THE DAILY GRIND

October 23rd, 2019

‘The daily grind’ in some sense seems to communicate something that is counter to human nature. A child certainly doesn’t think of playtime as a grind. 

For most, the daily grind seems to be this unpleasant but necessary ordeal that we must put ourselves through in order to keep moving forward.

Though, if we examine the real verb here, grind, what happens in the literal sense?  You sharpen a blade by grinding a dull edge down to a point, and then you continue the process of honing it down to a fine sharp edge with a finer form of grinding, with a smooth stone or a leather strap.

Similarly in the older gasoline cars, it’s possible to ‘grind gears’ by shifting the transmission improperly.  The gears begin to loose their teeth and therefore their effectiveness and soon enough they are too smooth to work.

We must ask, in the daily grind, what is being ground down?  The work? or the person?

If the daily grind is just grinding the person down, then we might think of that person loosing their bite, the same way a gear looses it’s teeth when it’s ground in a transmission.

It’s no surprise that so many view retirement as some kind of heaven, like a respite from the daily grind and unpleasantness.

And this is perhaps the fitting interpretation for most people in the machine.  They are gears, and cogs that are slowly being used up, worn down and worn out until simply useless by exhaustion.

But there is another interpretation, and it might lend a hint of directional change for those who feel like a cog that’s being used up.

What does the daily grind mean if it’s the work that is being ground down?

Like a fine blade, the more we grind an edge, the smoother it becomes.

If you just keep grinding, then whatever it is you’re grinding will get smooth.

And then you’ll be gliding.

While the barrier to entry for much of the best work we can do is a grind in many ways: a grind against social pressures to be a cog, a grind against the loneliness that no one is noticing, a grind against the sense that such work is useless because it’s not bringing in much money, the farther we go, the smoother the path gets.  Efforts compound and soon enough the work isn’t so much work as it is play.

And what is the difference really between work and play aside from the perspective we have for the given task?

The juxtaposition of the two different interpretations of the daily grind calls to mind an important question about the work you are doing:

Is it possible that the work you do will one day feel easy and fun and rewarding once you’ve grinded it down enough?

Or is it just grinding you down?

THE SMITH & THE DEVIL

October 22nd, 2019

By the word of some researchers, this may be the oldest story we know of, coming to us from the Bronze age,

6,000 years ago.

Despite it’s age, this story has never been more relevant than it is today, and it will be increasingly relevant as we move forward.

The story goes like this:

A blacksmith makes a deal with the devil.  The deal is the blacksmith sells his soul in order to gain the ability to weld anything together.  Once the blacksmith has this power, he then welds the devil himself to an immovable object, like a rock.  Some versions report a tree.  Rock sounds better.  No matter what it is, the point is. . .

 the blacksmith actually gets away with it. 

He gets the power without having to hand over his soul.

This story is the original technological hack.

It is the original story of being able to eat your cake and keep it too.

And even if this isn’t actually the oldest story we have on record, the fact that it’s one of the very oldest isn’t just prescient and astonishing, it’s. . . hopeful.

In this little story, the blacksmith changes the rules of how things operate.  The traditional rules are: you give something, you get something.  But the blacksmith uses the situation to change the situation.  He gets something for nothing . . . but it still requires one important ingredient. 

What’s required to get something for free is ingenuity.  He played by the rules of the situation, but there was a flaw in those rules, a loophole that the blacksmith saw and used.

One might say that the blacksmith didn’t play by the rules, but it’s far more accurate to say that the rules were not properly designed to account for all situations.  In effect, the rules were not designed to deal with human ingenuity.

It’s appropriate that this story arose in the bronze age when humans began to discover the possibilities of smelting different metals.  But it’s even more appropriate today, when it’s possible to make billions of dollars if you can touch a computer in just the right ways.

Our species seems principally defined by our ability to sneak treasures out of a lockbox that the Unknown keeps hidden away.

Anyone who reads or listens to this episode of Tinkered Thinking can only do so because of dozens and dozens of technological discoveries that have been laced together in an intricate way that compounds the beneficial effects of all those discoveries. And if say, you’re connected to a public wifi, then you’re doing so pretty much for free.  It’s as though you and I both conspired against the devil to get some thoughts that are in my head into your head without having to give much of anything away.  All it took was some ingenuity.

The story, as an analogy certainly seems even more ripe when you think of the recent scrutinies big tech has endured.  In some cases it certainly looks like someone sold their soul for power.  Regardless, that is a somewhat different topic.

