DEAD RIVER

November 11th, 2022

For about one thousand two hundred days, Tinkered Thinking was a river of content. A post and a podcast every day. And then the river ran dry. Not because inspiration was lacking but simply because another project got kicked into high gear during its final mile before launch. 

The river ran dry because a hiatus turned into an antihabit. This was also the fateful juncture where I decided to A/B test my life regarding a meditation habit, and reinstalling that habit in my life proved much more difficult than I anticipated. I quite literally had to build a new habit tracking framework into the forthcoming meditation app in order to solve my problem of building back up my meditative practice. So while the experience was very illuminating and yielded some potentially invaluable innovation, it definitely wasn’t comfortable. 

Another thing that has remained uncomfortable is the absence of writing in my life. The Lucilius Parables were generating themselves for a while… but the antihabit of not writing every day seems to have gained its inflection point and now the usual bullshit rationalizations that accompany a mind now accustomed to not pushing itself in some particular area are constant. 

Most rationalizations are merely psychological mechanisms for fast tracking towards emotional stasis. They are elaborate excuses to not do something. There’s likely a pretty good evolutionary reason for this. It’s just easier: a little self-deception is just more efficient than refusing to acquiesce to one’s own bullshit and demanding the extra mile. There’s quite literally less energy expenditure. But as with most things in life, this only makes sense in the short term. In the longer term the variables flip positions. Going the extra mile often invigorates the body, mind and spirit in a way that makes an additional mile possible, if not downright attractive. This counter-intuitive law seems to exist everywhere. Even this very post: I didn’t plan to go in this direction. I envisioned something much shorter, but the simple act of getting started generates momentum which can then be used to cover more ground than initially envisioned. It’s fascinating how consistent effort compounds due to the caching mechanism of momentum…

It’s a toss up which is harder: getting started or staying consistent. Perhaps that’s not the right dichotomy. Perhaps consistency is just a matter of getting started every day. Just focus on getting started each day.

So where now for Tinkered Thinking? Well for now it’s just a matter of (re)starting. I’ve A/B tested my life enough with and without writing and it’s definitely better when I’m writing everyday, however useless or low-quality it is. I was rationalizing that I want to keep writing until I have 5 volumes of Lucilius Parables but that was a rationalization that missed the real point, and it’s totally counter to the original strategy and philosophy that got me to 3.5 volumes of short stories in the first place. I was never aiming for finished books. I just wanted to write everyday. Because I like it, and it feels healthy in a brain-cleaning sort of way. It’s harder to believe your own bullshit if you’re actually reading it.*

Again, the momentum of this post has taken me to an unexpected place. This is what I love about writing. I had a vague idea about laying out a plan for the future of Tinkered Thinking, but instead it’s been an exercise in incentive-cleansing. The question was: what am I doing here on Tinkered Thinking? And through the process of busting out a couple of paragraphs I realized I was asking the wrong question. A better one is: Why does Tinkered Thinking exist?

This makes me curious about the relationship between incentives and questions. No doubt there’s a couple decent posts probably wrapped up in attempts to explore this curiosity. But hey, let’s try a one liner about it and say: The right question can realign incentives by reorganizing the reasons we do things. Bleh. That feels obvious in light of the last paragraph. So I’ll copy and paste the first sentence of this paragraph and leave it for myself as mental-bait for tomorrow’s post. Hmm. Mental Bait. There’s a post in that concept too…I suppose a good writing habit is much like a great conversation: constantly jumping around leaving loose ends that we can always return to in order to make even more cross-connections during the conversation. Writing is just a conversation that you have with yourself. There’s a post there too…

Unwittingly, this post seems to be arming my writing habit with the energy and bait to live on through tomorrow. It’s as though the latent and unrealized desire to just spitball words at the universe is desperately trying to capitalize on this fleeting opportunity. Like a wily lover playfully stealing a possession in order to guarantee a future reunion. Oh, you left your hoodie! Mmhm. Yeah, ok, I’ll be back tomorrow.

