James Barry

The Benefit of The Benefit of The Doubt

by | Jan 28, 2021 | Mindset

On the evening of September 26, 1983, it was a night like any other for Stanislav Petrov.

A lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense, Petrov had been assigned to a bunker command center near Moscow.

This bunker was not like other command centers in Moscow though because, unlike the rest, it housed Russia’s most important Cold War asset: Oko, the nuclear missile warning system. 

Petrov was on duty watching the system’s satellite feeds when, shortly after midnight, the early warning system reported a missile launched from the United States immediately followed by four more… all aimed at the USSR. Monitoring for this exact event was why Oko had been created, so that Russia would be prepared for any escalation in the Cold War by the United States.

Soviet Military Protocol required Petrov to report the incident up the chain of the command so a retaliatory launch could be triggered. This strategy of mutually assured destruction was the only defense Russia thought it had against the United States. 

Petrov did the unthinkable though, and directly disobeyed protocol.

He did so because not only did he not believe that the Americans would start a war with five missiles, but he didn’t believe that they would start a war at all. Petrov was correct, and the missile “alerts” were eventually determined to be caused by a malfunction from the satellite picking up a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds.

In that moment, Stanislav Petrov gave the entire United States the benefit of the doubt because the only other option was war and for that choice he will go down in history as a hero.

What is the Benefit of the Doubt?

The benefit of the doubt is assuming that somebody is telling the truth when they might otherwise be lying.

This is a common occurrence when somebody you know provides you an excuse that you have no way to confirm.

  1. I was late because there was traffic!
  2. I couldn’t make it to dinner because I had to work.
  3. I’m sick so I can’t make it out of the house today.

In these situations, it’s easy to give the benefit of the doubt. You’re dealing with people you know. You’ve had many conversations, shared experiences, and developed trust over a period of time. Of course if this person has a history of lying, then that would be different (but you should be trying to avoid relationships with lying in general).

Giving the benefit of the doubt to people you know is easy. Giving it to people you don’t is hard.

What’s The Downside

A few years ago a man came up to me at a rest stop when I was filling up my car. 

He was in a rush, told me an incredibly detailed story that involved a broken down car, a state trooper, two towing companies, and finished it by asking for $19 so he could pay for the cheaper towing option (or else the State Trooper would tow it and charge him much more).

My immediate thought was “How do I know if this guy is telling the truth?”.

Then, after 15 seconds of thinking about it, I realized I couldn’t figure out if he was with 100% certainty.

What I was certain of though, is that I have been in similar situations before.

I’ve been out of my element, without access to a phone, to cash, or to friends and I have had to beg for help.

So I gave him $20.

The downside? I got scammed out of some cash.

The upside? I got somebody out of a tough situation.

If this situation repeated itself 100 times, I’m sure a I’d get scammed a few times. Maybe 10, maybe even 50.

Even if I got scammed 50 times out of 100, and ended up helping only half of the time, I’d would rather be the person who helps, rather than someone who assumes the worst and acts as a bystander.

The Benefit to You

If you start giving strangers the benefit of the doubt, it will immediately change the way you interact with the world, and your mindset, for the better.

Think about the many day-to-day interactions you have with people that you don’t know.

The stressed out barista who messes up your order at your local coffee shop…

The homeless man who you pass by who is asking for food or money…

The attendee who showed up late to your meeting…

If you give them the benefit of the doubt, not only will they be better off, YOU will be better off. Your internal thoughts will become more positive, you will be happier as a person, and people around you will notice.

Always giving the benefit of the doubt is, without a doubt, the best way to live.

Follow The 20 Hour Rule, Not The 10,000 Hour Rule

by | Jan 21, 2021 | Favorites, Time Allocation

You likely know, or have at least heard of, Malcom Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule popularized in his book Outliers: If you put 10,000 hours of deliberate practice into any skill, you too can become a master.

This rule explains the Beatles success. They performed live in Hamburg 1,200 times from 1960 – 1964 before they became the most well known rock band in history. Their first album stayed at the top of UK charts for 30 weeks, and all but one of their first twelve albums hit #1 on national charts.

10,000 hours explains the wild success of Bill Gates. He began putting nights of coding practice in on the local high school computer starting at 13 allowing him to hit 10,000 hours of practice before co-founding Microsoft at the age of 20.

