iPhone Expectations

In just a few minutes, Apple will begin its on-campus “Let’s Talk iPhone” event in Cupertino, CA.

Like all Apple product announcements, it’s a big day for nerds all over the world, but this one has a particularly high level of anticipation because it’s been almost seventeen months since the iPhone 4 was announced. Traditionally, Apple unveiled a new iPhone every year at WWDC, but this year’s conference was dedicated entirely to software: OS X Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud. There were no new hardware announcements. Thus, the Apple community has been starved for a new iPhone for longer than usual.

Notably, this will be the first product announcement with (presumably) Tim Cook at the helm as CEO. It’s also being held in Apple’s on-campus Town Hall auditorium, rather than at a huge convention center.

Rumors and speculation about new products is part of Apple fan culture. It’s fun and exciting, because Apple’s products mean a lot to people in ways that other phones, computers, music players, and software don’t. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype.

As Stephen M. Hackett wrote in his article, “On Expectations and New iPhones”, it’s important to recognize the value of managing your expectations and not letting them run too wild.

Some of this year’s rumors include multiple iPhone models, improved voice control, a faster A5 processor, 4G compatibility, and so on. With all the speculation flying around, people become increasingly vulnerable to disappointment. If you’re really looking forward to one special feature, and Apple doesn’t include it, you’re going to feel like a sad trombone.

The better strategy is to look forward to the announcement, knowing that this new iPhone, whether it’s a 4S or a 5, will be a great device. It has to be, or Apple wouldn’t release it. However, the only certainty is that it will be better than the iPhone 4. How much better will be the subject of debate for the next few weeks. Since we’ve had to wait an extra long time, there’s an additional expectation that this new iPhone needs to be leaps and bounds better than the iPhone 4. It doesn’t. The iPhone 4 is still a tremendous success today, seventeen months later.

Apple itself seems to be downplaying today’s event. The press invitation for the announcement suggests there will only be one new iPhone announced. The event is being held at a much smaller and intimate venue. The event’s tagline, “Let’s Talk iPhone”, suggests that that will be the singular focus.

That’s good strategy. It’s all about managing expectations. It’s much easier to under-promise and over-deliver than it is to set a bar so high that it becomes unreachable.

For me, even if the new iPhone only features the A5 chip and an improved camera, it’s still an exciting day to be an Apple nerd. I’m not due for an upgrade until February, so I probably won’t own this generation of iPhone. That’s fine, because I’m still perfectly happy with my iPhone 4, and I’ll get to enjoy the iPhone 6 when it’s announced next year. I’m not saying I won’t be drooling over whatever gets announced today, because I almost certainly will, but I like to keep things in perspective.

Whatever gets announced today, just remember that we’re lucky to have a company that produces such consistently fantastic products at such consistently reliable intervals. No matter what happens, it’s a great day to be part of the Apple community.

James Shelley: Success

James Shelley on Success:

Herein lies the culmination of our review: “success” is an illusion. Granted, the human experience is full of tantalizing tokens, symbols and rituals to represent this apparently highly-sought status. But every diploma, certification, award, medal, pay-grade promotion and recognition is simply another construct of this brilliantly (and humanly) crafted mythology.

The whole thing is superb.

Three Entities

I’ve never been one to say, “There just aren’t enough hours in the day!”, but lately, it’s all I can think about.

Yesterday, I posted links to three great articles around the web. That’s it: just the three links. Barely a word of commentary. I felt conflicted about that because, while I enjoy linking and responding to posts from other writers, I want to maintain a balance between link posts and original articles. That’s not to discredit the three articles I linked to; they were all tremendous, which is why I recommended you read them. But since this site is so young, I’m concerned with establishing it as a serious, professional creative endeavor. I don’t just want to post links and call it a day. That makes me feel guilty, and even though this site is a labor of love and shouldn’t contribute additional worries to my life, it’s the fact that I care about it so much that makes only posting three links weigh on my conscience. When I can’t put 100% of myself into this website and make it as good as I want it to be, I get bummed out.

I’m in a tough position right now because three entities are competing for my time and attention. One of them is this website. Another is karate. I have three hours of workout + meeting twice a week and classes to teach in the evenings. I love and need the workouts, but on days like today, when I get home at 1pm and only have two hours to shower, eat, post something to the site, and make it to work on time, it can be frustrating. Especially when I read a handful of great, exciting articles like I did yesterday, and I wish I had time to sit and write some of my own. But the reality is, this site is not my full-time job, so sometimes, a link will have to do.

Chris Guillebeau posted an article called How to Write 300,000 Words In 1 Year yesterday, and this part really stuck with me:

Someone once said, “I hate writing, but I love having written.” I tend to think you have to love at least some of the writing part too, but I get the idea. In my case, I write because it makes me feel good, and because I feel like it’s what I’m supposed to do.

If you want to write consistently and thoroughly, you must learn to make writing your job, regardless of whether it has anything to do with your income. It must be what you think of at different times throughout the day, even when you’re doing other things.

Those sentences resonate with me because they’re exactly what I’ve been feeling every time I’ve had to tear myself away from the computer to go to work. I think about the site on the way to work, in between classes, and on my way home. It’s incredibly exciting to feel that way about a creative project, but it’s also frustrating because I’m not yet at a point where I can act on them to the degree I’d like. Plus, since the site has nothing to do with my income, the responsible thing to do, unfortunately, is make it the first thing to go on the back burner.

The third entity demanding my time and attention is my thesis on Middle English lyric poetry, which is the last thing separating me from my master’s degree. It’s also the last thing tying me to academia. Now, I love being an academic, and it’s been a huge part of my identity for the past 24 years, but I’m ready to take a break and pursue writing in a different medium, namely this website.

Having a massive paper on Middle English lyric poetry due is a drag, but alas, the system demands it, and so it must be done. Since starting my thesis earlier this year, I have approximately 14,000 words of stuff written on a handful of poems, but those thousands of words lack any unifying structure or argument. That, too, is a drag. Having a thesis hanging over your head makes it very difficult to write for your silly website and not feel at least a slight twinge of guilt.

