RITUAL INCENTIVE

February 10th, 2021

A habit stack is a group of ritual behaviors that support one another by being tied together.  We all have habit stacks. Nearly everyone has a ‘morning ritual’ which is a habit stack, and it usually comprises of brushing teeth, shower, all manner of bathroom activity, getting dressed, and of course the coffee.  It’s a curiosity of the improving mind to wonder if more habit stacks can’t be engineered to be as productive and compressed as that morning routine.

The workout is often another routine, a habit stack that becomes an automation after enough time.

But perhaps most important for creating new stacks of productivity is that we often unconsciously pair these routines with a ritual incentive.  In the morning it’s that hot coffee for many people.  After the workout, it’s a good meal.

The ritual incentive is a great tool to incorporate when trying to pick up a new habit, especially one that inspires a grudging groan when the time comes.  An important caveat is to make sure the incentive doesn’t undo the good work of the habit.  Eating a tub of ice cream after a good workout is counter-productive in all sorts of very human ways.  That being said, if there’s an incentive that’s inline with the underlying goals of the habit it’s accompanied with, than all the better.

We tend to think that we should be able to get ourselves going with all stick, but some carrot after the ordeal can go a long way.  And it’s amazing how effective a small the incentive can be, be it a cup of coffee as reward for meditating in the morning, or that hot shower, or even something as simple as listening to a favourite song.  The reward itself becomes charged more than usual with the sense of accomplishment that lingers after a habit completed.  The two become mutually reinforcing.

ERROR OF MYOPIA

February 9th, 2021

The tendency to delay the start of some new endeavour is often attributed to the need to plan more.  Often the issue can be the start itself.  How can something be started if the start itself is shrouded in a fog of unknown. It seems sensible that one should at least see the next step before trying to take it, and it seems further sensible that if just one step can be planned and executed, the plan for a next step can wait for the new perspective afforded by the first.  Entirely sensible, but unfortunately, it’s not always practical.

Sometimes, the most practical step boils down to that nerve-wracking buddhist aphorism: jump and the net will appear.  Sometimes the very next step is invisible, and we must blunder forward on just the scent of a dream that may await somewhere in the fog.

It’s likely that even the first step is a misstep, but if we as humans are good at anything, it’s the quick recovery.  Failure in this sense gives us something immediate and concrete to work with, like a baseball flying toward our face: it’s the sort of problem we actually are good at.

So in this sense, making a mistake can actually be a great way of getting started.  A mistake gives back information, and whispers an instant lay of the land.  Or at the very least, we quickly understand what not to do, which can just as likely provoke a better idea about how to get started.

Of course, it’s vital that such a first misstep not be an irrevocable mistake of huge consequence.   It’s better to fall while walking instead of wiping out while sprinting.

The error of myopia in this case is to believe that we will somehow figure out how to see farther into the unknown, instead of working forward with that myopia regardless.  Sometimes, the only way to see farther ahead is to more forward and get farther ahead.

THE WORST STORY

February 8th, 2021

It’s always a bit of a buzzkill when someone is asked about their vacation and the next ten minutes are filled with the excruciating minutea of some travel detail that didn’t go according to plan.  This happens with astonishing regularity, and as disappointing as it is, it’s entirely understandable, because, the worst story you can tell is a happy one.

It takes only the most cursory tour of film, literature  and all manner of storytelling to realize that a good story depends on a juicy conflict.  Otherwise, the underdog has nothing to rise up against, the hero has no adventure, and nothing is at stake because nothing threatens.  

This is, unfortunately, a somewhat modern mutation of story.  Before the rise of marketing and advertising, the blissful and happy experiences of life were replete within poetry and they certainly made their appearances in story.  But the business of sales and the propagandistic adverts to drive such sales appropriated happiness en masse.  That appropriation has occurred again, with FOMO as epitomized with Instagram.  Happiness, still infused with the poison of advertising now goads us to chase it as it seems to appear in the lives of others, who we follow.

