Normally I hate meta posts, but I had a really good one I wanted to talk about. Last night I was trying to write on the idea of of intelligence. You know, what is intelligence actually, why our standard methods of measuring it are really lame, etc. I was stumped on actually defining intelligence, though. Now, I normally map out thoughts on my mirrors, using a whiteboard marker to scrawl ideas. Very quickly most of it was covered in bad analogies and failed ideas. In a fit of inspiration, I erased everything and wrote the following:
"Intelligence is the ability to see your specific knowledge as part of a whole. The most intelligent man in the world can watch a Shakespeare play and through that gain a deeper understanding of mathematics."
Looked about right to me. I admired the definition for a bit, and then in another fit of inspiration wrote the following under it:
"My perception of intelligence is contingent on my fallacies of thought, which are contingent on my desire for the world to have a certain form. I desire the world's form to be that the qualities I idolize are the ones that define intelligence. Therefore, my meditation was to validate my beliefs and not to develop them."
Which is a little troubling to say the least. Understatement of the month right there. I try to figure out what I should want, and I decide what I should want is what I already want. While I wrote it specifically about how to think about intelligence, it's actually a pretty general claim. Does being obsessed with self-improvement make it any more likely to happen, or is it just to convince myself that I don't have to change how I handle things? Let's take for example my post on sleep schedules. We have a specific thing I am trying to improve: better sleep. But does that make me a better person? Or do I just pretend it does it order to justify the energy sunk into it?
This may seem like a minor problem: does it matter why I do things if I do them anyway? Yes, for two reasons. First of all, I stopped the sleep schedule thing. I kept it in place for like a week before forgetting all about it. Maybe part of that was improper motives, the same way you're not going to study much if your only reason is "Mom said I should." So the second part of that question, "if I do them anyway", is a straw man. It does matter because I don't do them.
The second problem feels less important, but probably is significantly moreso. I have finite resources. I have to prioritize certain things over others. If I'm trying to justify changes over find them, then I'm prioritizing the "wrong" things. Like if I spent all my energy getting really good at badminton while ignoring my social ineptitude. That kind of thing. I once asked people for what I could do better and got some responses. Most of them I discounted as unimportant, unnecessary, or already had by me. Looking back, that was damn stupid of me. Really damn stupid.
This is what I'm calling The Fallacy of the Self. Existing in your own developmental world, what you should be doing and what you plan to do forever disconnected. It's an especially potent trap because introspection just gets you deeper- you're already in a state where you see your current path as the best path. Any option you take to escape the trap is coloured by the fact it was created while you were in the trap, which makes getting out a fairly difficult endeavor.
So how do we get out? The problem I run into is that, if this is true, anything I think of is going to be suspect. I want to say outside experience (as always) is the key, since it's the only way to leave your world. But is that really true, or do I just really want it to be true? I have no way of knowing that anything I say is going to be so horribly biased that it's useless or harmful.
Nonetheless, "I can't be sure I'm right, so I won't say anything" is a colossally stupid thing to say. So I'm sticking with my current solution: make sure you keep experiencing things and hope for the best. If any of you disagree, feel free to tear into me. Hell, even if you agree but want to disagree for the sake of it, do that too. If there's something out there that could change my mind, I want to know about it.
Showing posts with label Improvement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Improvement. Show all posts
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Saturday, April 28, 2012
The Problem with Weekly Tasks
There are a couple of things I want to do at least once a week. There are a couple of things other people want to do once a week. We all never do them. Goals I plan once a day are fine. But if it's less than that, even if it's a less demanding responsibility, it never happens. I think the problem lies in the amount of leeway I'm giving myself. If I can do something any day, and I don't feel like doing it today, I'll say "eh, tomorrow". And then tomorrow I'll say "eh, tomorrow" again. Repeat as necessary. When the week is past I've sort of forgotten when the deadline was, and even if I remember think it can be fuzzy (since I'm already up against the well). Then it becomes "eh, I'll do it next week for sure" and the process repeats.
This isn't a problem if I do something every day, because then I, well, have to do it every day. This makes the solution set simple:
A) Make things happen daily. I have to update the blog every day, for example.
B) Make things happen on specific days. I have to update the blog every Wednesday. I can update before then, but I still have to update on Wednesday.
C) Build a dynamic. Yes, I know this is the obvious solution. Still.
I'm gonna try A for a bit, although I'm adding the caveat I can also update The Other Blog.
This isn't a problem if I do something every day, because then I, well, have to do it every day. This makes the solution set simple:
A) Make things happen daily. I have to update the blog every day, for example.
B) Make things happen on specific days. I have to update the blog every Wednesday. I can update before then, but I still have to update on Wednesday.
C) Build a dynamic. Yes, I know this is the obvious solution. Still.
I'm gonna try A for a bit, although I'm adding the caveat I can also update The Other Blog.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Modes of Thought
I want to try writing in a different way.
I sometimes feel limited and trapped, a 10 foot person in a 6 foot body. There's an outward pressure on my skin, threatening to explode and throw everything out. This body is a Matroshka doll, a second self inside the first self and all the way down. If we strip away everything that makes me me, all that would happen is that we would find a Me again.
It's an outcropping of intense restlessness, but forming an energy that can't be physically used. I'm trying to channel it mentally now and see if I can let some of it out, push that illusory self into bits of words and see myself from another place of myself.
Often I'm struck by a surreality about myself. I interact with the world in strange ways. I mean, I walk around campus handing out homemade candy. Why? Because. The thing is I cannot imagine anybody else doing this. If somebody walked up to me and said "here, have a caramel", I would honestly not know what to do. Which is odd, because that person is an aspect of me. I am not capable of seeing myself when that self is in another.
And that extends the other way, too. I cannot see another person seeing me. I can self-reflect but not throw that reflection into a mirror. Maybe it's another consequence of a malfunctioning brain. An unpleasant consequence is it is very hard to anticipate how people will react to me. So I just go with the flow.
This limitation of my self-awareness fascinates me. I cannot completely understand myself. I need someone else to tell me who I am. I once asked people what I could do better, and some of the answers were things I could not anticipate. In my head I see it as a hall of mirrors, seeing myself reflected in a thousand different ways and a thousand different colors. Did you know that if you juggle that kind of place, you can see what it looks like from behind you?
I've tried to think like other people. Not just "ask myself how would XYZ think", but try to think those same thoughts as if they were my own. It's hard. It's really damn hard. And even with people I am very close to, I can barely do it. Even then, it will be completely wrong. I am lightning in the shape of a human, casting the world in blue. Can I say that this is how I think, but everybody else is a Chinese Box?
Hell no.
Our individuality cuts us off from entire modes of thoughts, our minds collapse knowledge into three dimensions. Even when we try to act with perfect rationality we still are limited by our ignorance. And worse, we are limited by the unknown irrationalities, the things we don't know we don't know. Then again, maybe rationality itself is just another way of dealing with the world, one that easily gets us what we want. Or what we think we want. But not the only valid way. I've occasionally wondered if you could use irrationality as a epistemic superweapon. Rationality is so slow.
This is yet another reason why Rand is an idiot. We cannot be Objectivist unless we are also completely objective, and objectivity is impossible. You cannot exist without a mode of thought. It may constrain you, but it also gives you the power to act and think. I guess it's less collapsing potential and more as creating a tiny bubble in potential.
Even so, it's still a bubble, and bubbles have walls. We are used to thinking in certain ways and may not see clear ideas from other ways. The easiest way to think outside of the box is to think in another box. This is why it helps to know multiple academic fields. If you can move between the each field's mode, you can more easily solve individual problems in those fields.
More importantly, it means that we're always dependent on others for their own modes. Two mathematicians may be able to see the world mathematically, but they will see it in slightly different ways. And they will see in radically different ways. Of course this is tautological, only an idiot would say that teamwork was useless. Two people can come up with ideas that just one person would not. I wonder if it's in part because their sets of modes combine to produce entirely new modes of thought.
I've always wondered where the restlessness comes from, the restlessness that makes me want to explode. I think it might in part be from limitations in how I can think. I am human, so I am limited. If I want to make the restlessness bearable, I have to interact more with others, and interact in ways that would expand my own self. I also need to explore other ways of thinking.
And there are the unknown unknowns, always out there, affecting us in ways we can't comprehend. Maybe that's what we should care about. That's the scariest thing of all. It's not that we don't know what's most important. It's that we haven't yet considered it as a thing we could know.
The restlessness is back. Or maybe it never left. I feel like I'm on the verge of catching fire, burning without heat, pain, or harm. There are ways of thinking out there that not only would benefit me, but would completely change me. What are they? Where are they?
I sometimes feel limited and trapped, a 10 foot person in a 6 foot body. There's an outward pressure on my skin, threatening to explode and throw everything out. This body is a Matroshka doll, a second self inside the first self and all the way down. If we strip away everything that makes me me, all that would happen is that we would find a Me again.
It's an outcropping of intense restlessness, but forming an energy that can't be physically used. I'm trying to channel it mentally now and see if I can let some of it out, push that illusory self into bits of words and see myself from another place of myself.
Often I'm struck by a surreality about myself. I interact with the world in strange ways. I mean, I walk around campus handing out homemade candy. Why? Because. The thing is I cannot imagine anybody else doing this. If somebody walked up to me and said "here, have a caramel", I would honestly not know what to do. Which is odd, because that person is an aspect of me. I am not capable of seeing myself when that self is in another.
And that extends the other way, too. I cannot see another person seeing me. I can self-reflect but not throw that reflection into a mirror. Maybe it's another consequence of a malfunctioning brain. An unpleasant consequence is it is very hard to anticipate how people will react to me. So I just go with the flow.
This limitation of my self-awareness fascinates me. I cannot completely understand myself. I need someone else to tell me who I am. I once asked people what I could do better, and some of the answers were things I could not anticipate. In my head I see it as a hall of mirrors, seeing myself reflected in a thousand different ways and a thousand different colors. Did you know that if you juggle that kind of place, you can see what it looks like from behind you?
I've tried to think like other people. Not just "ask myself how would XYZ think", but try to think those same thoughts as if they were my own. It's hard. It's really damn hard. And even with people I am very close to, I can barely do it. Even then, it will be completely wrong. I am lightning in the shape of a human, casting the world in blue. Can I say that this is how I think, but everybody else is a Chinese Box?
