On Authenticity and the Action-Learning Framework

It's both easier and more constructive to say and do what you think.

Just Be Yourself

If prostitution is the oldest industry, “just be yourself” is the oldest bad advice.

We’ve all received it and we’ve all given it. When I was a data science consultant, my boss always told me that the analysis we provided needed to be actionable, so instead of changing the advice I’m giving, I’m changing its actionability.

I went to one of those high schools where we wrote a lot, so generally I can COOK if we’re looking for a thesis + supporting arguments, however in this blog, I’m doing it my own way because I think it’ll be more valuable. One might even call that authenticity.

I bolded the word “valuable” on purpose back there if you had any doubts (hard to finger slip that one). My whole argument around authenticity is around adding value and getting better at adding value. Maybe you’re being inauthentic because you believe it adds value (i.e. your opinions could suck, so speaking your mind may reveal you as the resident idiot, which may in turn make you the resident of your parents’ house as you look for a new job), but I disagree.

Starting a Company

In 2022, I broke all my rules. Lose money, and throw the plan away.

As someone who has had both pretty severe OCD and insecurity-about-where-I-am-in-the-pecking-order my whole life, quitting my job was the gain-of-function-research-equivalent to throwing away everything I hold sacred. This isn’t a blog post about doing the hard thing, nor is it one about quitting hard things, but I will touch on those a little bit, this is a blog post about doing you.

Concerns about why I only have 2 rules aside, being a first-time startup founder was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, however it was a time machine for my maturity. When you’re a founder, it’s all up to you (and your co-founder)(and your board)(and your advisors).

Every day, you wake up with a dozen things to do that you’re not convinced will do anything, you only have time/energy to do 3 of them, and you’re not sure how to even do those 3 things. It’s a crash course in “figure it out”, but it’s also a crash course in discovering who you are.

Figure It Out

This one is pretty straight forward. You don’t have a boss. You don’t have a subject matter expert, you probably don’t have a mentor who knows what you’re going through. You have your gut, maybe the top SEO’d medium article on the subject, and a goal.

You may never feel good about what you’re doing, but eventually you realize that despite all of that, stuff is actually…getting done? We had to pivot 4 times in the span of a year and a half (we chose the most volatile and fledgling industry), and every time we had to restart, we’d get back to where we previously were a little faster.

I didn’t know how to get customers, so I (action) joined 100+ Discords and tried to get in touch with people who made decisions. I worked out the kinks of that plan, and eventually (learning) learned that there are faster ways to get to a decision maker. Then we’d pivot and I’d need get our app in front of as many eyeballs as possible. I’d (action) try a bunch of social channels and app store tricks until I (learning) learned what worked. We’d pivot again, rinse, repeat.

I call this the action-learning framework, and yes I (action) just made it up. By doing things, I learned from those things, making me better at doing similar things in the future.

Your life is probably not a VR flash game, turned VR Chuck E. Cheese, turned Web3, turned metaverse start-up, but that doesn’t mean you’re insulated from hard things.

What’s cool about figuring things out is you fail forward. Figuring things out—whether it be dating, making decisions at your job, deciding on your values and life philosophy—happens naturally and you can literally start at 0 and see results right away. Just try something, learn from it, and take another shot on goal with that learning until you eventually score.

But doesn’t this come naturally? Doesn’t living naturally lead to trying things and learning from them. Yes, but I’d argue it happens too slowly most of the time, and unless you’ve got a lot of skin in the game, you’re probably not gleaning much from the feedback.

So how do you get skin in the game? Great question me.

You do things your way. You get to refine your ideas so they become better. If you’re always trying to be what your boss or the girl who was prettier in her pictures but you’re still blowing it on the date wants you to be, you’ll never get a chance to refine who you are, you’re just gonna get better browning your nose and exporting your locus of control.

Being a founder taught me that uncertainty is a part of everything, whether it be a business decision or sending that risky text, and that blithely hurling your ideas into the world is the most effective way to discover if your ideas are wrong (and how to refine them).

Discovering Who You Are

I thought that last section was going to be short, so buckle up for what I believed would be the longer of the two.

In November of 2020, I was in the thick of a battle with Alopecia, where I’d do anything at all, and more of my hair would fall out in chunks. It was super fun, I highly recommend it. The alopecia started in 2018 when I decided to start moonlighting 40 hrs a week on startups while also breaking into product management at another start up while also trying to maintain my 6 pack, while also trying to run a youtube channel, while also learning full stack programming. As you can imagine, this was a lot for a 24 year old to take on.

Over the 2 years between 2018 and 2020, basically nothing changed about that. I was full stack prioritizing the wrong things in life. I was blowing it on dates and lonelier than I have ever been (both romantically and socially). I felt terrible all the time. I went from a hot, tall, confident glass of water to an ugly and unsure glass of…uh…water.

Around this time, I got a blessing. My buddy got a bench press: it was a rinky dink piece of shit, but it was our rinky dink piece of shit. I had been doing bike rides, calisthenics, and light dumbbell work (we only had those adjustable 50lb dumbbells) pretty much every day as a means to hold onto the one thing I felt I could control (my physique), and this was a godsend. Finally some good news.

