On Hard-work Vs Entitlement

2023.11.12

Lindy Expectancy: 38 Weeks

The goal of a fight is to win. The goal of training is to lose in as many different ways as possible, at least once. You find the weaknesses to patch them.

When we’re entitled, we don’t even bother training. So, the weaknesses will stay.

Promoted

I just got my blue belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu this Wednesday; I am sincerely grateful to all of my training partners who made that possible. Every time that I have been “tapped” has brought me closer to not getting tapped in the future. 

Being tapped is how we say beat, or submitted, in the sport. When you’re in an exposed position from which your opponent could hyper extend a limb or render you unconscious, you “tap,” and the game is over.

I wonder how many times I’ve tapped over the last two years? Even if it’s already as high as the thousands, which it probably is, it will be in the tens of thousands before I am done. 

When does winning happen?

I’ve been thinking a lot about when you win a fight. Is it when the fight actually happens, or was it over the duration of your training? If I grapple with someone who has trained for half as long as I have, do I beat them when we grapple, or did I beat them everyday that I trained and they didn’t? 

That’s not to suggest that training is the only thing that matters, I’ve certainly been tapped by people with less training than me, just as I’ve occasionally tapped people with more training than me. 

But, what is the expectation of the outcomes of these fights? What is training except raising the expected outcome of your performance?

Expected Value

While I think training both raises the expected value of your outcomes while lowering variance, for now we’ll only discuss the expected value portion of the equation.

As a refresher, expected value (EV) is the first moment of a random variable. It’s like the average or the mean; you take the value of all of the outcomes & multiply them by the probability of them happening. Here, our notation is P(A) for probability of A and V(A) for the value of A, where A is some action or event. Value can be negative.

We could find the expected value on the scale of you fighting any arbitrary individual, with the value of loss often being negative:

EV = P(Win)*(Value of win) + P(Loss)*(Value of Loss)

Or, we could get more granular, and look at the things that contribute to a win or a loss; the less energy you spend when you don’t have to, the higher the probability of a win. We take shallow breathing and tense muscles as useless ways to spend energy. So, maybe:

EV = P(shallow breathing)*V(shallow breathing) + P(deep breathing)*V(deep breathing)

And: 

P(tense muscles)*V( tense muscles) + P(loose muscles)*V(loose muscles)

If you are tense 90% of the time, and tense muscles are -100 energy, while loose muscles are 0 energy, then your EV = -90 energy. Same thing with breathing: shallow breathing is -100 energy, while deep breathing is maybe +100 energy. If you’re breathing shallow 100% of the time, now you’re at another -100 energy, for a total of -190 energy.

This is way more actionable and useful than looking at whether or not you win the fight; these variables, whether or not you breathe shallow and have tense muscles are in our control. They’re why we train.

Loosey Goosey

One of the most critical things I have learned doing martial arts is to stay calm under pressure.

You’d be surprised to know that it is hard to remember to breathe and relax your muscles when you are simulating a life or death fight–your heart is in overdrive, you’re flexing every single muscle in your body, you hold on to every grip like it’s all that matters, you respond to every little movement with your full, combined strength.

Well, that’s not how you win. 

Matches are a test of endurance. Energy should be conserved until it’s needed, and a clear mind should be maintained for as long as possible.

I’m still not great at this; I tense up more quickly than I should, and have to remind myself to breathe. But, hey, progress is progress. Now, I actually catch myself when I’m tense and when I’m breathing too quickly and shallowly, and that is certainly the first step to improving that. 

When I started, I would be tense and breathing shallow 100% of the time. Now, maybe I’m too tense 60% of the time and breathing too shallow 50% of the time. Back to our EV equations, now we roughly have an EV of -60 energy. That’s a hell of an improvement!

In other words, I’ve reduced the expectation of my energy output; I can hold on to it for when I really need it. All things considered, this should increase the probability of a win.

Discipline & Habits

In the past, I’ve talked about discipline as the process of doing the hard things until they are easy. I stand by that. 

I’d rephrase the same idea here as discipline is raising the expected value of your outcomes in any state. 

If you get up at 5, and you sleep in, you’re still waking up at 6 or 7. 

If you train yourself to focus on something for three hours at a time, and then an emergency comes up that requires your unbridled attention for 30 minutes, it should be easy to focus on it.

If you are used to 200 pound men sitting on your chest and having to breathe deeply, then when you are uncomfortable in a social setting and notice yourself breathing shallowly, it will be easier to remind yourself to breathe fully.

Never Training

This newsletter is pretty positive. We talk about good things, we don’t talk about the inverse of the good things as much. Today, we will. 

One of the recurring themes of this newsletter is that doing hard things is absolutely a requirement for growth. If you don’t push yourself in one way or another, you won’t be getting better any time soon.

I was rewatching a part of The Dark Knight Rises the other day (totally not just the fight scenes…) and a quote from Bane stuck out to me:

If you haven’t seen the movie, the scene this quote is from involves Bane kicking Batman's ass in a fight before he takes a city hostage. And ya know what? In that moment, Bane’s right—he should beat Batman in a fight. Bane’s been training like an animal, while Batman’s been loafing around.

The hardest part here is that Batman was morally in the right, but he wasn’t doing what he needed to do to win. He hadn’t been training.

Entitlement & Moral Obligation

It doesn’t really matter if you’re morally right or wrong when it comes to a fight. If you’re entitled, and just think that because you are on “the right side,” you’re going to win, then I can tell you with certainty, you will lose. 

Entitlement gets you nowhere. 

If anything, being on the ‘right side’ almost creates an obligation to work hard and to defend the values you hold so dearly, to put your skin in the game. 

To me, entitlement is thinking that with no hard work, you deserve a specific outcome, for whatever reason. Sometimes that outcome is truly and genuinely moral and is aligned with the best interest of society; but, just because it may be the ‘right’ thing, it doesn’t mean that you should just get it. 

If you think that you should be healthy and fit, you’re probably right–it’s in the best interest of yourself and society for you to take care of you as much as possible. You’re not entitled to that without work, though.

Filtering Threats

Entitlement won’t get you very far. It certainly couldn’t earn me a blue belt, and it certainly won’t earn me a black belt. There’s only been one purple belt I’ve ever rolled with who I thought should actually be a white belt (it was in Montreal, go figure). 

In other words, martial art belts (at least in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu) are a relatively good filter for whether or not someone has been working at something. Entitled people can get quite far, until they actually have to fight or put meat on the table. Marital arts forces constant fighting.

When you’re screening for any sort of bad marital arts gym, one of the biggest red flags is if the instructor will refuse to train with any of his students. 

When push comes to shove, the untrained who think they deserve the benefits of training break. Funny enough, that purple belt who I thought should be a white belt actually only rolled with me one time before leaving the class early. 

Conflict Shows Strength

When you’re entitled, you’re fragile. Like water crashing against the rocky shore, you’ll break against reality.

If the principles you believe in are morally correct, I wonder if you have an obligation to do everything in your power to defend them in the real world that does not come at the expense of others.

Entitlement readily losing out to hard-work is both good and bad news.

Good news, because anyone who is morally corrupt and entitled is not a threat. Bad news, because anyone who is morally corrupt and hard working is a threat. 

Ignoring the dimensions of beliefs that can seem like they condone entitlement, perhaps anyone who acts entitled by not working hard for change should be disqualified from being your enemy in the first place.

Live Deeply,