The Basics

There’s so much to do, and nobody wants to waste time on the easy stuff.

Are you the type of person who always wants to skip the first few levels of a video game because they’re boringly basic? Do you hop past the textbook intro to get right into the meat and potatoes?

We tend to want to get right into things, much preferring action to the chore of introductions and learning. This preference isn’t limited to fun and games, but bleeds into every action we do.

Despite our penchant for skipping the basics, our first interactions are key to developing a solid foundation in any given topic. This foundation helps us more confidently navigate a subject and develop a comprehensive skillset. Some things can be learned on the fly, but we most often build the best systems when we take time to study the basics.

Skip the basics for a video game or a new hobby, but never for daily life.

What Are ‘The Basics’?

What constitutes the basics depends on the scope of the task at hand.

If we’re talking life in general, the basics would include something like eating, sleeping, moving, and lodging.

If instead we’re talking about healthy living, the basics would cover nutrition, exercise demands, recovery, emotional health, and community.

The basics are both the first things we learn related to a task and those most central to its completion.

The Basics are Foundational

Most people disregard the basics because they believe these aspects of a task are merely introductory and can be learned as they go. While the basics are often the first things we learn about a topic or task, they are also the most central bits of information related to the subject and form the core on which we develop our overall understanding.

The basics are taught first and with an easy entry point so that people can confidently start to learn something new and build from a place of understanding the big picture. However, while the basics often start off easy to avoid scaring newcomers, they quickly ramp up to reflect the pace and complexity of the task at full speed. After all, tempo and difficulty are core aspects to an activity, game, or subject.

Simply put, the basics are the core aspects of a given task or topic. Basics form the foundation and pillars on which we mount our roof and walls.

The Basics of Daily Life

The basics of daily life are the things we need on a regular basis to live a full and healthy life. They cover our basic needs, like food, water, and shelter, and expand into modern refining features of our life like effective transportation, fitness, and education.

Beyond providing for survival itself, the basics build toward our desired lifestyles and are refined to fit our unique needs, preferences, and circumstances. This includes social skills, emotional regulation, and general etiquette. There are slight differences depending upon our upbringings and health needs, but these basics are largely universal.

Food, personal hygiene, fitness, and social/emotional health come into play each day of our lives, regardless of our backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses. When approached thoughtfully, we can improve each of these tasks to make for a better day (and future at large).

In sum: the basics are the things we need to understand and do regularly to live the life we want.

However, many of us tend to disregard the basics as much as possible. The basics are common tasks that people have to do in this shared human experience. This commonality, while signaling their importance, often leads to us disregarding them as ordinary or played out.

We can build more durable lifestyles by taking time to consider how the basics come into play.

Why is it So Important to Study ‘The Basics’?

If you want to best to best understand life and the things that build each day, you are wise to study the basics. The basics are the things we need to do each day in order to access our regular life and keep it possible. Anything from sleeping, to moving and eating, the basics are the recurring actions common and necessary to the human experience.

It is so important that we study the basics because they take up a substantial portion of each day we’re alive and can be improved dramatically with a little effort. Studying the basics will help us sleep better, feel stronger, and connect more effectively with the people we love.

Regardless of who we are, developing a strong understanding of life’s basics will improve every single day.

What Happens When We Avoid Studying ‘The Basics’?

Discrediting the everyday leads to substantial and continued inefficiencies. Our recurring actions are repeated over and again, amplifying each of our failings. After all, we do these things everyday.

Imagine a young sports enthusiast who loves basketball. They are infatuated with the big dunks and ball tricks, but think that foundational footwork and dribbling are pedestrian. Therefore, they practice their deep three’s, but skimp out on the body mechanics and ball handling work. While they might develop a decent shot after specifically training that skillset, they often also develop poor movement mechanics and habits that lead to game breakdown against a well-rounded player.

Worse still, their lack of core skills leaves them more susceptible to injury because they have not built the necessary tools to keep their bodies moving consistently and continuously in what the player once considered the basics.

In the world of internet personal trainers, this phenomenon is often referred to as “majoring in the minors,” where people hyper-focus on the details of their training or sport while simultaneously disregarding the central aspects to what makes the sport move effectively. This interest in the flashy minor skillsets is one of the many reasons why we avoid studying the basics.

Why do We Avoid Studying ‘The Basics’?

If the basics are so important to everyday life, why would we avoid studying them? Can we even avoid studying the things we do everyday?

