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Abstract

t most do not want to take responsibility for answering. Humans are social, imitative creatures — we decide what to want, and how to get it, by looking at what others seem to want and do.</p><p id="f5f4">Behavior is plumage. It is the superficial, external hint at some inner trait. When a person’s behavior truly reflects who they are, that behavior is a side effect of their character. Not being able to see directly into the mind of the person we want to be like, we use the surrogate of their actions. We then start to copy those actions. In effect, we are trying to learn to fly by attaching feathers to our trunks.</p><p id="0b58">Biographies of successful people do not produce legions of newly competent businessmen and artists and athletes. Because there is no formula to follow. The actions that make a person great arise require an exquisite sensitivity to context, timing, subtle clues gone in milliseconds, moods, secrets, etc. This kind of knowledge cannot be made conscious and explicit, for to do so would be to severely weaken it and would require wasteful amounts of mental energy.</p><p id="237f">Whether the achievement you are aiming for is becoming the best in the world at something or simply removing all the excess baggage in your mind that stops you actually living rather than existing, prescriptions will never get you there. They will just replace the original target. You will practice them, you will wonder if you’re doing them correctly, you will seek prescriptions as to how to follow the original prescription more faithfully, and so on. Others will follow the same prescriptions. Demand will be created for teachers and coaches and instructors to guide you through whatever micro-territory you’ve strayed onto.</p><p id="7b1c">I’ll give an example. As a young person, you were captivated by a writer who seemed to have the secrets of the universe at her fingertips. How great it would be to finely adjust the currents of emotion and meaning and anticipation in a reader’s mind. This art, this is what life really is. Naturally, you decide to learn more about how to be a writer. Write every day, do so in the morning, apply to this college. Find a community of writers. Solicit feedback. Drink coffee. Exercise! It improves mental clarity, five times per week for maximum benefit. Network. Promote yourself on Twitter. Read the classics. Memorize poetry. Give up alcohol. Read ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.</p><p id="53ad">Prescriptions are actually fine for mechanical task

Options

s. Learning how to assemble DIY furniture; how to lose a few pounds before a wedding; learning the alphabet and how to spell. But if you want to become a successful writer the only hope you have is with the very thing that gets buried under prescriptions: intuition. Writing is highly non-mechanical, or at least it was before the internet made everyone a writer. It’s about feeling and mood and balance and even though you have to have a lot of explicit knowledge about something, this is a distant second step compared to giving your instincts the freedom to roam and develop without the parenthood of prescriptions.</p><h1 id="a706">Prescriptions and Feedback</h1><p id="b040">The question sometimes arises, “what about feedback?” It’s the close cousin of prescriptions. It’s linked with mentorship which is considered the <i>sine qua non</i> of mastery. This is a messy area. The problem with feedback is that it’s rarely genuine. The person giving it is trying to be helpful, or to impart their personal philosophy in the form of “things I wish I knew.” Almost no one can resist the temptations associated with this role, the “if he <i>just </i>did this” or the need to be the soil in which a student blossoms. The mentor will probably also have internalized the norms of the culture in which he has succeeded. These norms, regardless of the culture they came from, will be arbitrary and time-limited in ways that subtly or invisibly wear away the uniqueness in the student’s DNA.</p><p id="83f7">History suggests that mentorship is important- innovation in art and science tends to be geographically concentrated. The best mentorship is non-prescriptive which is to say that the core nature of the mentor is allowed to manifest and respond to the student. Generally, it is far more instructive to pay attention to nature (markets, behavior) rather than to what people say.</p><h1 id="30c0">Life is an Art</h1><p id="3d07">Life is very non-linear. There is no way to live life “according to science.” Science is a research procedure that produces a benchmark for objective knowledge. We have generalized from its achievements into believing that at whatever level a person may be, the next step upward is about better data and “proven” methods. To follow a standard contained in a prescription is really to chase a ghost.</p><p id="6c5a">What actually works? It’s a subject for another essay: Seeing the truth in the reality you occupy. The very thing that prescriptions keep you distracted from.</p></article></body>

The Harm of Prescriptions

(Not the medical kind)

The entrepreneur Peter Thiel famously asks interview candidates the question, “what important truth do very few people agree with you on?” Most people say something like “God doesn’t exist” or “the education system needs massive reform.” These are bad answers because they express superficially controversial truths which many people would agree with. The question reveals that almost no one has a truly rare worldview.

If I had to give an answer I would say this. Prescriptions—by which I mean life advice, how-to’s, “habits of effective people,” tips and hacks —keep people trapped in pain and mediocrity and are a large barrier to living fully.