The question does occur to me if a dedication to original incentives is incompatible with some planning and goal-aiming. For example, there’s a novella with Lucilius at it’s heart which has been outlined and drafted for a couple years now, but the project has stagnated. I’ve accidentally written additional collections of short stories on the fly, but I haven’t been able to make this dumb little novella materialize. There’s also the content for the meditation app The Tinkered Mind (by the way, I’m not super crazy about the name, so if someone has an idea for a better name, my DM’s are always open on the bird app). Creation of this content has been intermittent, which is a problem.

There’s a combination of problems here, but when viewed correctly askance, they resolve as solutions for one another. I have a whole bunch of writing content that I’ve wanted to work on, and I’ve also been wanting to restart a writing habit? Well that sounds impressively dumb. Funny how so many of our problems are really just Rubber Ducky problems: issues that are remarkably easy to solve if we just externalize our thinking, either by talking to someone or by writing. What was that bit about believing one’s own bullshit? Most issues aren’t even problems, we just feel a certain way and it’s the feeling that needs to change. The actual issue often has a mindnumpingly straight forward answer - uhhh, just do the thing? ( I’m looking at you productivity hackers: you’re all snake oil salesmen selling elaborate forms of procrastination garnished with good feelings. )

So I’ll be changing up exactly what I post on Tinkered Thinking. Daily musings will certainly continue, but I’m also going to use it as a drafting table for the content I’m talking about. Just as I challenged myself to write a short story every Sunday, I’ll augment this original (and highly effective) challenge by having one story a month be a chapter from the novella I’ve referred to. And at least once a week, I will post a draft of content intended for the meditation app. Perhaps on Mondays. “Monday Meditations” has that kitschy ring to it that makes me chuckle at its inanity. This altered strategy also gives me a bunch of breathing room regarding the difficulty of jumpstarting a habit: a lot of this content is drafted, so on days when I’m struggling to find motivation, I can post something from these nascent bodies of work to get my brain rolling in the right direction. 

So. Let’s see what happens to a dead river when we through a little rain at it…

*This does not appear to be true for many people on Twitter.

THE INFINITE LOOPS PODCAST + TINKERED THINKING

November 10th, 2022

The Infinite Loops podcast, hosted by Jim O’Shaughnessy just released an episode where I had the very great pleasure of being a guest.

The occasion of the appearance was on account of the White Mirror writing contest - a challenge released by Infinite Loops for writers to come up with a story completely counter to the Black Mirror TV series in order to present a more hopeful technological future. Tinkered Thinking had the great honor of being selected as the winner for this contest, and the story and the ideas surrounding it formed a delightful foundation for a conversation between Jim and I.

You can check out the episode here:

Jim and I cover a range of topics from writing, The Lucilius Parables, stoicism, curiosity, and the disappearance of positive poetry, to what levers exist in the human OS that are most accessible for raising the chances of a positive future.

It was an incredible honor to be welcomed on the podcast by Jim, and for The Lucilius Parables to be recognized as an effective picture of a better future. These little parables have certainly grown beyond anything I initially imagined and this contest and podcast only add to my stupefied awe. 

As an additional note, it’s worth mentioning just how good social media can be. It was with great reluctance that I initially got on Twitter at the urging of a wise friend. How surprised I have been to find a community and make real friends on the little bird app. Of course, this is where Jim and I first connected when a mutual suggested I submit the stories of Tinkered Thinking to the White Mirror contest. Truly, the internet is much like any tool: it’s danger is inherent in how you wield it. Daily, I am amazed at how most people seem to use the incredible technological tools at our disposal the way a drunk toddler would handle a knife. I’ll sincerely admit that Twitter adds greatly to my life in terms of community, friendship, and the most reliable daily laugh I’ve been able to find, not to mention the endless interesting rabbit holes it provides. Is it perfect? Well certainly not, but most tools are far from perfect...

