This is Water

This entry was posted in Buddhism, Education, Quotes on by .

If you have 10 minutes to spare today, I highly recommend viewing the video above, created by TheGlossary.com and based off David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech to Kenyon College in 2005.

His speech does an amazing job at communicating one of the most important aspects of education (and life), learning to think:

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

This arrogance, he says, comes from our default setting of self-centeredness:

We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

His advice to the students centers around choosing what and how to think about experiences, versus defaulting to the self-centeredness — essentially being mindful:

I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

He goes on to explain why this will be so important:

The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what “day in day out” really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about.
[...]
The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.

This reminds of a zen parable from Charlotte Joko Beck’s Everyday Zen: Love & Work:

Suppose we are out on a lake and it’s a bit foggy–not too foggy, but a bit foggy – and we’re rowing along in our little boat having a good time. And then, all of a sudden, coming out of the fog, there’s this other rowboat and it’s heading right at us. And… crash! Well, for a second we’re really angry – what is that fool doing? I just painted my boat! And here he comes–crash! – right into it. And then suddenly we notice that the rowboat is empty. What happens to our anger? Well, the anger collapses… I’ll just have to paint my boat again, that’s all. But if that rowboat that hit ours had another person in it, how would we react? You know what would happen! Now our encounters with life, with other people, with events, are like being bumped by an empty rowboat. But we don’t experience it that way. We experience it as though there are people in that other rowboat and we’re really getting clobbered by them.

The world would be a much better place if we just ignored the default more often and treated a larger number of negative experiences (or in many cases, potentially negative experiences) like an empty rowboat. At least we’d be a little less angry and frustrated.

Being able to navigate and deal with the hundreds of other people and stories you experience each day is an important life skill. All of those people have their own motivations, expectations, goals, fears, internal demons, and life experiences that drive their decisions and actions. It’s almost always not about US specifically. They are just trying to live, get through the day, and be as happy as possible. Just like us.

Matthew Smith on the unlimited web

This entry was posted in Digital Analog, Quotes, Technology on by .

I think we designed the wrong Internet. We’re creating rapidly for the Internet and we’re creating things that are life-changing for people. I think that smart people with good ethics need to make hard decisions about what we’re making. For example, I think about the feed, which invites us to come, be obsessed, and compare ourselves to everyone, all the time. Who came up with the idea of endless content constantly streaming toward us? There’s this unlimitedness that concerns me because it is so unlike the rest of the human experience and I think it confuses the human mind and puts us into a space where we aren’t at our best. I want to make sure that no matter the project or company I’m involved with, I’m always asking if it’s serving the human best and helping us be at our best.

via The Great Discontent: Matthew Smith.

Louis C. K. on trying to make everyone happy

This entry was posted in Quotes, Technology on by .

From a great NY Times Louis C.K. interview:

It’s a desperate thing to need everybody to be really happy with everything you say. To me the way to manage is not to have 50 versions of yourself — I do this thing, and the next time you’re going to hear me is the next time I do another one. As soon as you crack your knuckles and open up a comments page, you just canceled your subscription to being a good person.

via For Louis C. K., the Joke’s on Him – NYTimes.com.

I saw him a few weeks ago at Kleinhan’s in Buffalo — he ended the show on a related note, talking about the two worst versions of ourselves: driving a car and on the internet. How these two settings give us the protection (whether inside a car or a browser window) to say and do things that we’d never do in person.

I think a lot of life today comes down to effectively managing the multiple versions of yourself and consolidating those versions into an authentic, reasonable, and manageable number. Otherwise you are going to spend a lot of your time, attention, and money trying to make other people happy.

Be sure to read the rest of the interview, as he touches on all the indie things he’s done recently on his own terms — from tour tickets to comedy specials. Very inspiring.

The New Stability

This entry was posted in Productivity on by .

Robert Kirkman (creator of The Walking Dead and partner at Image Comics) on forging your own career path vs. relying on companies:

They make the rules. A lot of people have fooled themselves into thinking that’s stability but are now realizing that it’s the exact opposite. The real stability is controlling your own career and being in a position to hire yourself, generating ideas that are enough to make you a sustainable income, and also controlling those ideas and your own destiny. That’s the new stability and that’s something people are realizing. I’m very optimistic that it’ll be something that is here to stay.

via Graphic Novel and Comic Book Creators in New York City – Graphic NYC.

