Competently Incompetent

Confidence is attractive because it suggests insight into bewildering complexity. Admitting you are lost doesn’t feel like, or often translate into, a great sales technique. 

I find the strength, and patience, of Arya in Game of Thrones more appealing. Where she goes through the stage of “a girl has no name”, and she learns to find her way when she is blind. 

We can get overly attached to the story we tell ourselves about our lives. The narrative. Life has had a way of humbling me. When things change dramatically, I have to edit my story. I grapple with life trying to control me. 

I do have moments where I feel a sense of freedom through insights. But then the waves come back again, and I go back to grappling. An H-like furrow between my eyes from taking life very seriously. 

Repeatedly coming back to a very basic practice can provide a solid foundation. A dependable place of return, before you have to go back to the madness. 

Truth be told, I love the madness. Free will is 100% dependent on madness. A complicated world means we can be seduced by specialisation, and forget how to be competent at life. To be competent at being incompetent. 

Our bodies, minds, and relationships are use it or lose it, so the systematic practice of yoga means you do a body scan to notice where you are carrying tension. Like climate change, slow significant changes can only become apparent too late, if you don’t consciously build in ways to notice the gradual but compounding consequences of little choices.

Connected Energy

Real understanding of what is permanent, and what really matters, is the step you need to go through for true liberation. For the ability to engage effortlessly. 

You can still be doing amazing things, but without the weight of anxiety that sits on you. You build a practice that gets you to that stage over the long term. It takes commitment. A commitment that connects what you do every day. Small goals that add up. 

The productivity that matters is the *compounding* of a productive asset. The real driver is not simply being noisily creative, but whether that creativity is connected. Reinvesting rather than consuming energy and life. 

Where the outcome of what we do is not just something we have now. Where we become custodians, with constant growth through the pulsing cycle of life. 

We can come back into “the system” rather than simply raging against it. Adapting, adjusting, accomodating. Starting from where you are. Connecting to where others are. Compounding rather than consuming. 

Where what you do is not just about you and hand-to-mouth survival. Where what you do is driven by real understanding of why you are doing it.

Where does your energy go?

Not About Me

There is danger in mastery. In having control. 

The world is complicated, ambiguous, and random. The confidence that comes with control radiates in a way that is impressive. In the same way as people identify with their jobs, they can also identify with “being impressive”. Being respected. Being in charge. 

Warren Buffett talks about being aware of a clearly defined “circle of competence”. Being aware of the danger of the halo effect. Where mastery tends to leave a leakily positive impression in areas where that mastery doesn’t exist. 

In Yoga, mastery of specific abilities developed through intense practice are called Siddhis. These can appear supernatural or magical. Developing Siddhis is dangerous if you identify with them. Over-identifying with something that separates you from other people. It makes it harder to detach and look at waves of anxiety as not being about you. 

Every wave poorly handled can bring your world crashing down. Every conversation can be about you. Your problems. Your solutions. Self-worship. 

A powerful way of getting through waves is “this is not about me”.

Brain Waves

Surface Waves

Stilling the waves of money anxiety starts small. Like building relief from a storm when you have no shelter. The goal is simply to get dry and warm. If you can build a buffer of three to six months of what you normally spend, you start to create the capacity to make some path-altering decisions. You build a capacity to cope. You increase your control and focus. “You” increase it, but really it is the power of the buffer/capital. It is the same you. Just empowered. Similarly, yogis talk about Siddhis. Siddhis are seemingly supernatural, paranormal, or magical powers obtained through regular practice. In other words, mastery. But they are dangerous. Other people might elevate you and you might start believing that elevation. It is nice getting recognition. And that sets you up for the waves of anxiety to return. Real meritocracy is a call to see the value of people and their connection to each other through the waves. Building buffers and capital to power us without building barriers to divide us.

Stilling the Waves

 

Firm Grounding

 “sat u dirgha kala nairantarya satkara sevito drdhabhumih” Yoga Sutras

“Practice becomes firmly grounded on being continued over a long period of time without interruption and with sincere devotion”

I am not a great believer in Saturday Night epiphanies. I worry about Monday. There is no big secret. A lot of what we need to know is freely available. The challenge is embodying the right behaviours and building a daily practice. Not what you do today. What you do day after day. Firm grounding requires time. A long time. The key isn’t whether you can maintain your practice if the conditions are perfect. The key is whether you are able to sustain your practice through the chaos. In the real world. With all its distractions and challenges. Practice and Non-attachment. Solving problems without becoming overwhelmed by them. Epiphanies are more useful when they are the realisation of something that is already there. Has been built up over a long time. Is there to stay. Sustainably.

