UTILITY OF BOREDOM

September 7th, 2020

There are certain boring things that we must do: taxes, visits to the dentist, taking out the garbage.  These mostly consist of the inconvenient detritus of a society that has not reached the sort of technological maturity that would automatically take care of all these things.  Otherwise, there is an entire host of things we do - or don’t do - which inspire a boredom which we don’t appropriately appreciate.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written about procrastination as a useful tool regarding what he should and shouldn’t write about.  If he has a chapter in mind that he keeps putting off, he takes it as a sign that perhaps it shouldn’t be written.  The logic: why should I force both the reader and myself through something that neither enjoy?

The logic is simple, but perhaps should be taken to a greater extreme.  Just consider if it were applied to one’s job.  How many people are stuck in a boring job because of a host of obligations they’ve grown entangled in?  How many, if given the choice would gladly switch it up?

Boredom, in this sense is a useful metric: it’s the underwhelming sidekick of curiosity that tells you what to minimize.  If the job is boring, then perhaps it’s time to find an interesting route out.  Obligations and responsibilities might not make this easy, but interesting is rarely easy.  And the journey itself can be seen as the new, interesting job.  How exactly do I wiggle my way out of this situation and plop myself into a more interesting situation that makes money to fulfill my responsibilities and obligations?

Perhaps many people don’t think this way because the boring job, the boring task, the boring life trains us to continually expect something easy - something boring.  We train ourselves into an unsolvable paradox:  if you’re used to a boring life, how exactly does a person find the inspiration to create an interesting escape?

One way is to simply firebomb one’s own life.  Nothing jogs the rusty gears of creativity like an epic day of quitting combined with a near breakdown about what to do next.

In lieu of such drastic tactics, one can start small by merely getting frisky with the job at hand: how much of this is extraneous.  And how much can I get away with not doing in order to make the stuff I do do, that much better?  Can this job be leveraged into a remote position where I can control my own schedule and start allocating more time to other avenues?

We frantically run from boredom each day by inundating our minds with mindless social feeds and underwhelming entertainment.  The paradox exists here too.  The best entertainment is what you create for yourself.  The book you write, the pilot show you script, the piece of art you make.

Those bound for truly satisfying lives have figured out that it’s possible to stitch the two lessons together: to make money from a creative way of entertaining yourself.

Writers do this,

Painters do this,

Artists of all types,

And particularly: the entrepreneur does this.

All use boredom as a reverse-north-star: it’s something to avoid.  It tells you which direction you shouldn’t be headed.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: REDIRECT

September 6th, 2020

During his wandering life, Lucilius once found himself employed as an art teacher, tasked with the frenetic education of young broods of boisterous children and teenagers.  A new set of classes were starting and the professors he worked for decided to warn him.

“We honestly just don’t know what to do with her?”

“What do you mean?” Lucilius asked.

A frustrated and sad shake of the head was the response.

“Every class she’s in just dissolves into chaos,” the other professors said. “We just don’t know how to control her, soy can give it a shot, but we won’t hold it against you if nothing much gets done in that class.”

“What’s her name?”

“Lilith - well - everyone calls her Lili.”

“I’ll give it a shot,” Lucilius said.

While the older students he taught were trained in classical draftsmanship, oil painting and sculpture, the younger classes he taught were given activities like papier-mâché, and in this case, it was origami. 

Lucilius had prepared about a dozen simple origami pieces in preparation of the first few classes, unknowing how quickly the students might move through the material.  His first class ended up going quite well.  All the kids made it through the first piece of origami and Lucilius managed to begin the basic instruction for the next piece before parents began to arrive and pick up their children.

His next class, however, was the one with Lili, and Lucilius grew a bit nervous as the children began filtering in, some having planned to take the class together and chatting.  Lucilius knew enough of them from previous classes to give a guess as to which one Lili was. 

“Anyone know who I am?”

A couple of kids called out his name.”Yep, and now everyone knows, but let’s all take a piece of paper, fold it once down the middle to prop it up and write your name on it so we can all see and forget each other’s names.

Lucilius watched Lilith scribble her name quick and turn it around, looking around at the other kids with a smile while they finished.  Then Lucilius showed them a finished piece of origami that they were going to make together.  It was a simple boat.  Lucilius showed them the first few steps and then let the kids all take a shot at it.  He watched, and helped a couple, showing them again, specifically how to match up their corners and draw the edges flat to a crease.  One boy whose dexterity wasn’t quite as developed as the others needed a bit more help though the was concentrating as well as any kid, his tongue clamped to a side.  Lucilius was hunkered down next to the boy helping him with each of the folds, lost momentarily watching the boy work through with effort when he realized how loud the little class had suddenly become.  He stood up, amazed how all the children were now giggling and screaming, as though they were in hysterics. 

