On Perceiving Time

(Photo: ToniVC)

Recently I’ve been wrestling and tussling with trying to perceive time in a better way in the hope of aiding my personal growth. It all came about from reading Scott H Young’s article, “Balancing Today and Tomorrow”, where Scott tackles the age-old problem between personal growth and accepting things as they are. The solution, according to him, is to change from a positional based paradigm to a velocity based paradigm i.e. not to view personal development as reaching from position to position but to view progress as the rate of growth.

To adopt a velocity based paradigm, you have to have a specific way of perceiving time – all that exists is the Present. The Past is only a memory and the Future exists only in your imagination. This then reminded of an idea about goal-setting by Steve Pavlina. In “Personal Development for Smart People”, Steve writes that “the purpose of goal-setting isn’t to control the future…The point of goal-setting is to improve the quality of your present-moment reality.” Then I started thinking, “Do we have control over the future?”

I wrestled with this problem of control for a number of days. I had already worked out that we have no control over the past and we have a lot of control in the present, but I wasn’t so sure about the future. It seemed to me that on some level, we have control over the future, even though it didn’t exist. For example, I can decide that at 10:30pm, I will practise guitar. 10:30pm comes round, and, lo and behold, I am practising guitar. I can control what I do in the future. Well, at least that seemed to be the case. But how could I control something that doesn’t exist? So putting myself on the pro The-Present-All-There-Is side, I thought and thought and thought:

“Ok, if the future doesn’t exist, yet I’m able to control it, then it must be an illusion right?”
“But what about doctor’s appointments? If I have an appointment at eleven, I can wake at ten-thirty, get ready so as not to be late. So it seems I have control there. Ah shit…”
“But what about…nah…ah, fuck it, go sleep.”
“…If I have a doctors appointment at eleven…”

And so it went. I thunk and thunk and thunk. I then hit upon the visualisation of traveling on the red secondhand of my clock. I refined this by imagining myself being strapped to a seat on the secondhand, and thus unable to move. I then visualised a slightly less surreal metaphor where I was in a car at a constant speed of 40mph on a very straight road in an American desert. What I had forgotten to implement in my thought processes was, of course, Time. Specifically, that time exists and the consequences it has on my actions and everything else in my reality.

Time is always moving. And it moves at a constant speed. That much is obvious. But what influence does it have on being able to control the future? So I used my guitar practise example again, as well as the idea of a schedule. What sense would a schedule have if you couldn’t control the future?

Imagine that you have a certain number of things you have to do, and so you create a schedule for the day. You can’t do all of these things at once, so you have to separate each of them out for certain times. You also need a certain amount of time to achieve the required progress for each activity. So you go for a run at 7.30am, get home by 8 to get ready to go to work, leave the house at 8:30 to get to work by 9. So it seems that you have control over what you are going to do next. But the thing is, you only ever experience each of those things in the present moment. You can’t reach work at 8:30 and expect to start working (unless you’re a workaholic) because work begins at 9 (at least the part you’re being paid for). I was beginning to make sense of this whole thing.

Returning back to my car analogy, it’s like there are sign posts on the side of the road proclaiming “MySpace rules! Facebook sucks lol” that need to be thwacked with a hefty baseball bat. You can see the sign up ahead, but you can only hit it when it reaches to you; you can’t hit it any earlier, because your car goes only at 40mph i.e. you have to wait. It was this waiting aspect that made me go “Ahh!”. You can only do those things when it is time to do them, and you need to spend an appropriate amount of time to do them too.

Of course, this doesn’t completely eliminate the position that we have control of the future. For now, being unable to obliterate the competition, I will surrender to the view that we seem to have some control of what we do in the future. It’s the prescience, the predictive ability, being able to see the sign ahead that allows that sense of control. But realise that a) the future doesn’t exist; b) our predictions can be wrong; and c) true control exists in the present. Although you can see ahead, you are welded to the endless march of the secondhand.

