Where do you look when you're trying to generate value? How do you manifest value? Can you manifest value on demand, or is there a struggle? Is there a fixed limit that you can't break through? In this episode we examine the beginnings of a simplified strategy to manifest value through the application of what you already know to new areas AKA generalization.
Hunter Powers: Welcome to The One. I'm your host, Hunter Powers broadcasting live from our nation's capital D.C. Proper, Washington, D.C. Today's one idea is manifesting value through generalization. Now, I feel like on the face of it, even the title here suggests a certain level of nonsense, but it is not meant to be nonsensical. This is a serious topic that I believe if you do not understand will hinder your ability to get where you want to go. Manifesting value through generalization. I want to start with the word manifest. I think this is a misunderstood word. I believe that when the average person hears the word manifest, the average person walking down the street, what they think is that it means to bring something into existence. You manifested it, it wasn't there, and then you like some great magician, waived your wand and it appeared. You manifested a rabbit out of a hat. You created something from nothing to manifest.
Hunter Powers: But that's not what it means. To manifest is to make something be understood or obvious to others, often by showing it to them or displaying it to them. The idea being that it's taking something that's probably already there and you just, you're not recognizing it and pointing it out and making it really easy to understand. That's manifest. The word that's closest to this with a similar-ish definition is manifesto. That word, the average person, and you are of course far above an average person, but the average person probably does have a decent understanding of that word. The manifesto is their statement of everything that they believe in, their intentions, their motives, their views, and it's also often associated with a more extreme viewpoint. Because if your viewpoint is simply in alignment with everyone else, then why do you need a manifesto?
Hunter Powers: Here, the manifesto, which is this statement declaring all of your views, it's not as if you didn't have those views before. You are manifesting them or you are making them your ideas and views easily understood. To manifest is taking something that already exists and making it easily understood. The one idea this week is manifesting value through generalization. So now let's go one word deeper, manifesting value. I think, and I think by the way, when I first started manifesting value, what I thought in my head, that means you're talking about that law of attraction stuff. Maybe you've heard of this, maybe you haven't, and the gross simplification of it, and it is a gross simplification, is that you think of whatever you want in your head, you close your eyes, you envision it, and then it will more or less appear before you or appear before you in just a few days.
Hunter Powers: Oh, I'm going to close my eyes right now. I see a a giant house at the beach, a private jet and I see a billion dollars in a bank account. All right, now that I've seen into my head, I will manifest it. I'll open my eyes and it will all exist, the law of attraction. Again, gross simplification, but [inaudible 00:03:35]. I tell you what, it is what I thought it was when I heard about it. So manifesting value. What is that manifesting values? Okay. It's when you think about something in your head and then it comes up. But we just kind of pulled back a little bit on what manifesting is and it's making value that already exists easily recognizable, easily understood. So to manifest value is to find value that is not currently recognized by others, that is not obvious, something that has a worth that is far greater than most people apply to it.
Hunter Powers: Now it could also be the inverse. You could discover that something is worth far less than it actually is, but we're focused on the first scenario. How do you discover something that has far more value than anyone else is aware of? How do you manifest this value? Of course now we go back to the full idea again, manifesting value through generalization. So what is generalization? What does it mean to generalize about something? It means to look at a person, a situation, a group of things, and to try to understand the first principles that make it all work. We could oversimplify this to say, how does this situation work on average? What's the basic idea of what is going on here? What are the basic principles at play, the laws that are governing this situation? If you refer back to the episode, the alien observer model, what is the strategy at play? How can we talk about this situation broadly, not focusing on the individual specifics?
Hunter Powers: I'll note, generalization probably has a more negative connotation than a positive connotation. People will talk about sweeping generalizations that were made, stereotypes. We're not supposed to generalize. Don't do that. Stay away from any generalization. You need to know every single person and all of their quirks and all of their history and to do anything less is disingenuous. The truth is there are moments where that is a correct statement and there are moments where that is an incorrect statement. But generalization in general, we're going to generalize about generalization here and it's not great idea. Generalization in general has a lot of value. We have to generalize. That's how we move through life every day. I've used this example before. When the crosswalk, it turns white, that little person, they turn white on the sign and then you you walk across. Why do you cross then and not when it's red?
Hunter Powers: Well because in general it's safer then. In general, you don't get hit by a car when you cross at that time. Of course you should always be hyper aware of your surroundings and check to see whether some cars coming flying down the road. But we don't always and we actually don't the majority of the time, the majority of the time we generalize about things. Then there are certain moments where we realize we need to get hyper specific and understand the minute details of what is going on. If you want to know why, like why do you do that or how do you know when you do that, it's when the pattern doesn't quite match the generalization because generalizations are all formed on this pattern. There's these general laws, these general principles that are at play in this situation and your brain recognizes something that's slightly out of place. It doesn't match those principles that you know.
