Production vs Consumption, Being Lazy, "Learning On The Job"

I've always considered myself a fairly lazy person. But I've recently realised that my laziness depends on the style of tasks.

I can sit around and consume information for hours. Days. I have a huge appetite for consumption. Of any nature. I'm indiscriminate when it comes to technical or casual information. But when it comes to production, I'm extremely lazy. I procrastinate. I find other things to do. What's with that?

I've thought about the people I most respect in my life recently, as well as the people I least respect in my life. I'll probably have to say - the people I least respect are the procrastinators. The people have a lot of potential, but never realise it. I might be one of those people. It depends what your expectation of yourself is, I guess.

I also realised another thing: why I may be so aligned to an ability to consume instead of produce. Throughout my life at school, we have a tendency to be taught theory rather than doing practicals. This lends itself to the learning the capacity to consume information, without learning the ability to produce. There is another skill we can learn: the skill of doing, and learning while we do. learning on the job. This helps as we can achieve two things at once: we can achieve a learning experience whilst still producing or going through the act of producing something.

What Writing A Book Has Taught Me About Life: The Ending

Creating a good story arc in a book can teach us a lot about how to interact in our every-day lives. In this article, I'd like to talk about the ending of the book.

In the ending of the book, there should be a sense of closure. The different threads of the story all get tied up into a nice, enclosed finale, where the event being written about comes to its final resting place (unless it's a cliff-hanger). There aren't many situations in normal life where events get such a polished sense of closure... so why is this type of story ending so popular?

It's popular because people like to have closure in their lives: because leaving something open-ended gives them stress. It's another thing they have to try to remember or even worry about. Giving people a cliff-hanger in a book can sometimes be effective, but a lot of the time, people can resent you for giving them the stress of not having closure.

What can we learn from this for every-day life? Have a finishing message with your interactions that signify closure with that action. This finishing message could take many different forms, depending on what the action was. I recently helped someone out with a task, but didn't receive a thank you. I wasn't particularly bothered about "not being appreciated" - I'm sure I was - rather, I was actually worried I hadn't done a good job. The lack of closure that I take from not being told, "thank you", leaves that action open-ended for me.

You've got to think about what was meant to be accomplished with each action. Another example is the dating scene. What is the reason for going on a date (let's say: first date)? To see if you like someone enough to continue seeing them. So at the end of the date, saying, "I really enjoyed this, I'd like to see you again", gives a sense of closure.

On the other hand, saying, "my schedule is pretty busy, I'll see if I can fit you in in the future", gives a big cliff-hanger for the other person. Will you see them again? Won't you? The door is left open, and a lot of people struggle with that. I think that some people consciously use this sense of non-closure, because by leaving it open means that the other person (person two) is forced to go back to think about that unresolved issue, in hopes of closure. This means that the person two almost feels compelled to think about person one every now and again.  From there, it could go one of two way: down the path of increased energy being input into the relationship, or closing the door emotionally to gain some form of closure.

Another form of not finding closure is in earworms. Earworms are songs that get stuck in your head. Scientists believe that they get stuck in your head because you might know the chorus and first verse, but you can't remember the middle and end of the song enough to finish it. In this way, earworms get stuck in your working memory, the part of your brain responsible for holding information on tasks that aren't complete. If you can finish the song, your brain may deem the "task" complete and the song will be forgotten. Another line of research that scientists have gone down is getting rid of earworms through other methods. Interestingly, researchers have found correlation between doing anagrams and removing earworms. This is because it is believed that we have limited working memory and a five-letter anagram is usually the perfect size to use up most of our working memory: forcing out the earworm.

In the end, whether closure has been found is how the two phrases, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder”, and “out of sight, out of mind”, can still be resolved without being contradictory - depending on whether good closure has been found: either two possibilities could be true. 

Limitations With The Scientific Method

A friend of mine was talking to me on MSN/Lync, today. At one point, I used the acronym, 'tbf'. He didn't know what it meant and decided to reply back saying, "to be frank?", "I like it".

Now, I use it as "to be fair", but it can just as easily be used as "to be frank". And here's the interesting bit... you can use it as both, simultaneously. If you write the acronym, people will take it however they want to take it. It's only when they ask what you mean that you'll have to pick the three words you're associating the acronym with.

It's at the point that the other person asks that you collapse the waveform. Before asking the question, all possible options for what the acronym can be can exist simultaneously.

In quantum mechanics, collapsing the waveform is the act of observing an electron. The electron can have many different energetic states and can be said to exist in all of those states at once. However when a scientist decides to observe the electron, it can be seen that the electron then has the characteristics according to only one energetic state. I.e. The scientist asks what the acronym means, and the electron has to chose a specific set of words that resolves the equation (this is the same phenomenon as the one being investigated in the famous "Schrodinger's Cat" thought experiment, BTW (and yes, I did use an acronym on purpose)).

