Tenure
Or: Is…Is this why Grandma's food tastes so delicious?
Here’s a statement of truth so obvious that it’s easy to overlook: If someone is better than you at something, they’ve likely spent more time thinking about and practicing at that thing than you have.1
An example from my personal life: I was telling someone that I wish I could transfer my financial discipline to other areas of my life, and I couldn’t figure out why I was pretty good with money. But zooming out, I realized that my dad had been teaching me about finances and accounting since I was six. When you add that early start plus the two-plus decades I’ve spent refining this skill, it suddenly makes sense why my financial muscle is stronger than most areas of my life.
Compare this to other parts, like being a better friend or living a good life, which are all recent undertakings, and it makes sense why I’m struggling in these places compared with money.
I understand my explanations sound abstract, so I’m going to expand everything I’m trying to say using examples.
Save the childhood, save the world
Psychologists [really, people with big, fancy degrees and even fancier words] say that most adult behaviors can be traced to childhood. Interestingly, famous novelists echo a similar point, too. One interpretation of this idea is that everyone, depending on how or where they grew up, has some compounding that has occurred in their lives. Some people are born to families that prioritize reading; others are born to families that are big on finances or chasing prestige, etc.2
Tolstoy puts it best when he says that every family is unhappy in their own way, but a slight remix is that every family favors a type of compounding in their own way. That’s why everyone, especially when they meet in the melting pot of the “real world,” comes with different strengths and corresponding weaknesses.
On one hand, your strengths are like superpowers you don't even realize you have until someone points them out. "Wait, not everyone knows how to read a room like this?" "You mean most people didn't learn to cook three-course meals by age twelve?"
On the other hand, it also means there are parts of you—skills, traits, or potential—that remain dormant, waiting to blossom.
Which brings me to:
Parts of you that aren’t grown yet
Everyone has a compounding advantage. Unfortunately, not everyone knows what their advantage is. It’s not like you’re thrust into this world with a manual that tells you why learning about finances or playing an instrument at six is a great skill to have in the future. So, most people spend their lives chugging along in the dark, not knowing what advantages they have.3
But a select few, God’s favorites, so to speak, realize early that the world rewards xx trait and double down on it. In a sense, they learn early to commit to the bit and amplify said strengths, while the rest of us have to watch in awe at their awesomeness and blinding halos.
But here's the kicker: When we see people who've amplified their strengths through years of practice, we often fall into the trap of comparing our weaknesses against their most polished abilities.
We conveniently forget that everyone has parts of themselves that aren't fully developed yet. And because life rewards different traits in different environments, we usually only see people's highlight reels—their areas of mastery—while missing their other skills that still need fine-tuning.
The truth is not every part of you grows at the same pace because we don’t pay attention to every part of ourselves at the same rate either. Plus, nature has this secret thing that ensures you can’t unlock certain experiences or insights about yourself until you hit a particular milestone, but I digress.
Given these obstacles, what should you do?
Learn to see your fish!
One of my all-time favorite stories about writing and doing anything comes from a story about a 19th-century naturalist called Louis Agassiz.
This Louis chap would start his classes by bringing out the most smelly fish known to mankind and ask his students to “look at their fish.”
He’d then turn around to leave in what I hope was a pretty dramatic fashion. On his return, he’d come back with the same question: “What did you see?” to which his students, like normal human beings should, would reply, “Not much.”
This process would go on for days, and his students would be encouraged to draw the [super smelly] fish using no tools for examination—only their good old eyes and hands.
A famous lad who happened to be one of Agassiz’s students explains the fish ordeal best:
After several days, [I] still could not see whatever it was Agassiz wanted [me] to see. But, [I ] said, I see how little I saw before. Then [I] had a brainstorm and announced it to Agassiz the next morning: “Paired organs, the same on both sides.” Of course! Of course! Agassiz said, very pleased. So [I] naturally asked what [I] should do next, and Agassiz said, Look at your fish.
The point is this: we’re all like Aggaziz’s students in the sense that we don’t spend enough time examining ourselves and specific strengths; instead, most paradoxically, we spend more time looking at other people’s fish [read as their strengths] and not ours.
Like Agazziz encouraged his students: “Look at your fish”— both the good, the bad, and “this can be improved.”
Is…Is this why my grandma's food tastes so delicious?
The points I’m trying to make in a roundabout way are these:
Everyone has parts of their lives that have compounded, which makes up their unique strengths and corresponding weaknesses.
Not everyone can identify what this is. Unfortunately, when we see other people’s strengths or areas of compounding, we compare them against our “weaknesses” or parts of us that haven’t compounded as well.
But the good news is that we can all improve our ability to see our fish [ourselves] clearly and properly calibrate ourselves. Practically, this looks like identifying where you’ve spent the most time improving and areas where you’re still growing. That way, you don’t compare five years of progress in one area of your life against someone who has had decades of progress in a similar area.
More importantly, by learning to see yourself well, you learn to also see others well. As in: rather than seeing only people’s strengths and forming a one-dimensional image, you also see the parts of them that haven’t grown and how those parts stack against all of you [both the grown and the “this needs improvement” bits].
Finally, you understand what your economics teacher was trying to teach you about compounding and the time [tenure] it takes to achieve.
And to answer your most pressing question: yes, tenure—or time spent—is the secret ingredient to why grandma’s food tastes so delicious. She’s had enough time to perfect her recipes, testing, and tweaking until every dish feels like second nature. But in a weird twist of fate, because she hasn’t spent enough time around technology, she always needs your help with her devices. Talk about the good old duality of [wo]man.
In addition to natural talent and other material advantages, deliberate practice can provide an edge over mindlessly working on a task. It’s not just about performing a task repeatedly but actively refining your technique and improving over time.
It’s important to note that your compounding area depends heavily on access to resources. People in underprivileged environments may face [systemic] barriers that delay or limit their ability to develop specific strengths.
Also, growth can start later in life. Research on neuroplasticity shows that the brain can adapt, allowing late bloomers to achieve remarkable success by compounding effort in new areas.
Thanks to Aronkus, Claude Agba, and Lekan for reading a rough draft of this.
** Cover image from FreePik.