Doing Things The Wrong Way

There are a large number of social constructs we comply with in our daily lives, many of them without realizing it. Many of these have legitimate reasoning behind them, though many are also not the optimal way to do things.

For example, it’s probably a good idea to follow the social custom of taking a shower after working out. If you don’t, you’ll be hot, sweaty, uncomfortable, and possibly smell bad. Most of us would decide to shower on our own for these reasons.

On the other hand, why exactly do you make your bed in the morning? You’d probably say, “so that it looks nice.” The real reason is probably because your mom told you to when you were a child. But what does it really accomplished. If you follow an average work/life pattern, nobody is going to see that unmade bed! Why not just make it when having company over? Incidentally, its possible that not making your bed may be good for your health, but that’s not the point.

The point is that be aware of what social constructs actually provide the best way to live our lives. Those which can be replaced by a process which is more beneficial should be replaced! This advice can be applied to nearly all parts of your life as well; school, home, work, family, friends.

I’d like to share 3 choices I’ve made this week to “do things the wrong way,” all of which have lead to very positive outcomes.

• Before this Wednesday, I had never swam the length of a pool in my life. Now, I want to learn how to swim so that I can compete in triathlon events. The standard thing to do, the accepted social decision, would be to either enroll in the beginning swimming class at Duke, or find beginner’s swimming lessons in the area.

  I signed up for Duke’s endurance swimming class. Given that this class is designed to follow beginning swimming and intermediate swimming, this seems rather ridiculous. But let’s think about what my goal is: to be able to swim triathlon distances, a.k.a. proficiency in endurance swimming.

  Further, the beginning class spends the entire semester teaching the four basic swimming strokes. That’s slow. By “jumping in the water” so to speak, being in a class where everyone else is an experienced swimmer allows/forces me to learn faster. Since I’m so invested in learning, this is a benefit, rather than a hindrance.

  The end result; I ended up in a class that’s appropriately motivating (because I want to stop being the fool in lane 1 doing breathing drills) with an instructor who is equally motivated to help me learn. Ballpark guess, I’m going to learn how to swim 3-4 times faster. Can’t argue with that.

• This semester I’m taking two of the easier math major courses, Probability and Combinatorics. I need to learn the material for my thesis on voting theory, so it’s quite worth my while. However, since I’ve taken a number of significantly more advanced courses, at lot of the material is either review, or presented slower than necessary.

  The natural assumption in a course is that you have to go the speed dictated by the professor. I don’t think it’s particularly advantageous to proceed slower, but there can be great benefit to moving faster.

  By learning the first few sections of the material before the first day of class, I was able to get a lot more out of lecture. When the professor was talking about points I hadn’t quite understood, I could perk up, listen, and ask questions. The rest of the time, I could work on learning new material or doing homework problems for the current material. This allows me to easily stay ahead and perpetuate the cycle, and allows me to maximize the usefulness of classtime, which we all know can be a complete waste.

  On top of this, being even one section ahead makes it really easy to impress your professors, which is nice for developing fruitful relationships with them (I’m trying to get as much help with my thesis from the probability professor as possible, he’s quite good).

• As a member of DUMU (the Duke University Math Union), I was supposed to go to two meetings this week. Having gone to too many such meetings in the past, I knew ahead of the time that it was going to amount to about two and a half hours of wasted time in which I would be given a few tasks (that could be sent in an email) and unnecessarily talk about the details of them (which I invariably already know or are unimportant).

  As you might expect from the way this post is going, I didn’t attend either meeting. I didn’t even let them know I wasn’t coming (they might have tried to reschedule). What happened? Absolutely nothing. I got an email (told you) with one line of directions it. Isn’t that much better? Now ideally, we’d conduct all business that way, but the current situation works for me.

  Before you do something you feel obligated to do, really consider what would happen if you didn’t. I bet it’s not nearly as bad as you think.

So, think about why you’re following the crowd. A lot of the time there’s a great reason (like when wearing a coat in sub-zero weather), but a lot of the time there isn’t, and there are often gains to be had by doing things the wrong way.

-III

This article was featured on the Carnival of Self-Mastery
This article was featured in The Twenty Fourth Edition of the Carnival of Improving Life.