Moving Well

Our minds, insight, knowledge, biases, and ignorance are not disconnected from physicality and embodiment. 

I have to work at moving out of my head and taking my body more seriously. 

 I enjoy watching GMB.io and other teachers of movement culture using small gentle movements and body weight exercises to work on flowing control. A dance of gravity and strength. 

I definitely feel that I have to make time for exercise, and don't. Particularly when I am desk-bound. I wrestle with deep soaked guilt. Maybe less guilt... and more prioritisation. Even though I *know* I need to move, the bottomless pit of things-to-do always seems to scream loudly. 

 

Movement culture proponents try incorporate movement into life, rather than explicity making time for it. 

How are you working? How are you sitting? While you are making a cup of tea, can you do some stretches as the kettle boils? Building movement into your lifestyle. Like kids, when they have to go somewhere... they run! 

Strength builds endurance. Like weight training where some stress in a controlled environment builds your capacity for when chaos descends. For when you are pushed outside your energy and power comfort zone. 

Flexibility builds resilience. Ideally. you are not just focused on one set of exercises, but you can adapt and adjust to whatever is happening. 

 

Control is the intention behind creativity. Where you move smoothly and consciously, despite - ambiguity, - randomness, and - complexity. 

When you watch masters of calisthenics, their bodies seem to operate according to different laws of physics. Yet their movement looks way more natural than the awkwardness of niggles and knots, when we normally don’t use our bodies then expect them to jump to action. 

Monday Happens

Behaviours get embodied. When we respond in a certain way for years, we can cease to be aware. Our minds and bodies are ruthlessly focused. 

If you do press-ups, they will progressively get easier. If you aren’t exercising, then you go for a run... you will be sore, because you have told your body those muscles don’t matter. 

Regularity allows deep soaking. If you learn superficially, then the knowledge can disappear. Explaining or teaching is one method to allow you to constantly re-engage and not forget the steps. 

"The Curse of Knowledge" is when we forget what it is like not to know. 

If the steps suddenly stop working, it can be hard to fix the problem if you have been on automatic pilot. 

In Jonathan Haidt’s analogy, the elephant is in charge even if the rider looks like they are holding the reins. 

The elephant is our habits. The rider is our perspective of the decision-making. The rider can point, and even believe they are in control, until the elephant wants to do something else. 

You can train your elephant, but it takes work, consistency, and time. I believe in Free Will. But it is incredibly hard. You don’t just have life-changing epiphanies in a weekend away, or by reading an article online. 

Monday happens. Repeatedly. Do the work to create the meaning you want. Invest in the resilience and endurance needed to hold space for you to create.

Galileo's 1616 drawing

of the phases of the moon

Worth doing Badly

“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly”. 

This is true because you start by doing something badly until you know how to do it. If bad is measured compared to people who are already doing it. If learning is not recognised as a necessary part of the process. 

We are better at that when we are kids, because most kids don’t receive a salary. Our judging system is different. Marks are a communication tool, just like money... except they usually aren’t constrained by supply and demand. 

With a functional education system, there is capacity for lots of students to do well. If well is judged by knowledge. 

As soon as education is judged by money and jobs, then nice disappears. 

Not enough jobs that require the skills you have? Not enough jobs paying more than you spend? Not enough jobs in the type of work you want to be doing? Cold, hard, reality. 

As a child, someone (normally your parents) holds space for you to be bad. Gradually, we stop holding space for each other. As an adult with responsibility, you need to get the balance between focusing on things supply/demand tell you to do, and holding space for yourself to be bad. 

One of the things that sucks about being an adult is we stop doing a lot of things we love, because we filter what we do, not only by what we are good at, but what we are best (relatively) at. We cut off parallel sources of joy.

Little Rugby Players

Big Man Holding Space

Creative Process

When I started writing blog posts daily, I jotted ideas on a list as they came to me. One sentence/word notes to myself. Gradually "about what" generation and writing became a habit, so that I didn’t even need to refer to “stored ideas”. 

