Hunt, Don’t Fish
August 6th, 2008
Recently, I wrote Fish, Don’t Hunt, where I argued you should set things up so that results come to you, then you can lean back and focus on other stuff. Today, I’m going to argue pretty much the opposite point. I’ll show you why you need to get out there and make things happen. I can’t resist arguing both sides of the argument, I just love confusing you that way :). But also, it will help you form your own opinion, instead of just accepting what someone says.
Or maybe I’m just a schizophrenic. And the self in charge today is plotting to kill the other self and take over the world. (Dum dum Dum DUM!)
Passion matters
Napoleon Hill once told this story:
I applied for my first job at a company. I sent them my resume and asked to be employed… and I got a letter back that they’re sorry, but they can’t provide a job for me right now.
So then I sent them a telegram EVERY DAY for a week, asking to be employed. The answer was still no. So then I sent a telegram EVERY HOUR FOR TWO DAYS, asking to be employed.
I got a telegram back, telling me to come to work on Monday morning.
Do you think the boss was right, giving him the job?
I think so. I would also hire Napoleon in this case. Not because he had bugged me so much I caved in. But because he demonstrated a burning desire to work there. People with passion like that are few and far between… and they’re going to go very far in life.
Another famous man, Thomas A. Edison, was once interviewed by a newspaper after 800 unsuccessful tries to make a working light bulb.
“How does it feel to have failed 800 times?” the reporter asked.
And Edison’s answer?
“I haven’t failed 800 times. I haven’t failed once. What I HAVE done, is I have succeeded in proving that those 800 ways wont work. Once I eliminate all the ways that wont work, I will find the one way that will.”
Several years later, after thousands more “successful proofs” he managed to find a way that works, and thus illuminated the world.
This story is usually told as an example of positive attitude and reframing. But it’s also a great demonstration of having a burning desire, a passion. Edison was willing to go through thousands of failures, and still keep going, until he found a working solution.
If he was like a fisherman, he would lose interest, and go on to invent a few small, mostly irrelevant invention. Catch a few small fish. But he was a true hunter. Planning, always looking towards his goal, sticking with it through numerous failures. And eventually, he caught an elephant - an invention that truly revolutionized the world.
Why passion matters
Would you be willing to stick through thousands of failures?
In everything you do, in everything you learn, there are times when you seem to be making no progress. Those times are a natural part of it.
You achieve a certain level, then your skill/success/whatever drops slightly, and then you have a long plateau. True success comes from not giving up in those circumstances, but keeping going until the next big improvement hits. It’s as if you were pushing a cart full of valuable goods along a dirt road, and came to a muddy stretch. You could abandon the cart, and keep walking. Or you could keeping pushing through the mud, eventually getting to a better road again.
Of course, it’s also possible that you’re not making progress because you’re doing something wrong. If you find yourself stuck, try some new things. As Einstein said, “the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect different results.”
But if you try new things, and still nothing happens, you might have just hit the natural plateau. Keep going. Things will change, as surely as a bubbly muddy pond will change to a bubbly dry pond after a nuclear war. (I’m working on my metaphor skills. I got inspired by funny metaphors used in high school essays.)
How to be passionate
So when you have a burning desire to achieve something, what do you do?
You need to get out there, and make things happen, like a hunter. Sitting around like a fisherman, waiting for things to come to you, won’t help.
Aaron Stanton, of gangooglehearme.com did exactly that.
He developed a product idea he thought was great, and tried giving the idea to google. But however he contacted them, nobody even looked at his idea. This went on for months, and Aaron grew increasingly frustrated.
In the end, he thought enough was enough.
He set up a website called CanGoogleHearMe.com, and this was his plan:
Here’s what I’m going to do. Next week I’m getting on a plane to California. I’m going to go to Google’s headquarters Googleplex, and just sit in the lobby until someone is finally willing to hear me out.
He wasn’t trying to sell his idea. He wasn’t trying to convince them that his idea is great. All he wanted was to be heard by Google.
Short story even shorter, his story hit the front pages of several social media sites, and he got hundreds of people e-mailing him their support. Including some Google employees.
He was heard. Because he was willing to fly across the US and sit in Google’s lobby just to have his idea heard. He believed his idea was good enough to be given some serious consideration. And he took action to make things happen.
And that’s what a true hunter does. Take action.
Figure out how you can make progress. It might not be something bold as flying across the country and sitting in someone’s lobby. Maybe you can e-mail some people, or make some phone calls, or set up a website, or a dozen other things.
Don’t just sit around. Be a hunter!
August 6th, 2008 at 17:08
This is a good one, although I feel it a little incomplete. Passion is usually provoked by a strong lack. Every artist, for example, became passionate because he wanted to give a message to everybody, yet no one listened.
They have let us the most fanstastic works of the world, though.
August 6th, 2008 at 20:23
I think you have to know when to be a hunter and when you have to be a fisher to get the most!!
August 7th, 2008 at 3:31
Yeh. In this particular case, the guy at the beginning of the story got a job. In far more cases, however, he would have been blacklisted at the company and slapped with a restraining order…
August 11th, 2008 at 14:39
Oh I know about pushing through plateaux. I write fiction, and it’s normal to get about 10 rejections for every acceptance. But I once a very long time between acceptances.
It was even worse when I started meeting people who said, “Oh I used to write. I had a couple of things published, and then I only got rejections after that.” So I started asking them how long they’d gone on trying between the first rejection and giving up. And they usually said, “Just two or three.”
So it was obvious that I could do something different. So went on submitting, and submitting, and submitting. And after the 83rd rejection, I started getting acceptances again.
August 26th, 2008 at 16:37
It’s not always easy to keep hunting when you can’t even see dear tracks - at these times never hesitate to ask for help, you’ll be surprised what’s there when you can’t see the wood for the tree’s!!