2024 1 25 Q&A with Tiago

Hello.

Hey. Hey, how you doing?

Good.

Well, I was wondering, what is the process to apply TOC to the personal development area?

To apply what? Theory of Constraints. Oh, to apply it to what?

The personal development.

Have you seen the, the essay that I wrote called The Throughput of Learning?

It's in my reading list.

That, that thing is my answer. That's my answer. But it's basically, okay. Maria, could you put a link to my Theory of Constraints series in the chat? This is kind of one of my, for anyone who doesn't know, one of my sort of research areas. It's this, it's this methodology, philosophy, and way of thinking that arose in starting in the '70s, I want to say, applied to manufacturing, like how to improve and scale up manufacturing that went on to be hugely influential. It's influenced everything from, you know, the flow of traffic on the freeway to airport design to how healthcare is like the capacity of healthcare, like many, many different industries. And I've, I've been fortunate to meet some of kind of the leaders of that field. And this series explains what it's about. But what I like about the theory of constraints, which can be summarized in one sentence, which is in any system. So your any system, your productivity system, your second brain, your body, your relationships, your house, the freeway, a factory, you can think of anything as a system. There's one bottleneck. There's one resource that is the most constrained, right? There is probably many that are constrained, but one of them is the most constrained, is the most limited, right? You can think of it as a constraint or a bottleneck. Those are kind of interchangeable. And the capacity of that whole system is limited by that constraint. Right? This is kind of a long sentence. It's like a 3-part sentence, but it could be one sentence. And the third clause is, therefore, only improvement at the bottleneck matters. Only improvement, only getting more of the most constrained resource will make a difference. And then there's a little caveat, which I talk about in the series, which is not only will that, that be the only thing that makes a difference, trying to improve anything else will make things worse. Which is super counterintuitive for humans. Super counterintuitive. And this is where it comes back to personal growth. Usually with personal growth, if you think of our psyche as a system, there's all these things that are constrained, you know, your courage, your, your vulnerability, your power, your personal charisma, your ability to manage money, like just list all the personal qualities. And you probably think I don't have enough of any of those. But what people tend to, tend to do when it comes to personal growth is just keep doubling down on what they're already good at almost universally, right? Like I've seen this described as, you know, for someone who has a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You may have heard that expression. So the person who's already super fit is getting even more super hyper ultra fit. The person who is very personable and charismatic is just becoming more charismatic and more personable. The person who's organized just becomes ever more organized. We just keep leaning in the direction that we already know how to make progress in until pretty soon we've gone so far in that direction that it actually becomes a problem. You know, you see people who are addicted to fitness, who are so good at managing money that it's like all they think about, people who are so charismatic that they never have to figure out anything for themselves. They just, you know, persuade someone else to do it for them. Like, becomes kind of a, kind of a sickness. And so applying— to actually answer your question— applying all those, all those principles to our personal growth, it's a way of encouraging us to pay attention to what we've been neglecting. Like, pay attention to the personal qualities and skills and knowledge that we neglect precisely because we're not already good at them and we don't know how to make progress on them. That's our most constrained resource. That's our bottleneck. And if you keep in mind that principle, only improvement at the bottleneck makes a difference and everything else actually hurts. To me, that just encourages me, even though I really don't want to, to pay attention to those parts of myself that I'm neglecting. What'd you take away from that? What's— and do you have a sense of what your personal bottleneck is, which is even knowing that is half the battle.

It's kind of cloudy to me yet, but I think the way you explain it, kind of, it's what I have the most fear of or what I try to just let apart most is the thing that it's my personal bottleneck.

Say more, say more about that.

Yeah, it's kind of one thing that I feel it's like the economy part, the financial part is one of my of my bottlenecks, that it's one thing that I neglect to go and develop that, uh, because yeah, I already have, uh, personal work on my fitness and on my art and on my, on my knowledge, but the financial, it's like I try to avoid, I try to not see, I try to, you know, everything that it's kind of what can I not do for pay that this debt, for example, in, and it's like, it gets me like really uncomfortable with that. Yes.

