Life and Personal

Power of Simple Metaphors

I love talking; I love discussing matters of philosophy and human nature. The strange dichotomy of human existence is that what makes us human also makes us difficult to understand each other. As a result, we often rely on established social norms and behaviors to guide us.

Every so often, you want to ask yourself why things are the way they are; why there are inexplicable patterns surrounding everything from human migration to business development. A theorist would take out their subject compendium and refer you to the works of someone who has performed academic research in that area. Yet, you will be left with dealing with a few assumptions that have no clear basis.

Let me explain what I am getting at. Today, while sipping our morning coffee, V&I started a discussion on simplifying how V approaches her new food entrepreneurship. She was concerned that she did not have a clear path to innovation that would differentiate her business/service from that of established competitors. Classic problem, right. There are dozens of books and university courses that offer to solve exactly this problem.

Then, I started with one of my simple metaphors. That of a train.

When you’re starting a new business, you’re the person with the second class train ticket without reservation, which means you’re going to have to walk all the way to the end of the platform to get into the train. This means that you would have to budget for some time to get to the station and get into your train; you’d probably also have to put up a little fight to get any open unreserved seats so that you don’t have to endure your journey standing up. Life will be a bit tough, especially if reaching your destination means a couple transfers along the way, all complicated by your possession of only a second class ticket without a seat reservation.

So, how do you make your life and journey better? You simply keep catching the same train every day, getting there a little earlier every day to save time, to find a seat, and then getting accustomed to the journey enough that you know precisely when seats open up at stations along the way. After each day of repeating this, you become an expert in the art of traveling on a second class ticket.

There is no need to innovate. You just follow the established playbook of finding a seat, with perseverance.

Then, as you optimize your daily journey, you gradually start reaping benefits of getting to work earlier and in a better state. That leads you to gradually be able to afford a seat reservation, possibly even in first class. You have mastered the playbook.

When do you innovate? How do you get to your destination even faster? Perhaps you could charter an airplane or figure out a combination of rail and road segments. That’s when you innovate. That stage comes long after you’ve made yourself comfortable doing the same thing day in and day out.

This is probably not a perfect metaphor, but it sure does motivate you and make things a whole lot clearer.

The same metaphor also explains human migration. We are all catching the same train to work every day. People in developed countries are riding fast direct trains, whereas there are some stuck riding trains that are slow and often have to endure their journey without a seat. The whole point of migration is to promote yourself to one of those fast trains.

Life is simple.

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