The Attention Economy

In my neck of the internet woods, a lot of people are selling writing courses. I see the students of these courses on Twitter sharing the latest essay in their prescribed 30-day streak. Common topics are how to write better, how to develop the habit of writing, making a living on the internet…

The people who lead these courses have a few statistical elements in their favor. A small handful of students may develop a career in writing. They will be the source of the testimonials.

Many more will observe. They are not necessarily serious about writing, but see it as one way to start improving yourself. They think maybe they could do it. They see that distribution has never been less scarce. If only they had a few essential pointers. But what to write about? Well, once this course is finished, you could write about learning to write!

You get attention by selling other people a How-To. How-tos are sugar rushes of possibility.

The Effect of Prescriptions

Prescriptions are like a middle man that removes you from your goal. The prescription becomes the new goal and between it and its related prescriptions, it may well extract a lifetime of unrewarded effort.

Why are prescriptions popular? People don’t know what they want. This is a question that most do not want to take responsibility for answering. Humans are social, imitative creatures — we decide what to want, and how to get it, by looking at what others seem to want and do.

Behavior is plumage. It is the superficial, external hint at some inner trait. When a person’s behavior truly reflects who they are, that behavior is a side effect of their character. Not being able to see directly into the mind of the person we want to be like, we use the surrogate of their actions. We then start to copy those actions. In effect, we are trying to learn to fly by attaching feathers to our trunks.

Biographies of successful people do not produce legions of newly competent businessmen and artists and athletes. Because there is no formula to follow. The actions that make a person great arise require an exquisite sensitivity to context, timing, subtle clues gone in milliseconds, moods, secrets, etc. This kind of knowledge cannot be made conscious and explicit, for to do so would be to severely weaken it and would require wasteful amounts of mental energy.

Whether the achievement you are aiming for is becoming the best in the world at something or simply removing all the excess baggage in your mind that stops you actually living rather than existing, prescriptions will never get you there. They will just replace the original target. You will practice them, you will wonder if you’re doing them correctly, you will seek prescriptions as to how to follow the original prescription more faithfully, and so on. Others will follow the same prescriptions. Demand will be created for teachers and coaches and instructors to guide you through whatever micro-territory you’ve strayed onto.

I’ll give an example. As a young person, you were captivated by a writer who seemed to have the secrets of the universe at her fingertips. How great it would be to finely adjust the currents of emotion and meaning and anticipation in a reader’s mind. This art, this is what life really is. Naturally, you decide to learn more about how to be a writer. Write every day, do so in the morning, apply to this college. Find a community of writers. Solicit feedback. Drink coffee. Exercise! It improves mental clarity, five times per week for maximum benefit. Network. Promote yourself on Twitter. Read the classics. Memorize poetry. Give up alcohol. Read ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Prescriptions are actually fine for mechanical tasks. Learning how to assemble DIY furniture; how to lose a few pounds before a wedding; learning the alphabet and how to spell. But if you want to become a successful writer the only hope you have is with the very thing that gets buried under prescriptions: intuition. Writing is highly non-mechanical, or at least it was before the internet made everyone a writer. It’s about feeling and mood and balance and even though you have to have a lot of explicit knowledge about something, this is a distant second step compared to giving your instincts the freedom to roam and develop without the parenthood of prescriptions.

Prescriptions and Feedback

The question sometimes arises, “what about feedback?” It’s the close cousin of prescriptions. It’s linked with mentorship which is considered the sine qua non of mastery. This is a messy area. The problem with feedback is that it’s rarely genuine. The person giving it is trying to be helpful, or to impart their personal philosophy in the form of “things I wish I knew.” Almost no one can resist the temptations associated with this role, the “if he just did this” or the need to be the soil in which a student blossoms. The mentor will probably also have internalized the norms of the culture in which he has succeeded. These norms, regardless of the culture they came from, will be arbitrary and time-limited in ways that subtly or invisibly wear away the uniqueness in the student’s DNA.

History suggests that mentorship is important- innovation in art and science tends to be geographically concentrated. The best mentorship is non-prescriptive which is to say that the core nature of the mentor is allowed to manifest and respond to the student. Generally, it is far more instructive to pay attention to nature (markets, behavior) rather than to what people say.

Life is an Art

Life is very non-linear. There is no way to live life “according to science.” Science is a research procedure that produces a benchmark for objective knowledge. We have generalized from its achievements into believing that at whatever level a person may be, the next step upward is about better data and “proven” methods. To follow a standard contained in a prescription is really to chase a ghost.

What actually works? It’s a subject for another essay: Seeing the truth in the reality you occupy. The very thing that prescriptions keep you distracted from.