SLY UTILITY

August 27th, 2020

The utility of a question seems pretty straight-forward.  You don’t know something, so you ask in order to get an answer.  This transaction is almost boring at first glance.  Perhaps it’s spiced up by a sense of embarrassment when we feel shamed into thinking that we should already know the answer.  Now the transaction seems weighed down with a kind of burdensome debt.  The question becomes a stress, a thing to avoid a bane of our experience.  All this just relegated to the questions that other people have answers to, and to say nothing of the infinite open-ended questions that no one has an answer for.

But folded within the dismal appearance of such a paralyzing moment lies an opportunity to flip it all inside out with a bit of artistry.  

Language is an absurdly flexible medium.  It is an everything machine.  For example, it just crafted an experience of a question-and-answer situation in a terrible light.  It’s an experience we’ve all had: it can actually be quite painful to feel the need to ask a question that is embarrassing to ask.  But now, allow language to take the exact same circumstance and turn it inside out.  Watch and listen as language transforms itself, and by doing so transforms your sense of this transactional question-and-answer..

A real expert or master in any field has arrived at that state by continually moving forward into a cloud of unknown to explore, learn and understand.  For many such individuals, it’s not an overwhelming and debilitating sense of confusion that drives their pursuit, but rather a healthy curiosity, and we need only wonder: what is the relationship between curiosity and questions?  Is it a relationship as fraught and difficult as the one between confusion and questions?  This question can be further expanded and drilled into:  How does a curious expert receive and view a question?  Does such a person roll their eyes in annoyed frustration at the burden? Probably not a sign of a curious expert if that’s their reaction…

A well formed question can accomplish a surprising alchemy of outcomes: 

it can flatter the person being asked by presenting them in the role of teacher and expert, 

it can conceal the embarrassment of the person who doesn’t know, 

it garners the answer to increase understanding, and

it can strengthen the bond between the person with the question and the person with the answer.

The question, if artfully crafted can create a synergy between two people who we might originally see as existing within a hierarchy fraught with some power dynamics.  With an artful use of language, we can simultaneously manage emotions surrounding confusion and create an interaction where all gain.

CURIOSITY & HOPE

August 26th, 2020

Hope is generally regarded as a good thing.  But is it?  Hope is what draws us forward.  The hope for accomplishment, the hope for love, the hope for peace, the hope for a better future.  

But do these things not denigrate our assessment of the present by default?

Doesn’t a claim that tomorrow could and should be better imply that the present moment is somehow… bad?

Hope, as a concept is detrimental in the same way the notion of having a passion is detrimental.  These concepts isolate us from the moment and lend us to fall victim to wishful thinking.  By hoping for a better future, we can miss what we’ve actually got, in terms of the present moment that is ripe for peace and contentment, and in terms of seeing clearly the raw materials we have to work with.  

Hope is a dream world that offers the possibility of forming impossible ideals that we cannot live up to and which may simply not be possible in the real world.  How could the danger of such a thing be so subtle and understated.  How is it not obvious that hope can be a sly enemy?

The answer lies in the capacity of a dream world to make us feel a certain way.  It’s nice to imagine it, because in imagination, a thing can be flawless.  In imagination, things can be devoid of reality, and that escapism can be intoxicating for someone who has not yet seen a beneficial way of using the raw materials that their life currently offers in new ways.

For an individual who seeks to accomplish something that really is new, hope is a dangerous concept that should be regarded as null.   Think about it this way, what would your life look like, and how would you approach your current work and projects if hope wasn’t a concept in your brain.  This isn’t to say that your life is hopeless - not at all.  But that hope and failing to have hope are both absent from your life.  How would that change things?

