In the world of sports, we easily understand that someone has to be in a certain type of shape to compete in a specific event. For example, cyclists in the Tour de France need to cycle dozens of miles day after day. Boxers need to have speed and stamina to deliver and stave off blows. Gymnasts need strength and flexibility to pull off their stunts. The list goes on and on.
No one criticizes marathon runners for doing things completely differently from powerlifters, despite both being athletes. ESPN covers sports, yet no anchor pretends golf and mixed martial arts are remotely similar.
– The Psychology of Money, by Morgan Housel
Michael Jordan exemplifies the necessity of different physiques to excel at different sports. Jordan played both basketball and baseball professionally. Baseball requires a strong, stocky upper body while basketball favors lean arms. Jordan struggled in his return to basketball from baseball because he was trying to play one sport with the body formed for another.
I spent 15 months turning my body into a baseball body. I had to reconstruct my whole body — which was hard. . . . Looking back, I didn’t have enough time to get back to a basketball body.
– Michael Jordan in The Last Dance
The same thing is true for education. Different skills must be learned by accountants than what’s required of architects. An accountant doesn’t think he can design a skyscraper and an architect doesn’t think she can audit the financials of a Fortune 500 company.
We understand that different pursuits require different conditioning. Yet when it comes to realms outside of sports and other professions, this way of thinking goes out the window. Why?
Exploring Other Realms
The other realms we’ll delve into have a common thread: we all as human beings are impacted by them. That’s probably the reason why we don’t respect the amount of conditioning required to excel at these skills. Whereas only some people play a sport like golf and only some others practice law, everyone communicates, everyone thinks, everyone transacts, and everyone has emotions.
Because thinking, communication, money, and emotions are universal, we expect ourselves and others to naturally excel at them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Those realms, just like sports and other professions, require conditioning to get—and stay—in the right type of shape.
Being in Thinking Shape
Thinking is a skill that we, ironically, don’t think about enough. And it’s often not emphasized in educational settings. Yet it is foundational to being a capable person.
I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business.
– Warren Buffett
Critical thinking takes a lot of time and effort. Unless we challenge ourselves to think deeply about difficult topics and develop tools to help us traverse them, our ability to do so will be lackluster.
Mental models are one such set of tools that improve thinking capabilities. They take big questions and break them down into manageable bites that can be stretched and formed into different molds, which helps exhaust possible solutions. But like any other tool, their effectiveness is dependent on the skill of their user. The more that you work to improve and refine your skills using mental models, the more adept you become at critical thinking.
On top of developing skills for thinking, you also have to contend with endurance. It’s great to be the master of thinking skills, but if you’re confined to only using them in short bursts, you’ll be limited. But the more you intentionally practice critical thinking, and increase the length of periods devoted to critical thinking, the more capable you’ll become.
Being in Communication Shape
Communicating effectively is hard expressly due to the fact that it takes so many different forms, such as speaking, writing, and gesturing. And oftentimes, these forms are intertwined and used simultaneously, which adds to the complexity. Ultimately, good communication starts with sharp thinking. From there, communication shape improves by exercising it.
Public Speaking
One example of communication that requires conditioning is public speaking. Many people think they are bad at public speaking; they struggle when they have to do it. Well, how much practice have you had? How much instruction? Ask yourself these questions for public speaking in general, but also when preparing for a specific speech.
Comedians are some of the best communicators in the world. But to get that way, they practice. A lot. Think about the big comedy specials you see on Netflix. Before stepping on stage in front of the bright lights and dozens of cameras, those comedians are using new and rough material in clubs around the country, refining it as they go, adding some bits and removing others based on the feedback they get from countless audiences. That’s on top of the years of experience required just to be good enough to have a special.
Equating that to ourselves and the types of public speaking we are asked to do in our everyday lives—running a meeting at work, a wedding speech, or a school presentation—how many of us use the professional comedian with a Netflix special’s approach? Do you plan out the material we are going to use, try it out on practice groups, refine it, try it on some more groups, refine it some more, practice with it even further, and then use it? Of course not. Not every type of communication opportunity requires that amount of preparation. But they all require some degree of preparation. And we should endeavor to put forth the effort to communicate effectively in each type of situation we’ll be in.
So when it comes to your public speaking communication skills, ask yourself these questions. How much experience do I have doing this? Especially in this context? How much practice have I put in so far? How much more do I need to give? How much have I watched others perform in this area?
Personal Conversations
The type of shape you are in for communicating also matters when it comes to personal conversations. Two main forms emerge here: conditioning and skill.
On the conditioning front, some people are more verbose than others. This often causes fatigue for the person who isn’t used to talking that much. If you tend to be on the talkative side, think of this as if you’re a marathoner taking a non-runner on a ten-mile run. What feels like an easy jog for you is excruciating for them. You wouldn’t take a novice on a grueling run; why try to do the same with conversations?
When it comes to communication skills, some people are more articulate than others. These people practice to become this way. Many read widely and incorporate new words and phrases into their vocabulary to keep expanding their abilities to describe the world around them and the ideas they have. Think of this as someone like a lawyer who has developed a specialty in torts. The layperson will have no idea what it is that the lawyer is talking about; they haven’t developed those skills. Likewise, a person who isn’t as articulate as another person cannot keep up.
When it comes to personal conversations, remember that people differ in conditioning and skill. When someone doesn’t fully engage with you, it may not be a lack of interest. It may just be that they aren’t in the same type of communication shape as you.
