COMPOUND

July 4th, 2018

This Episode references Episode 42 Entitled Level-Up.  If you’d like to fully understand the reference, please check out that episode first.

 

Learning has compound effects.

 

Knowing addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and the rules of algebra has a compound effect that allows the learning of calculus to be much easier.  At least if it is compared to an attempt to learn calculus with no previous exposure or understanding of any mathematics.

 

The cumulative effect of these compounding tools allows the brain to LEVEL-UP it’s abilities.

 

Might the structure of this process be applied to the brain, our well-being, our personality on a larger scale?

 

How do we institute virtuous cycles of growth within the brain?

 

What might the results be if we compound a 10% improvement in:

 

Our fitness,

Our mindfulness,

Our diet,

 

Might improvement in one area aide improvement in another?

 

Can improvements in mindfulness help us make better choices with our diet?  Can slowing down and being more thoughtful give us a better chance, a higher probability of making a better, healthier choice?

 

Can a better diet perhaps give us more energy to bring to the gym and power us through those first tough work-outs?

 

Can the neurological byproducts of exercise, such as phenethylamine, anandamide, and endorphins, help us have a positive impact on mindfulness exercises?  Most definitely.

 

 

Can small improvements in these three areas have, not only a compound effect, but a circular-compounding effect.  Each benefits another in a a circular fashion.

 

This is a simple example of a virtuous cycle.  Like a spiral staircase, each effort and improvement in one area creates a stronger platform, a higher probability for the next area to go well.

 

 

With a few of the right moves, and some consistency, can we send our minds on a new trajectory?  One that spirals upwards?  A trajectory that helps us LEVEL-UP.

ROTTEN CHERRIES

July 3rd, 2018

 

Context always matters.

 

Someone can easily be vilified and cast in a bad light if a particular statement they have uttered or written is  -picked and presented as a stand-alone statement.  Without the original context of the statement, a new context arises instantly: a narrower context that can only be inferred by the one statement.  The person who pulls a statement out of context hobbles anyone who reads it – forces blinders through simple ignorance.

 

Indeed in some sense we are forced to do this with ourselves and our message.  We are invariably limited in what we can say and so we try to be succinct and pack our meaning into denser and denser sentences.  Or we simply think that a listener will intuit all that is left unsaid.   When really what is needed is more conversation, an expansion of context until at last two perspectives can be seen as part of one environment, limiting themselves and each freed with the introduction of that larger context.

 

It’s a fairly reliable rule that if you aren’t actually up in a tree harvesting one of nature’s delicious sweets, then

 

Cherry-picking always yields rotten fruit.

INFERNAL PARKING METER

July 2nd, 2018

“In the beginning nothing comes,

in the middle nothing stays,

in the end nothing goes.”

 

 – Jetsun Milarepa  twelfth-century Tibetan poet and sage

 

 

Jetsun’s observation here is directed specifically at meditation, and the gradual process of change that occurs in one’s mind after much practice. 

 

At first it seems like a colossal waste of time.   Even ridiculous.   

 

Imagine putting money in a parking meter and nothing happens.  The damn thing seems broken.  Why would you ever put more money into it?  Maybe one more coin, just to make sure it’s broken.  But after that?  It just seems unwise.

 

So many just simply stop.

 

This is the case with many of the endeavors we embark on over the course of life.  We pick up a guitar and sound like a cat walking on a piano.  This happens an aggravating number of times.  So we quit.

 

This is juxtaposed with the mystifying experience of trying something new and having what many might call Beginner’s Luck.  Which is an illusion.   An illusion where many capabilities that have been honed for other reasons are coming together in a novel way.  In essence, when it appears we have a ‘knack’ for something, it is only because we have practiced for it in other ways. 

 

A long time gymnast, for example, shouldn’t be surprised to find out that they have a knack for say… dancing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our instant gratification culture certainly provides an evil fertilizer for the idea that we are either good at something or not.

 

The truth, like establishing proper context, is more complicated – more nuanced.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When trying something genuinely new, the expectation should be akin to that seemingly broken parking meter. 

 

But the analogy needs to go further. 

 

Making headway with any new endeavor is much like feeding the parking meter hundreds of dollars and then finding it finally registers a few minutes.

 

Or course the parking meter runs out. 

 

However, feeding it now seems to make it work every time. 

 

Eventually, with lots of practice, our parking meter becomes more generous, registering much more time for our effort and counting down through the minutes slower and slower.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Such is the case with any new endeavor.  The beginning sucks.  But realizations eventually compound, reinforcing one another, and create a new foundation for a more difficult or advanced level of practice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Careful though.  As with anything we learn, enough neglect and that parking meter will eventually run out.

 

If our practice is consistent though, the benefits will never run out.

 

THE PROPER WAY TO FAIL

July 1st, 2018

This episode references Episode 72: Persevere vs. Pivot.  If you’d like to fully understand the reference, please check out that episode first.

 

 

The decision to ‘pivot or persevere’ is perhaps a better way of looking at failure. The word failure, the concept, the event. It has so much negative flack associated with it.