At the heart of the Smith and the Devil is the notion that you can invent your way out of a situation. 

That underlying principle is the reason we like James Bond movies, Mcgyver, and Jason Borne, along with the Indiana Jones series and The Da Vinci Code.

Fewer things are more satisfying than when a puzzle is defeated by human ingenuity.

In the broadest sense, it’s this that we seem to be naturally geared towards.

We seem to forget that our species is the product of natural processes.  The difficult word in these last two sentences is the word ‘natural’.  Plastic litter certainly doesn’t feel natural, but if we recognize humans as a natural process of environmental conditions. . . than it is. 

Our drive as a species appears more and more like an unstoppable colonization of the unknown.  No matter what the rules seem to be, we intuit the possibility of a deeper set of rules that allows us to act in a way that hacks the situation, and by this process we slowly tame chaos and uncover the unknown.  And in the process we uncover treasures afforded by understanding these new secrets.

This applies on the level of our society and planet, but more importantly it applies to the individual.

With the internet, nearly anyone has access to the tools needed to teach themselves virtually anything.  And with that, you can innovate your way out of your current situation and quite literally create a better situation. 

fact is,

Everyone is a smith.

And we all have the opportunity to trick the devil

and make a better life.

The first trick is to realize that your life, your current situation, is a puzzle.

Are you working to solve it?

or are you doing laps in the maze?

A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: CUTTING QUESTIONS

October 21st, 2019

Imagine this:

You have two thick pieces of identical card paper, and they are glued together,  but between the two is another thin sheet of blue paper. But within the borders of this blue sheet of paper is a white design.  The color is not just on the surface but goes all the way through to the back, so if you were to tear it in half and look at the torn edge, you would see that some of it is blue and some of it is white.  It’s a sort of mixed material paper, but it’s perfectly flat, and the edge between the two colors has no noticeable change other than color.  There’s no small divide or ridge, it is perfectly smooth.

Now the white design on the blue page is very very important, and your goal is to figure out what that shape is.  However, as mentioned, it is glued between two thick pieces of card paper.

You are tasked with figuring out what the design is, and all you are given is a pair of scissors.

Imagine how this tedious process would go: 

You have to cut into the sandwiched paper and then look at the edge of the cut you’ve made, inspecting it for any white in the layer of blue. 

Slowly you cut farther into the paper until you hit some white, and then you know you’ve gone too far, so you change directions slightly and test with a small cut.  All blue.  So you cut some more until you find white.

Slowly, by prodding into the area of white you would eventually find the border… if you are careful and diligent.

This thought experiment is an analogy for the way we build and discover novel things.  Whether that be learning something knew like how to install a perfectly aligned drawer or whether that be finding a profitable idea for a business.  With each, while learning or figuring out, we ask ourselves questions that propel us forward.  This can be as simple as what should I do next?  and from there it can get as specific and detailed as necessary.  What if I do this?  Maybe that would be better?

Each question that we ask is like a single cut with the scissors.  The question we ask inspires some course of action to investigate and ideally we come up with some kind of result.  And that result is like inspecting the layer of blue that we’ve cut into.  Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be any result, and all we see is blue.  But when we hit upon something, there’s a noticeable change.  We see some white.  And we want to follow that color to see what else is there, because this mysterious character or shape or rune is the key to increased agency. 

Every time we learn something or build something that makes an impact, we are invariably more capable than we were before the effort.  And it’s through this iterative process of action and result, and making sensible course corrections depending on the results we find.

It’s tedious, but it works.

The astute thinker will be wondering about shapes and characters and designs that have some kind of internal negative space.  Think about the difference between the letter ‘T’ and the letter ‘B’  You can trace a ‘T’ without ever picking up your pen.  But in order to trace out a ‘B’ you need to lift your pen in order to make the two spaces inside of the ‘B’.

So what does this mean with regards to the thought experiment?

Well it’s certainly important to find the outer limits of the shape, that thing we are building, or the skill we are learning. 

But we need not fear cutting straight into the thing we seek.  Who knows what details lie within that require our attention.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: A CARVING LESSON

October 20th, 2019

Lucilius arrived at the house with two packages, giftwrapped in brown paper, and bow-tied with black twine.  It was the day after his godson’s birthday, and Lucilius had purposely waited so that the allure of all the birthday gifts would have waned, the novelty spent.  Lucilius knew his gift was one that required quiet, and concentration, two things that rarely frequent the parties of young children.

