Everyone can not stan only Messi, or only Ronaldo. There has to be a balance.
On understanding peoples' personality, rice farming and how it affects a person ability to understand mathematics.
Hey guys! How have you been? I have had a really stressful and sleep-deprived week. and for someone that loves sleeping a lot, this is indeed a trying time for me😅. To everyone that drops comments on substack, in my DM or even in person, thank you very much. Y’all are the real MVPs!
So I have had this in my mind for a while now, but I kept dismissing it. Since I do not have any other idea at the moment, I might as well just stick with writing on this. I have been thinking about how Humans can be quite difficult to handle. And honestly, I wouldn’t expect any different, because everyone is wired differently. I mean, people come from different cultural backgrounds with different belief systems and ways of life which has indirectly (or directly) shaped up their personalities. So there is no way everyone would act or behave a certain way, and if you ask me, life would be boring if every single person thought or acted a certain way. For example, everyone can not be introverts, or everyone can not stan Messi —with no Ronaldo fans to you know, spice things up (Messi is the Football GOAT sha). No spice, no nothing. There has to be a balance.
Now the problem comes from trying to manage people that obviously do not act (or think) the way you do. What Cynthia thinks is the perfect idea or approach to something, Rose might discard it as something unrealistic and unnecessary. It is even more difficult if Cynthia and Clinton have to work together on a team. You can imagine the amount of “she is very selfish and only thinks about her benefit” or “he thinks he is the only one that knows how to do it abi” that would be flying up in the air.
Some people would say, it is better and easier to work with people that think (and act) like you. But is it though? Maybe easier because there is no friction whatsoever, but I doubt it is better —because having people with different personalities means different people bringing different ideas and additions from different points of view, which also implies extra spice and all of that. What is challenging though, and makes people go for the former is how effortful it is to manage (or tolerate) people that aren’t like you.
This is the point where most people think managing people has to do with being in a leadership position or being a member of a team. That is actually far from it. We all need human management skills on how to deal with that sassy bus conductor, that ‘difficult’ team member, that lady that wouldn’t apologize after being wrong, and the list goes on.
One thing I have learnt is, understanding humans and why they do the things they do saves a lot of drama. For example, I worked with someone that didn’t see any need for prolonged planning or analysis. If you know me, you would know I love planning ahead for a lot of things. What if plan B fails? There is plan C. And if that fails too? Plan D would come through. So it was difficult to make our team work. But I came to understand that, his personality type required him to go with the flow and figure it out along the way, and mine simply didn’t. Of course, he wouldn’t abandon his beliefs and go with mine, and it would be difficult for me to do the same, so we had to meet somewhere in the middle. If I didn’t realise/understand that it was just his beliefs or his personality manifesting, it would become really frustrating and difficult to deal with.
So, I believe, the key to managing or tolerating people is understanding their personalities, their beliefs and why they act the way they do.
I have had a really busy week with no time to read a book. So to fulfil my promise, I read a few pages of Outliers this morning and here is my excerpt.
You must have been used to me coming up with some weird theories from this book, like how plane crashes are linked to cultural beliefs, I wrote on it here or why Asians understand maths better than their counterparts. Well, here is another —Coming from a background of farmers (a rice farmer to be specific) increases a person’s ability to solve and understand mathematics.
Rice farming requires a lot of hard work, compared to other types of farming. Unlike most crops, where all you do is plant, maybe not even irrigate if it’s a rainy season, and harvest after some months. Rice farming requires a lot of care, waking up before sunrise, making sure the water level is just right (not too much or too small) and not too hot for the summer sun, weeding by hands because the seeds could be easily choked up by other plant life, harvesting as quickly so as to be able to plant another set before the season runs out, etc. This can easily be linked to a person’s ability to solve a difficult math problem due to their patience and steadfastness developed from the rice farm, they are more likely to persevere and solve a difficult math problem without giving up easily.
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Have a great week,
Yosola.
A very good newsletter
It is good to hear from you again 💪
Hahaha, trying to start a fight on who's the football goat?? 😹😹😹 and I completely agree on understanding and managing people. It's a skill one should develop, it's very important. And while I've always known farming Is hardworking that requires patience and all that (I admire farmers btw) I didn't know rice farming was connected to someone's ability to solve maths problems so thank you for that