The Case for Organized Self-Obsolescence
You’ve probably never heard the name Theodore Newton Vail. He's been described as “the least known of the great American business builders,” and “the most effective decision maker in U.S. business history.”
The former seems like a reasonable statement, the latter, a bit of a stretch.
Vail was the president of Bell Telephone from 1907 to 1919, the company that later became AT&T.
He is credited with four major decisions that led to tremendous success for the company, but the decision I find most interesting is the one to create Bell Laboratories.
Vail was building a monopoly during an era know for trust busting. Given the political climate, he had to figure out how to make the company competitive so it wouldn’t be broken up by the government.
His solution was Bell Laboratories.
Bell Laboratories was responsible for organized self-obsolescence.
There are two ways to look at this:
As a monopoly, Bell Telephone’s barriers to entry prevented competition. To avoid the government breaking the company apart, they needed to provide innovation to the public in the same way that competition does.
In the off chance aspiring competitors were working to develop new technology, Bell was going to beat them to it. Bell Laboratories would ensure they made themselves obsolete through innovation before a competitor could.
Vail’s idea of organized self-obsolescence is just as applicable to individuals as it is to companies. Let’s take a look at a few examples:
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
One of my good friends started training BJJ this year. He loves it, and I get at least one text per week shaming me for not starting yet.
My buddy trains four or five days a week, and some days he goes to two sessions.
Occasionally, we meet at the track in the morning to work out. On two separate occasions, he showed up to our morning workouts with a black eye. Both times, he got the black eye rolling the night before, less than ten hours prior to our morning workout.
As Jocko would say, the dude gets after it.
My friend is still a white belt. As I understand it, earning your blue belt typically takes about two years. But he recently told me he’s confident he can beat every other white belt in the gym – and he can hold his own with some of the blue belts.
This is the result of organized self-obsolescence.
He’s busting his ass in the gym every day to make sure he’s a better fighter than he was the day before.
He’s using discipline and consistency to make sure that if his future self ever met his former self, his future self would mop the floor with his former bitch ass.
This organized self-obsolescence extends beyond his BJJ training, and it’s the reason he is one of my closest friends.
He makes me better.
Writing and thinking, thinking and writing
I’m constantly working to make future Joe superior to present Joe. If I don’t make my current self obsolete, I’m not doing my job.
Aside from physical improvement, writing and thinking are the two areas in which I’m trying to make myself obsolete. This works well because the two skills go hand in hand.
This year, I’ve read two books on writing in general, and many articles specific to writing online. I’ve never consciously studied writing before this year, so that was step one in my organized self-obsolescence.
In January, I committed to publishing one article per week. My goal was to become a better writer, and repetition is the best way to do it. This is article number 35 for the year. They haven’t all been works of art, but I think there’s been an upward trajectory.
I’m a better writer now than I was in December 2018 – all because of organized self-obsolescence.
One of the keys of good writing is the ability to tell a coherent story and form logical arguments. Clear thinking begets clear writing, but the opposite is also true.
The more I write, the clearer I find my thinking to be.
September 2019 Joe could argue circles around December 2018 Joe. Again, organized self-obsolescence.
In January, I worked my way through Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. I took copious notes and gave myself headaches trying to understand the concepts. Then I wrote an article about them.
This process felt like mental Crossfit, but it made me better today than I was yesterday.
Improvement as a philosophy
Tim Ferriss recently interviewed Ken Burns, the best documentary filmmaker in the world. In the interview, Burns shared a personal philosophy he picked up from one of his college professors. He said, simply,
“Go. See. Do. Be.
Go – get out into the world.
See – look around you.
Do – make something. Relate.
Be – have an exchange with someone. Take it in.”
With this philosophy, Burns put into words the actions I’ve been trying to live this year.
It’s easy to exist your way through life. It’s easy to hide behind your phone screen and simply go through the motions.
It’s much harder (but much more rewarding) to put your phone on do not disturb and actively participate in the world around you.
I’ve always enjoyed people watching. I’ve spent many weekend mornings sitting on a park bench observing people over the top of a book.
I’ve taken many midday walks to escape my cubicle and observe humans in their natural habitats.
I mastered the “Go and See.”
This year, I’m working on the “Do and Be.”
When the face shield clad man outside my office demanded to know, “How does it feel to be white today?” I challenged myself to reflect on it. I created something, and I tried to relate.
I often have conversations with cabdrivers, bartenders, and people in grocery store lines. My girlfriend finds it to be one of my weirder traits, but I’m pretty sure it improves my thinking (and hopefully my intellectual humility).
These conversations used to be nothing more than idle chatter, but now I challenge myself to be and do. I try to go deeper on these exchanges. I try to relate, and I try to make something out of them.
Go, see, do, and be. Ken Burn’s philosophy, and my strategy for organized self-obsolescence.
A strategy for an effective life
Theodore Vail was a business genius.
If we work to make ourselves obsolete, like he worked to make his company obsolete, we can also stand the tests of time.
Here’s my last argument for organized self-obsolescence:
“Someone once told me the definition of Hell: The last day you have on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.” — Anonymous
So what’s it going to be? Organized self-obsolescence or the hell of lasting regret?