This rule is so well known that famous artists like Macklemore & Ryan Lewis have attributed their success and written songs about it:

Ten thousand hours I’m so damn close I can taste it

On some Malcolm Gladwell, David Bowie meets Kanye shit

This is dedication

A life lived for art is never a life wasted

Ten thousand

– Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

10,000 hours has become so popular because its simple: If you work hard at anything you can be successful. While a few research papers have debated whether this rule is true, that’s not what I’ve decided to write about.

I’m focusing on why the 10,000 rule can actually lead you in the wrong direction.

What does 10,000 hours cost you?

This rule, at its core, glorifies the sheer volume of work you need to put in to be the best, to be a “master” at a skill. It takes 0.1% of high-achievers and puts them on a pedestal and shouts “they worked hard and that’s why they were so successful, you can be successful if you work hard too!”.

This thinking completely leaves out the much larger portion of people who also put their 10,000 hours in, but did not make it. Think of the failed entrepreneurs, Olympic hopefuls (athletes who didn’t make the games), or unknown artists who never made it big. This group is vastly larger than the small group who “made it”.

A singular focus on achievement in one field may be worth it for some, but many others realize, often too late, that they would have rather spent their time somewhere else. I have put 10,000 hours into achieving my own athletic dreams and while it got me far, it did not get me as far enough to make me happy.

Few people take into account what 10,000 hours truly costs: 10,000 hours of your life. They only think about what you can achieve.

If you devoted that time elsewhere, how many other skills do you think you might be able to develop in 10,000 hours?

According to another fun (and likely over simplistic) rule, the number is right around 500.

Welcome To The 20 Hour Rule

Recently popularized by the author Josh Kaufman the 20 hour rule states you can learn any skill with 20 hours of deliberate practice. Any skill at all, just takes 20 hours learn. For many of us, that’s 20 hours well spent.

Want to learn how to play the guitar? – 20 Hours.

Ride a unicycle? – 20 Hours.

Repair your car? – 20 Hours.

Learn photoshop? – 20 Hours.

While you will not end up being the best in the world after 20 hours or even come close to mastering the skill, you will develop a better sense of what you’re good at and enjoy. You’ll also become a more well rounded person overall.

Many societal pressures currently force us to specialize. Whether or not it’s to get a good education, make it in that important career, or just so you can say you’re the best at something, specialization has its advantages. It’s not the only way to approach life though, and sometimes it can be important to take a step back and consciously understand the different ways you can allocate your time.

The majority of us will not follow the path of Bill Gates or The Beatles and discover early on we truly enjoy doing in life. It will take many years of learning and exploring new skills until we finally get to the point where it will be worth it to put those 10,000 hours in.

It’s always important to strive for excellence, but life is long.

It’s equally important to try a lot of things and figure out what we enjoy.

Creation vs. Consumption: 4 Ways We Allocate Time

by | Jan 14, 2021 | Favorites, Time Allocation

The clock just hit 6pm.

You’re wrapping up work for the day and now you have a choice to make.

Do you give into your desire open your phone and mindlessly consume, or do you go create something?

Creation, simply, is the act of adding something to the world. Shooting a video, baking cookies, writing a blog post, volunteering at a local non-profit, going to the gym (adding muscles to the world), etc.

Consumption is the act of taking something from the world. Watching TV, reading a book, eating food, scrolling through social media, mindlessly gambling, etc.

The act of creating and consuming are parts of our everyday lives. As a general rule, the more time you spend putting time into the creation bucket, the more you will accomplish overall in life.

Ideal allocation to each bucket will differ for each person and many of us (including myself) struggle to spend enough time on the creation bucket. The late Anthony Bourdain describes his own struggle in a highly relatable way:

“I understand there’s a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons and old movies. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid, and outwit, that guy.”

– Anthony Bourdain 

In one way or another, we are all Anthony.

Constantly trying to outwit that person inside our heads who want us to give into our vices.

The best way to win any battle, internal or external, is to understand who you’re up against…

Which conveniently leads us to the 4 different types of creations & consumptions: Great Creation, Experimental Creation, Good Consumption, and Mindless Consumption.

Great Creation

Great creation is simply that, producing something that is truly great.

This happens when you’ve learned the one thing that you’re great at, and you continue spending the majority of your free time doing it.

