Applescotch

Power Over Us

2020-12-06T19:28:00+00:00

Power is a theme that occurs often in legend, folklore, and fantasy. The worst fate that can befall a hero is for someone or something to gain power over them. This can happen in many ways: for example, through a curse, a talisman, or revealing their true name (the name that “perfectly describes something’s essential nature”). While the idea sounds fanciful, as with most legends, it contains some truth and wisdom. And, as I’m beginning to understand, there are other ways in which we commonly give things and people power over us.

Every time we turn our attention to something, we give that something some power over us. This is as true of small activities like reading a book or going for a walk as it is of big enterprises like going on a long trip, or starting a company or a new project. If there is a human in the loop, as when we start a conversation with another person—or, to use a particularly modern example, engage with an app operated by a tech company—we give that person or that company power over us as well.

The most obvious way in which this is true is the straightforward commitment of time and attention. Time and attention are our scarcest resources, and there’s no way to manufacture more of them. This much is self-evident, but what’s less obvious is that the time and attention consumed by a task is often more than we intended. We’re not capable of starting and stopping things instantly. There’s always some overhead, some cost associated with switching activities or preparing for a task. And then there’s the opportunity cost, the fact that that time and attention could have been spent on something (or someone) else, which we often choose to ignore. This is the first example of how the things we do have power over us.

But costs aren’t only measured in time. There’s also the psychic cost of a task. Different sorts of task have a very different associated psychic cost. For something simple and straightforward, something we’re used to doing, the cost may be quite small (but it’s never zero). If a task is complex, unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or dangerous, the cost may be quite high, doubly so if it causes stress such as cognitive dissonance. Reading an academic paper with a lot of complex math totally drains my psychic energy, for example, because I’m not very good at math.

Tasks that require preparation exert more of a cost than those that don’t. Even tasks that don’t require preparation can begin exerting a psychic cost on us long before they actually happen, in the form of anxiety, worry, doubt, or fear. And some tasks continue to consume our mental energy long after we finish them. This may be true of a pleasurable experience like reading a good book or an engaging article, or having a deep conversation, which we may turn over in our head for hours or even days. It can also be true of a traumatic experience. This is another example of how the things we do have power over us.

Imagine that you start each day with a certain budget of “psychic energy points.” On a day when you’re feeling relaxed, well rested, healthy and generally not under a lot of stress, the budget may be higher. On a day when you’re unwell, exhausted, or feeling stressed, it will be lower. Different people start each day with different budgets depending on their overall level of stress, ability to handle stress, and mental fortitude more generally. Every task and every stressful activity that you undertake depletes some of these points. As described above, there is a cost associated with switching tasks, and some tasks start to deplete the budget long before you begin working on them or continue to do so long after you finish. When you run low on points you’ll begin to feel mentally exhausted and you’ll need time to recharge, something you might accomplish by sleeping, spending time in nature, exercising, meditating, etc.

They say that you are what you eat. They say that you become like your friends. If these things are true, it’s certainly also true that, over time, the things we spend our time doing shape who we are. They shape how we think, and how we see the world. Soldiers who return from war continue to see threats and enemies lurking around every corner, even in civilian life. Software developers who spend all of their time interfacing with machines sometimes lose the ability to interact with other people. A cardiologist who spends all of her time studying the heart inevitably begins to see the human body as a machine that exists to serve and protect the heart. This is the third and most powerful way that the things we do have power over us: they have the power to shape us.

Here’s another metaphor that I find helpful: your mind is like a home. You make every effort to keep your home neat and clean so that you may reside comfortably in it, and you keep things (thoughts, memories, ideas, etc.) in their place so that you can find them when you need them. Every time you engage in some activity, you invite that activity into your home for a time. While the guest is present, you have a duty of hospitality towards them: you must show the guest generosity and courtesy, and make sure they’re safe and comfortable. Some guests will be well behaved: they’ll be neat, and they’ll leave when it’s time for them to go. Others will be less well behaved: they might get rowdy, overstay their welcome, or leave a mess behind.

The best guests bring gifts, stories, and good cheer, and leave a home feeling warmer and more comfortable than before. After an ill-behaved guest has left, we have to clean house, which can take some time. We must be exceptionally careful about whom we invite into our homes. To invite a guest into your home is to give them some power over you. To engage in an activity is to give it some power over the state of your mind.

Understanding the power that tasks and activities have over us, and the patterns of how psychic energy is depleted and recharged, has had a big impact on how I spend my time. I used to naively think that being productive meant filling every moment of every day with wholesome, valuable activities, e.g., listening to podcasts or audiobooks while on the go, exercising, or in the shower. I used to think that it meant rarely if ever doing things like playing video games, watching television, spending unstructured time with a friend or family member, or just leaving an empty hour on the calendar.

I now see how wrong I was. First of all, by trying to fill every moment with productive activities, I wasn’t giving myself enough time to recharge. This approach totally neglects the collateral costs described above: the costs of task switching, preparation, and the “hangover” cost that lingers after finishing a task. Secondly, it measures input, not output. Counting the number of hours I spend consuming “productive” content or engaging in other “productive” activities is a vanity metric. It would be better to measure quality of output—and sometimes doing less results in better output. Finally, it ignores intangibles like frame of mind. What good is being perfectly productive if we lose our minds in the process, or aren’t enjoying ourselves?

These days I’m much more comfortable spending time in silence, reflection, and meditation. I don’t rush to open a podcast the moment I walk out the door, often choosing instead to walk in silence and appreciate what’s going on around me, or just turn things over in my mind. I don’t immediately pull out my phone when I’m on the train or in line somewhere. I check the news less often, and engage more deeply when I do. I’ve turned off all notifications on my devices, which allows me to be much more intentional about what I engage with, when, and how. I spend a lot less time on social media, knowing the psychic toll it takes. All of this has made me happier and more productive.

The next time you consider starting something, whether a task, a new project, a trip, or something as simple as picking up your phone, consider carefully what power you’re giving it over you and whether that’s a trade you’re willing to make.

Times Are Changing

2020-11-30T20:20:00+00:00

When I want to get a quick sense of how the world visualizes a thing, I try an image search. When I type the word “startup” into a search engine such as Unsplash, I see something like this:

Try the same and you’ll find images of mostly twentysomething, mostly white men wearing shorts, t-shirts and hoodies, sitting around large, reclaimed wood tables next to exposed brick walls in open-plan coworking spaces decorated with tacky motivational slogans (“Do Something Great”) and lit by Edison lights, sipping coffee, tapping away at Macbooks and iPhones, and putting sticky notes on whiteboards. Having spent time in a few such places over the past few years I can attest to the fact that they do indeed exist, that they are full of nerdy, ambitious types, and that, once in a while, they even produce something innovative.

I call this the Facebook Effect. Millions of Millennial hackers, hustlers, and hipsters watched Mark Zuckerberg & co., followed by dozens of other high-profile Silicon Valley founders and startups, achieve success in settings such as these.[¹] They decided that, in order to maximize their own chances of success, they should ape not only the technology and business that Facebook built but also its culture and aesthetic. You can hardly blame founders for adopting a “fake it til’ you make it” mentality. Fast-forward ten or fifteen years and suddenly every world city from Rio to Reykjavik, Rajasthan to Rhode Island had at least one coworking space full of determined, hardworking twentysomethings.

While the Facebook Effect has been a source of inspiration for millions of people around the world and has directly or indirectly led to the creation of many successful companies, I can’t help but wonder if it hasn’t done more harm than good. Startup fever and an attempt to create clones of Silicon Valley all over the world led to enormous investment in coworking spaces and other accoutrements of the perceived Facebook aesthetic. However, from a social perspective, many of the dollars spent on Edison lights and espresso machines might have been better spent on education—or, in poorer countries, on basic infrastructure like running water and reliable electricity.[²] Also, while some especially driven, lucky founders no doubt found success in such places, it gave millions more unrealistic expectations about the glamour of startup life (most of the time, for most founders, it’s unglamorous) and their chances of success on the scale of Facebook (very slim). It probably caused some to abandon promising educations or careers. And it caused no small number of especially strong headed founders to become arrogant and egotistical, develop a Steve Jobs complex, and assume they know better than everyone else, reality be damned. (I’ve known a few such people. They may be talented but they’re not easy to work with.)

In any case, times are changing. It’s usually very difficult to put your finger on the pulse of history, so to speak, and know precisely when it changes course. Sometimes, however, you just know. Now is one of those times. I don’t expect innovation is going to slow down in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic—quite the contrary, in fact—but innovation in the future will look less and less like Facebook.

There are many distinct but related reasons for this. The most immediate and obvious is the demise of in-person coworking and the rise of remote work in the wake of the pandemic. The fall of WeWork, already in trouble before the pandemic, portends this shift. While in-person brainstorming, design and hacking jams, and simply getting to know one another will probably always be an essential part of the innovation process, the bulk of this work has moved online and will likely stay there. For the past five years I’ve had the opportunity to contribute to several amazing, complex projects being built by remarkable teams that are entirely remote. I’ve seen firsthand how well this model can work when it’s done right. True, not every team has figured out how to do this yet, and true, it’s much easier for some types of projects and some types of work than for others. Increasingly, however, all firms are software firms and the larger part of innovation and growth in the foreseeable future will probably occur in the digital realm. And better tools are making remote work and collaboration easier.

While the pandemic is the reason many teams are avoiding traditional, in-person offices and coworking spaces today, more and more teams and firms are discovering the benefits of remote work, including more flexibility, better work-life balance, and savings on rent and commute time. Commercial and residential rents in major metro areas have continued to rise relative to income over the past few decades as the returns on getting groups of highly educated people together have continued to grow, reaching truly unsustainable levels. It was only a matter of time before something gave.

It’s no wonder that talented people are leaving big cities in droves and moving to more affordable areas where they still have fast Internet but have a lot more space and a better lifestyle. While reports of the demise of big cities like New York are no doubt overblown, better technology, fast Internet everywhere, and a culture of remote work means that talented people will continue to leave cities with high rents and high taxes. Over the long term, this dispersal will bring huge economic benefits. The Silicon Valley of the future won’t be Silicon Valley, nor will it be a new Silicon Valley somewhere else. It’ll be a mesh of many small, local innovation clusters connected more tightly than ever via a digital substrate and more powerful tools for cooperation and coordination.

Another related and welcome trend is increasing globalization and diversity. Silicon Valley and the people who happened to be there over the past few decades had a huge head start in the beginning of the digital technology revolution, but as technology becomes more accessible and better understood, innovation is increasingly happening in more far-flung places. Remote work makes it easier for Silicon Valley firms to hire people in other places, but access to tools, education, capital, and the spread of startup culture literally all over the world make it more likely that the innovative firms of the future will appear somewhere else entirely (or, more likely, in multiple places at once). More innovation-friendly policy in more places will also contribute to this effect.

Then there’s also the rise of alternative forms of financing. The first couple of tech booms were fueled by Silicon Valley venture capital, which are bound to miss many opportunities due to biases such as groupthink and homophily, to their detriment. This includes firms founded by women and people of color, and those emerging in far-flung markets or founded by diverse, multicultural teams. Ambitious, high-potential projects have lots of alternatives for fundraising today, including Kickstarter, equity crowdfunding, revenue-based financing, and cryptocurrency. Many high-profile VC investments have begun to look overvalued, wise founders have begun to push back on the prevalent VC model, and it’s only a matter of time before the proportion of startup funding coming from VCs begins to shrink relative to other sources of funding, if it hasn’t already.

