Flexibility. Searching for Experiment Opportunities.

 So, I've been going hard with planning and discipline and systems. It seems that now the universe is telling me to go thesis-antithesis-synthesis on this. Some quotes that have popped up:

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Abandon your plans, even the best ones"

"Lord, Thy will be done. Thou think of it."

"Relax, have Faith, Allow"

"Surrender, Trust, Accept"

Soooo.....

I'm easing up the reins a bit and trying to let the Silence within lead the way. While still remaining acutely active, dynamic, and focused. It requires much more skill and dedication to do it this way. Planning things out and creating systems and following rules is a way that we try and gain control and certainty in this very uncertain and uncontrollable world. Generally, when we give up on having that control, we end up going almost catatonic, like a child whose parents do everything for them, or a kitten that's been picked up by the scruff of its neck.

In the kitten's case, it's an adaptive behavior, and it stops as soon as it's not grabbed. With the kids, it often ends up as a maladaptive behavior that gets learned even when the kid isn't being helicoptered.

Similar to adults, it often ends up looking like depression and a lack of enthusiasm or even awareness of their own desire. Or sometimes a fear of it.

What the healthy version looks like is zest, playfulness, and flexibility, with a fine sensitivity to rightness or intuition, that allows an activity to be dropped mid-sentence, if it's no longer indicated. That's hard for our psycology to do, because of our impulse to complete things we've started, in addition to the general craving for comfort, familiarity, and control. I am no outsider to those cravings.

So, that's the lesson for this week.

In other exciting news, I'm at the point now where I'm mostly done navel gazing, ('mostly' means there's still some more time I want to spend going through my vision quest journals, for example.) and am ready to start getting some more experiences doing different kinds of work, some of the possibilities I've identified, to test if they are a good fit. The main puzzle at this point is finding opportunities to try out these different kinds of work. And to some extent, translating the things I think are good guesses, into actual concrete tasks/experiences.

That's all for now, though this is a week late so the next one may come soon.

Love!

Reflection, Bugs, AI

This is going to be a short one, (I think, never actually know until it's done, but I've got a bunch of other things to do in a short amount of time, so probably)

I just completed my weekly review of this whole motivational system, so I can share the results, in case you don't feel like tracking them.

Some bugs with the Beeminder program (pun!) It only has daily as it's increment, so if something is weekly I have to write it as .18 or whatever per day. Also, the free version has no "weekends off" feature, so I have to re-calculate what fraction per day based on 7 days, rather than five. Because of how the program works, those changes don't go into effect for a week, so I had to add two hours each day Sat. and Sun. though I didn't actually plan on working that much over the weekend.

Various other little tweaks. I had forgotten to take my own advice and set my habit tracker goals too ambitiously, and perhaps too many at once. That's why I'm not paying out for not doing them though, I'm experimenting and I want the flexibility to change, remove, add, or put things on hold.

In general, making sure I'm doing some deep (no distractions) work on my most important goal(s) and hardest, most important action steps, each day, is great. As is making sure I fill out the habit tracker. Even if I'm missing days, just having my attention on it helps keep me on track.

Reflecting on that, I see that I may have to put a few of the habits I want to instal on hold, while I focus on others.

One habit, the productivity system, has been wonderful. It gives me a sense of peace and focus, using it, and keeps me on track. So I'm definitely keeping that one. It has a lot of moving parts, so that might be the only one I keep, for a while.

Though I think I have one more that I'd actually like to add, that of tracking my time very carefully. I haven't been getting as much done as I think I should be, and so I want to be able to see exactly where my time is actually going, so I can problem-solve it, the same way I'm problem-solving this whole motivation and goal-achievement system in general. Scheduling the time for this review was also really useful, I'll be keeping that.

I've been having issues following through on my intentions to go to bed early though, and it is a bit of a keystone habit, as sleeping in then gets the whole rest of the day out of whack. I think I'm going to add a digital sunset and some rules to the beeminder, as I think it's an important enough goal, and hard enough that it needs the extra umph of serious loss-aversion to back it up. We will see how that goes this week.

I've also been reading about OpenAI's projects more, it is just intensely fascinating, like witnessing the birth of the internet or the personal computer or something. It kind of feels reality-warping, and though OpenAI seems really dedicated to "do no harm" the problem is that if others realize this technology is possible, they are going to make their own versions, and some of those teams will likely not be as moral. That's frightening.