Few examples:

  1. Ed Sheeran writing and singing his music.
  2. Pablo Picccaso creating art (50,000+ pieces).
  3. Richard Branson building new companies.
  4. Joe Rogan interviewing on his Podcast (1582 podcasts and counting at time this article was published).

The common thread in for all the creators above is that they found something they were great at early on in life. They are part of the lucky 1% of humanity who found their niche early on.

For 99% of other humans, we are still looking for that niche. So that brings us onto the next bucket of creation: Experimental Creation.

Experimental Creation

Experimental creation occurs when you are producing something new that you’ve never done before. With the proper mindset, this can be one of the most rewarding ways to spend your time in life.

Common examples of experimental creation include:

  1. Learning any new instrument (such as a guitar).
  2. Volunteering at your local soup kitchen.
  3. Painting for the first time in your life.
  4. Learning to speak in public.
  5. Starting a blog.

Experimental creation is something that you will spend the majority of your time doing when you’re younger, before you know what you’re good at and what you love.

It’s important to not try anything new just once, but to stay at it until you can say “I know I can do this, but I don’t want to spend any more time on it”. In fact, it only takes you 20 hours to get to this level (based on Josh Kaufman’s research).

No matter how old you are, you should devote some time to experimental creation every week. Without it, you’ll never get the opportunity to try new things that you may love and be great at.

Good Consumption

We are constantly consuming throughout our lives.

Whether it’s literal consumption (food), information consumption (news / books), or entertainment consumption (TV, video games, podcasts, etc.), consumption is a constant. The differences in the quality of what we consume will have a direct impact on us in both the short-term and long-term.

Just think of the consumption we all do on a day-to-day basis: food.

If you choose a donuts instead of oatmeal for breakfast everyday, your health will suffer.

The same goes with the news you consume and the entertainment you watch. Unless whatever you’re consuming provides long-term benefits or if you’re actively enjoying it in the moment, then your consumption falls into last category: Mindless Consumption.

Mindless Consumption

This is the consumption bucket that I try to avoid 100%, yet I still find myself occasionally falling back into it.

Mindless consumption is simply what you do when you have nothing better to do with your time.

100 years ago, it was hard to mindlessly consume anything because consumption items were scare. In our current society though, our ability to create infinite duplicates of digital media such as videos, social media, and videogames, has made mindless consumption a part of our daily lives.

While most of us know we should avoid this, the tricky thing with mindless consumption is usually hidden behind good consumption.

If you scroll social media for 5 minutes, you will find information, updates on your friends lives, and maybe even learn something new. If you continue scrolling for another hour, you gain little more.

If you finish your favorite Netflix series and then decide to start a new show, you will likely pick a show that you never set out to watch. You’re not deliberately deciding to watch it and while it could be one of the best shows you’ve ever seen, chances are it’s not and it will just be a waste of time.

It’s incredibly easy to switch from good consumption, where we place a high value our leisure time, to mindless consumption, when we have nothing better to do with our time. The key is to know when this switch happens.

In summary

Think about where you are in your life and how much you should be allocating to each bucket.

Great Creation happens when you know you can produce something amazing. This is one of the easiest stages to spend time on, but one of the hardest to get to.

Experimental Creation is where you should be spending the majority of your time, especially earlier on in your life. The more you experiment and create, the more opportunities you will get to discover what you will be great at.

Good Consumption: This is a bucket where you make a conscious decision to devote your time. Everybody needs to put some time into this bucket because we all need leisure, and we all need to learn from others.

Mindless Consumption: Avoid this bucket at all costs. It will make you unhappy.

My 2020 Year In Review

by | Jan 7, 2021 | Annual Review

This year I’m writing my first annual review in an effort to summarize what has gone well this past year, what has gone poorly, and what are the areas that I plan to improve in.

While this exercise is important for me to take stock of how the past year has gone, the primary purpose is to create a plan for my future self. That way I will have a public record of my decisions and commitments so that I can hold myself accountable to what I want to accomplish over the next year. I have spent too much of my life with unclear plans, working towards unclear goals, and this review will force me to take an honest look at myself and ask “Are my actions helping me live the life that I want to live”.

There are three questions that I am going to answer (thank you James Clear who I took this annual review concept from):

  1. What went well this year?
  2. What didn’t go well this year?
  3. What am I working toward?

As a note, this is a personal process, but I hope my example here can inspire you to start your own annual review.

What Went Well?