Fortunately, I have one hell of a thesis advisor. As he says, “Don’t get it right; get it done.”, which seems paradoxical coming from an English professor, but the notion that a thesis has to be some terrifying behemoth is mostly unnecessary. If I think about how I need at least fifty pages of groundbreaking analysis on 500-year-old poetry, I’ll become paralyzed with fear. Where would I even start? Rather, all I really need is five pages of introduction, five pages of conclusion, and five pages each about eight different lyrics. I’ve been writing five page papers for most of my life. That’s the bulk of the dirty work. A unifying thread will present itself naturally. When you put it in perspective, a thesis is suddenly not so intimidating. I don’t need to agonize and slave over it for months and months. It’s just a big paper. That’s not to undermine the endeavor, but rather to turn an abstract horror into a manageable assignment.

I can do it, and it will get done, but fifty pages is fifty pages, and with deadlines looming, it’s another thing distracting me from what I’d really love to be doing, which is writing this website. I know: life is tough, get a helmet, and all that, but I don’t believe life needs to be filled with things we don’t want to do. Some things, sure, but not most things. There’s only a finite amount of space in your head, and the more things that reside there, the less attention each receives. But, the only way out is through, as they say.

It’s fascinating how issues I’m wrestling with in my head also tend to bubble up in discussion on the internet, seemingly by coincidence. As I was taking a break from writing this article, I was finishing the latest episode of The B&B Podcast. Shawn Blanc just happened to bring up the topic of self-imposed urgency in maintaining his website, which he writes full-time.

It’s a self-imposed urgency. It’s self-imposed responsibility. You know, because I’ve been thinking about this a lot for the past six months now that I write my site full-time. And… you know what? I’m going to show up to work every day, I’m going to work hard, I’m going to do my best, I’m going to try to write as well as I can, and as regularly as I can. And sometimes that only equates to two or three links a day. And you know what? So what? That is me working. Because there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes behind that.

The thing is, Shawn and his wife are expecting, and here I am bumming out about balancing work, school, and writing. But he’s totally right. The only person pressuring me to post every day is me. Would I love to write 1,000 words a day for this site? Of course. But sometimes other things will need to take precedence, and the site will still be here tomorrow.

So, today I’ve woken up early to write five pages on Fowles In the Frith, and during that time I won’t be able to give this website any attention. But the sooner I get those five pages done, the sooner I’ll be able to post something here guilt-free. The sooner my thesis is done, the sooner I’ll be able to pour myself even further into QLE. I’m not excusing what will probably be a dearth of long-form content over the next few months, but I am asking you to bear with me. Before long, I’ll have found some more hours in the day.

The Fear of Being Wrong

Randy Murray thinks you’re probably wrong about that:

I judge people, but not on the current state of their knowledge. I judge them on their willingness to learn, to think, and to change what they believe to be true. I think that is the fundamental philosophic difference between the scientist and the believer. The scientist should always be willing to say, “based upon new information I am willing to re-evaluate.” The believer often shuns information that contradicts what they “know.”

It’s a thoughtful piece, and it makes a good companion to my article, The Man Who Knows Nothing. In that post, I explained how adopting the know-nothing principle is not a matter of playing dumb. Rather, it’s a way to avoid being so attached to your ideas that you fear being proven wrong and subsequently become unreceptive to new information. As Randy puts it, you become a believer rather a scientist.

If you can eliminate that fear, whether it’s by being willing to change your opinion or by adopting the know-nothing principle, you’ll actually learn and grow much more quickly. In both cases, you become more receptive to opinions different from your own. This open-mindedness is inherently beneficial because, even if you don’t know for certain which answer is the right one, simply being aware of different viewpoints will enable you to both be more knowledgeable about the topic and to better formulate your own opinion.

When your mind is open, you become less afraid of being wrong. You become less defensive about your ideas, and thus you become more calm and relaxed. By being open-minded, you free yourself from the risk of having your inner peace disrupted by someone who thinks differently than you.

Eliminate Unnecessary People

John Lilly:

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got, back when I was 23 and newly out of school, is this: look around and figure out who you want to be on your team. Figure out the people around you that you want to work with for the rest of your life. Figure out the people who are smart & awesome, who share your values, who get things done — and maybe most important, who you like to be with and who you want to help win. And treat them right, always. Look for ways to help, to work together, to learn. Because in 20 years you’ll all be in amazing places doing amazing things.

A central tenet of minimalism is eliminating unnecessary things. You can apply this principle to virtually anything, including relationships. It may sound cold, but there’s simply no reason to waste time and energy maintaining a relationship that contributes nothing of value to your day.

Of course, some relationships are unavoidable, so it’s also possible that you might need to minimize a relationship to only its essential aspects. My roommate freshman year, for example, was absolutely nothing like me and had little to offer besides copious amounts of alcohol and chicks, bro, chicks. I’m sure he had similar feelings about me. Requesting to switch rooms was probably an option, but rather than go through all that hassle, we opted to peacefully coexist instead. We didn’t have to hang out all the time just because the university decided to pair us up; we just had to sleep in the same room and not kill each other. When the year ended, we went our separate ways, save for the occasional, “Hey man, how’s it going?” in the cafeteria line.

Now obviously, human relationships are enormously complex, and I don’t mean to undermine them. But it’s important to remember that, even though this is the Age of Facebook, you don’t have to be friends with everybody. It’s alright to let someone go when your relationship has run its course. It’s not about being a cold-hearted jerk, it’s about accepting the fact that not everyone needs or even deserves a place on your team. There’s no need to feel guilty about it because you’re freeing yourself to focus on those who matter most.

Different personalities have different needs, and some may enjoy the challenge of keeping up 500 friendships. In that case, by all means do what makes you happy. For me, though, relationships are one of the foremost examples of quality beating quantity every time.

Via MG Siegler

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The Evil of Numbers

They’re everywhere: on the cover of every magazine, on the sign for every gas station, on the face of every clock.

As a student of English, I always had an inherent disdain for any subject dealing with numbers: math, chemistry, physics, etc. Hence, my C in 9th grade geometry. It was a dark time.

As I progressed through my collegiate career, I was privileged to deal with numbers less frequently and to be surrounded by people who shared my sentiments. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that numbers are one of the principal roots of all evil.

That seems like a pretty bold claim, of course, but I’m not talking about scary, fire and brimstone, universal type of evil. Rather, numbers are one of the biggest offenders when it comes to things that disturb our inner peace.

If you think about it, most common sources of stress are directly or indirectly associated with numbers:

  • We stress about grades.
  • We stress about our age.
  • We stress about our weight.
  • We stress about money.
  • We stress about not having enough time.

All of these examples focus on numbers. Why? What’s a number anyway, and how can we break free from them?

