đ Hey, Abhishek here! Welcome to the 117th edition of The Sunday Wisdom. Each week I share ideas on thinking clearly and making better decisions.
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On to this weekâs essay!
Today, letâs talk about resourcefulness. Mark Watney is hands down one of my favourite characters from a movie (and/or a book). Matt Damon played it brilliantly in The Martian for which he got an Oscar nomination.
Apart from his one-liners and uplifting sense of humour (even in the direst of situations), what makes Mark Watney standout from the rest of us is his limitless resourcefulness. You can put him in an impoverished habitat on a barren planet and he would manage to grow potatoes using his own poop. Who wouldnât want to be more like him!
The opposite of being resourceful is being hapless. Paul Graham writes:âHapless implies passivity. To be hapless is to be battered by circumstancesâto let the world have its way with you, instead of having your way with the world.â
Resourcefulness is about finding a way to get what you want, without waiting for conditions to be perfect or otherwise blaming the circumstances.
Resourceful people either push through in the face of adverse conditions or manage to reverse the adverse conditions to achieve goals.
After coming to terms with his new reality (being alone on mars with limited food) Watneyâs attitude was, âIâm going to have to science the shit out of this,â instead of, âIâm gonna dieâ or âMy teammates are effing stupidâ or âItâs NASAâs fault. Itâs their responsibility to save me now.â
Of course NASA would do their part, but Watney didnât just put it all on them. He took the shared responsibility of solving the problem, without worrying about whose âmistakeâ it was or thinking about whose âresponsibilityâ it was. Thatâs resourcefulness!
Resourcefulness isnât creativity. People often confuse between the two. Yes, we have to be creative to be resourceful, but thatâs not all. You need creativity to paint or write well, but you need to be resourceful to find a way to be seen or get published.
Being creative doesnât make you resourceful by default.
Resourcefulness implies that the difficulties are novel. You canât just look up and follow a set of prescribed steps. You canât simply apply a tried and tested solution because you donât know the nature of the problem. You have to keep trying new things. This is the essence of being resourceful.
Resourcefulness isnât an attitude. You cannot wake up one day and decide to be resourceful henceforth. It needs to be cultivated over time. Unless you have the required tools, compounded by creativity, along with a curious and positive attitude, itâs impossible to be resourceful.
Mark Watney wasnât a nobody. He was a NASA astronaut, a botanist, and an engineer. He had enough knowhow to burn hydrazine to generate water, grow potatoes from his poop, modify a rover for a long journey by adding solar cells and additional battery, using Morse code to communicate after he accidentally shorting out the electronics of Pathfinder, and whatnot! You cannot be resourceful unless you have âresourcesâ.
The most successful people are Watneyesque. They have all the necessary knowhow compounded by a positive attitude. They are neither hapless nor helpless. They donât have to be babysitted. In other words, they can âtake care of themselves.â
But we donât have to be a NASA astronaut left for dead on Mars to be resourceful. There are ample opportunities on Earth.
When the Airbnb guys rented air mattresses to pay rent, they displayed resourcefulness. When they targeted the Democratic National Convention (2008) attendees, they displayed resourcefulness. When they sold cereal boxes to pay their credit card bills, they displayed resourcefulness.
Can this quality be learnt? Yes, of course! The first step is to learn the fundamentals of as many things as we can. This will help us build a latticework of mental models that we can apply in numerous situations.
The second step is to shift our thinking from reactive (victim) to proactive (victor). For example, going from âThereâs nothing I can doâ to âWhat are my alternatives?â This simple step, this shift in mindset reframes our mind to look at problems from a different perspective. Where there were shut doors, suddenly there are windows of possibilities that can be leveraged. We are no longer paralysed by our circumstances.
Resourcefulness is not for everyone. While many have a natural curiosity to try out new things, to experiment, to throw many darts and see what sticks, others are pathologically passive, and thereâs nothing much that can done. But for the rest, itâs a good practice to science the shit out of things!
It may not guarantee success, but it does increase our odds tremendously!
Interesting Finds
You must be curious to learn. Otherwise, you wonât even consider learning. If youâre not curious, you donât think that learning more about what you already know is needed. You have convinced yourself that you already know everything. It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
Donât invest any energy in bargaining. Except when the zeros become large. Lose the small games and save your efforts for the big ones.
We are wired to care about what others think of us. As the Roman Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius observed almost 2,000 years ago, âWe all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own,â whether they are friends, strangers, or enemies.
Timeless Insight
We have difficulty with absolute judgments. We judge something to be beautiful, expensive, or large if we have something ugly, cheap, or small in front of us.
â Hang Out More With Your Ugly Friends
What Iâm Reading
Few people outside medicine realise that what tortures doctors most is uncertainty, rather than the fact they often deal with people who are suffering or who are about to die. It is easy enough to let somebody die if one knows beyond doubt that they cannot be savedâif one is a decent doctor one will be sympathetic, but the situation is clear. This is life, and we all have to die sooner or later. It is when I do not know for certain whether I can help or not, or should help or not, that things become so difficult.
â Henry Marsh, Do No Harm
Tiny Thought
The difference between a good salesperson and a charlatan is belief not skills.
That Good Tweet
Before You GoâŚ
Send me tips, ideas, questions:Â abhishek@coffeeandjunk.com. Read all the essays Iâve written so far:Â coffeeandjunk.com.
Until next Sunday,
Abhishek đ