Yet another trend is the rise of China, where more and more successful tech startups are being founded. This is only natural considering rising economic and educational standards and massive investment in tech and education in China over the past few decades. While in some ways Chinese tech startups have followed the Facebook model—startup hubs and big tech campuses in Shenzhen and Beijing superficially feel quite similar to their Western counterparts—in other ways they’ve followed a very distinct path. Chinese consumer tech was largely ignored by the rest of the world and was uncompetitive globally for a decade or two, but the wild success of TikTok, while got its start in China, shows that this is beginning to change. The divergence of the Chinese Internet from the global Internet is troubling but technology is a unifying force and I’m hopeful that this will change.

Then there is the breakdown of traditional educational models. The success of Silicon Valley is in large part thanks to Stanford University, and many of today’s successful tech firms, such as Google, were incubated there. Stanford was an early pioneer in computer science education but much of that material is now available online and for free for motivated students, regardless of where they happen to be. What’s more, tech companies are beginning to look past traditional credentials towards self-motivated learners of all stripes. This creates massive opportunities for non-traditional education and tech clusters, another argument in favor of many tiny, distributed Silicon Valleys rather than one big one.

Finally, there’s the rise of decentralization. Linux was the first global-scale project to prove the viability of the “bazaar” model of software development: it was built among peers, by a decentralized, flat community of passionate hackers all over the world rather than by a single, large, centralized corporation. Bitcoin and Ethereum, two of the first unicorns of the past decade, are similar. The centralized “cathedral” model isn’t going away anytime soon, but as understanding of how to manage and govern global, decentralized platform cooperatives continues to evolve and ideas like commons-based peer production continue to spread, the bazaar model will increasingly give it a run for its money. Frustration with big tech corporations and their inability to consider and respond to the needs of diverse groups of users will further this trend.

I don’t know exactly what the most important startups of the next decade will look like, but I’m certain they’ll look less and less like Facebook, and more and more like Linux and Bitcoin.

Notes

Actually, the first startup that we’d think of as a modern, Silicon Valley startup was Netscape, which predated Facebook by ten years. But for some reason, maybe timing, maybe the fact that Netscape ultimately lost the browser war, it was Facebook that defined this cultural milieu for the Millennial generation. ↩
Other things being equal, more coworking spaces per capita is probably a good thing almost anywhere in the world. But other things are not equal. Ten thousand dollars invested in a coworking space might result in the birth of a startup, but the same ten thousand dollars invested in running water or laptops for schoolkids might have resulted in ten more startups over the long run. We have no way of measuring such things, and by and large no way in investing in them, either, which is a shame. ↩

Productive Monkeys

2020-10-25T20:21:00+00:00

What does it mean to be more productive? Over the last few years, as I’ve thought more about productivity and worked to become more productive, this is a question I keep coming back to.

I can’t help but fall back on a running metaphor. Assuming that the “product” of running is the number of miles run, there are two ways to become a more productive runner. You could run for more hours, or you could run faster, so that you cover more miles per hour run.

As a runner, for years I’ve been pursuing this sort of mindless productivity. I train by gradually trying to run faster, and further. And I’ve made good progress. With some effort, I reduced my pace by around 30 seconds per mile. And I doubled, then quadrupled my weekly mileage. Of course, this sort of progress can’t continue forever, especially as I get older (and busier!). While I’m proud of the progress I’ve made over the years, I’ve begun to rethink my goals and priorities while running.

What if my goal is something else entirely? What if it’s, say, to really enjoy running? Or to maximize the health benefits, or to maximize the positive impact it has on the other aspects of my life? These holistic goals sound better than running a little faster or a little further. These goals may entail running faster, or further, but not as an end in and of itself. They might require a very different approach than maximizing speed or distance! Rather than closely tracking my pace, pushing myself harder, etc., they might instead mean that I should run a different route, or make an effort to regularly try new routes. In fact, they might mean slowing down rather than speeding up, or going on shorter runs, or joining a team and running with other people.

It’s essential to spend time considering our goals and our motivation before we rush headlong into running, or any other activity. If we don’t, we may inadvertently use a technique that actually takes us farther away from our goals.

Once our goal and motivation are clear, the next step is to start running while listening carefully to the body. This is one of the hardest and most nuanced aspects of distance running. The body warms up slowly. At the start of every single run, no matter how long or short, it complains. Like a spoiled child realizing it’s not going to get its way, however, it eventually, gradually gives up protesting. Running hard or running far is a fine balancing act between, on the one hand, paying close attention to the subtle messages the body sends us—since even a tiny ache can turn into something quite serious after a dozen miles—and, on the other hand, not indulging every little gripe, and learning to filter out the messages that actually matter from the incessant noise.

It requires pushing the body farther than we ever thought it could go, but doing so in a soft, respectful, gradual manner: pushing, then giving the body a chance to catch up, to rest, and to heal and strengthen. Any other type of pushing is unsustainable. Eventually, after many hundreds of hours and many thousands of miles, we develop a form of trust and a sense of oneness between body and mind. Running itself becomes almost effortless, as we develop a sort of symbiosis or comfortable, confident partnership with our body, as with a trusted old friend.[¹]

As slow and arduous as this process is, however, it doesn’t hold a candle to the challenge of training the mind. In some important ways, training the mind and training the body are quite similar. Body and mind both have their limits, and they both have their own ways of communicating. They’re both stubborn and reluctant, but both are malleable and, if we keep pushing in the right way, if we respect them, both will yield to our will. If we push too hard, both will resist and ultimately break. Training the mind is as important to running as training the body, and it’s much harder. This is double true for distance running, which involves spending many hours alone with only your thoughts, body, and the road for company.

For me, the key difference between body and mind is that, while I feel mostly in control of my body, my mind is another story. My body mostly does what I tell it to do. As I described above, it’s a little slow to warm up and it tends to complains a little bit. But as long as I treat it well—eating well, sleeping well, drinking enough water, working out regularly, resting enough—I know it’ll more or less do what I want.

If the body resembles a loyal dog, the mind is more like a cat with a mind of its own! When I want it to focus on one thing for a while, it wanders off, like a cat choosing to ignore its owner, run off and hunt. When I want it to wander, it becomes fixated on something I want to set aside, like a cat chasing a laser pointer.

Andy Puddicombe, cofounder of the excellent Headspace app, points out that, while many of us enjoy regularly training our bodies, most of us don’t spend much time training our minds. The mind is like a muscle, and it needs to be regularly trained to become stronger. We train our bodies to have greater strength, endurance, and flexibility—all of which are also important qualities of mind. However, the sort of training the mind needs is actually quite different than the sort of training our bodies need.

Buddhists have been perfecting the art of training the mind for a few thousand years. And I’m far from the first person to use an animal metaphor to describe the mind! According to Buddhist tradition, training the mind is like training a wild elephant. You put it on a thick leash, and tie the leash to a heavy stake. At first, the elephant will resist, running in circles and stomping on everything. Gradually, however, it will quiet down and grow comfortable with the situation. One day, you’ll be able to remove the stake and leash and the elephant won’t bolt. In other traditions, the mind is instead compared to a wild horse. It’s a proud, independent creature that roams freely. There is great potential for “communication and rapport between horse and rider” but the training process must be slow and intentional.[²] Initially, a wild horse requires a huge pasture and a very, very long rope. Over time, if you pull the rope in slowly enough, the horse will quieten and won’t even notice the rope growing shorter. Eventually, you’ll be able to remove the rope entirely.

These metaphors are both apt, but the best metaphor for mind has to be monkey mind. I don’t know about you, but my mind feels more like a monkey than it does like an elephant, horse, or cat! It’s constantly darting around, chasing whatever catches its eye, and it moves from one thing to another faster than I can keep up. Getting it to stand still for even 60 seconds is challenging, even after years of meditating.

Like training the body, training the mind also requires constant exercise and constant pressure. The mind also needs periods of intensity and periods of rest. But it requires a much more concerted, nuanced approach to training. It’s like the difference between running ten miles on an easy, familiar road, and running ten miles on a difficult, unfamiliar trail, in the dark, while juggling. In the first case, you can just start running without thinking much about where you’re going or how you’ll get there. Keep moving forward and sooner or later you’ll cross the finish line. In the second, you have to proceed much more carefully, making sure you don’t trip, get lost, or drop a ball. Every time you do drop a ball, you have to stop, pick up the ball, recenter yourself, and then try again. This requires much, much greater force of will than simply moving forward.

To Andy’s observation, I suspect the reason more people are willing to train the body than the mind has to do with will power. It’s not that working out is easy, but it does require less will power than training the mind. The hardest part of training the body is starting a workout. By contrast, training the mind requires more sustained focus. It’s a slow, frustrating process. Imagine that running ten miles is a bit like trying to focus the mind for an hour. In terms of running, then, my experience learning to meditate over the past few years has been like trying again and again to run ten miles but failing every time after only a mile or two. Making progress requires setting out diligently every morning in spite of this perceived failure without becoming too frustrated.

What do running and training the mind have to do with productivity?

Most productivity techniques focus on the mindless sort of productivity: how to make more widgets, sell more widgets, or field more emails about making and selling widgets per day. The problem with this approach to productivity is that it doesn’t zoom out far enough. It presupposes that as a runner your only goal is to run further, faster. As with running, the first step to increasing productivity should be to zoom out and think carefully about your goals, and about how and why being more productive will help you achieve them faster.

In the past, I tried a brute force approach to productivity, a lot like my approach to running: if I worked eight hours one day, then I’d try to work eight and a half hours the next day. If I wrote 200 lines of code one day, then I’d try to write 250 lines the next. It sort of worked for a while, until I reached a plateau and my stress level increased. In my experience this approach is more likely to lead to burnout than sustainable progress. I find this approach to running ineffective and unsatisfactory, and I feel the same way about this approach to productivity.

In reality, you cannot measure progress towards productivity linearly. In this respect it’s like trying to measure mindfulness. You can’t measure mindfulness by counting the number of hours you’ve meditated or the number of times you’ve repeated a mantra. And you can’t measure productivity by counting the number of hours you’ve worked, emails sent, or lines of code written. Real progress isn’t linear: you may feel like you’re making rapid progress for a while, only to later find that you’ve suddenly regressed. This is natural and it’s all part of the larger process.

For most of us, increasing productivity is much more like training the mind than it is like training the body. It’s more like increasing mindfulness than it is like running farther. In fact, training the mind is one of the best ways to increase productivity. Train the mind to relax, focus, and to have stronger intent, and you’ll accomplish more in less time and feel better about your work. Now there’s a definition of productivity that I’m on board with!

Here’s another parallel to running: not all days are created equal. Some days when I wake up the sun is shining and I feel great, bursting with energy and wanting nothing more than to hit the road for a long, hard run. Other days it’s cold and wet, getting out of bed is a pain, and I hit the turf only reluctantly. Still other days I know that what I need is a shorter, easier run, or a run more geared towards sightseeing, enjoying the fresh air and natural light. The tempo of my running differs depending on my mood, and also on the season: spring and autumn are prime distance running season, whereas summer and winter are better for shorter, more intense runs.

When I first started running I tended to push hard all the time, believing that distance and speed were the only metrics that counted. These days I’m kinder to myself. I listen to my body and mind, check the weather, and go for the sort of run that I’m craving. Once in a long while this means not running at all!

This sort of self-awareness is critical to being a successful runner, and it’s also critical to increasing productivity. There are times when we feel more or less energized or focused. This is true of certain times of the day and certain days of the week, but it can also be true for entire weeks or even a whole season. For example, most people tend to have more energy just before lunch, and to get sleepy after lunch (hence the tradition of the afternoon siesta). If you’re a morning person you probably do your best work at the start of your day; if you’re a night person you probably do your best work late, after others have already turned in for the day. For many of us winter tends to be a good season for focused, deep work.

It’s a mistake to believe that we can always be on, focused, engaged, and equally productive. Just as I used to always push myself when running, I used to think productivity meant always doing as much as possible: cramming as many tasks as possible into a busy day, hopping from engagement to engagement, activity to activity, task to task, article to article, etc.. When you get to know monkey mind, however, you realize that acting this way only feeds the monkey. We’ll never become more productive by indulging the manic monkey mind!