There's a problem with observing the electron, though. With all scientific tests, and tests conducted according to the Scientific Method, we set a theory first. We set an idea of what we expect to see, and then we test, controlling all variables that could negatively affect our outcome, so that we set up a "yes" or "no" answer to whether our theory is correct. But in this way, we give ourselves blinkers. We only allow ourselves to see what we can only comprehend. I didn't think that "tbf" could be be "to be frank", so I wouldn't even think to set up a test for it. But it can still exist as the set of words, "to be frank".

In this way, the extent of scientific discovery through the Scientific Method is limited. We are limited by how we can imagine something else to behave like. And as we get deeper and deeper into the weird world of Quantum Mechanics, things start behaving in ways that are less and less intuitive to us. So the scientific method becomes less and less useful. Rather, we need to reverse the way we study things.

The problem with observing before creating a theory around what we can deduce from our observations, is that there's so many things we can look at. I'm looking at electronic devices at the moment. There are hundreds of properties of that device based on how you look at it. How powerful is the device? How big is the device? How big is the screen? How many buttons does it have? What is the colour of the device? And some of these properties will be unknown to the observer - at least in the beginning: What is the photo-response non-uniformity of the camera? What is the dielectric breakdown voltage within the insulators of the transistors?

For example, categorizing by colour will be a useless variable to use if we want to try to work out how powerful the device is. You can get the most powerful computer to the most pathetic calculator in most colours.

Correlating size to power might start yielding more useful information. Categorizing type of electronic device: phone, laptop, desktop, computer - will also be useful.

But we're always limited to the tests and categories we can imagine and comprehend in our own minds. What if the universe works in a way that is outside our own perspective of what is possible, or what is possible to imagine? How will we ever be able to understand those mechanisms?

I guess the ultimate question is, is there a way - a framework - that allows us to realise correlations that are outside of what's possible for us to imagine? Because right now, the Scientific Method is getting more and more inadequate.

A Negative Outlook - Symptoms & cause

I was deliberating for a good few minutes about the title of this post: "A Negative Outlook" or "A Positive Outlook". The edgy title vs. the uplifting one.  In the end, I decided to go for the edgy one, because as Drake says: "Sometimes working with the negatives can make for better pictures".  However this post is essentially going to look at both perspectives and will argue a case for having a positive mentality using logical rhetoric: because a lot of the time, even though most of us intuitively know that it's good to be positive, I think we forget all the reasons why it just makes logical sense to have a positive outlook. And sometimes by explicitly articulating something logically (or solidifying nebulous ideas), everything just makes more sense.

First, I'd like to delve into why we have a negative outlook in the first place. Let's imagine a time back when humans were just cavemen. There's the caveman that was negative: don't taste those berries, they might be poisonous. He'd be cautious with the other cavemen and reserved: what if they had sinister motives? He lived his life with a sense of careful unease, always wary to try new things. But he ultimately lived a long life and passed on his genes. Then there was the happy, positive caveman who saw the good in everything. He'd try all the tasty berries, he'd make friends with all the other cavemen and find out their interesting stories. He'd pet the furry lion. The lion would rip off his arm and bury his face into the man's warm, juicy stomach.

There's an evolutionary reason why we focus on the negatives. Why we're cautious and sceptical. We do it to survive - there are a lot of things out there that can kill us.

People can often tell how we see the world: how cautious, sceptical and negative we are. There are many different tells the reveal how we see the world to other people. The words we use, our tone, our body language all point towards how we focus on problems and ideas.

But there's a reason why we should be positive as well. Let me ask this question: why would anyone around you want to be persuaded by an idea of yours if you express it while focussing on the negatives? What kind of emotions will you be evoking in someone else if you use language that insinuates that you're conscious of all the ways in which a project or idea might fail? The chances are: you won't be evoking many good emotions. And it's surprising how much of a difference that makes. If people start associating negative emotions with something you're trying to persuade them to help you with, you won't stand a very good chance of influencing them. There are more reasons as well: what kind of emotional state will you generally be in if you continue to focus on the possible ways anything can fail? Chances are, you'll be pretty nervous most of the time. And that's not a comfortable state to be in.

How do we resolve this problem, then? We don't want to be mauled by the lion, but we want to be happy, effective, influential people.

The trick is to do both.

