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From Pupa to Flight

Feb 3

Posted by Aaron in Philosophy, mindset | No Comments

The visual analogy of the caterpillar weaving its cocoon and then metamorphosing into a beautiful butterfly is so overused that it’s gone past the level of cliche. But sometimes things become cliche for a reason (because they make sense), and this is my blog so I can use cliche if I want, dammit.

So then, my thoughts for the day:

I have become increasingly convinced that development in life is not a linear path. For many people, the most important learning and growth is not a gradual and continual process. Oh sure, as we age we gain experience and from this comes a certain kind of wisdom, but it does not necessarily impart significant growth as a person. I have come to believe, through what I have been taught and from my own recent experiences, that we as humans often can shift into a kind of pupating process of growth. What I mean by this is that often the most significant and important changes that can happen in life do so throughout a process that is not outwardly noticeable.

Humans are capable of shifting into extended periods of deep personal reflection and introspection, during which no major personality or behavioral changes take place. However, there is a certain point at which the internal change and growth is complete, and a very rapid outward transformation then occurs.  My own experience in this aligns quite well with what I have been taught regarding the four phases of growth and change in a person’s life.

Briefly, they are: 1) the doldrums. You have reached a point where you feel lost, bored, or dissatisfied with the direction in your life. You decide that a change is necessary. So you 2) cocoon, and spend a period in self-reflection looking at values and examining your emotional feelings on things and what makes sense to you. People often develop mission statements or core values at this point, and achieve a much greater understanding of who they are as a person and how they can impact the world. After a period of doing a lot of internal growth and change, you’re set for 3) getting ready, experimenting, and trying out new things. At this point, you may not be fully committed to one goal, but are instead feeling out different paths and seeing what makes the most sense to you and what aligns best with your core values. And finally, once ideas have been tested and a clearer picture is in place of motivations, drives, and what really feels right to you, you’re ready to transition into the 4) go for it phase. You may create a set of 1, 5, and 10-year goals, and may develop your own personal hedgehog (which is a guide to aligning your passions and talents into an effective economic engine.) With these goals in place, and this great personal knowledge, a person can really produce some amazing results both personally and career-wise.

I have been fortunate enough to be able to move through those phases as I’ve been undergoing a pretty intense career and life path change. My experience with this is that it hasn’t been easy, and many people won’t or don’t understand it – after all, our traditional societal values don’t exactly put much emphasis on nonlinear growth. But overall the experience has been really positive for me and I hope I can move into the go for it phase with greater confidence, some new skills, and a newfound drive and motivation for what I’m doing in my life. It’s something I would encourage to anyone who feels lost or stuck in their life.

Like Sifting Grains of Sand

Dec 8

Posted by Aaron in mindset, skills | No Comments

It’s become clear to me recently that one of the more useful skills a person can posses in these times is the ability to sift through the wealth of information strewn about everywhere to find the best and most useful piece of information at that particular moment. It’s true that google has done a wonderful job at sorting information into groups that are relevant based on particular phrases or words, but as of right now it can’t go any deeper than that in terms of delivering information relevant specifically to me as a person. Google doesn’t know whether or not I have time to read a 1000-word article, or listen to a 45-minute podcast. It categorizes in general what is useful, but not what is specifically useful to me. That level of sorting needs to be done by me, and it takes skill to do so quickly and rapidly. When I execute a google search, in some way all of the information presented to me could be useful, but in no way do I have the time or inclination to read all of it. How do I determine what pieces of information will be most relevant to me at this specific point in time? How do I maximize the impact of the time I spend digesting any set of information?

The old adage “information is power” is no longer relevant in today’s world. Right now information is not power. Everyone has information. In fact, a valid case could be made that too much information is less power, because as more time is spent on reading and parsing information, less time is available to act on that information which could have had the most impact.

So in our times, it is more appropriate to say “the right information is power.” (And, no doubt, someone far more forward-thinking than me has likely said this very thing years ago. But let’s just gloss over that for a moment.)

My point here is my realization that the ability to sift through mediocre and good information to find the really great information, and the ability to filter out that which is not important is a skillset which is becoming increasingly necessary. I suppose much of this line of thought was prompted by a search on Amazon for books on social media. The stack of books that was thrown at me by Amazon’s “relevant titles” was ridiculous. What really freaked me out was that all the books actually looked good, were written by fairly prominent authors, and had been published in the last year. I instantly wanted to buy and read about a dozen of them. Ridiculous. “Choose one or two Aaron,” I thought.