According to a general definition, a number is “a mathematical object used in counting and measuring”. Obviously, anything with the word “mathematical” in it raises a red flag, but beyond that, counting and measuring are activities solely attributed to humans on this planet. That is, numbers were created by, and only exist because of, the human race. They are entirely manmade. Numbers are a system put in place to help us control our lives and assert our importance in the universe.

You need good grades so you can make a lot of money. You need a lot of money so you can buy a big house and fill it with stuff. You need to maintain a certain weight so society will find you attractive. You need to rush to school and work so you’ll be on time. You need to act your age.

All of these needs are constructs that we as a species have decided to enforce upon ourselves. As a result, we have become slaves to numbers.

So, what to do? Obviously, numbers aren’t going anywhere, and trying to live without them would be absurd. Good grades, a healthy weight, and income to live on are important. We do need numbers, for better or worse.

However, we do not need to allow numbers to control us. We can’t get rid of them, but we can change the way we think about them. They’re just numbers.

A grade is just a number. It does not define who you are as a person. Doing your best is what defines you.

Eating well is important, but it’s not healthy to stress over every tiny fluctuation on the bathroom scale.

We should act our age most of the time, but we can’t forget how to play.

Stop. Rushing. Wherever you’re going will still be there when you arrive.

It’s just money. That statement is going to offend some of you, but even if you don’t have a single cent to your name, you’re still going to be able to wake up in the morning and breathe fresh air. You’re not going to die. There’s comfort in that way of thinking.

Speaking of having no money, I’d like to give some credit to the number zero. Yes, literally having $0.00 in the bank would be stressful, as some of us know, but imagine if there was no money at all — in the world. How much more relaxed would life be if money didn’t exist? How much more relaxed would you be if you didn’t have a clock strapped to your wrist telling you where you were supposed to be all the time? Wouldn’t it be nice to identify yourself by how old you feel?

Zero can be considered the absence of numbers. Zero is simplicity. Zero is inner peace. When your inbox is empty, you feel calm. When your desk is free of clutter, you feel relaxed. When your head is emptied of all worries, life is good.

Since numbers are here to stay, try seeing them for what they are: just a little made-up invention to help us control our world. We can’t get rid of numbers, but we can change how we think about them, and subsequently, be a little less stressed.

Control the numbers; don’t let them control you. They’re just numbers.

The Simplicity of Self

I love this idea of Triangular Focus by Everett Bogue:

These three things are important to me:

  1. Writing (and publishing)
  2. Yoga
  3. Eating (well)

[…]

Whenever I’m presented with something outside these three, I have to ask myself: does this take me towards these goals, or away from them?

I talk about simplicity a lot on this website, but Everett’s point is one that’s often overlooked. I think of it as the simplicity of self.

Just as it’s impossible to read everything, to see everything, to do everything, it’s also impossible to be everything.

Everett has identified the three things most important to him, and as a result, he can pour himself completely into each of them.

When I was little, I wanted to be an archaeologist. Then, I wanted to be a karate instructor. Then, I wanted to be a famous bass player. Then, I wanted to be a student affairs professional. Now, I want to be a writer. It’s natural for these dreams to change over time, but eventually I have to figure out what’s going to define me for the rest of my life. What do I care about most?

I would still love to be a famous bass player, but I’ve started to accept that that’s not likely to happen anytime soon. That’s not to say it couldn’t happen, of course. If I really set my mind to it and put the hours in, I could probably make it happen. So, perhaps more accurately, I’ve decided not to become a famous bass player. Luckily, that doesn’t mean I have to give up bass playing. In fact, I still play every day. Bass will always be a passion of mine, but it’s one that’s been relegated to a lifelong hobby, rather than a potential career path.

Being everything at once is like trying to be everywhere at once; it’s exhausting and, ultimately, impossible. Think of it as quality versus quantity. Do I want to be a decent bass player, and a passable writer, and a part-time karate instructor all in one? Or would I rather spend my time and energy focusing on being the best I can possibly be at one important thing?

The more identities you have, the less attention each receives. It’s like being involved in seven different clubs in school. Can you become, say, president of all seven clubs and still perform to the best of your ability at all times? I’m sure that sounds doable for some people, and I commend these individuals for their ambition and superhuman abilities.

But for me, I’d rather live a calmer and more focused life. Looking at Everett’s three things, I see they’re not much different than my own: writing, exercise, and diet. These are the things I care about.

If, at this time in my life, my day consisted of eating well, exercising, and writing about things I love on this website, I don’t think I’d be able to imagine a better existence.

Bending the Stiffest Arrow

J. Eddie Smith, IV:

To get up smiling when the universe hits me in the mouth. To make something out of nothing, even if that something exists in a reality known only to me. To defy the Second Law as many times as I can before it beats me for good.

To be an anomalous crook on the arrow of time.

I wish I wrote that.

It’s a mantra for myself and for this website: we have control over almost nothing except our minds and how they deal with the world.

Simplicity is one way to combat the complexity of the universe. The more moving parts something has, the more likely one of them is to break. I keep my workflow simple so I can get more things done in more places, rather than be debilitated by a missing tool or a foreign location. If something contributes more complexity than harmony to my life, it gets simplified or eliminated.

The more simplicity, the less friction. The less friction, the less struggle. The less struggle, the more inner peace.

The Importance of Mindless Activities

I spent the majority of Labor Day weekend home alone, camped out on my couch, playing an old video game from my childhood.

This was an odd occurrence, as I don’t do much video gaming anymore, but the urge to go back to the nostalgic pastime of my youth was unusually strong. I had just finished working a couple of six-day weeks, and I’d been putting a lot of time and effort into building this site for more than a month straight. I was tired.

At first, I felt a guilty about spending a long weekend inside, glued to a television screen. I thought, “I should go running,” or “I should write something new,” or any number of other more productive activities.

But then I realized that time off is a good thing. Joshua Becker, of Becoming Minimalist, just wrote a post about the underappreciation of rest in today’s society:

Rest has become confused with laziness. We live in a society that praises those who work 60hrs/week and makes faulty assumptions about those who work 40. We have confused rest with laziness. And while too much rest may indeed be an indicator of sloth, the regular practice of finding rest is not.

Sometimes, you need to do something mindless. It lets your mind and body recharge and recuperate so that you’re better prepared for what comes next. There’s no reason to feel guilty about not going to the gym once in a while. Your muscles — physical and mental — need time to recover. Forcing additional work from them when you’ve got nothing left in the tank will only run yourself into the ground, and then you’ll miss several days due to illness or injury.