Or approach it from the reverse.  What happens when outcome turns out to be different than what we hope?  Disappointment ensues.  Hope is the sly mother of expectation, and expectation is the sole alchemist of disappointment.  In the absence of expectation, it’s just not possible to be disappointed with how things turn out.  The outcome is merely more information about this world and reality that you are exploring.  Hope is actually, completely unnecessary for moving forward toward a better life.  There is instead an unexpected nemesis of hope which lives quietly within all of us, one that has on hand infinite reserves of liquid oxygen to pour into the fuel tank of our life, one that is easily ignored, one with a quiet voice, one that is powerful but lacks the need to be judgemental, one that is drawn forward - not by hope - but by a genuine interest in the unknown:

That ally is curiosity.

Consider for a moment how an immersion in a thread of curiosity resolves the conundrum of enjoying the present and shooting for a better life:  when curiosity is at the helm of our attention, we experience a strange amalgam of interest, desire and peace.  Paradoxically, the curious mind is totally satisfied with the process of the moment but still moves forward, making progress, adding to the moment while eschewing all need to compare it to anything better.  

Forget things like hope, and passion, expectation, and desire.  All of these feelings and concepts fail us, tugging us down nefarious rabbit holes of emotion.

All of these inadequate concepts and emotions, their functions, their inequities, all of them are subsumed by the synergy of the curious mind.  The curious mind is thrilled not just by the expected outcome, but also the unexpected outcome.  The curious mind wonders what might exist in the realm of tomorrow while evoking a serene experience of the moment. 

It may be strange to try and imagine a world without a need for hope, but you need only ask: are you curious to see what it’s like to move forward without a need to hope?

ENGINE OF THE CREATIVE LIFE

August 25th, 2020

What is at the heart of the creative life?  What keeps creative people moving forward as though they are drawn by some sort of invisible force?  How is it that consumption can be so unsatisfying, so unfulfilling when placed next to a life of creating?  Creating is work, consumption is pleasure.  Is there not a paradoxical contradiction here?

Starting out in the creative life is fraught with hard goings.  Ira Glass put it quite well in an infamous quote where he describes the ‘killer instinct’ that creatives have.  They get into the business because they have good taste, and then they try to create something and realize there’s this huge gap between their good taste and their skill.  And this, as Ira states, this where most people give up.

The straightforward analysis of this discrepancy is that the feedback loop between skill and taste is too large and unwieldy.  A good taste in writing, or painting, or whatever the creative endeavour be is just too far ahead of the skills we possess at the beginning.  The instinct for what is good doesn’t really inform the burgeoning creative about how to improve their work, it just crushes it, seeing everything wrong with the work.  

As with all instances of learning, the real trick here, is an emotional one.  If the young creative can respect their instinct for what is good without being offended by it, by managing those emotions effectively, and just keep at it with the work, the quality of the work does eventually close the gap between what we think is good and what we produce.  

But the key to why the creative life is so fulfilling is that the gap between our good taste and our ability to satisfy that good taste is never fully closed.  Now with the feedback loop much tighter, the creative work produced starts informing that killer instinct.  Our sense of what is good is not a static rubric.  It too is a changing, shifting, pivoting entity that is improving, and our own creative output eventually becomes a fuel for its process. 

The skill required to satisfy that instinct with your own creative work is always lagging behind.  The creative skill sharpens, and further informs the instinct for ‘what’s good’ and in turn that instinct sees the creative work in a sharper light, a more honest and brutal frame.  It’s this asymmetry that is at the heart of why the creative life can be so fulfilling.  It’s like you’re always chasing the perfection of your own shadow as the sun sets behind you, running into darkness, trying to find this particular thing, this method and process, the experience of execution that lurks in the unknown - that fearful realm that holds everything you don’t yet know.  And we race into the unknown, trying always to grasp at that mythic ideal envisioned by instinct, before the light finally goes out.

SIMPLE OPERABLE ITERATION

August 24th, 2020

Startups and entrepreneurs of all kinds seek to get off the ground with a minimum viable product.  This is generally the first version of a business product that can actually be released to the public, ideally for money.  Many great things have come to market because of the thinking that tends to compliment and enable a minimum viable product.  But all too soon, that thinking goes awry, as the product becomes bloated with features and clunky iterations, as companies grow themselves upon the success of that first minimum viable product.  How is it that the pressure of necessity and the simplicity that boot-strapping forces is lost once we move beyond that first iteration, and more importantly, how can we maintain the efficiency of the boot-strapper and the survivor?

