Books over Headphones

I’ve been eyeing a pair of noise cancelling headphones for a few months. They cost $350 and I really want them. My budget tells me there isn’t enough fun-money.

My budgeting system works well — it keeps me from spending on frivolous wants even though I can convince myself to buy: I like to read when I fly for business and the noise-cancelling feature will make my reading more pleasurable.

Friday night, the budget showed a surplus. If I waited a week or two, there would be enough fun-money to buy the headphones. Instead, I ordered three books and drained most of that surplus.

• No Cure for Being Human by Kate Bowler — February’s book for the Growth EQ Bookclub
• The Power of Regret by Daniel H. Pink for April’s Bookclub meeting
• Frank Batten biography by Connie M. Sage — I heard about it from this video by Howard H. Stevenson

The past me would have bought the headphones already. The present me can’t wait to start reading those books.

On Writing Well

Five years ago I read On Writing Well by William Zinsser — I wish I hadn’t waited this long to read it for the second time.

I grabbed it from the bookshelf earlier this month. What I thought would be a quick refresher turned into underlining, dog-earing and writing in margins.

Here is Zinsser answering the question “Who am I writing for?” The answer is yourself. He says about the audience, “You are who you are, he is who he is, and either you’ll get along or you won’t”.

Since I read a lot of books, I am inspired by lots of authors. I’ve been collecting advice for a number of years. What surprised me is to find most of that advice summarized in one, neat 300 page book.

For example, Scott Carrier advises Najib in Prisoner of Zion about writing what you say, writing conversationally, naturally. Zinsser says “Never say anything in writing that you wouldn’t comfortably say in conversation”

Another example: Ursula Leguin talks at length about the rhythm of writing in Conversations on Writing. Zinsser highlights the same point on Thomas Paine’s “These are the times that try men’s souls”. There is no other way to rephrase Paine’s words that bring this much delight:

Times like these try men’s souls.

How trying it is to live in these times!

These are trying times for men’s souls.

Soulwise, these are trying times.

I must read this book every year!

Choosing Not to Binge

If I am being honest, I love being entertained. As a young boy I loved watching cartoons and movies. In those days, Indian TV channels didn’t have variety. I remember all us kids on summer break piling into a neighbor’s flat because their TV was the only TV that received a grainy signal of Spiderman. No one had cable.

By the sixth of seventh grade, I don’t remember when exactly, we got cable TV in every home. HBO became a household name. It opened the door to a western world that was filled with variety. Way more variety that I was used to. I loved it! Ate it all up!

Now that, I am grown and make my own living, I can access entertainment when and where I like. No parents to nag, no homework to do. The internet modem replaced Cable TV provided even more variety.

To binge meant to over-eat food. Synonyms are engorge, stuff and pig-out. Today, it refers to watching entire seasons of shows in a few sittings. Inhaling it, like you would a drug. Here is The Onion’s jab at it. None of the definitions to binging come from an inspiring place. Another word comes to mind: Cramming, as you would before a test. Cramming can be positive, it means to memorize a lot of subject matter to be successful in a test. But we never say I crammed the second season of Witcher. We say I binged it.

The reason binging fits over cramming is because it is compulsive. No one crams compulsively. Internet-TV hosts like Amazon make binging easy by playing the next episode automatically within seconds after the credits start rolling. You can turn that feature off, as I did, but it didn’t stop me from watching half a dozen seasons of Wheeler Dealer. I have no interest in fixing cars for a living.

Matthew Crawford introduced the idea of Attentional Commons in his book The World Outside Your Head. It is a simple idea, like good ideas are. Crawford proposes untrammeled attention is as valuable as clean air and clean water. We must be free to give our attention to what we choose. At first read, it seems Crawford is talking about Free Will. It also seems our free will is intact so far — Jeff Bezos did not turn on the TV, I did. Bezos did not pick Wheeler Dealer for me, I did. I hit play. And when the show ended, I hit play again to watch the next episode.

Now, imagine a binge-eater’s trouble to choose if every street had an all-you-can-eat restaurant for a low annual subscription of $119. Can you blame them for making the wrong choice? Crawford makes the case that companies with a lot of interest in your attention make it harder and harder for you to make a different choice. Let’s call them Choice Architects — those who are in the business of producing or promoting content you can’t ignore. Shiny new TV shows, Hollywood level CGI, big name performers, and flashy adverts target the same parts of our brain that alert us to the presence of a predator in the Savannah. We are wired for it!

Jeremy Dean said in his book Making Habits Breaking Habits that if we do something weekly then it is a habit, not an intention. At the end of a work day, when I switch on the TV, pick a show and hit play, nobody made me do it. I thought it was my intention and Free Will. But this was the habit working itself out.

This is the recipe for binging: First, Choice Architects plunder our Attentional Commons with sophisticated tools, then our brain habituates and perpetuates. We binge.

Quitting cold-turkey is one option. I considered cancelling my Amazon and Netflix subscription. But I like movies and some of my friends do too. My friends and I have bonded over Crown and Expanse. Last Detective on HBO was a delight of story telling. Jeremy Dean says vigilance can curb the habit at first but the habit comes back stronger. Ask anyone who has tried to quit smoking.

I followed Crawford’s advice and opted for the Epicurean option. Crawford quotes Iris Murdoch:

“Deliberately [changing a habit] is not a jump of the will, it is the acquiring of new objects of attention and thus of new energies as a result of refocusing.”

First, I acquired the habit of reading profusely. And then I made a goal to write about what I read. Collecting good ideas, cultivating them, connecting them together into a rich web, and then writing about them are strong attachment points for the mind. I found they are strong enough to choose the book over the remote control.