Even as I started working on a first book, the idea of writing a book still intimidates me. Blogging no longer does. Neither does putting my ideas out in public, since I have been doing this regularly. I store the posts I put on LinkedIn, and I have written 235 pages (about 170,000 words) since February 2019. Longer than a book, but not a book. I still have work to do in the editing etc. 

I am most productive when I have confidence in a process that works. Second time is less scary, but you don’t get a second time without a first time. 

Part of my creative process this time, was recording myself talking to myself. I mapped out 12 chapters based on what I had been grappling with for the previous 5 years on my blog. Then some sub-points for each chapter. Then I just spoke about it, and recorded that on Zoom. Then I used Otter.ai to get a transcript. 

Now, I am gradually working through that transcript day by day. I write a paragraph based on the next bit of the transcript, then use naturalreaders.com/online/ to read it back to me. 

A long process, but fortunately I am not scared of things taking time. I think the best things do. Most of all, I enjoy the process. 

Thinking aloud instead of in silence also means I am engaging with people. My water cooler conversations often relate to a post I have written, but it is the colleague who brings it up. Stumbling on and grappling with ideas that resonate is why I enjoy my creative process. 

I am still intimidated by the idea of writing a book... but, it seems, that is what I am doing.

Looking Inside

I will be the first to admit that I mostly live in my head. In the year and a half before my attempt at the Comrades, I wanted to look inside myself and answer the question, “Am I a runner?”. I did love sport growing up, and I threw myself into various things. Even though I wasn’t great, each year my body changed enough to ask the question, “maybe I am now?”. 

When I started working, I did neglect my body more than I should have for a few years. Getting swallowed by the time at my desk. In 2009 I moved near to a Yoga Centre, and gradually stopped treating my body as a “transport device for my head”. I was attempting a few “100 hour projects”... like piano and capoeira (8-week course). Seeing how fluidly some people’s bodies or fingers move... with rhythm that is inspirational. Planting a seed for my later interest in “Five Rhythms” (a form of moving meditation) and movement culture more generally. 

When you are not on a specific path (e.g. when you are a child), you can be more flexible and playful. Trying things. Holding back your “self-definition” in those first hundred hours. Less about whether or not I was a runner, and more just about running. 

The best advice I have been given on how to become a writer, is “write”.

Digging Deep

Hour by Hour

I approached my professional exams in a very structured way. I was told they took 100 hours, and that resonated with my experience as a ticked them off one by one. Hour by hour. Going from not understanding to sinking in. 

100 hours is fairly chunky. Two hours a week? Then it would take a year. Two hours seems reasonable for a valuable skill. 

The problem is the first 100 hours are often tough because you feel completely lost. We often think that people who are good in the first 100 hours, are going to be the ones who are chosen/good for the 10,000 hours. I don’t buy that. Quite often the generic learning skill set that is needed in the first 100 hours is very different. You need to get through the hard to find the joy. 

My first idea for a book/project was “First Hundred Hours”. To write about my experiences of constantly learning. Get used to, and good at, being bad in the first 100 hours. That was how I got into running. I asked some university friends for ideas. One said babysitting. Unfortunately, I didn’t get many takers – parents are often very territorial despite being overwhelmed. 

Another suggested a marathon. I had never run more than 10km. I wasn’t a runner. In other words, I had never seen if I was a runner. Another friend handed me the book, “Born to Run” which argues we are all runners. About 18 months later, I was standing on the starting line of the Comrade Marathon in Pietermaritzburg belting out a nervous pre-dawn Shosholoza and Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.

Good at being bad - 300m from the finish when the gun went

Chipping Away

The thing I work hardest on is accepting noise. Accepting wildness and randomness. Finding comfort in ambiguity and discomfort. Returning to an internal source of joy which I can build on. Coming to peace terms with constraints. 

Not building up hope that something is going to happen, and then it doesn’t happen. But also not expecting the world to be horrible, painful, and cruel. 

It comes down to the practical reality of what each day looks like. How am I going to wake up? The longer periods build on each other. The idea around 10,000 hours of purposeful practice. Hours that are meaningful and consciously lived. 