His godson was overjoyed to see him, his eyes magnetized by the two packages Lucilius held.  The family welcomed Lucilius in, and Lucilius handed off the gifts, calling down the hall to his godson.

“Don’t open them without me, there are special instructions.”

He took off his coat, listening to an account of the wonderful day before, as they walked down the hall to join his godson.  The boy gently shook the larger heavy package.  It was shaped like a cube, and the other one was a small thin box.

“Open the other one first, but be careful,” Lucilius said.  The family gathered round watching the excited boy tear open the paper.  He opened the small box and pulled out a small hooked knife.

The mother sighed, “aw geez, you really know how to stress me out.”

“The boy’s gotta learn how to handle danger,” Lucilius said.  “And plus,” he added in a quieter tone, “it’s pretty dull.”

The boy investigated the knife carefully, putting the tip of his finger to the tip of the knife.  He poked himself gently and then looked at the pad of his finger.  Then he looked at the bigger package.

He put down the knife and untied the bow, tore the paper away and looked on a wooden box that had branded on the side the word SOAP.  The boy stared at it a moment and then tried to open the lid.

“Lift the box,” Lucilius said.  The boy followed and the box separated from its base, revealing a large cube of…. soap. 

The boy looked at it a moment, and then looked at his mother, before looking to Lucilius.

“Well, at least you’ll be clean,” the boy’s mother said.  Gently laughing.

“You have a puzzle before you. Bring it here.”

The boy lifted the cube of soap, remembering the knife and brought it to Lucilius.  The man hoisted the boy up on his lap.

“I made this cube of soap for you, but more importantly is what’s inside.”

The boy’s gaze quickly shifted from the soap to Lucilius.

“Inside there is a container, like a balloon, but shaped in a crazy way.  It is very delicate, and there might be many of them.  And because they are so delicate, they can easily be popped with a knife,” Lucilius said nodding to the curved blade the boy held.

“And you don’t want to pop any of these balloons because they are filled with a special liquid, and if that liquid spills out, it will disintegrate the paper I have wrapped around the balloons and you will loose the message I have written for you.”

“But what did you write?” the boy asked.

“The message gives you the location of a special gift that I have hidden for you.  And it will be waiting for you as long as it takes you to uncover the message. But be careful because it’s very easy to lose the whole message.  You need to carve away at the soap very carefully.”

Lucilius set the boy down, and the boy went to a coffee table that his mother had just covered with some newspaper.  The boy set about scratching at a corner of the cube with his knife, and the adults picked up their chatting. 

After some time, with a couple of the corners rounded and laced with scratches, the boy grew tired of the task and moved on to something else.

Years passed and as Lucilius made his visits he watched as the cube of soap was moved around and slowly, it disappeared.

Long after this, Lucilius found himself atop a mountain, spending the days simply, meditating for much of it and chipping away at a little project.  He was sitting with a warm cup of tea, watching the sun set over the ocean when a soft green light underneath the skin on the back of his hand warmed to a noticeable and gentle glow.

He uncloistered his mind and tapped back into the network.

“How are you godfather?”

Lucilius smiled.

“I’m well, and you my boy?  What are you getting up to these days?”

“I finally carved out the riddle you buried in that soap.”

Lucilius gently laughed.  “I forgot about that…..

and what did you end up finding?”

10 MINUTES

October 19th, 2019

Let’s see if this sounds familiar. 

You spend hours researching and planning.  Perhaps even you do this for multiple sessions.  And then at the very end, right when you think you’re done, one last contingency or detail comes into your mind.  You mull it over for a few seconds and decide that it’s already taken care of or you assume that it’ll work out.  And then that last little detail comes back to haunt you in a way that makes all your previous preparations useless. 

If only – you might find yourself saying – you’d only taken 10 more minutes to look up a few things.

It’s incredible the use to which 10 minutes can be put to.

Ruined projects aside, meditation is probably the best example.

Just 10 measly minutes a day of meditating can have staggeringly large effects after enough time.

And then when someone has passed away, we often find ourselves thinking about the huge amount we’d be willing to pay or sacrifice just to have another 10 minutes with that person.

Even just 10 minutes of exercise is enough to trigger the hormonal responses that account for the large majority of benefits that come from exercise.

If you sleep 8 hours a day, then that gives you 10 minutes during the day 96 times.

It’s going to run out anyhow, whether we like it or not.

Perhaps a few more of those 10 minute chunks could be devoted to better things.