THE AVOIDANCE DECEPTION

July 5th, 2019

A sense or vision of ideal perfection is often broadcasted as the grand and noble reason why we delay and cease to make those beginning moves.

It’s got to be just right. . .

Anyone who honestly scrutinizes the ideal vision of their goal will see that it’s mostly just a hazy feeling of certainty and desire peppered with a few details.  No one dreams in fully formed  and complete ideas.  We follow notions and discover and iterate the details as we go, following that sense of aesthetic.

For many this is a hard process to get going with, especially if the topic or issue or design feels cripplingly important.

The self-defeating solution is to avoid failure and simply never start.

But this is again a linguistic illusion.  Failure is a negative word and in the emotional logic of language it makes perfect sense to avoid something negative, as one would avoid placing a hand on a hot stove.

the linguistic illusion is in the use of the word failure. 

It’s not failure people are avoiding.

People are avoiding growth.

Simply compare these two synonymous statements:

I’m avoiding failure.

and

I’m avoiding growth.

They essentially mean the same thing but they carry wildly different emotional weights. 

Avoiding failure feels forgivable.

Avoiding growth though…

that seems irresponsible.

BRAIN BUG

July 4th, 2019

Coders talk about debugging code.  Finding the one spot where things go awry, where the whole system stops or trips or redirects in a strange way.

What about debugging the mind.  Surely we all have a few bad ideas running around wreaking havoc from time to time.  Like bugs in code, bad ideas or narratives can keep us stuck in a bad system of thought and behavior, creating a vicious cycle and burrowing who we are deeper and deeper into a problem.

However, just as code can be debugged, the mind, and the ideas that run on our gooey hardware can also be debugged.  These bugs might look like bad habits.  And no matter how nonsensical, there is always a story that we are telling ourselves when such a bad habit rears it’s counter-productive head.  Sometimes, the mere act of saying this story out loud, by simply speaking the thoughts as they occur around a bad habit can be enough to totally disrupt a habit.  We become mindful and reflective in a way that exposes our thinking as opposed to letting it slide in the silence created by a private mind.

At the very least, saying such stories and thoughts out loud can spark a new perspective that breeds ideas about how to our own undermining behavior.

Getting rid of these bugs may in fact be more important than installing better ideas and habits. The urge and possibility of these better habits might already be there, lying dormant, remaining static from  friction caused by brain bugs making everything go haywire.

What’s required first and foremost is the idea that we can change who we are.  Without that idea, little is possible in the way of debugging our thoughts.

But, with a solid curiosity installed about who we could become,  everything is up for grabs, and like a program that instantly starts performing as intended, the mind can begin to weed out it’s own bugs and start performing as intended.

ONE SIZE FITS ALL

July 3rd, 2019

The concept of one-size-fits-all surely fell out of a hole in someone’s head that also happened to be a portal to hell.  The concept is trying to take a butter knife to the clunky and inconvenient reality that in fact, only one size is being made.

We need only engage someone to open up about some peculiarity of pain or irritable temperament that they’ve discovered regarding their own body to know just how peculiarly different everyone is. The same is naturally true when it comes to size or shape. 

But the phrase “One size fits all.”  It has a certain ring to it.  There is something democratic about it.  Or fascist… (Though communism is clearly the political system of choice for such a concept)

While Aldous Huxley might be giggling in his grave over the concept of One Size Fits All, we can be sure that Orwell is equally tickled by the irony of ball caps built to fit every size head that say ‘Make Orwell Fiction Again.’

There lies a deeper interpretation that we can draw from this one-size-fits-all.  Just as the one-size-fits-all item never really fits anyone very well, there is something else, something big, that many people, indeed most, often find a similar problem, that is: reality.

How often do our ideas about reality fail to be true?  Or put another way.  How often does reality prove to be stubborn to the way we’d prefer it to be?  Like the one-size-fits-all shirt that doesn’t really fit too well, we are constantly faced with the fact that reality is very often not as we’d like nor what we think.