Hell no.
Our individuality cuts us off from entire modes of thoughts, our minds collapse knowledge into three dimensions. Even when we try to act with perfect rationality we still are limited by our ignorance. And worse, we are limited by the unknown irrationalities, the things we don't know we don't know. Then again, maybe rationality itself is just another way of dealing with the world, one that easily gets us what we want. Or what we think we want. But not the only valid way. I've occasionally wondered if you could use irrationality as a epistemic superweapon. Rationality is so slow.
This is yet another reason why Rand is an idiot. We cannot be Objectivist unless we are also completely objective, and objectivity is impossible. You cannot exist without a mode of thought. It may constrain you, but it also gives you the power to act and think. I guess it's less collapsing potential and more as creating a tiny bubble in potential.
Even so, it's still a bubble, and bubbles have walls. We are used to thinking in certain ways and may not see clear ideas from other ways. The easiest way to think outside of the box is to think in another box. This is why it helps to know multiple academic fields. If you can move between the each field's mode, you can more easily solve individual problems in those fields.
More importantly, it means that we're always dependent on others for their own modes. Two mathematicians may be able to see the world mathematically, but they will see it in slightly different ways. And they will see in radically different ways. Of course this is tautological, only an idiot would say that teamwork was useless. Two people can come up with ideas that just one person would not. I wonder if it's in part because their sets of modes combine to produce entirely new modes of thought.
I've always wondered where the restlessness comes from, the restlessness that makes me want to explode. I think it might in part be from limitations in how I can think. I am human, so I am limited. If I want to make the restlessness bearable, I have to interact more with others, and interact in ways that would expand my own self. I also need to explore other ways of thinking.
And there are the unknown unknowns, always out there, affecting us in ways we can't comprehend. Maybe that's what we should care about. That's the scariest thing of all. It's not that we don't know what's most important. It's that we haven't yet considered it as a thing we could know.
The restlessness is back. Or maybe it never left. I feel like I'm on the verge of catching fire, burning without heat, pain, or harm. There are ways of thinking out there that not only would benefit me, but would completely change me. What are they? Where are they?
Sunday, March 18, 2012
The External Self
The other day I was talking with a friend about something private. At one point I critiqued some of his actions, saying he was acting callous. His response was "I may act callous, but I'm not callous on the inside. That's what matters." If people can't see what he's really like on the inside, then they're badwrong. He can discard them.
It's a troubling thing to hear, especially because I realize I do it myself. One of my biggest fears is being an arrogant person. I obsess over being modest and not arrogant. I also think that if people do think I'm arrogant, then they're mistaken, because I work so hard to not be arrogant that I know I'm not. They're just seeing a face, an external part of me that doesn't reflect who I truly am.
The problem with thinking this way is that you're dropping a wall between how you think and how you act. Just because something is part of the external self does not mean it has no impact on you. It's still an external self. If you present yourself in a certain way, you can't say that it's not how you actually are. Even if it wasn't, you're acting in that form. That's going to bleed into your 'actual' self.
This is especially true since we are fallible people. Just because we think we are a certain way does not mean we are that way. There are aspects of us we are blind to, willfully or not. We have to listen to other people, and hope that they can see the things we can't.
So a question. If I think I'm not arrogant, but a lot of people say I act arrogant, am I arrogant or not?
Yes. Yes I am.
This sucks.
It's a troubling thing to hear, especially because I realize I do it myself. One of my biggest fears is being an arrogant person. I obsess over being modest and not arrogant. I also think that if people do think I'm arrogant, then they're mistaken, because I work so hard to not be arrogant that I know I'm not. They're just seeing a face, an external part of me that doesn't reflect who I truly am.
The problem with thinking this way is that you're dropping a wall between how you think and how you act. Just because something is part of the external self does not mean it has no impact on you. It's still an external self. If you present yourself in a certain way, you can't say that it's not how you actually are. Even if it wasn't, you're acting in that form. That's going to bleed into your 'actual' self.
This is especially true since we are fallible people. Just because we think we are a certain way does not mean we are that way. There are aspects of us we are blind to, willfully or not. We have to listen to other people, and hope that they can see the things we can't.
So a question. If I think I'm not arrogant, but a lot of people say I act arrogant, am I arrogant or not?
Yes. Yes I am.
This sucks.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Sleep Schedule
I'm a night person. My normal sleeping schedule is 1:30-9:30, later on weekends. So basically, an average student. This is not something I'm overly fond of. Yeah, it might be natural for me, but so having no hand-eye coordination. If I can learn to juggle, I can change my sleep schedule.
I'm generally a lot happier with a 11-7 schedule. This isn't just a "life would be better if I was a lark" wishful thinking. There have been several month spans where I'd force myself wake up at 7 every weekday. The rush I get from being up early is incredible. There was even a month where I did 6, out every day before the sun was up. It felt like stepping out into a barren world and watching it come alive. I'm just a lot happier on days when I wake up early. On the flip side, if I get up past 10 I just feel miserable. It's like the whole day is wasted.
There are a couple of big disadvantages to an early schedule. One, I'm shifting two of my awake hours to when nobody is up, or at least socializing. I'm taking a small hit to my social life. Then again, I'm usually in the apt at that time so I'm only affecting my fb and roommate interactions. I'm not particularly worried about either of those. The other issue is that I'll have to get better at completing assignments. When you stay up late, you can trade sleep for homework time. But if you go to bed early, you have no idea when to wake up to have adequate working time and can botch an assignment that way. This means I'll have to get better at doing assignments in advance and managing my time well. Horror of horrors.
The bonuses are huge and the problems easily resolvable. So why don't I do this all the time? Like I said, my body naturally does a late-night schedule. It's also a lot easier to go to bed late- it's only a matter of procrastinating sleeping. Sleeping early requires a lot more dedication and willpower. I've only recently tried to pick it back, and have consistently woken up at 7 for the past week. I stopped it during the weekends because everything interesting happens in the evening and night.
I'm going to try to keep this up at least until Spring break. I've never kept up an early bird schedule during vacation. I think that would be nice to try. It's just a lot harder when you don't have obligations during the day. Even if I stumble over vacation I'll attempt to pick it back up again for the new quarter and run with it until finals. It seems like it'd be really nice to do during the Spring. I'd get an extra two hours of warm daylight.
I'm generally a lot happier with a 11-7 schedule. This isn't just a "life would be better if I was a lark" wishful thinking. There have been several month spans where I'd force myself wake up at 7 every weekday. The rush I get from being up early is incredible. There was even a month where I did 6, out every day before the sun was up. It felt like stepping out into a barren world and watching it come alive. I'm just a lot happier on days when I wake up early. On the flip side, if I get up past 10 I just feel miserable. It's like the whole day is wasted.
There are a couple of big disadvantages to an early schedule. One, I'm shifting two of my awake hours to when nobody is up, or at least socializing. I'm taking a small hit to my social life. Then again, I'm usually in the apt at that time so I'm only affecting my fb and roommate interactions. I'm not particularly worried about either of those. The other issue is that I'll have to get better at completing assignments. When you stay up late, you can trade sleep for homework time. But if you go to bed early, you have no idea when to wake up to have adequate working time and can botch an assignment that way. This means I'll have to get better at doing assignments in advance and managing my time well. Horror of horrors.
The bonuses are huge and the problems easily resolvable. So why don't I do this all the time? Like I said, my body naturally does a late-night schedule. It's also a lot easier to go to bed late- it's only a matter of procrastinating sleeping. Sleeping early requires a lot more dedication and willpower. I've only recently tried to pick it back, and have consistently woken up at 7 for the past week. I stopped it during the weekends because everything interesting happens in the evening and night.
I'm going to try to keep this up at least until Spring break. I've never kept up an early bird schedule during vacation. I think that would be nice to try. It's just a lot harder when you don't have obligations during the day. Even if I stumble over vacation I'll attempt to pick it back up again for the new quarter and run with it until finals. It seems like it'd be really nice to do during the Spring. I'd get an extra two hours of warm daylight.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
"I can't do this."
Most of you know that I'm a really avid juggler. I also really love teaching juggling. If you want to learn how to juggle, I will find time to teach you. Of course a lot of people don't want to learn. A lot of them say "I'm just not interested," which is fine. And a lot say that they would be interested, but "they don't have the hand-eye coordination".
This is stupid.
Imagine if you came to me saying "H, you should read more", and I said "Sorry, I don't have the vocabulary for that." You'd laugh at me. You'd tell me vocabulary isn't something you have or you don't. It's something that nobody starts out with and everybody develops over time. If you don't have the vocabulary to read a book, than build it up. How? Read more. Reading and vocabulary feed into each other, where developing one also helps you develop the other.
Why should hand-eye coordination be any different?
A lot of people I've met have this weird static view of their abilities. They think you have a fixed coordination, or balance, or stamina or whatever that can't change no matter what you do. Because they can't always catch a ball, they will never be able to juggle. Since I can juggle, I obviously must have burst out of my mother's womb doing a five-ball cascade.
Fun fact: nobody is able to naturally juggle. I've met exactly one person who instantly picked it up, and she already did a crapton of coordination-heavy activities beforehand. Juggling is just an unnatural movement that your body doesn't know how to do, and it can only get that by seriously improving your coordination. Don't believe me? My coordination was so bad it took me three days to learn. Most people take three hours.
As I got better at juggling, my coordination and reflexes steadily improved. As they improved, I became a better juggler. This is because my attributes are dynamic. It's not that I have bad reflexes, it's that I have bad reflexes for now.
And why shouldn't this be true of everything? Don't think you have the balance to dance? Then dance until you have balance. Don't have the ear for music? Then practice until you can tell the tones. Don't have the patience to meditate? Keep doing it for a month and see what happens.
We all start with varying strengths and weaknesses. But when it comes to improving, dedication and motivation matter much more than natural ability. Learning and doing new things change us. If you think of yourself as static then you're doing yourself a huge disservice .
This is stupid.