While doing more and jumping from task to task might be okay for some kinds of tasks, like email, it’s especially bad for tasks that require deep work. The right way to do deep work—the kind that requires deep thought and reflection, analysis, and introspection—is almost never to do it more or to do it faster. Quite the contrary! Deep work often requires taking a step back, relaxing, clearing the mind, working on something else for a bit, going for a walk, or just sleeping on it.

When we develop self-awareness we not only learn what sort of work we’re best prepared to perform at any given moment, but certain higher-level patterns also become visible. One such pattern involves energy level and ability to focus. We gain the ability to predict when we’re likely to be “switched on”—ready to engage in deep work—and when we’ll need to disengage from that work. This could be a certain time of day, a certain day of the week, or even a certain season. Or it may be more about task sequencing: e.g., I know that after exercising I’m prepared to sit, focus, and read for an hour or two.

Another such pattern is fixation: the degree to which the mind will become fixated on a particular activity or pattern of thought, how long the fixation will last, and the psychic cost associated with task switching while fixated. For instance, I know that if I start reading a book I won’t be able to disengage for at least 20 or 30 minutes. If it’s an especially interesting book, I’ll need at least an hour, and even after I put the book down, I’ll continue to think about it for the rest of the day. In a similar fashion, if I start coding, I know that I need at least a couple of hours before I can get really deep into the task and reach maximum productivity. If I’m interrupted from deep reading or coding, I’ll feel frustrated and grumpy towards whatever or whomever interrupted me. It’ll take me at least 10-20 minutes to context switch back to where I was, and I may unable to reengage. For this reason, I try to block big chunks of maker time on my calendar where I can code uninterrupted for two, four, or even six hours. I also hesitate to pick up a book or start coding unless I know I’ll have the time I need to go deep. If I have less time and/or less energy I know the time would be better spent doing short tasks that require less focus.

This sort of planning is especially helpful for breaking up large tasks. If I expect a task to take a few hours, it may be better to block half a day to finish it in one go, or it may instead be better to work on it for an hour a day over the course of several days. Being able to forecast my level of energy, focus, and fixation, and knowing how deep I need to go to finish the task, helps enormously in planning and executing work.

Of course, some projects take more than a few hours and sometimes we need to devote ourselves to a task for a longer period of time. Bill Gates famously took a Think Week off twice a year, and I had a wonderful experience last year taking ten days off for a meditation retreat, something I hope to repeat regularly. In the extreme, we may want to think in terms of entire seasons: a scholar might decide to take a sabbatical for a summer, or a semester, or even an entire academic year to study, do research, or write a book.

In summary, while most productivity techniques focus on simply attempting to do more, we cannot and should not take a brute force approach to productivity, trying to do more the way a runner might try to run further or faster. The mind is more complex than that and it works in sneakier, subtler ways. A better approach to increasing productivity is more like learning to meditate: it involves paying close attention to the mind, learning its patterns and its quirks, and working with them rather than against them. If we take a more gradual, gentle approach, the mind will eventually fall in line and cooperate.

There are two things we can do along the way that will prove especially helpful. The first is to reflect on our goals and to understand that productivity is a vector: it’s not just about quantity of output (distance), it’s also about intent and directionality (angle). The second is to pay close attention to our patterns of energy, focus, and fixation, all of which are closely related. In doing so, we can learn to forecast our state of mind like we forecast the weather, and we can plan our work around this forecast, much like planning travel around a weather forecast. As the patterns become more familiar, we can plan not only our day, but indeed our week, month, and season around these patterns.

Try paying closer attention to these patterns, and try planning your next project around your mind’s weather patterns. By working with these patterns, I bet you’ll find it much easier to finish the project.

What does productivity mean to you? What’s your experience with productivity techniques? Leave a comment and let me know.

Notes

In Running With the Mind of Meditation, a unique and enjoyable book, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche describes four phases of becoming a runner, which he ties to the Four Dignities of Shambhala teaching: tiger, lion, garuda, dragon. Our goals and abilities evolve as we progress through these stages. This description resonates quite strongly for me and it’s changed the way I think about running. Confidence and effortlessness are associated with the later stages. ↩
Source: The Practice of Meditation, Birmingham Shambhala Meditation Center ↩

Run the Other Way

2020-10-11T21:28:00+00:00

I run the same route nearly every morning. The route is a loop, which means that I don’t have to double back and run the same path twice. I’ve been running this route for years. I know it like I know a lover’s body: the location of every curve and hill. I know where to find every toilet and water fountain. I even know its smells, the various fragrances, pleasant and unpleasant, that waft up to me as I pass different areas in different seasons. I’ve run it many hundreds of times, maybe thousands, in every season, every condition, and every possible frame of mind.

For all that knowledge and experience, however, until recently I had never run the route in reverse. I had run parts of it in reverse, but never the whole route, start to finish. It’s hard to say exactly why. There is no official right or wrong direction. Yet most people run and bike in the same direction. Even running the right way, you always pass people going the other way, so not everyone plays by these rules, but you always assume they have a good reason for running the wrong way. They must be taking a shortcut, they must be in a hurry or something.

I sometimes think about running the wrong way, but by force of habit I never do. Distance runners find comfort and safety in habit. Changing even something small, like your socks, or what you eat or drink before a long run (or when you eat or drink), can have a big, unexpected effect on your performance. It can cause an injury. When we discover or develop a routine that works for us, we hesitate to make changes. I guess you could say runners are conservative by nature, even superstitious.

I have no good reason for always running the same direction. Running the wrong way just makes me uncomfortable. Maybe it’s a tacit social contract with the other runners, like I’d somehow upset them if I ran the wrong way. Maybe it’s because, running the right way, I can manage my effort and speed since I know where the hills are.

A few days ago, I decided to run the wrong way on a whim. It was an interesting experience. The familiar route felt mysterious and surprising. Of course, even running in reverse I know how long it is, I know where it starts and ends, and I know what I’ll pass. As I could’ve guessed, the hills were in the wrong places, and where I expected sun, there was shade.

But there were also a lot details I had never noticed before. There were paths branching off to the side that I had literally never seen. There were little nooks and groves in the trees, and vistas on top of rocks that I had never noticed. It was sort of revelatory, for lack of a better word: I realized that there is so much I had never noticed about a place I spend time every day, and have for years, a place that I literally know better than I know any other place on earth.

It made me think about my work. I spend most of my time working on an application that’s implemented in a particular framework, in a particular programming language. What would happen if we reimplemented it in a new framework, using new tools, or in a new language entirely? Wouldn’t it be like running the usual route in reverse? I think this would be a good idea (given the resources), but I can’t clearly articulate why. It’s more of a hunch.

If we want to understand our protocol as thoroughly as possible, if we want to know its curves and contours, its strengths and weaknesses, the best way is to implement it several times in several different languages and frameworks. Why? Because each is a different paradigm, a different way of structuring and expressing knowledge and process. Reimplementing it would require going back to basics, revisiting a lot of prior decisions and assumptions within a different set of constraints. Each language and each framework emphasizes different things: makes it easier, simpler, or more natural to express some ideas, constructs, and patterns, and harder to express others. Even if the final product does precisely the same thing—as the protocol dictates—the way it works, and the way the code is structured, would be completely different.

It’s a bit like giving a talk in English, then giving the same talk in Chinese. You can attempt to give precisely the same talk, to present the same slides and ideas and say the same things in the same order, directly translating each line. Having attempted this more than once, I can assure you that the result is something altogether unnatural. Even for a technical topic, it’s important to work with the grain of the target language rather than trying to force the structure or maintain the turn of phrase of the source language. And, of course, language cannot be divorced from context: an audience with a different cultural background will expect the same ideas to be presented in a different way. Direct translation might be possible with two languages that are more similar, but not with languages as different as English and Chinese.

The right way to approach the task is to go back to basics and ask yourself the most important questions: “What’s the core point I’m trying to convey? Who is my audience? What tools do I have at my disposal, and how can I use them to convey this message in the most straightforward, approachable manner possible?” The final product may look quite different than where you started.

If you want to really test your understanding of an idea, try explaining it yourself—then try explaining it again in another language, to a different audience with a different background and a different set of knowledge, experiences, and expectations.

Running the wrong way also made me think of mindfulness. One of my favorite ways to practice daily mindfulness is to make a slight change to a routine, a behavior that I typically perform without thinking about it. A good example is changing the hand I use to brush my teeth, shave, or tie my shoelaces. Another is taking a slightly different route home. Or, when listening to someone speak, I try to pay close attention to use of filler words like “uh,” “um,” “well,” “you know,” etc., then try to eliminate the same words when I speak.

Try these exercises. Like running a familiar route in the wrong direction, they force you to be more aware of what you’re doing. They force you to slow down, and in doing so, you might just appreciate and enjoy the activity more. You may even see an activity that’s totally routine and mundane in a totally new light. (Yes, it is possible to enjoy even something as mundane as brushing your teeth!)

Mindfulness is good for its own sake, but it can also have utility. Being mindful of what we’re doing is a great way to test our skill and understanding, and to find ways to continue to learn and improve. Take the time to run the other way, and you’ll notice things you never noticed before—and things that most people will never take the time to notice. Then, the next time you run the right way, not only will you be more aware and enjoy yourself more, noticing things you hadn’t noticed before, you may even perform better. You may have discovered a shortcut that you didn’t know existed. You’ll certainly be more confident in your knowledge of the route and your ability to handle it.

The computer science equivalent of this might be rewriting something complex, something previously written in a high-level language such as Rust or Go, in a lower level language like C. It’s much more difficult, but it gives you a better, more fine-grained understanding of what’s going on. If you were to go back and rewrite it again in a higher-level language, you’d do a better job than you did the first time around, knowing what you now know.

Finally, exercises like these will give you empathy. Not everyone experiences the world precisely the way you and I do. Running the other direction—especially when that means not only changing your routine, but also running “upstream,” against the crowd—is a good way to remind yourself of this fact. Attempting to give a talk in Chinese gives me a lot of appreciation for the challenges faced by my friends, colleagues, and classmates for whom English is not a first language.

Empathy is in short supply these days. Run the other way once in a while to improve your own knowledge, confidence, and performance, but also to remind yourself that there are many ways to see the same situation.

The Secret of Happiness

2020-09-20T14:16:00+00:00

“Of course I don’t have to do this,” one middle aged man said, carefully cleaning the table with a damp cloth. He put the cloth in a little pouch, sat down beside him. “But look, this table’s clean.” He agreed that the table was clean.

“Usually,” the man said, “I work on alien religions… I catalogue, evaluate, compare. I come up with theories and argue with colleagues here and elsewhere. But the job’s never finished. Always new examples and even the old ones get reevaluated and new people come along and come up with new ideas about what you thought was settled. But,” he slapped the table, “when you clean a table, you clean a table. You feel you’ve done something. It’s an achievement.”

“But in the end, it’s still just cleaning a table.”

“And therefore does not really signify on the cosmic scale of events?“

He smiled in response to the man’s grin. “Well, yes.”

“But then, what does signify? My other work? Is that really important either? I could try composing wonderful musical works or daylong entertainment epics. But what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure, and people come to a clean table which gives them pleasure. And anyway, the people die. Stars die. Universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? … Because I choose to do it, it gives me pleasure.”

from Use Of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks

There’s a scene that I’ve remembered for many years.

I was visiting one of the small hot spring villages tucked into the mountains in northern Japan, not far from the university where I was studying abroad as an undergraduate. It was late winter or early spring, and I distinctly remember the steam rising from the channels by the side of the road where the excess hot spring water flowed down the hill, giving off its distinctive, sulphuric odor. I visited a small gift shop that specialized in simple wooden dolls known as Kokeshi. I had been introduced to these dolls by my host family, and was instantly enamored of them for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on: their refined simplicity and symmetric elegance perhaps, or the variety of styles and designs, or the fact that they were unique not only to Japan, but to the particular region of Japan where I was studying.

