Have you ever walked into your freezing cold house and turned up the heat to medium, waited for the heater to get warm, which it didn’t do fast enough so you cranked up the heat to full power only to be sweating like mad 10 minutes later? Have you ever then turned the heat back to medium or even off?! I know you have; because I have and because we are human.
Not getting the feedback we expect from the environment immediately forces us into a spiral of more and often times unnecessary, even harmful actions. In the example above we have wasted money and burdened the environment.
As humans evolved we went from having immediate effects i.e. kill goat and have food that night to delayed and mediated effects i.e. go to the office, work for one month, receive money for work, go to supermarket, chose and pay for groceries and then have food that night. Pfhoo. That is a prolonged process because we are now part of larger systems.
A whole branch of science within Psychology called Human Factors aims to find out how we as humans represent technological systems (i.e. how that heater works) in our minds and interact with them. Have you ever seen a machine get beaten up by its user? Hit that computer screen that started flickering? Clicked the refresh button of your browser 50 times because that makes it load faster? Written a second text message to your crush asking if he or she got the first message, because they didn’t respond within the first minute? I know you have, because I have and because we are human. Don’t beat yourself up though, it just means that the machine didn’t have a Human Factors expert involved in its design process.
So scientists figured out that feedback from the system is crucial to guiding the user and to avoid machine-al abuse. The heater from earlier didn’t let us know that it needed about 10 minutes to get to the set temperature. And we didn’t have the accurate map of how the heating system works saved in our brains. User error is preprogrammed. But when we see the blue double check marks on a WhatsApp message, we know it was delivered and seen! Which does not guarantee a second message isn’t sent asking why the other person hasn’t responded yet – no technology can be blamed for that 😉
But I didn’t want to give you an intro into Human Factors really; I wanted to tell you about the inevitable lag that happens when you operate in any system especially online publishing systems aka the Internet. I want to show you how to deal with lag and delay in a more constructive way.
Take for example my hobby blog andcute.com, some articles didn’t get much feedback until months after they were first published. In fact, one of the most popular posts on my blog had zero views on the day it was posted but 13000 about 4 months later. In a way, we as small online publishers, bloggers or the like are painters whose art and talent are often discovered late in life or even after they are dead – I hope this won’t be the case for us 😉
What this has taught me is that the Internet is not as fast lived when it comes to quality content as we might think. Obviously this does not apply as much to news articles that need to be recent and up to date. But it does apply to a deep analysis of a certain topic that was in the news recently. People will come back to it years later.
So what are the take-aways?
- Create like an artist: Do it for yourself. Do what you want to do for the joy of doing it; make it independent of external feedback. I could have gotten discouraged making dishes, styling them, photographing them and writing down the how-tos when I didn’t get any feedback (comments or massive referrals to the article). Instead I started looking at the blog as my own cookbook, a website that I can refer back to for the recipes of my tried and true dishes, a place where I can send my family and friends to who compliment me on something I made. Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comics put it this way recently on Tim Ferriss’ podcast: “Think systems; not goals!” This means you focus on the process – the doing – not the goal, because you will always learn something or grow even if you don’t reach a set goal. In short, make your doing have an internal purpose.
- Live at your own pace: When I first started blogging all the classes about great blogging included a “publishing or editorial schedule” and the notion to publish at least several times a week. And there is some truth to it – especially if you strive to be a magazine. But beware that quality articles take time. I have always been amazed by food bloggers who publish 5 new recipes a week – all of them styled to perfection and delicious?! If you know anything about statistics this is impossible for one person to run a blog! In my mind it is more important to publish a few quality articles whenever I feel inspired then forcing myself to pump out anything just because the schedule says so. In short, if you don’t have anything of value to add, keep quiet!
- Get to know the system! Whether you are trying to get the house warm, want to blog about your passion or build a professional network do your homework and figure out how the system works. Purposefully use trial and error to figure out the system not waiting for the perfect plan before starting. Find the response times, the interconnected links and moving parts of the system you are trying to master. In short, figure out the rules as soon as you start playing the game!
- Do your part! After you have figured out the system to the best of your abilities, you now know in which radius you can act. You know you have to set the temperature gage of your heater to the temperature you want. You know you have to share your blog content on social media to increase your chances of being found. In short, smartly do your part!
- Let the system do its part! After you are done figuring out the system (see step 3), this step will be a lot easier for you. When you turn on the heat you will know that in 10 minutes you will be comfortably warm. When you sent out an application, you will know that it takes HR a certain time to review your packet and get back to you. When you write a blog entry, you now know that it might be a while until a like-minded soul from across the world shares your article with its 100000 followers. And you also know what lag time is tolerable. When the DVD won’t eject 5 minutes after you have pushed the button, it is time to take action (non-violent action that is 😉 ). In short: take it easy!
Hopefully these tips will help you bumping up your lag tolerance and freeing yourself from the knee jerk stimuli-reaction madness.
PS. Did you know that one of the most popular blogs Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings with millions of unique views a month has her comments disabled?
PPS. Did you know that we can dive deeper into this topic when we start working together? Shoot me an email hello @ danielagudith . com
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