Imagine if you came to me saying "H, you should read more", and I said "Sorry, I don't have the vocabulary for that." You'd laugh at me. You'd tell me vocabulary isn't something you have or you don't. It's something that nobody starts out with and everybody develops over time. If you don't have the vocabulary to read a book, than build it up. How? Read more. Reading and vocabulary feed into each other, where developing one also helps you develop the other.
Why should hand-eye coordination be any different?
A lot of people I've met have this weird static view of their abilities. They think you have a fixed coordination, or balance, or stamina or whatever that can't change no matter what you do. Because they can't always catch a ball, they will never be able to juggle. Since I can juggle, I obviously must have burst out of my mother's womb doing a five-ball cascade.
Fun fact: nobody is able to naturally juggle. I've met exactly one person who instantly picked it up, and she already did a crapton of coordination-heavy activities beforehand. Juggling is just an unnatural movement that your body doesn't know how to do, and it can only get that by seriously improving your coordination. Don't believe me? My coordination was so bad it took me three days to learn. Most people take three hours.
As I got better at juggling, my coordination and reflexes steadily improved. As they improved, I became a better juggler. This is because my attributes are dynamic. It's not that I have bad reflexes, it's that I have bad reflexes for now.
And why shouldn't this be true of everything? Don't think you have the balance to dance? Then dance until you have balance. Don't have the ear for music? Then practice until you can tell the tones. Don't have the patience to meditate? Keep doing it for a month and see what happens.
We all start with varying strengths and weaknesses. But when it comes to improving, dedication and motivation matter much more than natural ability. Learning and doing new things change us. If you think of yourself as static then you're doing yourself a huge disservice .
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Chain of Insights
I vaguely know I had something I was going to talk about this week. Probably something either navel-gazing or incredibly pretentious. But I can't remember it. And I don't care! Because I actually have something I DO want to talk about!
Last night I was getting ready for bed when I was struck with a mode of insight. It's hard to describe. For maybe five minutes my brain stopped thinking in terms of logical progresses and just went straight from premises to conclusions. I managed to write one of them down, but the rest faded away after half an hour. It was one of the most surreal experiences since Chile.
So now what? I really want to make it happen again. How do I do that? I don't know. I'm completely at loss for how to go about this. Anybody have any ideas?
Last night I was getting ready for bed when I was struck with a mode of insight. It's hard to describe. For maybe five minutes my brain stopped thinking in terms of logical progresses and just went straight from premises to conclusions. I managed to write one of them down, but the rest faded away after half an hour. It was one of the most surreal experiences since Chile.
So now what? I really want to make it happen again. How do I do that? I don't know. I'm completely at loss for how to go about this. Anybody have any ideas?
Monday, January 23, 2012
Introducing the Workbank
Recently I've run into two problems:
1) I've haven't been working all that much for my research professor. I love the work, I just... don't do it.
2) I don't have funds set aside from discretionary spending. I believe I shouldn't spend money under any circumstances that aren't "I need to live", which is an obvious problem. I still buy luxuries, but I feel bad when I do. This isn't a good way to live.
So I've decided to kill two birds with one stone: introducing the workbank! For every hour of physics work I do I get five bucks of disposable spending, slightly under half of the amount I make. I can spend this on whatever I want, like meals on campus, club dues, cooking equipment, etc. Only five dollars max roll over to the next week, plus whatever I made that Sunday (to give incentive to work on Sundays). And to add a bit of bite: if the workbank ever goes negative, I have to donate twice the difference to charity.
Ideally this means I can spend guilt free as long as I work, since for every dollar I spend I'm also saving at least a dollar. So does it work? I've had it running for a week, and I haven't had any problems so far. I made more progress last week than I did in November. I've also been buying more nonnecessities. While I still feel a little guilty, hopefully that will go away in time. I've been making really small 'just because' purchases to work on that. Hoping on keeping this up for at least another month, if not indefinitely.
The idea of combining solutions to problems is actually a pretty interesting one. I haven't thought too much about it besides "it might work here", but I'm going to play around with it and see if anything really useful comes out.
1) I've haven't been working all that much for my research professor. I love the work, I just... don't do it.
2) I don't have funds set aside from discretionary spending. I believe I shouldn't spend money under any circumstances that aren't "I need to live", which is an obvious problem. I still buy luxuries, but I feel bad when I do. This isn't a good way to live.
So I've decided to kill two birds with one stone: introducing the workbank! For every hour of physics work I do I get five bucks of disposable spending, slightly under half of the amount I make. I can spend this on whatever I want, like meals on campus, club dues, cooking equipment, etc. Only five dollars max roll over to the next week, plus whatever I made that Sunday (to give incentive to work on Sundays). And to add a bit of bite: if the workbank ever goes negative, I have to donate twice the difference to charity.
Ideally this means I can spend guilt free as long as I work, since for every dollar I spend I'm also saving at least a dollar. So does it work? I've had it running for a week, and I haven't had any problems so far. I made more progress last week than I did in November. I've also been buying more nonnecessities. While I still feel a little guilty, hopefully that will go away in time. I've been making really small 'just because' purchases to work on that. Hoping on keeping this up for at least another month, if not indefinitely.
The idea of combining solutions to problems is actually a pretty interesting one. I haven't thought too much about it besides "it might work here", but I'm going to play around with it and see if anything really useful comes out.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
On Inertia
Let's try an experiment. Take some homework you have. If it's reading, read two or three sentences. If it's a problem set, set up one of the problems. I'll wait for you to do that.
Okay. Do you stop after three lines or read an entire paragraph? Do you try to solve the problem?
I know I do. As I started making small, cumulative changes, I noticed some patterns to how I did things. I didn't want to start working on a project. But once I started, I didn't want to stop. Once I start a problem set, I have no trouble working for two hours. The problem is starting. It's not quite laziness, because I don't give up early. I think a better word is 'inertia'. At person at rest remains at rest, and a person moving remains moving.
Inertia prevents you from doing things. But I think it can also work in your favor. Since the hardest part of doing something is starting it, we should be able to cheat that by using a small stepping stone. If you don't feel like exercising, say you'll walk to the gym to clear your mind. Then enter the gym to use the water fountain. Then just do a small part of your routine...
It's all about that first step. Inertia is a powerful thing.
Okay. Do you stop after three lines or read an entire paragraph? Do you try to solve the problem?
I know I do. As I started making small, cumulative changes, I noticed some patterns to how I did things. I didn't want to start working on a project. But once I started, I didn't want to stop. Once I start a problem set, I have no trouble working for two hours. The problem is starting. It's not quite laziness, because I don't give up early. I think a better word is 'inertia'. At person at rest remains at rest, and a person moving remains moving.
Inertia prevents you from doing things. But I think it can also work in your favor. Since the hardest part of doing something is starting it, we should be able to cheat that by using a small stepping stone. If you don't feel like exercising, say you'll walk to the gym to clear your mind. Then enter the gym to use the water fountain. Then just do a small part of your routine...
It's all about that first step. Inertia is a powerful thing.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Millennium Goals - Deadline One
The first set of millennium goals were to be completed by today. Overall, I didn't do very well. Goals are below.
Successfully replicate a restaurant dish. Pass. Done with a couple of different things. Unfortunately this doesn't really mean that much, because "any restaurant dish" is such a low bar it's impossible not to pass. The other goal is a lot stricter, and I'll definitely have a lot more fun with that.
Read two books on photography. Fail. Was planning on doing this over break, decided to read things I wanted to instead.
Run a 7.5 minute mile. Pass! Really proud of this one!
Bench press 140 pounds. Fail. Nowhere close. Hoping I'll get this far by spring break. Reaching 200 by the end of spring quarter will be physically impossible.
Flash five balls. Pass. Video goes up when I can juggle them.
Sit still for 20 minutes. Passed a couple of different times. Honestly not sure why I wanted to do this one.
Get an A- in Grad Math Methods and a A in Statmech. Fail. I withdrew from Math Methods.
Stop instinctively avoiding eye contact. Pass, I think. This one is a lot harder to judge success, but I think I'm doing a lot better.
Write a 500 word creative piece in Spanish. 50 words is the same thing as 500, right? No? Then fail.
Overall 5 passes, 4 fails, only really proud of 2 of the passes. My original goal was to have at least 13 passes in total, meaning I'd have to pass eight of the long term goals. I'm definitely failing the anaerobic one and almost-definitely the Spanish one, so there's no chance of hitting that mark. I still intend to try for them and accept the consequences of failing.
Looking back, I'm unsurprised I did so poorly. I was setting up huge goals with a lot of time to do them with no milestones. It would have made a lot more sense to set up a bunch of small goals that built on each other with short times between them. Weekly goals, if you will. I'm gonna go back to the drawing board and find a better way of structuring improvement.
Successfully replicate a restaurant dish. Pass. Done with a couple of different things. Unfortunately this doesn't really mean that much, because "any restaurant dish" is such a low bar it's impossible not to pass. The other goal is a lot stricter, and I'll definitely have a lot more fun with that.
Read two books on photography. Fail. Was planning on doing this over break, decided to read things I wanted to instead.
Run a 7.5 minute mile. Pass! Really proud of this one!
Bench press 140 pounds. Fail. Nowhere close. Hoping I'll get this far by spring break. Reaching 200 by the end of spring quarter will be physically impossible.
Flash five balls. Pass. Video goes up when I can juggle them.
Sit still for 20 minutes. Passed a couple of different times. Honestly not sure why I wanted to do this one.
Get an A- in Grad Math Methods and a A in Statmech. Fail. I withdrew from Math Methods.
Stop instinctively avoiding eye contact. Pass, I think. This one is a lot harder to judge success, but I think I'm doing a lot better.
Write a 500 word creative piece in Spanish. 50 words is the same thing as 500, right? No? Then fail.
Overall 5 passes, 4 fails, only really proud of 2 of the passes. My original goal was to have at least 13 passes in total, meaning I'd have to pass eight of the long term goals. I'm definitely failing the anaerobic one and almost-definitely the Spanish one, so there's no chance of hitting that mark. I still intend to try for them and accept the consequences of failing.
Looking back, I'm unsurprised I did so poorly. I was setting up huge goals with a lot of time to do them with no milestones. It would have made a lot more sense to set up a bunch of small goals that built on each other with short times between them. Weekly goals, if you will. I'm gonna go back to the drawing board and find a better way of structuring improvement.
