The consistency cost

There are compounding benefits to being consistent but are there benefits to switching it up?

First of all, thank you so much for the warm reception to my first post. It got over 20K views! - way beyond my wildest expectations when I picked this as a new hobby. Moreover, extra thanks to those who sent me tips and words of encouragement. I’ve enough process hacks to lean on now - these are the best guard rails you could give to an engineer like me.

—

As for today’s topic, it’s about consistency.

Some of you know how much I love dogs and cafes. During this pandemic, my favorite hobby - and comfort - has been to sit at the cafe in my neighborhood and make friends with dogs and their parents. (Thanks to outdoor seating, closed streets, and friendly neighbors)

I met this cute pup - Aussie¹ - this week and ended up striking a conversation with his mom and his human brother. We ended up chatting for a while, and I learned that the kid is graduating middle school and going to boarding school next year. I’d shared that I went to a boarding school when I was 11 (not as fancy as Andover or Doon school; a low-cost, $350/year boarding school as my village didn’t have a high school) and that I’ve lived away from home since then. So, they asked me what advice I have for them. I gave generic answers with tips on making friends, homesickness, holidays, etc.,

Since then, it made me ruminate on how going to boarding school or the frequent relocations I made contributed to the person I am today. That’s the story of today’s piece.

—

I found my answer in two of the biases I learned about at Stanford - Commitment bias and consistency bias. More about them here and here.

Charlie Munger - one of the greatest investors and an ardent student of human behavior - summarizes aptly:

“The brain of man conserves programming space by being reluctant to change, which is a form of inconsistency avoidance. We see this in all human habits, constructive and destructive…Given this situation, it is not too much in many cases to appraise early-formed habits as destiny. When Marley’s miserable ghost says, “I wear the chains I forged in life,” he is talking about chains of habit that were too light to be felt before they became too strong to be broken.”

I think I inadvertently found a hack to overcome this periodically in life:

Back in boarding school, the first few weeks were pivotal: the friends I made, the persona I developed, and the nicknames I were stuck on me for the following 2 years! I didn’t want to change to avoid attention (the thing you least want as a pre-teen) or be ridiculed (the best starting point to get bullied in boarding schools).

But as I started to do well in school, I got ‘bumped’ into a better campus and got a new group of friends and teachers. In that new setup, I consciously avoided some of the behaviors and habits that I was made fun of before. Given that there is little overlap with my previous group in the new setup, it was easy to be a different person and make the changes I wanted to without worrying about someone pointing out the change.

Since then, it has become a ritual for me to take time before a big move to think about who I want to be and the changes I want to see in myself. I counted and realized that I’ve been through 9 distinct groups of people in my life - with almost no overlap between those groups. Although the journey was hard and every new start a big emotional investment, it was a huge benefit for me to be able to start afresh and be a better person without being seen as inconsistent or judged as someone who I’m not.

I don’t envy some of my friends who have the same group of friends from pre-K to business school and beyond. I may be retro-respectively rationalizing² and incorrectly attributing my personal growth to the frequent changes I made. But I feel that this periodic intentionality towards personal change played the biggest role in shaping who I am today. I am less conscious now of changing myself, but back then these moves with an opportunity for fresh starts helped a lot by enabling me to try new behaviors and shed bad ones.

—

So, how is this relevant to you or to the life I’m living now (which I love but there are fewer radical pivots I could now)? Two tangible ways come to my mind.

The first - Professional life:

There is ample material out there that the primary job of a leader is to set up organizations to explore and exploit opportunities presented by the market³. The exploration part is especially important in this era of fast disruption (at least in the startup and venture capital world I’m in).

However, change is really hard. Especially in roles when we are in, in which we are looked up to for our vision and the emphatic conviction and execution of that vision. Subconsciously, most of us even don’t change our fashion style in a job. We pride ourselves on being that consistent, dependable, and predictable partner. Furthermore, some markets are too big, and it’s often prudent to let the advantage compound fully before changing - thus presenting an innovator’s dilemma. So, then how do we change without having all the negative self-doubt and imagined fears of being judged unfairly.

I have the privilege of seeing change happen in compressed times due to the exponential growth at startups we work with. The most successful leaders in history have been those who changed frequently. The difference is that they had a clear vision but were open to change on the sequence of tactics and were open to failure of those tactics. Furthermore and most importantly, they normalize failure, talk openly about their failures, and disassociate failed experiments from competence. Thus making it easier for those around them to change frequently and get better outcomes for themselves and their mission.

My boss Hans does this very well internally and openly acknowledges his failures more than his (exceptional) successes. Taking his cue, I now acknowledge more openly when I am wrong; and every time I took a step towards that direction, I gained a little. It’s way better than reflecting and ruminating on my own without a thought partner to calibrate and collaborate. Moreover, some of my best relationships lately are those with whom I admitted to being wrong and been open and vulnerable.

I still have miles to go in personal growth as a young investor, but this focus on change and experimentation has been very helpful.

The second - Personal life:

Relationships: In the last 2 years, I’ve seen several breakups and divorces of folks I know and/or those I looked up to. It made me get into this wormhole of literature on underlying causes and early signs of relationship failures. What came out - and resonated with my own relationships and experiences - has been that lack of change makes relationships lifeless. We don’t change quickly enough to get rid of a bad trait or have a boring routine without variety.

Don’t get me wrong, consistency in values and priorities is necessary but not sufficient to make a relationship work for decades.

I think this also applies to our relationships with parents and siblings - as we get older, the needs, wants, and behaviors of us with our families and them with us change considerably. If we don’t adapt, we drift apart only to realize too late in life when age and circumstances are not on our side.

I’m still figuring out how to change consciously without coming across as a mechanical maniac, and I’m open to tips. A lot of the resources I read suggest that simply saying out loud our desire to change for the better makes the other person valued. Moreover, because we committed aloud, we tend to follow through due to the commitment bias.

Mental health: One of my good friends Tess - an A+ investor, a neuroscience nerd, and a great thought partner to riff on interdisciplinary things - says that happiness and variety in life correlate strongly⁴. Something to do with neuroplasticity and stuff. So, I made it a new year’s resolution to infuse some change every day - ranging from making small tweaks in my running route to having the courage to say hi to random pet parents!

I don’t know whether it is because of science or because of my own rationalization, but I feel a lot happier this year than I was last year. At the least, this focus on change is one of the reasons that forced me to start writing publicly and gave me a ton of puppy friends!

The asks: What are some best tactics you’ve seen at work or in your personal life to change as a person? Do comment below or drop a line to me.

Have a good weekend!

—

PSA: The content below may be triggering. It’s an appeal to donate to a cause I care about.

An appeal: As some of you know, I lived in Ethiopia and care a lot about its people. There is a devastating conflict happening in one of the regions - for a myriad of reasons and decades of complex tribal and political tensions. The UN says the region is on the verge of famine (a classification not given lightly by them). So, please consider donating to the World Food Program’s efforts in the region - link. It’s the most efficient and effective way to help, without corruption and with better access than other organizations in this situation. (I can vouch for them as I’ve worked with them in planning an unrelated, aid effort in 2014/15).

1. Contrary to his facial expressions, Aussie did really like me. Or so I think. His attention in this picture is focused on the treats on the table next to us.

2. My professor Bill Barnett’s favorite phrase.

3. Attributable again to Prof. Bill Barnett. He used to drill it down in our minds in the strategy class at Stanford. I’m not sure whether he coined it, but I learned it from him.

4. The formal terms are related to neuroplasticity and happiness. Some links shared - link1, link2, link3, and link 4.