In the back of the shop was a small studio where an old man was stooped over a wood lathe, slowly and meticulously giving shape to a new doll. His hands were wrinkled and his knuckles were knotty, but he worked the wood with precision and grace. There were large piles of wood shavings on the floor all around him.

Two things struck me about this man.

The first was the degree and intensity of his focus. Ever since that day, every time I think about a flow state or about “being in the zone,” I’ve channeled the image of that man. He bent every fiber of his being to his task. I could tell just by looking at him that he had become one with the wood in his hands, and the world around him had ceased to exist. He had clearly spent a lifetime perfecting his craft: the very definition of a master craftsman.

The second was a feeling of pity at the unimportance and meaninglessness of his craft, doubtless stemming from my youth and naivete at the time. I couldn’t help but think to myself, “This poor man has wasted his entire life making wooden dolls. There’s an entire world out there to explore: books to read, places to visit. There are so many ways a person can have an impact and do good in the world. Yet this old fool chooses to spend his whole life sitting on the floor of a tiny woodworking studio in the mountains, oblivious to the outside world, totally uninterested in the modern world taking shape around him. May I never be like him.”

And, indeed, the path I followed over the following years and the following chapters of my life took me in a very different direction. Yet, reflecting now on the experience—and struck by the way this image has stayed with me across the distance and the span of nearly 20 years—I understand now that that man knew something I didn’t know. He possessed a wisdom which I am only now beginning to grasp.

All existence is struggle. We struggle with our work. We struggle with money. We struggle to be healthy. We struggle with things that upset us, but we also struggle with the things and the people we love the most: our friends and family, our passions and joys. Even the most successful among us, even those who seem to have it all—health, wealth, power, and fame—struggle with pride, loneliness, privacy, and the constant stress of managing a personal brand and reputation.

However, there is one thing that causes us more grief than anything else. There is one thing that we struggle with more mightily than we do with any of the above. That thing is time. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through all of the various experiences I’ve had in my life, it’s this: we must learn to live with the grain of time, not against it.

If you’ve ever worked with wood, you know what I mean by “with the grain.” When you cut a piece of wood, you can cut with the grain or against it. When you cut with the grain, the process is easy, smooth, and natural, and the final product comes out clean and beautiful. When you cut against the grain, the wood is much harder to work with: it tends to split and splinter, and the result is usually not very pretty. It can be done, but you feel like you’re forcing things and struggling against nature.

This is a simple but powerful metaphor for life. We can live in either of these two ways.

The way most people approach life, intentionally or unintentionally, is maximization: we have a finite period of time on the planet and a lot of things to accomplish, so we should put that time to good use and accomplish as much as we can while we can. On the face of it, this sounds like a pretty rational approach. Shouldn’t we strive to do the most good that we can in the limited time we’ve got? This is certainly how I lived my life for the first 30-odd years, and it got me reasonably far. Learn all you can, love all you can, be as generous as you can, that sort of thing. It’s better than a life of regret.

The problem with this approach is that it’s a race against one another and, ultimately, against death. It’s a race that we simply cannot win. It’s therefore a recipe for unhappiness and dissatisfaction. No matter what goal you set yourself, no matter what you set out to accomplish in your finite lifespan, no matter how grand or mundane, you will be dissatisfied. Perhaps you won’t accomplish it in the first place, and then you’ll be frustrated and disappointed. You may even come to feel that you’ve wasted your whole life pursuing the wrong thing. Perhaps you do accomplish what you set out to—then what? You aim higher. A higher income. More impact. A bigger family. A nicer home or car. A better job. More books read, more places visited, more, more, more. Whatever the goal, however well-intentioned, it’s a recipe for dissatisfaction and unhappiness. The very act of choosing a goal is the act of setting oneself up for disappointment. Where does it all lead? When does it end?

To live in this way, against the grain of time, is to always be in a hurry, always going somewhere else, never slowing down to appreciate the process or the present. To live this way is to constantly battle with time, to feel that you never have enough of it.

There is another possible approach to life. To live with the grain of time means to work with time rather than against it, to make the most of the time we’ve got without craving more or seeking to maximize every moment. It means to slow down and appreciate the time we have and to be present as much as possible; to enjoy the process, the means, the journey, rather than always focusing on the ends, the destination. I’ve only just begun learning to live with the grain of time rather than against it, but it’s already brought me more sustained peace and joy than anything else I’ve learned or done.

To me, the secret of happiness is timelessness, to transcend the perceived limitations that time imposes on us and to escape from this race. The way to achieve timelessness is to learn to live with the grain of time.

We cannot win the game of life and time, and we cannot win the race against death, no matter how hard we try. Sometimes the only way to win such a game is to refuse to play in the first place. This means looking Death herself in the face, smiling at her, and saying, “I know you. You don’t scare me. I won’t play your game. Let’s be friends instead.”

Our society is obsessed with narratives. Companies, countries, and individuals need to have stories: a creation myth, a present full of challenges and shortcomings, and a glorious, promised future when those challenges are overcome and some ultimate goal is achieved. For a company, this ultimate goal may be the launch of a killer product, a billion dollar valuation, or an IPO. For a country or a people, this may be winning a war, achieving independence and recognition, or attaining some quality of life metric such as per capita income. For an individual, it could be getting into a good school, getting a dream job, getting married, owning a home, or having children.

Each of these narratives has a beginning, a middle, and an end. They each have a plot, and protagonists that set out to accomplish a specific mission, facing and overcoming challenges along the way. It’s certainly an appealing way to think about life, and the world.

The problem with these stories is that they by definition have a climax, a denouement, and an ending. But in the real world there is no such thing as “happily ever after.” The company that successfully IPOs isn’t done with anything. It’s only just begun, and it has an entirely new set of challenges to face. The country that wins a war isn’t done, either: it has to face the daunting prospects of rebuilding and redefining itself, and of continuing to grow, develop, and ensure a quality of life for its citizens. And someone who gets into school, or gets a new job, or gets married isn’t finishing something, they’re beginning, too, aren’t they? Fairy tales that end in “…happily ever after” are important, but their value lies not so much in showing us the way towards a specific future we ourselves may never achieve, but rather in inspiring us to keep moving forward when times get tough, and in reminding us why we keep struggling.

We must escape from this linear, story-driven mode of thinking and discourse. We must escape the allure of “happily ever after.” It’s one of life’s many great paradoxes: the only way to actually find happiness is to accept that happiness doesn’t mean what most people think it means, and it doesn’t lie where we think it does. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. In fact, there is no rainbow.

By escaping from linear thinking, by opting out of the various finite games unfolding around us, by instead choosing to live in the moment—this moment—now!—we can choose a vastly different path and pursue a different sort of happiness, one that’s not dependent upon what we accomplish or possess.

As someone who cares deeply about having a positive impact on the world, it’s important to note that the choice to live and work in the moment does not mean to minimize our long-term impact, either. Quite the contrary. It’s counterintuitive, but by taking a step back and not trying to do too much too fast, we can actually increase our net impact. Think of it this way: do fewer things, better.

This may sound great in theory but it’s quite vague and metaphysical. What does it actually mean? What “path” am I referring to and how does one find it?

I suspect there are actually many paths. Each of the major religions offers one and I strongly suspect that they all lead to the same place. There isn’t that much difference between a Buddhist life of renunciation, meditation, mindfulness, insight, and intentionality, and a Christian life of prayer and compassion, following in the footsteps of Jesus. Universal virtues like compassion, empathy, patience, and equanimity are not just buzzwords, they are the waystones that mark the path, wherever you begin.

Here are a few such waystones that I have personally found particularly salient and helpful: examples of what it means to live with the grain of time. Note that these serve double duty as both cause and effect: they are good ways to get started, but equally they’re indicators of progress.

I don’t mean to suggest that this path is easy or straightforward. It’s not. And, not having reached it myself, I can’t promise that it leads to enlightenment. But I can promise that in spite of the struggle, or perhaps because of it, even just starting on this path will bring a great deal of unexpected joy and peace.

Dance to your own tune. Recognize that there is no such thing as a right way to live or a “career path,” so you should not be afraid of stepping off this path. Think less about the destination and take time to enjoy the journey. Try charting your own course entirely. When I first tried this I found it a little frightening but also delightful and intoxicating. I felt a sense of freedom, independence, and excitement at being able to define success for myself. There is a timeless nature to a life lived by one’s own standards and rules, and overcoming the feeling that you must arrive somewhere within some finite span of time is powerfully liberating. By the same token, we should not chart our progress by someone else’s metrics, and we should be especially wary of traditional metrics such as wealth, power, and fame. There is no one right way to live. There is no dishonorable path, or career, as long as it’s honest and true to the virtues described above. A life lived with integrity is by definition a good life. The things that matter the most cannot be measured.

Stop to smell the roses. Enjoy life. Spontaneously take an hour off, or an afternoon, or a week. Take a different route home, one that’s a little slower, a little less direct, and see something new. Stay up an hour or two later to read, watch, converse. Always be open to discovery and new experiences.

Make time for others. Talk to strangers. Make eye contact. Make time for that conversation with your father, your old college roommate, the homeless person on the corner. Other things can wait. There is always time for conversation, compassion, and sharing stories.

Spend time alone. You don’t always need to be in the company of others. Sometimes we all need time alone to get to know ourselves. Don’t be afraid to be alone from time to time. Schedule time and take yourself out on a date once in a while: coffee, dinner, the museum, a walk in the park. Try to find a few quiet moments alone every day to think, reflect, and ground yourself.

Make time for reflection. Stop every so often to ponder and reflect on your experiences, values, priorities, behavior, goals, and progress towards those goals. This might mean prayer, meditation, or simply going for a long walk, whatever flavor of reflection and contemplation you prefer.

Leave space. Don’t fill your calendar. Don’t fully plan the next day, week, month, or year. Instead, leave ample time for delight, surprise, wonder, and serendipity to work their magic. If necessary, intentionally block empty time on your calendar!

Be open-minded. We should strive to open our minds to the near-infinite possibility of the world around us. We should accept that there are realities out there other than the ones we’ve been taught and the ones that we’re familiar and comfortable with. At the same time, we should balance this against staying true to ourselves and our values. Replace expectation with openness, receptiveness, and respect of other perspectives.

Treasure what you have. I can think of 1,000 ways my life could be simpler, easier, more comfortable: ways my family could be less annoying, ways my partner could be more supportive, ways my work could be more effective. Indeed, I always have and always will strive to improve things. But this is not at all incompatible with being perfectly content with things as they are, no matter how good or bad they may seem. This means spending as much quality time as possible with friends and family, and reminding them often that I love them. It means taking the time to enjoy every meal, to really savor the flavors and textures, even when the food is quite simple. It means feeling genuinely grateful every morning when I wake up that I didn’t go to sleep hungry, and that I have a comfortable bed to sleep in and a roof over my head. It means taking the time to appreciate every leaf, every petal, every passerby and every note of birdsong even while walking down my own block. It means treating each new day in your heart as a gift.

Have patience. Patience is hard, especially in today’s fast-paced world. To have patience is to understand that all things have a season, and that not all seasons will be easy. It’s to appreciate that all things, good and bad, will eventually come to an end—so the good must be appreciated while possible, and the bad must be tolerated, abided, respected. It also means letting go of the good when the time comes to do so, without clinging. Patience means doing the best work I can every day and trying to effect positive change in the world, but recognizing that that change may take years, or a lifetime, or even a millennium, and truly being okay with that.