When I was working in a cubicle and sitting at a desk for eight hours a day, I was exhausted. I’d wake up, drive 45 minutes to a building, sit there all day, go to class, and then drive 45 minutes home. Add in homework and finding time to sleep and exercise, and things weren’t all that enjoyable. I’d daydream about all the things I’d do once the weekend finally arrived and I had some time to myself. But when the weekend finally did show up, I didn’t do anything. I’d just spend it screwing around on the computer, not getting anything done that I’d wanted to. I was too tired to do anything but sit.

This is why the occasional mindless activity is so important. If you work too hard for too long, you get burned out, which can be depressing and actually make you sick. That’s your body forcing you to rest. When you take a rest voluntarily, be it with video games, or reading a book, or taking a walk, your mind and body get a chance to regain their strength. Once you’ve gotten enough rest, once you’ve done nothing for a while, you actually regain the drive and motivation to do things naturally, without having to force it.

After I finished my coursework for my master’s degree, I spent all of June and most of July doing a whole lot of nothing. I worked at my usual summer job, but otherwise I spent my time relaxing. Once I had gotten enough rest, I found that I wanted to start doing something, to start creating something, which turned into this website. If I hadn’t had that time to decompress and get back to neutral, I may not have created QLE. So those two months weren’t full of laziness, they were full of necessary rest, which gave me the strength to create something new.

So, don’t feel guilty about doing nothing once in a while, whatever your version of nothing may be. The gym will still be there tomorrow, and you’ll be able to hit it twice as hard. If we never stopped to rest, we’d still be doing everything we ever started, and that’s no way to get anything done.

Step Off, Step On

Yesterday, my family made pizza on the grill for Labor Day. I wasn’t thrilled.

When I was younger, I had a long period when I actually didn’t like pizza. I know: what self-respecting kid doesn’t like pizza? I wasn’t an overly health-conscious adolescent or anything, but something about it didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it was the scalding hot tomato sauce, which to this day never fails to burn my mouth, or the abrasive crust, or the guaranteed messy fingers afterward.

Whatever the reason, I did eventually overcome my fears and learn to enjoy pizza. I still do, but yesterday’s feast was a struggle for me, and it led to me thinking about the issue of exceptions and how to make them effectively.

First, a little background…

A couple of years ago, I broke up with my then-girlfriend and found myself with considerably more free time on my hands. Up to that point, I had been adverse to any kind of healthy diet. I just didn’t feel inclined to suffer through eating grass and tree bark. I wasn’t even overweight, although I probably could have been considered skinny-fat.

But in that post-breakup moment, wherein I needed something new to focus on, I decided that the past 22 years of eating garbage had run their course, and it was time to get down to business. So, I started trying to eat healthier and exercise on a more frequent basis. I scoured the internet and found a solution that made sense to me and seemed like a sustainable lifestyle.

It took me close to two years to fully assimilate to my new and improved way of life. During that transition period, being consistently healthy was a struggle. You never really realize how unhealthy society is until you try to break free from it. Junk food is everywhere. Friends want to go out to dinner. People bring trays of cupcakes into the office for literally no reason. And sometimes, your mind just convinces yourself that one little bite is okay, even when it turns into twenty.

I stuck with it though, and now I’m at a point where I actually enjoy eating healthy more than eating junk food. It’s still tough sometimes, but on most days, I have no trouble avoiding cookies or turning down cupcakes. Even though they’re everywhere.

Now, back to my mention of exceptions.

Some members of my family, who don’t adhere to my personal health philosophy, have a hard time understanding the parts that seem controversial by conventional wisdom’s standards. I understand this difficulty because I would have felt the same way two years ago.

So, I was informed in advance that we were having pizza for Labor Day, and there was, essentially, nothing I could do about it. At first, I said I would eat beforehand and then come over, but I was told we were having guests, and that would be rude. My mom asked, “Can’t you just make an exception this one time?”

Of course I could. Did I want to? Absolutely not.

I know how I feel after an off-day of eating. It bums me out. It feels like all progress up to that point has been shot to hell. It feels unfair that I should have to sacrifice for others’ unhealthy habits. Did I have missteps once in a while? Obviously, but I would rather save those for instances when I had absolutely no control over the situation. If there was a way to avoid a misstep, why would I voluntarily choose not to take it?

Well, to make an increasing long story short, sometimes you just have to bite the bullet. I understand manners, and sometimes there’s no point in creating an unnecessary argument. Sometimes, you just have to eat pizza.

So, I ate the pizza, but I also managed to enjoy it by altering my perspective so that it wouldn’t bum me out too badly. Here’s how:

First, one cheat meal is better than an entire cheat day. People like to have a Pop-Tart for breakfast and say, “Welp, the day’s shot. Might as well start over tomorrow.” That attitude is detrimental and does more harm to your goal than need be. In the grand scheme of things, one cheat meal is only a blip on the radar, and it won’t undo months of progress. Several cheat days, however, will take much longer to recover from.

Second, I still had a great deal of control even though I was giving in to the pizza gods. I ate healthy all day so I wouldn’t be starving at pizza time, which would have caused me to overeat. I tried each kind of pizza, but I didn’t scarf down enough slices to make me uncomfortably full afterward. You don’t always have to kill yourself on an off day.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, after dinner, I went right back to my old habits. The path is always there, waiting for you to step back on. I didn’t think, “Oh, the day is ruined!” and stay up all night eating cookies and ice cream. One misstep doesn’t have to lead off a cliff. I stepped off the path, then course-corrected and stepped back on. Nothing worth agonizing over.

This is the mindset that has been most effective for helping me deal with those inevitable exceptions to my rules. I think it works for me because I’ve been trying to adhere to this lifestyle for so long that exceptions themselves have become unwanted. People who are just starting out, who haven’t fully transitioned and possibly don’t even enjoy what they’re trying to achieve, often want to cheat. They want and look for excuses to make exceptions.

The strategies above are not excuses for stepping off the path; they are mental adjustments for coping with stepping off the path when you wish you didn’t have to. The smaller the step off, the smaller the step to get back on.

The Meaning of Happiness

As usual, James Shelley presents a great mind-bender with his article, Unhappy With Happiness:

But as counter-cultural as it may be, I have serious misgivings about the pursuit of happiness. There is a massive, irreconcilable clash between our modern obsession with happiness and the lives of our cultural heroes like Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, Mother Teresa — people who would have never inspired us had they simply taken the path of least resistance in order to achieve their own happiness. No, these individuals followed a trajectory set by a pursuit of meaning, justice and purpose. Values set their respective frameworks for making decisions (and significant sacrifices) in life.

