Definition

Vector: “a quantity having direction as well as magnitude, especially as determining the position of one point in space relative to another”

Intro

Math and physics are two studies that have continued to wow me throughout my years in grade school and even some of college. For anyone who knows me more personally, my biggest regret was not choosing to study either one of those (or CS) during college. Obviously, math and physics have very real-world applications; however, these concepts also have philosophical applications and can influence how we see the world.

Vectors are one of these concepts that have dual applications to the real world–in this piece, I’ll talk more on the philosophical.

I came up with the idea when I came across a post on X. It read as the following:

To measure the vector of a human can perfectly predict their trajectory to a tee. We as humans need to work to create the most optimal vector towards our target of success.

Measuring a Vector

To make sure this post makes sense, I must give a very brief physics lesson. For anyone who already understands what makes up a vector, skip to the next section.

A vector is composed of two components: the magnitude and the direction. The quantity defined by these two is called a vector quantity.

The magnitude refers to the size or length of a vector. An easy way to think of this is asking “how much” of something.

The direction is the orientation the vector is going towards. An easy way to think of this is literally asking “what direction”.

Here is an example of a vector quantity:

Example: 20 MPH North is a vector because the magnitude is the speed (20 MPH) and the direction is North.

Now that we understand what a vector is in the physics sense, let’s jump to a philosophical analysis.

Magnitudes of Humanity

All humans possess something we coin, “drive.” What is drive? To me, drive is the willingness to change circumstance despite adversity.

Drive is a form of magnitude within humanity. Drive is a way many people use to measure the potential success of someone. How much is someone willing to bite off, how many tries can they endure to move their own mountain?

High levels of drive signal positive outcomes; however, in regards to a vector, direction is equally as important to define a vector quantity.

Directions of Humanity

This is an interesting one because I don’t think there is a one-shot way to define the objective direction of a personal life aside from North, South, East, West. In this case, I will assume North is good and South is bad.

To move towards True North means to move towards an ultimate goal (hence the ideas of North Star metrics).

It’s the willingness and action to reach towards True North, despite uncertainty, that goes into the measurement of success within a human.

Our Vectors

Our lives can be summed up by the sums of our vectors within our lives.

A high magnitude of drive and a direction that points closest to True North is someone who likely lived a very successful life. This is now a math thing. We can add the magnitude, but direction is something we average. The closer our True North average is, the stronger correlation to intentional drive.

With this logic, to be a successful person we need to be a person with magnitudes that sum to a great number. This is your drive. You will also need a direction that is as close to True North. Any deviation from your goal points another direction. With this mental model, you can likely predict the success of anyone in your life with relatively solid accuracy.

I’ll use me as an example. I believe my drive is strong; I have what it takes to win and want it just as badly. My intentions and action (direction) can be more aligned. I am not at True North yet.

Now this isn’t to say we should live our lives only to achieve one goal. This simply isn’t a life; you are a machine. To many of us, this is not a good thing. I would somewhat side with this. However, it is when you realize that when you want to be the best doctor, lawyer, programmer, marketer, DJ, anything–it is a pure zero-sum game. You must align drive with direction. When these are not in alignment, it is then you realize your stagnation.

Don’t be stagnant. We’ll look back and regret it.

The Average Vector of Groups, Friends, etc.

Jim Rohn is the one who came up with the idea that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. I couldn’t agree more with this idea, and I have literally seen how this plays out with people in my life, including myself.

In this case, these friends have an average vector. Teams have average vectors. Families have average vectors. Life is full of this. You can literally predict with very good odds the success of a team, the happiness within a family, the closeness of friends, all with this vector-based approach.

Say a team is composed of the idea person, the programmer, and the marketer. The idea person is very driven to make a product work and is doing everything in their power to sell the product to as many people as possible. Here, within this timeframe, the idea person has high observable drive and actions align with this drive–aligning their vector to be pointing and moving to True North quickly. But, say the programmer doesn’t really care about making the product work (low drive), but does everything necessary to ship it quickly. This is a person with low observable drive but moving towards True North. Finally, taking the marketer, let’s say they care so much about the product and are surveying as many customers as they can to find features to implement and ways to appeal to their user base. However, they are dealing with three other projects with three other teams outside of this project we are talking about. This is someone with high intent drive, yet their actions are not aligned; therefore, their vector is actually pointing away from True North. If they dropped the other three projects, their observable drive would be much higher. Taking the average of these three, we see a team that is only moving at medium magnitude and is not pointing True North. This team will fail in the long run unfortunately, unless something changes.

As groups, alignment is needed to make things happen. They must be facing True North, and they must be doing it at a magnitude that is needed to win.

Conclusion

This is a topic that I could likely go on and on about. It is so important that we consider this framework and remind ourselves to align our vectors as best possible towards our own True North’s while doing it at a magnitude that would make it impossible for us to lose.

vectors A group of people all aligned on making the world a better place