Xian Yu answers the reader's question: Is the process more important than the result?

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There is a kind of thinking called "dualistic thinking", sometimes also called "dualistic thinking". Simply put, it is black or white. There are only two answers to everything, right or wrong, success or failure. , good or bad...

Maybe you've seen a conversation where one person says, "We shouldn't just chase success," and another scoffs, "Are we going to chase failure?"

Maybe you have had the experience that a friend didn't help you when you needed help once, so he felt that he didn't like you, and as a result, he began to gradually distance himself. Eventually, the distance was noticed by the other party, and the two sides gradually drifted apart.

The so-called dualistic thinking means that when thinking and solving problems, you only see the opposite sides or ends of things, so you simply seek yes or no, right or wrong, A or B.

In logic, there is a concept of the "law of excluded middle", its purpose is to maintain the clarity of thinking itself, which means that in the same thinking process, two ideas cannot be both false, and one of them must be true, that is, "either A or non-A". This is easy to understand. Aliens either exist or do not exist. Whether or not they really exist is a matter of science, not logic.

However, many people in life will misuse the "law of excluded middle" and mistakenly believe that both must be true, so either success or failure. Is the flip side of "success" a "failure"? According to the "Law of Excluded Middle", the other side of "success" should be "non-success", so is "non-success" a failure?

You know for sure that there is a "middle ground" for a lot of things: learning JavaScript, somewhere between mastering and not mastering, you may have basic, but not fully mastered. Rate a person as good or bad, and you will gradually acknowledge the complexity of "people", both good and bad.

Although as our minds mature, our dualistic thinking will become less and less, but many times, we still fall into this dualistic extreme thinking. The example I gave at the beginning is one where you may alienate others because they are not helping you. You may hate someone because the request is denied. You can miss out on success because of one mistake, and feel like you're a sucker all the time. You may think that today is useless because you slept until 10 o'clock today, so you spend the day in a hurry. You may always think about writing perfect once, so you repeatedly choose words and sentences, and finally give up when you are tired of writing. And when refuting others, "Do you want to pursue failure?" This kind of slightly tricky words may also be said.

Success or failure, 0%, 100%, A or B, this kind of thinking is likely to make us make wrong judgments.

But why do we think this way? I think it may have something to do with the education we have been taught since childhood.

In the examination-oriented education, the "correct answer" is more emphasized. In addition to the standard answer, it is the wrong answer, that is, "failure" and "point deduction". The content we watched since childhood, such as cartoons, also avoids the complicated side of the problem. Good people are good people, and bad people are bad people. This black-and-white division can indeed protect us in the early stage, but it also has a certain impact on our cognition. Impact.

Of course, these are not enough to make us rely on this kind of thinking. The real "advantage" of binary thinking is that it can effectively reduce the "mental cost" or "psychological pressure". If you choose between 10 things, you will Tangled internal friction, but if you choose between 2 things, you will at least be a lot easier. If you acknowledge the "middle ground," then measuring and rating becomes complicated, and these come with additional "thinking costs." It’s not perfect anyway, no matter how hard you work today, it’s still not perfect, so just give up and avoid the “psychological pressure” of working hard for one day or not being perfect. Of course, some people just want to vent their emotions, so they drag the problem into the duality.

So back to this question, is the process more important than the result? According to the "law of excluded middle", either "the process is more important than the result" or "the process is less important than the result", then how would you choose?

However, not all propositions are right or wrong, especially propositions of this type of humanities and social sciences.

The reason is also very simple. Whether it is important or not is a subjective judgment. Each has its own standards. Everyone can express a little opinion, just like the saying "Opinions are like assholes; everybody has one".

And the so-called "argument" we are talking about is not strictly deductive reasoning. We can't say right or wrong, we can only say whether it makes sense. Therefore, we can't prove that what we say is certain by falsification, that is, by citing a counterexample. is correct.

So questions like "Which one should you choose between work and love?", "Which one should you choose between money and growth?", "Which is more important between the process and the result", etc., obviously there is no absolute answer, so why do we still discuss these questions Woolen cloth? Are you wasting time?

When we discuss these issues, we have actually refined and summarized these things and pulled them into the field of abstract thinking. The views and conclusions we draw have general guiding significance, but it is precisely because of this "general" sex”, does not directly guide our reality, which is often more complex. Conversely, when we are thinking or entangled in some problems, we cannot be too "metaphysical", abstracting the problem into macro issues such as "money and growth", and then entangled in it.

So what should we do? In fact, the best way is to change the thinking direction of the problem, such as how to think better? How can we improve the current situation? In this way, we will not be entangled in specific binary issues, but will focus on specific actions.

So instead of thinking about the front-end or the back-end, it is better to do a project, try them all, and slowly know the direction of your interest. Instead of thinking about this offer or that offer, it is better to go to Soso and ask more about these two companies. Isn't the reason for the entanglement because the amount of information on both sides is similar? If you compare and compare, the amount of information itself will not change. Only when you take action will the amount of information change, and the extra information will ultimately help you make a choice.

Finally, back to this question, "Which is more important between process and result?", I will share some of my thoughts on "process" and "result".