1. Weigh up the positive and negative points for a project/proposition/action. Do this critically with as little bias as possible: the negative people will tend to focus on the negative points, positive people on positive points. Try to remain objective here.
2. Decide on whether you want to continue with your action. You'd want to do this - obviously - if the positives outweighed the negatives.
3. Prepare for the negative outcomes. Plan for the worst case scenario. The second worst case scenario. Mentally prepare and come up with ideas of how you would mitigate what would happen and move on.
4. Once you've prepared for the negative outcomes, stop focussing on them. Start focussing on the positive outcomes. You wouldn't be doing whatever you're doing if you didn't think it would positively impact you life. You're doing this because it will hopefully make your life better. So start focussing on that. How good it'll be when you successfully complete something. And hopefully it'll create a positive feedback loop as well. People will see how positive you're being about it, and you'd be more influential on getting a team together to help you on your journey to success.

Freedom

I wish I could jump a mile high. I wish I could be a millionaire overnight. I wish I could become someone's best friend by giving them a silly look. But I can't. Because to get anything done, we need to understand the rules of the game and play them well to achieve what we want.

We're bound by rules. Rules are what facilitated our existence. Without the rules of nature, the amino acids in prehistoric primordial soup couldn't have come together in a repeatable formation, evolved over millions of years to create us.

Without the rules of law and capitalism - our man-made laws - we couldn't have formed the civilization we have done today.

Without the laws of neuroscience and psychology, people would be (even more!) completely unpredictable, impossible to form friendships and relationships with.

We're all bound by laws. We're ensnared by them.  There is no trick to get round them, no shortcut out of the game we're born into.

How do we resolve this feeling of utter hopelessness? Of feeling trapped in a corner by hidden forces: strings that pull us taught and loose when it's the correct time to do so?

We need to find freedom within the boundaries of the laws we're born into. We can't jump a mile into the air: we will never naturally be able to do so. But we can jump ever so slightly higher than the next guy, if we train hard for it. We can earn more than the average guy if we put deliberate practice into the rules of business, the rules of capitalism, the rules of technology and science and life - and apply them in a way where we profit from the trends and products that occur due to these rules.

We can always find constraints if we look for them. But we can find small areas of freedom if we look for them as well.

"Man is free the moment he wishes to be" - Voltaire

Modern Day's Version Of The Prisoner's Dilemma

I was walking home from work yesterday, thinking about the social dynamics of Tinder (as you do) and realised that it's reminiscent of The Prisoner's Dilemma. For those of you who don't know this problem, Wikipedia explains it like this:

Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of speaking to or exchanging messages with the other. The prosecutors do not have enough evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They hope to get both sentenced to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the prosecutors offer each prisoner a bargain. Each prisoner is given the opportunity either to: betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent. Here is the offer:

• If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves 2 years in prison
• If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve 3 years in prison (and vice versa)
• If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve 1 year in prison (on the lesser charge)

It is implied that the prisoners will have no opportunity to reward or punish their partner other than the prison sentences they get, and that their decision will not affect their reputation in the future. Because betraying a partner offers a greater reward than cooperating with him, all purely rational self-interested prisoners would betray the other, and so the only possible outcome for two purely rational prisoners is for them to betray each other.^[1] The interesting part of this result is that pursuing individual reward logically leads both of the prisoners to betray, when they would get a better reward if they both kept silent.

I realised Tinder "game theory" is similar:

Two members of Tinder go out for a date. Each person doesn't know the other, and doesn't know the motives behind the other person's reason for a date. There could be two motives that you can have for wanting to go on a date: the first is for casual sex, the second is for a relationship. In this dilemma, both A and B hope to get into a relationship, but neither of them know the other person's motive. Now we have three possible combinations;

• If A and B both say they want just casual sex, both get just casual sex
• If A tells B that they want a relationship but B wants just casual sex, B will not feel comfortable continuing to see A knowing that A wants more, and will break off the Tindership, Neither will get anything.
• If A tells B that they want a relationship and B also wants a relationship, they both live happily ever after. Yay.

Now, as stated earlier, in this dilemma both parties want a relationship. But we can see that saying that you want a relationship also opens the risk of getting nothing in return. Rather, the best decision logically might be to say that you just want casual sex, as in this way, you always get at least casual sex out of a Tindership rather than run the risk of getting nothing. 

Discuss.

Grit Can Be Learnt

Balls. Guts. Bravado. Brilliance. Boldness.

Grit.

There is one thing in all of us. We all have tremendous potential, but we're all limited by ourselves. We all have some amount of self-doubt within us. If we were able to translate 100% of what we know into a useful business output, we'd all be rich.

But there's one thing that's mentioned time and time again that's needed in creating your own successful company: grit.

We need grit to push our idea out in the real world. To stick with our idea when things look hard.