Casual or Serious? Approaches to Learning

In anything that requires learning, I always lean towards being serious about it. Partly because I know that my self-discipline is awful and partly because I like to be more systematic and aim to be more proactive at it, rather than waiting for other people or other circumstances in order for me to improve my skill.

Problems with the Casual Approach
A couple of months ago, I really wanted to improve my skill in interacting with the opposite sex, particularly on a romantic/sexual level. So I did what I normally do: read up a bit (actually, loads) and go out to the world and aim to apply it. However, my partner in crime found that this was too unnatural for him, and would prefer it to be casual, to be a night out, and possibly chat up girls if the occasion arose. I understand the positives of this, the main one being a relaxed attitude to the whole thing, thus the interactions would be more organic, more natural. But when he told me this, my gut feeling was “Nope”. For a person like me, to do what is natural to me is to stay in my chair with my friends and not speak to any strangers at all. And from what I’ve seen of this wingman, this is pretty much his default behaviour except that he is an extrovert and I’m an introvert. So if we were to be casual, neither of us would ever improve in interacting with girls because neither of us would approach girls, except in unusual circumstances. Another problem with casual here is that you would have to rely on circumstances out of your control, like the girl speaking to you first or you accidentally bumping into a girl and thus initiating the conversation from there. It was this “out of my control” aspect that irked me the most.

Another problem I find with the casual approach is that you allow yourself to make many excuses if you fail to succeed, rather than plainly admitting, “I was too scared.” Instead, you’re probably more likely to say, “She’s too pretty/hot/cute for me,” “The group she’s in is too big,” or my favourite, “In a moment/I’ll do it later.” If you are honest with yourself, then you know what the problem is and can refine your approach. For instance, if I’m too scared to strike up a conversation with a stranger, it’s clearly too big a step. I can then lower the step to a really a baby step like “Make eye contact with a hot stranger for 1 second” and then progress from there. By being casual, you might jump into the deep end and drown, whereas a more systematic method might be to gently ease you into the water to get over the fear of drowning before you learn to swim.

The final problem I find with the casual approach is the discipline side of things. To continue using this pickup girls model, it’s like when I was really super duper excited about pickup technique last year and naturally went out to try it (not without being super intoxicated) and found my motivation died very quickly. Had I had some discipline, I would’ve continued to pursue it until I was sure I didn’t like it or I still hadn’t progressed the Frustration Barrier, where I have sufficient skill to begin reaping some rewards. The casual approach relies too much on your current emotional state, and allows you to be very lazy and hazy about things. “I’ll do it later.” Yeah, right. It recalls to mind that old adage:

He who hesitates, masturbates.

Damn straight.

Why So Serious?
The problem with the serious approach is not only my labeling of it (“systematic approach” is probably better, but my wingman has said I was being too serious about the whole pickup girls thing) but the mindset, the attitude towards learning. It can kill the fun. Particularly the way I do it. I’ve had lots of problems with procrastination, and one of the main things that prolong it is using guilt in an attempt to motivate me to do it. “I should do it,” “I have to do it,” “I must do it,” is a fantastic way to get yourself NOT to do something, or if you somehow manage to overcome this and do something, you usually feel miserable afterwards anyway. Thus learning becomes a chore and you associate awful feelings with it. And if it’s a hobby that you just decided to pick up, you probably throw it away forever, when it could’ve possibly provided you with much satisfaction, if you had approached it differently. If you were more casual towards it, you could maintain that child-like, playful exploration, and possibly decide later to be more committed towards it.

Another negative of the systematic approach is that you begin to apply it to everything that has a learning curve, thus not differentiating between things that matter and that don’t matter. I’ve applied it to table tennis, poetry, piano and photography. I think I was attracted to the money, the prestige, rather than learning them for fun, curiosity, art for art’s sake. Certainly it is possible to earn a living from each of them (maybe not poetry so much), but for fame and fortune to be the main factors of motivation isn’t the best way to go about learning hobbies, at least my particular ones. I definitely enjoyed them at times, but I guess that lusting after fame and fortune sustained me for only so long.