"Dynamism of a Cyclist" Boccioni (1913)

Trying to capture complexity in a single moment

Over Muddy Waters

“Abhyasa vairagyabhyam tan nirodhah” Yoga Sutras

Control of thought waves is brought about by practice and non-attachment.

Abhyasa means practice. You can develop a practice to gradually separate your financial decision making from the constraints of supply and demand. Not all good ideas are good business ideas. Money anxiety is all about barriers to entry and barriers to exit. About containers that can control the solving of problems. Developing a practice recognising “I am not this. I am not that”, gets closer to what is worth identifying with. You are not your job. Vairagya is non-attachment. We can get caught in the web of being what we do. Being attached to how we earn money. It is possible to gradually reduce our reliance on our earning ability. To move beyond being a productive asset. To move beyond hand-to-mouth living where the action of our hands becomes our complete focus. To still the power of waves of money anxiety.

The Lotus soaring above the water

Goals and Values

The most traditionally successful people I know are also the most pragmatic. The world tells you the answers if you are willing to accept them. It is people who are trying to change the rules (like me) who rage against the machine. The people who question traditional success. But if traditional success is your goal, don’t rage. Past Papers (know the answers the examiners are looking for), First Principles (know the tools), Practice, and Habit Building will let you pick off the menu. You start by finding out what is on the menu. What are your values? What is your goal? Whose life? Whose job? Then you find what skills and knowledge they needed. What was their path? Is that path open to you? If not, why not, and what can you do to change that? If you can’t change it or the cost of changing it is too high, what is open to you? Then you crack on and do what needs to be done. Just make 100% sure that is really what you want.

UCT Sports Hall - Exams as Sport

Outside our Reality

In Vedantic Philosophy (which is the foundation of Yoga), Siddhis are spiritual, supernatural, or other magical powers that are the product of Sadhana (practice). In my understanding, this is mastery. Sadhana is Purposeful Practice. Siddhis seem magical because they are so far above what we believe is possible, yet someone is doing it. They are outside our understanding. Outside our Reality. Excellence and Mastery are very attractive. They are also dangerous. Even Swamis are still students of Yoga, and no one is further along the path than anyone else. It isn’t that type of path. Taken in the context of privilege and opportunity, no one is impressive. Yet application is still impressive. Merit, out of context, is the same. We see excellence, and that can make people think they are Gods of a sort. Touched. Chosen. Unique. Above. Arthur C. Clarke’s law “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” applies to mastery too. It isn’t the master that is impressive. It is the glimpse into what is truly possible, and how far that is from the constraints we put on ourselves. Behind most of what impresses us is a curtain someone isn’t keen for you to look through.

Arthur C. Clarke on set 2001: Space Odyssey

Erinnerung

The French word for worried is inquiet. The German word for memory is erinnerung. More thesaurus than foreign if you look at the substance. Jonathan Haidt talks about the Elephant and the Rider. Daniel Kahneman talks about thinking fast and slow. What is it that we take from the conscious level and soak into our inners? Is there a quiet focus or a noisy angst? Haidt points out that the Elephant is in control, and the Rider just gives suggestions. Our conscious slow thoughts are the things we sit with. The things we dwell on. The things we chew. The training we follow. The Rider can train the Elephant by being conscious of the things we do every day. The habits. The scripts. The rhythms. The beat. The Elephant will listen to words that are whispered consistently and over a long period of time. Through a process of bringing in. Erinnerung.

Soaking

Thinking in Contrasts

We think in contrasts. Things become what they are in our minds because of how they are different. That is where Benchmarks become useful. They allow a form of score-keeping because you have an idea of the alternative if what you are offering is not available. Like sugar, fat, and salt, they are also dangerous. The goal isn’t to beat the Benchmark. The goal is the goal. In “The Art of Learning”, Josh Waitzkin discusses the principle of “numbers to leave numbers, form to leave form”. The goal isn’t the numbers. The goal isn’t the form. They are simply learning tools in the way a Benchmark is. What matters in investing is (1) being a good custodian of the Capital, (2) the creativity that that Capital empowers. Alpha is the term for how much an investor has “beaten their Benchmark”. You can’t eat Alpha. Eventually you let go of the contrasts and engage directly with what it is that matters.