A lot of people talk about grit as if it's perseverance. Or it's the ability to let problems and set back wash off you like they were nothing. And in a way, yes, that's right. But I see those qualities as the symptoms of grit, not the cause. Because the way I see grit is as the vehicle to get your idea from conception to production.

What are the implications when I say that grit is the vehicle for your idea to become profitable? Well, I mean that we might have the best idea in the world, but we might not know what to do with it. We might not know the steps - legally, financially, technically and marketing-wise - that we need to take that idea through in order for it to succeed.

And knowledge is power.

Perseverance is the symptom of knowing that what you're doing will come out alright, because you have a vision of the steps you need to go through to succeed. Problems solving skills are a symptom of knowing techniques to tackle those problems.

Of course, you can THINK you know what you're doing. You could be unconsciously incompetent. But that will reveal itself fairly quickly and the poor misguided individual will be lead back to be shown that they need to learn a bit more before thinking they can be adept with certain skills.

"Okay", I hear you saying, "that's all good and well, but where can I LEARN this information, then?"

Here's my break-down of the soft skills you need to know and be aware of to have grit:

1. Knowing what market & skill area you should invest yourself into
Some people follow their passion and fail because they don't have the business acumen. Some people follow their skills and "sell their soul", doing work they don't enjoy. Some people find a way to do both. I'd invite you to read: So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport to learn why skills are important. Then I'd invite you to read The Element by Sir Ken Robinson for the "passion" view. The trick is in finding something that you love, that you're good at. Then, finally, read Where Good Ideas Come From by Stephen Johnson to know how and when you can catch that money-making idea.

2. Financial literacy
If you want to be financially successful, you need to be financially literate. This means assessing your money flow critically, know assets and liabilities, knowing value added, business value added and no value added activities. There are TONS of places that you can learn financial literacy, and you may want to study a few different things to get different perspectives. I'd invite you to read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert T Kiyosaki to start you off.

3. Being emotionally intelligent
Emotional intelligence can be learnt, and it's a skill you need to be successful. Reading list:
How To Make Friends And Influence People - Dale Carnegie
Awareness - Anthony De Mello
Antifragile - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Power Of Now - Eckhart Tolle
The Antidote - Oliver Burkeman

4. Learning how to learn
What do you know? What don't you know? What are the things you don't know you don't know? Study philosophy and psychology - especially the four stages of competency.

5. Learning your own biases
We all have biases and flaws in our analytic thinking. Even the best of us. But the best of us catch 99.9% of those flaws, because they understand when they happen and how they happen. I'd invite you to read Thinking: Fast And Slow by Daniel Khanman and The HEAD Game by Philip Mudd.

6. General business acumen
This one is the most nebulous of skills. Getting into the head of successful businessmen is useful. The Snowball, about Warren Buffett, and When I Stop Talking You'll Know I'm dead by Jerry Weintraub are both good.


Excel in those 6 areas and you're well on your way. Of course... they you'd need to use your technical knowledge to come up with an idea that you can use grit to transport. Good luck.

Our Culture's New Unhealthy Obsession With Lists

10 Things You Didn't Know About Crossfit

5 Of The Best Times To Drink Coffee

50 Photos Of Cute Kittens That TOTALLY BLEW MY MIND


People seem to have an obsession with lists these days. Things that can be easily turned into metrics, and then ticked off, one at a time, so at the end of the task we get a mini feeling of completion. I do it at work all the time. In fact, I do it everywhere.

Fix bike. Check

Buy new shoe-laces. Check

Go to the gym. Check

Socialise with friends. Check

Eat. Breath. Sleep. Check.


It's got to a point where our lives are just a series of hoops to jump through. Digital binaries: complete or not complete. Is this all there is nowadays?

Yes, lists have their place, they're a useful tool for articulating our goals and plans. But we start becoming owned by the list. And therein lies the problem.

We need to re-instate our ownership over The List again. We need to remind ourselves to enjoy the journey, not the destination. Because even if we are able to finally tick those tasks off, we miss something vital if all we look forward to is crossing it out.

The Idea Of Feeling Like You "Deserve Something"

For a long time, I've agreed with this blog post.

In summary: WHY do you think you deserve something over someone else? No-one deserves anything, they need to work for what they have. Both the author of the linked blog and myself see a lot of people saying they deserve a lot of things... for no reason at all. "I deserve a better job": not if you're incompetent. "I deserve a nice person to be with": not if you're an asshole. As if it's their God-given right to have something. The author Ayn Rand is another big player for this idea, even coming up with her of philosophy on it: Objectivism.

But then I read this post (in particular, the line: "The first step to getting the things you want is to believe you deserve them."), and it put the idea of "deserving something" in a different light.