We avoid studying the basics we assume the regular occurrences do not necessitate further inquiry. Everyone can walk, so what could there possibly be to it?

The basics are not necessarily easy. In fact, some of the most difficult things we can do would constitute the basics.

We also avoid their study because we become bored of the basic image we create for ourselves of these everyday tasks. They feel so simple that we think we’re wasting our time each time we go about them. Secretly, we despise them even when we see how they can be improved because the improvements feel discreet and marginal, and we prefer to take giant leaps with each step we take.

Don’t be fooled. The basics are never a waste of time to study and develop. After all, they compose the majority of each day.

Common Mistakes Making ‘The Basics’ Harder

Hyper-Fixation

The basics are essential to everyday life and require more nuance than we typically credit. However, that doesn’t mean we need to devote every waking moment to their mastery.

Sometimes out of anxiety, sometimes out of enjoyment, sometimes still as a way to avoid other sorts of work, we fixate on one particular facet of life and make it a part of our essence. We see this across all basic life activities: cooking, cleaning, fitness, specific social interactions, etc.

I always support studying what you enjoy. After all, life is short and we should use our time to pursue what we value. At the same time, sacrificing other of life’s basic needs to spend time more deeply mastering something in which we already have considerable experience is an out-of-focus approach to life.

Siloing

Just as common as hyper-fixation on one of life’s basics is a siloing approach, where we determine that we will bare complete responsibility for some tasks while avoiding others by making them someone else’s responsibility.

Distribution of labor is an important part to healthy relationships and efficient schedules. Ask Adam Smith¹ and you’ll hear all about the productive gains from dividing a task up into a bunch of small pieces and having workers each focus on a single piece rather than the whole project.

However, you can’t divide responsibility for everything, and it’s nearly always in your best interest to have a working knowledge of how your everyday requirements should be done. Otherwise, you can find yourself with a wrinkly shirt for the job interview because you never cared to pay attention to how your mom ironed them for you.

¹A key point made in Smith’s The Wealth of Nations is that distribution of labor yields massive gains in productivity, exemplified through pin making.

Ignoring

The third (and potentially most risky) form of basic task avoidance comes through pure ignoring.

You ever play hide-and-seek with a young kid who covers their eyes in attempts to abscond? That’s how you look with this one.

I get it. The banausic basics could bore anyone if not pursued to understand and improve. So much so that we can convince ourselves to pretend they’re not there to see if they’ll go away.

Just as I don’t become invisible every time I close my eyes, my tasks and obligations do not dissipate when I turn my head to take them out of sight.

Worse still, when we ignore a task, it tends to exacerbate, making for more work and headaches than when we started. Leave teeth unbrushed and even the most wishful thinking won’t make that dentist appointment good.

Yet we still try. How often do you find people avoiding self maintenance because they don’t like to exercise, even as their bodies beg for some form of fitness and fewer French fries? Do you have friends who won’t clean their rooms even if their lives depend on it?

Remember that the obstinate mule ponders in pursuit of self preservation, not boredom.

How to Study The Basics

There is no one way to build a life that accounts for all basics, but a little active reflection goes a long way in terms of studying the basics. As I keep mentioning: we have to do these things every day! Each effort provides an opportunity to think about how we do it and how it could be improved.

It’s not just about the buzzer-beating three point goal. It’s the understanding of how you can move, what foods fuel you, how you sleep, and what makes you smile at the end of a hard day. Life is full of details, tasks, and opportunities, each requiring a diverse set of skills and interests to make them happen. Give yourself the chance to study the very basic things you have to do each day and understand how they might apply to even the most advanced of tasks.

You’ll see. That extra time spent understanding how your toes intersect with the ground while walking will feel much more useful when you’re able to compete in your sports and hobbies longer, more effectively, and with fewer injuries.

The basics add up and apply across the many things we do in life. Reflect and see where they matter, and you will feel much happier devoting real effort to their study.

Conclusion

With a strong understanding of the basics, we can achieve greatness. If they are lacking, however, we will pay for it in a matter of time.

Give yourself the chance to grow and understand the core elements to your regular life. Don’t brush past things merely because they feel easy, especially when they are central to many of the things you do each day. While it can be tempting to rush to the tough stuff, it’s the basic actions of everyday life that make them possible and successful.

Thoughts, comments or questions? Let me know!

-G