Hemingway once wrote a short story with six words. How would you summarize Lasting Contribution in six words?

Remove self. What remains is contribution.

How?

First think. Then act. Do both.

What is “chimerical?”

You wrote, “At this point, you may be concerned that you are not talented enough to make a lasting contribution. In the course of this book, I will show that this concern is chimerical. . .”

I later wrote, “I don’t struggle with self-doubt: I fight a fire-breathing, lion-headed, serpent-tailed chimera.” A “chimera” is a mythological beast. I’m saying that your concerns about not being talented enough are ungrounded.

Why is there an unnamed cell in the business Venn diagram?

As I wrote earlier in the text, if it isn’t in your circle of competence, don’t waste your time thinking about it. The unnamed cell is irrelevant.

I hear the call to greatness, but cannot tell from what direction it comes. In other words, I don’t have a final cause. What should I do?

If you can't begin with the end in mind, if you can’t map your path with considered action, then you must have a stronger moral compass and be more observant; you must be more flexible and be more willing to backtrack as necessary; you must be more sensitive to the terrain; you must recover from errors faster. Why? Because your only guide is an elusive sense that what you seek is, perhaps, in that direction. Your only guide is the feeling that this action will increase the probability of desired outcomes, that it raises potential. For example: I’m more employable with a college degree. Better health will help my life in a wide variety of ways, and so on.

I find the thought of making a lasting contribution to be too daunting. How should I motivate myself?

There are two aspects to my answer. When I was learning Chinese, I was overwhelmed by the number of characters I had to learn. The trick was not to think about it, but rather to put my head down and get to work. Later I realized that if I learned only three characters a day for 300 days for five years, I’d know as many as most educated Chinese.

            The other aspect of the answer is to occasionally take the time to notice how far you’ve come. I like to hike in the mountains. At some point it always becomes a slog. If I take the time to look around, I am usually struck by how beautiful the scenery is and how far I’ve climbed. It is motivating. When I am saving money for a goal, I find it easier to say, “That’s $10 a day,” than “In another five years, I’ll have enough.” Think in terms of frequent milestones.

What is the difference between religion and ethics?

God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son. If he does, that’s religion—the obeying of God’s will. If he doesn’t, it’s ethics—doing what is good vis-à-vis human beings.

What is the nature of humanity?

This question is like wanting to know the area of a rectangle, but asking only about one side. People don’t exist in nature. We exist in society. What we are is the result of the interaction of biology, culture, and choice; each of these is caused by a myriad of other factors.

How would your book apply to the old ethical dilemma of whether a man who can’t afford medicine should steal from a pharmacy to save his wife?

Obviously, it is wrong to steal and wrong to let your spouse die. Death, however, lasts longer and can’t be undone. If the man steals the medicine, then once his wife is well, she can help him repay the theft.

How do I know if I have a BIHAG?

It’s like love. If you have to ask, you don’t.

Can you give me another example of the opposite of the Whack-a-Mole approach?

Two guys are hiking along the Amazon when they see a baby floating in the river. One guy drops his pack, takes off his boots, jumps in, and saves the baby. After a while they see another baby floating in the river. The same guy jumps in and saves the kid. A little later they see yet another baby floating by. The same guy heads toward the river. When he sees the other guy start to run up the path, he shouts, “Hey, aren’t you going to help me save the kid?” The other replied, “No. I’m going to get the son of a bitch who’s throwing them in.” Rather than plugging the leaks, sometimes you can just turn off the water. Take a moment; think about what the big picture is, and how you might solve a problem systemically.

If you couldn’t use Aristotle’s four causes, how would you explain to somebody how to make a lasting contribution?

Start with what we know about the world. Some things are relatively abstract: love, goals, values, plans. Some things are relatively tangible: bricks, emus, skills, actions, even knowledge (because it can be measured with a test). Some things are inner: your thoughts and desires, your brain and heart. Some things are outer: dogs and dirt, other people and their thoughts. Then organize this knowledge:

It then becomes clear that some things are like science; they have rules and can be taught. Other things are more like art and are only acquired through experience.

            To make a lasting contribution you have to coordinate these four aspects of reality such that you translate the abstract into the tangible. It doesn’t matter if you start from the inner and work out or start from the outer and work in, because to succeed, inner and outer must meet.

            How? Whatever else you do, ignore the advice of most of the books on strategic planning. In Strategic Intuition, for example, William Duggan explains that this advice derives from Antoine-Henri Jomini: Figure out what territory you want to capture; set strategic objectives; execute. One downside of this way of strategizing is that it can lead everybody to the same place at the same time. When both sides that fought the American Civil War followed Jomini’s advice, the result was Antietam and its 23,000 casualties in a single day.

