GIFT OF YOU

December 25th, 2020

There are an endless number of ways we can help or give to others, but they all boil down to a change we wish to create in their experience.  A twenty tucked into a card likely creates a tiny burst of dopamine, similar to the rewards we might get by a well-liked post on social media.  The effect is certainly well intentioned but quite ephemeral.  The most precious gift is time, but of course such a gift is more complicated than just spending it with someone.  How exactly do we approach the issue of the quality of that time?  This pushes the arrow around and places the spotlight on who we are as individuals and what it is like to spend time with the person we happen to be at that time. Oddly, one of the best gifts we can give others - the best way we can change their experience for the better, is to first conspire to rally in a way that seems quite selfish.

This is the Oxygen Mask logic. The instructions are parroted at us without fail every time we have a seat on an airplane: in the event of an emergency, please place a mask on yourself before turning to help others.  This logic extends to one’s own children, and with a wider scope beyond emergencies and aviation, it’s wise to extend it to absolutely everyone.  

What exactly is it like to spend time with someone who has failed to concentrate on their own person, with an aim to improve and better their life?

This can be a delicate question, it can be a brutal and unforgiving one.  The divide is between people who really are trying or want to try, but somehow just don’t have the resources or the knowledge to make steps forward happen.  Then there are those who seem totally misplaced in their concentration and attention, giving little if any thought to practical improvement, the result of which can often be quite ‘needy’.

If anything characterizes this later segment of being, it’s perhaps a lack of self-awareness.  Neediness as it effects others often results from something a person is failing to give to themselves.  

Weirdly, the logic generally holds that the more we can give to ourselves, the more we capacity we end up having to give to others.  When this composition hits the sweet spot it is a non-zero sum game, and seems to produce more output than the sum of inputs it requires.  A lack of self-awareness usually inverts this equation, it’s not just difficult to be around needy people but being needy is inherently stressful: integral to such a disposition is an uncertainty about whether or not needs will be met, and uncertainty is one of our greatest sources of anxiety.

Without a strong practice and exercise of self-awareness, the original question of concentrating on one’s life with an aim of improvement is at severe risk of focusing solely on gains, often in status, money, lifestyle - all the ways that enable a person to show off.

A deep self-awareness questions the purpose of these gains.  What’s the point of showing off?  It doesn’t take much showing off or looking around at others showing off to realize that it delivers only quick blips of pleasure and that there is nothing sustainable nor truly fulfilling about it.  But this does not mean we should relegate our aims to a bare bones monastic life: even superficial material gains can be recalibrated to have an enormously generous effect on the lives of others.    Seeing this possibility requires a bit of that self-awareness because the broader attention afforded by such awareness can place the unsatisfying blip of pleasure in a context large enough to compare it to something done that is truly fulfilling and which has long lasting effects.  

Self-awareness ultimately is an act and exercise of zooming out and seeing one’s own self in a larger context.  Suddenly, a person isn’t so alone in their own perspective because now it is populated with other people who can now be part of the consideration of what effects one’s own actions might have.

Developing self-awareness, however, is a strange act of taking a step away from one’s own self in order to have more compassion for that person.  While the best effects of a healthy self-awareness ultimately focuses on what we can and might do for others, it begins with an honest look at what we might be able to first do for ourselves.

KINDS OF ATTENTION

December 24th, 2020

Levels of understanding are normally bound to attentional investment.  Experts invest more and more attention to achieve mastery of skill and deep principles of practice.  But there is quality of attention required for such progress.  A person who hates their routine job doesn’t necessarily become a master of it after decades of grudging attention paid to the task. 

A more accessible equivalent may be social media platforms: loads of people are pouring gobs of spent life and attention into these platforms without becoming an expert in the mechanics and potential leverage of these platforms.  Here we hit on a difference of attention:  it’s not good enough to simply be immersed in the task.  Another kind of attention is needed in addition to immersion.  The evolving artist does not simply paint and paint and paint, but steps back often to analyze how that process of painting is going.  This goes beyond the mere obvious need to see if it “look right”, but to also understand what is happening and why.  This is a sort of meta-attention: an instance of stepping back from the experience of attention being absorbed by the task in order to study the nature and function of that absorption.  How many of us are doing this when it comes to our aimless and continual flick of the thumb as we pour attention into the endless river of social media feeds?

This second gear of attention has different names depending on which angle we want to view it: self-conscious, mindful, disciplined.  All of these imply something about the kind of attention we are engaging to interact with the world and augment the way we react.