"The Garden of Earthly Delights"

Hieronymous Bosch

Emotional Integrity

Emotional is not the opposite of Rational. Emotions can be, and normally are, Rational. There is a reason for why you feel the way you do. If an emotion is irrational, discovering that can be a powerful tool to let it go. Unless there is some clinical issue that requires help. Emotional Integrity is a variety of happiness. Robert Solomon sees it as an ongoing "meta-emotion". Happiness is a summary evaluative judgement of us being in the world. Spirituality a way of taking that up a level, expanding the judged self to be suprahuman and all-inclusive. Emotional Integrity is developed when reflecting on values, purpose, and whether your emotions are constructive in building the type of life that resonates well. Emotions that serve.

Emotions that Resonate

Emotions that Serve

Stop

Proper Relaxation is not passive. 'The Corpse Pose' is the most advanced Yoga posture, even though it may look like someone is just lying there. Anyone can do it immediately. Doing it properly takes years of conscious practice... or immediate deep insight and profound connection. Not acting or stopping can be the most decisive, most forceful, strongest decision that can be taken. 'No decision' is a decision. All of this doesn't feel right because we take movement and change to be the only evidence of exercising our free will. The only evidence of taking control. The truth is, things only change from where they are. The 'reality' we see in our heads is where we want things to be. Action starts through inaction. Through acceptance.

Active Relaxation

Pointless

Map of Alexander's Empire and his route

There is a story of Alexander the Great coming across a Yogi on the banks of the River Indus, sitting quietly. Alexander asked what the Yogi was doing, and he replied, "Experiencing doing nothing". The Yogi asked Alexander what he was doing, and he replied, "Conquering the world". Both men smiled at what the other was doing, and thought "Pointless, what a wasted life". 'Wu Wei' is a concept in Taoism that could be seen to combine the two. It means 'action through inaction'. When action comes through an effortless engagement, without any attempt to force or control.

Meditating Yogi

Freedom (Chris)

Freedom is being able to choose. 

To choose your environment. 

To choose how to spend your time. 

To choose your purpose. 

To choose your income. 

To choose your relationships.

Sometimes these freedoms come with a heavy price tag. Other times they just require a decision.

This is how I chose my time, environment and relationships this morning.

We saw deer (mother and fawn), birds great and small, the sun warmed our backs and created shafts through the canopy. The dogs chased scents to their hearts' content.

This was a simple way to start the day, and so energising. It just takes a decision.

I love freedom.

Chris Gardener

A friend who works as a Business Consultant at his business, Strategic Mentors

Happiness

Happiness, for me, is the combination of a question, an acceptance and a practice. Any definition would be imperfect because the answer is deeply personal. The answer is a more beautiful question. One that only you can answer, yet never will. Despite the journey of understanding happiness being wrapped in understanding yourself, true happiness comes from expanding that definition. Fewer boundaries between what you believe matters and what doesn't. More connections. Wider empathy. Happier. We can chip away at our ignorance. We can accept thing we don't like but can't change. We can practice happiness.

Happiness and Learning

The general theme of my blog is 'happiness and learning'. What I am trying to do is think aloud, and be led by the conversations I have with my friends. Happiness, for me, is a combination of a question and a practice. The question is the bit that links with learning. How we arrive in the world, and where we find ourselves is pretty random. If you know where someone comes from, their age, their race, their religion, their wealth and their gender, you can probably narrow down their philosophy on life pretty quickly as a generalisation. We think in groups. The more we can expand the group we believe we are a part of the less random our ideas will be. The more we can benefit from the learning of everyone.

The practice bit comes in that you can't always be questioning. You can't always be doubting. You have to act, and I think small actionable things both matter, and add up. So you can practice happiness. I started Yoga in 2009 at a very traditional centre deeply soaked in Indian culture. At first I was quite sceptical of the fact that it was run by what seemed like very religious people - monks. These Swami's wear orange and devote themselves to the practice of Yoga believing "an ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory". 