Monday, December 26, 2011
On New Years
A couple of people asked me what my New Years Resolutions are, expecting something like "exercise more" and "procrastinate less." This year, like all of the past years, I don't. I've never been one much for NYRs. Not really a pretentious "I don't NEED the crutch" thing. Okay, maybe it is. But at least I can support it!
Trying to explain the idea behind NYRs would be just illustrating the obvious. Nonetheless, as a terrible illustrator I desperately need the practice. We see years as discrete units, 2012 separated from 2011 by a vast, insurmountable gulf. The new year is a chance to see the world in an entirely new light, turning a symbolic beginning into a new one. We see this in a lot of places- moving to college is a big one, as is the beginning of a quarter.
My issues with NYR stem from the same source. By being such a symbolic change, it ties the idea of making real changes to itself. We do not think of making resolutions on Christmas or Presidents Day or the beginning of a month. It's only New Years that has the Resolutions. Does New Years make us less likely to make other changes? I'd argue so. By so strongly associating one with the other, we lose our power to make resolutions at any time, at any place. Even if I really want to stop eating meat, I probably won't stop on a random Tuesday. This creates a time lag between having a resolution and implementing it. And lag time is the exact same as lost time.
The other problem is more pragmatic. One day a year is culturally associated with permanent change. If you can only make resolutions one day a year, what kind will you make? Big, sweeping ones, or small, specific ones? But change is not a discrete process. We can't say "I will now stop eating candy" and expect to hold it for the rest of the year. We'll be lucky to last a month. True change works best through small, manageable, and cumulative changes. These are the changes we won't make, because we don't want to "miss a change".
Most people drop their sweeping New Years Resolutions within months, if not weeks. I'd say it's better to not think about grand and sudden changes and focus on making small changes all of the time. Sure, grand changes can be useful, but they have their time and place. Giving it a specific time and a specific place just makes it artificial.
On a sidenote, I'm saying that many small changes = good. This is actually a new thing for me. I'm failing so many of the Millennium Goals (post up later) I've started exploring new structures of self improvement. We'll see how this fares. And I'll put my money where my mouth is, and start a small change right now: from now on, I will update this blog once a week. In the immortal words of Ke$ha: let’s go-o-o (Let’s go)
Trying to explain the idea behind NYRs would be just illustrating the obvious. Nonetheless, as a terrible illustrator I desperately need the practice. We see years as discrete units, 2012 separated from 2011 by a vast, insurmountable gulf. The new year is a chance to see the world in an entirely new light, turning a symbolic beginning into a new one. We see this in a lot of places- moving to college is a big one, as is the beginning of a quarter.
My issues with NYR stem from the same source. By being such a symbolic change, it ties the idea of making real changes to itself. We do not think of making resolutions on Christmas or Presidents Day or the beginning of a month. It's only New Years that has the Resolutions. Does New Years make us less likely to make other changes? I'd argue so. By so strongly associating one with the other, we lose our power to make resolutions at any time, at any place. Even if I really want to stop eating meat, I probably won't stop on a random Tuesday. This creates a time lag between having a resolution and implementing it. And lag time is the exact same as lost time.
The other problem is more pragmatic. One day a year is culturally associated with permanent change. If you can only make resolutions one day a year, what kind will you make? Big, sweeping ones, or small, specific ones? But change is not a discrete process. We can't say "I will now stop eating candy" and expect to hold it for the rest of the year. We'll be lucky to last a month. True change works best through small, manageable, and cumulative changes. These are the changes we won't make, because we don't want to "miss a change".
Most people drop their sweeping New Years Resolutions within months, if not weeks. I'd say it's better to not think about grand and sudden changes and focus on making small changes all of the time. Sure, grand changes can be useful, but they have their time and place. Giving it a specific time and a specific place just makes it artificial.
On a sidenote, I'm saying that many small changes = good. This is actually a new thing for me. I'm failing so many of the Millennium Goals (post up later) I've started exploring new structures of self improvement. We'll see how this fares. And I'll put my money where my mouth is, and start a small change right now: from now on, I will update this blog once a week. In the immortal words of Ke$ha: let’s go-o-o (Let’s go)
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Glimpses of the Past
Last week was finals week. Like everyone else around here, I had two goals. One: convince everybody I was studying really hard. Two: not study. I emailed a bunch of people I hadn't talked to in a while. I went downtown a couple of times to "clear my mind". I revised an already-submitted paper "just in case". Then, lacking anything else to do, I started Googling random things. Eventually I searched an old username of mine and, unsurprisingly, I got a hit.
Finding the old post wasn't unusual. I mean, I've been posting on forums since I was ten. I've left a data trail a mile wide. Bit what struck me was the content. 16 year-old me wrote a long self description. He detailed his incredible abilities, his intense antisocialness, and his cold logical thinking. "It is always better," he proudly wrote, "to kill one person than let ten die."
Oy.
I want to go back in time so I can meet him, and then punch him in the face. For all his bragging about his pragmatic ruthlessness, he was a pretty terrible fighter. I mean, he couldn't even do a pushup. And I'm pretty sure that his ego was even more fragile than 19 year-old me. And that guy went on a two day depression bender because nobody laughed at one of his skits.
Still, I'm incredibly glad I found that sample. I had no idea I changed that much in four years. It's one thing to constantly wax poetic about self-improvement, quite another to see it happen. Since then I've been obsessively tracking down everything else I can find. I'm constructing a timeline from old chat logs, pictures, and posts. Slowly, agonizingly, the picture emerges. My prior stupidity left gaping holes. I remember being proud of how good I was at avoiding pictures. I remember gleefully picking usernames that would be impossible to search. I remember wiping my hard disks "so nobody could learn more about my past." I was wanted to look mysterious. I was an idiot.
Even so, it's possible to see some patterns. The growth is subtle and continuous, a long chain of imperceptible changes that add up over time. Age 14 me is the same as age 15 me is the same as age 16, but the two ends are slightly different. On the other hand, upheavals can cause incredibly rapid change. Between 12 and 13 I moved to another state. The growth quickly follows. But really, did we expect anything else?
A lot of my dialogues on self-improvement are entirely philosophical. Now I have real world data. It's not much, but at least it's something. Looking at it, it seems improvement happens in one of two ways. One, it's gradual and imperceptible, something you only realized happened when you look back on your past self. Alternatively, it can be sudden, rapid, and extremely painful. It's either long and boring or agonizing. Often it's both. Not that appealing, is it?
Nobody ever said it was easy. Trying to consciously improve as a person is the most difficult thing I've ever done. I have to stare hard at my failings, dig out the ingrained bad habits, and push the limits of my comfort zones. I have to constantly question myself and never, ever, ever be satisfied with my successes. It's hard and slow and it hurts all the time. I know people who refuse to consider it, and while I find this completely incomprehensible the idea is sometimes very, very tempting. But now I can see how far I've come. I know for sure there's a light at the end of the tunnel, because I've been in tunnels before and found that light. And if it hurts, well, it hurt before. I got over it.
I wonder how much these patterns I see are influenced by my own biases. I've talked about external events breaking stagnation. Did this make me want to see the upheavals as causing growth? Or did I already know about the upheavals and unconsciously worked that into the externals? They could be the same, all externals upheavals. In that case, we are one step closer to consciously triggering periods of growth. At the same time, we have to accept that such periods will be quite an ordeal.
I head back to Michigan on the 20th. Once in my parents' home I can kick this project into high gear, scouring old photobooks and reading stories and search for diaries. If I'm really lucky I'll be able to contact people from my New Jersey days. I'm seriously regretting leaving so little behind. But I'll do my best to get it all, and I won't be making the same mistake again.
Finding the old post wasn't unusual. I mean, I've been posting on forums since I was ten. I've left a data trail a mile wide. Bit what struck me was the content. 16 year-old me wrote a long self description. He detailed his incredible abilities, his intense antisocialness, and his cold logical thinking. "It is always better," he proudly wrote, "to kill one person than let ten die."
Oy.
I want to go back in time so I can meet him, and then punch him in the face. For all his bragging about his pragmatic ruthlessness, he was a pretty terrible fighter. I mean, he couldn't even do a pushup. And I'm pretty sure that his ego was even more fragile than 19 year-old me. And that guy went on a two day depression bender because nobody laughed at one of his skits.
Still, I'm incredibly glad I found that sample. I had no idea I changed that much in four years. It's one thing to constantly wax poetic about self-improvement, quite another to see it happen. Since then I've been obsessively tracking down everything else I can find. I'm constructing a timeline from old chat logs, pictures, and posts. Slowly, agonizingly, the picture emerges. My prior stupidity left gaping holes. I remember being proud of how good I was at avoiding pictures. I remember gleefully picking usernames that would be impossible to search. I remember wiping my hard disks "so nobody could learn more about my past." I was wanted to look mysterious. I was an idiot.
Even so, it's possible to see some patterns. The growth is subtle and continuous, a long chain of imperceptible changes that add up over time. Age 14 me is the same as age 15 me is the same as age 16, but the two ends are slightly different. On the other hand, upheavals can cause incredibly rapid change. Between 12 and 13 I moved to another state. The growth quickly follows. But really, did we expect anything else?
A lot of my dialogues on self-improvement are entirely philosophical. Now I have real world data. It's not much, but at least it's something. Looking at it, it seems improvement happens in one of two ways. One, it's gradual and imperceptible, something you only realized happened when you look back on your past self. Alternatively, it can be sudden, rapid, and extremely painful. It's either long and boring or agonizing. Often it's both. Not that appealing, is it?
Nobody ever said it was easy. Trying to consciously improve as a person is the most difficult thing I've ever done. I have to stare hard at my failings, dig out the ingrained bad habits, and push the limits of my comfort zones. I have to constantly question myself and never, ever, ever be satisfied with my successes. It's hard and slow and it hurts all the time. I know people who refuse to consider it, and while I find this completely incomprehensible the idea is sometimes very, very tempting. But now I can see how far I've come. I know for sure there's a light at the end of the tunnel, because I've been in tunnels before and found that light. And if it hurts, well, it hurt before. I got over it.
