From a Point

You can rage against the machine, or you can start from a point of deep understanding of where you, and others, are. 

The way we communicate and the choices we make stem from deep soaked agreements. The vehicles we use (companies and countries) are just stories. A way we work together. Money is also just a story. A tool we use to cooperate. 

In order to interact with others, you need to learn about how we communicate. Embedding yourself in the language to let you make choices in ways that are consistent with your values. From a place of understanding. 

Once you have a point of focus, you can select where to deepen your skills and knowledge. You can have a selected portfolio of jobs for your money, and concentrate your attention on understanding those. You don’t have to have a view on everything. 

If the area you are looking at gradually increases your ability to not have a view on things you don’t want to pay attention to. 

Stilling waves of anxiety comes from decreasing the ability of waves to impact you, and simply wash over. Less unconstructive raging, and more focused, connected, and conscious engagement.

Focus

Start with Space

You can’t build capacity to absorb shocks and stress (to prevent losing sight of what matters), without finding space and time. 

Space is not “what is left”. Start with space. In financial terms, that means “paying yourself first”. 

First, put some money aside to build a buffer. Work towards having 3-6 months of spending as a cushion for the expected unexpected. To absorb months that cost extra. To absorb shocks that would have derailed you. Before you save to spend on a thingthing, put money aside to deal with anything life throws at you. 

 

The money is there, but not there. Protect the boundaries around your buffer. It is not there to spend, it is there to hold. Repair the buffer when noise shakes it. Pay yourself first. Then with whatever is left, decide consciously how to spend it. Don’t start with a list of things you have to spend on. Start with what you have, and choose how to spend that. Start where you are. 

Easier said than done... but we can’t focus on what matters, if we can’t focus.

Space is not what is left

It is where we begin

Be Still

Stilling the waves is not about the waves disappearing. It is about having comfort with your point of focus. Reflecting on the compounding consequences of the habits that you are embodying and relaxing into. The patterns. The limits. The impacts. 

Looking beyond and beneath the numbers to what the fundamentals are. What are the priorities? What are the tradeoffs? What if you are wrong? Is there space for alternative views? It is a different way of looking at risk. 

You don’t get paid for taking risk. You don’t avoid risk by settling for not changing. Risk is simply the fact that life can head off in multiple directions and we don’t and can’t know everything. Managing risk starts with accepting complexity, ambiguity, and randomness, and forming habits and practices that build on what matters to you. 

The waves can continue, but you will be still. You will create from where you are.

Point of Focus

There are consequences to the numbers we use. Yogis will argue it is only possible to think of one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is what the body does. The mind can only hold one idea. Then embody it through repetition. 

Our attention might jump around a lot, but it can’t be focused on more than one point. Which is why meditation is often the practice of thinking about your breathing. Breathing is a safe anchor to refocus on. 

In stark contrast, if you simplify everything down to a single number for return, and a single number for risk, dividing the one by the other to be your point of focus, you are going to make some poor decisions that ignore long-term consequences. 

If you make the underlying assumption that opportunities to recycle your high return decisions into high returning alternatives is going to remain a possibility. If what you are consuming is less than what you are creating, then that is sustainable. Then you can do it forever. 

If you aren’t considering the unintended consequences of your choices, and what lies outside the numbers, and outside your plan, then you are going to run out of breath when the air disappears.

Trataka - Meditation on a flame

Sacrificing Awareness

Developing cars that can drive autonomously requires multiple sources of awareness. When we drive, we somehow manage with one set of eyes and ears. We have a brutal internal system of awareness, triage, focus, and context switching. Yogis would argue it is only possible to focus on one thing at a time. The challenge is just that we are wired to take on an incredibly complex world. This means once a habit is engrained, we embody the knowledge. We let it go and move on. This means we are not always aware of ourselves. We often make decisions in isolation. Even when something is important to us, it isn’t necessarily present in our head. We might forget what we enjoy. We might forget what is important to us. We focus on what is in front of us and how we feel at that moment. When we are making decisions, it is not always in the context of everything that is important to us. This is both a strength and a weakness. We can “handle” the chaos that autonomous vehicles are still trying to conquer... plus more. But that handling can sacrifice awareness. 

Autopilot

Fixed, Internal, and Absolute

In Balancing Postures, you find your balance by picking a fixed point to focus on. You still your breath and fix your gaze. Gradually, for longer periods, you can close your eyes as you internalise that point of focus. One of the most powerful techniques for financial stability is picking absolute targets. Most commonly people adjust their spending to their income. That makes sense when you are living in poverty, and you have no choice but to live hand to mouth. Beyond that basic level, living within your means is the most reliable tool within your control, to extend your control. Detaching spending from income. The “lifestyle to which you become accustomed” can be your greatest asset or a moving target that keeps you wobbling, grasping and falling. Once you have secured your base, core strength can give you the flexibility to move with control. Pick a point. Build a base.