It put the idea of deserving something as a pre-requisite to frame your mentality before you're able to put the work in. So, after thinking that you deserve things, you also understand that you need to work to get it and you then put the work in.

It's ultimately a gauge of self-esteem. The greater your self-esteem and idea of self-worth, the more you think you would deserve it: if you put the work in. And I totally agree with this way of thinking. We all deserve great things, the good life, the mansions. But we've got to be willing to put in the work.

So next time I hear someone saying, "I deserve X", I'll agree with them. But I hope they'll have a good work plan set up for them to then achieve that goal. Because I don't believe that geniuses are born. Geniuses are sculpted, hour by hour, as they hone their skills towards mastery. I don't know if it takes 10,000 for mastery, but I believe that Mozart, Shakespeare, and Voltaire were all great because they were willing to put in the time to realise their full potential. And I think if we all went about life in the same way to realise our potential, we'd realise we have more power to create great work - and we'd deserve more - than we think.

An Extremely Stoic Perspective

In the grand scheme of things: civilizations rise and fall. Stars will swell up large and red and then pop out of existence. In five billion years, our own star will engulf the planet. The universe is slowly, unstoppable moving towards a state of disorder, like how sandcastles slowly fade back into the sand. And this disorder means the end of life. Whatever we produce will eventually be lost or destroyed or forgotten. If we're truly a great influence in society, perhaps what you put your name to will be talked about for the next few hundred years. Hey, you might be the loudest voice of our generation, of our civilisation, or our species, but that voice will eventually be lost - as if it never existed - when the universe becomes lifeless. If a tree falls in the forest with no-one to hear it... does it make a sound?

But you argue: yes, what we produce in isolation might fade, but what about the effect it has on society from years to come? If we create the tiniest grain of innovation in our lives, we leave one more inch of foundation for people to work on in the future. We will be immortalized by being another rung in the ladder for humanity's technological ascent. We may be a tiny drop in an endless ocean... but what is an ocean, but a multitude of tiny drops?

But I retort: you're thinking too short-scale. In a few trillion years, all stars will have burnt out. Like the sandcastle, there will only be atoms floating, spaced out in the universe. All there will be are inert particles floating through the vast darkness. Ultimately, everything is destined to die.

You could see this ideology as an existential crisis. And I guess it is. But ultimately, it's a liberating concept. If we just stop from the rat race for a moment, we are able to re-frame everything we do, based on this perspective. All of a sudden, that business opportunity that you've been stressing about stops to matter so much. The pursuit of money gets put back into it's correct place. I can lose perspective and put money on a pedestal, before happiness or health. I think a lot of people can do it: working countless hours so that they are able to say that they have a bit more money. But it doesn't matter.  Ultimately, none of that matters, because none of it will ever remain. Religious people will say, "you can't take your riches to the afterlife". But that's too short-term minded. Some people will say, "I can pass my wealth down to my kids", but that's too short-term minded. Those kids will have their kids will have their kids... until eventually, humanity goes extinct. It might take billions of years, but it is inevitable.

So what is the point of working hard? Why even bother? Well - now it's import to think short-term. We need to work hard so that in five, ten years, we'll be financially stable. That stability is the foundation to being able to do other things, to being happy. We might spend 30%, maybe even 60% of our time working to build that foundation, but we've got to keep perspective and think that the foundation isn't what we're working towards. What we're working towards is the grand palace we can build on top of it. And that palace is our happiness. Finding meaning and joy out of life. Even if it is just a flash in the grand scheme of things.

Knowledge is just a tool that we need to use so that we are able to be happy. We can be so fixated on learning knowledge that it becomes everything we strive for. But we need to remember that knowledge is means to an end. Yes, we can add value to society with our knowledge. We might even progress humanity forward with our knowledge: we might become the new Einstein's of our generation and create a new scientific age. We might be the best writers, artists, sports personalities or intellectuals: leaving a legacy after our death. This is invaluable to society - from a knowledge perspective. And seeing as you're adding value into society, you'll be worth something to society, which means that you'll be paid money for the work you do within society, which can act as your foundation. And then we come back to that final perspective - that foundation is there for you so you can be happy.

We need to work hard so that we can enjoy right now. Because ultimately: all that remains is right now. This moment. I can stop worrying so much about trying to be better, working to be rich or financially stable, or trying to leave a a tiny mark on this world before I pop out of existence again. I can take a deep breathe in, and re-find the beauty right in front of me.

Doing what's expected of you & sticking to "the plan"

I think everyone has a sense of duty. A feeling of burden when it comes to living up to other people's expectations of you. A feeling of honour. And different people have a lot of different expectations of you. Your mum wants you to "be happy", and get a family. Your friends want you to entertain them and make your company enjoyable to them. Your boss wants you to add the value you're being paid for to the company. I'm sure some people get this feeling of duty more than others.  It might be a cultural thing as well - as I'm writing this, I'm reminded of the Chinese/Eastern culture of strictly trying to live up to your parent's expectations of you.