But which ones? Is there one which will be best for me in my situation right now? So I looked through the reviews, read the excerpts, and whittled the list down to 2. I have absolutely no idea whether I made a good or a bad choice. But I did am slowly learning about the value of processing and sorting information into what will allow me to be more effective.

Is it possible that in the future, information processing and sorting systems will be so powerful, and have gathered so much specific data on us that they will be able to deliver with amazing accuracy the information and data that is perfect for us in each moment? Will we be living with predictive models so sophisticated that a search for tennis rackets will deliver those models suited specifically to my skill level based on knowing that I played on my high school varsity team, but have been an infrequent player for several years? And will we even want to live with so much about ourselves known and stored in massive data factories? Ok, that was just my Skynet/scary robots/evil computers nasty thought of the week. Apologies.

But really, about the dealing with massive amounts of information effectively thing. It’s important.

Oh Maslow, Why Do You Trouble Me So?

Dec 2

Posted by Aaron in mindset | No Comments

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

As humans, it seems that we are genetically programmed to always want more. And I suppose there is an excellent reason for the desire to always want more, to always feel that more is necessary in order to be happy and fulfilled. As much as it sucks to lose a job and then have to realign your priorities while living on unemployment, it would suck an order of magnitude more to think you are set with food for the winter, and then have mold ruin all your grain, and then starve to death with nothing to eat. So I can understand the need to always reach for more, to feel that another step has to be taken, that your situation can always be improved.

And from this, we come to Maslow.

About 10 days ago or so at a friend’s party I ended up talking to one of the girls there – who I guess had recently finished an MBA program – and we got to talking about needs as humans. My generation has so much in its favor – so many choices, so much freedom, and often so much ease at our fingertips – yet this almost paradoxically has created seemingly greater unhappiness in our culture. Maybe it stems from this feeling that nearly anything is possible and that we all can be amazingly successful. Perhaps for many people, anything short of brilliance and achievements that set the world on fire can lead to feelings of inadequacy.

But as we talked we got onto the subject of Abraham Maslow and some of the work he did with the human condition and what people search for. He came to some really interesting (and, if you’re anything like me, really frustrating) conclusions regarding what he referred to as a “Hierarchy of Needs”. Essentially, humans are creatures that are, by nature, almost never satisfied. We have basic needs which are those we require to sustain us and keep us alive. But once we have secured enough food and water to keep up alive for a while and we are not constantly worried about death by starvation, we start to look for a safe place to live – somewhere to be sheltered from the elements or from any creatures looking to do us harm. And, having satisfied those basic needs, we don’t just stop and say “Hey, this is pretty cool, I think I’m probably not going to die anytime soon. Sweet!” Nope, we start thinking “well, I’m a bit lonely now. Some other people might be nice to have around. And women. Women! They look nice. Let’s find at least one of those.”

So, having found a group of people to interact with, and a good woman to love and be loved by, do we think we have a  pretty wonderful life? Maybe. But we’ll still probably want more. We want to feel good at something, and be recognized for that. So should we become chief or leader of our little group, with everyone looking up to us for advice and wisdom, what should we feel? Powerful? Satisfied in our place in the world? Well, it’s possible. But… what are we here for? What is our purpose? Can we leave the world a better place in some way? What if no one remembers us when we’re gone?

And so we come to the angst of my generation. Here in the United States, in this 21st century, when you look at people who have grown up in middle class or above families, no other group in history has had so much opportunity for education, for self-expression, for intellectual curiosity, and for choice. We may worry about car payments, but the chance we are worrying about food and shelter is pretty low. Most of us have a support network, and the safety net the government provides is there as well. And without the burden of so many basic needs worries, many of us are experiencing feelings of confusion, many are feeling lost knowing that there is something we should be doing, something we’ll be amazing at and recognized for, or some way to contribute back to the world. But for many of us, we lack the tools or training to figure out what the contribution can be. Rather than figuring out jobs that pay well, many of us are focusing on careers that will make us happy and leave us feeling fulfilled.