Those who persevere, those with ‘grit’ are often lauded for their tenacity. But what about those who pivot? Who ask the difficult questions that result in a new perspective, and therefore: a new direction?

Perhaps when the given task was undertaken, those basic questions were not asked, such as: What is the reasonable timeframe that this will take? How long did it take others to accomplish this. Factor in Hofstadter’s Law. What are the tradeoffs required for this purpose. And so on and so forth.  Are the potential results of this effort even something that I really want?

We start with the end in mind, often forgetting just how far away that end might be. How much time that gives for other things to get in the way.

But if something is important enough. It’s important not to pivot, especially when the temptation is greatest, that is, right after a particularly stinging failure towards some dreamed-of end. The failure hits us and we look around. To see who might have been watching. To see if there’s a way out. Away. A way.

But if something is important enough. The best way out out, is through.

If something is important enough. The proper way to fail is to reserve the emotion for the next charge, and examine the result like a scientist observing unexpected results. The proper way to fail is to see the result as feedback. You took an action, and the world gave you the result. This is an opportunity to iterate. To fine tune, to exercise that perseverance by making a small pivot.

If it’s important enough, the proper way to fail is to try again by doing something new.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But why is there the need to pivot?  Why did the action, whatever it was, result in the outcome we imagined would happen?

 

Again, etymology comes in handy hear.

 

What does failure actually mean?

 

Failure comes from the latin fallere meaning ‘deceive’.

 

 

 

 

 

How does failure come from deception?  Where is the deception when we experience failure?

 

One useful way of looking at this old root is by comparing our idea of the world before the failure and after the failure.

 

 

 

 

Before failure, we have a certain idea of the way things are, how reality operates, and what the outcome of our efforts will be.

If we take actions based on this mental map of the world and things don’t pan out the way we imagined, then it’s fair to say that our mental map of the world was inaccurate. 

 

In some sense, it’s fair to say that we had deceived ourselves into thinking the world was a certain way. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Failure is merely the realization that we were deceiving ourselves.  And now, with new feedback, we can have a more accurate vision of the world and how it works.  And with this new perspective, we can pivot towards a new action, one more in tune with the revised vision of the world we now have.

 

In this way, to fail means to lift the self-deception we have.  To fail again and again means to become less and less  self-deceptive.  To pivot again and again with new information.  To fail over and over means to be more honest with one’s self.  To fail is to come face to face with how limited our perspective and understanding of the world really is.  But it also means to broaden that perspective and hone that understanding of the world and how it works.

 

P.S. It’s good to note Hofstadter’s Law: Everything takes longer than you think it will, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

UNLIKELY MENTORS

June 30th, 2018

Warning, there’s some Game of Thrones spoilers in this post for those who haven’t watched to the end of Season 7.

 

this episode references episode 72: Perseverance vs Pivot, episode 73: Plow Ahead and episode 75: Plan Vs. Hope.  If you’d like to fully understand these references, it’s best to check out these episodes.

 

 

We have an absurdly strong tendency to lump things into categories, and then lump categories together into larger, and increasingly vague categories.  And in the process we sever any helpful cross-overs that such vaguely defined boxes prohibit.  In many areas of life and culture, things eventually get lumped into super (and super simple) categories.  We all know them:

 

 

 

 

 

Good & Bad.

 

 

 

 

 

This thinking shortcut is certainly useful.  Indeed it wouldn’t exist if it weren’t helpful in some way, even if that reason is potentially due to the limits of brain size and capacity.  With any shortcut though, there’s usually a tradeoff, and in this case, it can be incredibly useful to challenge the shortcut and usurp any further usefulness that is inevitably cut short.

 

Take for example, the above super dichotomy: good and bad. 

 

This slippery pair is what life boils down to in a simple sense.  Is this good?  Then more of it.  Bad?  Let’s get rid of it. 

 

But in many ways we find that things we thought were in one category actually belong in the other.  Any concerned and loving mother would be stressed out by a member of the family who is not eating and say that such practice is bad.  But much scientific inquiry into the nature of fasting has shown that it does very good things for our health. 

 

Let’s take an even simpler set of examples:  Villains.

 

Superheroes are always the good guys.  And they fight the villains – the bad guys,

 

But there is automatically an inherent slight of analysis in this first declaration:

 

A villain or a bad guy in some fictional setting or even a real one is branded as such because of their effectiveness. 

 

Being effective is often seen as a good quality.  In fact it’s fairly broadly accepted that intelligence is an ability to understand the environment, form PLANS and carry those PLANS out to success.  Villains wouldn’t garner their illustrious title if they did not have this positive quality. 

 

Oh, but they have bad PLANS. 

 

Fair enough.  But does that mean we should overlook the many strategies they employ in order to be effective?

 

Take two popular examples: The Night King from the Game of Thrones series, and the Joker from Christopher Nolan’s Batman series.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s look at The Night King first.

 

In season 7, episode 6, Danny flies north to save Jon Snow.  Her dragons decimate huge portions of the Night King’s army.