Here’s me at the first workout. The hair in that photo is basically all the hair on my head. I was like 2 face, but with my hair.

Anyway, 3 sets into that workout my pec exploded and I had to go the hospital (225 for 4.5 reps for those curious).

You might be thinking the bench press was the blessing and this is just a twisted joke, but no, the injury was the blessing.

I had one thing in life that I enjoyed, and it was gone. No bikes, no fitness, no abs. I was not only going to have no hair, but no outlet and no redeeming sex appeal (because that’s totally how that works).

At this time, I could have spiraled, but I was already so far in the hole, I, for the first time, had an excuse to do nothing. I got a therapist, which I now realize was a gamble, but thankfully, I got a man, and he was hard on me.

He instilled in me that I was a pushover simp who was blowing it at every junction, and he was right. He gave me books and articles to read and reflect on, and he helped me re-interalize my locus of control, but also realize that you can’t force things. Yes, there was a lot out of my hands, and also yes, Sisyphus’s curse is as much a parable about not giving up as it is about realizing some hills are gonna drive you mad.

You pick your battles, you stand up for what you believe in, and you learn when to walk away from uncooperative, unrealistic, or unhealthy hills.

Part of my mental TRT was getting in touch with who I am and what I want. My therapist shared the philosophy of Existentialism. Existentialism preaches that life is inherently meaningless and therefore absurd, and based on how well you fill out a pair of jeans, you either become a nihilist, or you create your own meaning (I editorialized a bit there).

There is a concept in existentialism called “authenticity” (pertinent, huh), and I love it. In essence, it says that we don’t really know who we are, and we discover that through our actions. You might have beliefs, values, and goals, but it’s not until you go out and live do you discover who you really are.

As an example, I wanted to like being alive, but I consistently chose things that made me want to not be. Another, less whiny one, would be I was lonely, and even though my literal best friend from college lived across town the entire time, I didn’t visit him until he got a bench press. Authenticity would say I cared more about my body than my chronic-loneliness.

It all clicked, and I use that advice all the time. We discover what we care about through our actions, and until our thoughts/values and actions are aligned, we feel out of congruence.

Life is as much about taking the bull by the horns as it is discovering how you take the bull by the horns and if you want to take the bull by the horns, but it first requires that you get on the bull.

So back to the topic at hand, you can’t figure out who you are and what you bring to the table if your thoughts and actions are misaligned.

you can’t figure out who you are and what you bring to the table if your thoughts and actions are misaligned.

For me, this looked like working less, reading more, having standards/boundaries for relationships, and seeing my friends. My thoughts said I was lonely, unhealthy, despondent, and confused, and my actions said let’s work about it.

Bringing It All Together

If naming variables is the hardest problem in software, coming up with headings is the hardest problem in oversharing, so bear with me on these vanilla headings.

The convolution of discovering who you are and allowing yourself to figure shit out based on your “self” yields a new function that results in not only getting good at bringing your unique perspective to the table, but getting to refine that perspective and having better ideas as a result.

When your actions and thoughts align, you’re showing up as a wholly unique perspective in whatever you’re doing, and you get to battle test that perspective and make tweaks on it.

I had the fortune and misfortune of shutting down my start up. It sucked, we had a couple engineers, but we knew it was coming and it was time. I ended up in a new role at a friend’s start up, and I realized I had a choice: be the growth guy I thought he wanted me to be, or be the growth guy I was/am. I chose the latter.

Not only do I bring a new perspective that’s often very helpful to the team, but I get to refine my thinking on things, ultimately making me a better version of myself at a faster rate. Instead of being a parrot, I’m a goose honking all over the place, learning which honks get me where I want to be. Parrots lose their novelty and get annoying, gooses don’t give a shit.

This also applies in dating. The mark of a straight man who will never be happy is a man whose guiding light is wanting women to like him. If you’ve learned anything here, it should be that conforming to other people’s rubric inherently means you are not conforming to yours. If a relationship is a team sport with the goal being mutual support, raising a family, and bettering the community, you 2xing what your lady brings is like having two wide receivers—who is throwing the ball, and who’s catching it?

I recently was fortunate enough to bump into a girl who ghosted me while at the birthday party of another girl who ghosted me.

The birthday girl and I ended up friends after she realized that her early-mid 20s Sex and the City phase yielded nothing but her being single wondering where all the good men are: she grossed them out. I was forgiving—she’s the one who is stuck dealing with her self-esteem after living to some Hollywood writer’s playbook—but I definitely don’t want to date her anymore. I’m being mean, so let’s shift our sights.

Back to the girl I bumped into at the birthday party. I remembered spending days mulling over everything I said to her, wondering what made her ghost me, and I got my answer: spending days mulling over what I said to her, wondering what made her ghost me. You can’t be confident and inauthentic.

She wasn’t really even that cute, just French.

You’re Gonna Be The Man One Day

I’m a big believer in being yourself. You might think you’re one thing, but a better way to gauge who you are is to determine what things you’re choosing to do, and what things you’re thinking about but not doing. If you can do that, and start acting on those thoughts and learning from those mistakes, I’m pretty bullish that you’re gonna be the man one day.

Love,

Jack