Good. Yeah. You sort of highlighted some, we could make like a little quiz, uh, how to know what your, you know, neglected areas are. Uh, you avoid it, you evade it, you suppress it, deny it, don't like to talk about it, don't like to think about it, get mad or annoyed or bored. Bored, get bored when other people try to raise it. Those are all very good signs. Yeah. So what is— so I'll say one more thing and then I have a question for you, Tomasflores. It's interesting. Over time, I've sort of expanded my definition of what it means to develop one of those areas. When I was younger, like in my 20s, I thought, oh yeah, I'm gonna like, I'm gonna like just eliminate all my weaknesses and I'm gonna develop every skill and have every part of my life, you know, at the standard of excellence. And as I get older, I sort of am moving more towards like, it's sort of like, I'm okay how I am. I don't have to completely transform every part of my life. And so you can do, you can choose to develop that part of your life, you can take classes, and you can, you know, do all these transformational things, or you can just hire someone or get someone's help in your life who's good at it, or exchange. I'll help you with this, you help me with that. Or you can put it on autopilot, you know, just like invest in index funds. If you are too obsessed about, you know, day trading and investing and spending all your time doing that, hire a personal trainer or join a class that happens every week. If you're not good at exercise, like just put that part of your life on autopilot. With accountability, like you said, and constraints and forcing functions so that you don't have to develop it if you don't want to. I mean, no one says you have to, right? But what is one— with those kind of array of options in mind, what is an approach to your finances that would feel feasible?

I think putting it on autopilot, it's one thing that it will be of great value. I think You know, I am managing my finances all by pen and paper. And I think that is one of the things that I could make on autopilot on my phone or something. Or even the investment is a good way. Just, it's like, I feel like, you know, it's this scarcity mindset that I am trying to work, that I am working on so I can beyond, go beyond that. That is, okay, I can generate money, I can generate wealth through the things that I already know, that it's kind of close to the center of the bottleneck itself.

Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And there's different ways of approaching it. You know, like, I was always throughout my 20s, my narrative was bad with money, right? But it's funny. And mostly that came down to I didn't— it's not that I didn't like thinking about it. I really did. It's that I spent too much. I was always overspending. But what's funny is later on that became kind of my superpower because in business you, I mean, you have to spend money to make money. And a big part of the reason I was overspending, it wasn't on luxury, you know, clothes or fancy vacations. It was on like classes, programs, coaches, books. Looking back, I'm almost— I almost think I spent exactly the right amount of money because all those things allowed me to have the business that I have today. So So even strength and weakness, you can almost play a little bit with the definitions and kind of, I, I think often you have to go around. You can't do like a frontal assault to, I'm gonna change myself and force myself to be different because then your, your child self, your rebellious self hears that and goes, uh, I'm gonna fight you. I'm gonna fight you the whole time. You kind of have to go around and kind of massage it in different ways.

Yeah, that sounds more feasible, more relaxed even. It's like, okay, I don't have to confront me in, ah, you have to save it, you don't have to spend in this, instead of, okay, I am really investing in my knowledge, I am investing in my studies, in the things that I want to work on, it's okay. The, the massaging, it, it's a great metaphor.

Yeah. Or sometimes, yeah, you can pit your weaknesses against each other. You know, like, like this is, this is really the best is like use a weakness in one area as a, as an, as a forcing function to like, like improve or address or face the other. Like that's kind of advanced, but like what all that overspending on myself did in my 20s was create this pressure, this forcing function to, to start that business that I always said, oh yeah, I'm gonna do it next year. Oh Oh yeah, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that because I was taking all these classes and like how to be an entrepreneur. Well, eventually I just had to actually do that. Like I had to, I had to use my, my lack of frugality and pit it against my fear and laziness and procrastination. Awesome. Thank you, Tomasflores.

Thank you, Thiago.

All right.