Balance
This balance between casual and serious is a delicate one. The benefits of a serious, systematic approach are huge: faster progression, consistent improvement, control. But when should you become serious? The benefits of being serious at the beginning are enormous, as you can ride that massive surge of motivation at the beginning and use it to get past the frustration barrier quite quickly. But being serious early on can kill off the whole thing if you approach it the wrong way. What once was a choice becomes an obligation. What once was a delight in discovery becomes a familiar, boring chore.

I have problems with this myself and tend to lean towards the serious side for most things, though very often I lack the discipline to utilise the approach effectively. I like Scott Young’s approach of having a small number of things that you are committed to, whilst having a larger number of things as “side dishes” that don’t matter too much whether they improve or not. Unfortunately for me, everything seems to be on the fence: singing, songwriting, guitar. Fortunately, they’re all in the realm of music, so everything is kinda rambling along in a similar direction. Hopefully I’ll get to a point where I begin reaping some rewards. We’ll see.

How I Killed This Blog

I killed it by adding a focus to it. It might come back to life again because a friend of mine told me she was reading it. Lord knows why she would.

EDIT: It seems this WordPress interface is becoming quicker. Hmm.

I’ve Run Away…

Basically the WordPress interface is too slow for me and started to infuriate me. I’ve migrated to somewhere else: http://saichoo.tumblr.com/

Conversations About Conversations About Conversations

I have a friend who said to me, “Why are you so interested in talking about social dynamics? Why can’t you just go with the flow?” It’s a good point as I probably end up talking more about social dynamics than doing anything about my sub-par social skills. But for someone like him who has a great calibration^[1]for social interactions it’s easy for him to say, “Go with the flow.” And for someone like me who hasn’t, going with the flow would result in me mumbling in a corner of a fantastic party frustrated at my lack of courage. For me, who has come late to learning social skills, it interests me to talk about why people do the things they do. My adult mindset makes me think of it this way, to work on it consciously without the naiveté of the child. This awareness has its pros and cons. In my childhood and my teens I wasn’t aware of my sub-par skills but I did notice that others had more friends than I did and were more fun, more happy around others. It wasn’t until I was about fifteen when the frustration crept in. Since then this frustration has waxed and waned, which is somewhat due to this awareness.^[2]I knew what to do but lacked the courage to act. Of course, I transmuted this lack of courage into frustration. Now, I’m better equipped to deal with this frustration because I know that I can always improve, even when I’m not taking action because I’m imperfect and human.

So how are my social skills now? They’re still not where I want them to be. I’m crap at small talk, I lack courage, I’m unable to take consistent action. But once I get into the flow of things (hehe) I find that I can be funny, I can tell a decent story, and I can be a good listener. Even though I don’t have many friends, reflecting upon these positive things and being aware of what I need to improve on keeps me sane and aware, and helps to keep my glass at least a quarter-full.

Hope this post reaches you in good spirits! Have a nice day.

[1] Someone with a great calibration is one has internalized lots of thoughts, behaviours, and attitudes to achieve the the results they wants consistently. [Back to Post]

[2] I’m not advocating denial or naiveté. I think it’s far better to be aware of all areas of your life than trying to suppress it with denial and ignorance. [Back to Post]

Update: 12th November

So what have I been doing for a month then? I still haven’t found a job yet, so my mum has become my monkey on my back. For someone so obsessed with money, I’m surprised she hasn’t complained to me sooner. She’s worried that I won’t be able to make my way into the world. I feel absolutely fine about it. There’s no doubt that I will learn to make an income. But for an expert procrastinator like me, any pushing to make me feel guilty or obligated to do something will make me reject doing it even more. Of course, if I were thrown out on the streets tonight, I’d definitely have the motivation to find a job very quickly.