Similarly, many companies fail to get off the ground in the first place due to the same problem: by concocting elaborate demos that don’t actually do anything.  The thinking here is somewhat inside out: instead of making something that is powerful because it simply works in its most simple form, individuals plump up the pomp of their product with flashy theatrics that hint at what might be possible.  The insecurity here is searing: why go through all the showy flash and bang if at core there really is something useful?  Is it a genuine fear that normal people won’t clue into the potential use of something that actually is useful?

These questions answer themselves.  A flashy demo is likely to be hiding something.  But a working demo?

A working demo can become that minimum viable product.  This is certainly a better allocation of resources.  Instead of spending time, energy and money making a flashy demo to simply evoke a fantasy in the minds of others, wouldn’t it be more efficient to actually build the darn thing and see if it works?  The success of a demo in the eyes of others inevitably calls for a working version, which simply becomes another step.  Why not cut to the chase and build some thing that works?

For those in the business of building, these distinctions might be trivial and uninteresting.  What is perhaps lost on a great number of builders is the continued utility of simplicity and how to stick to it.  Many builders don’t realize just how simple a thing can be in order to get the feedback we need to move forward.  Not only this, we often build in a bloated way that inhibits clear feedback.  We can mistake the target of the signal.  Only be making simple, clear moves can we  be sure that the signal within feedback actually accords with the change we’ve made.  This hints not just at a minimum viable product, which harks of only one iteration of a given idea, but all iterations, and a philosophy of building that cuts the fat and makes our path of pivots towards something truly excellent faster, and more efficient.

The concept of a simple operable iteration applies to the 10th version, and the 1000th, along with all iterations in-between and beyond.  

Entertain, for a moment, a detour into an analogy comparing a student and a master: at first the student flounders, having no competence of the skill, then, once the student gains proficiency, the expression of this skill explodes.  Using the skill becomes an expression more of personal agency than it is an expression of the skill well-used.  Think of a junior woodworker, or even a kid with legos who figures out how to put things together and soon enough is pouring loads of effort into huge, sprawling, elaborate projects.  Then eventually the student, with time and practice slowly becomes a master of the skill.  And what is more evocative of mastery than simplicity?  The master of any given skill has distilled very simple fundamentals from enormous amounts of experience.  All the fat and bloat has been cut, and what is most often left over is elegance.

The image here evoked of the student and the master, and the bloated progress that links the two isn’t one so much to be applied to the builder, but to the thing being built.  All minimum viable products start in the same way that the student gains a simple proficiency.  But then the product (and the company) often bloats and bloats and bloats until it breaks.  How stereotypical is it for a young company with a fresh influx of money to spend huge sums on fancy office space and cute extras -or rather- extravagances?  How can this sort of bloat fail to indicate that something fundamental has shifted within the perspective of the company?  Would it be wise to worry about whether or not this shift might effect the way people build?

But we have to attract the best talent? Might be the rallying cry.  Perhaps, but does this not say more about the product and how interesting it is… or isn’t?  Is not such extravaganza not like the theatrical demo that doesn’t actually work?

Passionate people who are genuinely interested in their work don’t need views of the river or foozeball tables to keep them happy.  The work does that.

The simple operable iteration is a perspective about building at every step of the process.  It asks:  what does the this version look like with everything stripped from it before it ceases to fundamentally work?

The boostrapper asks this question out of necessity.

The master craftsman asks this question out of a hunt for beauty.

Strangely, the beginner and the expert are inextricably linked.  Both reach for success from a point of leanness as both are devoid of an interest or access to opulent resource.  It’s this pared down focus which creates the simple operable iteration.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: ZEN SIMPLICITY

August 23rd, 2020