In organizations, it is often emphasized that the result is more important than the process. For example, in Ali there is a saying that "applaud for the process and pay for the result". For companies, this is indeed the case. A company must make clear achievements in order to survive. If it consumes a lot of time, money, manpower, etc., but gets nothing, the company is doomed to fail. So from this perspective, this "result orientation" of the company really has to be communicated to everyone. The same is true when we do technology in the company. The company does not value the superiority of the technology itself. The company only cares about the value you create in the business, and determines your treatment and development based on this value.

From a personal point of view, the situation is more variable, because some people seek success in the worldly sense, while others seek the happiness of personal life. Focusing on results is easy to understand, so I want to talk a little more about focusing on the process.

The reason why many people turn from the pursuit of results to the pursuit of process, I think is because the sense of achievement or willpower brought by the results is limited, so that the more we persist, the more painful it is. Just like we insist on getting up early, the original intention is to make ourselves better, but some people don’t know what to do after getting up. Others read books, they also read books, others exercise, and they also exercise, although there is a little effect, But it is not as "significant effect" as we often hear. In the end, it becomes more and more difficult to persist. The meaning of waking up early seems to be only the number of days and the list of punch cards. ". There are also many such performances in the movie. For example, Michael in "The Godfather 2". Although he finally gained power, his brother betrayed and his wife left. In the end, he could only sit alone on the lakeside in the sunset and meditate on his life.

So we turn to questioning the correctness of the pursuit of results, so what will the pursuit process look like?

Taking getting up early as an example, the pursuit process will make you value the degree of happiness in the process, not to do the things you think you should do, but to do the things you want to do and enjoy. If you really There is nothing to do, that can develop a hobby. When you wake up in the morning, don't see it as a scary thing, see it as an opportunity to have a good time, or to pursue a dream. This kind of change will give you a reason to wake up every morning, and it will make you happier doing it.

Taking exams as an example, when we take various exams in colleges, we always work very hard before the exam, and of course, we may study very well. After the exam, we will completely forget about it and even indulge ourselves. However, if you can pay more attention to this process, aim for good results, continuously optimize the process, find and solve problems, explore and develop a good learning method or study habit, complete knowledge management, etc., in fact, It's also preparing for good outcomes later in life, which will be more helpful in your life.

Taking travel as an example, if we focus on results, then we go to a place to travel, and when we arrive, it’s good to go to the scenic spots and take a photo to check in, but we often don’t do this. , expressing thoughts. But if we can pay more attention to the process, this trip actually starts from the moment you leave the house, so there is a traffic jam on the road, a car and a stop, a fall and a broken skin. Quarrel, these things can be seen more openly, after all, this is also part of travel.

In everything we do, there must be a process, but blindly pursuing results may miss the opportunity to make the process play a greater role.

From the perspective of life, a good result we want is actually a happier life, so we need to be admitted to a good university, apply for a good company, and start a successful business.

People often feel that without a good outcome, the process seems to be meaningless. But from the perspective of the length of life, even if there is no good result at the moment, there are still many ways to go. As long as you don't give up life, life will develop in the direction you want. We often see stories of various failures and finally success, but if there are more detailed biographies to read, you will find that those experiences of failure actually provide experience for future success and avoid committing later The same error, even without experience, will be like the sentence in "Fullmetal Alchemist":

Lessons without pain are meaningless. Because if a person does not sacrifice something, he will gain nothing. But when you endure this kind of pain and overcome it, you will get a tough heart that won't lose to anything, yes, a tough heart like steel.

Without a good result, it does not mean that the process is meaningless, and the process without the pursuit of results is not necessarily meaningless. Many times you follow your interests, and these things don't work out at the moment, but maybe they will be connected in the future.

Just like Feynman, when he was eating in a restaurant, he saw a group of children playing Frisbee. The blue mark on the Frisbee was faster than the Frisbee, so Feynman studied the reason for fun. When he showed the conclusion to the When he was a friend, his friend asked, "It's interesting, but what's the use of it?" Feynman said, "It's useless, I just studied it for fun", but it was this study that Made Feynman think of a similar phenomenon, the rotation of electrons, which eventually inspired Feynman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.

In his speech at Stanford University, Jobs also gave a similar example. When he dropped out of school, out of interest, he participated in the school's art calligraphy course to learn how to write beautiful art characters. It was here that Jobs learned Serifs and sans serifs, and how to make the best typography. At the time, it didn't seem to have any practical application, but ten years later, when the first Apple Brain was designed, it was brought into it, and it became the first computer to use beautiful typography.

These are all successful cases, but this does not mean that it will be meaningful to do it. I believe that there must be many "failure" cases, that is, people are interested in researching, but in the end it is useless. So, don't expect it's future value, do it or just do it out of interest in the thing itself.

Whether you focus on results or process, you can actually achieve "success", even if you haven't thought about this issue, it won't matter, but I always believe in a sentence, that is, "You can't reach a place through an unhappy process. Happy ending", so when you feel pain, think about what else we can do to improve the situation, which may be more helpful than thinking about the outcome or the process.

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