 

How does this guy react?  Does he look on in dejected horror at his losses as they happen?  Does he stress over his loss in numbers and think about how disrupted his PLANS are and how much longer it will take to bring his numbers back up again?  Does he fear for his own ‘life’?

 

No.  He is calm as a cold rock. And beyond this, he sees the whole situation as an opportunity.  Instead of seeing Danny’s dragons as a huge obstacle and enemy that is making him weaker, he sees this obstacle as an opportunity to further his own goals.  Like a good chess player, he turns his opponent’s offensive attack into his own gain.  He takes down one of the dragons and revives that dragon, which in turn is the key for getting his forces past The Wall.

 

Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus… all of the stoics would have to admit some admiration for the Night King’s clear and calm thinking, his ability to turn setback into advantage. 

 

Indeed the Night King appears to be effective because of his stoic qualities.  His emotions seems well managed and supple to his goals, and never does he seem impeded by his emotions.  Particularly when there is good cause for negative ones. 

 

Just because he wants to go to war with all of humanity does not means we should ignore the qualities that allow him to be effective and PLOW AHEAD towards this goal.  Such qualities are admirable.  And his enemies would do much better to learn these stoic qualities. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Joker from Batman - particularly the Nolan movie – is also a villain replete with good qualities.

 

In his longer monologues he talks at length about how Batman and politicians, and the police force are all so tied to their PLANS.  He scoffs at this and takes his cues from something more akin to chaos.   While batman is all about preparation and control, the Joker feeds off of randomness and the unexpected. 

 

Granted, the Joker clearly makes plans to pull off his stunts.  It’s impossible to accomplish really anything without having some thoughtful foresight and putting things into place for future execution, and the Joker is clearly planning ahead in order to achieve his goals.  The lesson from the Joker is perhaps the emotional connection to such plans. He is completely willing to abandon those plans as things develop.  He is not tied to his theory of what might happen.  He is a doer, who is refreshingly mindful of what is happening in the moment and this makes his strategy nimble. 

 

When a superhero encounters an unforeseen flaw in a plan, the mood of the audience depresses with the superhero.  Whereas the Joker seems positively titillated by any event, whether it be the successful completion of a plan or an unexpected setback.

 

Which quality would allow YOU to move forward more quickly and efficiently?

 

The heroes of these stories are unfortunately a bit fragile in this way.  Perhaps they have to be in order for an audience to go on the emotional ups and downs required for ‘entertainment’.

 

The villains, on the other hand, are what Nassim Nicholas Taleb would probably call ‘Antifragile’. 

 

Like the Hydra which grows two new heads when you cut off one, these villains seem to be effective and powerful because of how they emotionally handle setbacks.  Like a good entrepreneur, they see opportunity where others might see a dismal situation. 

 

They are able to PIVOT extremely quick. 

 

Superheroes rarely display this kind of emotional ability.  And there is something romantic about this inability to let go of an emotion that we as an entertained species really seem to lust for. 

 

But this romantic tendency is ultimately a counter-productive one, and here is an uncomfortable juxtaposition to help.

 

 

In Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson’s fantastic book “Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body”  they recount an episode about the Dali Lama.    He is told about a terrible tragedy of a massacre of people and the Dali Lama exhibits a deep sadness about the news, and then a couple of minutes later someone says something funny and the Dali Lama laughs whole-heartedly.    Goleman and Davidson recount this anecdote to show how the Dali Lama has the ability to pivot emotionally very quickly.  At first glance, a westerner with familiarity with medical jargon might call this bipolar, but Goleman and Davidson point out how this emotional dexterity is the result of thousands of hours spent in meditation.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being so strictly tied to an emotional state prevents us from integrating new information effectively.  If our first reaction to a development in a situation is a negative one, then we risk being blind to seeing how such a development might help us if we hold onto that emotion for any length of time.

 

We’ve heard so often:  We see what we want to see.

 

or rather,

 

We see what our feelings permit.

 

 

Categories are inevitably a useful tool, but we must be aware of the ways they forestall our abilities.  What may be good may have bad aspects, and what we might associate with bad or evil, might have extremely admirable qualities.  Nearly everything is some kind of composite of different, and often conflicting qualities. 

 

The benefits of categories are short term, and the long term benefit lies in recognizing the tension inside categories and across categories.  Indeed the romantic flaw detailed above may be a simple love of categories. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I am feeling this emotion.”

 

To let go of that emotion and smoothly transition to another state is somewhat like a betrayal of identity in that moment, to somehow be less human, as though emotions were the only thing that makes us human.  Unless we decide to identify less with any given emotion we are feeling. 

 

Perhaps instead of phrasing things like “I’m feeling depressed”, what if we phrased things like “I’m experiencing some feelings of depression.”  Or “There’s some feelings of depression present right now.”

 

A simple switch in language can help institute a shift in thinking.  And in so doing we can distance ourselves from emotions a little and have a better perspective on how useful they are.

 

After thinking deeply about our long term goals and the good we HOPE to accomplish, we can perhaps then take a cue from the Joker, the Dali Lama and the Night King and PIVOT faster and more effectively when our path towards those goals of good are thwarted, obstacle strewn and laden with plenty of opportunity to lose heart.