BUSYNESS

May 31st, 2018

Ironically. . .

Busyness is often a form of laziness.

Or rather, the counter-intuitive by-product of laziness.

The aimless existence of couch-potatoes and serial sitcom dopers do not have sole claim to the throne of laziness.

Being more productive does not mean adding more things to our to-do lists. Often it means saying no, cutting out the unnecessary and doubly focusing on what is actually important.

Busyness becomes a by-product of laziness when we fail or refuse to first pause and ask ourselves what is actually important. What really needs doing? That is the difficult work. That requires flexing the brain.

Merely being busy does not automatically result in…. results.

Certainly there is a higher probability that results will occur if we are actually doing things. But simply being busy is no guarantee that the results will be aligned with what we truly desire. 

Ironically, the probability of desired results occurring goes up if we do the opposite of busyness first: devoting some quiet methodical time to what ‘busy’ tasks are worth doing. 

In productivity-speech, this can be relegated as Prioritization.

But usually this just means a reorganization of a giant list of tasks.

Funny enough, the word ‘priorities’ used to be only singular. There was only one priority. Meaning the one thing that comes before all else,  the prior. 

It is funny that ‘what comes before’ is now a giant laundry-list of busyness.

If we are prioritizing a giant list of things, have we flipped the meaning? Have we taken the huge lists of tasks and put it in front of the one thing that should be prioritized? The priority?

What are we procrastinating to do? What are we putting off and filling in the time with huge lists of busy-shit tasks in order to stave off doing the one most important thing?

Something that is more difficult than ‘being busy’?

Something that might be uncomfortable?

The hard work:

Pausing. Considering deeply what is important.

If we cannot say ‘no’ to things that will busy us, then we have not properly identified The Important.

TRAVEL

May 30th, 2018

This episode references Episode 8  Tiny Steps and Leaps and Episode 42 Level-Up, if you want to understand these references, best to check them out first.

What a grandly touted activity. A symbol of status, and some might even kid themselves: a symbol of courage.

From Socrates to Seneca to present day, it’s been asked: why go travelling? You’re going to carry along the problems you wish to escape.

Our discontentment with our situation, life, even our self has very little to do with our surroundings or environment – though such can have a meaningful impact on us – it’s more important to see that everything has to do with our perspective.

The distance we wish to travel from who we currently are, should not be mistaken for a plane ride.

And since that long ago time of wisdom and lore, travel has only become easier. Exceedingly easy. And there's a problem with that...

The large leaps we need to make are often hyperbolized as giant far-flung adventures. 

As though the way to change is to quit our job, pack our bag and fling our life all over the world. Many people do this thinking that it will *automatically* result in that substantial change they crave but fear to face honestly. It might help, but expecting one's self and life to automatically Level-up is a fantasy.

Travelling is incredibly easy these days, and carrying one’s comfortable little bubble along for the ride isn’t just exceedingly easy, it’s an industry. ‘Resorts’ are little more than satellite versions of the comforts of home with a more compelling change of “desktop background picture”. Even the slightly more adventurous pretty much always have a facebook/Instagram/email/reddit teat to suck on, no matter where in the world you are.

The large leaps we need that are hyperbolized literally in movies with far flung adventures are recreated in only the most superficial Disney-land-ride ways when we go travelling.

Want to travel? Want some transformative experience? Throw a dart at a map of the world and then go to that place without using a motor of any kind, no plane, no car, no train, no motorcycle. That’ll be an adventure. That will pop a comfort bubble.

What is required for change is discomfort. First, foremost, and last.

The greater discomfort we willingly embrace, the greater probability that we will progress into the changes we wish to become.

AUTOPILOT

May 29th, 2018

Learning and attempting a new activity usually results in a heightened awareness.

Learning to drive a car, for example. The student, aware of the high stakes of a mistake is wide-eyed and looking everywhere.

Over time, with experience and familiarity, this behavior changes. Until the lazy complacent driver is comfortable eating a bagel while yelling at someone on one phone, texting on another, down shifting through a left turn and cursing the fates that they did not have enough time to lean out the window and berate another driver for failing to follow their version of the rules.

We don’t even have to go this far. It’s only to point out that awareness decreases.

Why?

The student driver is unsure of what aspects of the environment are important, so the student driver is attempting to pay attention to everything. Learning a skill like driving has a lot to do with figuring out what in the immediate environment is important, potentially important, and what things are not important at all.

The process of learning how to drive invariably results in: figuring out what to ignore.

Our vigilance as drivers plummets over time as we are lulled into a survivor’s bias form of complacency.

And yet still: car accidents are a substantial killer of our species.

How many accidents might have been avoided if everyone involved had maintained the hyper awareness that the student driver has?

Of course this just isn’t possible. Doing something regularly breeds complacency, whether it be a job, driving. In some sense our minds seem programed to get bored as fast as possible. 

Emotion is a form of autopilot. And just like the complacent, distracted, over-confident driving human: it is not very smart and quite liable to steer straight into catastrophe.

As children we learn emotional constructs from those around us. We are not born with these emotions (though a baby can seem pretty pissed off, scared and angry at 4 in the morning for a new parent.) There is only discomfort and a sense of ease. These get extrapolated into a whole variety of ‘emotions’ so that we can communicate to others more efficiently what is happening. Anger and sadness are both a form of discomfort but being able to tell the difference between the two communicates exceedingly quick some basic information about the situation.