It took Lucilius more than a few minutes to settle the class down with that delicate balance of stern tone and patient request.  And by the time the kids were settled parents were already arriving.

Afterwards, Lucilius walked home, puzzled by the whole experience.  It had happened precisely as he’d been warned.  But at least he knew the likely cause.

The next week he started the class with just one mission.  He got the kids restarted on their first unfinished project and then simply sat back and watched.  It took almost fifteen minutes but there was a moment he noticed when Lili looked up from her piece of origami, having finished all the steps that Lucilius had shown them.  Lucilius couldn’t hear her, but she leaned toward a classmate on the adjoining side of the table and whispered something.  She got a giggle, and two other kids overheard.  One furrowed their brow, announcing “ew!” while the other also giggled.  Then Lili turned to another kid and whispered something else, and within a minute, the little class was lost, the hollers and hysterics of the kids talking over one another grew to a pitch.  Lucilius let them be to have their fun, and simply contemplated what he’d seen.  When the class was over he sat still longer, wondering what Lili had said to the other kids, and as he wondered, he noticed her piece of origami sitting in a cubby hole.  He got up and fished it out.  It was crumpled and far from perfect, but all the correct folds were there.  She’d actually finished, where all the other kids were barely half done.  She’d worked through the piece much faster than the rest, and being done, she’d had nothing else to do.  This sparked an idea in Lucilius mind and he got up and hurriedly started walking home to put his plan into action.

The following week, Lucilius started the class as normal, but once he’d finished giving his opening instruction, he asked Lili to take a step away from the class with him.  The girl’s face instantly fell, and it was clear to Lucilius that she was already well accustomed to being singled out and castigated.  

He took Lili to the other side of the class room and revealed to her a finished piece of origami that was far more complex than anything the kids had seen.

“I want you to make one of these,” Lucilius said.

The girl looked at him, suddenly unsure, but curious.  

“And I’m not going to show you how to do it,” Lucilius added.

The girl was suddenly suspicious.  What was this adult pulling on her?  

“It’s ok if you don’t succeed,” Lucilius said, “but, I think you can give it a good shot.”

“But how am I supposed to do it?” Lili asked.

Lucilius placed the piece of origami in her hands.

“Take it apart,” Lucilius directed.  She gave him another nervous, unsure look.  “No really, I mean it, take it apart, gently, without ripping it.”

Lili slowly began to tug gently at the different edges until it began to fall apart.

“What can you tell me about these pieces?”

“They are all the same,” Lili said.

“That’s right, this is what’s called ‘modular origami’, and since they are all the same, I can take away all of them but one, and now you really just have to figure out how to make this one, so pull it apart.”

Lili followed his instruction and pulled the one piece apart until it was just a crinkled square of paper.  

“See, now you can figure out how to make one of these.  You can see how it starts with a center fold like what we did with the boat, and how these other folds are then folded to the center.  And then you have the other 5 pieces to figure out exactly how each piece should be when it’s done.  And then….”

Lucilius revealed another hidden piece of origami which was identical to the one that he’d had Lili pull apart.  “You can then use this one to figure out how each piece fits into the other to create the whole thing.  And like I said, it’s ok if you can’t do it, but I’d like you to try.”

Lili was already folding her first sheet of paper as Lucilius finished.  He left her to it, and went back to the class and guided them through the next and hopefully final steps of the little boats they were making.  He went around the class, fixing little mistakes kids were making, and as they made progress, Lucilius forgot about Lili.

Soon enough, with clockwork, the parents began to arrive and filter back out with their children.  Lucilius was busy saying goodbye and sharing casual chitchat with parents when he felt a tap at his elbow.  He turned around to find Lili holding her own complete piece, cupped in her hands, the smile on her face, tremendous.

Lucilius squatted down to talk to her at her own height.  “Look what you did,” he said, “You didn’t just make this, you taught yourself how to do it.”