I know I've certainly had this feeling. With regards to adding worth to society: first with my father, as a child, and now at work. Every time I make a mistake at work, I feel the weight of expectation growing larger. And recently that burden has started to feel unbearable.

And sometimes, the biggest burden of expectation that I have, is the expectation I have of myself. I have very high expectations of myself, and maybe I've let them get away from me as I've found it harder to keep all of them in check. I'm very aware of the brief time we all have on this Earth, and I want to fill my life with meaningful activity and leave having made a real positive impact.

I've started turning everything into tasks. "Go shopping. Eat. Sleep. Shower. Work out. Play football. Got to work. Socialise. Meet a nice girl. Ask her out so that I'm not alone by the age of 40".

This burden has even become so great at work that I've started to become unproductive because of it. Every time I make a small mistake, I find it harder to think. And it's a downward cycle from there.

Something's got to give.

I could either go full-on crazy and quit my job, untie myself from anything linked to society as we know it and go on a complete bender travelling around the world doing crazy shit. Sometimes I feel like I want to do this one.

Or I could recognise the problem and try to shift my outlook on what's going on.

I used to enjoy work. Enjoy the challenge. Enjoy the mastery of being able to use a new piece of equipment. Now I just see it as a necessity. Something that needs to be understood to continue business as usual. And therein lies the problem.

Awareness of people's expectation of me has completely shifted my outlook of things being "fun activities" to "necessary tasks so that I can function in society and not look like a friendless crazy person."

And, in a weird way, my own expectations of myself - to have a meaningful life - has counter-intuitively sapped all the fun and meaning out.

What can I do about it?

Well, I need to make things enjoyable again. This, in turn, means that I need to do a few things:
1. Stop caring so much about people's expectations
2. Be mindful about turning everything into tasks: stop to enjoy the moment every now and again
3. Just do what I want to do and if people don't like it... well, that's their problem.

Of course... there are complications. I can't rock up tomorrow and, after my boss telling me, "Guy we need to study a few of these devices", just turn around and shout in his face, "FUCK YOU AND YOUR EXPECTATIONS!!". No. I don't think that would go down very well (although, thinking about it, it's funny how many films use this form of emotional release for their protagonists. I can think of two straight off the bat: Fight Club and Wanted. I guess a lot of people feel the same way I'm feeling).

But I can start doing things for me again. Within the rules. I need to study a few devices? Sure. That's fine. But I'll see if I can fiddle around with something, learn something that's not necessary, but just for me. I'll start trying to add fun back in.

Then, after that, I'll start re-addressing what expectations are truly necessary for my well-being. Yes, I have a duty to entertain my friends to a point, but in the end, if I turn around to them and say "fuck your expectations" (in a friendly way, of course), and they disappear, well, they weren't friends to begin with anyway.

The Lies That We Tell Ourselves

So many people make bad decisions because they do things based on what they'd like to believe, rather than what is the truth. I've recently realised that I've always had an idealistic notion in my head that I can remember things without taking notes: 
"my memory isn't THAT bad, right?" 
"I don't need to write THAT tiny bit of information down, right?"


I'd like to believe that I can remember all this stuff, so I believe it. It's a lie that I tell myself. And every time I choose not to bring a pen and paper into a meeting, it's a bad decision. What's more, these lies that we tell ourselves can be ridiculously stubborn... It's taken me 25 years to finally admit to myself that I need to make more notes than I currently am!


I wonder what everyone else's lies to themselves are... and what implications these lies have on their life, and on the decisions they make...

Dealing with ideas that go against our internal image of ourselves

We're constantly receiving feedback about ourselves that either supports the internal image of ourselves or contradicts it. For example: we might think that we're smart and intelligent people when it comes to a specific area of knowledge. I've found that people can deal with information that contradict their internal image very differently, and generally fall into two camps. Let's use the example I've used in the sentence previously and explain the two different reactions:

Protection of the internal image:
So someone has just told you that what you've said isn't true with regard to a certain subject. I've found that when some people get called out - the "protection of the internal image" people, they go on to either argue their case and never back down and/or get angry with the source of contradiction. I see this as a form of denial. Rather than look inside to question your perception of yourself, and question your knowledge of a certain subject, you protect that idea (the idea that you DO know that specific subject) and get angry at the source that is putting that idea into question.

Pros:
There are pros to this mentality. I've found these people to be more confident, which leads to more decisive decision making. I'm not saying that these decisions are always the right one, but in some situations, a decision just needs to be made.