Degrading Categories

I hate feeling incompetent. Almost as much as I hate the feeling of having gotten it wrong by someone. In a way that I can’t correct. Intellectually I get the idea of the importance of not caring what other people think. But I do care. And people, all people, have limits to their skills and knowledge. Money lets you hide it somewhat. You can pay people to do the things you can’t do. You can even convince yourself that that is because your time is worth more than theirs. That the thing you specialise in is more important than the thing they do. Particularly if it pays more. So, paying them to do the thing you can’t do is protecting your time. You can even convince yourself that you could do the thing they do, if you chose to. Underlying a lot of problematic prejudice is a fundamental belief in superiority. Dividing people into binary categories of “good enough” and “not good enough”. Second class citizens. Surrounding yourself with people you feel are good enough. Not doing the work to see the others. Underlying that is probably the internal voice telling you you aren’t good enough. The voice that is secretly aware of all the things you can’t do.

Think Smaller

Diversification is a recognition that there is both a good chance you are wrong about any decision, and a good chance that there is so much noise that whether or not you were right will never truly be known. There are Economies of Scale and Diseconomies of Scale. There are costs and benefits of Globalisation, and of Localisation. Advantages to detachment and broad framing, and details that are missed without focus and true commitment. No decision comes without unintended consequences. Micro-ambition is the idea of having small, achievable goals, that add up. Wu-Wei is the idea of action through inaction. That the true starting point is acceptance, and understanding, of how things are rather than how we want them to be. Nudging from there. Rather than arguing with people about finding one solution, in a theoretical imagined world, maybe we should start by finding the 5% of what they care about that we can support. Finding 5% of a potential solution ourselves, while allowing for a 95% chance that other people’s reality is not the same as ours. Creativity within substantial buffers, and with a foundation in the way the world is now.

Port Style

Many of us suffer from time poverty. An overwhelming sense of too much to deal with. 

I believe in Monotasking. We can only possibly have one conscious thought at a time. We can 'do' lots of things in parallel. We can build processes that automate action. We can't think in parallel. Which is why most meditation isn't thinking 'nothing', it focuses in on something - e.g. breathing. Then practices coming back to that focus point when you stray. Stilling, rather than killing, thought.

I am wary of specialisation. One response to 'busyness' is to be brutal in your selective ignorance. 'Say No' more. Ignore more. Specialise. Go deep. I am too keen to go wide to make that choice. I want to go deep in going wide. To be a constant beginner.

It is like we are at a bustling Port City during the age where far-flung places that used to be connected by foot, were now connected by sea. Do you choose to focus on just one language and only speak to those who speak that language? Move away from the Port. Or do you listen to the rhythm of the noise. Open up to whatever new words arise. Open yourself up to learning. Develop comfort in the discomfort of the Port.

Languages like Afrikaans and isiXhosa show lots of influence of the various cultures that brought them into being. A Pidgin is a simplified language formed by a few groups that don't share a common tongue. A Pidgin is kitchen talk. Cooking. A Creole (like Afrikaans) is a more stable language that has developed from a variety of languages. Afrikaans only stabilised by moving out of the Kitchen. The formal Afrikaans I learnt at school is not the stuff that gets spoken in the homes of the diverse communities that make up the original kitchens. Eusebius McKaiser argues that it is time to 'decolonise Afrikaans' and get it back into the kitchen.

That 'Age of Discovery' must have been similar to the tech ports (social media) we are now facing. It must have been overwhelming. New smells. New sounds. New tastes. New animals. New buildings. New colours. New, new, new.

The challenge is how to sit on the docks, being open to the new, while not jumping around excessively. To always have time. Being open to learning Pidgins, while leaving the Port now and then to focus.

Fragments of Brazil

'World Map'

Seaport 1683

Breaking Possible

As a grand finale to my two months in the US and Canada (Chicago, Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas), I went to a show - Absinthe. Somehow the performers manage to move in ways that don't seem possible. Through concentration, strength and flexibility they do things that bend physics to its limit. I don't believe most of the stuff I see shared on line. Photoshop means things that aren't real can look real. But this stuff was flesh, bone and muscle! 

Mixed Reality and Virtual Reality are soon going to be a part of our lives. We are going to be able to share experiences like we share information. We will be able to experience what it is like to fly a wingsuit from the safety of the ground. We will be able to feel like we are walking around in Paris when we are in Parys. What we won't be able to share is the hours of effort that go into that level of controlling the body. The ability to zone in. To focus.

