11/19/2016–The sooner you learn to recognize quality, the better you’ll be ready to contribute in almost any area. I’d put “quality recognition” in the category of “metaskills”. As Tim Ferriss said when asked about picking a target audience, “there’s always a market for quality.” This was in context of business, but a “market” is whomever you’d like to persuade. The concept of quality, in this sense, is opposed to “convenience” and “price”. There won’t always be a market for low-price, nor one for fast. Nobody searches for cheap, low-quality psychiatric help. There’s not a market for speed meditation, as far as I know. But, in every market/industry, for almost any product or service there is a player in the “quality” space, even if it’s a perceived commodity (not actual commodities markets, futures, etc.). Rather, if there isn’t a brand associated with quality explicitly, certain customers still prefer some vendors for what they themselves deem a difference in quality. Consider quality as any non-price, non-convenience aspect of a product/service which appeals to a customer. For auto mechanics, it could be “friendliness” or “honesty”–beyond the quality of a repair itself. This is one reason why there’s always a market for quality, while only sometimes a market for speed or price.
Back to why it’s a metaskill; quality, while everyone knows it when they see it in their field of interest/expertise, is also undervalued as a label–taken for granted in a way. I see many people awarding this label to various products and services. When questioned, these goods wouldn’t stand up to the highest relevant standard of quality. For example, health advice is given by everyone these days, but it can’t all be high-quality, even if only because so many people contradict each other. Same for business writing, and many other fields, surely. So maybe the really valuable skill isn’t the ability to recognize quality–it might be the ability to recognize lack of quality.
This is more practical. Say two people are shown advice on parenting. One knows quality when he sees it, the other knows the lack of quality. I’d argue, he who can’t recognize lack of quality is more at risk; if the advice is high quality, they’re both going to follow it correctly. If the advice is poor quality, one will correctly ignore it. There is a way to develop the skill, I think, and it’s like the Socratic method.
Socrates was known as a “gadfly”–an annoying pest to people he troubled while seeking knowledge, virtue, etc. Eventually he would ask so many questions as to be brought to trial and sentenced to a choice of exile, death, or simply to quit asking questions. Choosing death, he said (according to Plato) that the unexamined life isn’t worth living.
This relates to recognizing a lack of quality; I think Socrates recognized it. He saw the lack of depth in thought behind commonly held beliefs. He was in the market for “truth”, and was a customer who sought quality.
We can avoid the title “gadfly” as we learn to question the products/services we’re sold. Recognizing lack of quality is when you fail trying to answer questions in your head about the advice you’re hearing. It’s all about developing the habit of questioning well–not exactly “skepticism”–more of a trust, but verify approach. It’s not helpful if you can recognize quality but not the lack of it. And the best way I know of to do that is to test its ability to achieve whatever purpose it’s supposed to achieve, sustainably.
Perhaps it starts with asking “why” a few times. No matter how you do it, I recommend you aim to be able to do it in your head (rather than needing the person selling the idea to prove himself or herself). This is because you’ll be able to then recognize the lack of quality wherever you are–alone reading an article on healthy foods, for example, or listening to a business presentation. Ask yourself what’s the purpose of what they’re selling. Could it be true (and how), false (and how), likelihood of either case (disregard adjustments for your special situation, as we’re evaluating the quality of the message at face value).
If you quickly arrive at unanswerable questions or undesired answers, congratulations! You’ve recognized a lack of quality, but only potentially, as it could be a lack of quality in presentation, not in the idea being sold, itself. To distinguish this, you’d of course ask the presenter for clarification, if they’re present. If they aren’t, play out various scenarios following the guidance you’re questioning to see if obstacles could be overcome. Much depends on the context of what’s being suggested; in other words, parenting advice might need to be questioned differently than advice on resume-writing or whether one should rent or buy a house. However, in each situation the first step to recognizing a lack of quality is asking “what’s the purpose?”, then how many and how obvious/simple are the unanswered questions that come to mind.
So; the framework to follow might be: advice –> purpose? –> what’s left unexplained about how it works?
QOTW: “You could help a lot of people.”
?FNW: How’s the bloodwork? Rescheduled…