Internet Sabbath

William Powers disconnects the internet modem in his house Friday night and reconnects Monday morning. This is from his book Hamlet’s Blackberry. He calls it the Walden Zone. I don’t know Powers still practices this disconnection. Cal Newport talks about doing something similar. He relates it to the Jewish practice of Sabbath.

I love binging internet-TV shows. When I don’t bing TV, I binge Youtube. I love the variety and color from video but I have come to love books more. To give books a chance, I decided to try Internet Sabbath for myself.

I’ve given myself more rope than the Powers’ family did. I don’t switch off the internet modem because my wife has not asked for this. I also limit Internet Sabbath to just Saturdays.

• I set the phone to go into focus model all day Saturday; the screen goes dark and notifications silence
• I don’t watch Internet TV which is the only form of TV we have; I allow myself to watch DVDs but haven’t done it yet
• I don’t use the web browser on any device

Rigid rules rarely last. Powers talks about making exceptions in his book from time to time. Here are mine:

• Any app that works offline is allowed — my note-taking app, for example, lives on the cloud
• Budgeting is allowed on the web browser — I use Google Drive and OneDrive
• I will stream podcasts on my phone’s podcast app or music on the music app
• Maps are fair game

Slow In, Fast Out

Last week, my work started off at a reasonable pace. There were only a few meetings on my calendar and there were several open blocks of time for deep work. The deadlines, and there were a couple, were manageable, and I had a robust plan.

One of Monday’s meetings grew into three more meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday.

While eating dinner on Wednesday, the new crown on my tooth cracked. This led to visiting the dentist on Thursday. I was gratefully they were able to work me in. But then I worked till 9:30 PM on Thursday to make up for lost time from the dentist and from extra meetings.

Friday ended with a push to get work out. People were waiting for it.

In racing cars, when you try to corner, they tell you, “Slow in, fast out”. Brake before you enter the corner, accelerate after. This keeps the car stable and saves you time. However, there is no advice to negotiate a curve that keeps changing. This is what last week felt like — I though I had a plan until the track changed midway through the corner.

At the root of these hyperactive situations is an incomplete or missing process. Cal Newport gets into this in A World Without Email. Give it a read if this feels like your life.

Habit Forming by Anticipation

Academic types like to use jargon, and often, made up jargon. They also write books. Those books have some of the best ideas and I must read them! Even though I liked coming across new ideas, I found myself detesting the unnecessary use of large words and convoluted sentences in these books written by professors, researchers and law people.

Consider the topic: Prefactual Thinking Prefactual is Pre and Fact. Before the fact. Prefactual Thinking is thinking before the fact. Or as the rest of us call it: anticipation.

The going got smoother after I unwound the jargon.

The original idea appears to come from Lawrence J. Sanna in 1998. The gist of the idea is if you anticipate many outcomes from your decision, then it gives you a better chance to succeed. Jeremy Dean explores this concept in habit forming.

Say, I want eat healthy, then I must use Prefactual Thinking, or anticipate the times I eat unhealthy foods such as snacks. By anticipating my habit to reach for snacks, say in the afternoon, I can do the following:

• keep cut fruit in the fridge that is ready to eat
• keep the pantry stocked with nuts instead of chips
• remind myself how much I love apples

I expanded the use of anticipation to overcome dissatisfaction as I build new habits. More on that another day.

Zeigarnik Effect

2004: I was leaving India to come to the US for my Master’s degree. It is common in Indian Culture for elders to give parting advice. My friend’s mom who had never left India told me to write tasks in a book to become effective. I kept her advice in the back of my head but I didn’t act on it till years later.

2008: Productivity blogs were the rage. Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders was on the top of my list. I picked up his Hipster PDA system and carried it with me for nearly a decade. Even now, you will find a small stack of index cards clamped between a binder clip in my backpack. This was Merlin Mann’s way of capturing tasks. We were all followers of “Getting Things Done” by David Allen.

2021: I was reading Sönke Ahren’s book How to Take Smart Notes. He talked about the Zeigarnik Effect:

Unfinished tasks occupy and burden our mind. Burden keeps us from being creative and effective at other immediate tasks. Simply writing a task down in a reliable system allows the brain to "think" the task is complete even though it isn't. It frees up the brain to do more tasks.

I follow this up with Cal Newport who adds that the task capture system must be reliable. The brain must be confident that the task in that system will be completed at some time.

Dealings with My Growth Mindset

I imagine a ratchet. Turn the handle. Click, click, click. The spring gives. Then turn the other way and the nut tightens.

This visual comes to my mind when I think of Growth Mindset. If the tightening nut is a metaphor for Growth, then counter turning handle click, click, click is the Mindset.

Growth Mindset is the search to improve constantly. I feel alive when I improve. But it can lead to burnout.

I’ll lean on the tightening nut metaphor some more: after ratcheting, the nut reaches a point where it is tight enough. It has reached the torque-spec of that bolt. At that point the tightening must stop. The nut has now started doing its job of keeping the bolt fastened to the frame. It may need re-tightening later but today it is fastened.

This last image of the nut at rest is missing from my relentless pursuit of growth. It is easy for me to keep tightening and reach the point of over-tightening or burnout.

I have given myself a few lofty goals for 2022. Nothing wrong with aiming high as long as I remember that I many cases, finger-tighten is good enough.

Negative Reinforcement

I thought Negative Reinforcement was the same as punishment and I was wrong.

Get low grades and lose video game privileges. This is punishment.

Negative Reinforcement is removing something unpleasant to promote good behavior. Get good grades and you don’t have to do dishes for a week. Just like positive reinforcement is adding something to promote good behavior. Get good grades and we buy you a new board game.

I learned this three months ago and promptly forgot. I had to look it up to write this article. As irony would have it, I read about this because the author, Scott Young was making a point that remembering something new is hard when we have a wrong idea about it!

So true!