School doesn’t prepare us for that. We don’t receive training on self-actualization. School can provide an environment where accomplishment is recognized and rewarded, but once we leave school this is frequently absent.

So how does one navigate in this new 21st century reality? How do we adapt our society to one in which, increasingly, the bottom tiers of this hierarchy of needs will almost automatically be fulfilled and people’s efforts will go towards satisfying the top tier? What training do we need to be providing our children to successfully navigate this new psychological reality?

Well, hopefully I’ll have it figured out a little better myself so I can be a good example and teacher to my children (once I find my way out of this selfish phase and feel mature enough to have them, that is.)

And good luck to any of you feeling lost because your life is too easy!

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The Hardest Thing

Oct 12

Posted by Aaron in mindset | No Comments

For me the hardest thing about leaving the track of life I was on has been figuring out what to do now. When I look back on my life I see myself taking next steps that were, most often, not fully chosen by me.

As a child growing up I was pushed to excel in school and found myself collecting accolades and awards. Not only that, but I was part of a young boys singing group that was somewhat famous around the area I grew up. A lot of my sense of personal worth stemmed from the achievements I had gained. My will to work hard on things came not so much from a desire to learn and do well but more from an incredible fear of doing poorly. I had always done very well at pretty much everything, and I didn’t really know what failure felt like. I think there was this sense that if I failed at something, my entire world would crumble.

It look a while to get over that, but once I did, I failed a lot more. I found out it wasn’t so bad.

But I still hadn’t figured out how to untrack myself from the proscribed path. In some ways, it is much easier to just follow someone else’s plan and to just do what is next in the path you are on. When I removed myself from the narrow road of the path I was on, I initially felt this incredible sense of freedom. “Oh my god, I can try anything I want!” was the overwhelming sense I had at first. But that soon metamorphosed into “Holy shit, what the f* should I do?” Too many choices. “Which one is right for me? Maybe many paths are right for me. Is one the best? What if I choose poorly?”

So now I fall asleep every night praying that some sort of divine inspiration will hit me and tell me what to do. Isn’t that ironic? I left my career in order to have self determination in what I would do with my life. And now I just want someone to figure it out for me.

There is such beauty in that irony though.

The universe dances on, and laughs.

Good Intentions

May 7

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“L’enfer est plein de bonnes volontés ou désirs.” (Hell is full of good intentions and desires.)

St Bernard of Clairvaux (c.1150)

For years I have heard this quote or derivations thereof (the road to hell is paved with good intentions), and for years I took it to mean that people can, if they aren’t careful, do evil even when their original desire was to do good. But I had an epiphany this morning – well, more like a minor realization. I realized that I know a large number of people who honestly desire to do certain things, and make promises or commitments, and then do not follow through with their promises. I have been that person many, many times. In fact, I think that most of the people I know fall into the category of offering or committing to more than they ever actually deliver.

And then it hit me: hell is not a place of fire and eternal torment. Hell is a place of “what ifs” and “if onlys” and “I should haves”. Hell is coming to this realization at the end of a life spent poorly. And from what I have seen, the men and women who do what they say when they say they will have it done on a consistent basis are rare, and they more often than not are exceptional people.

I am not one of those people.

Yet.

But as I came further and further into my understanding of what is important to me in life, the more I find that I am willing to do what is necessary to be that kind of person.

Here’s to good actions, not just good intentions.

Twists and Turns

Mar 26

Posted by Aaron in mindset | No Comments

I was totally floundering. Well, maybe that’s an overstatement, but the fact is I had been getting much less done than I needed to and my progress had slowed quite a bit. It’s just so hard to totally self-motivate and wake up every day without a set schedule of what to do or where to be.

So I got a job. A part-time job. And I’m actually really excited by it, because the company is great and the people I work with are awesome. I’m actually looking forward to the next time I go into work. I know, weird.

But the greatest thing is that just having that little bit of structure has made all the difference in my personal productivity. Knowing that I don’t have 24 hours every day to do with as I please has made me more focused and more efficient in what I am doing. Adding to my new motivation is a wonderful policy of this new company: goal setting. The company places a huge value on personal education, improvement, and goal setting. Everyone is not only encouraged but required to create 1, 5, and 10 year goals that are displayed for all other employees to see. It’s a way to hold each other accountable, encourage, and motivate each other to achieve our life goals. Which is exactly what I have been needing.

