Adjacencies: the Zusha principle, valley toes, and TEA capital
adjacent • possible (noun): an innovation that acts as a building block, enabling additional breakthrough discoveries.
Here are this week's building blocks! This is an experimental new newsletter with just 50 initial subscribers, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether the format/ideas are useful or "meh."
The Zusha principle of self-development
From the NYT:
The 18th-century Hasidic rabbi Zusha is supposed to have said that when he died and appeared before the heavenly court, they could ask him, “Why were you not as great as Abraham?” and he wouldn’t be afraid; after all, he wasn’t given Abraham’s intellectual gifts. They could ask him, “Why weren’t you Moses?” and he wouldn’t be afraid; he didn’t have Moses’ skills as a leader. The question that frightened him was this: “Why weren’t you Zusha?”
One of the risks of being an ambitious person is it can put you in a horse race to grow into someone else's ideal rather than your own (a race in which you're the horse, not the jockey).
Between the two options of a) aiming to be better than others vs b) aiming to be the best version of yourself, the second option seems completely de-risked.
Imagine you could only choose one of the two options. It's easy to picture being disappointed in the first scenario, in which you're the "best" in a social hierarchy while failing to actualize your personal ideals. But can you picture being disappointed in the second scenario?
Toeing the valley
From Arthur C. Brooks' From Strength to Strength:
[Charles] Darwin died considering his career to be a disappointment.
In 1859, at age fifty, he published his magnum opus and crowning achievement, On the Origin of Species, a bestseller explaining his theory of evolution that made him into a household name and changed science forever.
At this point, however, Darwin's work stagnated creatively: he hit a wall in his research and could not make new breakthroughs. Around that same time, a Czech monk by the name of Gregor Mendel discovered what Darwin needed to continue his work: the theory of genetics. Unfortunately, Mendel's work was published in an obscure German academic journal and Darwin never saw it.
Despite his writing numerous books later in life, his work after that broke little ground.
This kind of thing haunts me because it poses a dilemma.
On the one hand, I want to spend time in the exploratory valley discovering the kinds of building blocks that will help me reach the tallest mountain of potential for my projects (i.e. a lot of reading, learning, networking, and experimenting). But on the other hand, executing on my projects requires focused devotion, and it's hard to justify taking time away from the work that I know I need to do to engage in fishing expeditions for creative inspiration.
My solution is to do what I call "toeing the valley." I block out ~15–20% of my daily work time for book reading. Usually 45–90 minutes in the afternoon. With a requirement to get to the end of a book by the end of the week. In other words, I keep my feet on the project mountain while keeping my toes in the learning valley.
The Adjacent Possible is where I share my most useful insights in bite-sized posts. One email per week. Many insights per email:
Don't just manage time. Manage TEA: time, energy, attention.
From Unlimited Memory:
Where your attention goes, your energy flows.
Years ago when I first read that quote from memory grandmaster Kevin Horsely, a lightbulb went off in my head that time, energy, and attention should each be separated into their own units of analysis for knowledge workers.
Say you devote a two-hour time block to working on a specific project. Although an infinite number of things outside of your control can go wrong here, it seems only three failure modes are within your control:
- poor time management, e.g. quitting the work before the two hours are up, despite working with enthusiasm and focus,
- poor energy management, e.g. working with lazy indifference, despite staying on task and sticking out the two hours, and/or
- poor attention management, e.g. for the entire two hours, you enthusiastically scroll social media rather than working on the designated project.
On the flipside, to max out on all three is to achieve a flow state.
This breakdown has proved so useful to me over the years — both as an instruction and a diagnostic — that I regularly now say things like "We should be mindful of how we deploy our TEA capital on this project" in meetings.
Staying focused on one project is harder than ever. And it’s why intense focus on one thing is the best alpha. But… I still want to learn and experiment with other things. Towing the valley was a great framework !
Some very useful concepts here.
Making time to read is something I've struggled with a lot. Neurodivergent mind that struggles not to fixate on and obsess over whatever project or idea I have at the moment. Definitely going to try to incorporate the concept of "toeing the valley" into my day to day.
The TEA breakdown is a concept I'm familiar with but only because of years of struggling with what I now know is ASD. I slowly figured out I needed to carefully manage and monitor these three aspects, in my work and my life in general, for better productivity and to avoid burnout. Only recently seen it articulated this way though.
Will be looking out for more. 👍🏾