CHASING SILENCE

November 14th, 2019

It’s a curiosity that our world is not more optimized around the issue of sound.  There is virtually no thought or effort dedicated to making anything sound proof outside of the industries that rely on recording, like the music industry. 

Everything we do produces a sound, and with so many of us up to something, there’s just about always something to be heard, whether that’s traffic on the main road, someone coughing on the floor above or some buzzing sound emanating from an appliance.  Finding a quiet space is difficult because it cannot be easily created.  For the most part it’s achieved by removing other things, like turning off the music, or by blocking them out, like wearing ear plugs. 

In this way, silence has something in common with attention.

We seem to be entering a period marked by wars over our attention.  Ads are everywhere, they are incessant, and more and more they seem to be tailored to anticipate our desires, thereby making it more likely that we will spend time and money in ways that we might not necessarily want to. 

Regaining a freedom of attention is like chasing silence, it’s a matter of removing distractions, blocking them out, and purposefully going to a place that might be so unfamiliar that it’s uncomfortable:  few people can sit alone with themselves for very long.

Attention, like silence, is not something you chase.  It’s something you cultivate, something you build, like a recording studio.  It doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen smoothly.  It’s like managing the growth of a garden.

It cannot be forced.

but we can keep the weeds from choking the fruits of our patience.

A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: A DAY'S WORTH

November 13th, 2019

Here’s the deal:  I give you 1 Trillion dollars right now.

But the catch is you instantly become 90 years old.

Would you do it?

Most people don’t go for it.  And this question brings to light one of the rare instances when people truly internalize just how much more valuable time is when compared to money.

Let’s say you are 20 years old.  If you do the math, saying ‘no’ to 1 Trillion dollars means that each day is worth at least

$ 39,138,943.24

If you go even further and account for 8 hours of sleep, then each hour is worth

2.4 Million dollars.

Think about that the next time you crack a beer and throw on a rerun.

Let’s say you are 30 years old.  If you do the math again, then saying ‘no’ to 1 Trillion dollars means that each day is worth at least:

$   45,662,100.45

45 million dollars.

Already we can see the trend.  The thing about time is that it’s like food when you’re lost at sea: it becomes more valuable the less that you have.

Let’s say you are 65 years old, the traditional age of retirement.  If you do the math, saying ‘no’ to 1 Trillion dollars means that each day is worth at least:

$ 109,589,041.09

The worth of a single day in this thought experiment would paradoxically fund many fantastic lifetimes.  Of course, the catch in the thought experiment is that most people don’t see much in the way of potential and possibility when it comes to such a ripe old age, and therefore the gargantuan amount of money would be fairly useless as the chance to use or enjoy it would be severely diminished.  But here’s the other side of that catch: we are all headed that way anyhow. 

We have to stop occasionally and wonder if our day is being well spent.  And pay attention to that verb we use:  spent.  Look back on your day yesterday and imagine if it cost you 39 million dollars to live that day.  Talk about a spending spree, and for what?  Hopefully some of you will look back on yesterday and smile, but it’s easy to imagine that many will look the other way rather than let this query land as sensitively as it could.

Here’s another way of looking at it.  The wandering homeless person who sits outside of a coffee shop reading a book has a lot in common with some of the richest people on the planet: they have the freedom to determine their own schedule.  Most everyone else in between is bound by a time table set by others.  While obligations and responsibilities have most people pinned to this situation, that does not mean the situation is unalterable. 

Human ingenuity is a powerful force.

But most people sell themselves short on that one too.

METAQUESTIONS

November 12th, 2019

The ability to form a question is our most vital tool.  It might even be our only real tool from which we derive every other tool we’ve created.   Everything we’ve created has stemmed from some version of

how would I do this?

 or

what can I do with that?

Each step in the process is usually a new question about what we are doing.  And when we find ourselves stuck in the process, one useful thing to wonder is whether or not we have the best question in hand in order to proceed forward productively and efficiently.

This isn’t something we necessarily pickup naturally, but the ability to ask:

Why am I asking and pursuing this current question? 

Can save us loads of time that would otherwise be wasted.  We sometimes catch ourselves in this circumstance.  We’re wrapped up in our thoughts, perhaps we’re looking for something around the house that we’ve lost, but in the process we find something else we forgot we owned, and we notice that it’s broken, but easily fixed, and before we know it, we’ve spent twenty minutes tinkering with it, when suddenly we step back from what we’re doing and ask: what am I doing wasting my time with this?  Wasn’t I looking for something?  Oh yea…..

