Always do what you know

Trust your instincts. Do what you know well to do. Don't overthink on what the "right thing to do" might be.

Like most conventional schools, the school that I went to issued a diary to all students every year. Like a lot of schools, the diary had “sayings” at the bottom of each page. And like most schools run by cults, the sayings were said at some point in time by the cult leaders. Since I went to Sri Aurobindo Memorial School, these sayings at the bottoms of our diary pages were all words of wisdom by Sri Aurobindo or The Mother.

These sayings would get rehashed from time to time as “thoughts for the day”. These thoughts would sometimes get written down on the blackboard (there was no consistent policy there). Some times, someone had to go utter a thought (didn’t have to be from the book, of course, but in those pre-internet days, that was the most convenient source) at the morning assembly. The result was that a lot of us ended up mugging up some of these “sayings” from our diaries. And if you are like me, you will remember some 27 years later.

This is possibly my favourite “thought” from my school diary (and the only one I remember, as it happens), and the reason I remember it is that it can be read two ways. And I like to interpret it the “wrong way”.

It goes:

Always do what you know to be the best even if it is the most difficult thing to do

I know it in full because I’d mugged it up to utter it in the big assembly sometime - now I don’t know when, but that doesn’t matter. I guess the intended reading of this rather complicated sentence (I’m surprised our English teachers didn’t bother using this when teaching us clauses) is:

Always do
What you know to be the best
Even if it is the most difficult thing to do

The way I’ve always liked to read this is:

Always do what you know
To be the best
Even if it is the most difficult thing to do

There is a subtle difference between the two. Imagine there are two paths you can go by. Or two things you can do.

The original meaning of the thought is:

Of the two things you can do, you know that one is “for the best”. So even if it is the most difficult thing to do, do it. In other words, don’t worry about the cost. Just look at the expected benefit of the things you can do. And do the thing that maximises this expected benefit.

I was possibly weak at reading comprehension when I was in school, so I interpreted the saying a bit differently.

There are two things you can do. You know how to do one, but not the other. It doesn’t matter which is the more difficult thing to do. You want to be “the best” (get the best outcome for yourself). So just do what you know, and it will maximise the chances of your getting the most benefit.

With benefit of hindsight, I know this is a bit illogical - if you don’t know how to perform a task, it has “infinite difficulty”, and is thus the more difficult task. But please indulge the 12-year-old me for the rest of this post.

Pressure and Performance

I was thinking about “thought” yesterday after I had written my post on pressure and rivalry and what it does to one’s performance.

In that post I talk about how whether or not someone is “good under pressure” is a false dichotomy, and typically, pressure improves your performance in things you are already good at, and makes performance worse in things you are not good at. And so if you think you “perform well under pressure”, it is likely that you are doing more things (under pressure) that you are good at!

Now come back to the quote. There is a situation where you can do one of two things - either the “right thing” (what you know to be the best) or the thing you are good at (“what you know”). If you need to do this thing under pressure, and you are not confident of your ability to execute on the right thing, then this is a bit of a losing game.

First of all, the odds of your successfully executing it are low (since you are not confident of your ability to execute). Second of all, assuming pressure is in the picture. Then your performance becomes even worse. So if you want to just do the right thing, without caring for how capable you are at executing it, it is likely that you may not have that great an outcome.

Instead, if you interpret the saying the way I did over thirty years ago, you simply do what you know to do. Even if it is difficult, you know how to do it and are confident of doing it well. And pressure in this case will actually enhance your performance. Yes, it may not be the “right thing” from the overall perspective, but it givse you the best chance of making an impact. And it will allow you to make an impact in a way only use can uniquely do!

Trust your instinct. Don’t overthink what the “right thing to do” might be. Do what you think will add the most value to you. If it is the right thing, you create great impact. If it is not, not that much is lost (since you knew how to do this thing, and thus haven’t expended that much effort!). It is like the queen of hearts all over again!