Why You Should Always Question the Default

by James Barry | Feb 18, 2021 | Favorites, Mindset

Every single day, you accept decisions that were made for you.

It may be the font on your screen, the layout of your inbox, or the arrangement of the icons on your phone.

Now you may be thinking “No, not me, I’ve selected all of those. I’m an individual!”.

Have you looked at the humidity setting on your fridge or the factory settings on your house’s router? Probably not.

Default choices exist all around us in our lives because they make life easier. These “defaults” usually end up being the most popular option since they are the easiest, lowest friction ones to choose. Just by doing nothing, you choose them.

When you start changing defaults though, you can start making tiny improvements each day to your life that will quickly compound over time.

Do you question defaults? Just look at your browser.

In 2015 a study was run to better understand what impacts employee retention and success.

The hypothesis was that job hoppers (i.e. employees with 5+ jobs in the past 5 years) would be more likely to leave their current job earlier than non-job hoppers. The study ended up finding no correlation between the number of previous jobs and likelihood to leave, but they had access to another dataset: The browser that the applicant applied through.

It turns out employees who applied using a non-default browser (such as Brave or Firefox) ended up staying in their positions for 15% longer. The data also showed that the same employees saw increases in other performance metrics such as total sales made and customer satisfaction.

The theory is that employees who question the default have a higher likelihood of choosing options that would make them more successful. Whether or not it was trying out new sales tactics or exploring a better way to help customers, their mindsets were constantly focused on finding a better way to do something.

How To Use Defaults To Your Advantage

Steve Jobs famously wore one outfit: a black turtleneck, a pair of Levi jeans, and New Balance sneakers. It was his default outfit, and it allowed him to remove the decision making process of what to wear from his schedule. He wore this same outfit for over two decades, and in doing so saved countless hours of time.

While this is extreme, it’s an example of the power that actively adding defaults into your life can have. It commits your future self to a decision and simplifies your choices. These decisions can quickly compound over time and can be used to improve nearly every single area of your life.

Here are my 5 personal favorites defaults:

Always have a glass of water or water bottle nearby: Water is great for you, and this will help you drink more. I absolutely love water.
Don’t sleep next to your phone. You won’t use it before you sleep and you won’t use it when you wake up. Put your phone charger somewhere far away.
Get a phone holder for your car. A small one, but this will guarantee you don’t drive while navigating on your phone.
Turn off all notifications on your phone. Nothing on your phone is urgent so you don’t need to be checking it 100+ times a day. If it’s urgent, somebody will call you.
Always have an Audiobook or Podcast in que. Whether you’re cleaning, driving, walking, or doing most daily tasks, defaulting to listening to something that is educational or enjoyable is a great way to improve every experience.

This is by no means an exhaustive list and I skipped over some pretty big ones (like having an automatic savings account), but the above are the ones that have had the biggest effects on my life.

How Companies Influence Your Behavior Through Defaults

Companies have a lot to gain, or lose, by changing default choices. The most common way this is done is through opt-in or opt-out choices.

Opt-in: You need to actively choose to do something.
Out-out: You need to actively choose to NOT do something.

Opt-out options are everywhere. You see them in the form of automatic renewals, pre-checked newsletter signups, or auto-upgrades for your trip. They can sometimes make your life easier, but often they are not in your best interest.

One of the most exploitive opt-out options was created by banks that automatically added overdraft protections to consumers bank accounts.

An overdraft happens when you spend more money in your bank account than you don’t have. Most people (including myself) have done this at least once. While the name “overdraft protection” implies that it will “protect you”, it actually does the opposite. This option made overdrafts more common. Imagine you have a low bank account balance and go buy something with a debit card. Here is what would happen with, and without, overdraft protect:

Without overdraft protection, the transaction would be declined.
With overdraft protections, the transaction would be completed but the bank will charges you a fee, usually $35.

Banks made, and still make today, BILLIONS off of overdraft fees. It’s one of their primary sources of revenue and until the government stepped it, it was the default choice for many consumers. Companies that provide free services need to make money somehow. One of the best ways for them to make more money, is to change the default choices you have, which is usually worse for you. They may choose to share your data, opt you into more expensive programs, or hide programs that should be free from you.

Be careful of the defaults that people pick for you. Unless you pick them yourself, you can never be sure that they are in your best interest.

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

by James Barry | 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 James Barry | 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:

Ed Sheeran writing and singing his music.
Pablo Picccaso creating art (50,000+ pieces).
Richard Branson building new companies.
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:

Learning any new instrument (such as a guitar).
Volunteering at your local soup kitchen.
Painting for the first time in your life.
Learning to speak in public.
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.

James Barry