This post has thrown me for a loop because I’ve been assuming happiness is the ultimate goal for quite a while now.

The people James lists above are exceptional individuals — once-in-a-lifetime human beings. It’s true that they might have endured much less adversity had they only been concerned with their own happiness, but they also wouldn’t be the heroes of humanity they are today.

Can one aspire to be an individual of the same caliber as Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa? Sure, why not? But I question the likelihood of such an outcome given most of our comparatively sheltered existences. How can a college graduate from suburban Connecticut become a cultural hero?

Before reading James’ essay, I was always focused on my own happiness, and I don’t mean that in a selfish way. Various influences throughout my life taught me that I can’t control anything except my mind and how it deals with the world around me. That sounds pessimistic, but it was actually liberating because it showed me that no one was in control of my happiness but me.

In college, as I started to become interested in Eastern philosophy and minimalism, I began focusing on ways to eliminate friction in my life. I might not have known what job I wanted, or where I wanted to live, but I did know I wanted to be happy, content, and fulfilled — wherever I was, whatever I was doing. I thought, “We only get one shot here, so why not make it as smooth and enjoyable as possible?” It seemed like a worthwhile and achievable long-term goal.

On top of that, I also found this anonymous quote:

You must love yourself before you love another. By accepting yourself and fully being what you are, your simple presence can make others happy.

As you may know, it’s my favorite quote, and I’ve tried to ingrain it into my conscious as a way to become the person I want to be. I fully believe it, too. If you don’t love yourself, how can you possibly love another? Learning to love yourself is an act of acceptance for who you are. If you can achieve that state, that love will emanate from you and spread to others.

So, my ideal version of happiness is one that allows me to be who I truly am, which is hopefully a person other people enjoy and benefit from. I think this is different from a pursuit of happiness where you only care about yourself or material possessions.

James:

Sheer happiness for happiness’ sake leads to numbness. I can not imagine any other consequence. For once happiness is achieved, what remains? Does not the bubble of the happiness economy eventually burst under the surplus of indulgence?

It seems like a case of “too much of a good thing”, but I don’t think happiness is a state with any sort of permanence or finality. It’s not like we finally get to the happy state and then never have to worry about it again. My happiness rises and falls multiple times over the course of a single day. I don’t think happiness can ever reach a state of an “indulgent surplus”. If you were permanently happy once you achieved happiness, then yes, I would agree that it sounds boring and unfulfilling, although you might not recognize it. It reminds me of an atheist asking what people in Heaven do all day.

Like minimalism, I believe happiness is a constant struggle. I’m constantly editing and refining my life to keep it simple and frictionless. It’s not something that’s just achieved, over, and done with. You can’t just set it and forget it. Even if I can learn to be happy most of the time, I’m still going to have bad days when I just don’t feel like doing anything. That’s human nature.

James concludes:

Once personal happiness is dethroned as the crown jewel of existence — once the dream of a tension-free life is finally disregarded as the rhetoric of infomercials — the world explodes with opportunities and possibilities to pursue causes drenched with meaning. This is, I think, what Viktor Frankl was pleading with us to acknowledge:

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

If not today, then someday, the choice will confront each and every one of us: do we choose the path of happiness or the path of meaning?

I guess what I’m struggling with is why it has to be one or the other. Since when is happiness a meaningless pursuit? I can see how some versions of happiness could be interpreted as selfish, like buying fancy cars or a huge house because you think it’ll make you happy. The pursuit of that happiness is certainly questionable. But I think the quest to love yourself so that you may pass that love onto others is worthwhile.

To suggest that we need to have Gandhi-level achievements to have meaning in our lives is obviously unreasonable. I don’t think Martin Luther King and Aung San Suu Kyi were unhappy people just because they pursued meaning, justice, and purpose. Being happy with myself and making other people happy gives my life plenty of meaning. I value simplicity, and removing friction, and finding inner peace, among other things. The pursuit of those things makes me happy, yes, but also fulfilled.

I would think people who consider themselves to be happy don’t feel their goals and lives are meaningless. Everything you choose to include in your life should contribute to your overall sense of well-being, be it people, places, or things. That includes goals. Whatever you’re pursuing, if it brings you fulfillment, it’s okay in my book.

How to Not Miss Out

Leo Babauta challenges us to stop worrying about missing out:

It’s why we’re so busy — we take on so much because we don’t want to miss out. We take on dozens of goals and aspirations, because we don’t want to miss out.

The title of Leo’s piece, “The Tragedy of Missing Out,” is ironic. At first glance, it sounds like missing out on things is tragic; we tend to interpret the act of missing out as a negative experience.

But it’s actually the fear of missing out that causes us to miss out in the first place:

If you always worry about what you’re missing out on, you will miss out on what you already have.

The tragedy lies not in missing out on things; that’s unavoidable. Instead, the tragedy lies in the mindset of “I’m missing out”. When we feel like we’re lacking — in experiences, social circles, possessions — we feel compelled to chase after those things in the hopes of feeling complete and of not missing out. Thus, our minds trick ourselves into pursuing things out of fear, rather than enjoying and being content with what we already have.

You will miss out, but in striving to do everything, you’ll miss out on the wonder of the thing you are doing right now.

File that under “mindfulness”.

Busted

(Or, How Math Homework Can Teach You to Not Worry About Yesterday)

When I was little, I hated getting in trouble.

Being a nerd when you’re 24 is cool; being a nerd when you’re 11? Not so much. But a nerd I was, and so I was mostly well-behaved, studious, and terrified of rule breaking. Not of other kids breaking rules, but the thought of personally getting in trouble made my little pre-pubescent heart palpitate.

One night, when I was in sixth grade, I didn’t do my math homework. Well, I wrote down the numbers to the problems, and stared at the paper for a little while, and then scrawled a big question mark next to the problem to fill up some of the very blank page. Unfortunately, question marks weren’t considered acceptable. When my teacher checked my homework the next day, despite my stammering attempts to explain, all I got was a smug “Boo-hoo. Sign the book,” in her elderly southern drawl. The book, as in, The Detention Book.

Needless to say, I was a wreck for the rest of the day. Detention? I don’t even know what that means! What do I have to do? Where do I go? What are the procedures? How do I get home? How can I avoid mom and dad finding out about this? What the heck is a “late bus”?!