I wonder how much these patterns I see are influenced by my own biases. I've talked about external events breaking stagnation. Did this make me want to see the upheavals as causing growth? Or did I already know about the upheavals and unconsciously worked that into the externals? They could be the same, all externals upheavals. In that case, we are one step closer to consciously triggering periods of growth. At the same time, we have to accept that such periods will be quite an ordeal.
I head back to Michigan on the 20th. Once in my parents' home I can kick this project into high gear, scouring old photobooks and reading stories and search for diaries. If I'm really lucky I'll be able to contact people from my New Jersey days. I'm seriously regretting leaving so little behind. But I'll do my best to get it all, and I won't be making the same mistake again.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Teeth
Those of you who knew me last year probably remember my problems spring quarter. All of my wisdom teeth got infected at once. I had four extractions and three root canals in under a month. At the peak I was going in twice a week, gutting my family's savings and my time. By the end I had developed a resistance to Novocaine. No wonder I was so depressed and assholeish that quarter.
I remember my relief at the end of the quarter, knowing that the ordeal was finally behind me. I was wrong. Yesterday I went in for a routine checkup. I left with three root canals. If I'm lucky I'll only need two more appointments. The next one is tomorrow. Already I can feel the crushing dread: it never gets better and it never ends.
Then again, I'm not the same person I was six months ago. Back then I would have curled into a ball and cried. Now... well, I still want to curl into a ball and cry, but I'm also wondering if I can benefit from this. They say that hardship makes us stronger. In order to overcome our obstacles we have to grow and develop the power to cope.
The short term hardships are:
So the big things are learning to live with the fear and not worsening my personality in the process. The fear happened because every time I came in for my last appointment they'd schedule "just two more". Nothing would be okay ever again. Every time I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel would stretch. And even when I thought it was all over... yeah, I think I have good reason to be afraid.
There are two things I can do to deal with this. First, I've arranged both of my next appointments to be before I go home for break. If you need "just two more", too bad. I get a two week break before the next evisceration. There's a hard cap on when I last go in. Certainly not as bad as "first week to eleventh."
Number two. It might help to understand the core of the fear. I think it's all a manifestation of my feelings of powerlessness. There was no way I could have prevented my teeth problems. There's no way I can reduce the number or costs of my appointments. I don't even know when it is going to end; the goalposts shift so much I lose even that tiny bit of knowledge. I feel like I have absolutely no control over my situation. This isn't something I can just accept; the only way to deal with it is to take back my agency. Only then can I escape the omnipresent fear.
How do I do that? I dunno. I've tried to keep the pain and time loss from impacting my academic and social life. Keep at least a little bit of power over the rest of my life. That's the only thing I can do. I might be able to extend this. If I do more I will have more things in my life that I can control, which takes the edge off the dread.
This segues nicely into the personality problems. I'm sure at least a couple of you noticed how irrationally controlling and spiteful I got last quarter, and I'm feeling that start up again. The pain and stress and fear mess with my head. I know this is hard to quantify- how do we know what we have felt in different circumstances?- but it's obviously there. I used to swear pretty rarely, and only with great effort and gravity. The day I got my wisdom teeth out I started swearing like a sailor. That definitely wasn't a natural evolution of my personality.
This is the thing I worry about least and should worry about most. It's an incredibly subtle hardship that can hurt both me and others without me ever realizing why. It also emphasizes a flaw I have: I let fear/anger/pain cloud my thinking. A Better Me would be able to function at least as well as Current Me even under extreme stress. I may not necessarily be able to stop feeling the fear/anger/pain, but I should be able to cope with it. I think this can be improved by being constantly aware of how my personality is changing. So if any of you see me acting more abrasive/sociopathic/angsty than normal, give me hell about it.
Eleven hours until my next appointment. I'm not looking forward to it.
I remember my relief at the end of the quarter, knowing that the ordeal was finally behind me. I was wrong. Yesterday I went in for a routine checkup. I left with three root canals. If I'm lucky I'll only need two more appointments. The next one is tomorrow. Already I can feel the crushing dread: it never gets better and it never ends.
Then again, I'm not the same person I was six months ago. Back then I would have curled into a ball and cried. Now... well, I still want to curl into a ball and cry, but I'm also wondering if I can benefit from this. They say that hardship makes us stronger. In order to overcome our obstacles we have to grow and develop the power to cope.
The short term hardships are:
- Pain (operation)
- Pain (recovery)
- Time loss (transit, dental work)
- Fear (hopelessness, needles, pain)
- Negativity (grouchiness, anger, from other hardships)
So the big things are learning to live with the fear and not worsening my personality in the process. The fear happened because every time I came in for my last appointment they'd schedule "just two more". Nothing would be okay ever again. Every time I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel would stretch. And even when I thought it was all over... yeah, I think I have good reason to be afraid.
There are two things I can do to deal with this. First, I've arranged both of my next appointments to be before I go home for break. If you need "just two more", too bad. I get a two week break before the next evisceration. There's a hard cap on when I last go in. Certainly not as bad as "first week to eleventh."
Number two. It might help to understand the core of the fear. I think it's all a manifestation of my feelings of powerlessness. There was no way I could have prevented my teeth problems. There's no way I can reduce the number or costs of my appointments. I don't even know when it is going to end; the goalposts shift so much I lose even that tiny bit of knowledge. I feel like I have absolutely no control over my situation. This isn't something I can just accept; the only way to deal with it is to take back my agency. Only then can I escape the omnipresent fear.
How do I do that? I dunno. I've tried to keep the pain and time loss from impacting my academic and social life. Keep at least a little bit of power over the rest of my life. That's the only thing I can do. I might be able to extend this. If I do more I will have more things in my life that I can control, which takes the edge off the dread.
This segues nicely into the personality problems. I'm sure at least a couple of you noticed how irrationally controlling and spiteful I got last quarter, and I'm feeling that start up again. The pain and stress and fear mess with my head. I know this is hard to quantify- how do we know what we have felt in different circumstances?- but it's obviously there. I used to swear pretty rarely, and only with great effort and gravity. The day I got my wisdom teeth out I started swearing like a sailor. That definitely wasn't a natural evolution of my personality.
This is the thing I worry about least and should worry about most. It's an incredibly subtle hardship that can hurt both me and others without me ever realizing why. It also emphasizes a flaw I have: I let fear/anger/pain cloud my thinking. A Better Me would be able to function at least as well as Current Me even under extreme stress. I may not necessarily be able to stop feeling the fear/anger/pain, but I should be able to cope with it. I think this can be improved by being constantly aware of how my personality is changing. So if any of you see me acting more abrasive/sociopathic/angsty than normal, give me hell about it.
Eleven hours until my next appointment. I'm not looking forward to it.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
On Elitism
Hm, haven't been here in a while. Life has a bad habit of sneaking up on you, then clubbing you with a tire iron and running off with your cell phone. I'd like to reflect on a set of ideologies I've encountered over the past few years. It's not directly related to improvement, but I think understanding how the ideals work is rather important to our growth and maturation.
Most people are unconscious. They do things without understanding why they are doing them. Other people are conscious and have developed a soul. They understand themselves and can influence the people around them. Only the conscious are really aware of what's going on.
Most people are background characters. The story of life passes them by, and they just go through the motions without understanding them. Some people have narratives. They have agency over their own lives and those of the backgrounds. Only the main characters are really aware of what's going on.
Most people are sheep. They follow the will of society without thinking about it. Other people are the shepherds. They see how the societal machine Works and can make it affect them less, or influence it. Only the shepherds are really aware of what's going on.
Seeing a pattern? The first one was something somebody I respect said last year. The second was said two years ago by somebody close to me. The third was what I believed three years ago. This is an idea that was independently developed by three very intelligent people. It made the world seem so obvious.
The overarching thema is to divide society into two groups. There's the unconscious/sheep/unwashed masses who do not have agency or influence over their own life or, as one person put it, the ability to consciously analyze reality. The other group is the conscious/shepherds/elites who have this ability to think for themselves. They are the movers and shakers of the world. Naturally, everybody who comes up with this idea automatically assumes they are part of group two.
Now this is an extremely comforting idea, the idea that you are more special than the faceless horde around you. It also has a lot of glaring problems. For example:
-Just because you don't know another person's life in depth does not mean you can make a sweeping condemnation of it. Most people have dreams, aspirations, and self-doubts just like you do. You might not be able to get in their head, but they cannot get in yours either. Can they see your eliteness glowing like a beacon? If not, maybe you can't see theirs.
-Self awareness isn't a discrete unit. You can have a measure of consciousness between "stick" and "Buddha". You can't break people into "self aware" and "not self aware", because people are things besides sticks and Buddhas. Imagine trying to break people into "babies" and "geezers" with nothing in between. That's what we're trying to do here.
-Similarly, self-awareness can't actually be maximized. Becoming one of "the conscious" implies that you have achieved the epitome of awakenedness, which would be like trying to achieve absolute mastery over lifting things. In the grand scheme of things you will never, ever, become Buddha. Additionally, self-awareness isn't a one-dimensional thing. I may understand more about what makes me angry, but you might know more about what makes you happy. Trying to compare one person's consciousness to another's is mathematically meaningless.
-The entire idea is just Objectivism with a heaping scoop of metaphysical superiority.
It's poison. It convinces you that you are Above other people and know more about them they do themselves. They will never understand you, for you are an Elite and they are just the Sheep. It's not a large step to start believing that you can ignore other people's opinions on matters and even violate the rules that keep civilization functioning. I've certainly been there. Once you start believing only the Elite posses the truth, you're no longer part of the "little people".
I can't say why this belief is so popular. I mean, all three of us came up with it, and I'm sure far more have too. I think it might be a defense mechanism. The world isn't an unimaginably complex network of connections where the aspirations of a guy in Kansas can tank the price of your morning coffee. A world where billions of people are fighting tooth and claw to achieve their dreams. Much easier to believe that only a few people affect things, and the rest are along for the ride. Easier to think that everybody's dreams and "2.5 children and a white picket fence" and only you, only you, truly hold a burning desire. It makes you special. You don't have to prove to the world that you deserve what you want. By being Elite you already deserve it, and it's only a matter of taking what should be yours.*
But you are not special. You do not hold the secret truth that ascends you as a human, the one thought that makes you a render of worlds. Everybody else has their dreams and desires, hates and revulsions, struggles with themselves, just as you do. Everybody else has gone through trials and tribulations, gained reality and revelations just as you did. Everybody is just as awake and just as conscious as you are. You do not tower above humanity. You are looking it in the eye and saying "I'm taller." But you're not. We are all the same height, and only by standing on the shoulders of others can we see further.