FOCAL LENGTH

September 5th, 2020

This episode is a response to a post by Josh Duffney who recently published Become Ansible, you can with Josh on Twitter with the handle @joshduffney, and you can check out his writing and work at duffney.io 

Is there anything more satisfying than a deep conversation with a close friend?  Perhaps, but this experience is certainly quite high on the list of peak experiences that make life worth living.  The engagement feels almost automatic, as though we’ve been seduced.  Our focus is on point, the rest of the world has fallen away and our responses aren’t forced or worried, they feel like natural and fluid reactions to the words of our company, virtuously welcomed from the ether of thought.  There are two important aspects of this lovely experience that are best illuminated by questions:

Where is the rest of the world during these conversations?

&

Can we force this experience to happen?

Focal length is an optical system that is usually only a concern for photographers, cinematographers, astronomers and those who design microscopes.  A simple description compares short focal length and long focal length.  If the focal length is short then we have a very wide view, like a panoramic photo.  If the focal length is long, then our focus is very narrow like when we bring the diamond ring very close to our face in order to study its tiny details.  

Focal length isn’t just a description of of something having to do with camera lenses and pictures.  It’s a description of our attentional field.   Just consider the difference in terms of our attention when we look at a huge sprawling panoramic photo of a mountain scene that stretches across the entire wall and a super-zoomed in close up of say, a hair follicle.  This difference is easy to point out with language because language suffers and benefits from the same phenomenon.  We need only ask: what’s the specific subject of each photo?  With the hair follicle, the answer is easy - the subject is a hair follicle.  But with the mountain scene?  What’s the specific subject on display?  Well a panorama is by definition not specific.  The purpose is to give us a much wider view in order to show us many things together.

Another important difference between short and long focal length has to do with context. It’s possible to have such a zoomed in photo that you can’t even tell what you’re looking at.  It lacks the wider context of a larger environment.  Panoramas on the other hand offer the opposite: they display the context of many specific things in a wider shared context.

That intense, deep conversation with a good friend is a natural example of long attentional focal length.  Our focus is zoomed in, narrow, and delightfully so.  An example of short attentional focal length would be perhaps a party or a big dinner party at a restaurant where our focus has a buffet of topics and subjects to feast on.

Technologies like zoom, email, text, direct message… all of these force upon our minds a long focal length, meaning the subject of our experience is narrow, specific and this obligates intensity.  Juxtapose the effect of these technologies to something like the experience of that party with dozens of people, or being at a beach on a sunny summer day.  The “attentional” focal length of such experiences is much shorter - we have the freedom of a much wider perspective.  We aren’t forced to be on point regarding just one point.  Our attention is allocated more breathing room.  There is more to take in and this expansion of material seems to free us up psychologically.  Unlike a zoom call where the only thing to focus on is the tightly framed talking head of another person.  The focal length of the technology is attempting to force an intensity from us that we only occasionally come across and exercise, and is perhaps something that can’t or shouldn’t be forced. . . at least not without discomfort and stress.

It would be interesting to see if people found zoom and Skype less stressful if all parties where also privy to a wider attentional experience.  What would this look like in practice?  Let’s say you have a zoom call with a colleague but both of you also open up another window which is the same live view of some remote natural setting, like a camera in Antarctica displaying waves lapping up against the icy shore.  This wouldn’t be a distraction because there’s nothing really going on, but it would widen the attentional focal length of the situation.  Both parties wouldn’t feel obligated to look at each other’s face 100% of the time, and in the absence of eye contact, neither would likely feel ignored because both parties know what the other would be looking at, i.e. the live feed of the natural setting.  This phenomenon happens constantly and naturally in a setting where we are actually with one another.  If we are sitting around a table in a restaurant and someone looks away for a moment or two, we have no reason to worry, principally because we have the option to turn around and also look at the object of their attention.  There is something fundamentally unnerving about someone else’s attention being directed elsewhere in a direction and to a specific topic that is unavailable to you.  Especially when it is communicated by eye movement, and how exactly do we register eye movement?

There’s some powerful theory and thinking behind the potential reasons why we’ve developed sclera - or the white of the eye.  The movement of the pupil decreases the amount of white space above or below or to the right or left of the pupil, and this tiny piece of information in a person’s face is extremely important for our tribally evolved brains.  If everyone is looking in a certain direction, we can tell, and we have a huge incentive to look in the same direction so that we can be on the same mental page as the rest of the tribe.