There is something strangely similar between the zombie-like behavior of people staring placidly at their phone and the experience of a productive flow state when someone is engaged in deep and meaningful work.  Both are a kind of intoxication of the mind tagged by similar attentional markers: we lose track of time, we notice little else, we lack a sense of self.  In this way, it’s a bit eerie to realize the enormous similarities between procrastination and deep work.  

The difference is their initiation - how they start.  Aimless procrastination is effortless to fall into, and modern distractions are characterized as whirlpools with gravity, always exerting a draw on anything that is applying no effort nor traction.  That deep, meaningful work, on the other hand requires a different kind of attention to begin.  Well, that is if we’d like such meaningful work to occur with any kind of regularity.  Certainly it’s not uncommon for a person to find their mind engaged with something worthwhile by accident.  But to make that accident happen on purpose, daily, requires a different kind of attention, that meta-attention, a perspective that zooms out to a larger picture that places the self and one’s efforts in a larger environment.

This is perhaps the best way to think about kinds of attention: as the size and direction of the attentional environment and whether that environment includes one’s self.  With both zombie-like procrastination and deep flow states, the attentional perspective is narrowly focused and without self.  Then, if this attentional perspective zooms out to include the self, we can begin to see and understand the mechanics of our role in a situation: instead of being focused on the post in the feed, we focus on ourself in the day, in the week, in the month, in the year, in a life.
From this zoomed out position we can, like directing a ship one tiny degree in order to miss an obstacle on the horizon, redirect ourself, switching the task, and then zooming back in until we find ourself immersed again, in something better.

PROJECT RHYTHM

December 23rd, 2020

It’s a bit funny to think that the “weekend” was invented.  Animals don’t have weekends, but apparently even God rested on the 7th day.  This was only after days were invented, of course, and more importantly, the project of creation was finished.  It’s a bit funny to wonder if creation ever would have been finished if that fanciful diet took his day off on a Wednesday instead.  Point being: it can be far easier to simply continue when you’re on a roll instead of taking a break.  For many the weekend is this paradisal reprieve that people can’t wait for, and then collapse into.

A worthy exercise is to wipe the schedule of civilization from your mind and ponder about whether there’s a more personal rhythm that might be more comfortable.  Aside from the circadian rhythm that we all have baked into our hardware to one degree or another, there likely isn’t any rhythm aside from project rhythm.  God’s project was creation and he didn’t take a break until it was done.  Likewise we have a cultural imagination abundant in images of the writer or artist or coder who toils away feverishly on marathon stretches of project creation. 

Unfortunately, the systems upon which civilization depends on still require a vast mechanical cooperation among many people.  In theory, anything that happens with any kind of regularity can be automated - that is a tremendous project, of which we do seem to be chipping away at, but who knows how long it’ll take and if we’ll ever get there.  Those people bound up in the schedule of civilization’s mechanics don’t get to explore the timing and rhythm of a project, something that like a book, story or movie has a beginning, a tumult of conflict, confusion, and then finally, resolution.

One of the great things about project rhythm that is absent from most 9-5 jobs is the inherent momentum that exists with a project.  A worthy project is often difficult to take a break from, and symmetrically for the worse, if a reprieve does come about, it can be hard to restart as the enormity of the task becomes apparent with a few steps back.  In this sense it’s like the dreaded Monday workday, but for a good project, the weekend can seem arbitrary, even like an unwelcome obstacle to be avoided.

The rhythm of a project is non existent compared to the regular workweek.  The rhythm of a project resolves to a single tone of being incomplete, a perpetual annoyance that converts into a satisfying sense of achievement as effort is poured into the aim.

BETTER BORED

December 22nd, 2020

Our happiness and productivity is determined by the use of one finite resource: time.  The economy continually shape shifts around the use of time.  In the age of the assembly line, the correlation between hours and output was quite high.  But as the economy becomes one termed as ‘knowledge work’, the correlation between hours and output appears to become far fuzzier.  

The deception lies in the simple notion that a computer can be used for a nearly infinite variety of attentional uses, whereas a hammer cannot.  The tools of the assembly line are straight-forward, often single-utility.  We only pick up a flathead screwdriver when there’s a flathead screw to be dealt with.  Nothing like that kind of straightforward relationship exists with the computer.