Swami Vishnudevananda knew a thing or two about happiness and learning

I backed myself as able to take the bits I found useful, and remain sceptical of the bits I didn't. It turned out this was very consistent with the philosophy, and the Yoga practice was very different from my introduction to religion as being more focussed on the philosophical side of 'what is truth'. Yoga isn't a religion. At the heart of the Yogic philosophy was the admission that we don't know. Our understanding is limited. The closest we can come to understanding is Ishvara. Since we think in stories, this will be different for all of us. It will just be a framework to help us think. To calm our thought. Whether you are a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist or none of the above.

In the meantime, we can practice well-being. We can eat well. We can breathe properly. We can exercise. We can learn to relax and manage the energy we have to approach the things that matter to us. We can try understand how powerful our minds are at influencing the way we experience the world. We can try think positively. We can remember to look after those we care about. We can find something to do that challenges us and keeps us engaged. All these things are very practical.

We can get a little done and learn a little. Add time. Simmer. Then taste.

Time Practice Focus Flow

I get quite frustrated with one of my favourite writers, Maria Popova, 'debunking' the 10,000 hour rule popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers. At no point does Gladwell say that 10,000 hours of aimless time spent on a task will lead you to being world class. I believe he uses the examples of driving and sex as things we may spend a lot of time doing but not improving. Unless, of course, you remember to maintain eye contact with everyone you clink wine glasses with. But that won't help your driving. To improve your driving you actually have to try. Through purposeful practice.

I think the confusion comes because the thrust of Gladwell's point was that things take time no matter who you are. Even if you are good, you need to put the effort in. I am also a big believer that sometimes different skills are needed at the later stages of being awesome. Dan McLaughlin, who happens to be the same age as me, decided a few years back to put in 10,000 hours at golf having never played 18 holes. The further down the path he goes, the more psychological the training becomes. In the beginning you are laying the ground work and that can be tedious, so many people may choose to give up. They never get to the juice. Gladwell points to the strength required to push on through the tough bits. To put the time in. Purposeful practice and focus matter, but the idea that you have to put the time in matters too.

I thought Matthew Syed's 'Bounce' captured the ideas behind purposeful practice well, adding to 'Outliers'. Daniel Goleman's 'Focus' adds rigour to this rather than challenging any of the points. The best of the lot, in my view, is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's 'Flow' because it doesn't obsess about the 'world class' bit. Being world class is awesome because you get flow, but you start getting flow far earlier than when you get to the end. Flow isn't a competition. Everyone has something they love. If you love something and spend time on it in a purposeful way, you get better. That moment when you are doing something you love and it challenges you enough to have your full focus is flow. Flow is magic. I think the reason the world moves forward is because we all find flow in different places. The world would be a magic place if we managed to get to the point where, rather than to survive, we all work for flow.

The point that flow requires purposeful practice rather than slipping into automatic pilot is an important one, which is what I think Maria Popova is emphasising. In the workplace and in relationships we could benefit from more purposeful practice. The problem is that in these two places feedback is very hard to take. Feedback is essential to practice, but if how much you get paid (or whether you have a job) or whether someone breaks up with you is on the table - honesty and vulnerability becomes incredibly challenging and emotionally difficult. 

Perhaps the answer lies in 'role play' and acting. If you are acting out scenarios with characters that aren't you, it gives you anonymity. The feedback can be harsh and you won't care. The great thing about being human is that we can learn through the mistakes of others. Even if we are those others - through acting. If we want to pursue flow in the workplace and in our relationships, I think we can learn lessons from all four of the books above. Like Dan, who decided he wasn't intrinsically 'the guy who can't play 18 holes of golf' and did something about it, we can choose who we are.

Intimate Reward

Some things take time. Kids learn slowly. The little emperors are notoriously fussy eaters and take time even to fall in love with the tastes of their mother tongue. Unless we want to live a monotongue life, we need to venture out. We need to train our buds to love the taste of learning.

I am pushing on with my piano learning. I have managed about an hour a day for the last 4 or 5 months. I can now almost play two popular songs so that they sound reasonably musical. I am loving it. Getting passed that first 100 hours so you can taste the juice is a start. That doesn't change the need to put in a proper commitment if you want to keep enjoying it. Flow is a wonderful thing. Flow is something we experience when we are pushing ourselves just outside our comfort zone. Not too far, but just enough so that we are not too stressed to learn. You can over complicate the idea of meditation. Meditation is just the practise of focus and concentration. When you are doing something you love and in that exciting phase of discovery, it is almost impossible for you to think about anything else. The great thing is that flow comes at different stages and in different things for different people. This variety of flow is the engine that drives the world forward.