Con:
These people can be extremely frustrating to talk to and if their knowledge on a subject is completely differently to what their internal perception of the extent to their knowledge is, they could be detrimental to the group, as their inflated views will damage decision making.

Constant re-adjustment of the internal image:
Other people are the other way and constantly look inside to question their idea of their internal image when introduced to contradicting information. These people tend not to react to things people say but rather reflect, judge whether it is reliable information and re-adjust their perception without emotional response.

Pros:
This mentality is good for remaining attuned to how the world perceives you and is good for realising areas of growth and areas where you excel.

Cons:
One bad/good comment can make you re-adjust your internal image too far, and pessimists tend to prefer to hear negative comments whereas optimists tend to prefer to hear positive comments. It can also leave you in a state of constant questioning when it comes to knowledge of a subject, which ultimately has a negative impact on your confidence and your decision making/leadership.

The synergies of life

Sometimes, I think that life has a way of giving us two conflicting ideologies for how to live our lives. It tells us, "you've got to choose one!", and the real trick is to be able to find a way to adopt both mentalities in a way that they harmonise.

You've got to work in a way where your own self-interest is aligned with the interest of the group.

You've got to find a way in which what you consume works towards what you produce.

You've got to walk the path of your passion while aligning it to a path for monetary gain (because a player's gotta eat, yo)

You've got to walk with a destination in mind without losing focus on the next step you need to take.

You've got to come to terms with death to more greatly appreciate life.

Information overload

The problem today is that there's too much information. It’s too easy for people to upload their voice to the world. Too easy to find their voice. All of a sudden we’re smashed in the face with a wave of a million voices, all screaming out to be heard. All of them shouting that they have useful information and that we should take five minutes out of our day to listen to them. We awaken to find ourselves sitting at our computer, listening to someone on YouTube explain about how to change a Yamaha YBR125 camshaft. Hey, we might need that information in the future, right?

So many people are shouting at us from so many different directions, saying that they have vital information, that it’s difficult to remain focused along the path of information that will be useful to us. And after we've gotten over that hurdle, it’s harder still to set a line in the sand where we can say we've heard enough, we can finally put that information to use in producing something. We’re a world of consumers. But it’s not just physical products that we’re mindlessly consuming and recycling nowadays. Oh, no. It’s information as well. Right, enough of this rant. I'm off to watch another cat video.

Style And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance

Back-story: I have recently come to purchase a motorbike. Just now, while sitting at my desk, I got back to asking myself the same old question of: "but what EXACTLY do I like about riding a bike?" I had a few reasons pinned down, but I knew there was one more, lurking, that I couldn't quite grasp. Somewhere, deep in my unconscious, I had a nebulous form of how I felt about style, but it's in articulating that idea that it can become solid. And only until just now, have I been able to find the words to solidify and articulate that last reason.

So... why do I like bikes? 

The obvious/already well-formed ideas:
-> It's life-affirming - being fully aware that your life hangs in the balance every time you're on the road forces you to re-evaluate how you value your life, and really makes you appreciate what you have.
-> It's more of a sensory overload than any other means of transport: speed - The wind is buffeting you as you speed along the motorway, you can feel every bump and jolt of the road as you go over it, your balance tells you how you're tracking the corner. It all adds to the sense of speed and motion in a way that you can't even comprehend in a car.
-> It's more of a sensory overload than any other means of transport: connection to your surroundings - As you travel through London you can smell everything better around you, you're hit by the smell of jerk chicken from the food markets as you travel through Brixton, the smell of weed from someone's window as you pass the hubbub of people enjoying their life. You feel a lot more connected to the immediate world around you, a world which, conversely, cars shield you from - for better or for worse.
-> The idea of holding your life in your hands - Every time I get on my bike, I'm relying my skills as a rider, literally putting my life in my own hands. Yes, a lot of the time it's another person in a car that doesn't see you which leads to an accident on a motorbike, but any measure of skill acts as a mitigating factor. Either way, that's not even the point. I enjoy the metaphorical implications in that it's my own skill that's keeping me on track.
-> It gives you a sense of present-time awareness -  Because, for as long as your on that bike, nothing else exists. All other thoughts and concerns melt away and it's just you and the bike.

The newly developed idea:
-> Style
Until now, I had associated style with a purely cosmetic and shallow perception of life. I imagine the kind of people who don't study the function of why things are the way they are, but the shallower question of how they are they way they are. You don't study an engine based on it's style & image, but based on how the parts come together to form a working body based on strict mechanical  principles. But style is a lot more than that. Perhaps this lesson took me so long to learn, because, as an introvert, I tend towards soaking up information and trying to make sense of it internally, not feeling any pressure or need to let other people know what I'm doing or what I think. But that's exactly what style is: a way of communicating to the world how you see it.

