So I did join Ramit Sethi’s earn1k insider’s list.
It’s quite interesting to note how often he responds to objects and naysayers about his product. Of course he’s right — if you can’t spare 30 minutes from your day to save you potentially hours then you’re wasting time by even considering throwing 1k into a program on how to improve… (business practice, marketing, negotiation skills…). Most of his regular emails seem composed of this kind of hustle, to urge people to get off their butts and refuse mediocrity.
This is good because often many of my closest friends, while all intelligent and capable, do not invest their time into activities that will benefit them in the long run. Video games are the best time-waster. You spend 40 or 60 bucks to buy a game and then spend the next week or two playing it and beating it. It’s good to spend 12 hours, say on Ico or 115 hours on GTA4 and then go to bed at night feeling like you’ve made progress. You have made progress. It’s just not applicable to life. It’s the same thing with wildly successful multi-player games like Left 4 Dead, Battle Field 2142 or Call of Duty 4. Yes I’ve played most of these games (except Ico). And I’ve not beaten a single one of them. But the online games are especially trying because you do cooperate with other people, or play against them, and you get players who take them way too seriously. Any sense of accomplishment from a video game is real — even if the accomplishment and the work never fully or even partially translate into a real life benefit. Unlike say, climbing a corporate ladder or learning a new trade… So the email urging is good. People are hooked in some sense, many many people. And it’s good to call people out — the ones who would set goals for themselves but never follow through… because the goals are only there for them to remind themselves that they aren’t as loserly as anyone else… (I find that so annoying, to have a ‘serious’ conversation with someone who believes they will do something but never do it!) So I do agree with Ramit on this.
But at the same time it’s freak’n annoying. I didn’t realize that reading his emails would mean that I would get badgered into doing whatever he wanted me to do. Taking action right away, or at least within a reasonable time frame. That’s okay though, because if it’s annoying enough I could always unsubscribe. But I won’t because I do find value in what he says, even if most of his emails is him responding to whining (he must get alot of people who reply with whining).
Anyway, I’m starting to ramble but I did look at Ramit’s offering of a 60 minute interview with Tim Ferris on the subject of testing. They are about the same age I am, and they speak of testing as Testing. I listened to the interview while I was writing some database code for MySql and while answering some emails on a Saturday afternoon. The subject of testing is interesting, although I kind of wished they had set the foundation for it better.
In my work-life I don’t have much guidance as to how to go about conducting business. Since my services are relatively new on the market (as a niche business), testing is necessary for me. So some areas in which testing apply are in a networking situation, saying different things for the breakfast 30 second microphone time — is useful. Trying out different pricing, and trying to see what fits best is another thing I’ve done. Asking customers and potential clients how we may better service their needs, also works. Ferris had some interesting and useful comments about testing (for instance don’t test when the risk is too high). Perhaps I am too new to Ramit’s blog — because I am not certain what the context is for testing. For instance, when is it good to test? The interview seems to conclude that testing is always good — when the risks are not too high. I guess this is alright, but I think at some point, testing becomes trolling. In real life or online.
How do you know what to test? Going back to the video game scenario, people ‘test’ the rules in video games all the time. For instance, in the original Battlefield 1942 people learned that they can put the engineer bombs into a jeep and drive it into a tank, effectively destroying the tank with a car bomb. That’s testing but the rewards are so low… and transitory. Owning on an online server might be great if you are 14, but it’s less relevant if you’re 25 or even 35… Social ‘situations’ online such as on discussion forum don’t seem like a good place to ‘test’ although asking people their opinions on things is less a test than just surveying… (this is where I disagree with their notion of testing, although its vaguely applicable). If anything, determining when to test seems like a matter of boredom or curiosity. Ultimately, doing website SEO requires some kind of testing — to find out one’s target market or to find out which words are the ones which best attract customer dollars (if it is indeed that kind of website). So testing as an effective activity really depends on the context of what’s really at stake. When does testing become less effective and more about provoking people for whatever reaction they get?
If anything, the most useful point about testing is more about how to determine when we need to test something. It’s obvious when we aren’t getting results at all or if we don’t have enough information to make a decision that we need to expand out knowledge base. The best way to do that is to test new situations. But it becomes less obvious if we are succeeding that we need to test if we are to maximize or improve what we want to do. Life is (often but not always) about learning new things. If we are complacent, satisfied with what we have, or afraid of losing — then testing becomes less important. Likewise, how we can step outside of our normal processes and conceive of a new way of doing things — paradigm shift or whatever you want to call it — is a completely different topic in itself, one that has had many many books written about it. In fact, such a level of creative-stepping-outside-of-the-proverbial-box is the wet dream of many many scientists, writers, managers, marketers, CEOs… and of course all those really smart finance people who create new finance instruments for investors all the time.
So figuring out how to test or construct new paradigms or ‘scripts’ as Ramit calls them, may be beyond the scope of this entry, even if that’s what I’m talking about. In fact, the other side of testing is the purpose of testing — at least in business — and that’s INNOVATION.
Recently Harvard Business Review Blogs have got some interesting thoughts on INNOVATION. Two of the three articles they have relate to the topic of testing. For instance, Quicky is an open-source model for product innovation, created by users to try and make better products. In essence, the users themselves were suggesting what they would like to buy. That certainly circumvents normal business ‘testing’. Of greater relevance, though, is this entry on Google’s attempt at being innovative — which basically could be resolved if Google were to test its innovations before committing to creating them. This is a clear case where testing is necessary.
In general, testing isn’t just about originating a new idea and seeing if it will fly, it’s about interacting in the field of interest — succeeding where you want to succeed and trying new things to mark out territory for proposed behavior.
On this vein, it may be of greater interest to introduce someone who has built a career off of testing (social boundaries) — and then publicizing it for all to gawk at… Would Ramit interview Tucker Max about testing and how he determines what next to test or how he goes about ‘testing’? (Who knows, maybe he already has! I just started reading the Ramit’s blog, but I don’t read Tucker’s…)
*note, bringing up the two of them yet again seems kind of nefarious, or atleast it feels that way to me, but I think relevant because their models of interaction seem so similar… it may be interesting to see if Tucker Max can engage on the level of discourse Ramit seems so bent on focusing… and what he might be able to say… if it would even be relevant at all. It is of note though that Ramit did mention pick up artists I haven’t listened to this pod cast, but I did read the entry. Ramit’s main criticism about PUA is that it’s more about scoring than less about personal self-development… I don’t know… do you think Tucker Max is about personal self-development? It seems to me that he is about some kind of development… although it’s quite unclear what.
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