I’ve found something like a job: volunteering. I’m helping out Card Aid, a charity that sells charity Christmas cards, and most of the profit goes to charity, unlike other charity cards. I’ve mainly been going out to shops and stuff asking if I could put posters up. It’s a good experience because it helps me to exercise my courage through asking strangers, and also dealing with rejection. It’s an odd thing to say, but I need to get rejected more. I think it’d help immensely if I were to chat girls up….

After reading many excellent articles by Penelope Trunk, my blog will now have a focus: thoughts on my personal development. It doesn’t stray far from what’s been on here before, but it means posts like Damien Fried Rice and Quotes won’t be on here. At least until I think the blog needs a different focus.

I’ve been out less often than before, though things seem to be picking up again. Less going out means that my monthly balance is positive, despite my paltry salary (pocket money is more accurate) of £50 per week with a few gifts from my father here and there. I dunno why I’m saving up the money for – I think it’s the heriditary habits from Mum and Granddad.

I managed to complete a 30 day trial in October. It was sending one CV per day. It was surprisingly difficult at first, but then I got used to it. I hardly got any results, but I can now send out CVs quite comfortably, which is a nice skill to have. My mobile phone was an immense help because I was able to stick “I am sending one CV per day” on the home screen, and I look at my phone all the time. It’s using subliminal messaging or perception without awareness (PWA) to good effect. I’m currently doing another 30 day trial, and I’ll tell you about it when I finish it. (there have been experiments concluding that NOT telling people your goals will make you more likely to complete them. It’s true for me because I’d hate the guilt I’d feel if I told people my goals, which would end up with me not completing them.)

I’ve also been hypnotizing myself with Paul McKenna’s Instant Confidence CD. The big question: has it worked? Sort of. I’ve been listening to the CD daily but haven’t done the exercises daily so the results are probably less pronounced than if I also did the exercises. My general mood is better and I’m beginning to make more eye contact with people.

I’ve also been trying to take responsibility for bringing my little brother up. No one has really been bringing him up these past few years, and I’ve shirked from that responsibility for long enough. I’ve always felt incapable of taking this resposibility, but no one else is going to do it so it has to be me. I’m gonna be shit at it, but hopefully I’ll improve in time. There’s just so many little things here and there that you have to remember. Are his clothes getting too small? Is he still getting bullied? Is he having enough fun? Since I’m his biggest influence, I also have to become a model and improve myself too. Up til now, he’s taken most of my bad characteristics: laziness, lack of discipline, unsocialable. So it’s imperative that I improve myself too, as well as handling all the other responsibilities too. I don’t feel capable (I think my older brother would be best) but it must be done.

That’s about it for now.

Ach…

From Craig Harper:

“Of course the journey is where we grow, learn and become and a better version of us, but show me a person who has no clarity or certainty about where they’re going and what they want to do, be and create in their world, and I’ll show you a miserable, frustrated and unfulfilled individual.”

Ach, sounds like me. *sigh*

Out Finding What I Love

As some of you may know, I currently have very little motivation to look for a job. It doesn’t appeal to me that much, despite the money I could be earning so that I could buy lots of books. Instead, I’ve been reading up on how to find a hobby, activity, interest that I would love to do. In some of my previous posts, particularly Beginner’s Excitement, I’ve mentioned that I’ve flitted from interest to interest without achieving anything significant in that area. I think I also mentioned that I didn’t know whether I was quitting the interest because it wasn’t fun anymore or whether it was my lack of discipline. Looking back, it is very likely that it was the latter. I came across an idea recently by Paul Graham that solved it for me perfectly. It is the concept of bounds.

Bounds

The concept of bounds helped me to answer the question, “When am I supposed to quit [insert said interest here]?” Here are the upper and lower bounds:

Upper Bound: Do what you love doesn’t mean, do what you would like to do most this second…The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn’t mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.

lower bound: you have to like your work more than any unproductive pleasure. You have to like what you do enough that the concept of “spare time” seems mistaken…you don’t regard this time as the prize and the time you spend working as the pain you endure to earn it.