The change has to be in the other direction.  Whereas any of us can dispense with a poorly made one-size-fits-all T-shirt and make one by hand that fits us perfectly, it’s the other way with reality.  We have to change ourselves in order to fit reality.  A sort of Procrustes bed of sorts.  But the good thing is that the human mind, beyond almost all else that we can point a finger at seems to be the most well equipped to take on this challenge.

Indeed, one reality fits all of us, whether we like it or not.  But those who flourish will realize what virtue there is in making themselves conform more and more to the reality in which we all find ourselves.  Unlike a T-shirt that doesn’t fit well, there is no returning the reality we’ve been handed.

Best to see what shape we can take to better fit it.

MAKER OR USER?

July 2nd, 2019

In today’s day of superphones, laptops and apps, we are all users, using something. And perhaps more interestingly, on top of this use, everyone has an idea for an app. Mention you know even the smallest bit about writing code, or make the full blown mistake of mentioning that you are building an app and suddenly everyone pipes up about their own great idea for a new app.

Users, it seems, always have ideas about what else they could use. But this does not make a user a maker. A simple and slightly rude question makes the difference immediately apparent:

“If you think it’s such a great idea, why don’t you build it?”

“Well, I don’t know how to code.”

Perhaps if the idea was really that good, not knowing how to code wouldn’t stand in the way of bringing it about. But this rarely happens. Even actual coders are often too lazy to follow through on their own ideas. Although, to be fair, this might be because coders are a little more familiar with how few ideas when actually built actually prove useful.

We need not confine our discussion of Users and Makers to the world of digital builds. We can think of any product really: a dress, a woman might make for herself, a back pack, a house. Almost everything that we interact with is the result of some maker hauling an idea into reality. And yet, just as everyone and their mother has their own dumb idea bout what the next big app could be, everyone is immeasurably talented when it comes to the easy art of finding something to complain about regarding what someone else made.

Too put this in perspective, imagine the primordial example of the hunter in ancient times. Imagine if this hunter complained about the construction of their spear. What would happen? Either this hunter would hear his own complaint and immediately improve the spear or build a new one, or everyone in the tribe would think him a bit of a moron for complaining about something that is 100% his own responsibility. (Though, phrased that way, many of the complaints that we hear in modern times seem to fall into this category of self-inflicted annoyance.)

The point still stands. If everyone was required by necessity to make their own clothes and cut their own hair, it’s certain that nearly everyone’s sewing and scissor skills would improve tremendously, and fast.

Not only would this have an effect on one’s skills, but it also allows items to be tailored very specifically to individual needs. On top of this, a person can build with an aim of how long a thing will last. And notice how counter these aspects are to the phenomenon of mass production. Longevity of an item sold is rarely a goal because it means less profitability when things don’t need replacing, and individual customization is a feat that puts great friction into the process of mass-production.

Unfortunately, the user is rarely cognizant of the realities of the maker, but strangely enough, the inverse can also be true. When a maker does not use their own product, they fail to see all of the annoyances they’ve built into the product that are immediately noticed by the user.

The only remedy is for each to become the other. The maker fine-tunes their product by using it, but likewise, the user can get a sense of how good an idea is by actually making it. And then using it.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

July 1st, 2019

Perfection can infect anything that we endeavor to undertake.  One slip up and the perfect streak is lost, ruined, and then it can feel incredibly compelling to just give up.  It’s ultimately easier to do so.  And giving up in such a way has a conclusive finality to it that can even be reassuring.

But an opportunity would be missed.  One that exercises the ability to say ‘screw it, I’m going to keep going anyway. On time or not.”

Practicing this is potentially vital, because when the time comes along when something truly important is suffering in a similar way, we are well practiced, and getting it done late saves us from the forever guilt of never.

No one ever says or hears that never is better than late.

Our colloquialism is the other way around.

We benefit most, not from being on time but with consistently trying.