It was graduation season last month so it’s no surprise that after writing about Sheryl Sandberg’s commencement address, this next post is inspired by Adam Grant’s speech. The line that I loved the most was, “‘Never give up’ is actually really bad advice. Sometimes quitting is a virtue. And if you want to cultivate the virtue of grit, that doesn’t mean keep doing the thing that’s failing over and over again. It means defining your dreams broadly enough that you can find new ways to pursue them when your first and second plans fail.”
Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.
If you think about it as an engineer, your efforts are part of a control loop (illustrated below). Your goal is the setpoint and what you’re trying to do is close the gap between your goal and your current reality (the process variable). The difference between the two (the error) is sent through the controller, which drives a change that alters your current reality. This results in the difference between your setpoint and your process variable to be measured for the process to start all over again.
So the advice these two quotes are saying is actually, close the feedback loop. Don’t just get stuck in the controller phase where you make changes to alter your reality without actually studying the changed reality.
What are your thoughts on the topic? Tweet me @ahechoes to let me know.
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Also, check out my fiction short story collection, “All Bleeding Stops and Other Short Stories from the Kenyan Coast” and subscribe to the newsletter here; [mc4wp_form id=”680″]