It’s funny, in retrospect, how much anxiety a little boy can experience just from having to stay an extra 45 minutes after school, but what can I say? I hated getting in trouble.

I still do, even as a post-pubescent. Fortunately, my last math assignment was over four years ago. Still, even a simple, “Sir, you can’t park here,” makes me flinch. I end up repeating the incident over and over again in my head, replaying it ad nauseum until enough time passes, and it fades from memory.

Fortunately, as an adult, I rarely find myself in trouble, and the occasional incident is far less debilitating than it was in the halls of John Wallace Middle School. What I’ve come to realize is there’s no point in worrying about things that have already happened. Repeating a mistake in your head over and over again rectifies nothing. It only causes you to experience the same unpleasant emotional response you felt at the time.

It sounds simplistic to say you should learn from your mistakes, but that’s really all you can do about them once they’ve been made. I should have done my homework. Oh, well. Can’t do anything about it now — except prevent it from happening again.

Dwelling on the past beyond any meaningful reflection is a waste of time.

That’s not to say it isn’t hard to do, but sometimes you need to ask yourself what you’re gaining from allowing a thought to take up residence in your head. What purpose does this thought serve? Is it healthy for me to continue to think about this thing I can’t do anything about?

Maybe the answer is yes. Maybe it’s taking a long time to figure out exactly what happened and how to learn from it. That’s okay. But anguishing over things you can’t change, and things that, in thirteen years, might not be such a big deal, isn’t productive. In fact, it can be counterproductive if it prevents you from moving forward. It’s another form of paralysis generated by the mind. Fortunately, that means it’s also something you can control.

Everett Bogue puts it splendidly:

Spending one moment more than necessary worrying about what I should have done yesterday is a moment that I’m not spending now taking concrete actions that are necessary in order to achieve what I need now.

Don’t worry about yesterday. Do your homework, and soldier on.

A Fair Fight

Leo Babauta on the amazing power of being present:

If you are completely present, the external forces are no longer a problem, because there is only you and that external force, in this moment, and not a million other things you need to worry about.

Vital, but so very challenging. It’s really hard, for example, to do yoga when you’ve got a hundred things on your mind and a ton of stuff to do after you’re done. It’s really hard to go to work after having a rough morning and realize it’s only Tuesday.

I thrive when I have things to look forward to. It can be anything, really: plans with friends, a new podcast to listen to, a new album coming out. Having these things in the back of my mind helps me get through the stuff I’d rather not be doing. It’s a means to an end; you have to get through the obligations in order to reach the things you’re passionate about.

But when there doesn’t seem to be anything to look forward to other than long workweeks and uneventful weekends, things can seem pretty bleak. So while having stuff to look forward to can be an advantage, it can also be a detriment when there’s nothing exciting on the calendar. That is, reliance on always having something to look forward to is not the most effective method for avoiding a bad mood.

Leo’s advice about being present is the solution. It’s a form of mindfulness:

Being present becomes, then, a way to handle any problem, any distraction, any stressor. It allows everything else to fade away, leaving only you and whatever you’re dealing with right now.

If I’m at work, I’m responsible for teaching a great karate class. I can’t let the thought of having nothing to do this weekend affect my performance. The better option would be to focus on the present moment and think about what I can do to make this class memorable for the students. Then, my fear or longing for things outside the moment will fade away, rather than dictate how I feel. This allows me to give my full attention to whatever I’m doing right now. In other words, don’t let something happening in the future affect your happiness in the here and now. Deal with it when it arrives, not when you can’t do anything about it.

If you’re present, you can fully enjoy the moment. Even if the moment finds you working on something you’d rather not be doing, you’ll be better equipped to deal with it when it has your full attention, not when you’re simultaneously thinking about ten other things.

When it’s just you and the moment, it’s one-on-one: a fair fight. All that other stuff will still be there afterward. One thing at a time.

This Week

(Or, Three Ways to Survive Bad Times; a.k.a. The Big Perspective Post #1)

This week promises to be what can only be described as “a bitch.”

Allow me to explain.

As I’m writing this, it’s Sunday night. This week I will be teaching at our annual Karate Camp, which runs from 9am to 3pm, Monday through Friday. Our regular classes will continue unabated from approximately 4pm to 9pm. On Friday evening, virtually the entire school will be graduating via three different ceremonies, and on Saturday, after I teach the regular classes from 9am - 1pm, I have to do a birthday party for what is sure to be a manic group of youngsters. This week ends at 3pm Saturday, a horrific 126 hours after it begins, and about 70 of which I will be hard at work teaching little kids how to defend themselves using only their shoelaces. Personal fitness, healthy dietary choices, and solitude are sure to take a backseat for the next six days. Not to mention it’s going to be difficult to find time to write and maintain this website, which threatens my 30 day writing commitment.

In addition, summer was slapped across the face today by a 68 degree and relentlessly rainy day, with the rest of the week looking to offer more of the same. All the while, my exquisite girlfriend will be sequestered in a draconian training program for her upcoming job, the likes of which does not allow for much verbal or textual communication.

All in all, the week of August 15, 2011 appears to be a prescription for angst, exhaustion, and general burnout.

Fortunately, this post is not intended to be a colossal woe-as-me rant. Nobody likes a complainer. Rather, I thought I would take this opportunity to document exactly how I intend to survive this hellish week and emerge in six days with my sanity mostly intact.

To put it simply, as I often try to do, the answer lies in Perspective.

For the past few years, I’ve been intrigued by the concept of Perspective and how it can be practically applied to help us lead healthier, calmer, and overall happier lives. This week provides an excellent chance to explain some of the strategies I use to ensure life doesn’t beat me when the going gets tough.

Perspective is a very complex topic, and there are many ways to implement it. I’m only going to talk about three in this post. More will follow in future posts.

The first thing to remember when dealing with any sort of challenging situation is also perhaps the most important:

1. You aren’t going to die.


Obviously, heartbreaking situations do exist, and they do happen, but those extraordinary circumstances aren’t the challenges we’re talking about here. We’re talking about beating the average bad day. Or week, as the case may be.

Always ask yourself, when presented with a scary or otherwise stressful situation, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Chances are it’s not that bad, and chances are even greater that the worst thing probably isn’t going to be what actually goes down. Realistically, the worst thing that could happen to me this week is I get exhausted, run down, and frustrated. Maybe I even get sick from working too long and too hard. But even then, what’s the worst thing that could happen? I’m bedridden for a few days, I suppose. That probably won’t happen, but even if it does, it’s not going to kill me. I’m not going to die.

