Virtuous circle & Self-driven
When I was working in Amazon several years ago, I attended internal training lectures, many of which mentioned well-known Amazon flywheels. It's been guiding Amazon towards right direction for years successfully. Obviously it's a typical instance of virtuous circle of a company.
This model should work on individuals as well. I clearly experience the benefit of virtuous circle during school time. But recent years, thing have went bad and uncontrolled. When I tried to ask myself the reason behind it, I always concluded with LAZINESS. Is it the essence? Perhaps. However I'd liked to review it a little bit differently.
When we talk about virtuous circle, we are actually implying closed loop. The sustainability of the virtuous circle depend on stability of the closed loop.
As with Amazon, it increases its customers number, selection number, sellers number. It in turn raises its bar of online & offline technique. Finally its services become better and attracts more customers & sellers. Personally, what it also means is that the improvements of all aspects are triggered spontaneously. For example, the invention of AWS isn't due to existence of other cloud services, but due to its own demand. Its closed loop is stable.
Well as with me in school time, cases are not the same. I learnt hard because society told me to. I tried to get high scores in exams because all the other students in the country were trying to do the same. If I saw my score decreases or others' increase, well I got new initiative. I got good/bad feedback from classmates / teachers / parents etc., except from myself. The loop seems closed and firm, while it's actually not. This loop was composed by the whole exam system and me. The “loop” vanishes when these two are no longer counterparts. The issue of this situation is I didn't own my closed loop, instead I depend on environment heavily. Environment doesn't always cooperate, even though it may do at the beginning. For example when I leave exams and score, I lost much source of accomplishment. This happened abruptly after I said goodbye to algorithm contest activities.
The key to make one's own closed loop is Self-driven. Self-driven is not just working hard to accomplish tasks at hand. In my opinion it should cover several aspects:
- Making choice that can convince yourself;
- Working hard on the way your choice indicates;
- Gain sense of accomplishment from the bottom of your heart, instead of anywhere else.
Obvious I did quite bad for 1 & 3, and have been sucked with 2 in recent years. If I don't trust the meaning of my work at hand, why should I work hard? I have to admit even now I'm incapable to make choice that can convince myself on big map. And I have to admit I had been too lucky in early life. Without big frustrations, I'm alway gain "confidence" from others' feedback. Put it simple, in fact I just lack real confidence, because I used to live happily without it for a long time! When obstacles are in the way, I doubt myself easily.
In this cooperative society, you just can't expect as many compliments as before. You need to first trust yourself before trusting your choices. Perhaps many people learnt this lesson very early when they met big frustrations in their early life, which made them strong and brave. Meanwhile I'm just a newbie on the way.