We can replicate this sort of reboot by having some meta-questions on hand:

Why am I trying to answer this question?

How am I trying to answer this question?

Should I be trying to think of a better question?

It’s helpful at this point to remember how Tinkered Thinking defines a question.  A question is an open-ended concept that creates forward momentum.

In that framework, just about everything we do can be viewed as stemming from some sort of question.  You go to your job in the morning because at some point in the past you asked yourself: how am I going to make money?

Perhaps it’s time to revisit that question.  For example, we can apply that third meta-question to this query about money.  That is: Should I be trying to think of a better question?

A potential example of a better question with regards to making money might be:  Am I aware of all the different ways that people are making money today?

This is essentially asking:  is my information about the world up-to-date.

Perhaps we apply that third metaquestion again:  Is there a better question?

And we realize that we can energize our thinking about new, potentially better questions by using another metaquestion:

Why am I trying to answer this question?

Essentially, why am I trying to answer this question about making money?

The logic is pretty simple:  So I can eat and pay rent and all that stuff.

But like a child equipped with a Why-Shovel, we can keep digging:

What’s the point of paying rent and eating, why am I trying to make those happen?

The answer here seems obvious but people often don’t face it fully.

The answer is, so you can live.

But living really refers to time well spent, not time grinded up at a day job.

So now we can return to the original question: How am I going to make money?, and rephrase it in a much deeper and potentially life-altering way:

How am I going to spend the time I have alive?

INDICATION OF A BAD QUESTION

November 11th, 2019

We do not have a system for identifying good questions and bad questions.  Neither do we have a process for making bad questions better.

We are somewhat plagued by questions.  Far more than we might observe in other species.

What penguin or tortoise is so concerned with the meaning of life that they develop ulcers?  None.

And yet we are primarily driven by questions of one sort or another.  Without being all that conscious about it, poorly formed questions can drive us in unproductive directions or perpetuate self-sabotaging behavior for years.

This happens because of two reasons, one which stems from the other.

First, it’s an unanswerable question.

And because we never achieve a satisfying answer, this question gets repeated.

Here’s an example that many, if not all of us have heard in some circumstance, and in some form or another.

Why don’t you act like I want you to?

It’s easy to imagine a confused and frustrated parent saying this to a child.  And it’s not unimaginable to hear this between lovers.  Certainly it has been said in hushed angry tones between couples in public.

Setting aside all of the problems we might be able to flag for this question, the repetitive nature of such questions – the fact that they are asked over and over to no avail is a very important indication that we might have a bad question.

Another similarly common question that flags the same trouble is:

Why am I so stupid?

Who hasn’t asked this question of themselves?  And yet, the obvious issues with this kind of self talk are abundantly clear beyond the fact that people might be chastising themselves with this unanswerable question on a daily basis.

Other repeated questions might be more subtle, but if you find yourself asking the same thing over and over, it’s time to ask another question, namely:

What’s a better, more specific version of this question that I could ask?

This episode references Episode 30: The Only Tool

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: THE MOVING MIND

November 10th, 2019

Lucilius was walking along campus when he overheard several friends in debate.  They were looking up at a tree as it swayed in the wind.

“It’s not the tree that’s moving, it’s the wind.”  One of them said.  Lucilius closed his eyes for a moment and enjoyed the feeling of the wind on his face.

“Of course the tree is moving,” another said.  “Can’t you see it move?”  Lucilius opened his eyes and watched the full branches sway back and forth against one another.

A third tried to help.  “The tree is certainly moving, we can see that, and we can feel the wind, so  can’t we say that both the wind and the tree are moving together?”

The group seemed to contemplate this, until a forth spoke up.  “If we weren’t here seeing the tree and feeling the wind, could we say that either are moving?”

“That’s like asking if a falling tree makes a sound in the woods if no one is around to hear it.”

“I suppose,” the other wondered aloud.  “But what if it was a different kind of absence.  What if this was just a dream?  Would there really be wind or a tree?  What would be left to move?”

At that moment Lucilius awoke, opening his eyes, ignorant for a moment as the world around him rushed in.  He laid still breathing in the morning air.  Slowly, his scattered attention began to resolve and he picked up on an image as it moved, coming to life in staggered blips and starts until he caught the flow of his dream and it came to life in his mind.