Career: After searching for a job for just over 3-months after shutting down a failed venture, I was incredibly lucky to receive a job offer right when COVID-19 hit in March. I interviewed in-person, but have been working remotely since I started. Unlike my previous jobs, I told myself upfront requirements were non-negotiable in this role (autonomy, personal growth, and large impact on this business) which has led to me working in the most fulfilling role that I have had to date.

Developing Thick Skin: The primary function in my current role is sales which involves a lot of “no’s” and rejection. I have also started to put out content publicly under my own name which has opened up another channel for people to disagree, or in most cases ignore, what I have to say. Prior to this year, I had a large fear of rejection which I’ve managed to decrease to the point has now decreased to the point where I can put out my thoughts on my own public forum (i.e. this blog).

Family Time: Just like many of us, one of the silver linings of the pandemic was that I had an opportunity to see and spend more time with my family than I usually do. Since I am the youngest of five, many of my siblings are moving on to the next stage of their lives (i.e. marriage) so I make sure to cherish every moment we can have together.

Reduced Phone Usage: I broke my phone at the end of August and decided to spend the entire month of September without one. The immediate increase to both my happiness and attention span was astounding. While not having a phone created a few issues (specifically, I could not use 2-factor authentication), this change led me to permanently delete many time wasting apps such as social media and games.

Prioritizing My Own Path: I have spent a long time going down life paths that others have told me will make me happy without ever truly asking myself “what do I want to do”. While some paths worked out to my advantage (going to college), others did not (spending 2+ years pursing a failed career in finance). This past year was the first time I began to make decisions that were true to what I wanted, rather than a version of myself that I thought I wanted to be.

What Didn’t Go Well?

Mental Health: This was an incredibly tough year for all of us and while I know I’m lucky to not have to worry about paying rent or where my next meal will come from, the stresses of the pandemic did create an enormous strain on my mental health. Like most things, poor mental health created a downward spiral and I spent far too much time trying to distract myself, rather than focusing on fixing the root causes of the issues I was dealing with.

Wasted Time: Like many of us, I filled a lot of my free time this year with junk such as binging Netflix and playing video games. While I certainly don’t have regrets about some media I consumed (such as watching Queens Gambit or playing Red Dead Redemption 2), there was a lot of media I consumed that I won’t remember and was a pure waste of time.

Commitment: In the past 2 years I’ve put serious time into pursuing at least three potential businesses ideas (two physical products, one blog) and none of them came to real fruition. It’s hard to tell if an idea will work if you don’t spend at least a year committed to making it work. For this year, I am committed to trying to make this blog work.

What am I working towards?

So where am I trying to go? While I still plan to take everything one year at a time, here are the five things I am committed to achieving in 2021.

Consistency: My New Years Resolution is to write 52 articles in 2021 which I plan to publish every Thursday. This is going to be first one of many articles that I put out and over the course of this exercise and through it I hope to become a better writer and meet new people who can challenge and improve my thinking.

Healthier Habits: Specifically around sleep and meditation which are both critical to developing a healthy mindset. While I’m not going to set myself any specific numerical goals here (only picking my article writing resolution for that), a general theme of the year will be to increase the consistency of how often I implement healthy habits.

Prioritization of Time: I have spent far too much time in my life on activities that did not benefit me, nor that I wanted to be doing. This happened since I did not have a set of clear priorities in life and I was in my early 20s when it seemed like drinking and partying was the best thing you can do with your free time (it’s not, especially once you start getting older).

Bias Towards Action: Whenever life becomes overwhelming me I tend to freeze up and replace my problems with a distraction such as Netflix, which is a common, yet ineffective coping mechanism. This resulted in multiple negative feedback loops (you ignore the problem, the problem becomes larger, the cycle repeats itself). This year I’m committing to not let any long-term problems build up by always prioritizing a bias towards action.

Giving Back: It’s scientifically proven that helping others makes one happier. While my primary focus will continue to be my own personal development, I plan to share my journey with as much transparency as possible on this blog in an effort to help others who are in a position similar to me. I also plan to begin committing a portion of my income every year to charitable causes that I think are important which is something I should have done long ago.

As Always…

My life is a work in progress.

If you’re reading this, you’re watching me take one of the first steps (of hopefully many) towards deliberately building a life that I want to live. I hope my example can inspire you to do the same in your own way.