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Making progress is easy, actually

Making progress is easy, actually

The Monkey & The Pedastal

Jay Yang
May 25, 2025

3 Thoughts

The world is much smaller than you might think.

Keep your word.
Act with integrity.
Give more than you ask.
Never steal, cheat, or lie.
Do not ever dismiss anyone.

What you reap will come back to you, but tenfold.

II.

If you want to be an outlier, by definition, you’ll have to be different from the crowd.

III.

You can avoid your problems, but you can’t escape the consequences of avoiding your problems.

2 Quotes

A beautiful reframe:

II.

This is so real:

1 Game-Changing Idea: The Monkey and the Pedestal

Imagine you’re tasked with building a machine that can teach a monkey to recite Shakespeare while standing on a pedestal.

There are two obvious parts to this challenge:

Building the pedestal.
Teaching the monkey to recite Shakespeare.

Most people would start by building the pedestal. It feels productive. You can measure progress. You can show it off.

But it’s also irrelevant.

The hard part—the part that will actually determine success—is teaching the monkey to speak.

If you can’t solve that problem, the pedestal doesn’t matter. It’s a distraction disguised as progress.

Yet people naturally gravitate toward the pedestal. It’s easier. Safer. You get to feel busy without confronting the real challenge.

I think about this story every time I catch myself working on the wrong thing.

We all have a “monkey” in our lives—the uncomfortable, difficult, uncertain task that actually moves the needle.

And we all have our “pedestals”—the tasks that feel like progress but are really just stalling.

• You want to start a business, so you spend weeks on the logo instead of talking to customers.
•You want to grow online, so you obsess over the perfect bio instead of posting consistently.
• You want to write a book, so you reorganize your notes for the seventh time instead of writing the first chapter.

The pedestal is comfortable. The monkey is not.

But only one of them actually matters.

If you want to move forward, you have to train the monkey.

Start with the hard thing.
Or at least admit to yourself when you’re avoiding it.

Until next week,
Jay “Train The Monkey” Yang

Ps. Anyone else?

Kind words for ‘You Can Just Do Things’

Thank you @Jayyanginspires for gifting me your book! Looks great and will be added to my reading list.
— Jim O'Shaughnessy (@jposhaughnessy)
12:20 PM • May 11, 2025

when someone recommends me a book, I never read it. instead I call somebody that already has
i’ve found people naturally remember what matters most, creating a filter of real-world value.
this approach pushes me beyond my tech bubble. My dad taught me: "If you cannot explain
— Advay Gupta (@_advay_)
3:30 PM • May 7, 2025