My thoughts do not make me Elite. If anything, my actions do. We must prove our worth, not steal it through Right of Consciousness. We all have our brilliance inside. All that matters is how we face the outside.
*A friend just suggested a third reason. We judge ourselves with respect to others. When we say "I am good," we really mean "I am better than everybody else." Believing ourselves to be Elite allows us to say "I are inherently better than others", and therefore "I am a Good Person."
Most people are unconscious. They do things without understanding why they are doing them. Other people are conscious and have developed a soul. They understand themselves and can influence the people around them. Only the conscious are really aware of what's going on.
Most people are background characters. The story of life passes them by, and they just go through the motions without understanding them. Some people have narratives. They have agency over their own lives and those of the backgrounds. Only the main characters are really aware of what's going on.
Most people are sheep. They follow the will of society without thinking about it. Other people are the shepherds. They see how the societal machine Works and can make it affect them less, or influence it. Only the shepherds are really aware of what's going on.
Seeing a pattern? The first one was something somebody I respect said last year. The second was said two years ago by somebody close to me. The third was what I believed three years ago. This is an idea that was independently developed by three very intelligent people. It made the world seem so obvious.
The overarching thema is to divide society into two groups. There's the unconscious/sheep/unwashed masses who do not have agency or influence over their own life or, as one person put it, the ability to consciously analyze reality. The other group is the conscious/shepherds/elites who have this ability to think for themselves. They are the movers and shakers of the world. Naturally, everybody who comes up with this idea automatically assumes they are part of group two.
Now this is an extremely comforting idea, the idea that you are more special than the faceless horde around you. It also has a lot of glaring problems. For example:
-Just because you don't know another person's life in depth does not mean you can make a sweeping condemnation of it. Most people have dreams, aspirations, and self-doubts just like you do. You might not be able to get in their head, but they cannot get in yours either. Can they see your eliteness glowing like a beacon? If not, maybe you can't see theirs.
-Self awareness isn't a discrete unit. You can have a measure of consciousness between "stick" and "Buddha". You can't break people into "self aware" and "not self aware", because people are things besides sticks and Buddhas. Imagine trying to break people into "babies" and "geezers" with nothing in between. That's what we're trying to do here.
-Similarly, self-awareness can't actually be maximized. Becoming one of "the conscious" implies that you have achieved the epitome of awakenedness, which would be like trying to achieve absolute mastery over lifting things. In the grand scheme of things you will never, ever, become Buddha. Additionally, self-awareness isn't a one-dimensional thing. I may understand more about what makes me angry, but you might know more about what makes you happy. Trying to compare one person's consciousness to another's is mathematically meaningless.
-The entire idea is just Objectivism with a heaping scoop of metaphysical superiority.
It's poison. It convinces you that you are Above other people and know more about them they do themselves. They will never understand you, for you are an Elite and they are just the Sheep. It's not a large step to start believing that you can ignore other people's opinions on matters and even violate the rules that keep civilization functioning. I've certainly been there. Once you start believing only the Elite posses the truth, you're no longer part of the "little people".
I can't say why this belief is so popular. I mean, all three of us came up with it, and I'm sure far more have too. I think it might be a defense mechanism. The world isn't an unimaginably complex network of connections where the aspirations of a guy in Kansas can tank the price of your morning coffee. A world where billions of people are fighting tooth and claw to achieve their dreams. Much easier to believe that only a few people affect things, and the rest are along for the ride. Easier to think that everybody's dreams and "2.5 children and a white picket fence" and only you, only you, truly hold a burning desire. It makes you special. You don't have to prove to the world that you deserve what you want. By being Elite you already deserve it, and it's only a matter of taking what should be yours.*
But you are not special. You do not hold the secret truth that ascends you as a human, the one thought that makes you a render of worlds. Everybody else has their dreams and desires, hates and revulsions, struggles with themselves, just as you do. Everybody else has gone through trials and tribulations, gained reality and revelations just as you did. Everybody is just as awake and just as conscious as you are. You do not tower above humanity. You are looking it in the eye and saying "I'm taller." But you're not. We are all the same height, and only by standing on the shoulders of others can we see further.
My thoughts do not make me Elite. If anything, my actions do. We must prove our worth, not steal it through Right of Consciousness. We all have our brilliance inside. All that matters is how we face the outside.
*A friend just suggested a third reason. We judge ourselves with respect to others. When we say "I am good," we really mean "I am better than everybody else." Believing ourselves to be Elite allows us to say "I are inherently better than others", and therefore "I am a Good Person."
Thursday, October 20, 2011
On Stagnation
Stagation.
The third state. The one we fall into without a thought, trapped in our railroads and empty routines. The worst state, where where growth is stunted and our fire goes out. Stagnation is what kills us in the end. We may try to improve ourselves to death, but that blaze is never in reach. We stop improving, we stagnate, and then we die.
I used to think that stagnation was an anomalous state, an aberration caused by... something. I don't know. Trying to write it out just emphasizes how pervasive it is. Nothing causes stagnation. After we've grown enough it simply happens. It's the normal state, I think. Only serious external events really knock us out of complacency and back into growth. Otherwise we're stuck. We can temporarily force ourselves to fight, but not for long. We grow tired and our will fails us.
As you can tell, I want to improve. So stagnation is a biiiiiiit of a problem.
Solving it is essential. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do this. It seems almost impossible. The entire point of stagnation is that if you aren't doing your damnest every single day to avoid it, you succumb to it. And it's really hard to do your damnest.
Case in point: last night I got badly drenched by the storm. Really badly, "shoes are soaked completely through" badly. There was no way for me to get to campus today, so I stayed home. My plan was to get ahead on all of my work. Over the past ten hours I have... done my reading for one class, read five pages for my research job, and did the dishes. I spent the rest of it vegging out in front of the computer and playing with the rabbit. Hell, I just managed to force myself to do my laundry. The place isn't cleaned, I haven't made tomorrow's lunch, I haven't graded a single homework... you get the idea. Writing this post is taking a huge amount of effort. Today I stagnated.
So stagnation is something we have to use every ounce of will to beat, for a short time, and without much gain. To stop stagnating we have to gain infinite willpower or be physically addicted to improvement or something. It's a shadow under which we live with our whole lives. It has always has the upper hand, and the rules say it always wins.
But what if we cheat?
Is there a way to beat stagnation without inhuman willpower? Maybe. Could we set things up so there's always external events kicking us out of the rut? I have no idea. But it's an idea worth pursuing.
The most important part in self improvement is also the hardest to do. How do we beat stagnation? I've been trying to figure this out for years and have gotten nowhere. But maybe this is the year. If not, next year. If not, the year after that...
The third state. The one we fall into without a thought, trapped in our railroads and empty routines. The worst state, where where growth is stunted and our fire goes out. Stagnation is what kills us in the end. We may try to improve ourselves to death, but that blaze is never in reach. We stop improving, we stagnate, and then we die.
I used to think that stagnation was an anomalous state, an aberration caused by... something. I don't know. Trying to write it out just emphasizes how pervasive it is. Nothing causes stagnation. After we've grown enough it simply happens. It's the normal state, I think. Only serious external events really knock us out of complacency and back into growth. Otherwise we're stuck. We can temporarily force ourselves to fight, but not for long. We grow tired and our will fails us.
As you can tell, I want to improve. So stagnation is a biiiiiiit of a problem.
Solving it is essential. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do this. It seems almost impossible. The entire point of stagnation is that if you aren't doing your damnest every single day to avoid it, you succumb to it. And it's really hard to do your damnest.
Case in point: last night I got badly drenched by the storm. Really badly, "shoes are soaked completely through" badly. There was no way for me to get to campus today, so I stayed home. My plan was to get ahead on all of my work. Over the past ten hours I have... done my reading for one class, read five pages for my research job, and did the dishes. I spent the rest of it vegging out in front of the computer and playing with the rabbit. Hell, I just managed to force myself to do my laundry. The place isn't cleaned, I haven't made tomorrow's lunch, I haven't graded a single homework... you get the idea. Writing this post is taking a huge amount of effort. Today I stagnated.
So stagnation is something we have to use every ounce of will to beat, for a short time, and without much gain. To stop stagnating we have to gain infinite willpower or be physically addicted to improvement or something. It's a shadow under which we live with our whole lives. It has always has the upper hand, and the rules say it always wins.
But what if we cheat?
Is there a way to beat stagnation without inhuman willpower? Maybe. Could we set things up so there's always external events kicking us out of the rut? I have no idea. But it's an idea worth pursuing.
The most important part in self improvement is also the hardest to do. How do we beat stagnation? I've been trying to figure this out for years and have gotten nowhere. But maybe this is the year. If not, next year. If not, the year after that...
Sunday, October 16, 2011
An Ignoble Experiment
When my computer died I thought I'd be more productive in class. This is technically true, in that I'm doing a lot of grading and writing in class. My attention to class hasn't improved in the slightest. I go to class out of a sense of duty; that as a student I should go through all of the motions of learning. For a long time I've wondered if this is impeding my actual learning. Maybe if I pushed myself those 16 hours I spend in class per week could be put to much better use.
So I'm going to try an experiment this week. I am only going to necessary classes- classes with either discussions or homework due. During the class hours I will only be able to work on class material, work on homework, do my jobs, and work towards Millennium Goals. At the end of the week I'll post a rundown of how things went. Cool? Cool.
So I'm going to try an experiment this week. I am only going to necessary classes- classes with either discussions or homework due. During the class hours I will only be able to work on class material, work on homework, do my jobs, and work towards Millennium Goals. At the end of the week I'll post a rundown of how things went. Cool? Cool.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Myth of the Ultimate Person
A few days ago some of us had a conversation on facebook about the possibility of robots outcompeting humanity. Standard science fiction stuff. The one person asked "can we create an ultimate person?" I thought this was an incredibly interesting question, given my general outlook on life. If there is an ultimate person, obviously I'd want to work towards that. So it kinda sucks that there isn't.
