount of different kinds of work. These include, for example, multitasking, self discipline, entrepreneurship, precision, timing as well as soft skills such as the ability to work in teams, leadership and motivation. Read a random CV and you’ll find more examples of this kind of skill.

I would like to describe another skill, similar to the ones already mentioned, but — according to me — much more interesting. As the title suggests, the skill consists of visualizing the effects and consequences of one’s own ability. Less strictly speaking, it is the ability to accurately foresee how the end customer will perceive the product one has created.

Examples are great — let’s give an interface designer this skill. His ability to create gorgeous graphics would probably remain the same, but his instinctive feel for his craftmanship would perfectly tune his designs to match what the customer expects. Hello, Jonathan Ive.

How about a politician? A noble message and a great plan is never enough for a political success — in a democracy populism is more or less always necessary. So, the most successful is the one who can sense the reactions his own words would cause to the public mind, and dress his message in just the right words. Hello, Barack Obama.

It’s perfectly controlling the puppet that is oneself. It’s full knowledge of what input gives what output.

Writers! A great writer can create the most vivid and living sceneries with the only aid of well-chosen words. But it’s not only up to the choice of words (if it was, the writer using the most adjectives would be the best) — it’s what not to include, it’s the order of words, the metaphores, the reader’s own knowledge etc. It’s perfect control of how to use the language to trigger desired feelings in others. The guy stating that “the pen is mightier than the sword” probably knew what he was talking about.

Consultants. CEOs. Comedians. Architects. Software Engineers. The list can be made long. A very clear common denominator among the people sharing this skill is a well-developed emotional intelligence.

The knowledge of the self, one’s own developed ability and the sensibility for the aggregate of the crowd’s mind makes it a characteristic of really interesting people.

It can, of course, be self-taught and mastered — something that is greatly aided by identifying what elements of one’s work that require great skill and is judged by another person’s perception. Then just KPI it, and add it to your daily personal development routine.