Its' Five Dimensions, Six Senses - Why I Cannot Beat Seth Godin's Shortest Post
A single perspective is not enough
Its’ Five Dimensions, Six Senses — Why I Cannot Beat Seth Godin’s Shortest Post
A single perspective is not enough
This is a response to my attempt to write a post shorter than Seth Godin’s shortest post.
To my knowledge, the post is his shortest. He might have another shorter one but I can’t tell. It also has to do with the intended message of the post.
If you cannot define a problem, then you have two problems. These are:
The initial problem and
The problem of defining that problem.
Nested problems
Defining a problem with clarity is often half the battle.
If you haven’t defined it yet, then you have yet to go to battle.
And here’s the spinoff.
I think I know Seth Godin’s shortest post. But I have not read all his posts for me to conclude that this one is his shortest. If it is true, then I may have done it.
But if it is not, then it relays another problem. I don’t know what it is I went after.
Here, I talk about the latter. In particular, the impossibility of beating Seth Godin’s short — or maybe his shortest — post.
The first rule is never to fool yourself, and you’re the easiest person to fool
This is a quote by Richard Feynman.
Its power comes from the scientific method and our affinity for the things we create.
If I have a child, then it is partly my creation. I am likely to be fooled by it in the years to come.
How many parents have sent their kids money because of some story they created? How many times has a parent defended their child for a claim they consider false even without weighing the argument of the other side?
Hinged to our creations, we are the easiest people to fool.
I may have created a short post, but what metric do I use to establish victory?
First, I have to ask myself if I have found Godin’s shortest post. I haven’t done enough research to make that conclusion.
Second, I have to be sure that by coming up with a post shorter than Godin’s, everyone would agree that I have beaten his post. This is the harder part.
Why this yardstick and not the other?
How does one develop an objective yardstick? Does the number of words cut it? Not quite.
I can have a two-worded post but have one of the words be long as hell.
I’m supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
It is a sentence made of two words, but it is long.
It is longer than this:
I’m done.
Or
Yes, you.
Or even shorter:
Okay.
Ok.
The number of words does not simply state what is the shortest compared to another. This is a single view, a single dimension.
Then there is the other dimension, bigger than the previous arguments I have discussed.
What constitutes beating a post? Who knows!
Seth Godin has amassed a huge following and fanbase, much more than I can ever imagine.
I first heard about him from the Farnam Street (Shane Parrish) podcast over the COVID-19 Pandemic.
I had made a decision to listen to all the podcasts on the website, and Godin was one of the interviewees. His insight was precise and I had to go back to some of the words he said years later to understand what he meant.
In particular, I wanted to know what he meant by sunk costs. I understood sunk costs in one way. Here he was describing it as a gift to your future self. What could he mean?
I learnt how he flipped the definition described in MBA programs and offered another alternative view. As you might have guessed — The One Alternative View — I am all about alternative views.
Sunk costs can be used as a yardstick to know when to quit a project, and when to continue. He even discusses how to use the same gift to your advantage.
You can find it here.
There are seven dimensions and more to a story
I understood sunk costs using one dimension.
I needed to travel the Internet universe to come across another dimension of sunk costs.
By a large margin, the second dimension was richer than my first understanding of the concept. If I had not explored, I would never have discovered this alternative view.
What does it mean?
There are different dimensions to an idea.
Yes, I planned to make a post shorter than Godin’s, but that is only a single dimension. I may have created a short post, but who will know about it?
I only have slightly over 140 followers, and not many of them read my articles.
Godin’s website is a stop shop for many viewers from all over the world. Myself included.
If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is around, does it make a noise?
Godin has made a reputation for himself which I’ll never attain. By this standard, going after his shortest post was akin to picking the easiest battle.
On further contemplation, it wasn’t.
Here’s another dimension I did not consider
His post has meaning.
It is dense. Well-packed.
Mine doesn’t.
I had to link it to this article to make my point.
His is self-explanatory.
Therein lies another dimension I cannot compete with.
We are as strong as our weakest link. As far as the shortness of posts is concerned, Godin’s post is far stronger than so many others he has written which are magnitudes of words longer.
It might not even have been the easiest battle that I had picked. I had not properly defined the task and as a result, ended up second.
Or worse, a rank I will never know.
The final takeaway
The central point is this — ideas have more than a single dimension to them.
Many get dismissed because they have not been explored extensively.
Charlie Munger is famous for quoting Garrett Hardin when he says:
Take a simple idea and take it seriously.
Most ideas are simple. But too many of them are not taken seriously. Thus, our dimensions are limited.
If explored, we can unmask the richness of a single idea. A rich idea implies a rich form of intelligence. We cannot measure intelligence by a single yardstick and claim we have found a fundamental difference.
The problem you cannot define is now two problems.
As a result, the post I could not beat has extended into an article with over a thousand words.
In short, I can beat the post in one dimension, but in others, I can’t.
Godin’s still on top.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article.