            Instead, follow the approach that derives from Carl von Clausewitz: Look for the time and place in which you can destroy your enemy’s army and seize these decisive points. When Napoleon invaded Italy, he passed by the obvious goals of Turin and Milan. Instead, he routed the Austrian army at the relatively obscure Lodi. Why Lodi? Because that is where he could achieve his goal. Obviously this approach means that your goals are not fixed, but as Abraham Lincoln said, “Important principles may and must be flexible.”

            There are more questions that can be asked about this theory of how to make a lasting contribution:

The world I see is tangible. Why even have the abstract?

Because it is necessary. Suppose I want to retire to a lighthouse and live off my garden. If I don’t understand global warming, then I’ll be less able to manage the tangible stuff around me. Moreover, I can’t understand global warming as just one more tangible thing, because it exists in the system of carbon inputs (known amounts via the coal and oil markets), a theory of how the greenhouse process works (O₂ and N₂ let heat slide by while H₂O and CO₂ block its escape [note the shapes of the compounds]), and outputs (the temperature trend line).

Isn’t the tangible part materialistic?

Materialism leads to abstract value. Imagine if you were among the earliest humans. How would you show that you loved someone? You could offer her a grub, or you could hold a leaf over her head so that she might not get quite as wet in the rain. Today you can write a song, fix her car, teach her little brother how to play a game. Materialistic advances give us options.

Is mindfulness important?

Yes, because the future flows from here and now. If you have presence of mind, then it allows you to see and seize opportunities, to be flexible, to sense and respond, to anticipate, to be proactive, to calculate the system, to see how the latest thing changes everything. Bring the now to the center of your being, as you would move your queen to the center of a chess board.

Q: Who do you hope will benefit most from this book?
The book is targeted to people who want to make a difference in the world. As I originally saw it, this broke down into two groups of people:
     • Thinkers who already have a sophisticated understanding of the world, but who don’t know how to translate that understanding into results.
     • Doers who are prone to action, but who want their actions to have a greater impact on the world.
But targeting is an imprecise science and I’ve found a third group of people are also seeking to benefit from this book. I am often asked, “How can I use these ideas to raise my children?” The image that pops into my head is that of a mushroom: Raise your children such that they have a fair degree of breadth of learning. This assures that they are generally competent and that they’ve tried enough different things to discover where their strengths are. Encourage them to go deep into the area where they have strength. Then apply strength to world.

Q: What is the relationship between making a lasting contribution and achieving professional success?
I don’t really know what “professional success” is. Success is success, and there is no distinction between the professional and the personal. I know plenty of miserable ‘successful’ people. They are rich, but empty. In comparison, I have a dirt-poor friend who grows garlic and home-schooled his daughter. He is happy and his daughter (also happy) is blowing through college at age 14. Who do you think is more successful? My point is the same as the poet Louise Erdrich’s:
     Pursue the authentic—decide first
     what is authentic,
     then go after it with all your heart.
This is the path to true success.

Q: How are people who’ve already read it reacting to Lasting Contribution?
Different people read the book very differently. Some people read it simply for entertainment. They like the squirrels that cause avalanches, the pachyderms that turn into cheetahs, the singing vorpal blades, and the high-casualty cocktail parties. Other people read it for the utility they can extract from it. They find useful the explanation of the essence of business, the application of minimax, and the analysis of how to become wealthy. Still others are into the ideas, citing in particular that they didn’t know that hermeneutics, information theory, and the notion of emergent properties have so much in common. Finally, some people are most drawn to the overall idea of a systematic way of thinking about how to contribute to the world and to have a meaningful life. Everybody appreciates that it can be read in an hour and a half.

Q: What do you want readers to take away with them after reading the book?
To become more sophisticated in thought and action so that they make the world a better place and have more meaningful lives.

Q: For example?
Suppose you see a parent lose patience with a screaming baby. Like any decent person, you would feel moved to help, but what could you do? Offer to carry the groceries? Play peek-a-boo? Give the kid a lolly? You could do what Jean Ann Lynch did. She asked: Why is the baby crying? In many cases, she understood, that the baby is uncomfortable due to diaper rash, caused by the parents being unable to afford diapers. Lynch created an organization, called Baby Basics, which gathers donations to give diapers to working-poor families. More diapers means less diaper rash. Less rash means less crying. Less crying, means less child abuse.