It isn't all pretty. Flow is paired neatly with purposeful practise. Purposeful practise is the deliberate, regular, conscious attempt to learn. It can be draining. You may need to break it down into small chunks. Malcolm Gladwell popularised the idea of putting in 10,000 hours in order to become world class at something. He was not arguing that these hours could be on automatic pilot. Matthew Syed wrote a book that was a little more explicit about the importance of practise, and what that means. Practise isn't just mindless repetition of the same mistakes. If you can work in a little time every day to edge yourself forward, in a considered fashion, with a purpose in mind - flow will be your reward. Like the handicap system in golf, flow doesn't require you to be world class. Instead it adjusts to your level and incentivizes progress more than any bonus cheque ever could. It is a deeply personal reward system that knows you intimately.

It doesn't need to be hours and hours either. Ask yourself the same thing kids get asked when they get home. 'What did you learn today?'. One thing every day can be enough. Little things add up.

Get Lost

There are some things you can measure and some things you can't. Having a clear, objective, quantifiable goal can be addictive - it can let you feel like you have everything under control. It is much easier to be productive when you can say, 'these are the three things I want to achieve today', and then to tick them off. We apparently get a hit of dopamine when we do manage to hit these targets.

A child with the spending power of an adult would struggle to make it down the tantrum tunnel. You know that tunnel of sweets by the check out counter when the parent is trapped and the kid has to survive to the end without blowing their minds. The risk when you try measure everything is that you become the child rather than the adult. The measures are so sweet, you can't think of anything else.

Source: Hardwareretailing.com

What I am wanting to study and talk about are the obstacles to learning new skills. What I don't want to focus on is the efficiency side of things. Tim Ferris is doing some awesome work in his Four Hour Series showing ways to free up time by doing things better and cutting out waste. Incorporating productivity measures is great, but above that I do think there is stuff we simply can't measure.

Malcolm Gladwell talked about needing 10,000 hours of practice to become world class at something. Matthew Syed continued with the idea and spoke of how practice needs to be purposeful. Ken Robinson wrote about the need to find that place where talents and desire intersect and how those who succeeded found that powerful combination.

So you need to put the time in. There need to be objective criteria. You need to love what you do.

There is also some value in going off the clock. In stopping measuring and getting a little lost. When you use satellite navigation to get somewhere, sometimes you are not able to get there by yourself. Above that, you don't discover the flavour off the route. I spoke the other day of our 'Sense of Authenticity' - I think part of method acting or our ability to tell if someone is talking about something someone else does or something they have done is our ability to tell if it is worth doing in and of itself. I love the Afrikaans word 'Kuier' - it translates as visit, but that doesn't quite capture it. When you 'Kuier', you are in no rush and you have no measurable goal. Yes there is an intersection of 'talent and desire' but it isn't explosive, it is comfortable. Beyond the very valid points Ferris, Gladwell, Syed and Robinson make about finding success - I think perhaps one of the things we haven't explored enough is the value of regularly just getting lost in the things we love.

Time and Patience

We celebrate how smart kids are. Every new word brings rapture to parents and those who have the pleasure of watching them grow. It amazes us to see them pick up skills. Seeing them learn to walk. Listening to them sing off key and out of tune... and slowly they make progress. Year by year they become more and more accomplished.

We apply different standards to ourselves. When learning something new, we are brutal. We expect almost instantaneous results and we get very frustrated. Kids actually learn quite slowly. They get frustrated too. Perhaps two key things they get that we don't give to adults are time and patience. I would love to find a study of how much time a day kids spend learning. Dan quit his job in April 2010 to spend 10,000 hours attempting to become a Pro Golfer. He fast realised that you can't do 10,000 hours of purposeful practice condensed into 5 years. He is about half way now. I would like to find out how many 'core hours' a day we get of real energy. I imagine this is at most 6 hours, more likely 3-4.

As an adult, I don't think you can beat yourself up if you spend a full 8-12 hour day working and then come home and try spend an hour or two learning a new skill (or in some cases even being present). Maybe you get a few of these sessions in a week and then seeing no progress you get frustrated and give up. Kids are time rich. They are also surrounded by cheerleaders.

We can't chirp adults for struggling to pick up skills if they are being asked to run while someone is holding their collar.