The Break School

Transcript of the Snippet

Hello and Welcome,

I’m Sanjay Khandelwal and this is the Break School, A self learning Podcast to enable you to do what you love, Everyday!

This is our third snippet on consistency. In the 1st snippet we discussed the primary reason for our inconsistency – Our dependence on emotions. We act only when we feel certain emotion like feeling great, feeling miserable, jealous, or inspired. Because our emotions are unpredictable, our actions dependent on those emotions get equally unpredictable and inconsistent.

In the 2nd Snippet we discussed Time blocking Method, a simple and powerful way to stop depending on our emotions and take action consistently

Before you move to the 3rd snippet. I would like to thank you all for writing to me about your experiences of using the 30 days challenges and Time Blocking method to start being consistent. Your feedback and comments is what keeps me going. So, Please continue writing and sharing your thoughts and experiences

In this snippet we will discuss, another powerful method to achieve consistency. 

Method 2 – The Inversion Method

It’s a method inspired by German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi and popularized by Charlie Munger, The Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and a longtime partner of Warren Buffet.

The inversion method, as explained by Charlie Munger, says that when you are trying to be good at something, instead of trying to be brilliant, consistently avoid being stupid. Or instead of trying to be successful at something, identify potential causes of failure and avoid them.

Let’s take an example 

Let’s say you want to quit your corporate job and become a writer. In a normal scenario, you would ask how do I become a successful writer?

However, If you were to apply inversion method, you would ask what are the different ways in which I can fail as a writer? In what scenarios will my decision to quit my job and become a writer prove wrong? 

Some of the possible reasons could be 

1. I’ll not make enough money through writing. I’ll get desperate and quit writing

2. I’ll stop enjoying writing after a few months?

3. I’ll have health issue and loose both money and time?

Now that you have identified the causes of failure, you work backwards on possible solutions. Let’s just look at the 1st cause

1. Ill not make enough money through writing : Let’s admit, no matter how much you love what you do, you need money to pay your bills. If you are just started off, you’ll take at least an year or more before you start making money from any craft. So to deal with the money problem, I’ll ask myself, Do I have enough savings to survive a year or more, so I don’t feel helpless even If I don’t make money? Am I willing to cut down on some of my expenses? Or should I take a part time job while I work on my craft? Or should I stick to my job for some more time, build some savings and work on my writing in parallel? In fact this will also solve your second problem, which is “I’ll stop enjoying writing after a while”. Wouldn’t it be better to realize you don’t enjoy writing while you still have a job at hand than when you don’t have any alternative nothing.

You can similarly identify solutions to your other causes of failure. 

So that’s inversion thinking, instead of trying to be extremely brilliant, just consistently avoid being stupid. 

Now how do you use this method to achieve consistency?

Well instead trying hard to be consistent, just identify what makes you inconsistent and avoid them. 

Let me give you my example. When I started this podcast three months ago, I promised myself that I’ll release at least one episode each week. I asked myself what will stop me from maintaining this consistency? I listed down 7 to 8 reasons, some of them were 

1. Health Issues 

2. Not having listeners

3. Not finding Guests for the show

4. My day job getting hectic?

5. My Planned Vacations 

I then worked backward to deal with each one of them – 

1. Health Issues : I knew that if I fall sick then I’ll not work on my podcast. Because nothing is more important than health. So to stay healthy, I make sure, I eat my meals on my time, I sleep on time and I do some basic exercise for 30 minutes each day. But for all you know, I may still fall sick despite all of this, So to ensure I can release one episode every week, I’m trying to have at least two podcast episodes ready at any given time. 

2. Not finding listeners : I knew that I did not find listeners, I would eventually get demotivated and stop podcasting. To deal with this issue, I started using social media channels I had never used before. I post my episodes on WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, so at least people know about the podcast. Second, I personally request people to share the episodes they liked in their circles and third, I have made peace with the fact that building an audience takes time. I need to constantly produce good content, people will slowly find it, listen to it and share it. So when there are days when I barely have few people listen to the podcast, I tell myself, it’s okay, This is natural.

3. Those were two major reasons, then there were other reasons like I have 2 weeks long vacations coming up or an important presentation coming up at work. I know during this period I’ll not be able to record or edit an episode. So I compensate for this by blocking extra time for the podcast on the weekends or during public holidays. 

So that is inversion thinking for consistency – Identify all possible causes that will dent your consistency and then actively avoid them. Of course, you cannot identify all possible causes. However, performing a pre-mortem can help you significantly avoid common causes and be more consistent.

So do take out a few minutes today, during your time block and make a list of all the issues, professional and personal commitments that will not allow you to work on your break project consistently. Once you have them, check if you can avoid some those commitments, postpone them or compensate for the time you will lose by blocking more time for your break project during weekends and holidays.

I would hear your experience of using the inversion method to be more consistent. You can write to me sanjay@sh048.global.temp.domains or post a comment on iTunes or Castbox

If you would like to receive future episodes and snippets from the break school, then do subscribe to The Break School on Spotify, Castbox, Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. 

I’ll see you next week again, with another snippet on consistency and story of another Pathbreaker doing what she loves. 

Stay tuned. Good Luck doing what you love, Everyday! Consistently.