Update: 30 Day Challenge – No Facebook

This entry was posted in Technology on by .

So, it’s been exactly 30 days since I last visited Facebook (on purpose at least — I did get tricked by a few URLs posted to Twitter!)

Overall, I was surprised how little I thought about it. At first, during moments of boredom, I thought about checking Facebook to pass some time. That lasted around two weeks in total. The last half of the 30 days went much smoother and I barely thought of the site. The “freedom” from the thoughts (once they basically stopped occurring), was refreshing.

It’s amazing how much the digital world impacts you, even subconsciously. There are a ton of studies and articles on the fear of missing out, how Facebook makes you feel sad/depressed/miserable, and so on. Anecdotally, I agree. I didn’t use a log or track happiness or anything, but in general I think having one less thing to worry/think about in your life is never a bad thing — especially when it’s something like a web site.

One challenge (and something Facebook is pretty good at) was the email notifications. I turned off all notification emails from Facebook a long time ago, but apparently pending notification emails aren’t one you can turn off. I received a ton of them. The email I received last night said I have 95 pending notifications, along with a sampling off all the things I missed since I last logged in to the site. Facebook does have to improve at the selection of events it includes — most were not specific enough to entice you by any means. (“So-and-so commented on so-and-so’s status”? OMG, yes I need to find out what was said!)

I did have a few experiences of “did you see that on Facebook?”, but overall that slowed to a trickle over time as well. My wife did pass me her phone a few times to show me a few funny/cute things I didn’t see, although none were in the “OMG, I need Facebook” category. One thing I didn’t see, and regret, was missing the opening of my friends art show at WNYBAC. A lot of people rely on the Facebook events feature now, so that is one weakness of not checking into Facebook occasionally.

So, what did I do in place of Facebook (and even other social networking) time?

  • Moved forward with starting my own business with two current co-workers and friends (more coming on that soon!)
  • Finished reading The $100 Startup (highly recommended)
  • Read a ton of comic books
  • Continued plugging away at Carte Blanche (newest James Bond book), which I continually forget that I am reading
  • Started two more books: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the Zen of Listening
  • talked with family on phone and in person more

Most of these aren’t life changing, but all were things I wanted to do and either put off before or made very slow progress. That was a pleasant outcome of this experiment, as well.

And then the big question I’ve been asked: what are you going to do now?

Honestly I don’t know. Things I do want to figure out first:

  • A strategy for who I stay connected with on Facebook (Thinking friends and close friends only at this point.)
  • Which email notification would be most useful to turn on.
  • How I can take advantage of the events calendar, without being actively engaged in the site.
  • How I access the site. (I’m thinking Flipboard only at this point.)
  • Active browsing and usage vs. just sharing to the site (I know some people rely on Facebook for all friends/family news, so this would accommodate them without me having to use the site.)

So, just a few things to figure out and at this point I’m not feeling much pressure to make decisions on any of these items, given the results of this experiment.

Anyway, give it a try. Living without Facebook is totally fine. You may actually like it!

sample880

26th
Mar

Slow Company

This entry was posted in Productivity, Technology on by .

Fast Company recently interviewed Jason Fried, who is the CEO of 37signals. There are so many great quotes that continue to prove to me why this company is so great and the model for the kind of business I want to work for and build.

On four-day work weeks in the summer:

People were like, “I have stuff to get done, it’s Thursday, so I’m gonna work Friday and just get it done. But we actually preferred that they didn’t. There are very few things that can’t wait till Monday.

and:

We don’t track things in that way. I don’t look at that. I don’t want to encourage that kind of work. I want to encourage quality work.

and

We’re about being in business for the long haul and keeping the team together over the long haul. I would never trade a short-term burst for a long-term decline in morale.

On tech companies and the lottery mentality:

But I think all you have to do is read TechCrunch. Look at what the top stories are, and they’re all about raising money, how many employees they have, and these are metrics that don’t matter. What matters is: Are you profitable? Are you building something great? Are you taking care of your people? Are you treating your customers well?

On slow growth and long term thinking:

We’re about being in business for the long haul and keeping the team together over the long haul. I would never trade a short-term burst for a long-term decline in morale.

and:

I’m a fan of growing slowly, carefully, methodically, of not getting big just for the sake of getting big. I think that rapid growth is typically of symptom of… there’s a sickness there.

So good.