Bob Parsons, CEO & Founder of GoDaddy.com, says in one of his rules to live by:

With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be. Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as a cloud of “undefined consequences.” My father would tell me early on, when I was struggling and losing my shirt trying to get Parsons Technology going, “Well, Robert, if it doesn’t work, they can’t eat you.”

This is huge. For many people, the worst case scenario in life is death, or, in Bob Parsons’ case, to be literally devoured by humans. I agree completely; that’d be terrible. But, it’s not going to happen. No matter how badly you screw up a presentation, disappoint a loved one, or fail to meet a goal, no one’s going to eat you for it. That’s a very comforting thought. Say you embarrass yourself in front of a packed room of people. What’s the worst thing that could happen? They all laugh at you? You end up on YouTube? I suppose, but those outcomes have slim odds. You’re not going to die, and you will live to see another day. This is incredibly empowering if you can keep it in mind and not let fear consume you.

“Alright, fine,” you say. “I know I’m not going to die, but this is still going to be awful!”

Yes, you’re right. But that just means you need to ingrain this second mindset:

2. Time never stops.


I’m staring down a 70-hour workweek right now, and nothing in the world is going to change that. No matter how badly I wish it wasn’t so, nothing’s going to change the fact that I have a long six days ahead of me. The 70 hours are a reality I cannot alter.

What I can change, however, is how my mind thinks about and deals with those 70 hours.

When it comes to challenging parts of life, there is no fast-forwarding, but at the same time, there’s no pausing, stopping, or rewinding either. Time never stops moving forward. That means once the clock starts on those 70 hours, every day, hour, and minute that goes by brings me a little bit closer to 3pm Saturday afternoon. This mindset can have a tremendously augment your ability to deal with tough times. No matter how much it sucks, it will never be worse than it is at moment zero, when the pain or stress first starts. Every minute that goes by brings you a little bit closer to being okay. Thus, the end never gets any further away. Time never stops. You’re always moving closer to the goal, to the end, to the solution.

If you envision your challenge as a tunnel you need to walk through, you could say the worst part is the first step because you’re still the entire length of the tunnel away from your goal at the other end. But in fact, you’re also one step closer than you were when you were outside the tunnel. As long as you don’t give up or turn back, as long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you’re always getting closer to the end and to being okay again.

You can apply this thinking to virtually any situation:

If you’re sick, you can wallow in self-pity and mucous-filled tissues, or you can take comfort knowing you’re not going to be sick forever. The pain is temporary. There is a fixed point in the future when you’re going to feel better, and every passing hour brings you closer to that moment.

If you have to do twenty push-ups, and you hate push-ups, you can focus on the pain and agony in your triceps, or you can enjoy the fact that every push-up you do brings you closer to number twenty. Twenty is never getting any further away! Plus, the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll get there.

If you’re devastated you haven’t met the love of your life yet, and you think you never will, you can beat yourself up about it, or you can decide you believe he or she is out there, and it’s only a matter of time before you find that person. They aren’t getting any farther away, even if you have no idea when they’ll show up.

In some of these cases, you can’t control when the end/relief/solution arrives, but you can always control how your mind deals with the time until you reach that moment.

If I sound like I’m repeating myself, it’s because you have to treat this step as a mantra. The more you say it, the truer it becomes.

And finally…

3. We are all wonderfully irrelevant.


There’s no doubt about it: this is going to be a trying week for me. Still, in the grand scheme of things, it really isn’t that big a deal. In seven days, the previous six will be just a memory.

What might be a big week in the world of Andrew Marvin is really just an undetectable blip on the timeline of the Universe. My rough week isn’t that important to anybody except me — apologies, dear readers — and as such, it holds a complex duality. It’s a big deal to me because it’s my life, and my life is my whole world. But at the same time, it’s practically nothing in the larger picture of humanity.

The Universe is incomprehensibly big. We are tiny infinitesimal specks on a minuscule little planet in a vast solar system, which is just one small part of thousands of galaxies and stars and space.

You may find this depressing, but it’s actually incredibly liberating. When you keep in mind how insignificant we probably are, things have a way of becoming far less serious.

As George Harrison wrote:

Try to realize it’s all within yourself,
No one else can make you change,
And to see you’re really only very small,
And life flows on within you and without you.

So there you have it: three strategies for beating a bad week. Note that none of them change the bad week itself, only the way you approach it.

The bottom line is you usually have no control over the things that happen to you, but you will always have control over your mind and how it deals with them.

Now, I’m off to bed. The sooner I sleep, the sooner tomorrow comes, and the sooner day one is complete. If I don’t see you, I hope you’ve found this article useful, and I encourage you to adapt my strategies to suit your own thinking.

I’m sure I’ll see you, though.

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All There Is To Know

A little while ago, I wrote about the Know Nothing Principle as a way to circumvent the emotional tension stemming from differences of opinion. But that’s just one altered perspective, which may or may not work for you.

Colin Wright, of Exile Lifestyle:

Other people’s stupid opinions have just as much merit as your own, in that they are opinions backed by individual experience and a closed body of knowledge. Perhaps they – or you – simply haven’t lived long enough yet to see their error of their – or your – ways.

Colin’s idea is equally effective, particularly if you can’t imagine ever freeing yourself from your opinions. As he says in his post, people’s opinions develop as a result of their own experience and a closed body of knowledge. If you’re going to have an opinion, personal experience is a good thing to go by. After all, you can’t just blindly accept as fact something from another source; you have to investigate that thing on your own, and then decide whether to agree or disagree.

But the second clause is even more crucial. If we take “a closed body of knowledge” to mean knowledge limited to one’s own experience, then people’s opinions become much easier to accept. If everyone had the same experience as you, — the same upbringing, values, exposure, etc. — then they would probably have no trouble seeing, if not agreeing with, your point of view. Someone who disagrees with you probably hasn’t seen what you’ve seen, read what you’ve read, or felt what you’ve felt. Of course they disagree.

But at the same time, as Colin says, you likely haven’t shared their personal experience either, which is what lead them to their opinion. Colin suggests that living long enough might give you the time needed to experience or understand their point of view. Eventually, you may actually change your own opinion.

But what if the topic is incredibly complex? What if it’s so multi-faceted that it’s impossible to gain a truly open body of knowledge? That is, a scenario where you’ve read all there is to read, heard all there is to hear, and felt all there is to feel about a given topic, to the point where you are 100% knowledgeable and thus 100% equipped to establish your own opinion.