Different Worlds

Our worlds are already a mixed reality. A mixture of what we believe is possible and what is possible. A mixture of fact and fiction. Sometimes we see things that break our reality. That break possible. Then we can take that spark and go out and make possible. 

You can't share flow. You earn it.

Less Abstract Little Things

Minds and hearts have a capacity. At some point when stuff comes in, there just isn't space. We are constrained by our biology. There isn't enough time to listen, read, think about, digest, compare, criticize and develop on all the thoughts that humanity has collectively had. Even just chewing on a little bit of what is going on in the world is a challenge.

There seem to be two choices. Either you dive deep into a particular area and develop expertise that can then be shared with everyone else. I am scared of this option, because I think we end up being seduced by our success. Without being careful, we can end up pushing the boundaries of human thought, but being so close to the edge, no one understands us. We can end up being defined solely by our work.

The other choice is to try bring things right down to basics. Narrow your world, and leave the expertise up to others. Focus on being competent at life. Getting the simple things right. This still leaves space to choose a few things to go a little deeper into, but you need to accept that you will never be the one 'changing the world'. Instead you focus on a smaller world to change. The world of your family, friends and people in your community.

The issue I have with the second option is our communities are still bubbles. Our friends tend to be like us. Our comparisons are relative to what we see. With out the perspective of looking around the world, you can lose touch with reality. You can lose the ability to appreciate what you do have, because there will always be someone with more. There will be someone with less too, but we tend to look up rather than down.

Malcolm Gladwell, in the book The Tipping Point, talks about 'The Rule of 150'. He says, 'In order to create one contagious movement, you have to create many small movements.' When there are groups of people of 150, it is small enough for everyone to know everyone. It is also small enough to understand something of the dynamics of the other people. How they relate to each other. Once things get bigger than that, human biology kicks in. Our brains can't process it all, so we lose the nuance. We start thinking in stereotypes. Defining people by the subgroups they belong to. Putting processes in place that summarise people.

There are 7.4 billion people in the world. The problems get abstract. But if we could bring that number down to 150 that is representative of some of the demographics of the world, we can start bringing in the empathy and subtle understanding that puts the hum in humans. Each group would not cover everything, but each group would not be the same. 

Little things are less abstract. We are really good at the little things. At some point, as Gladwell says, the little things reach a tipping point and the world changes.

Protected by Rain

I love rain. Warm, inside and nowhere to go. I even like English winters with short days. If you use the few hours of sunshine to get outside, avoiding cabin fever. Work days should start after lunch if you are going to be in the dark anyway. When I worked in an open plan office, I used the ChatterBlocker app to play the sound of rain. The occasional rumble of thunder broke the monotony, and I could concentrate fully on whatever I was doing. No phonecalls. No emails. Nowhere to go. Just a little island to engage with something completely. Protected by rain. 

Seduced by Success

Errol Stewart was a legend old boy from the school I went to. He played rugby for our provincial rugby side, and represented South Africa in cricket as well. In 1995 he won the Currie cup with the Natal Sharks rugby side and the Currie cup with the Natal Dolphins cricket side. At school, he also made the provincial teams for hockey and athletics. As sport has become more professional it is unlikely that these sorts of feats will be repeated. David Epstein takes a look at some of the reasons that we have 'gotten better, faster and stronger'. While specialisation does improve our focus, and arguably makes sports more entertaining, I quite like the idea of a goal independent of competition. A goal which doesn't require complete specialisation.

I spoke of yesterday of the communication challenges that come from filtering. The more we specialise, the more difficult it is to talk to each other. We share less context. We do need some brave souls to venture out to that lonely edge to find truths to bring back. For most people though, the ideal should not be to be unique. Unique for unique's sake is overrated. The focus then becomes on what others are doing in and semi-paranoid search for words to describe what your competitive advantage is. I believe in a search for competitive advantage. In its place. I love finding companies that I think do something great and have some sort of barrier to entry to protect their ability to carry on doing well. They make great investments. I don't think that is where happiness lies. What you are good at should be an engine for you to explore the things that are worth doing, not because you are the best, but because they are worth doing. Make your excellence your muse, not your prison. Sometimes the most efficient use of your time isn't the best use of your time.

I think we need to be careful of being seduced by the comfort of things we do well. We need to be careful of being seduced by things that can easily be measured. It makes life more comfortable once we get onto a path that we get a sense we are good at. We get on a roll and get better and better. We start to hum like a well oiled machine. We are not machines. Time can pass and you can realise you have been doing something really well but a whole bunch of other things that were important to you have been missed. They never screamed loud enough to get attention. They just waited for you.