Back in the caveman days, an angry tribe member would put us on alert with exceptional swiftness. This probably primes us faster for defense from an external enemy (or an internal one..). Whereas a sad tribe member still communicates that something is wrong but does not prime others for a large potential physical struggle (err. fighting.)

(this is an undoubtedly primitive hypothetical example of emotion as communication. For more on this topic, please delve into Lisa Feldman Barrett’s often mentioned work.)

While emotion is useful, problems quickly mount when emotion becomes the default: the autopilot.

New information in the environment arises:

A colleague has made a joint project delayed. Think about what can be done? Nope, just show frustration.

A spouse has made a purchase we disapprove of. Think and discuss? Nope, just show anger.

A foreigner with limited English cannot understand our complicated coffee order. Demonstrate patience and help this person learn and further integrate? Nope just say the order louder, with plenty of aggravation.

The reason why emotion as autopilot causes such problems is because emotions are too simple.

A child can list for you the major emotions.

Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions gives us 32 emotions with some quaint colors between to indicate a spectrum.

But communication in ANY language yields nearly an infinite spectrum of communication with any degree of depth, detail and thoroughness…

if...

we are willing to take the time.

Emotions blanket the spectrum. Using emotions gets a point across quicker, but at the sacrifice of detail.

And the devil is in the details. Or lack thereof.

Like the ‘experienced’ complacent driver who learns what is ‘ok’ to ignore and develops a kind of autopilot, the emotional human is likewise using a simplified mode of reaction.

Running on emotion is autopilot.

But then the complacent driver after thousands of comforting miles steers into a nuanced situation that cannot be read properly without strong awareness. And the driver might pay the price of that mistake with their life.

The emotional human drives into an argument with emotion and might pay the price of a treasured relationship. Or worse: pay the price of time wasted. Time spent in a slowly degrading relationship that does not die and does not flourish. But just wastes time. Wastes potential. And perpetuates the status quo: a trend of negativity, an open sore never healing, the scab always rubbed off by the next blunt emotional communication. Lacking the detail, the communicative sensitivity that clearly calls each person into focus.

This is the mistake of the autopilot.

Being present actually creates a distance between ourselves and the emotion we might feel.

Being present calls into tight focus what is truly important and the present emotion is rarely what comes into focus.

Isn’t it funny how everyone wants the controller when a single-player videogame is being played with a group of friends? Everyone wants to DRIVE. A chance to pay attention, make a turn, get better. But take the videogame away, give us the vast world that we live in and we are so quick to switch and go through our days on autopilot.

Life is short.

Why spend a single moment of it on autopilot?

SUNK-COST

May 28th, 2018

Sunk-costs can have terrible ramifications. 

The sunk-cost of time, effort, and money, can keep people in terrible marriages, holding on to failing businesses, even researching pointless scientific inquiries.

Generally the sunk-cost is spoken of in negative terms. 

But it is a simple aspect of human psychology that is neither good nor bad. 

(That we unconsciously default to focusing on the negative is simply an unfortunate aspect of human psychology. But it can be trained to be otherwise.)

Sunk-costs can be used for good.

Buying a year’s membership to a gym is generally going to cost a fair amount of money. That sunk-cost can be a motivating factor when it comes to the difficult beginning portion of starting a new habit or set of habits geared towards fitness and health.

So many want the perfect free meditation app. But paying for a meditation app gives it a much highlighted presence in one’s mind when compared to the free apps that we can weigh our phones down with. The sunk-cost makes us more likely to actually use it. To Commit.

Money is a form of belief. It is an abstract agreement that we have with one another.

(always interesting to think about someone with good credit. What does the word ‘credit’ even mean? It comes from the French and Latin, meaning ‘belief’. Having good credit simply means that people can believe you will come through on your financial promises. That is what a credit card is: a promise card. A promise that you will pay. Eventually. And if you don't come through on that promise, that promise card starts declining. It's a signal that you are not to be believed in, not to be trusted. THAT is why it is so embarrassing when a card declines, and why people are soooo quick to furnish a reason why it is not working. We understand this unconsciously, but consciously using money with a thoughtful understanding of it's abstract nature can yield us benefits beyond the material.)

Money can be an agreement we have with ourselves.

Pay for the membership. Pay for the app.

Committing the money commits one more part of your brain. 

The more parts of the brain that are devoted to the change, the more likely it will stick.

If you can’t commit the money, then do you really believe in yourself?

LEVEL-UP

May 27th, 2018

In school, barely passing means you level-up.

In life, you have to go above-and-beyond in order to ‘level-up’.

That’s a huge disconnect.

Conditioning young humans for years and years that just passing will get you to the next level is seriously undermining their understanding of how life will work in their future.

12 years of this bullshit is a very hard mental construct to escape.  That’s a bad habit cross-bred with a very reliable and reoccurring process that easily creates expectation.  No wonder reality is so daunting for so many after the cute orderly structure of school ends.

Video games are much better.  You don’t get to level-up until you destroy a fucking boss. 

Who’s the boss now?

Oh hey, that sounds like real-world talk..

School doesn’t have bosses to battle against over and over until you’ve gotten good enough to…

After school, the bosses are not obvious. They certainly are not properly defined with due dates and grades. Becoming physically fit, controlling emotions, setting goals. Life’s ‘bosses’ are of all shades and kinds, many of them have been paired to us for a long time. Quiet bosses that secretly guard us from better, more fulfilling lives.

Sometimes, you have to invent a boss to beat in order to…

Level-up.