Five Slices #3: The Interview Project
Garfield return-on-time fallacy, Clean India challenge, the maddening need for control
Welcome to “Five Slices.” Every day, I’ll be sharing five stories and ideas from history, business, technology, culture, and art. Some will be fun, some will be useful, all will be interesting, and they’ll take you less than five minutes to read.
You can check out the complete list of issues here.
1. The stories of people in their own words
This is one of my favorite photographs of all time:
Staged as part of a publicity stunt for the Rockefeller Center building being built in 1932, this is probably “the most famous lunch break in history.” To these men, it was just another Tuesday. The buildings we see and the cities we live in are built and shaped by ordinary people like this. Who were they? What were their lives like? The Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts and the Elon Musks have biographies written about them. What about the assembly line worker who polished your floor tiles or fixed the screws in your television?
David Lynch, one of the artists I admired most, made a series called “The Interview Project.” He traveled 70,000 miles across America, interviewing people from different backgrounds, asking them all sorts of things: like whether they were happy, what they were proudest about, what regrets did they have, what did they look forward to, their childhood memories, and so on. He just let people talk in their own words and recorded them. The most ordinary-looking people have the most surprising stories.
The series has 121 episodes. They were missing from the internet but 3 months ago, they were re-uploaded in high definition. You can watch them here. Some of my favorite episodes are Tommie Holliday, Palmer Black, Louis, and Daniella Barr. Each episode is only 3 to 5 minutes long, so click on anything that catches your attention.
David Lynch died on 15th January, five days before his 79th birthday.
2. Garfield Return-on-time fallacy
One of my biggest problems is getting caught in loops of doing “half-satisfying stuff” – things that are neither productive nor fully enjoyable. For example, I might watch five YouTube videos with random titles like “Bill Burr talks about being sober,” and “Theo and Timothee Chalamet think of biopic ideas for each other.” These videos are 10-15 minutes long, but watch six of them in a day and that’s a full-length movie.
In this article called A ‘failure to evaluate return-on-time’ fallacy, Sebastian Marshall observes (paraphrased):
A large majority of otherwise smart people spend time doing semi-productive things, when there are massively productive opportunities untapped.
A somewhat silly example: Let's say someone aspires to be the best comedian ever, and to make a living doing comedy. And he decides that to do so, he will watch re-runs of the old television cartoon 'Garfield and Friends'.
This is absolutely not a great use of his time. Maybe he'll learn a little about jokes structures and pick up a gag from the show. But he would be much better off watching Eddie Murphy, George Carlin, and Bill Cosby or reading memoirs, autobiographies, and articles by people like Steve Martin and Jerry Seinfeld. Or he could learn the technical aspects of comedy and study well-respected books in the field. Or best yet, go to an open mic night, or spend time writing jokes, or otherwise do comedy. But he doesn't, instead he just watches re-runs of Garfield and Friends.
Anna Salamon replied to this explaining that “Humans are not automatically strategic”: Knowing the right thing to do and doing the right thing are different tasks (though awareness definitely helps). The way to fix this is to create habits and systems that help you do more of what you want instead of relying on willpower. Like James Clear said:
“You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.”
3. The impossible “Clean India” challenge
Since my friend told me about this challenge, it’s been frying my brain. It’s hard to keep India clean, but it’s harder to find a clean place in India. The challenge is simple:
Open Google Maps
Drop a pin at any location you want
Zoom in through “Street View”
If you can find even one place without a piece of garbage on the road, you win.
We have tried this for hours and failed. If you can find a street in India without garbage, please reply to this email with a picture.
4. The maddening need for control
“Focus on what you can control” is a common platitude, usually interpreted as “Focusing on what you can control will give you better results.” But research suggests that people derive satisfaction from feeling in control, and it doesn’t matter what the result is. For example, people feel more certain that they will win a lottery if they can control the number on their ticket or bet more on a wager if they throw the dice themselves. They feel confident while deciding, regardless of the outcome.
On the other hand, not having a feeling of control can be problematic – and even fatal. Researchers in a study asked volunteers to regularly visit two groups of nursing-home residents: One group could control the timing and duration of the visits (“Please visit me next Friday for an hour”), and the other group could not (the visitors would choose the time). Two months later, the high-control group were happier, healthier, more active, and needed fewer medications than the low-control group.
Unfortunately, when the study ended, the researchers didn’t inform the residents. Many people in the high-control group felt like their control was suddenly taken away, worsened in health, and died. Apparently, gaining control and losing it can be worse than never having had control at all. Two takeaways here:
Tracking and monitoring what you can control (“Can I read for 30 minutes today?”) is more productive than tracking outcomes (“Reading 1 book a week”).
Realize that tech companies use the same tricks to keep you hooked on apps/games/social media by creating the feeling of control in a virtual world.
Source: Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert
5. The only financial advice you need
For most people, investing isn’t a way to become rich. Rather, it’s a way to preserve and grow what they already have. Frustrated by the complicated financial advice that was being peddled in the media, professor Harold Pollack stated that “the best [financial] advice for most people would fit on an index card.” Then he went on to scribble and share it:
This was written with an American audience in mind, but it can be further simplified to “most people should invest in low-cost index funds” because the fees you pay to managers tend to be the most expensive part of investing.
I’ve written more about this on the Market Sentiment blog.
If you enjoyed reading, please like and share this with a friend to support my writing:
Yesterday, I wrote about a surgeon who operated on himself when stuck in Antarctica. I also write longer, more personal pieces like this one about my experience starting a company in India. You can also check out the complete list of issues here.
The maddening need for control amazed me, how human minds play a great role in shaping the health of a person!
Clean India drive is really driving me crazy 😧