Another idea in the article to help me answer when to quit was under “Discipline”, where Paul brings up the idea that you should always produce. Then, if you still don’t like what you’re doing, it’s not your laziness at fault.

Experimentation and Commitimentation

Scott H Young summed up how to find passions quite simply:

1.     Try a lot of different things
2.     See what you enjoy

He goes further in “Is More Commitment Always a Good Thing?”, where he describes two stages in, hehe, pursuing pursuits, but it also applies to finding things you love. The first stage is experimentation. Your curiosity aroused, you go read it up on Wiki, you try out things here and there, and so on and so forth. Then you do a 30 day trial. After the 30 day trial you can decide to commit to it or throw it away. If you decide to commit, you move onto stage two, which is commitimentation. This involves concentrating on the activity and setting goals in order to achieve something meaningful. This two step programme, absolutely guaranteed, full refund, no questions asked, sounds great to me! If I incorporated it, I will know for sure whether or not an interest/hobby/activity is for me, and if I find something good, then I can work towards something meaningful in that area.

But why accomplish something meaningful? Paul Graham has the answers:

To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that’s pretty cool. This doesn’t mean you have to make something. If you learn how to hang glide, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will be enough to make you say, for a while at least, wow, that’s pretty cool. What there has to be is a test…I think the best test is one Gino Lee taught me: to try to do things that would make your friends say wow. But it probably wouldn’t start to work properly till about age 22, because most people haven’t had a big enough sample to pick friends from before then.

This “Cool” factor is what appeals to me most. Accomplishing something that I think is pretty cool would be awesome, and it would be fantastic if my closest friends thought it was pretty cool too. And by setting goals once you’ve commited to something you gain clarity in what you want to do, what makes you passionate, what makes you excited. If I was working on something I loved to do, everyday, that I admired and my friends admired, I’d think my life would be far more awesome. Wouldn’t you?





Resources:

Paul Graham: How to Do What You Love

Scott H Young: How to Discover What You’re Passionate About

Is More Commitment Always a Good Thing?

What Do You Want to Do With Your Life?

Steve Pavlina: 30 Days to Success

Argh – It’s All Wrong!!!

(Photo: Porphyria Poppins)

I think I’ve been going about this blog all wrong. Well, in some ways at least. You may have noticed that some of the previous posts have an occasional, didatic tone to them. This is probably because I had high hopes of instructing you as to what the right way of living your life should be whilst writing those posts (Ah, the irony). It may also be because I’ve read an immense amount of personal development material in the form of blog posts and thus subconsciously infused my writing style. It’s not that this type of writing is bad in any way, it’s just that it seems unsuitable for a blog such as this. It doesn’t mean that I’ll stop writing those types of articles though; it just means that I’ll be a bit more wary about posting such articles to this blog. So from now on, I shall make this blog full of absolutely useless material.

“What has prompted this post?” you may ask. I read the wonderful Nick Cernis’s Rise of the Tablog where Nick says blogs are crap. Blogs are no longer the celebration of free speech they once were; bloggers are creating content instead of writing.

Nick also addresses the design issues of a blog, such as reverse chronological sorting, which is crap for everything except for the news. As a result, Nick completely redesigned his site, removing all the bits and pieces that are synonymous with blogs. I agree with all of his changes except for the removal of comments – I think it’s quite nice to see what other people think about certain articles, ideas, issues and there often is something interesting in the comment section. I think the important thing about the comment section is that is shows that a blog is alive. I like alive.

Chatmonchy – Sekai ga Owaru Yoru ni (The World Ends Tonight) (with Lyrics)

What a gorgeous song. By one of my favourite Japanese bands, Chatmonchy.

Translation by Anna P.