Being in Financial Shape
Being in financial shape is difficult because it takes many forms and is intertwined with our emotions. One of those is enough to pose a challenge; combining them both helps explain why many people struggle to understand and implement effective financial strategies.
Forms of Financial Shape
When we aren’t well-versed in something, we look to others as examples. This is especially true in personal finance. The trouble is that what someone else is doing might not be the best example for us to emulate. It might not even be the best strategy for that person to pursue.
There are different ways to play the money game and different goals call for different strategies. It’s hard to win a game when you don’t know the rules, other players, and probabilities. Therefore, it is paramount to devote time to developing foundational knowledge and then build upon that. It’s the circle of competence concept: stick to what you know. Straying outside your circle is where downfalls are more likely to occur. But you can grow your circle through deliberate effort and study.
There is an abundance of nuance when it comes to finance. There are innumerable ways in which you can succeed with money, yet it’s often viewed through a one-size-fits-all perspective. That perspective restricts the personalization of strategies that account for specific conditions different people have. Instead of accepting this oversimplification, financial shape requires understanding the numerous avenues that exist and identifying which ones work for you and which ones don’t.
Finance is highly personal; don’t emulate others who may have completely different financial conditions than you.
Finance and Emotions
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky laid the groundwork for behavioral study in the world of money. Their studies teach us that people by default are victims of biased thinking. We are prone to prejudice and overconfidence, a potent combination of maladies.
We can mitigate our inherent biases by creating systems to slow down our emotional responses. For one, we can run through a list of biases we may be falling for. Or we can ask others to provide feedback. It’s much easier to spot biased behavior in others than it is to spot in ourselves. However, based on Kahneman’s and Tversky’s research, we are unlikely to eradicate irrational behavior entirely. But just because we can’t divorce our rational brain from our emotional one, doesn’t mean we can’t improve.
Being in Emotional Shape
Emotions are difficult to understand and harness. Yet they are integral to our lives. Understanding and harnessing our emotions allows us to be more capable people who are not whipsawed by life’s volatility. Instead, being in emotional shape affords us the ability to navigate troubling waters more effectively and connect with others more deeply.
Loss is a major impactor of emotion. Our brains are wired to be especially susceptible to loss. Losing something has around double the emotional impact as gaining something of equal value. A false sense of permanence exacerbates the magnitude of loss. Not only do we have to contend with the loss itself, but we also must deal with the shock of getting blindsided by it. It makes a tough situation tougher simply because we weren’t prepared for it.
A Behavioral Scientist article dives into incremental recovery after loss, saying:
Keep in mind that the brain cannot learn everything at once. You cannot go from arithmetic to calculus without many, many days of practicing multiplication tables and solving differential equations. In the same way, you cannot force yourself to learn overnight that your loved one is gone. However, you can allow your brain to have experiences, day after day, which will help to update that little gray computer. Taking in everything around us, which updates our virtual map and what our brain thinks will happen next, is a good start for being resilient in the face of great loss.
Keep in mind that the brain cannot learn everything at once. You cannot go from arithmetic to calculus without many, many days of practicing multiplication tables and solving differential equations. In the same way, you cannot force yourself to learn overnight that your loved one is gone. However, you can allow your brain to have experiences, day after day, which will help to update that little gray computer. Taking in everything around us, which updates our virtual map and what our brain thinks will happen next, is a good start for being resilient in the face of great loss.
Stoics devised a strategy for such resilience: premeditatio malorum, or “premeditation of evils”. They identified what losses would devastate them—family member deaths, loss of wealth, tarnished reputation—and then imagined that those things actually happened. They reimagined those things happening again and again. Not all at once, but rather small steps at first and growing over time as their ability to handle more increased.
Conclusion
Just like how different conditioning is required for different sports and professions, so too is specialized conditioning required for other areas of life. This isn’t always obvious, which is easy to overlook. If we think that everyone inherently knows how to think, communicate, use money, and understand emotions, we leave little room for the nuances that are prevalent in each of those topics. Moreover, we signal to others that these subjects are simple, and if they don’t understand them then they must not be able to. And that feeds a personal narrative of inability, which prevents the growth that nearly everyone is capable of.
When it comes to these shared human experiences, and others, we must remember that they are skills. And like other skills, we can improve them through consistent, intentional effort. Or we can let them atrophy.
Ultimately, what you’re in shape for comes down to two things: skill and endurance.
Skill is ability. Skill is technique. Skill is knowledge. It is something learned through observance, emulation, experimentation, and refinement. Which requires time and effort and defying the ego. Humility paired with effort to learn and refine techniques improves skill.
Endurance is the capability of persisting, specifically at a consistent level of performance. Much like how a runner endures over long distances, so too the individual is capable of enduring over long time periods when it comes to thinking, communicating, strategizing financially, and using emotions.
The analogy between internal conditioning and physical conditioning is not limited to getting in shape. It is also relevant for staying in shape. Simply because you get in a certain type of shape doesn’t mean you stay there permanently. If you don’t use it, you lose it. We saw this with the disruptions to our lives from Covid-19. Due to isolation requirements, social interaction decreased dramatically. As a result, skills and endurance decreased too. Then as restriction eased, social interaction increased and many people found themselves out of shape when it came to interacting with others.
Skill paired with endurance is the formula for getting—and staying—in shape. Remember that this applies to more than just physical activities; it applies to all areas of our lives. And while you use this to understand and improve your abilities, remember that this applies to others as well. Understand that others may not be in the same shape as you. Just like how a marathoner wouldn’t take a novice on a long run, you shouldn’t expect others to keep up with you in areas where you are in better shape.