Style is a form of communicating to the world about your ideals. It's a visual representation of everything you'd like to tell people about yourself. It's associated with outlooks and mentality, how you feel about the world, what you think things mean to you and how you'd like to live your life.
The style of someone who rides a sports bike: live life fast.
The style of someone who rides a classic bike like me: I respect heritage, and for me it's more of the feeling & lifestyle of biking rather than pure speed.

But then style can be generalised to a much larger level than bikes and fashion. As I'm writing this, I'm reminded of a study that was able to associate people's music taste with various personality traits, like self-esteem and creativity. Of course, now we're getting into territories of cause and effect: do people choose music to communicate to the world how they perceive themselves, or are they drawn towards the music that's most suited to them? ...How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7598549.stm

"If you can't do, teach"

We've heard the phrase, "If you can't do, teach". I've often wondered the reasoning behind it, but recently a few reasons have surfaced to my thoughts:

1. We use teaching as a learning tool for ourselves. By attempting to teach other people, we discover the blind spots in our knowledge and can go back and teach ourselves these things to form a coherent picture. People who like this way of learning would naturally gravitate towards teaching. 

2. The "do-ers" don't even realise there's a problem/solution to be taught. They are of a certain skill level where the knowledge they already know allows them to unconsciously solve problems without them even realising a roadblock. The teachers find smaller things a larger obstacle for them. How many times have you seen a topic of education and thought, "what?! They're even teaching that? I thought everyone just knew that!!"

Happiness imagined as a resource

We've all heard the mantra, You can't buy happiness. This is a well accepted phrase that people have just kind of gotten used to hearing. But what does it mean, really? The phrase itself is just the tip of the iceberg of a bigger concept that I don't think many people have explored.

You can't buy happiness. So what we're saying here is, that we have one resource. Money. When we obtain money, we expect that money to be attached to another resource - happiness. When one goes up, the other will go up. The phrase is breaking the assumption that the two resources are tied together, so that when one goes up - money - happiness will actually stay precisely the same, as the two aren't tied in any way. 99% of the time, the phrase is associated with how much people EARN: you EARN more money, you EARN happiness, and people use the phrase as a way of explaining that getting a good job and earning a money isn't at all connected to "earning" happiness. So people know that how much money you have isn't linked to their levels of happiness. But we can look at the phrase another way, and perhaps one that's closer to it's literal meaning. We still live in a deeply consumerist culture where people think that if they SPEND that money, they can BUY happiness. This idea is still rooted in the same concept, yet it is one less explored.

So if you're not buying happiness, what are you buying? All you're doing is buying that material object. No matter how much you spend, money can only buy you material things. How much joy and happiness you get from that, depends solely on yourself. Buying an expensive drink at a club isn't going to increase your levels of happiness. It's only going to increase the amount of expensive drinks at a club you have. I'm not saying that you shouldn't go out and buy expensive drinks at clubs. I'm saying that the amount of happiness you get from that is the amount of happiness you give it. You could be in blissful happiness from a glass of milk... if you love milk, and be non-the-happier after a £400 bottle of champers if that 'ain't your thing.

So what are some more implications of this concept? All of a sudden, a lot of things look more cheap again. Perhaps you don't have a sudden desire to go out and buy those shoes you wanted. You can start to re-evaluate what makes you happy, and you might realise that what makes you most happy is completely untied to the resource of money. Going for bike rides in the park suddenly become a much more "valuable" prospect again. I think people feel this unconscious pressure in a consumerist society of that if they're not spending money, they won't be able to be happy. Don't look at a price tag and think "it's more expensive therefore it'll be better and give me more happiness". The price tag is associated with the material value of the product. You need to evaluate the intrinsic value of the product, how much it'll make you happy, whenever you buy something. This model also reminds you that happiness, unlike money, is an infinite resource. There is no limit to how happy you can be, and when you give your happiness, your enjoyment, you don't lose it!

We can go even further with this idea and see how far we can generalise into every day life. If money isn't going to buy you happiness, what else might not buy you happiness? What two resources aren't explicitly tied? The biggest culprits of making resources look like they're (falsely) joined together are the marketers. How many times have you heard "get a 6 pack, get the women!!". No. You obtain a 6-pack, you get a 6-pack. You don't get women. The 6-pack might be a tool where now women find you a bit more attractive & you've gotten rid of a "barrier to entry", but when you work to "buy" a 6-pack, that's all you get. Marketers tend to join two resources up so that it incentivizes you to buy what they're trying to sell. So next time you see two resources joined together to look like one affects the other with products, question it.