Compare the computer with it’s visual predecessor: the typewriter.  Hours spent hitting keys correlate fairly reliably to one’s productivity while sitting at a typewriter.  The same is obviously not true with a computer.  One could be tapping keys on a computer for an infinite number of reasons, and most importantly, the reasons can switch effortlessly.  Switching the reason why keys are getting hit on a type writer requires, usually, a brand new page, which is a bit of a task, especially if there’s any possibility of returning to the current task on the current page.  Say switching between writing a letter and working on a novel.  On a computer there’s about a much friction switching between such tasks as there is switching between thoughts.  As a result, our productivity is now tied to our ability to direct our own focus in a kaleidoscopic world of possibility and distraction.  This is no small feat, to say the least, and it requires a bit of training.

The recommendation is nearly platitudinal:  training in meditation, concentration exercises, discipline, etc.

But there’s perhaps another sly animal running around the mind that can help if turned to with an eye of training.  It’s that pesky monkey of the mind that’s looking for the next distraction.  Certainly it can benefit from a little restraint, but what if it were pushed in the other direction?

What if we could get bored faster?  Think about the moment when the mind decides it’s had enough of scrolling, indulging, and wandering.  What does that feel like, and why does it happen?  Is it always because of an impending guilt about something else that’s not getting done?  Or is it also a kind of exhaustion, and a boredom, a sense that, eh, there’s nothing new right now…

If our attention has a hard time becoming concentrated, this also means that we aren’t easily fascinated to any degree of meaningful depth.  We are just skimming in a perpetual state of non-commitment.  Gaining traction on a subject means we can’t be easily distracted.

Our problem isn’t distraction, it’s a lack of fascination.

If anything, we are content with superficial activities because they are ‘enough’ in the moment, despite how much we shake our heads in mild disgust after the fact.  The unfortunate truth is we  don’t get bored of stuff that is, for the large majority, quite superficial.  But imagine, what must happen if we grow bored with superficial things faster.  Where does attention have left to go if each flick of the thumb yields more hollow content?

Does that big project suddenly seem like it might have something buried within the depths of effort needed to win some further progress?  The answer is almost always yes once we get there, and delightfully, this feeling persists afterwards as a feeling of accomplishment.  It’s of course, not as easy to switch into that mode of deep work.  It’s much easier to switch to something that only requires a superficial amount of effort to comprehend and engage with.  That is, unless every other option that’s easy to switch to is something we get easily bored with.

MEDITATIVE LENGTH

December 21st, 2020

How long should you meditate for?  The longer seems better, but then concentrating on such a metric turns it into a bit of an unsavoury competition.  Is more better?  Well, it depends on the aim, the reason and the mechanics of practice.

To be frank, when all ego is stripped away, the amount of time really needed to meditate is simply a single moment.  If meditation has a goal, one of them is to merely connect with the moment.  And in order to do that, why would it take any longer than a moment to do so?

There’s an aura of misunderstanding around this point that relates to flow and the word meditative.  Some have the idea that meditation is all about getting to some deeply concentrated state.  And certainly, if this is the aim, then yes, perhaps a great deal of time is required.  But many of the benefits of meditation, and arguably the most important of them are far closer, and a flow state is potentially and probably just a different type of distraction and mental intoxication.

People have occasional spontaneous moments of mindfulness without necessarily being able to recognize and categorize them as such.  It’s much like that moment when you shake yourself out of a trance and zoom back to the present after being hypnotized by cat videos for an embarrassing length of time.  The unfortunate tendency for those who don’t meditate is that this breath reprieve to come up for air is immediately followed by another dive into some other topic of submersion. 

So why meditate for longer than a moment?  This question is trickier than it might at first seem.  One might rebound by asking: is it possible to meditate longer than a moment?  The moment is in a constant state of bloom and decay.  Can our attention also achieve a perpetual bloom and decay?  A fair ponderance and one that is worthy to try and explore in practice.  Exploring it in theory, however, is likely to be less fruitful. But to turn towards a more pragmatic answer to our initial question, the reason why it’s wise to try and meditate for a dedicated length of time is to devote specifically to the possibility of herding one’s attention back to the moment.  Doing this repetitively, and consistently simply makes it more likely that during the rest of the day when we are not explicitly practicing meditation, we will have spontaneous moments of mindfulness.  It’s a bit like physical exercise: one need not workout constantly in order to be consistently stronger tomorrow.  In a basic sense, meditation simply puts moments of mindfulness on the day’s menu of possible options.

Meditating for longer periods certainly raises the probability of invoking the machinery of mindfulness during times when we aren’t meditating, but as with just about everything in life, we’re best to ask: what’s optimal - what’s enough to get the desired effect?  It seems 10 minutes is likely the minimum length required to have an effect, but more far more important is consistency of practice across days, weeks, months and years.  Meditating for 10 minutes for the 730th day in a row is entirely different than meditating for 2 hours on day 1.