Great craftsmanship might be described as a combination of excellent tools and abundant skill, but in contrast, I’m more attracted to a juxtaposed definition of resourcefulness: the ability to have great effect with tools and materials that are far from ideal. Great craftsmanship certainly deserves respect, but we can’t all be great craftsmen in all areas of our life. For most situations we are are left with a choice to be resourceful or not: to try and use imperfect tools ingeniously, and to our benefit… or not.

THE LUCILIUS PARABLES, VOLUME II

September 27th, 2022

Tinkered Thinking has released its second book, The Lucilius Parables, Volume II.  

Those who are regular readers or visitors of Tinkered Thinking will know that a short story is released on most Sundays.  These stories are dubbed ‘parables’ and they always revolve around the same character: Lucilius.  This second volume is an illustrated collection of the 42 parables released on Tinkered Thinking.

The name Lucilius was inspired by the famous Letters of Seneca, or as they are sometimes referred to The Moral Letters to Lucilius.  This is a collection that documents one side of a correspondence between the philosopher and statesman Seneca and a financial official in Sicily.  Lucilius’ side of the correspondence is not included, and so he remains a bit of a mystery, appearing only as Seneca imagines him.

At the time when Tinkered Thinking was just starting, Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s work was also on the chopping block, and his use of the fictional character Nero to illustrate certain points inside of his non-fiction work helped provoke this notion and question:  would Tinkered Thinking benefit from fictional narratives that try to explore the same material in a totally different light?

Even with a good deal of experience writing fiction, this is a fairly tall order: to write a short story every week.  Luckily, the word ‘parable’ comes into quick and elegant use for this issue.  A parable is a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson.  And of course this comes from the Christian tradition, as they were told by Jesus in the Gospels.  This concept of a ‘parable’ does several things which are in-tune with with a possible answer for that question posed about Tinkered Thinking benefiting from fictional narratives.

In literary circles, a story that blatantly demonstrates the ‘point’ that it’s trying to get across is frowned upon, especially if it’s a moral one.  Why this is, and whether its good or not is a can of worms better left for someone else to crack. But a parable straddles this issue quite nicely. A parable makes no claim to be any kind of high fiction. There is something far more humble about a parable. The entire concept lacks the stuffy conceit often associated with fine literature.  And for good reason: when it comes to the task of understanding what’s going on, the barrier to entry is far lower than it is for something like say… oh, James Joyce’s Ulysses.  

This conscious flip of purpose is quite interesting in a modern context of social feeds and over-stimulation and constant distraction.  Whether it succeeds on Tinkered Thinking or not, the concept of a modern parable teases at something that is quick, accessible and thought-provoking.  These concepts don’t usually go hand-in-hand.  What is quick and accessible is often shallow, and what is thought-provoking  - or rather what is culturally deemed ‘thought-provoking’ can often be concealed within layers of obfuscation that one is required to sift through.  The Lucilius Parables from Tinkered Thinking seek to cut this cake and keep it too.  The kernel curiosity that generates each story is this: is it possible to help a reader think about their experience of being alive in a new refreshing way within the bounds of just a couple pages of fictional story?

Tinkered Thinking has now released over 170 Parables, and the feedback emphatically answers: yes, It is possible.

The 42 illustrations were added for several reasons.  One is that a few parables really are quite short, and to be frank, this presents an awkward situation regarding spacing and design within a book.  The illustrations provide a beautiful punctuation between each story.  The other reason is that.. well, everyone loves pictures in a book, and do be sure, these illustrations were quite a lot of work.  The hope is these illustrations add a bit of mysterious value to a physical item like a book.  This isn’t just a bunch of stories, this was designed to be a larger aesthetic experience, like a book you can imagine having on a coffee table, but if picked up and genuinely perused would quickly have your brain bent in an unexpected and refreshing way. That’s another aspect of this book: the stories can be read in any order, and they are quick, bite-sized meditations.