What is it I am learning? What am I building? What is my (evolving) path? Not as a tool for separating myself from others and creating a hierarchy where I am better, or good enough. 

Just a practice for grappling with stuff I find fascinating. Doing something that grabs my attention and develops my skills and knowledge. 

Reflecting on why I react in the way I do. Noticing when I am in situations that scream of the past, or where the past screams. 

Competitive Advantages are often not what you are good at. They are the container in which you are operating. One of the most effective containers is difficulty. If hard doesn’t scare you. An easy path is easy for everybody... it has no container. 

If you want to find creative problems that are really going to engage you, the challenge lies in chipping away at things that are hard.

Not Two

Yoga means union. The idea that everything is connected, and that in “reality” there is only one of us - "Not two". Only the permanent is worth identifying with. There is, however, also the concept of Dharma. You will experience separateness and be on a path that is different from everyone else. 

Your actions matter. Actions have consequences. Maya is the experience we have that separates us from everything and everyone else. An illusion of reality, that is temporary and so not worth identifying with, and yet beautiful and still worth engaging with. In all shapes and forms. 

Part of detachment comes with awareness of how things have manifested/appeared/demonstrated. Noticing the emotion you are passing through but not being angry. 

You can view your mind as a controlled hallucination. Inputs come in – we feel, touch, smell, hear, and see. Then inside we ignore, accept, twist, contextualise, forget, project, and connect dots to create an impression of the world. We try make sense of the outside by finding patterns, and then acting. 

Acting in a way where we think we have a degree of control over the way our actions matter. If you want to still the waves of anxiety, and see beyond what is there... you have to deal with what is there. 

Realise what works where you are. Be aware of your story. Have a purpose... then create your meaning.

Not Separate

Paying for the Priceless

In times of plenty, when there are lots of good business ideas, there is often money available for good ideas that don’t generate their own money. There are muses for creativity. Golden ages. 

Something may be incredibly valuable and hard to quantify, but still have costs that are very real, very grounding, and very countable. There is magic that happens between the inputs (what something costs) and the outputs (that we value). Directly marrying inputs and outputs in a money dance is stifling. 

Some creative, exciting companies, will have at their core a very boring business that generates cash. That provides the money for the angels, moonshots, and unicorns. The money for research and development. Management could easily sell those businesses separately, but don’t... because they need the cash! 

Newspapers made money because they sold advertising. The ads paid for the investigative journalism. Adverts that make the advertisers money mean they are happy to spend $1 if they are confident that will make them $2. 

Is the journalism worth that same $1? Harder question. What do you find interesting? What do you want to read? Are we better off if we have intelligent people asking difficult questions? Search and social media muted Newspapers' cash engine. 

Theoretically, you can put a price on anything, but that requires a buyer and a seller to agree on that price. It is easier to price things you can count, compare, and control. 

Then pay the costs for the priceless.

Achievements in Golden Ages

Mini-You and Real-You

Fundamental investing is treating your money as a mini version of an earning you. Applying the same “what are you going to do when you grow up” that excessively defines our life planning. Fundamental investing is getting your money a job. 

The same concepts of Financial Yoga for an individual real person apply to the legal person that is a business... and to your money that invests in businesses. Endurance, resilience, and creativity give shape and form to ideas. 

The Balance Sheet of a company provides endurance. The rock on which they do whatever they do. A strong Balance Sheet allows a company to survive. It buys time. To invest in research and development. To properly maintain what they have. 

The Cash Flow Statement indicates resilience. It breaks down how cash is used for operating, investing, and financing activities. Can the company find the liquid cash it needs, as and when it needs it? Is there the money available to do what needs doing? 

The Income Statement is a picture of the bottom-line creativity. Is what the company is doing costing more than what it is producing? Is spending under control? Is the business sustainable? 

Studying the Financial Statements of a business is similar to the financial planning of an individual. Money is more suited to the hard solvency, liquidity, and profitability ratios that weigh, measure, compare, and judge containers for wealth creation. 

The more time and space it is given to grow, the more money as a mini-you can free real-you from those constraints.