Conversely, there is a very real type of automatic intensity that occurs when we can see a person’s pupil is centred.  This is easy to evoke: just try looking a stranger straight in the eyes.  Not only is it difficult to do, but it’ll most likely unnerve that person… and technologies like zoom essentially force this experience… at least far more than is called for in a social or group setting, or even a shared setting of just two people sitting in a coffee shop or office, which automatically offers more of a panoramic effect or shorter attentional focal length due to the fact that it isn’t constrained by the four edges of a window on a computer screen.

On a regular basis, attentional focal length is something that we toggle constantly.  It varies as we zoom out to take in the whole context of a situation and then we zoom in to do some deep work.  The infant stages of our communication technologies have not yet evolved to take this natural variance into consideration.  

Perhaps technological advancements in Virtual Reality will alleviate these pressures.  But in the time being, an easy hack might be to send someone a link to a harmless live feed that both can enjoy.  

Hey, do you mind if we watch this live feed of these bald eagle chicks while we talk?  

Perhaps it’s a silly idea, but silly often has on offer a lot less stress.  Isn’t that the point?

ON RAMP

September 4th, 2020

We wait in rapt and growing anticipation for months, even years for the movie, the book, the epic vacation.  There’s an aspect of human psychology, clearly rooted in dopamine and the substantia nigra that infuses waiting with a wanting that is often more intense than what comes when the long wait is over.

The intensity of this experience is something we can all relate to.  But is it something we can also appropriate for other means?  Can we get this excited about work?  For the vast majority of people the answer is a disgusted and emphatic NO! This inability to get excited about work probably says far more about the nature of our work and our incongruity with such work than it is an absolute answer.  

What if our life was filled with work we love and enjoy?  What if life was a string of projects we chose and designed ourself?  Could we then plan, and anticipate the work as we do a book or movie or a vacation?

The luckiest of us seems to have figured out a sweet hack of life where work isn’t so much work as it is an extension of our personal agency in a curious way.  The concept of personal agency here is key.  People who feel like they don’t have any personal agency while work - meaning they are told exactly how to do their job - they are micro managed, and they have no freedom to develop their own methods - these people are the least happy of all.

Juxtapose this with the counter-extreme: the artist, whose entire job is quite literally dealing with the freedom they’ve afforded themselves.  I the absence of a boss, an artist has to dictate and schedule their own work, which can be quite difficult - but when such work is at the discretion of one’s own curiosity, the structure and course seems to materialize on it’s own without planners and productivity hacks.  

Non-existent but imagined projects begin to balloon with gleeful anticipation like the new book that so many anticipate, or the sequel movie that people just can’t wait for.   This is a pleasure that so many people -unfortunately- do not get to experience.

We get the curiosity beaten out of us with industrialized education and then  we become weighed down with responsibility, and the time for exploration is squeezed down to nothing.  And then often for so many people, the on ramp they look forward to is wrapped up in an ideal of retirement- one that is hard to fulfill for lack of practice.

ANTIHABIT

September 3rd, 2020

There’s good habits, bad habits and then there are anti-habits.  Bad habits are easy to develop.  They are seductive and generally pleasurable in some sort of way that is easy and desirable to repeat tomorrow… like buy another bottle of wine, or a six-pack of beer.  Good habits are usually the exact opposite in terms of ease of development.  That first month usually requires a substantial dedication and discipline to get that new behaviour through the hoops of 3 and 5 and 7 consecutive days in a row.

The antihabit describes a combination of both.  It’s the seductive ease of the bad habit and the unravelling of the good habit rolled into one.

Let’s say you have a solid meditation practice of a couple years.  It feels as though there is a substantial momentum and inertia that will carry you forever into the future.

The antihabit starts slow, but easy.  It’s when you have that stray day that is characterized by an unusual schedule, and it slips by without meditating.  The next morning perhaps there’s the realization - whoops, that didn’t happen yesterday!  That’s a key moment to make sure that one day missed doesn’t grow into two, because two slides into three missed days far easier. 

This is the development of the antihabit, which is the unravelling of the good habits we have.  Just as habits have thresholds of development - generally attributed to 3 days, 5 days, 7 days, 21 days, and so on and so forth, the unravelling of a good habit seems to accord to the same stretches of time.  Miss three days and the likelihood you miss 5 is substantially greater.  Miss 5 days in a row and it becomes far more certain that 7 days will pass without the good habit happening.

Antihabits are bad habits taking root in the guise of the ghost of a dying good habit.

Being mindful of their pernicious development is perhaps more important than stopping other bad habits or starting even more good habits. Preventing the antihabit is a defence of all that we’ve worked for up until this point.