There is little to no cultural instruction about how to simply rest, exist and be a peace with that circumstance.  Certainly there powerful tools that are assembling.  The spread of meditation practice within the west is certainly encouraging, and Tinkered Thinking will soon release a meditation app.  But for the most part, Western culture seems to have been geared towards too much of an atomized utility to see the diffuse benefits of something like meditation.

In light of our bad cultural habits, this does not mean they can’t change.  Though we seem hardwired to think that a story must have some miserable kernel of conflict at it’s core, we can rather wonder if it’s possible to instead speak a bit lyrically about something that was particularly wonderful.  Can you describe that exquisite shade of blue without sounding trite?  Can you convey the awe you felt?  The taste and the feel of air?

There are so many details on offer to talk about that we pass up by default in order to pollute someone else’s curiosity with a description of the tired, overworked, and incidentally rude ticket agent who couldn’t accommodate the redirect when plans didn’t work out.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: EDGE OF CONTEXT

February 7th, 2021

Lucilius was quiet, concentrating on the problem at hand.  His eyes narrows on a detail on the screen as he read it again.  There was something wrong with the context of his understanding, he knew.  He leaned back to entertain the notion for a moment.

“When you understand a problem completely…” Lucilius said out loud to himself. “…it ceases to be a problem…. Because a problem really represents a lack of understanding because the context is wrong.  There’s a bit of nuance missing that solves the problem and nuance is always a function of context.”

He smiled at the smart sound of his own words and then noticed the problem still on the screen.  He frowned a bit, realizing his meta-musing did nothing to actually help solve his problem.  He sighed and leaned back in to concentrate again when the door to the apartment burst open and his roommate stomped in.  

The drama of the entrance was too much to ignore.  Lucilius swivelled around in his chair.

“Something wrong dear?” He teased.

“I just don’t understand how stupid some people can be!” Shouted the roommate.

Lucilius smiled.  It was one of his favourite topics, primarily because he always seems to find himself on both ends of the confusion.

“Noticing people’s poor diet choices in the wild again?”  Lucilius offered.

“What? No.”

“Counting the number of people commuting to jobs that can be done through a wire?”

“What?” His roommate was growing more frustrated. “No!  I was at lunch with people I work with and I found out that nearly all of them voted for that moron!  I mean, how can these people be so stupid?  How can they do things that are clearly not in their own best interest?”

“If you can’t understand why someone would do something, does that necessarily mean they are stupid?”

“I don’t see any other way to explain it!”

“That’s my point.”

“What?”

“You said yourself you don’t understand.  Isn’t that sort of what stupid means?  When someone doesn’t or can’t understand something?”

“Are you calling me stupid?”  Lucilius roommate asked, even more incredulously.

“No,” Lucilius said with a suspicious smile.  Then he slowly offered out his hand as though he were presenting something.  “But you might be.”

The roommate was not amused.  Lucilius shook his head and waved a limp hand as if to ask forgiveness.

“All kidding aside,” Lucilius continued. “You admitted as much yourself: thinking a whole bunch of people are stupid is an admission of ignorance, because we can’t understand what causes their stupid behavior, right?”

“I mean, they have to be delusional,”  Lucilius’ roommate added.

“Sure, maybe,” Lucilius agreed. “Certainly a whole bunch of people can be delusional about something, it happens all the time, but even delusion has root causes and a specific context that makes the delusion really compelling.”

The roommate seemed to be listening, more interested now rather than just emotional.

“Like this problem I’m working on,” Lucilius said, lazily nodding his head back at the computer.  “The only reason it’s a problem is because I actually don’t understand the problem completely.  There’s some little bit of detail and nuance that’s escaping me which keeps me from understanding, and so right now, I’m just confused.”

“Huh, yea, I’m definitely confused by their decision.”  The roommate piped in with high eyebrows, but after a moment he rolled his eyes.  “You’re saying I’m missing some detail that explains their behavior?”

Lucilius nodded his head down gently.

“If you can’t believe what you’re seeing or hearing, what does that mean about what you actually do believe?”