19th Century German Ledger

Autonomy and Consent

Once you have a deep understanding of yourself and where you are, you can build capacity. To handle the random, ambiguous, and complicated change you are a part of. You will be able to cope. “I am okay now. I will be okay later. I will thrive.” 

Plans are neither static, nor able to remove difficulties. Plans are a tool to create a process to deal with problems as they arise and evolve. Challenge means you are alive. In movement culture (calisthenics) they focus on developing strength, flexibility, and control (see GMB.io). This is the same idea I talk about with financial yoga and stilling the waves of money anxiety. 

Strength is endurance. The building of your muscles through regular controlled stress. Through workouts, varied between Sustained Medium-Intensity and High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). 

Flexibility is resilience. Your ability to adapt and adjust to accommodate different situations. Through calm and relaxed lengthening of your muscles. 

Control is creativity. It is the ability to see, evaluate, decide, act, and get the intended consequences you were looking for despite all the things that are not in your control. 

Moving well gives you an underlying sense of autonomy and consent.

Moving Well

Little Finger

It is important to practice the ability to detach. Not all the time. We also have to relax into and accept the way we are, but then build capacity for periods of reflection. Where you can look back and see, “This is a game. I am an avatar. What did I do?”. It can be quite useful, for example, in work situations where you might have a boss that has treated you really badly. I can remember watching Game of Thrones during one of my periods of work that was really frustrating. I remember walking on my commute with one of those ear-worms of something that is bothering me. One of those ones where it just seems like there is no way out. But if you are able to step back and see yourself as a character in the story, you can see that it is not you. It is a situation that the character in the story is in. This provides a sliver of separation. That can offer a tiny gap of calm. Perhaps even some humour. This bit of the story will pass. Pages turn. Chapters end. Characters evolve. 

See What Happens

In the study of machine learning, they started to see that you can simplify quite complex decisions down to a string of ones and zeros. The computer is not sentient. It has just learnt through multiple repetitions of trial and error, with adjustments. Feedback loops added to complicated processes. It does not understand its own behaviour. Given the ones and zeroes, you can’t extract the knowledge they contain. You can only apply it and see what happens. We are sentient, but even we do not understand ourselves completely. And we have to accept that we can not understand ourselves fully. A lot of our behaviour carries deep knowledge that we can try to interrogate but we might not be able to come to the bottom of. We can constantly be on the path of understanding ourselves through self-awareness, self-search, and self-reflection. That includes recognition of limits, and creating an environment that can cope with lack of understanding and regularly being wrong. That can cope with lack of control.  

Binary Counter

Conspicuous Skills

One of the ways we develop conspicuous skills is through exams. Exams are not real life, but they are a blunt way to communicate your skills, so in most cases you just suck it up and write them. I prefer to think of exams as sport, where you practice writing “for the exam”. Knowing the content is a different task to showing up for the demonstration. Think from the perspective of the examiner. What are they looking for? I think of my mother as a teacher. Sitting on her bed with piles of marking, tired and keen to get to the end of the slog. As the person writing, you need to make their life easy. Think of the marking schedule. How are you going to be assessed? Unfortunately, exams are not purely about creativity. They are about signals. They are about containers. You are building a box to give the examiner what they want. You need to still your inner purist’s romance around the love of creativity and learning. That is a small part of what you are doing when you write exams. Study techniques are important. Summarising information. Identifying the main point and getting to it quickly without filler words and fluff. Practice answering questions in a way that gives the examiner the ability to mark you, so that you are match fit. 

 

Colourful Delight

To really gain an understanding of the world, you need a pinch of salt for the way you think things work. Understanding that can be quite frustrating when things do not respond the way you thought they would. When we are children, we are much more willing to let things play out. We enjoy being surprised. It delights us when things are interesting. Rather than the joy of a fascinated two-year-old, we can be enraged. 

Ken Robinson pointed out that almost all children believe they can draw when they are 5 years old. You learn your way out of creativity. By the age of 15, someone has convinced most of us we cannot draw. Our creativity is bounded by the belief that we need to be sorted by conspicuous, immediate, competency. We stop learning as we create a story about who we are, and how we control the world. We specialize to get recognition for how we are special. We tell stories so that we can categorise and create boxes in which we can find comfort. A safe space we understand. That allows us to ignore the world that is not the way we want.