Be ambitious but balanced. Ambition allows us to improve our lives and the lives of others, but we should not be in a hurry to do so. And we should make sure that our ambition is motivated by the right reasons. To me this means thinking carefully about my life’s work and about the impact I intend to have, and about how my day to day life and my daily actions fit into that.

Reread books. We should not hesitate to reread a favorite book three, five, or eleven times, rather than chasing novelty and feeling that we always need to consume new content. How much you consume, whether books, news, video, music, or any other medium, is much less important than what you consume, what frame of mind you cultivate as you consume it, and how you later reflect and build on what you’ve consumed.

Give more than you take. Stop calculating what you personally stand to gain from an act or interaction. Do good for the sake of good, for the sake of the beneficiary, rather than for yourself. In a finite mindset, you might wonder why you should bother investing in relationships with people who seemingly have little or nothing to offer, e.g., the uneducated, poor, or elderly. In an infinite mindset, these relationships can be deep sources of joy and inspiration for both parties.

Don’t wait. Do as much good as you can for as many people as you can today rather than planning to do so at some indefinite point in the future. I know how tempting this way of thinking can be. Trust me, the day will never come when you will have earned your target amount of money or achieved that specific objective and can miraculously transition into giving mode. Making compassion and giving a part of your life today.

Be present. It’s one thing to be present and engaged when doing something engaging like having a conversation or working on something challenging. We must strive to be mindful, present, intentional, and genuinely curious even when engaging in the most mundane tasks: washing hands, cooking, walking, breathing. These moments are some of the best opportunities for slowing down and exploring the idea of timelessness, and when we learn to be present while doing them, they are a remarkable source of joy and wonder.

Do less. Instead of trying to maximize how much we accomplish, we should seek to do work that we are proud of. Prioritize quality over quantity. Take the time to really hone a craft. Stop trying to multitask, overoptimize, and do multiple things at once. When finishing something, don’t immediately rush on to the next thing. Take time to reflect on the task you just accomplished and consider how it could be done better the next time. Do fewer things, better and more mindfully.

Respect nature. Nothing embodies timelessness better than Mother Nature and there is no better place to learn to understand and appreciate timelessness than surrounded by nature. Go on trips, take walks and hikes, explore the countryside, climb mountains, swim in the ocean, and spend as much time outdoors as you can. Cultivate a profound respect for the beauty, power, wisdom, and timelessness of nature.

Relax. Don’t worry too much if you forget something, miss an opportunity, or fail at something. Missing one opportunity almost inevitably results in others appearing sooner or later. Herein lies another of life’s great paradoxes: when we feel under less pressure to accomplish specific things within a specific timeframe, we relax, perform better, and are more likely to accomplish those things!

It’s taken many years, but I’m beginning to see the wisdom of the old artisan I observed in Japan. Perhaps he really had spent his entire life and career perfecting his craft. Perhaps he had done something entirely different before. Perhaps he had traveled the world, and at some point, had decided that he had seen enough. Perhaps he had even gone to war, and when it was over, decided he just wanted a quiet, peaceful life. It makes no difference. He had achieved something most of us never will: a sense of total oneness with his work, and of purpose and satisfaction. I could see it in his eyes, in his hands, and in his work. He was living completely in the moment.

There isn’t really a good word for this state of being in the English language, this unique form of happiness, contentment, and satisfaction. “Enlightenment” is a bit too strong. A better word is eudemonia, a Greek word which means a “state of excellence characterized by objective flourishing across a lifetime, and brought about through the exercise of moral virtue, practical wisdom, and rationality,”[¹] described in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as the ultimate form of happiness. Another possible word is simcha, a Hebrew word used to describe the happiness associated with any joyful occasion which has deeper meaning in Jewish philosophy: “the experience of the soul that comes when you are doing what you should be doing.”[²]

It’s a state that most of us would be lucky to reach a handful of times in our entire life. To enter this state regularly, to be able to enter it at will, is rare indeed and is tantamount to enlightenment. We could do worse than aiming to achieve it in our own lives.

I don’t know the whole way there there, but I know that it starts with timelessness.

How do you feel that you battle with time in your own life? What do happiness, timelessness, and escaping from the finite game mean to you? Leave a comment and let me know.

Note: The ideas in this post are heavily influenced by three books: Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for Success, Team Human, and Finite and Infinite Games. These books are an excellent place to explore these ideas in greater depth.

Notes

See eudemonia. ↩
As articulated by Rabbi Akiva Tatz. From Springboard, p. 37. ↩

Institutional Hypocrisy

2020-09-11T19:40:00+00:00

We live in a world where we are constantly lied to. Our leaders and our politicians lie to us (but at least we expect this). The companies we rely on, including our financial institutions, lie to us. Companies lie to their own employees (recent examples include Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Uber). Even our most trusted institutions such as universities and the medical system lie to us regularly. It’s no surprise that we’ve witnessed a breakdown of trust over the past few years, and it’s no surprise that “trustless” systems like Bitcoin continue to gain in popularity.[¹]

Society cannot function without trust, and the breakdown of trust is one of the biggest collective crises that we face. It makes addressing other problems, from climate change to Covid19, much more difficult.[²] This subject merits much deeper analysis and discussion, but for the purposes of this article I want to focus on one particularly common, repugnant type of dishonesty that has contributed much to this breakdown: hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is the type of lying that bothers me the most. It’s a surprisingly complex, nuanced phenomenon with a number of different definitions. In a nutshell, hypocrisy is a pattern of behavior that involves professing certain beliefs, values, or virtues, while simultaneously acting in ways contradictory to those stated beliefs, in effect contradicting oneself. While not strictly required, it often involves criticizing the same behavior in others.

Some hypocrites lie outright and profess to believe things they don’t really believe, thus deceiving others. More often, however, hypocrites are really only deceiving themselves. If there’s one thing worse than lying to others, it’s lying to yourself. This is probably one of the reasons hypocrisy bothers me so much.

In a world full of complexity and moral relativism, internal consistency is one of the few absolutes we can realistically, rightfully, and regularly expect from one another. We don’t always have to agree, we don’t always have to understand or be okay with each others’ beliefs and behavior, but at minimum we should do the things we say we will do. We should act in a way that’s consistent with the things we believe and the things we say we believe. We should not contradict ourselves. And we should expect the same of others.

While hypocrisy on the part of an individual is bad enough, hypocrisy on the part of an institution is much worse. An individual can be forgiven for a temporary lapse of consistency, but the raison d’être of an institution is consistency (along with efficiency and longevity). As individuals, we are fickle and unreliable. We build and subsequently align ourselves with institutions as a guard against our own failures and unpredictability.

Individuals aren’t very good at clearly articulating their values and principles. To do this is difficult, and it can be the work of a lifetime. On the other hand, an institution that doesn’t know what it stands for isn’t an institution at all. At best, it’s unfocused and ineffective; at worst, it’s a tool in thrall to someone else’s will. In any case, such a false institution is almost by definition deceptive to those inside and outside.

Many types of institutions are guilty of institutional hypocrisy. Here are a few examples.

_{A perfect example of the sort of advertising that bothers me. I’m not sure what a credit union has to do with a girl dressed as a superhero, or why I and a credit union are “stronger together.” (Source)}

Commercials and advertisements with messages such as, “We’re here for you” or “Stronger together” have always bothered me. These are things that family members and close friends say to one another. When a company says them, it comes across as hollow and devoid of meaning. It’s an attempt to rob these phrases of the power they have when they’re used meaningfully and intentionally. It would be one thing if the message came directly from someone with whom I had a personal relationship, such as a banker or shopkeeper. Coming directly from corporate HQ, conveyed over an impersonal medium such as television or the Internet, it’s particularly offensive.

_{It’s good to know that so many firms are suddenly “here to help” in the wake of the pandemic. As one commentator put it on YouTube, “We know you've lost your job, we know you've lost family members, but please buy our new Cadillac Escalade.” (Source: Every Covid-19 Commercial is Exactly the Same)}

In the wake of the current pandemic, this style of marketing has become even more common. Companies may intend messages such as these to sound reassuring, but to me, they come across as insensitive and tone deaf. Rather than leaving families alone to face this crisis and, for those who have lost loved ones, to grieve in their own way—you know, with actual friends and family—our capitalist machine cannot quiet itself for even a moment. As one commentator put it on YouTube, “We know you’ve lost your job, we know you’ve lost family members, but please buy our new Cadillac Escalade.”

Companies do not “miss” us and we’re not “welcome” back any more than they’re “there for us” in normal times. What they miss is their profits, and what’s welcome is our money. A company is not there for you the way a friend or family member is, it’s there to take as much of your money as it can.

Of course, many companies are also struggling in the wake of the pandemic. Why can’t they be honest about this fact? A much better sales pitch would be, “Ordinary people work for us, and we’re struggling, and if we can’t stay in business, then they’ll lose their jobs. Now, would you like to buy a tasty burger?” At least it’s honest, vulnerable, and to the point!

Dishonest, hypocritical marketing takes many forms. My personal favorite example is when a company puts you on a long hold to speak to a customer service representative, and gives you the pre-recorded message, “We know your time is valuable. We’ll be with you as soon as possible.” (Translation: We don’t value your time at all, or we would’ve invested more in customer service so you don’t have to wait. We’ll be with you when our stingy budget allows. Maybe.)[³] Then there are all of the mediocre products and services marketed as “premium” or “elite” that are nothing of the sort. Of course, no company wants to market its products as “basic.” This gives rise to the fascinating phenomenon of Premium Mediocre.[⁴]

I find this sort of marketing genuinely offensive and demeaning. Why do companies feel that they need to lie to us to earn our business? Why do they feel the need to pander to consumers as if we somehow can’t handle the truth that they care about profits and not about us as people?

_{A full-page ad that Patagonia ran in the New York Times in November, 2011.}

Not all companies lie to us. There are a precious few that know what they stand for and act in a way that’s consistent with their values. One example is Patagonia, which famously ran a full-page ad in the New York Times on Black Friday a few years ago reading, “DON’T BUY THIS JACKET” as a way to encourage consumers to consider the environmental impact of their purchasing decisions. Another is CVS, which discontinued the sale of tobacco products in 2015 (whereas all of its rivals still sell tobacco products, directly violating their values and mission statements).

While it probably comes as no surprise that companies lie to us all the time, what about more trusted institutions such as universities? In fact, universities are guilty of similar behavior. Universities market themselves as places of learning, which typically requires good instruction, yet incentivize their faculty to do research and publish rather than to teach well. Indeed, this is the only way to gain tenure at most schools. Why? Probably because metrics such as number of articles published and citations are objective and easy to measure, while quality of teaching is not. Quality and quantity of published research is also the main way that academics and universities evaluate one another. As a result the quality of teaching, and thus student experience, tends to suffer.

What about the medical system? Different health and insurance systems in different countries and states, coupled with differing policy approaches and an increasingly quantitative, evidence-based, outcomes-oriented approach to medicine, provide a wealth of data for interesting comparisons of the effects of culture, policy, and incentivization. Atul Gawande has written compellingly on this topic.

It turns out that doctors and hospitals lie to us, and to themselves, too. Most doctors tend to believe that prestigious medical institutions provide the best care leading to the best patient outcomes, even without supporting evidence. There’s widespread belief that surgeons who attended the best medical schools and have the best reputations are better surgeons, but research indicates that successful outcomes depend primarily on something much more mundane: number of past surgeries performed. And, as Gawande has written about poignantly, doctors are just as susceptible to the Lake Woebegone effect as other people: they all tend to believe they’re ahead of the curve, even though this is statistically impossible.

Another example is financial incentives. Doctors want to believe themselves, and want us to believe, that they always want what’s best for the patient: in other words, that incentives are always aligned. In fact, research shows that doctors are incentivized by money, and that they tend to order more tests, interventions, and prescriptions when they stand to benefit financially as a result. The fact that healthcare institutions and doctors have resisted further research on these topics and publication of individual performance data is a form of institutional hypocrisy and collective self-deception.