Each parable in this book can be found on Tinkered Thinking in its rough unedited form.  But, good luck finding them in a way that is as effortless and pleasurable as turning a page and seeing a hand drawn illustration to invite you into the next story…

RESTART/REBUILD

September 17th, 2022

Recently someone pointed out that an experienced and skilled artist can toss a drawing away and start over with little thought or concern. Amateurs will toil away at something that can never get much better because they don’t have much to show for. They try to improve what little they have, failing to realize that it’s more efficient to just start over. The master draftsman isn’t so unattached because of a sizable cannon of work, but simply because it’s just faster to start over in order to get somewhere good.

This has happened countless times here on Tinkered Thinking, both with Lucilius Parables and regular entries. This very entry started off three different ways, with three different titles, and while one of those false starts was saved for perhaps another day, the other one is already lost from memory. This isn’t to imply some sort of mastery over writing, but after a thousand and some odd essays and stories, the psychological experience is far… lighter, casual, and playful. Writing can be serious business ( always too serious if even just a little serious, in this writer’s honest opinion ) But as soon as all that cramped spirit released, words have a much easier time coming to mind.

But the technique or advice can be imported. Currently a little chess app is in the works and just today I rebuilt it twice, tackling different aspects of functionality as I wiggle my way around a tech stack that I’m not all that familiar with. While I’m making good progress with the latest iteration, I already have plans to start anew tomorrow. None of this is all that repetitive, it’s more as though you’d built a blossom before the leaves and done so without stem and seed. Rebuilding isn’t so much a total restart as it is an iterative cumulation - the same way we might race through and obstacle course over and over, each time figuring out some aspect of the course that can improve performance on the next run. 

Perhaps the most approachable example is when we stutter to start on some point, as the mind rewrites our opening sentence as we say it. It’s hard to think no one hasn’t had this experience: we get half way through our first sentence and the mere hearing of that sentence gives us a better idea about how to go about our description or argument, and so it necessitates starting over. 

All of this boils down to a priority of moving, especially when stuck. Without the ability to abandon some nascent effort and restart, getting stuck can be a serious waste of time. And the time it takes to succeed is always good to cut down. As counter-intuitive as it might seem, starting over is often quicker…

QUESTIONS & CONVERSATIONAL CONSTRAINTS

September 16th, 2022

It can be incredibly difficult to get someone to see things from your point of view. Often it feels as though no one is listening. But there’s a problem with this feeling: it’s based on a lack of evidence, an no evidence is not proof that something doesn’t exit. It’s just proof that the evidence currently isn’t visible. 

What’s often happening is that we are heard, but instead of confirming this, our listener is too busy trying to push their own perspective because they are in the same boat - they feel as though they have not been understood.

We keep heaping our own point of view on others. Everyone struggles with this.

The key and hack to good conversation is in the questions we ask, not the descriptions and arguments we give.

When stuck at an impasse in conversation today, I felt the urge to rephrase what I’d already said, but a thoughtful moment made me realize that I was just repeating myself. So I switched it up, and wondered: how could a I force a response about the direction I was thinking in? The question I ended up asking was:

Given what you understand about my situation and my goals, if you had to adhere to those parameters as if you also really wanted them, what would your advice be for moving forward?

This got the thoughtful pause in my conversation partner that I was looking for. And the initial response was telling.

Hmm. You’ve forced me to give up my perspective and my agenda and take on yours as a kind of creative constraint….

Exactly. Isn’t this in large part what most people are looking for in many conversations? Isn’t this the framing through which we often hope to be spoken to? Put on my shoes for a moment. Look through my eyes. Wear my dreams and shroud yourself with my problems. Do you see something here that I don’t? How would you navigate forward?

Raw description does little to steer the mind of others. Argument and description function like the walls of a structure. Questions are the thresholds, the doors and portals that welcome a listener to venture in and explore. And notice the difference in agency allotted our partner in conversation: our partner takes no part in building the argument we give, but a good question requires both people to properly function. The listener is not just granted agency in terms of supplying a response, the listener is challenged to do so.

As it turns out, the advice my partner in conversation ended up giving me was exactly what Was doing.

Previous to my pivot with the question it had seemed like we were in total disagreement, but as it turned out, we were on the same page.