Do what you want and success will follow. It’s true, but it’s also completely irrelevant. It’s what you do next that really matters.
Imagine you worked like hell to make something cool. People start catching wind of what you've done, and before you know it, you're rich and famous. You revel in the success. All eyes are on you. You're the new hotness and everyone wants to know what you're going to do next.
So what do you do next? You flop. Your reputation descends, and your success rapidly dwindles. Everything you do just makes things worse, spiraling you down the drain. People start thinking maybe you never had it in the first place, or you got lucky. Nobody likes you anymore, and if anything you're worse off.
Companies call it the product life cycle. Artists and athletes call it the sophomore jinx. Celebrities blame a fickle public. Nobody really knows why it happens, just that it happens.
I know why it happens.
Or, I should say, a very good friend helped me figure out why it happens and, more importantly, that it was happening to me. Indeed, it's been happening to me my entire life. I'm writing this down because I need to remember it. I'm publishing it because I'm paying it forward.
When you're hungry and doing what you love, you do good work. When people notice that work, you become successful. Success makes you a different person. Maybe you're lazy, and can't compel yourself to do the work. Maybe you're burned out, or tired of it. Maybe you only ever had one good thing in you.
Success is a temptress and you want desperately to stay in her good graces. You start thinking of what it is people want from you so you can give it to them. Trouble is, you've stopped being yourself and started merely doing an impression of yourself. You have become insincere.
Insincerity is a symptom that lets you hide the disease. It's like a girdle: it's a good sign you've gone off your diet, but it's also a means to hide that fact.
Eventually the real problem—that you're washing cheeseburgers down with super-sized Cokes—is going to overtake your ability to hide it. In the end all you've done is give yourself more weight to have to lose. Because you know what? You were never fooling anyone.
The ability to spot insincerity is built into our social instinct. Socialization is one of our biggest evolutionary advantages, and it's been evolving since the earliest primates. (That, as an aside, is what makes lemurs so scientifically interesting: they were the first social primates.)
Insincerity doesn't accomplish anything except for making people hate you and making things worse. If you find yourself being insincere, stop it. Figure out what the problem is and fix it. Even if that means never coming out with a next move and eventually fading into the collective memory. At least people will remember you fondly.
Sincerity Theory has become my Unified Theory of Everything.
It explains the one thing in my life that has always baffled me: why do things go so well then go so wrong? How come I could do no wrong and now I can do no right? How come even though I try to act like the cool kids, nobody thinks I'm cool?
For example, this explains Apple's failure, as well as their success. By the Gil Amelio years, they had stopped being Apple and started pretending to be Apple. In reality, they weren't really innovating. They were just whining, which made them no friends and alienated users.
Now Apple comes out with new products before we get tired of the old ones. Look at the iPod mini. This was literally their most popular product and they discontinued it. Why? Because the first thing they did when they released the mini was went back to the drawing board. They didn't let themselves get lazy and try to milk the mini for all it was worth, then flail around desperately when people finally got tired of it.
Consider the Drunken Batman debacle at C4[1]. Why was it received so poorly? Was it because DB is a racist asshole? No, it's because he was being insincere. The fact is, whatever he once had that made him so popular and controversial, he's lost it. The man who stood before us and made an ass of himself was not Drunken Batman. He was simply trying to be Drunken Batman, but we could all see right through him.
One of the ways you can detect insincerity is by seemingly innocent mistakes. Here's a hypothetical based on something that recently happened to me. What if someone told you they were a doctor but, as they talked, they said the human heart was on the right side. It's a simple mistake, but it's a mistake a real doctor never would have made.
Even if you read a book on pretending to be a doctor, you would still not fool a real doctor. That's because the only way to gain all the knowledge of a doctor is to actually practice medicine.
Being a programmer is the same way. The only way to be a good programmer is to write code. When you realize you haven't been writing much code lately, and it seems like all you do is brag about code you wrote in the past, and people start looking at you funny while you're shooting your mouth off, realize it's because they know. They might not even know they know, but they know.
So, yes, doing what you love brings success, and by all means, throw yourself a nice big party, buy yourself a nice car, soak up the adulation of an adoring crowd. Then shut the fuck up and get back to work.
Addenda 
l am not Wil Shipley.
And there’s a very good chance that neither are you. I realize it sounds like I’m talking about Wil, and that’s not a coincidence. When you work with Wil, you get to pretend you’re Wil. It’s really easy to lose sight of the fact you’re not.
I’m not saying Wil is exempt from laziness or insincerity. No one is. However, consider this analogy.
Wil has been dieting, working out, and watching his figure for years. He’s on the 5 year plaque down at the gym. After I’d been dieting and hitting the gym for a month, Wil says, hey let’s get some ‘chos.
I’m like hell yes (when I should be a good influence and say hell no) and we go eat enough nachoage to undo two full months of dieting. Wil does not need two month’s worth of nachos under his belt, but, again, he’s been at it for over five years. I, on the other hand, have just gone backwards.
I am practicing this theory.
It’s only been a day but damn it’s been a good day. I feel so much happier with my life and my work since this realization. Things make so much sense, it’s like my last name is Gautama.
Understand that my head is a huge mess. I have multiple voices running around in there driving me nuts. I over-think everything I do. Consider what would happen if you asked me to lunch.
I would wonder if I was hungry and if I had previously made any lunch plans. Then I would wonder why you were asking. What is your angle? I would examine the hypothetical responses to my responses, and try to figure out which one would have the best outcome. I would think about which restaurants were in the area, and how each selection would reflect on me. This insane conversation would go on and on.
It wasn’t always this bad, but every time something would go south I would think I need to try harder. I need to analyze things more. I need to think more moves into the future.
Here’s the thing: none of that shit matters at all. If you’re hungry, you’re hungry. If you’re not, you’re not. Maybe it would be nice if you could fake your feelings to make other people think something about you, but you can’t.
Today, if you asked me to lunch I would ask myself, am I hungry? Do I want to go? And that’s all. I’m not saying the crazy voices have gone away; I’m just saying I can cut that shit off at the first sentence and move on with my life.
I guess a good analogy would be spending an hour every morning working on my combover, then spending all day wasting mental cycles worrying about it, adjusting it, and stealing glances at it in the mirror. When someone is talking to me, I’m thinking about whether they can notice my combover and hating them if I think they can.
Sincerity Theory didn’t give me my hair back, but it did make me realize: dude, everyone sees your stupid combover. And just like that, I’m free.
That is, by the way, only an analogy. My hair is gorgeous.
Socialization is one of our biggest evolutionary advantages, and it's been evolving since the earliest primates. (Photo by Mary Brunson.)
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Sincerity Theory