“Sekai ga Owaru Yoru ni” (世界が終わる夜に) (The World Ends Tonight)

たとえば孤独な夜が過ぎ
わりと良い朝が来る
どうせ変わりやしないのに
みんな何かに手を合わせてる
Tatoeba kodoku na yoru ga saki
Warito yoi asa ga kuru
Douse kawari ya shinai no ni
Minna nanika ni te wo awaseteru
=====
Although the lonely night is over,
A relatively good morning will come.
After all, nothing has really changed.
Everyone is joining hands for some reason.

たとえば虚しく時が過ぎ
馴れ馴れしい静寂が来る
しまった！もう世界は終わっていた
Tatoeba munashiku toki ga saki
Narenareshii seijaku ga kuru
Shimatta! Mou sekai wa owatteita
=====
Although the empty moment is over,
The all-too-familiar silence comes.
Dammit! The world has ended already.

あの子もその子も不安ぶっ飛ばしてさ
いけてないジョークで　Hey Hey Hey
Ano ko mo sono ko mo fuan buttobashite sa
Iketenai JOOKU de Hey Hey Hey
=====
That child and this child let go of their insecurities.
I’m not in on the joke, Hey Hey Hey

わたしが神様だったら
こんな世界は作らなかった
愛という名のお守りは
結局からっぼだったんだ
Watashi ga kamisami dattara
Konna sekai wa tsukuranakatta
Ai to iu na no omamori wa
Kekkyoku karabbo datta nda
=====
If I was God,
I wouldn’t have made this world.
Love, the name of my protection,
Was empty after all.

たとえば砂漠で花が咲き
また不幸の種かなる
どうせ育ちやしないから
みんな何かに目をそらしてる
Tatoeba sabaku de hana ga saki
Mata fukou no tane kanaru
Douse sodachi ya shinai kara
Minna nanika ni me wo sorashiteru
=====
Although a flower blooms in the desert,
I again wonder about the cause of this disaster.
After all, because there is no growth,
Everyone is turning their eyes away for some reason.

たとえば優しく風が吹き
後悔の兵隊が来る
しまった！もう心は穴だらけだ
Tatoeba yasashiku kaze ga fuki
Koukai no heitai ga kuru
Shimatta! Mou kokoro wa anadarakeda
=====
Although a gentle wind blows,
The surrendered soldiers come.
Dammit! My heart is already full of holes.

今もどこかがいろんな理由で
壊れはじめてる　Hey Hey Hey
Ima mo dokoka ga iron na riyuu de
Koware hajimeteru Hey Hey Hey
=====
Still, somewhere there are various reasons
As to why I’m broken for the first time, Hey Hey Hey

わたしが悪魔だったら
こんな世界は作らなかった
命の砂時計は
結局からっぼだったんだ
Watashi ga akuma dattara
Konna sekai wa tsukuranakatta
Inochi no sunadokei wa
Kekkyoku karabbo datta nda
=====
If I was the devil,
I wouldn’t have made this world.
The hourglass of life
Was empty after all.

暇つぶし出来る話題をくだらない笑い声と嘘を
探し続けるのわたしからっぼだから
Himatsubushi dekiru wadai wo kudaranai waraigoe to uso wo
Sagashitsudzukeru no watashi karabbo dakara
=====
It’s a waste of time to dwell upon this subject, the stupid laughing voices and lies.
I continue to search, because I’m empty.

わたしが神様だったら
こんな世界は作らなかった
愛という名のお守りは
結局からっぼだったんだ
Watashi ga kamisama dattara
Konna sekai wa tsukuranakatta
Ai to iu na no omamori wa
Kekkyoku karabbo datta nda
=====
If I was God
I wouldn’t have made this world.
Love, the name of my protection,
Was empty after all

わたしが悪魔だったら
こんな世界は作らなかった
命の砂時計は
結局からっぼだったんだ
Watashi ga akuma dattara
Konna sekai wa tsukuranakatta
Inochi no sunadokei wa
Kekkyoku karabbo datta nda
=====
If I was the devil,
I wouldn’t have made this world.
The hourglass of life
Was empty after all.