How Controlled Negligence Can Make You More Successful
If you are lucky enough to come across SMART goal setting , you know the acronyms stand for Specific, Measurable, Assignable (replaced by Achievable), Realistic, and Time-bound. Specifically, being specific makes it easier to plan and track goals. For example, “eat less takeaway food” is not as good as “eat takeaway food no more than twice a week.” But while specifics can be helpful, they can also be counterproductive in some more complex situations.
Specific cost
When you’re about to do something less simple than eating less take-out food, you may not yet know everything there is to know. At this point, being specific means ignoring some great options that you don’t even know about yet.
For example, the phrase “I want to make $ 300 a month on TikTok ” cuts out many other potentially more profitable options than the more general one, “I want to make $ 300 a month.” In situations like this, the key is to indicate the area you want to explore, but not necessarily to strive for a specific result.
“Chance is unintentional, it’s capricious, but we don’t need to conclude that chance is immune to human interference,” writes James H. Austin in Chase, Chance, and Creativity . You can influence how lucky you are .
If you are lucky and come up with more creative ideas, then you need to research and research without knowing what the results will be. This is the principle behind15% of3M’s work timeand 20% ofGoogle’s work time, which give employees time to work on their own, undefined work projects. This kind of work requires a less specific, more general plan.
Lifehacker parenting editor Megan Moravchik Walbert has written about the importance of investing time in your kids’ creative projects , and this mindset can be applied to your personal or professional projects as well. Here’s how you can make your specific plans general so you can keep them open in case inspiration – or luck comes up.
Allow controlled negligence
In The Journey and Adventures of Intuition, authors Robert C. Merton and Eleanor Barber write that overall planning preserves freedom of exploration and opportunity. They cite the late University of Illinois professor Salvador Luria, who describes a research process that combines the general with the particular; Luria refers to “controlled negligence, which says that it often pays to conduct a few untidy experiments, provided that someone is aware of the element of untidiness.”
Take, for example, Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin not only through painstaking labor, but also because he was diligent enough to check the culture dishes in his sink after he returned from vacation – a perfect example of controlled negligence.
As long as negligence is controlled and deliberate, it can be a virtue. Leave the reading material on the table and make a backup copy of unread tabs . It’s a balance. As the facilitator of the 100 Days project, Lindsey Jean Thomson , told me when I was studying the book on creative work , the key is to channel chaotic energy through structure — in this case, negligence through control — to allow ideas to mix.
Follow your curiosity
Often we are not sure if such an opportunity can bring promising results or be a waste of time. Either way, we’d rather try than not . As Austin writes, “If the researcher did not move until he was sure of his progress, he would achieve very little.”
TikTok author and comedian Sarah Cooper is a recent, highly visible example of this phenomenon. Her gamble on the social platform paid off when her Donald Trump lip-sync videos went viral. This is not an anomaly; Cooper has been experimenting with platforms for a long time , from Medium to Facebook ads , and even created her own parody of Cosmopolitan .
This type of action is best when it affects your personality. I was fortunate enough to write for Lifehacker a few years ago: “Follow your instincts and your passion. Your personal views, rich life experiences, and unique lifestyles can all come together to create that chance. This is the rarest and most unpredictable form of incident. ” Creativity arises when you put together your personal experience or better understand it .
Open your mind and your door
While I benefited tremendously from the productivity associated with single-tasking and deep work , I found myself getting too close to it . That’s what Richard Hamming is talking about in this speech , which I’m paraphrasing: working with a closed door makes you more productive, but it also costs you to understand what the really important issues are. He says: “I can say that there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with open doors and those who end up doing important things, although people who work with closed doors often work harder.”
Of course , it’s important to keep your head down and work hard, but intermittent breaks shouldn’t be painful or annoying. Each interruption and new information can be an opportunity – a starting point or a development point for your work. Greet them and talk to more people . Reach out to new people. In Chase, Chance, and Creativity, Austin quotes his neuroscience professor Houston Merritt: “Look at the turtle, it only progresses when it sticks its neck out.”
To some extent, in order to keep the door open, you also need to keep your mind open. An open mind notices possibilities that are not in closed ones. As Richard Wiseman writes in The Luck Factor : “The ability of successful people to spot opportunities is the result of their laid-back view of the world. It’s not that they expect to find certain opportunities, but that they notice them when they encounter them. ”
Maintain harmony between the general and the particular
There is a contradiction between the general and the particular – a kind of paradox – but there is no need to be extreme on either side. You can start by setting aside more free time in your schedule and use that time to allow yourself to notice and explore the unfinished and unexpected moments. In situations where you may have other options that you do not know about, you would be better off if, in addition to SMART, your goals include a little GO – community and openness.