Also, the fact that the people who create the AI, don't understand how it works, is also a bit frightening. It's a little bit of a black box, it seems, where the massive computations that go into creating the AI's "neural network" happen away from human view, and so in a sense it's like interacting with a person, who we don't know what they're thinking, what they're motivations are. I don't think it's a Terminator/Skynet scenario, but I am worried some day the AI will be solving health and environmental problems, and give us a solution that looks good on the outside, but results in some serious environmental problems, that it either didn't realize would happen, or didn't think was a problem. It's the same problem as guns I think, where the tool can do so much with so little input, that it becomes easy to make a really big mistake really quickly.

On the other hand, you will be able to ask your computer to do just about anything for you, from doing your taxes to making up a story just for you based on your own plot. Or probably at some point, a movie, or a complete virtual world.

In some ways, it's really cool, and I think that's what a lot of people will be thinking.

On the other hand, distraction and entertainment does not lead to a rich, meaningful, and satisfying life. That's something that comes from inside and there is no short-cut to that or technology that can do that for you. Just look at the fabulously wealthy, and you will see they don't have special access to happiness, any more than the middle class person who can feed and house themselves and take care of their health. AI may change a lot of things but it won't grant us self-actualization or lasting peace and joy.

But that's ok, we can do that for ourselves. Given dedication and persistence.

OK, I'm out for today.

^_^

-Isaac

Social Accountability

 As promised, here are the links so you can see how I'm doing in real-time.

Here is a link to my non-money incentivised google sheets habit tracker

Someone was nice enough to post it for free use, so all the explanatory info and the template sheet are someone else's work and words. Just the tab that says February is mine so far, though I'll add months as I get to them. 

Next we have the pages for Beeminder, which is set up to take my money if I don't meet my goals. I've set that to only track my most important or keystone goals:

Doing at least 2 hours of deep work (intense focus on challenging things, no distractions.) every day, on my 1# most important goals for the day. One hour of which has to me on my current long term goal of finding dharmic work I love

Filling out my habit tracker each day (I've got one in my paper journal as well as the google sheets, not sure which should be the one I'm tracking here. I suppose the google sheets one for now.

A weekly review of this whole Motivation and habit system. I need to keep it current and troubleshoot issues since this is new and experimental for me. I want something with endurance, so anything that would make this system crumble needs to be accounted for.

You can see my progress on each via the link, updated in real time :D

There's still more things I want to set up to help me, but I think this is plenty for the first week. I may just stick with this until my first weekly review.

Let's see how it goes! So far I've already passed my deep work goal for the day, and the habit tracker won't happen until the end of the day each day, but so far the paper version is on track. Feel'n good ^_^

The Motivation: Begin

It is done. It's 9:09 pm, a bit late, but I decided to stay up as long as necessary to make sure I got all my ducks in a row to start this experiment tomorrow.

Sai Baba, one of my favorite spiritual teachers, wrote a play when he was little, maybe... 10 years old? not sure exactly. The title and subject of the play was "Do you do what you say you will do?" And I think that is kind of the essence of true virtue. Do you do what you say you will do? It's rare. And when you DO, you start feeling really good about yourself, and when you don't, you slowly ooze into feeling bad about yourself and not trusting yourself or respecting yourself, sinking into a cloud of distraction and rationalization to avoid facing the stark fact, because you don't feel very good about yourself when you realize you are not being true to your word. (It should be common sense to add, your word must also be true to your thinking. If you don't think something is actually good, but you say it anyways, you probably don't feel good when you act in accord with your word. You need your true thoughts and values corresponding to your words corresponding to your actions.)

I said I'd have it ready by the end of this weekend, and dag nab it, I'm going to be true to my word if it means I'm staying up all night long.

I have a few administrative tasks to do that will further enhance my focus, but I have my goals, and I've put real cash-money on the line if I don't deliver on them. I'll be sharing those tracking graphs so you can all check on them in real-time, along with some other links to the rest of my goals that I also want to accomplish, but am not putting to quite so strict a criteria for success and failure, for now, since I want to follow proper habit formation and motivation science guidelines, and not try and do too much at once. But I also want them all visible to people I know and care about, so I have a little bit of additional motivation to stick with them. However, it is getting late, so those additional helpful boosts can wait. Let's say they're due tomorrow, along with an extra blog post with all the links proving it has been done. ;-)

Looking forward to it :D

See you tomorrow,

-Isaac