Justly Do It
As the new year kicks off and we all flip the bird to the wild ride that was 2016, self-help posts are coming out in droves.
Not that there is ever any lack of them, the nearly non-existent margin between things-as-usual and the absolute max possible output for such posts has now been filled.
There are good posts. There are great posts. There are crap posts. And plenty that find themselves somewhere in between.
You have 10 ways to own your life decisions this year. How to go from good to great. How doing so much less will magically produce so much more. Why meditating for 12 and a half minutes every morning before even hitting the head will most certainly make you a creative genius. Cold showers, daily journaling, less caffeine.
Read. Write. Keep a journal. Meditate. Ignore the news. Set goals. Set values. Turn off Facebook. Learn to say ‘no.’ Read these books. Read those books. Follow these motivators. Ignore those commentators. Remember these life hacks. Learn those psychological tricks. Start with why. Something about Elon Musk. Something about what Peter Thiel said about what Bill Gates read last year. Create habits. Learn how to get into deep-think and flow. Kick the bottle. Sleep more.
I know all of this because I read it.
What Matters
Reading this sort of material is in no way problematic. We all need variegated sources of information to help us figure out how to live life better.
The more the merrier, in fact. It helps us think more broadly and deeply than we’d do if left to our own devices, something we should pursue and be thankful for when it’s found.
Yet we all must remember that none of it matters if we don’t do the one thing we need to do: execute.
All the reading, pro-tips, life hacks, human insight, and listicles in the world don’t amount to anything if we don’t “just do it.” And while Nike has had that phrase locked down for going on 30 years, it is as applicable as ever.
So, yes, gather all the resources you can. Discard all the distractions in your life. Read voraciously. Study the giants. Glean from history and literature. Find the signal while avoiding the noise. Get yourself into a good rhythm via ritual and habit.
But only bother with any of these things if you’re going to actually bother executing. Only spend time attempting any of them if you’re going to make an attempt at your goal, your vision, your dream, your thing.
Justly
The world needs executors. We have plenty of dreamers. We have plenty of pledgers and promisers. We have plenty of entertained, numbed, and generally unconcerned quasi-zombies walking around not bothering to do much beyond exist.
We even have plenty of actual hustlers—smart, thoughtful, and tenacious people with a great work ethic—pissing away their energies and efforts on the next multi-billion dollar social media app rather than the next product to help multitudes of their fellow humans in deep, significant ways.
(And why not? Snapchat’s parent company Snap is valued 35% higher than SpaceX. Our priorities certainly need some realignment.)
The world in which a picture taking app with filters is more valuable than a company building reusable rockets and aiming at the colonization of Mars is same one that is running up against increasingly dire warnings concerning the future stability of our planet.
The list of not-really-worth-it unicorns is tremendous. And while I’m not against the leisure or luxury that many of them bring us, I do think that there is a problem in our valuations due to there being a problem in our values.
- Roughly half a million people die from malaria every year (thankfully this is well down from the million-plus just five years ago).
- An estimated 21,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes.
- Three and a half million people die every year due to lack of clean water.
But damn if that puppy face or princess fairy filter isn’t just totes adorbs.
While living in the sort of world we find ourselves in, there is great need for executors. Precisely the kind that have a grand vision for what the world should look like—not just what the next goldmine technology will look like.
As such, we don’t need visionaries drowning in the quicksand of mere motivational mantras.
We don’t need people who have actual value-add ideas losing their way because a guru on Medium pointed them towards all sorts of distracting habits to employ that were ironically intended to help them avoid distractions.
And we absolutely can’t have more effort put into things the market currently demands (e.g. Snapchat) over and above things the world actually needs (e.g. SpaceX).
Yet, for all of our good intentions, we continue to primarily push out motivation aimed at the status quo and more of the same. But we need more than business as usual.
In short, we need people who have a vision for a better world to actually execute. That means we must avoid them getting caught up in all the gimmicks and buzz of how to execute.
Our work can be quite just. It can be a means to a better end. It can move the needle forward for quality of life. It can right wrongs, prevent disasters, or keep children alive and well fed.
To be distracted from acting, then, can ultimately be a means of injustice. If we can act then we must act. And we must act aright. Merely talking about action is no true substitute for the action.
So, whatever your thing is: please, for all of our sake, stop focusing on all the how-to’s and just fucking do it. A better world is waiting for us to do just that, and to do it justice.
P.S. In the sprit of this post, I’ll donate a dollar to the Against Malaria Foundation for every recommend this post receives.
About the author
Hi there, my name is John. I love having conversations. My posts are an attempt to start some. Please join in the conversation via commenting or sharing. Thanks for reading!
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