If you spend a significant part of your time online, and on twitter - you might have come across the name Tyler Cowen. Tyler is a professor of economics at George Mason University. Among other things, he writes on Marginal Revolution with his fellow professor Alex Tabarrok, hosts a podcast Conversations with Tyler, and has written around 20 books - not just academic, but on food as well. However, this post is not about Tyler.
At GMU, Tyler leads a funding program called Emergent Ventures. The idea is to fund moonshots - ideas that can change the world. The amount of funding is surprisingly small as compared to other conventional philanthropic funding. But Tyler takes bets on those people and projects that nobody else does. One of the thing that Tyler looks for when evaluating EV applications is earnestness.
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Decoding Earnestness1
The google definition of Earnest is ‘resulting from or showing sincere and intense conviction’. Two qualities are highlighted - sincere, and intense. The google definitions of these two are, ‘proceeding from genuine feelings’ and ‘of extreme force, degree or strength’ respectively.
In the short life that I have yet lived, I have time and again noticed this quality in successful people. Successful not only in the sense of being CEOs of large companies (even though almost all CEOs of large successful companies are, in fact, really earnest), but also in the sense of anyone who is really knowledgeable. Someone who really knows their stuff. A common trait of these people is that they are sincere and intense to their chosen vocation. Sincere in the sense that they genuinely like what they’re doing, and intense in the sense they constantly keep doing good work.
Being genuinely interested in something without the intensity to work on it, or only have the intensity to work while not genuinely caring for it - both lead to failure. The important thing to understand is that having only one without the other is an incomplete recipe to success.
There is also a sense of honesty attached to being earnest. When you know what you like and care for, you are clear on what you want to do. The first thing you need in order to succeed long term is to be honest with yourself about what you love. Doing something you’re really good at but do not care for might make you successful in the short term, but you will leave it at one point or another for the need of a better engagement. There is a limit to how much you can drag yourself to work doing things you see no sense of, and find no joy in. I always say - ‘The surest way to fail is to do something you do not like’. The reason why I do not say ‘The surest way to succeed is doing something you like’ is because I do not believe loving something is the only thing you need in order to succeed. You need other attributes as well. The reason why I say the other phrase is because I do believe that irrespective of what you have going for yourself, if you do not like what you do, there is no way for you to succeed.
So if you want to do well, optimize for love.
Another really important aspect of honesty that I have recently realized is to be honest with yourself about how much you don’t know - even if it about something you have been working in, or are generally aware of (or at least people think so). Because it is much easier to have intellectual humility in fields that we do not consider ourselves natives of (even though, as I mentioned in a tweet earlier, embodying intellectual humility is way harder than it seems). Earlier I used to actively resist being honest to myself about how little I knew and how less precise my knowledge is, even for things I love. I suppose there was some sort of status game I was playing with myself where the blanket of obscurity made me feel as if I knew most things. But sooner or later I realized, that I cannot just pretend to like something, but also need to make sure that I know that thing inside out.
So if you want to do well, be honest and precise about the extant of your knowledge.
The aspect of being earnest that I have most struggled with is the second part of the definition i.e. intensity. It is very easy to pick up something, read a bit about it and then proclaim to countless others that you like it. But it is equally as difficult to build expertise around it. And success can’t come without the latter. This is perhaps the less glamorous part of curiosity that is not often talked about. Curiosity, in almost all framing and debates is looked at as this beautiful thing that makes the time pass by as if one was sitting in the garden of Eden. The reality couldn’t be far from it. Being curious about something is as grueling, tiring and demands as much hard work as any other task. Of course the sources and motivation of the initial impetus are different. (I have to do this versus I want to do this). But the bottom line is that you will have to do it. You will have to put in the hours, you will have to make the sacrifices, you will have to carry the logs, and climb through sewage. Curiosity leads you to many wonderful places, but in the end you will have to navigate through those places by your own will. Curiosity by itself cannot lead to success, it has to be coupled with commitment. Do you wonder why you have so many unread articles, unlisten-ed to podcasts, papers you never read, conversations you never had etc.? That is because you are curious, but not committed. And you need to have both to succeed. Also do you know who has endless curiosity but no will to commit follow through? Children. And the last time I looked, they weren’t really successful.
So if you want to do well, commit to your curiosity.
While reading for this piece, I found out that there is a piece by Paul Graham on the same topic titled (spoiler alert) earnestness. I have not read the piece, and will not until I write this piece first.
Good piece, boss. Looking forward to reading more from you.