Acting Despite Confusion

If we were to wait to understand how things worked, we wouldn't do anything. People are blessed with wonderful imaginations, the ability to forget, and incredible confidence relative to what we actually know. Before we have an answer, we make one up and we live according to that. Fortunately (if closer to the truth), once the evidence is overwhelming or someone has a better story (or someone has a sword/gun/bomb) we have the ability to change our minds and actions. The evidence points to us improving - see Our World in Data - even though it doesn't feel that way. It doesn't feel that way for the same reason we can act in a world we don't understand. We don't step back and analyse everything. We are very good at responding to thin slices of reality.

Whether it is understanding the world, or just managing our daily lives and what to do, technology can help. With the Big Picture, it can help Steven Pinker and Max Roser (from Our World in Data) provide evidence for new stories which are closer to the truth, and Here & Now it can help people like Dan Ariely, author of 'Predictably Irrational' to have a stab at creating an app to sort through the madness:

Because of the ways calendars are created, people actually take more meetings than they should. Why? Because meetings are incredibly easy to represent on the calendar. Two weeks from now, you see that Wednesday is open. But it’s not really open. It’s just that the things you need to do aren’t represented, and you don’t remember them.

 With our creativity and a little help, we can understand and act better.

Path Dependence

We tend to define ourselves by what we do. Stephen is a Doctor. Nick is an Actuary. Kate is an HR Expert. The thing is these people are much more than that, but as we develop we have to put more and more aside to focus. To become an expert in our field. Each choice results in a new direction, but each choice is not obvious. We have to choose with incredibly complex combinations of what we want, what our responsibilities are, what those around us want, what our opportunities are etc. So we go left, when we might have gone right. Sometimes we don't choose, life chooses for us. It is also true that the further down a specific path we go, the harder it is to jump back to another. The great thing about the way the world is moving is that it is becoming easier and easier to keep the 'wormholes' open to jump to other paths. MOOCs make education cheap and available. Social Media helps people stay in touch with those from whom our paths diverge. Life Hackers like Tim Ferris and Josh Kaufman work hard at finding ways to add back some flavour. We are becoming more efficient at making things. We can choose to either make the same amount of stuff and have more time, or make more stuff in the same amount of time. If you had a wormhole you could jump through, what would you 'be'? What if it took less effort than you think to actually bring some of that back into your life?

Next spin starts fresh

I spent yesterday afternoon with a bottle of Bordeaux, a book and some live music in Montmartre. I finally got my act together and organised a Schengen visa, so now I may be able to pop over far more regularly. The intention was to watch the tennis... but that was not to be. Instead I wondered the streets of Paris. Not a bad outcome.

I am busy reading 'Flow' and can highly recommend it. In it, Mihaly C talks in detail about his decades long study of the science of happiness. 'Flow' relates to...

'we have all experience times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like. This is what we mean by optimal experience. It is what the sailor holding a tight course feels when the wind whips through her hair, when the boat lunges through the waves like a colt - sails, hull, wind, and sea humming in harmony that vibrates in the sailor's veins. It is what the painter feels when the colors on the canvas begin to set up a magnetic tension with each other, and a new thing, a living form, takes shape in front of the astonished creator. Or it is the feeling a father has when his child for the first time responds to his smile. Such events do not occur only when the external conditions are favorable, however: people who have survived concentration camps or who have lived through near-fatal physical dangers often recall that in the midst of their ordeal they experience extraordinarily rich epiphanies in response to such simple events as hearing the song of a bird in the forest, completing a hard task, or sharing a crust of bread with a friend.'

Apologies for the long quote. I would quote the whole book if it could get you to read it. I think the concept of 'flow' and cultivation of it cuts through the quagmire of mans search for meaning, and while not giving a step-by-step approach to happiness, is a fantastic guide.

Sometimes life just seems to throw everything it can at you. In the words of J.H.Holmes 'The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent.' While some people choose to find comfort in the world making sense in terms of a cosmic plan, I find it far more comforting to think of it as random. Even if I have bet black three times in a row, and it has been red all three times... the world forgets. The next spin starts fresh. Each time you wake up, the people who hate you are likely not thinking of you, and no one except those you love are looking out for you. On the balance, 'the force' is probably in your favour.

So it becomes a case of focusing. Focusing on something good. Something in your control. Something that gives you joy. Something that gives you flow. Each time thoughts wonder to something else, choose to have them wonder back and things get better.