Alan Kay's What is Actually Needed (14/30)

I'm writing 30 posts in 30 days. This is number 14.

I found this talk (start at the part he talks about thresholds) by Alan Kay when I chanced upon his answer to a Quora question regarding Ken Kocienda’s tweet on web browsers. You really need to watch the talk starting from the point about the thresholds. I guarantee you nothing I write in these 30 posts will be anywhere as good or as important.

His concept of WIAN (What is Actually Needed) is what I needed to learn.

Not All Improvements are equal

I have a slight gripe about his use of the word Better in “Better” and “Perfect” are the two enemies of WIAN. His “Better” refers to improvements that actually do not move the needle. In the image above, better covers all the improvements that are in the pink zone below the blue line. Might have been better to call them Busywork Improvements or Insufficient Better.

Looking at this, I can feel that most of the attempts at improvement in my life, be it career, health, social, etc fall under this pink zone of not good enough improvements. I spent a lot of money in some of these improvements attending paid courses and seminars. I have to say that the money only correlates to how I feel during and the immediate aftermath of the course. They have little to no correlation to actually moving the needle.

On the other hand, I can count with the fingers on one hand, improvements that did cross the blue line.

Moving the Needle Definitely is Expensive and I Don’t Mean just Money

One such Actually Needed Improvement I experienced was to go for a drastic body transformation regime with food and exercise. It showed me just how much I can push myself physically in a short period of three months. It was costly in terms of money (> 10k expended) but it required a lot of time and energy as well.

I had to plan my life around meal preps and gym sessions. I recall watching tv shows sometimes depicting a drug addict trying to kick their addiction using cold turkey. Changing my lifestyle with meal preps when I almost never cook my own meals before, going to gyms at early hours before an intensive 8 hour work day feels like trying to quit my old lifestyle cold turkey and attempting a 4 year bachelor’s degree that requires discipline.

Definitely Moved the Needle

I got the results I wanted but also what I didn’t expect. One unexpected result was that I now have a different body image of myself. I now know that I am strong in the deadlift. I have never seen myself as a particularly strong person. I am pretty scrawny. To go from zero deadlift to deadlift more than 120kg a few times in a single set in a few months really changed the way I see myself physically.

Sometimes, You Cannot Directly Go to WIAN in One Move

After many years of fooling around with infrequent gym sessions, I had resolved to put aside some serious money and invest in a gym training that also included nutrition advice. Spending money is easy after you saved enough. But I did not immediately let myself go and hire one until I can prove to myself I can go to the gym frequently and consistently for 6 months.

Going to the gym consistently but without any actual change might be considered as a form of Insufficient Better Improvement. What it served was a challenge to myself and a forcing function to arrange my lifestyle to better suit me when I hire an actual gym instructor. If I had immediately jumped into hiring a gym instructor, I think the change would be too hard all at once. I had to both drastically change my lifestyle in terms of nutrition and exercise, as well as time management.

In other words, sometimes you cannot reach WIAN in a single move. You need to break it up into multiple moves. Like having a basecamp before attempting a summit.

If there are any additional elaborations I dare make to Alan Kay’s WIAN model it would be those two: rephrasing Better as the Insufficient Better, and acknowledging that sometimes you need to break up the move to WIAN in multiple steps.

Those are minor nitpicks. The most important thing to know is not all improvements are equal. Life is short to waste time on those Insufficient Betters. Go for WIAN but don’t be stupid about it.