Let's get the obvious problem out of the way. We can trivially define the UP to be "in absolute perfect physical, mental, and spiritual condition." This already causes a bit of an issue. For one, 'absolute perfect physical condition' doesn't actually exist. Every physical ability corresponds to some physical attribute, and these attributes often clash with each other. It's not just a matter of finite time and resources. Sometimes getting better at one thing actively makes you worse at another. Become the best football player in the world? Good luck doing gymnastics. Prefer to master contortion? You won't have the strength to do well in a fight. This even holds true in subfields of physical abilities, where the best marathoners make terrible sprinters. You can be the best in the world at something, sure, but for everything else you'll have to settle for merely 'good'.
Okay, this isn't a huge deal. Instead of requiring UPs be absolutely perfect we just have them maximize competence, whatever that means. Being damn good in a bunch of things is better than being the best in one if we're trying to achieve ultimacy. In which case our problem shifts to the whole 'mental and spiritual part'. What does it mean to have a good mind? A good soul? Is being a biologist better than an economist? A NeoKantian better than a hedonist? A quiet man better than a brash and outgoing one?
Ultimately, 'the best' is incredibly sensitive to cultural assumptions. Five hundred years ago racism was perfectly okay. Heck, you don't even need go back in time. Just look at the difference between the ideas of academic success between American and Chinese universities. Any conception of the ultimate person is intrinsically tied to the cultural assumptions you use to decide what is "best". There is no absolute metric, and so no absolute "ultimate". My conception of the ultimate person can be your conception of the quintessential asshole, and we'd both be right.
So where does that leave self improvement? Why do we self improve if there's no reasonable culmination? We can't just say "we'll improve to our cultural norms." Part of self improvement is avoiding misperception, which means we have to rise above our intrinsic assumptions. But while there is no 'ultimate person', there is still a 'better person'. Someone who clearly isn't above mankind or whom maximizes his cultural value, but a person who is capable of doing a little more. The person who has a little more control over his own mind and emotions, who can choose to be a pacifist or a killer depending on what he chooses. Clearly you hit problems if this control becomes absolute, because a person who could change their personality at will isn't a human anymore. But it's a goal constructed of smaller, attainable goals.
Looking back, this entire post makes very little sense. Proof that I shouldn't try updating at three in the morning.
Let's get the obvious problem out of the way. We can trivially define the UP to be "in absolute perfect physical, mental, and spiritual condition." This already causes a bit of an issue. For one, 'absolute perfect physical condition' doesn't actually exist. Every physical ability corresponds to some physical attribute, and these attributes often clash with each other. It's not just a matter of finite time and resources. Sometimes getting better at one thing actively makes you worse at another. Become the best football player in the world? Good luck doing gymnastics. Prefer to master contortion? You won't have the strength to do well in a fight. This even holds true in subfields of physical abilities, where the best marathoners make terrible sprinters. You can be the best in the world at something, sure, but for everything else you'll have to settle for merely 'good'.
Okay, this isn't a huge deal. Instead of requiring UPs be absolutely perfect we just have them maximize competence, whatever that means. Being damn good in a bunch of things is better than being the best in one if we're trying to achieve ultimacy. In which case our problem shifts to the whole 'mental and spiritual part'. What does it mean to have a good mind? A good soul? Is being a biologist better than an economist? A NeoKantian better than a hedonist? A quiet man better than a brash and outgoing one?
Ultimately, 'the best' is incredibly sensitive to cultural assumptions. Five hundred years ago racism was perfectly okay. Heck, you don't even need go back in time. Just look at the difference between the ideas of academic success between American and Chinese universities. Any conception of the ultimate person is intrinsically tied to the cultural assumptions you use to decide what is "best". There is no absolute metric, and so no absolute "ultimate". My conception of the ultimate person can be your conception of the quintessential asshole, and we'd both be right.
So where does that leave self improvement? Why do we self improve if there's no reasonable culmination? We can't just say "we'll improve to our cultural norms." Part of self improvement is avoiding misperception, which means we have to rise above our intrinsic assumptions. But while there is no 'ultimate person', there is still a 'better person'. Someone who clearly isn't above mankind or whom maximizes his cultural value, but a person who is capable of doing a little more. The person who has a little more control over his own mind and emotions, who can choose to be a pacifist or a killer depending on what he chooses. Clearly you hit problems if this control becomes absolute, because a person who could change their personality at will isn't a human anymore. But it's a goal constructed of smaller, attainable goals.
Looking back, this entire post makes very little sense. Proof that I shouldn't try updating at three in the morning.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
On Misperception
All of the improvement I've talked about so far are action improvements. They're about things like optimizing free time and messing with risk reward. All of the millennium goals, save one, are about doing something, or doing something better. Even the patience one is about gaining the ability to sit still, not the mind to do it. There's only one millennium goal directly related to how I think, the one about emotional hypersensitivity. I think this is a huge shame. It's generally much easier to improve ourselves physically and professionally than mentally. But mental improvement is the absolute core of self growth. Without the ability to change our perceptions, we can't truly say we've become better people.
We're human. That has a lot of meaning behind it, but there's only one I'm concerned with right now: flawed. To be human means to be imperfect in countless numbers of ways, from our failing bodies to our holes in our knowledge. But by far the worst flaws are the ones where we see the world in a wrong way. A few ways immediately leap to mind: racism, homeopathism, theism/atheism to atheists/theists, etcetera. More subtle are the ones that don't define a mode of thought but hide in the cracks of our interactions. If I miss a day of training I've failed. Only a genius can write a program. I don't have the time to learn this thing. I'm spineless. I am set in my ways.
What makes these so terrible is how hard they are to fix. First of all, you have to notice them. Finding a flaw in your perception is like needing to fix a car that you don't know is broken. The flaw is just another part of how you deal with the world. Unless something huge happens to you or you spend a lot of time introspecting, you'll never realize you have it. Writing that short list was incredibly difficult for that reason. I just couldn't think of possible flaws in perception. They were there, certainly in me and certainly in others, but they're almost invisible.
Then you have to realize it's a flaw. It was only recently that I learned to "loosen up" with my training regimen. I used to think that if I didn't run for a day, I failed at exercising. That would lead to me just giving up and abandoning my work. I didn't think this was a problem, though. I was holding myself to a high standard, where the price of failure was so great that I should never even consider missing a day. But now I think that part of working hard at something is to be adaptable. I am not defined by what I do or don't do. I can be a runner without running, a writer who doesn't write, even a physicist without physics. Rather it's a mode of thought and focus, not the act of doing those things but the will and desire to do them. I am not a runner because I run. I run because I'm a runner. And this means that even if I don't run for a day, I'm still a runner. My former perception of "fail once fail forever" was invalid, to be replaced with "a miss is a blip on the radar."
((Incidentally, I'm staying up late to write this, so instead of exercising in the early morning I'll just jog and lift after my class today. Adaptability means keeping the ritual while allowing yourself to break free of the routine.))
Finally, and perhaps worst of all, you have to know that you can change a perception. This may very well be the hardest part. A lot of them are self inhibiting. Say you think you lack willpower or patience. Will you have the willpower to build patience and the patience to build willpower? Not until you stop thinking you lack them. Catch twenty-two. We never change, and so we live our forlorn lives. We stay angry and hurt and petty and down, never once truly believing that we can make ourselves better.
Is there an easy way to change perception? I wish there was. The question is pretty much the same as: is there a fast track to becoming a better person? The past 4000 years of theology say 'no'. And I'm not gonna argue with the Buddha. We have to try, though. If we want to really improve as people and not just pick up new skills and tricks, we have to change our perceptions. It's a slow and agonizing process, one from which I've often strayed away. But I keep coming back. There's no other way.
My past few posts have been small ramblings on the metagame, so I figure it's time to talk about where I currently am. Two of the millennium goals are completed, and I'm working on five more. The photography and Spanish ones have unfortunately fallen by the wayside, and I'm not putting as much time into anaerobics as I should. But still, they're coming along! I'm confident that I'll have at least five more of the short term ones done by winter. That's only two terrible movies I have to watch. I'm gonna restart the Spanish effort this week, maybe reserve the photography one for a winter-break reading marathon. It's one of the goals that can be completed in a very short intense time, unlike the steady pace ones I'm currently doing.
I think I've hit my limit. What are your thoughts on misperception? Can you think of any powerful ones people don't notice? How do you work on changing them?
We're human. That has a lot of meaning behind it, but there's only one I'm concerned with right now: flawed. To be human means to be imperfect in countless numbers of ways, from our failing bodies to our holes in our knowledge. But by far the worst flaws are the ones where we see the world in a wrong way. A few ways immediately leap to mind: racism, homeopathism, theism/atheism to atheists/theists, etcetera. More subtle are the ones that don't define a mode of thought but hide in the cracks of our interactions. If I miss a day of training I've failed. Only a genius can write a program. I don't have the time to learn this thing. I'm spineless. I am set in my ways.
What makes these so terrible is how hard they are to fix. First of all, you have to notice them. Finding a flaw in your perception is like needing to fix a car that you don't know is broken. The flaw is just another part of how you deal with the world. Unless something huge happens to you or you spend a lot of time introspecting, you'll never realize you have it. Writing that short list was incredibly difficult for that reason. I just couldn't think of possible flaws in perception. They were there, certainly in me and certainly in others, but they're almost invisible.
Then you have to realize it's a flaw. It was only recently that I learned to "loosen up" with my training regimen. I used to think that if I didn't run for a day, I failed at exercising. That would lead to me just giving up and abandoning my work. I didn't think this was a problem, though. I was holding myself to a high standard, where the price of failure was so great that I should never even consider missing a day. But now I think that part of working hard at something is to be adaptable. I am not defined by what I do or don't do. I can be a runner without running, a writer who doesn't write, even a physicist without physics. Rather it's a mode of thought and focus, not the act of doing those things but the will and desire to do them. I am not a runner because I run. I run because I'm a runner. And this means that even if I don't run for a day, I'm still a runner. My former perception of "fail once fail forever" was invalid, to be replaced with "a miss is a blip on the radar."
((Incidentally, I'm staying up late to write this, so instead of exercising in the early morning I'll just jog and lift after my class today. Adaptability means keeping the ritual while allowing yourself to break free of the routine.))