Lucilius’ roommate looked off, thinking about the idea.  “Well, obviously you’re implying there’s something wrong with what I believe.”

“You said yourself that you don’t understand, and isn’t that the same thing?  So where is the problem really?  With ourselves or with them?”

“Isn’t that two different problems?” The roommate countered.

“Sure it is, but aren’t they clearly related in a way where the solution to one also solves the other?”

The roommate seemed stuck.  Unsold maybe.  Lucilius waved a hand, as though to try and wipe the slate clean and start again.

“This was about a vote right?”  Lucilius asked.

“THE vote,” corrected the roommate.

“Ok, the vote.  Let me ask you: what’s the point of Government or even civilization?”

“Progress? and order?  I guess?”

“A little bit. But containing both those, it’s really about how we try to take care of each other.  How we can get along with strangers because we simply just don’t have the time nor the memory to get to know everyone individually.  Government and even more, civilization is an attempt to solve for the problem of: how do you cooperate with strangers? And so when you asked how they could do something that was clearly not in their own best interests, who’s interest were you really thinking about?”

“But I can clearly see how they are undermining themselves!”

“From your perspective which admits not being able to see their perspective.  How can you claim to know what’s best for someone who you don’t understand?  Saying someone is stupid is not understanding…  Isn’t that really an admission of your own approach to the situation?  How can you be sure your ideas and solutions will work if you’re admitting from the outset that there’s something you really don’t understand?  Doesn’t that sound rather brash?”

“So, your saying they see some sort of benefit that I don’t?”

Lucilius nodded.  “That might be the key, that missing bit of context that makes the picture snap into focus.  People act based on their emotions, but just like delusions, emotions also have causes, which seem sensible and compelling within their context,”  

Lucilius shook his head some, now talking more to himself,  “When it comes to these sorts of issues we are so sloppy with the context, and it’s strange.  We become so binary and then pretend that one half of that context just doesn’t really exist or doesn’t matter.”

The roommate sank down on to the couch, and smiled a bit sheepishly.

“I must have seemed pretty ridiculous stomping in here all pissed off about my dumb coworkers.”

Lucilius lifted half a smile, feeling a bit defeated. “No, but, that’s probably because I know where you’re coming from.”

LAYERS OF THE SKILL

February 6th, 2021

The effort to learn some new skill often stutters at the start when we try to bite off more than we can chew. Learning any new skill is a problem to be solved, a dynamic one where the solution morphs depending on our approach. Sometimes the main problem is the approach, and a solution is simply trying a different solution. Here already the task of learning a skill is being broken down just as we do with problems, and perhaps not enough thought is given to the different ways a skill can be pieced apart and tackled in smaller bits.

Take learning a language for example. The approach is often full on: alphabet, pronunciation, vocabulary, reading, grammar, writing. We get the whole enchilada. But despite how interrelated these categories are, how fast do we progress in any one of them? Generally we progress on all of them, but slowly. What if, instead, we focused on just one at a time? What if pronunciation was simply the first step? Just figure out how to read the language immaculately? And then once that skill is fairly robust, start learning what those perfectly pronounced words mean. At the very least, even with just that first layer of skill, a person will walk away with an ability to impress their date while reading their order off the menu at that French restaurant.

Another easy example is meditation. It’s not a single skill, nor a single habit. The mental training of meditation really takes some time to come on line. In the beginning, people are mostly just figuring out how to make a habit of sitting in one spot with decent posture for a few minutes a day. But again, the way it’s generally taught, the whole enchilada is thrown at the student.

Or take coding for example. How much harder would it be to learn how to code if you didn’t know how to type? Here the situation is a bit backwards. Most everyone already knows how to type so we don’t see it as part of the skill of coding. But of course it is. It’s just a layer of the skill we already come equipped with, and because of this skill, it’s a lot easier to get started.

Every skill can be broken down into these component parts, and the ability to parse the problem of learning thoughtfully can make the learning process faster and far less painful, by virtue of the fact that we can simply pick the chunk of skill that grabs our interest most.