Last but not least, we’d be remiss if we didn’t consider the most chronic of all cases of hypocrisy: that which afflicts our governments and the electoral process. In surveys, voters regularly report that honesty, integrity, and ethics are the most essential characteristics for someone elected to high political office. Yet we’ve come to expect our governments and political leaders to lie to us regularly. Indeed, research suggests that we want politicians to lie to us, and that honest politicians are less likely to be reelected. There’s nothing new about this phenomenon and disinformation has been a political tactic for millennia. What’s new is the brazenness with which modern politicians lie and the degree to which this behavior goes unpunished.

If hypocritical voters electing hypocrites to high office isn’t bad enough, the offices themselves and the institutions they stand for are guilty of an entrenched form of hypocrisy as well. In an especially shameless example, countries with the word “democratic” in their name are among the least democratic.[⁵] These same countries often run sham elections that aren’t free, fair, or transparent—but, of course, they always say they are. They maintain the barest veneer of democracy as a claim to legitimacy.

Actual democracies aren’t always better when it comes to honesty and integrity. We Americans tout the merits of liberty, transparency, due process, habeas corpus, and rule of law. But we also keep “enemy combatants” in prison against their will and without trial for decades, classifying them “indefinite detainees” or “forever prisoners.” We engage in forms of torture such as waterboarding, breaking our own laws and pretending it’s okay through the use of euphemisms like “enhanced interrogation.” We condemn extrajudicial, extraterritorial abductions, transfers, and detentions on the part of countries like China, yet engage in the same behavior ourselves. And let’s not forget that we also separate migrant children from their families and lock them in cages against their will.

If these ignominious examples have one thing in common, it’s a misalignment of incentives. You get the behavior you incentivize. Companies will continue to pander to consumers as long as consumers continue to consume products marketed dishonestly. Universities will continue to invest more in research than in quality of instruction as long as the public values and evaluates universities on the basis of research over instruction. Doctors will continue to prescribe unnecessary pills and procedures as long as they are paid to do so (and sued when they don’t). Political leaders will continue to act like lying, spoiled, entitled children until we hold them to account and elect better leaders. And our most cherished institutions, including our courts and our Constitution, will continue to be debased by hypocritical behavior until we demand change.

The rise of social media portends a dystopian future where we are all defined by a shallow public image and vanity metrics like follower count rather than by the substance and integrity that makes us who we really are: the things we really believe in, the projects we dedicate ourselves to. But there is hope. Covid19 has exposed the empty bluster of populists and the sham marketing of insolvent corporations. As Warren Buffet famously remarked, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” And nascent technologies such as blockchain, and the communities and systems of belief and values that they engender and embody may yet augur in a new era of less bullshit.

Before we attempt to reform our institutions and make them more honest, however, we must learn how to be honest with ourselves. The first step is the hardest.

Do you have other good examples of institutional hypocrisy? How do you think we should go about fixing things? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Bitcoin, and blockchain more generally, is often called “trustless” because in theory you don’t need to trust what anyone else says in order to use the system. If you run your own Bitcoin node, you can be sure that your balance is what your node says it is. The term is a bit misleading since you’re still trusting many things when you use Bitcoin: you’re trusting that the code does what it says it does, you’re trusting the underlying cryptography, you’re trusting that your Internet and power connections will be stable, you’re trusting the nodes you talk to to follow the rules of the protocol, etc.. The point is, you’re not placing your trust in a single, centralized, authoritative institution the way you are when you transact with a bank or use fiat money. ↩
Incidentally, and perhaps unsurprisingly, climate change and Covid19 are two of the topics that those in power seem to like to lie about the most. ↩
Statements like this remind me of Betteridge’s law of headlines, which states that, whenever a newspaper headline ends in a question mark, it can be answered no. Whenever a company suggests in their marketing materials that they “care about” or “value” you, they don’t. It’s just a euphemism for wanting your business. ↩
Truly premium products aren’t labeled “premium.” They don’t have any label at all. They’re usually bespoke. ↩
This in and of itself is a fascinating phenomenon. For some background on how this happened, see The Undemocratic People’s Republic of Korea. As Santiago Siri, founder of the Democracy Earth Foundation once put it, “Democracy has become such a powerful meme that even countries that aren’t democracies have to pretend that they are.” ↩

Ideas, and Their Opposites

2020-08-29T14:16:00+00:00

“What do you stand for?”

This is one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves and those around us. It’s highly relevant to topics that are near and dear to me including business, blockchain, and governance. If a project or organization doesn’t clearly articulate its values and purpose, it’ll invariably lose its way when times get tough, which they invariably do. It’ll also struggle to engender followership in others.

This goes for leaders of projects and organizations, but it goes for us as individuals, too: without a sense of mission, purpose, and values, we tend to lose our way easily and we struggle to make an impact. Without a mission, as an individual or as an organization, it’s impossible to know how well we’re doing or to course correct. (And a generic mission such as “sell as much as possible” or “enjoy yourself as much as possible” is not much of a mission and won’t get you very far.)

But there’s another side to this question, one that’s equally relevant and important but often overlooked: “What don’t you stand for?” Because you cannot ask the first question without also asking, explicitly or implicitly, the second.

Ancient Chinese philosophers were on to something when they developed the notion of yin and yang. A dualistic cosmology makes a lot of sense, because pretty much all things are defined by and exist in conjunction with their opposites. There’s no light without darkness, no male without female, no hot without cold, and no right without wrong.

I first really began to understand this idea a few years ago when I learned about the “Big Five” personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Naively, it may seem like there is a better and a worse side on each axis. For instance, it may seem better to be open, conscientious, extraverted, agreeable, and confident (i.e., not too neurotic).

However, upon deeper reflection, it becomes clear that each extreme has both positive and negative aspects. Those who are very open may have more and varied experiences, but they tend to be less focused, trustworthy, and reliable, and are more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors such as taking drugs. Those who are very conscientious are likely to be responsible and successful, but tend to lack spontaneity and adaptability, and may therefore miss out on opportunities and new experiences. Those who are very extraverted tend to have strong social networks, but they likely lack focus and attention to detail, and may struggle with deep work. Those who are highly agreeable are easy to get along with, but tend to be fickle and change their minds and behavior to suit those around them, without having strong principles of their own. And finally, those who are emotionally stable, a desirable quality, may be overconfident and may miss important details that are obvious to someone who is more neurotic.

The point, of course, is that there is no right or wrong, no better or worse on any of these axes. The right way to interpret our own personality traits is to find the ones that are the most pronounced, as these are the sources of both our greatest strengths and our greatest weaknesses. My most pronounced personality trait is probably my curiosity and openness to experience, which at times makes it very hard to focus on one task or project and see it through to completion over a period of months or years when many other interesting and exciting opportunities beckon.

In modern society, we love to tell people the things we stand for. Pretty much every company has a mission statement or a set of principles on their webpage and in their investor materials, and politicians make lots of noise about their platforms and the policies they support. What they talk about a lot less, however, is the things they don’t stand for. Life is all about tradeoffs: whether you want to admit it or not, the very act of deciding that you stand for one thing is by definition the act of closing another door and deciding that you’re opposed to something else.

I’ll use myself as an example. A few months ago, as an exercise, I made a list of my personal values: the things I stand for and believe in. At the top of this list were values such as Excellence, Humility, Empathy, Compassion, and Curiosity. It sounds like a pretty good list, but I recognize that each of these values limits me in some important way.

To me, Excellence means working hard and always doing work that I’m proud of. It means that I put my money where my mouth is, to so speak, and I prioritize actions over words. The downside of this value is the need to limit my own output: if I put a lot of effort into something that I’m not proud of, that work will probably never see the light of day. This has been a challenge with my writing. I’ve written dozens, perhaps hundreds, of pieces that I’ll probably never publish because I don’t feel that they’re up to scratch. I’m trying to address this with three promises I’ve made to myself: 1. that I’ll publish something every week, 2. that I only need to be 80% satisfied with the things I publish (since the last 20% would be impossible), 3. that I write, first and foremost, for myself, not for an audience.

To me, Humility means taming the ego. It means putting others before me, and always doing what’s right regardless of whether it benefits me personally or is good for my “personal brand.” It means acting out of reasons such as Compassion rather than out of pride. The downside of this value should be obvious: it means that I’m perhaps less ambitious than I might be if I were more prideful, and that I may benefit less in material terms from my work than I might otherwise. (To me, the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual benefits far outweigh the material benefits, and anyway, those who are the least prideful and the most generous do tend to do pretty well over the long run.)

To me, Empathy means reflecting on the effects that my words and actions have on the people around me, and whenever possible, putting myself in the position of others to understand how they see and experience the world. The downside of this value is similar to that of being highly open to experience: it means that I’m less focused on one particular perspective or set of beliefs, things that are helpful if one wishes to have a real impact.

Compassion is closely related to both Empathy and Humility: it also means to consider the impact that I have on all other people, and all other lives, now and into the future. To me, it means acting in a way that brings the greatest amount of happiness to and causes the least amount of suffering for others. The downside of this value is analysis paralysis: sometimes it’s not possible to know what the impacts of one’s actions will be, positive or negative. This is especially true of higher order effects, over time and at a distance. Sometimes actions that have a chance of leading to great benefit in the future can cause suffering in the short-term (a version of the trolley problem). A life lived in constant pursuit of Compassion is a life of frustrating, often quixotic analysis. (Here, as well, I tend to invoke the 80/20 rule as a way of avoiding this paralysis.)

To me, Curiosity means to question everything. It means asking lots of hard questions and always listening more than I speak. It means reflecting on my own ignorance and cultivating a sense of beginner’s mind. It means cultivating, and demonstrating, a genuine interest in the people, places, and things around me. It means maintaining a healthy respect for the things and ideas that I haven’t yet been exposed to. As with Openness and Empathy, the downside of this value is lack of focus on one particular perspective, set of beliefs, or course of action, since there may always be another possibility that I haven’t yet learned about.

By deciding to stand for these values, I am implicitly deciding to stand against things such as pride, ambition, material comfort, focus, extremism, and quick action. While I’m happy to take a stand against extremism, I don’t feel so strongly opposed to, say, focus, which is clearly a powerful tool when used for good. And, of course, values don’t exist in a vacuum: there are intricate, complex, and sometimes contradictory connections among them. For instance, I put humility before pride, but I also value excellence, and isn’t taking pride in one’s work part of celebrating excellence? Obviously, understanding my own value system is still a work in progress—and understanding and articulating it better is one of my goals for writing here. As Douglas Hofstadter put it, “We are all bundles of contradictions.”

What things do you stand for? What matters the most to you? What ideas, beliefs, or patterns of behavior are you the most strongly wedded to, and the least willing to give up? These are your values and your most strongly expressed personality traits.

Next, consider via process of elimination which doors these values and traits close for you. What things do you by necessity not stand for?

I propose that, when we ask ourselves and one another what things we stand for, we also always ask the second half of the question, no less important than the first half. We may be surprised by the answer.

What do you stand for? What things do you stand against? Leave a comment and let me know.

Cityside and Countryside

2020-08-22T23:14:00+00:00

Over the past few decades, major cities have been engines of enormous growth and prosperity. Cities have brought together diverse groups of people from different places and different walks of life, forcing them to live side by side more or less peaceably and allowing them to learn from one another. Cities are cauldrons of more than cultural mixing, however: they’re also where ideas, business, and innovation flourish. This concentration of different forms of capital—human, intellectual, and financial—has led to the largest explosion of prosperity in human history, particularly visible in places like Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

The story of the twentieth century is the story of people migrating to cities in search of better lives. At the beginning of the century, only 16% of the global population and 40% of Americans lived in cities; by the end, those figures grew to around 47% and 79%, respectively. In 2007, for the first time, more people in the world lived in urban than in rural areas. And, by and large, they found the prosperity they sought: median household income is higher and poverty rates are lower in urban than in rural counties in the United States, and urban living standards tend to be higher. (Sources: Urbanization, Differences in Income Growth Across U.S. Counties)

While cities have been enormously beneficial to those with the desire and wherewithal to migrate (and stay in spite of crowding and rising costs), the prosperity they’ve generated has not been widely shared. One of the starkest divides politically, economically, and socially in recent years is the urban-rural divide. One way in which this became obvious was the 2016 presidential election, which saw increasing polarization in voting patterns between urban and rural areas.