Finding your Entrepreneurial Creativity

Mar 6

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It’s been a few weeks now since I’ve been back in California following an amazing trip to London. The weird thing for me was that I was over there for a month, but I stepped back into my life and surroundings here back home almost seamlessly and almost immediately. After two days it honestly felt like I hadn’t left at all, and London began to seem like some sort of dream. That really is the best way that I can explain and describe it – because coming back home felt like waking up from an alternate reality into my real existence.

I know, I know, I really have no business trying to be either transcendent or poetic. So I’ll stick to what it is that I do best… which I still haven’t figured out yet. In any event, although I got some work and research done in London, it really was much more of a vacation than I intended it to be, and as I find myself returning to my reality, I also must return to my occupation – which just happens to involve trying to figure out what I need to do on a daily basis.

So I come to the subject of entrepreneurial creativity (just as an aside, I am sitting in a cafe, and from the table 10 feet away from me, I just heard “rough sex” said rather loudly… which just completely made me lose my train of thought.) Ahem… so, creativity. And more specifically, the application of it to a pursuit entirely your own which you hope to lead to material wealth. To me, this seems like one of the ultimate forms of creative expression, because the avenues one may pursue are nearly limitless, and are not constrained by any title or job description, nor are one’s ideas molded or limited by a supervisor’s conception of what should be done.

This is also, alas, one of the great drawbacks. Because in a world or nearly unlimited possibility, where do you go?

This is the issue I have been struggling with. Prior to now, in every occupational facet of my life, I have had structure of one kind or another. Even when I ran my own lab and had complete freedom to work on projects of my choosing, there was a framework set in place to define the ultimate goals of any work I did.

One of the best sources I have discovered for new ideas and entrepreneurial creativity is simpler than you would think: other people. Sometimes we are so close to what we are doing that not only do we not see flaws in our plans, but we can be completely blind to new possibilities and avenues of exploration. Sometimes we may dismiss an idea out of hand, without really analyzing it because it doesn’t fit into the mold of what we have been working with. But another person may be able to see the potential in that idea and their support for it can make all the difference.

Other people also have completely different life experiences and will approach thing from different angles and their perspective is invaluable. What is difficult in this for me is that I attack so many problems in my life completely on my own – not wishing to rely on anyone, but more deeply I think it’s because I don’t wish to burden anyone else with a responsibility I think should be mine and mine alone. When I ran a marathon last year I could have chosen to do something like Team in Training, which is completely focused on motivation through group training and support. Instead, I went the complete opposite route and did almost 100% of my runs alone. So the realization that I can’t do everything alone took me a while to fully process.

But now that I have realized that I can rely on others I think I will be a lot more creative, a lot more productive, and quite a bit happier.

Maintaining Motivation

Dec 29

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“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step…”

As I ascended Mt Shasta the words of John Gray, our leader, echoed in my mind.  He had told me to just keep focusing on taking one step at a time.  When mountaineering, it is of utmost importance to pace yourself, rest if you need to, and keep focused on just putting one foot in front of the other.  If you keep doing those things, you will get to the top.

Through the last few months, a continual process for me has been to refine and simplify my way of doing things.  I have had to figure out how, in the absence of external motivation, to keep myself going.  I have tried multiple organization and project management methods, and multiple programs and accessories to aid me with that organization.

The realization I have come to is this: I just need to put one foot in front of the other, and focus on that.  It seems simple really, but here’s how I have been able to apply that idea to my specific way of doing things.

Getting Things Done as a Motivational Tool

First, I have been implementing the steps of David Allen’s Getting Things Done that I discussed in an earlier post.  Far and away the most important aspect of that for me has been breaking down each and every project into specific action steps.  The are the equivalent of bite-size project morsels (damn I think I just made myself hungry for desert).  Each of these steps isn’t necessarily simple, but they all are completable within a fairly short block of time once begun.

Why is this so motivational?  For me, I no longer look at my projects and find myself lost in a sea of uncertainty about what to do next.  Every week I spend time planning what to do next, and then the rest of my time is spent doing smaller specific steps, and then checking those off my lists when I complete them.  It is intensely gratifying to me to be able to knock off several things within a day, and I feel good about myself and what I have accomplished by being able to see all the things that I have done.