Hunter Powers: Of course this is mainly happening on a subconscious level, but you get ticked by one of the details that is off and so you break out of the generalization and start focusing in on the details. Why? So that you can generate a new generalization and understand what's going on. So there is a lot of inherent value in generalizations. They are how we get through life, how we get through our day, how business works. The first part of manifesting value through generalization is understanding that basic idea, why is there value in generalization. Now that you hopefully understand why there is value in generalization, the next question is how do you manifest value through generalization? How do we find new generalizations? How do you find new generalizations? So first let's remember that they already exist. We are merely manifesting them. We are bringing them into the conscious of others in a very clear way.
Hunter Powers: So the simple question to ask yourself is what do you know or do that is not particularly clear to others or even particularly clear to yourself? Maybe there is something that technically you know how to do and you've done it once and it's kind of hard and given enough time, you could do it again, but you don't ... It's not clear. But what are these things that you know how to do or that you do in your every day that the average person doesn't really understand? A process, a technology, a strategy that the average person is maybe not aware of? By the way, perhaps what we're doing right now in talking about this is a manifestation. This whole strategy that we're talking about is a generalization and right now we are trying to manifest value from it, but what are the things that you do that everyone doesn't know how to do? Is it something at work? Is it something at home? Is it a hobby?
Hunter Powers: By the way, if you have nothing, you could always go grab a book on something that everyone doesn't know and there's essentially infinite ideas out there. Learn a little bit about something and now you have something that the average person doesn't have. Finding something that the average person doesn't have is a remarkably simple task. I am completely confident that you already have some of these things, but again, if you're completely blocked, you're like, "No, I got nothing." Go to a bookstore and grab a book. Go online and read an article about something, something that you don't know and now bam, you have ... There's something. Now that you have the idea, the idea that the average person does not know the technology, the strategy. I'm just going to kind of wrap all of that up and call it the tool.
Hunter Powers: Now that you have the tool that the average person doesn't know, the next step is the process of generalization. Now you are using this tool in a domain, a specific sphere of activity, the field that you are in or the activity that you're working on and so the first thing to ask is does the average person in this area, this specific field know this idea? By the way, it's completely fine if they do, but if they don't, then the first thing that you want to do, the easiest thing to do is to show this idea to others, to bring value to others by making this tool clear to them. Here's how you use it. This is how your job can become easier, just use this tool. So that's the first way of manifesting value through the generalization. But there is a way that usually manifests far more value and that is if you can take this tool and broaden it outside of the domain that you're working in.
Hunter Powers: For example, this strategy that I'm talking about, for me personally, it started as I was trying to solve a software engineering problem and then I wanted to bring the ideas of solving that problem to a broader group of people. Why? Because the tool has a broader application. Now that you have your tool, what are the possible broader applications of it? What other industries or fields can that same idea, that same strategy, that tool be brought to? A place where you commonly see this play out is in business where companies will take a technology from one domain and bring it into another domain. Usually there's one field that has been advancing rapidly and another field that seems to be stagnating, not really moving forward. So you take the technology from one field and try to find the applications of it to another field. A specific example, the field of marketing has been advancing wildly over the last 20 years.
Hunter Powers: The degree to which we are able to target people to advertise them is incredible and probably even a little frightening. I only want this ad to show up to people of this age, of this sex, of this political affiliation who have visited these websites, who have purchased these products, show it to them. Now a field that hasn't been advancing nearly as fast would be recruiting. Every company needs people to work for them, but the technology that we're using, while there have been advancements, nothing like the marketing industry. Well, what if we could take that technology of targeting very, very specific people and bring it to the recruiting field? Most companies know a lot about the kinds of people that they're trying to hire to get the jobs done that they need done. What if we brought that technology? What is that? That's a generalization, a generalization of the technology and we're able to manifest value by making the recruiting industry understand this technology and its applications to their field.
Hunter Powers: There's a higher level truth at play in this as well, which is worth mentioning and that's that problems in general, people think that problems in general are their problems. I have a problem and I'm working on a solution for my problem, and then slowly you realize that everyone around you has kind of the same problems, but you still assume that these problems are very domain specific. In other words, they're specific to the situation at hand. Well, this is really only a problem that you see in the recruiting field, in the engineering field, in the sales field. It's a unique problem to, first, it was a unique problem to me. Now it's a unique problem to sales and then you realize, "Oh well, actually our whole company's kind of having this problem one way or the other." So okay, well, it's a problem that's unique to my company. Then, well, no, it's unique to companies in this field.
Hunter Powers: It just keeps going broader and broader and broader. There are really just a set number of problems and we all have the same problems and we're all searching for solutions to those problems. But we think that our solutions are specific to our very unique case. Maybe there are minor, minor details of our solution that is unique to our case. But just in general, those solutions apply broadly. So to kind of wrap this whole thing up, how you manifest value through generalizations is to look for the solutions that you assume are specific to your area and then consider how their appeal can broaden to other areas and how you can allow others to understand the clear application of them. If you can do that, you can manifest value. If you can manifest value, there really is nothing that you can't manifest and that is your one idea for today. I am Hunter Powers, broadcasting live from our nation's capital, as we say in the city, D.C. Proper, and until next time.