As someone who spends most of his time in big cities, it’s easy and tempting to write off rural communities as ignorant, backwards, and obstructionist, opposed to innovation and immigration (one of the biggest modern drivers of prosperity). But this view is not only unhelpful, it’s also misguided. The urban-rural divide is about more than education and economics. It reflects a core philosophical divide.

I was born in New York City, but raised on a tiny dairy farm in rural southern New Jersey. I’ve spent my life since then moving back and forth between city and country. I feel at home in both. When I’m in the city, I miss the country, and when I’m in the country, I miss the city.

These days, driving through the countryside, the contrast to city life feels as harsh as ever. New York is an extremely diverse city, with a majority of people of color. By contrast, most of the United States outside major metro areas isn’t very diverse. Leaving the city, you quickly find yourself in Trump Country, especially recognizable this election season by the ubiquitous “Make America Great Again” signs in towns and on lawns.

New York City is home to more than hipster coffee shops and great ethnic food: it’s also full of people who are open-minded, progressive, globally oriented, and optimistic about the future. If I had been old enough to understand politics when I lived on that dairy farm, I would have understood that my neighbors held opposing political views: relatively narrow-minded, conservative, locally-oriented, and, at least recently, pretty pessimistic about their place in the world and the state of the country.

The urban-rural divide is of course much bigger than my personal story, and it’s also bigger than the cultural divide between New York and its neighboring regions. It is, in fact, the story of modern America, of its politics, economics, and society. These days it feels as if there are two Americas. There’s “fast lane” America, open to the world, optimistic, confident about the future, and benefiting handsomely from unstoppable trends like digital technology, globalization, and diversification. Then there’s the other America, an obstinate, backwards-looking, conservative “slow lane” America longing to return to a traditional way of life that’s gone for good. That, at least, is how a progressive urbanite might describe the situation. Someone with a more rural set of sensibilities would be more likely to frame things in terms of urban hedonism and decaying values, entitlement, and loss of national pride.

I’ve long been fascinated by deep, fundamental contrast. And one of the things that makes the urban-rural divide so fascinating is that, if you zoom out far enough, these two camps represent one of the most fundamental opposing pairs of philosophies, remarkably resilient across time and place. Like authoritarianism versus liberalism, it’s a battle that has been going on for centuries and that will likely continue for many generations to come. It’s not a war of right versus wrong, and it’s not a war that can ever be won decisively.

At its core, urbanism is progressive and growth-oriented. It’s a confident, open-minded, compassionate, permissive philosophy that welcomes and celebrates diversity and change. Those who live in big, modern cities feel that we can get more done by supporting one another, working together, and putting diversity to good use through a “marketplace of ideas.” This confidence, assertiveness, and openness is enabled by abundance: when resources are plenty, there’s plenty to go around plenty to share with other people. Cities have long been associated with innovation and prosperity. In the modern economy, they’re engines of wealth creation, where people, ideas, and capital intermingle and synergies arise. In the modern economy, sustained wealth creation relies on the free flow of people, ideas, and capital, and big cities abound with these. This mindset is associated with trade and commerce.

By contrast, the rural mindset is conservative both in the sense of being opposed to change, as well as in the sense of conserving relatively scarce resources. This mindset is less interested in growth and more interested in survival and sustainability. It’s a “circle the wagons” mindset: when resources are scarce, we tend to prioritize our own needs and those of our families and closest friends above the needs of the “other”. This mindset is associated with agriculture, which naturally tends towards conservativism. There is less to be gained from innovation in agriculture, and more to be lost. Agriculture, of course, depends heavily upon nature’s whims: one extra wet or dry season, one bad harvest, can cause great financial distress that may last a long time. Whereas traders can diversify into different lines of business or trade with different geographies, those who practice agriculture are much more tied to the land and have much less ability to diversify. For all of these reasons, the rural mindset is focused much closer to home: the needs of family and of one’s local community are prioritized over those of people farther away.

The point is that neither of these philosophies is right or wrong, and both bring something important to the table. Each can and should learn from the other. Over the long term and at the macro scale, growth is essential because it’s the only way to empower hundreds of millions of people to escape poverty and create better lives for themselves—precisely the story of the past few decades. To some extent, urbanization, globalization, and diversification are the only ways to achieve sustainable, widespread, long term growth.

Other things being equal, growth is good, but we should not pursue a strategy of growth at any cost. In particular, as we’ve seen quite clearly over the past few years, growth must not come at the cost of environmental, social, or economic sustainability and security. Once a certain level of material wellbeing has been established, it may make sense for economies and societies to prioritize things other than growth, which inevitably brings with it a wealth gap and socio-economic disparities. Northern Europe and Japan are examples of societies and economies that, having grown wealthy, have since chosen to prioritize things such as environmental sustainability, cultural continuity, and social cohesion over continued breakneck growth at any cost. Overall, the rural mindset better encapsulates this sense of security, sustainability, and balance.

While big cities have indeed been engines of economic growth and prosperity, they have done less well at sustainability. The story of the city is also inextricably the story of the automobile. Cars enabled generations of Americans to escape from crowded, polluted, unsafe city centers and find independence and a higher quality of life in the suburbs while keeping the jobs and incomes that the city enabled. But they also caused mixed urban communities to fracture and isolate along lines of class and race. Cars led to increasingly longer commute times as more and more families fled city centers and were forced deeper into the suburbs in search of affordable homes. They cause a shocking amount of pollution, and have led to more sedentary lifestyles and increased obesity. Cars all but destroyed the downtowns of cities such as Los Angeles, making them no-go zones to pedestrians and bicyclists.

What’s more, homes in and around big cities have become increasingly unaffordable to all but the wealthiest few. The “American dream” lifestyle of a couple with high-paying jobs and two kids is also one of isolation and loneliness, largely cut off from traditional support groups such as an extended family and a tight knit, local community. Those who pursue a modern, urban lifestyle have in many cases had to sacrifice traditional values such as family ties in order to further their careers. To paraphrase the Book of Matthew, what good does it do us to gain the whole world but lose our families, ourselves, and the things that really matter in the process?

This year marks an inflection point in the inexorable rise of the big city over the past few decades. What’s still unclear is which direction the trend will go from here. Forecasting the decline and death of big, expensive cities like New York and San Francisco seems to have become even more of a national pastime lately than usual. Indeed, cities like New York do face enormous challenges in the wake of Covid-19: billion-dollar budget shortfalls just as states, which typically support city budgets, are also going broke; commuters are working from home; many restaurants and other local businesses are closed for good, increasing unemployment and decreasing tax revenue; rents and property taxes aren’t being paid; and the wealthiest residents are fleeing, possibly for good. If more workers can work remotely, keeping their high salaries without needing to pay big city rents, and if companies don’t need to spend so much to maintain downtown offices, then many of these changes may be permanent and may trigger a downward spiral for cities, the thinking goes.

It seems like the perfect storm. But I wouldn’t be so quick to count big cities out just yet. If the story of the city is one of growth, diversity, and prosperity, it’s also one of reinvention, dynamism, and antifragility. People die—cities don’t, especially the biggest ones. London has been around for two thousand years and I’d wager that it’s probably got a few more good years in it. The story of the city is not a linear story. Cities grow in fits and spurts. Sometimes they shrink a little, then grow more later. New York has been especially pleasant lately as many people have left, there are less cars on the streets, and rents are a little cheaper. It won’t lose its charm anytime soon, regardless of what some putz on LinkedIn says (Jerry Seinfeld gets it).

If there’s one theme in this blog, it’s that of contrast: of dialectic and of opposite extremes meeting in the middle to find a sustainable path forward. The city-country divide is another great example of such a dialectic. Speaking personally, I would be pretty unhappy if I spent all of my time in the city and never escaped to the country: I’d feel out of touch with nature, I’d never feel at peace, and I’d have no space for big-picture thinking. But I’d feel equally unhappy if I spent no time in the city: I’d miss the diversity, the exposure to new people and ideas, the intellectual and sensory stimulation. The country inspires me to reflect on what matters most; the city inspires me to learn, grow, and become better.

We need to find a similar balance as a society and as a country or we too will go crazy. We must continue to pursue growth, and the dynamism and diversity of our big cities is necessarily part of that story. But equally we must not forget our values and where we’ve come from, and we must not pursue growth regardless of the cost. Rural people and rural values do a better job of preserving where we’ve come from, and we can learn from these too: the importance of family and local communities, supporting one another, and sustainable growth. Country folk look out for and take care of each other. We, too, must take care of our people, something we haven’t done such a great job of the past few years. It’s the only sustainable way forward.

Why I Meditate

2020-08-15T13:14:00+00:00

I was challenged a couple of months ago to write about meditation, and about why I meditate. I happily accepted the challenge, but I didn’t realize at the time what a difficult topic it would be to write about. For one thing, it’s more deeply personal than anything else I’ve written about publicly. For another, it’s the sort of thing that just feels self-evident (for lack of a better word). It’s a bit like asking, “Why do you sleep?” or “Why do you breathe?” After meditating pretty seriously for the past few years, I now think of meditation as just part of life, like sleeping or breathing.

I realize that’s not much of an answer, so I’ll attempt to dig a bit deeper here. One way to answer this question is to begin with the related question, why did I begin meditating? From there, I can try to explain why I continued, and then circle back to answering the real question—why I still do it, or, why I do it at all.

My first real experience with meditation came as part of a workshop during business school. A meditation instructor walked several dozens students through some fairly standard visualization exercises. I experienced something quite profound during the workshop. I closed my eyes, listened to the instructor’s words, visualized myself sinking into a deep, dark, comfortable space—and then, suddenly, I felt as though time had stopped. I experienced very vivid memories of my childhood, and of my grandmother, whom I had lost several years before. When I came back to the present, I felt like the meditation had only lasted for a few minutes, and I was shocked to learn that in fact a full hour had passed. It was as close to a religious experience as I had ever come, and it felt like a signal that I should continue. I felt like there were a lot more deeply-buried memories and emotions that I should get in touch with, and meditation seemed like a good way to explore them. While I’ve since had several other profound experiences meditating, I’ve never had an experience quite like that one again.

I intended to continue meditation, but over the following years life, and a startup, intervened. When I finally did begin meditating again, it was through the Headspace app, relatively new at the time. Whereas the meditation workshop had lasted several hours, Headspace promised that I actually only needed ten or fifteen minutes a day. That appealed to me because it sounded realistic and achievable. I began to use the app, and managed to do a brief meditation every day for about two years, which felt like an enormous accomplishment. At this stage the short meditations felt calming and helpful, but not life-changing.

The next big step came with my first silent meditation retreat. I spent ten days at a Vipassana center last year, and this experience was truly life-changing. Where my meditation up to that point had been like dipping my toes into a small swimming pool, Vipassana felt like being thrown headfirst into a huge ocean. I could write many pages about the things I experienced during those ten days—indeed, I have, although I haven’t published any of them yet—but suffice it to say that it was the most profound and valuable experience of my life, and I could not recommend it more highly.