I use a free online program (named Tracks) to organize and track all of my projects and action steps.  It’s simple visual layout makes seeing my next action steps and projects easy and encapsulates everything in one place.

So I am hopeful that I will be able to maintain this mindset, keep my progress going, and have great results.  I just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The Learning Process and Life Multitasking

Dec 19

Posted by Aaron in Philosophy, mindset | No Comments

I sincerely hope that I never stop learning.  My father once said to me that his ideal lifestyle would involve being able to go to school throughout his life, continuously learning.  And a friend of mine named Stork years ago explained that he wanted to gather knowledge completely without any ambition to apply that knowledge to anything useful.  He was a man focused on learning for learning’s sake.

I don’t think either of those approaches to learning apply to me, but I do strongly believe that one will never really grow in life unless that person is committed to be open to new thoughts, new experiences, and new knowledge.  So I am always trying to learn new things and to expand what I am capable of.

Generally, I think I do a pretty god job of reading, internalizing, and learning.  I am always hungry for more, which is preceisely my problem sometimes.  See, I often get so excited by the possibility of learning something new that I take on too many things at once.  It’s like I’m in an ice cream shop, and I can’t decide on any one flavor since they all look so good, and instead I try one, then want to try another, and another, and another, until I am so full I feel sick and the staff is mad at me for eating so many samples and not actually committing and buying anything and now they are giving me angry looks and all the people in line behind me are pissed off but damn it all tastes so good and I can’t stop.

Yeah, that describes my approach to bookstores, to reading things online, to new activities, etc.  Everything looks so damn cool, you know?  It would be great to be able to do everything I want to do.  So I find myself in the midst of trying to learn dozens of things at once, which I would desribe as a type of life multitasking.  And you know what?  It has been shown conclusively that those who multitask (say, splitting time responding to emails along with writing a blog post) do both things with a lower level of quality.  If I were to focus on the blog post, and then respond to the emails, the tasks would be done better and probably in less time.

So I postulate that those who engage extensively in life multitasking suffer from the same lack of quality in what they do.  If I were to focus my efforts more exclusively on learning a limited numbers of things, I would likely learn them more quickly with a better retention rate than using my current methods.

Actually, this is precisely the approach to learning that a brilliant man, Josh Waitzkin, is advocating.  This name might actually tickle the brains of some of you – Josh Waitzkin was the subject of the 1993 film Searching for Bobby Fischer, about a chess prodigy.  Josh believes in diving deep into whatever it is you are learning, to focus on it such that you attain significant depth in your learning.  Here’s a quote from Josh:

Let’s say we have three skills to learn. The typical approach is to take them all on at once. It is much more effective to plunge deeply into one, touch Quality, and then transfer that feeling of Quality over to the others. A martial artist, for example, should internalize one technique very deeply instead of trying to learn 10 or 15 superficially. This approach engages the unconscious, creative aspects of our minds, and we start making thematic connections which greatly accelerate growth. It is also important to point out that deep presence is required for a state of neural plasticity to be triggered—our brain does not re-map effectively when we are skipping along the surface

So my goal is to target my efforts into learning one thing well before moving on to the next, rather than trying and struggling to learn 3, or 4, or 12 things at once.  I am sorely tempted to order Josh’s book on learning from Amazon, but I already am reading about 6 different nonfiction books at once.  I’ll try to finish just one first, I think he would approve.

Holidays and Vacation

Dec 15

Posted by Aaron in mindset | 2 Comments

Last year at Christmas I had 12 days of vacation time that I needed to take for work otherwise I would lose them.  I was more than happy to get a 2 1/2 week break from work – it had been 5 years since I had that much time off in a row with nothing to worry about.

This year, I’m not working for a company that grants me vacation time.  I’m working on Aaron-time.  Sometimes I think Aaron lets me have too much time off from work.  So the question then is: how much holiday vacation do I allow myself to take?  Should I set some days aside that I use to completely divorce myself from any thoughts of work?

I guess I will probably end up working the whole time through the holidays, just not as much as I would normally, and not on any kind of real schedule.  I keep thinking that I’ll feel guilty about that though.  When I had vacation from work I didn’t feel guilty in the slightest about not working.  Now I will, because I still haven’t gotten anything concrete up and running and I desperately need to.  Either that or get a part-time job… *ugh*.