Financial Calm

Financial calm does not require you to be loaded. It comes from a level of confidence that you can cope in three dimensions. 

1) With decisions that take you left or right. 

2) With the unexpected bumps of ups and downs. 

3) With the endurance to keep on keeping on. 

Financial calm can come with belief in your plan. Not a crystal ball that sees the future. Instead planned capacity for futures. When you know you are living within your means, then deep soaking calm builds your strength, flexibility, and control. In a way that radiates through how you move. 

Stress releasing from your muscles and joints. Living within your means allows you to expand the length and smoothness of your inhalation and exhalation. Identifying and building the skills and knowledge needed for a source of income. Overcoming the barriers and securing your container. 

Calm is not the size of the ins and outs. 

Calm is the space between the ins and outs.

Up-Down, Left-Right, Forward-Back

Creating a Why

Money and words are a form of communication. A way to hear stories. You can reflect on and learn through other people’s stories. Your reflection will change as you change. Part of my story is Apartheid in South Africa. I cannot let go of History. I refuse to let go of History. Because it is such an important part of understanding. We carry all this knowledge with us. Some written, some aural, some in the way we dance, the way we make our art, the way we build community. Part of being human is this beautiful, deep, painful, glorious, connection to everything. The future, the past, and other people’s now. That source of understanding gives us a powerful view of the why of why we make our decisions. I believe that life does not have meaning. We give it meaning. We create meaning. Books like Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” and David Duncan’s “The River Why”. See what your values are. See what is important to you. Then create a bolder life.

Mad as a Potter

Somewhere in Cape Town lives a crazy potter named John. He is not hard to find if you follow the trail of creativity he leaves in his wake. He used to live (conspicuously) a couple of houses down from me when I was in Harfield Village. His dream was/is to bake some houses that would grow into a Creative Community. A group of people coming together to make beauty. Community building is hard. Even with passion. I also want to build a virtual Community of 150 people that pays Basic Incomes and builds a Community Wealth Fund. The challenge is who?, how?, and around what common fire? What happens when (not if) people leave? As we discard geography, race, class and other containers, how do we build new ones to support each other? In a world where tomorrow is very different from yesterday, what does a thriving us look like?

johnbauerart.com

Engine and Vehicle

Don’t put good ideas on a pedestal. A good idea is just an intended destination. To get there, you need an Engine (Capital) and a Vehicle (Container). Fundamental Investing recognises that just because something is a good idea doesn’t mean it will be a good investment. A strong company needs a strong Balance Sheet and control of their Cash Flows. Meaning they need to be both solvent and liquid. To survive the long term, their assets need to be worth more than their liabilities. To survive the short term, their liquid assets (easily available) need to be more than their immediate obligations (payable now). A company with assets that are theoretically valuable may be forced to sell them for far less than they are worth if they have short term obligations that are impatient. The same is true for individuals as is true for good businesses. What you do, isn’t the only thing that matters. Your Engine matters. Your Vehicle matters. Step back. It isn’t just activity that counts. Work on the foundations and the environment in which you create meaning. Create space. Create time. Then create.

Good Ideas need Engines and Vehicles

Product Development

Product Development is a process that is never finished. It is a constant dance between users and the people tweaking the solution. The product/service offered can be a slight change or a completely new way of getting the desired result. It can even be a new result that hadn’t been thought of. Or simply rolling out best practice. Seeing how a problem is solved elsewhere and introducing it to a new community in a way they recognise. This requires a deep understanding of the community being served and an ability to observe and listen. It requires awareness of the alternative solutions being offered. What are the challenges a community is facing? Who are the decision makers in that community? How can you help them? What resources would you need to do that. Product Development also involves identifying the skills, knowledge, and resource gaps you might have. That isn’t the end. Once you know the gaps, you can fill them. Product Development isn’t about you, it is about the people being served.

Weaver - Van Gogh (1884)