Since then I’ve continued to meditate for about an hour each day, usually first thing in the morning. I’ve continued because it brings me great joy and peace, and it helps me focus. It’s a powerful antidote for the stress, anxiety, and uncertainty of everyday life. What felt like a chore in the beginning developed into a habit, and now it’s something I genuinely look forward to and miss profoundly when it gets postponed. (That seems to be the nature of habit formation: do something long enough and you will grow to love it.)

Circling back to the original question, then: Why meditate in the first place? The best answer I can give is in the form of a metaphor (and I’m beginning to understand why meditation instructors have used metaphors since time immemorial!).

I sometimes feel as if I’m living my life on a spaceship. The ship is vast, almost unfathomably so, and I can explore and wander in any direction endlessly. The possibilities feel almost limitless: as if the ship contains an entire world within its boundaries. But the ship does have limits. If I wander far enough in any one direction, I eventually reach an outer wall. I was never previously aware of the boundaries, or indeed, of the existence of the ship in the first place—probably because I never had the patience, focus, or fortitude to wander far enough in one direction!

I’ve spent my entire life on the ship, and it’s literally all I know. I was born there, and I will most likely die there. I have no idea from whence it came, nor where it’s bound. Many of my fellow passengers have theories: about the ship, about its origin, about its possible destination, about the mission of the trip. Many more are unaware of the existence of the ship in the first place, or simply choose not to care, preferring instead to just get on with their lives.

The act of meditation, for me, is like peering out of the ship’s windows at the vast expanse of empty space beyond. It’s the act of contemplating the hardest questions. Where are we coming from, where are we going, and why? Who built this ship? To what end? It’s the act of setting aside the noise of everyone else’s theories and observing, experiencing, and contemplating the nature of existence and reality for myself. I don’t do it in expectation of finding answers. That’s not the point. Meditation is not geared towards some particular end—and, by extension, that which is geared towards a specific end is not meditation. It’s like the act of gazing up at the stars or out at the endless ocean: it’s something one cannot help but do, out of curiosity and the feeling of being a tiny speck in a universe that’s vast beyond belief. At the same time, perhaps ironically, it’s an act that makes one feel a deep sense of connection with all other existence and all other lives.

In short, meditation has become an important and central part of my life. In some ways it’s the foundation rock upon which my entire life is built—so you could call it a form of faith. It’s the truest thing I’ve ever learned or experienced. It’s difficult to describe it in more specific terms.

I really cannot imagine life without it. Indeed, I didn’t feel alive in the first place until I began meditating. It shocks me to think how much of my life I missed, passing before my own eyes—and, indeed, how much I still miss, despite my best efforts to always be present! Meditation brings me more joy, more continually, than anything else I’ve ever experienced. And I’m constantly looking for ways to make meditation, mindfulness, and intentionality a bigger part of my life, such as by studying Buddhism more deeply and by becoming more active with the sangha. Hopefully, writing will also be part of this, but first I have to find the words.

If you meditate, does any of this resonate for you? Are you interested in meditation, or have you considered trying it? Let me know by leaving a comment!

Something to Believe In

2020-07-19T15:26:00+00:00

I’m feeling pretty fed up with the state of the world, and the feeling has definitely become more intense recently. There are a number of reasons, but the most obvious one is politics. Politics feels totally broken in the United States and in disarray at the international level too. I’m sure I’m not alone in this feeling.

When I look at the Democratic party, I see idealists who wish for a more perfect world and promote legislation that might work in such a world, but that’s largely unrealistic in the world we actually live in. I align with the Democrats on many things including voting rights, promoting immigration, healthcare reform, and the value of a basic social safety net. I like moderate Democrats and moderate proposals, but I disagree with more radical policy proposals. A lot of them sound good in theory but wouldn’t work in practice, ideas like universal free college education and tighter corporate regulation. The Democrats have an unfortunate tendency to look like the party that’s bad at math and doesn’t really understand economics (who’s going to pay for universal college education?). Of course, the Democrats are also the party that’s traditionally opposed to free trade and that believes in big government and high government spending. I have no trust in the government to spend money well. I also feel like Democrats don’t appreciate the importance and value of business and entrepreneurship, and want to drown business in red tape and costly regulation that stifles innovation.

When I look at the Republican party, I see a dumpster fire. The party has a long history and used to stand for many admirable things such as small government, fiscal conservatism, free trade and free market capitalism, and classical liberalism. I support all of these, and in fact, I align with more closely with the traditional Republican stance than with the Democratic stance on these issues. However, the Republican Party has rapidly shifted its stance on many issues and now appears to stand more for populism, nepotism, incompetence, anti-science, self-defeating trade wars, white nationalism, and Trumpian narcissism. I struggle to see how the party will have any real relevance in an America that is increasingly young, diverse, urban, educated, and globally-minded. That is, unless it undergoes another total transformation.

In short, both political parties look extremist and absurd to me. I’ve never considered myself a Democrat nor a Republican, but I feel even less aligned with the political mainstream today than at any other point in my life. Crisis has a tendency to bring out extremes, and lately we’ve seen the worst of both parties and of our political system more generally. Somehow, the choice between two bad options seems antiquated and oddly quaint, like a relic of simpler times. My parents may have grown up in a world where there were only three or four television channels, but surely we have more options today, right? Hasn’t the Internet solved this already?

It hasn’t—if anything, the Internet has made things worse by removing what common ground we once had to stand on.

There was a brief moment, a few weeks ago, when I thought I had found my people. I saw, and joined, groups of angry, motivated, passionate citizens who gathered to protest injustice. I discovered that they are as disgusted as I am with the state of affairs. In fact, many of them have faced much greater injustices than I have, and are even more disgusted. The proximate cause that brought us together, from Brooklyn to Tulsa to Minneapolis to the self-declared Capital Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, was the wrongful death of George Floyd at the hands of those sworn to protect his life. While systemic racism was, and is, one of the main things these groups are protesting, I think that it’s about a lot more. In addition to persistent racism and white nationalism, there’s the partisan disaster that American politics has become, ongoing corporate bailouts in the face of rising inequality and stagnating wages, unaffordable housing and broken healthcare, the bungled response to Covid19, inaction on climate change, and the ongoing threat of nuclear war, just to name a few. We’re failing to address these critical issues and we need a new approach because what we’re doing is not working. Our leaders are clearly not up to the task of responding to these crises, and the political systems that elected them aren’t working, either.

In this moment, for the first time in my life I saw the vanguard of a motivated group of people that I thought could effect real, deep, lasting change. Their anger and their passion were palpable. Walking alongside the group through the eerily quiet corridors of power in Manhattan, I felt an energy in the air that I have never felt before—the energy of the real possibility of change, of revolution.

As magical as it was, the moment passed. And when I considered things more objectively, I began to see that the protest movement is no different than the politicians. This movement too is peddling outrageous policy goals that stand no realistic chance of fixing things. Defunding or abolishing the police is not the way forward. It sounds nice as a rallying call but it’s utopian and unrealistic. In this way it’s no more helpful than all of the other pie-in-the-sky policy goals from the mainstream parties. As long are still more guns than people in the country, the police will have a role to play in keeping the peace. (If you really want to reform America, maybe start by addressing gun violence.)[¹]

What scares me even more than a radical policy agenda is the spectre of cancel culture. There’s a new religion brewing, one of wokeness and political correctness, that I find toxic and terrifying. You’re entitled to express whatever radical opinion you want to, but you’re not entitled to silence those you disagree with. In fact, you have an obligation to listen to and engage with others, especially those you disagree with, because it’s the only way we move forward as a society. Radical wokeness is the last thing our country or our world needs. We don’t need “one true party line.” We don’t need censorship. If you want those things, move to China. We need a liberal marketplace of ideas, and objectivism, and respect for one another’s perspectives.

Extremism breeds extremism, and it’s not surprising that the extremism of Trump should give rise to an extreme backlash. I’m still hopeful that we can meet in the middle and find a better, more moderate path forward. What might such a path look like?

The American political system has held up remarkably well for nearly 250 years, and I think we should keep most of it, but some institutions are badly in need of modernization. While I don’t support political revolution in the traditional sense, I do think that we need change that’s revolutionary, not merely evolutionary. We need better leaders. And we need a better system of nominating and electing them. While trust in institutions is low overall, trust in Congress is in the single digits. It’s time to hit reset and engage in some painful but necessary political reforms.

We need to stop the ridiculous practice of gerrymandering. We need campaign finance reform. We need to make sure that people everywhere are able to vote easily. We need term limits on Congress, which was not a full-time, professionalized institution for most of its existence. We need to reform or eliminate the Electoral College, which is antiquated and antidemocratic.[²] We need to shrink the federal government and put more power back in the hands of the states and local governments.[³] And we may need to dissolve Congress completely and elect leaders we actually trust and believe in.

A better path forward would prioritize democracy (little “d”) and liberalism (little “l”). It would focus on education and on equal access to opportunity. It would fix healthcare and take climate change seriously. It would engage boldly and optimistically with the world and support free trade. It would embrace immigration and diversity. It would believe in, promote, and invest heavily in science and in STEM more generally. It would support a marketplace of ideas and would be opposed to censorship and cancel culture. It would be unafraid to admit its own failures and limitations, and it would have bold ideas to address racism. And it would have some radical economic policies, because Capitalism 1.0 isn’t working. It would promote a fairer and more inclusive form of capitalism, but it would not embrace fundamentally failed ideas such as communism.

In short, it would be values-driven. It would actually stand for things like liberty, responsibility, compassion, human rights, innovation, objectivism, equality before the law, and a liberal social contract—rather than just making noise about them—and it would put country and Constitution before party.

Is there any hope of such a party or platform actually appearing in the United States? I’m given hope by the appearance of Andrew Yang, a candidate in this year’s presidential election. He understands and respects technology and education. He recognizes that capitalism isn’t working for most people and has bold ideas on how to reform it. His policy goals are overall quite reasonable. The fact that he won only 2-3% of the votes in the first presidential primaries shows that America isn’t ready for such a president, or perhaps that the broken electoral system inevitably sidelines moderate, centrist candidates in favor of extremists. But Yang is young and his political career is new, and I suspect and hope he’ll be on the political scene for a long time to come.

In the meantime, there is another hope, albeit a very different one: the hope of building a new system entirely. Rather than challenging the existing system, this system would be built in parallel in digital space. John Perry Barlow is the honorary founder of this project. In 1996 he gave cyberspace a Declaration of Independence, but he did not give it a Constitution. That work has fallen to us, and it remains very much a work in progress.

Covid19 and the past few months have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that cyberspace is just as real, and as relevant, to humans today as the offline world. We’ve only just begun to understand how to organize and govern it. The current system, which places far too much power in the hands of a tiny number of unaccountable companies, is clearly unsustainable. I have hope that, as we figure out how to govern cyberspace and how it fits into the modern world order, we can do much better than we’ve done building our “weary giants of flesh and steel.” I hope that reasonable policies, and indeed politics, will play a larger role in a digitally native, transnational, enlightened community than they do in increasingly shortsighted, toxic, nationalistic offline politics. In some ways I think it’s our only hope. But that’s a subject for another article.

Of course I do support many of the things the protestors are fighting for. While I don’t believe in abolishing the police, policing needs real reform and a lot of the money we spend on policing could probably be put to better social use. And I absolutely support their right to continue protesting. Joining these protests was one of the most exhilarating, eye-opening things I’ve ever done and I don’t regret it for a moment. I think these protests have opened many eyes to the realities of racial injustice, and for this reason alone they’re valuable and important. But if they want to garner mainstream support and have a serious, long-term social or political impact they’re going to have to adopt more realistic, well thought-out policy goals. Is it possible to fix our broken system from within? I’m not sure, but I haven’t given up all hope yet. ↩
There may be a path forward that doesn’t actually require changing the Electoral College: see, for instance, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which provides a clever workaround that does not require a Constitutional amendment. ↩
If there’s one political system I do believe in, it’s localism. People should govern themselves as locally as possible. ↩