How you do anything is how you do everything. Your “character” or “nature” just refers to how you handle all the day-to-day things in life, no matter how small.
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Derek Sivers: Character predicts your future
Derek Sivers: Character predicts your future
Jason
on 03 Jun 09Saw this quote elsewhere a few weeks ago and I’ve been thinking about it on and off since then… here’s what I’ve put together as a response: “How you do anything by which you define yourself is how you do everything by which you define yourself.”
Anecdote: I’m meticulous when it comes to upkeep of my tech hardware or the precision of my woodworking, but I drive a P.O.S. car that hasn’t had an oil change in 7000+ miles.
Reasoning: The weights (of importance/relevance/attention) we assign to portions of our lifestyle are influenced greatly by our definition of ourselves. I am a techie/carpenter. I am not a “car guy”. My priorities (in a world where time and resources are finite) reflect that.
Ben D.
on 03 Jun 09@Jason: and yet you know (more or less) when your last oil change was. Sounds like you’ve assigned a low priority to the car in an informed and conscious way… as opposed to just being oblivious.
Will
on 03 Jun 09Interestingly enough, I take the quote a little differently. I understand your concerns with giving relevance to items and causes. However, I think this quote more or less says ,”You are only as good as your weakest link.” Which more or less means, perhaps giving a little more attention to those seemingly unimportant tasks could stabilize you more. Just some thoughts.
Sam X
on 03 Jun 09This is a good reminder of ancient wisdom.
“Whoever is faithful with little will be faithful with much.” — Jesus
joseph thibault
on 03 Jun 09sounds a little like Malcolm Gladwell’s thesis in his Newyorker article about the girls bball team from Silicon Valley, it’s about the effort, not necessarily skill.
Jason
on 03 Jun 09@Ben: I completely agree with you, it’s a conscious decision.
My problem with the quote isn’t that there isn’t reason or purpose to the way things are done (on a higher-level), because there is… my problem with the quote is that it uses absolutes like “anything” and “everything” when there is gray area to be considered.
You can’t, for example, look at someone’s shoes (since shoe care is one such “anything”) and surmise how they handle themselves as a person.
And consider the reverse: I know plenty of guys with meticulously cared-for tricked-out cars (sorry to dwell on the automotive) who are complete shit in the rest of their lives.
I agree that there is a correlation between a person’s attention to the seemingly inconsequential and the person as a whole, but I don’t believe conclusions can be drawn beyond the elements by which people choose to define themselves… that’s all I’m saying.
Marie Poulin
on 04 Jun 09This has ALWAYS resonated with me… I think this is way more a “big-picture” thing, than a “jumping to conclusions” thing based on one small part of a picture.
Time and time again I can see how those who are hesitant, self-conscious and afraid to take risks tend to be that way in many MANY small ways, ALL the time. People can make small changes, and even sometimes big changes, but when it comes down to it, I fully agree that how you do something is how you do everything.
Jason Klug
on 04 Jun 09@Marie: “How you do something is how you do everything”. Now THAT I can get on board with… I think we’re all on the same page, it’s really just the absolutes of the statement that get to me… more a technical writing issue than anything philosophical.
sensei
on 04 Jun 09Just because you don’t have the depth of perception to see how the way you handle your car is also the way you do everything else doesn’t mean that it’s not true.
The fact that you pay absolute detail attention to certain aspects of your life is the same thing as paying absolutely no attention to your car. The underlying principle is that you’re an absolutist – that’s why you hate the absolutes in these sentences so much.
He’s not saying “you neglect your car, therefore you neglect your life”, he’s saying “the reason you neglect your car is the reason you do everything else you do in your life”. We have patterns, and they are exemplified in fractal-based detail in everything we touch. We imprint the flavour of ourselves on to anything that comes through us.
That makes this aphorism easy to mis-interpret unintelligently, and not very useful, though, unfortunately.
Jason
on 04 Jun 09@sensei: If you’re talking about me, I’ll let you know that I’m Mr. Gray Area… far from an absolutist. Language just happens to be one of those areas to which I pay closer attention and have higher expectations.
When I refer to extremes of behavior, it’s only because that’s the fastest way to disprove a statement of absolutes from a logical (and, I feel, intelligent) standpoint. Life itself is a spectrum. But we’re talking about the words someone chose to represent a trend he noticed… I’m saying I disagree with the words (and the way those words twist an otherwise insightful statement to make it less so), not the existence of a trend.
Philosophical statements like this, are, in my mind, to be crafted more carefully (as a blend of language and mathematics). When I read this quote, I picture a Venn Diagram that’s out of whack… that continues to be my biggest issue with it. I agree almost entirely with the sentiment behind the statement.
KP
on 05 Jun 09@Jason: You are assuming that your character trait is “Meticulous”, in which case the quote doesn’t hold true for the reasons you give. So, perhaps your character trait is in fact “Meticulous when you consider it important”?
The quote is in fact a truism. You just need to find the character trait that fits all the evidence.
Jason
on 05 Jun 09@KP: Well put… that reframes my mental Venn, and it seems to be working now. I think you might have just convinced me…
It still feels a little awkward to put conditions on the trait itself, though… there’s not much point in asserting “anything” and “everything” if we can pile on a string of conditionals to make it become true in each instance (honing an algorithm for each person that encompasses the nuances of all situations). What’s the point in making the statement then?
Anonymous Coward
on 05 Jun 09I am so inconsistently inconsistent I don’t think this applies.
aris
on 06 Jun 09It is probably a matter of you interpret “anything” and “everything”. What do you throw in the “anything” bag to make the motto work? Instinctively it sounds right but I think it is only right when one really narrows the scope of the “anything” to a specific field. So, here’s another re-write:
How you do anything in a specific field, is how you do everything in that field.
Fair?
This discussion is closed.