I'm going to take Ed's examples one step further and visualize some of my favorite lessons from physics and chemistry and how they apply to life.
Pareto Principle
The Pareto Principle is also known as the 80/20 rule. To summarize this principle: 80% of your results comes from 20% of your inputs. Apply this to economics, 80% of the income is concentrated with 20% of the population. A few people hold most of the wealth. The distribution is a Power Law Distribution shown below.
 |
| Power Law Distribution |
This graph can be found everywhere. 20% men are having 80% of the sex. 80% of fitness results comes from 3 simple rules: Eat right, exercise, get enough sleep. Supplements would be addressing the 20% part of fitness results. 20% of your clients will give you 80% of your revenue.
Not sure if Ed saved the best for last, but I'll visualize his piece about inertia. This is from his post:
This curve illustrates force needed to move an object. As you apply more force on an object at rest, at some point, it will start moving. The vertical line is the point where the object starts moving. This is the important part. Once an object starts moving, you don't need as much force to keep it moving.
Once you start killing it in life, it becomes easier to maintain that momentum compared to when you first start out. Once your efforts pass through the breakthrough point, it requires less effort to keep moving forward.
To go more scientifically, Newton's law of universal gravitation follows this graph. The further away from Earth you go, the less gravitational pull you feel. This also applies to Boyle's law. For an ideal gas inside a container, as the volume of the container decreases, pressure increases. The Power Law is such a widespread phenomenon that you should immediately think about it in all the decisions you make. Knowing what effort belongs in that 20% and focusing your energy towards those efforts will yield tremendous results.
Acceleration and Gravity
As mentioned before, Newton's law of universal gravitation follows the Power Law. You can rotate and flip the graph make the effects of gravity more apparent.
 |
| Gravity |
Gravity is a force when applied to a mass produces acceleration. The effects of acceleration are not very perceptible at first. The object does not fall much. But as time goes on, the object moves quicker and falls farther.
Going back to the Pareto Principle, addressing an issue within the first "20%" time-frame window prevents the problem from snowballing. Human development takes 18 years. The first 20% has the biggest impact on how the child grows up. Your health can rapidly deteriorate later in life if you don't address issues early on.
Here's a mind blogging concept. The green dot represents what would happen if you removed gravity. Stopping acceleration does not stop the falling! You have to generate a force greater than gravity to reverse the trend. Depending on when you reverse the trend determines how little or how much ground you have to recover. Trying to turn your health around later on in life is much tougher because you have so much ground to make up. Deep down you know what you need to work on. The longer you wait, the harder it gets. Slay the dragons while they are little!
State Changes
Question: Is water a solid or a liquid at 32 degrees? The answer is... both! Take an ice cube and start applying heat to it. As shown below, the temperature of the ice cube will start to increase over time. Once the ice hits 32 degrees, you enter the first red line.
 |
| State Changes |
At this point, the ice cube does not change in temperature. Simply put, the heat is being used to break the bonds holding water molecules together. This causes the ice to melt. Once the ice has completely melted, the added heat will cause the temperature to rise. Same thing applies to boiling water.
There are times in your growth where you feel like you've stalled or hit a plateau. This is normal. You are transitioning from one state to another. Maintain the effort. If the plateau remains, investigate what is holding you back. See how you can break those bonds. There might be some friction (this will be covered later on) that may require an extra push to breakthrough.
Titration
Chemistry was my favorite high school subject. Maybe because it is the closest thing to magic. To an extent, chemistry allows you to change and transform matter. Plus explosions are always cool to create. Visualize a mad scientist with the lab coat and googles. Imagine beakers with different color solutions. Dexter's Laboratory! That is fantasized chemistry.
Titration is used to determine the concentration of a solution. Acid-base titration is the most commonly known form. For example, you slowly drip your unknown base into an acid. Simply put, when an acid comes in contact with a base, you get some kind of salt and water.
 |
| Titration |
On the left side of the curve, adding base does not change the pH much. Because there is plenty of acid to counter the base. At some point, you run out of acid and you get the vertical line. Now adding more base rapidly changes the pH until you reach the pH of the base.
Often times, life comes in spurts. Puberty is a big example of rapid changes. A small consistent change over time can lead to dramatic results. Ed is a great example of this. He put in the consistent work. He has now entered his breakthrough phase.
You can also apply this titration concept to the migrant crisis. A slow drip introduction of migrants is not noticeable at first. But with enough time, you end up dramatically changing the country to the point where you don't even recognize your own country. A culture and a country is determined by the individuals in the country. If you completely replace the individuals, you completely replace the country.
Inertia
Not sure if Ed saved the best for last, but I'll visualize his piece about inertia. This is from his post:
"Whether you are at rest or in motion, you want to stay that way. If you aren’t doing shit, you want to continue being lazy. If you’re killing it in life, you don’t want to slow down. The only thing that over comes inertia is force."
 |
| Friction |
This curve illustrates force needed to move an object. As you apply more force on an object at rest, at some point, it will start moving. The vertical line is the point where the object starts moving. This is the important part. Once an object starts moving, you don't need as much force to keep it moving.
Once you start killing it in life, it becomes easier to maintain that momentum compared to when you first start out. Once your efforts pass through the breakthrough point, it requires less effort to keep moving forward.
No comments:
Post a Comment