Finally, and perhaps worst of all, you have to know that you can change a perception. This may very well be the hardest part. A lot of them are self inhibiting. Say you think you lack willpower or patience. Will you have the willpower to build patience and the patience to build willpower? Not until you stop thinking you lack them. Catch twenty-two. We never change, and so we live our forlorn lives. We stay angry and hurt and petty and down, never once truly believing that we can make ourselves better.
Is there an easy way to change perception? I wish there was. The question is pretty much the same as: is there a fast track to becoming a better person? The past 4000 years of theology say 'no'. And I'm not gonna argue with the Buddha. We have to try, though. If we want to really improve as people and not just pick up new skills and tricks, we have to change our perceptions. It's a slow and agonizing process, one from which I've often strayed away. But I keep coming back. There's no other way.
My past few posts have been small ramblings on the metagame, so I figure it's time to talk about where I currently am. Two of the millennium goals are completed, and I'm working on five more. The photography and Spanish ones have unfortunately fallen by the wayside, and I'm not putting as much time into anaerobics as I should. But still, they're coming along! I'm confident that I'll have at least five more of the short term ones done by winter. That's only two terrible movies I have to watch. I'm gonna restart the Spanish effort this week, maybe reserve the photography one for a winter-break reading marathon. It's one of the goals that can be completed in a very short intense time, unlike the steady pace ones I'm currently doing.
I think I've hit my limit. What are your thoughts on misperception? Can you think of any powerful ones people don't notice? How do you work on changing them?
Monday, October 3, 2011
On Activity
My computer died today.
It still works, technically, but it won't recharge. If I'm lucky I might be able to borrow somebody else's battery, use it to back up all of my important files. Otherwise it's dead. Looks like it's time to get a new computer.
I'm going to hold off as long as possible. This is going to be the first time in two years I'm not constantly wired to the internet. I'll only get small doses whenever I can get to a library or steal somebody's laptop. I think this will be good for me. Let me explain why.
We can roughly divide people's actions into high intensity and low intensity. High intensity is commonly seen as "productive". This is self improvement, working a job, doing homework. Low intensity is generally "relaxing". Meditation, watching television, playing video games, going for a walk. This is not to say that these boundaries are well-defined. Sports are high intensity relaxation, knitting is low intensity productive/relaxation, cooking can be high intensity or low depending on what you're doing, etc. Maximizing the value of your time is to walk the fine line between high intensity and low intensity activities. Too much of the former and you crash, too much of the latter and you don't burn.
But there's another side of this, a third thing you can do besides production and relaxation. That's stagnation. Time you don't spend burning or healing yourself. Time you spend eroding, slowly falling apart through complacency and lethargy. It's the dark side of relaxation. We relax to eventually work again. We stagnate to continue stagnating.
The problem is how thin the line is. A lot of things we do to relax can be easily turned into stagnation. Think about the difference between playing two games of Starcraft and playing twenty.* I definitely have a problem with this. I'm really afraid of relaxing, not because I'm some sort of working machine but because I know how easily it will turn into wasting. So I spend more time in high intensity, which leads to me crashing more often. Then I need to relax a crapton, which quickly turns into stagnation, which makes the next productive zone a little less productive... so yeah. My time schedule is completely out of whack. I need to cut my high time, boost my low time, and do away with my stagnation periods.
Where does the computer fit into all of this? Being jacked to the net makes stagnation incredibly easy. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about. Worse, it's often high intensity. I've somehow managed to make surfing the web physically draining. Might explain why I'm so underweight. It also means that when I finally drag myself away from the internet I'm in a worse place than when I started. Surfing the web is one thing, snorting it is another. I do the latter.
That's why I think losing it will be good for me. I'm going through a detox here. Being semi-cut off from the internet should help me learn to use my time more wisely. Of course, I can't go cold turkey. There's still work and academics to worry about. But I think this will be enough.
You might call this sour grapes. I mean, I'm trying to justify why losing my computer is a good thing. I see this as optimism. If things go right I'll walk out of this a better person than I came in. I'm taking a bad situation and trying to spin it to my advantage. Isn't that what luck is? Every setback is an opportunity. Here's hoping this one pays off.
It still works, technically, but it won't recharge. If I'm lucky I might be able to borrow somebody else's battery, use it to back up all of my important files. Otherwise it's dead. Looks like it's time to get a new computer.
I'm going to hold off as long as possible. This is going to be the first time in two years I'm not constantly wired to the internet. I'll only get small doses whenever I can get to a library or steal somebody's laptop. I think this will be good for me. Let me explain why.
We can roughly divide people's actions into high intensity and low intensity. High intensity is commonly seen as "productive". This is self improvement, working a job, doing homework. Low intensity is generally "relaxing". Meditation, watching television, playing video games, going for a walk. This is not to say that these boundaries are well-defined. Sports are high intensity relaxation, knitting is low intensity productive/relaxation, cooking can be high intensity or low depending on what you're doing, etc. Maximizing the value of your time is to walk the fine line between high intensity and low intensity activities. Too much of the former and you crash, too much of the latter and you don't burn.
But there's another side of this, a third thing you can do besides production and relaxation. That's stagnation. Time you don't spend burning or healing yourself. Time you spend eroding, slowly falling apart through complacency and lethargy. It's the dark side of relaxation. We relax to eventually work again. We stagnate to continue stagnating.
The problem is how thin the line is. A lot of things we do to relax can be easily turned into stagnation. Think about the difference between playing two games of Starcraft and playing twenty.* I definitely have a problem with this. I'm really afraid of relaxing, not because I'm some sort of working machine but because I know how easily it will turn into wasting. So I spend more time in high intensity, which leads to me crashing more often. Then I need to relax a crapton, which quickly turns into stagnation, which makes the next productive zone a little less productive... so yeah. My time schedule is completely out of whack. I need to cut my high time, boost my low time, and do away with my stagnation periods.
Where does the computer fit into all of this? Being jacked to the net makes stagnation incredibly easy. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about. Worse, it's often high intensity. I've somehow managed to make surfing the web physically draining. Might explain why I'm so underweight. It also means that when I finally drag myself away from the internet I'm in a worse place than when I started. Surfing the web is one thing, snorting it is another. I do the latter.
That's why I think losing it will be good for me. I'm going through a detox here. Being semi-cut off from the internet should help me learn to use my time more wisely. Of course, I can't go cold turkey. There's still work and academics to worry about. But I think this will be enough.
You might call this sour grapes. I mean, I'm trying to justify why losing my computer is a good thing. I see this as optimism. If things go right I'll walk out of this a better person than I came in. I'm taking a bad situation and trying to spin it to my advantage. Isn't that what luck is? Every setback is an opportunity. Here's hoping this one pays off.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
On Procrastination
I was planning on writing a post about motivation, but procrastinated it into oblivion. Then I thought "Hey, why not write a post about procrastination" and here we are.
There are a lot of things I really want to do but never get around to. Uploading my Chile pictures. Finish my fiction. Update my blog. But I don't. I trade long term satisfaction for the immediate pleasure of surfin' da web. And it really is da web that's my procrastination locus. But not the only one. In Chile I'd not brting my computer home for precisely this reason. I ended up spending all of my time sleeping and reading trashy fantasy.
We are life with a question: why short term over long term? I'd say it's two reasons. Short term satisfaction absorbs the mind, so I don't remember the long term projects. This can be beaten by having constant reminders in always-novel forms. Any sort of daily planer becomes mundane and useless for remembering, after all. My This of course assumes I remember to set this up, which runs back into the procrastination problem.
But why seek short term pleasure at all? It's addictive, of course. Amusement and satisfaction provided in blazing-fast time?! Count me in! And once you start, the inertia keeps you going. Kinda like how you put going to bed off for just five minutes, then five again... How do we beat this? Either make the addiction provide less pleasure or the virtues provide more. I think this can be accomplished by a three-tiered approach.
1) Make slacking off less enjoyable. Install locks and conditions that make it tedious and difficult to reap rewards. This is easy to implement: Only one "addiction tab" can be open at once. I'm going to start this right now.
2) Make the reward more tangible. Give victory a taste. I can do this by encouraging friends to remind me about the benefits of my goals. Then actually improving is part getting what I need and gaining prestige among my friends. This should make putting in the effort a lot more appealing.
3) Make the process of improvement more enjoyable. Turn it into an addicting game. Set and reward milestones. This one is the hardest to figure out and implement, and will have to wait for another post.
Now I'm turning the question to you all. Why do you procrastinate? How do you overcome it?
There are a lot of things I really want to do but never get around to. Uploading my Chile pictures. Finish my fiction. Update my blog. But I don't. I trade long term satisfaction for the immediate pleasure of surfin' da web. And it really is da web that's my procrastination locus. But not the only one. In Chile I'd not brting my computer home for precisely this reason. I ended up spending all of my time sleeping and reading trashy fantasy.
We are life with a question: why short term over long term? I'd say it's two reasons. Short term satisfaction absorbs the mind, so I don't remember the long term projects. This can be beaten by having constant reminders in always-novel forms. Any sort of daily planer becomes mundane and useless for remembering, after all. My This of course assumes I remember to set this up, which runs back into the procrastination problem.
But why seek short term pleasure at all? It's addictive, of course. Amusement and satisfaction provided in blazing-fast time?! Count me in! And once you start, the inertia keeps you going. Kinda like how you put going to bed off for just five minutes, then five again... How do we beat this? Either make the addiction provide less pleasure or the virtues provide more. I think this can be accomplished by a three-tiered approach.
1) Make slacking off less enjoyable. Install locks and conditions that make it tedious and difficult to reap rewards. This is easy to implement: Only one "addiction tab" can be open at once. I'm going to start this right now.
2) Make the reward more tangible. Give victory a taste. I can do this by encouraging friends to remind me about the benefits of my goals. Then actually improving is part getting what I need and gaining prestige among my friends. This should make putting in the effort a lot more appealing.
3) Make the process of improvement more enjoyable. Turn it into an addicting game. Set and reward milestones. This one is the hardest to figure out and implement, and will have to wait for another post.
Now I'm turning the question to you all. Why do you procrastinate? How do you overcome it?
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