Inexperienced Me

Mindsets

Mindsets are over-powered. And I don't see an update coming to patch it up in the near future, so we might as well exploit it.

I'll probably mention it a lot, for the rest of my life. Mindsets change lives. Mindsets is what differentiates people at a fundamental level. I want to know how they react to various factors, how they approach a problem. This has been an absolutely priceless tool in choosing the people I spend my time with.

That's why when I get to know somebody, I mostly pay attention to clues about what is going on in their head. I want to know their intention, not the outcome. The outcomes of our actions can be easily changed with experience, skill, knowledge, random factors and many other things. But intention is who we are in terms of our goals. It's what we want to do, not what we're doing. If you want to do good, but don't quite know how, we can work on it, we can help you. But if your intention is evil, the effort needed to change that is going to be relentlessly higher.

Irrationality of our world (Digression)

If you approach a problem in a best way possible, let's say, it doesn't mean that you will certainly succeed. And it doesn't mean that your approach was wrong.

You could succeed using the dumbest approach possible. And it doesn't mean that your approach was right.

I think it's a huge problem when it comes to understanding our world and connecting causes with effects. You can make an objectively good decision and end up worse than If you'd made an objectively bad decision.

40% of winning 100$ and 60% of losing 100$ is not a good bet to take. And I don't care that there are people who took the bet and won and are happy now. You do not take the bet and that's an objectively good decision. Outcomes are not as important as the decision-making process (When we're talking about assessing someone or something). But that's probably a topic for a different post. Let's get back on track.

Back to mindsets

Mindsets are significant, as I said before, and hard to change. People just cannot switch their mindsets like that.

Significant, and hard to change...

I already knew that. And then one day, spending yet one more hour on mindless watching of quality content, I watched this video from Dr K. from HealthyGamerGG:

It would be great if you actually watched it, it's certainly worth your time. But to sum it up, taking just the essence of Dr K's talk:

The smart kid only does things that makes them appear smart, things that are generally easier. And stay away from things that are hard for them

Without getting too personal, I could not relate to the quote more, considering myself quite a gifted kid. It's not really a choice. By the time you grow up old enough to be conscious of what's happening with you, it's already too late. Especially If nobody's there for you to teach you life.

What happens then? What happens when you go further in life and it becomes so hard, that you're sole intellect is not enough?

A lot of people are really smart but they do not amount to much

You feel that despite being so smart, you're not able to accomplish a whole lot in life

As Dr K. suggests, or Alok Kanojia, the solution to all of that is a mindset shift. Reframing.

Your success has nothing to do with your intelligence. It has to do with your experience or inexperience. And the degree of competence you have, they better off you're gonna be

Life is not about intelligence. Life is about experience and competence. Isn't that wonderful?

Solution

What we can do about it is not being scared of trying new things, that we'll suck at, at the beginning. Do not be scared of failing. You failed? Do it again. And again. And again. When you're not too fond of trying new things that you're not good at, think of yourself as inexperienced, not stupid.

Just yesterday, on 3rd of August, I watched the newest video from Veritasium

about an idea I first read about in, If I remember well, an outstanding book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by a Nobelist Daniel Kahneman. The video is about experts. Now when I think about it, it could also be mentioned in "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg. These great books cross-reference each other anyways. But for sure Kahneman wrote about it in the chapter called "The opinion of experts - When can we trust it?".

I know that what I write is quite chaotic, but if someone watched the video or read any of the books, they will know the reference. Besides, I just recommended you these 2 great books, so it's hard to complain about wasting your time on my ramble.

Moving on, in the video Derek from Veritasium talks about a great example that fits our topic and that I like a lot because of my interest in chess. Derek mentions chess Super Grandmasters, more specifically, Magnus Carlsen, a five-time World Chess Champion.

Knowing some chess, people like Carlsen and incredibly smart and they have much much better memory than most of people. Absolutely outstanding memory, with how much chess matches they remember and how quickly they can recall a game from the past and recognize the position while looking at it for a second. Right? Wrong.

Derek shows a proof that great chess players do not have an incomparable memory with the rest of us. That it all comes with experience. And Magnus has the experience, playing chess since he was 5 years old.

Experience, not intelligence.

How to change my mindset?

Coming back to Dr K's video: After watching it, I realized that I need that change in my approach to life. I am truly inexperienced, and that's fine. But how do I adapt that new way of thinking? Maybe, just maybe, since mindsets are so hard to change, it will be a little easier if I embed my mindset in my name?

It was about time to create my own blog and adapt that new internet identity. And the start point was that I want to include being inexperienced in my whole brand.

Because that's what I want to do for the rest of my life: Try something new. Try something I'm bad at. Explore a topic until I truly understand it. And no matter how much experience I get, there will always be more things to learn, more things to try, more things to get good at. And I will always be Inexperienced Me.

How it got to Inexperienced Me

Inexperienced. That's the adjective. But maybe I'll add something to my name? My first thought was Inexperienced Explorer, but the name seemed too long and difficult to spell and pronounce. It's not too catchy either.

I decided to go for just Inexperienced. But when I got to buying a domain name, some annoying investor bought inexperienced.com and wanted to sell it for more than all my money and both of my kidneys are worth, so I had to give it a pass.

By the way, the guy, the investor, looks like he's the biggest cringelord alive, who got rich by selling adult site domain names. And the latter information is not a joke.

The only affordable option was to go for inexperienced.me which is obviously usually pretty lame domain extension, but not if I include it in my name. Inexperienced Me. It doesn't sound too bad, it's more characteristic and the domain looks quite professional. Like the domain of Alphabet at abc.xyz or Google domain at goo.gle

Improvise, adapt, overcome. What can I say.

Final words

So, no matter how experienced I'll be one day, I will still be Inexperienced Me, making his first attempt at, idk, flying a spaceship. Using new cool tech. Talking to aliens. I have no idea what far future will bring. Hopefully something nice 😊

It was important for me to clarify the name, as some people's first reaction might be like one of my friend's:

Certainly, my name's purpose is not to put myself down. I'm inexperienced and that's completely fine. In fact, it might even make me more self-confident. It takes time, though.