In my view, such a scenario is impossible, which is why I find it easier to accept that I know nothing. Remember, we’re not talking about literally believing you know nothing; it’s about understanding the very real possibility that your opinion is wrong and subsequently freeing yourself from that fear.

I don’t feel comfortable fighting for an opinion unless I’m completely confident I know all there is to know about the topic, and in my mind, such a state seems unattainable.

You could just accept this impossibility and formulate your opinions based on the portion of total knowledge you’ve absorbed. I think this is what most people do, but without realizing it. By accepting their personal experience as all there is, they become attached to their opinion and closed to anything that challenges it. But if you become aware that you can’t possibly know everything there is to know about something, that your experience is but a fraction of the entire body of knowledge, and thus understand that your opinion is just as susceptible as anyone else’s, you’ll be less afraid of being wrong and less compelled to fearfully defend your idea. This is a way of keeping our opinions in perspective, which in turn allows us to be content with others’ points of view and avoid the negative energy so often associated with differences of opinion.

The Man Who Knows Nothing

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.
-Socrates

I have mixed feelings about Everett Bogue. I admired him when he was writing Far Beyond the Stars, a wonderful resource about minimalism and business, and I still admire the success he’s achieved as an independent presence on the internet. But when he self-righteously abandoned his label as a minimalist and started pontificating about augmented humanity and mental cybernetics, I grew weary. He took down Far Beyond the Stars, the blog that made him a role model for the minimalist community, and decided he was moving on to other things. (Fortunately, Far Beyond the Stars has been archived here, and I still recommend it to folks interested in learning more about minimalism.) I appreciate Everett’s courage and quest for personal growth, but his talk of cyborgs and cybernetic yogis was a bit much, so I too moved on to other things.

After declaring he would disconnect from Twitter and most other forms of social media, Everett recently decided to end his digital sabbatical — his resolutely-titled “foreversabbatical.com” is now forwarded to his personal website — and has since decided to grace the internet with his presence once more. He’s been writing daily posts on his website, and I’m genuinely glad, because he still has plenty to offer us humans.

Part of Everett’s new approach to existence is explained in his post, Unlearning What the Internet Wants. He writes:

This is a new section on my site. Let’s call it: unlearning. Every week, until I decide to un-post schedule myself, I’ll be writing an intention to unlearn something for that week.

It is, characteristically, a bit melodramatic, but the notion of “unlearning” is intriguing, and in my opinion, it can have very valuable real-world applications. Let me explain.

The quote at the top of this post was introduced to me by my undergraduate philosophy professor, and it remains one of my favorites. The idea of knowing nothing seems paradoxical, but it can actually be a highly effective way to look at the world.

To put it simply, when you declare yourself to be an expert on something, whether explicitly or implicitly, you bring upon yourself a great deal of responsibility. People will demand answers of you, and you must deal with their reactions. You may have to deal with people who vehemently disagree with you and attempt to persuade them to see or acknowledge your point of view. Some people might love such a challenge, but I can’t say I do.

Everybody likes to be right, and most people believe their opinion is the right one, or at least the best one. But being right all the time takes a great deal of energy. This is especially true of larger issues, like politics, religion, and so on. In these areas, people are increasingly unlikely to change their point of view, regardless of how strong an argument you might present to them. This stubbornness can be frustrating when you’re passionate about your ideas.

That frustration is almost inevitable. When you claim to be an expert — that is, when you claim to know something — you become an authority, either in your eyes or the eyes of others. The more you claim to know something, the greater your attachment to your ideas and, most likely, the more determined you’ll be to make others agree with you.

For example, this evening I witnessed a lively political discourse about the state of the country between two people. Fortunately, the participants were on the same side and subsequently were able to enjoy repeatedly agreeing with one another. They both validated each other’s ideas.

If you were present for such a conversation and held strong convictions contrary to what was being discussed, it would likely be frustrating to hear your point of view being disparaged. As a result, you might feel compelled to interject your opinion and defend your ideas, especially if you’re convinced your ideas are the right ones. But initiating an argument, friendly or otherwise, probably wouldn’t result in either party changing their point of view. Acknowledging the opposing side, perhaps, but that would be an optimistic outcome. To put it bluntly, a conservative is not going to become a liberal over a conversation at the dinner table, nor is the converse any more realistic. This is true of any great social debate: atheist versus theologian, pro-choice versus pro-life, many guns versus no guns.

People who claim to know things — i.e. people who believe they have the right answers — are so attached to their ideas and so afraid of being wrong that they will go to great lengths to defend themselves, verbally or otherwise.

But the man who knows nothing will never experience this problem. He will never be angered by another’s opinion, and he will never feel compelled to force his ideas on other people.

You cannot be wrong if you know nothing.

To go back to the political example, I personally would never feel fully confident having a debate unless I was sure I had obtained my information from a neutral source (which in itself is a tremendous challenge) and read every article on the subject. And even then, I would have to sift through and evaluate hundreds of essays and reports, each potentially full of opinion or baseless claims. So, even if I could complete this infinite investigation, how could I ever be 100% certain my position is the correct one?

It’s an impossible task, and I simply don’t want to dedicate my life to reaching a point where I can confidently prove people wrong. It’s a waste of time and energy.

Everett gets it right here:

Whenever I think I’ve mastered something, chances are I’ve just achieved a false sense of entitlement. People with a false sense of entitlement I generally want to smack, unfollow, and put on my zombie wall.

The process of unlearning is an exercise in letting go. Letting go of preconceived notions. Letting go of the concept of correct and incorrect, of “you’re wrong” and “I’m right”. Knowing nothing is not about playing dumb; it’s about recognizing the absurdity of being attached to your ideas. When you know nothing, you can float above the din of people competing for the supremacy of their knowledge.

The man who claims to know something chooses to spend his life defending that idea. The man who knows nothing has no such obligation, and thus, he is free.

Update: A follow-up to this post can be found here.

Behind the Screen

Philip Bump, writing for The Atlantic:

Our always-on society is, in fact, becoming a Golden Age for introverts, in which it has become easier to carve out time for oneself.

The full article is here.

As a introvert myself, I completely understand and agree with Bump’s argument. One might think the onset of technology and our current state of always being connected would be the bane of an introvert’s existence, but it’s actually quite the converse.

As Bump points out, introverts likely found pre-Industrial Revolution America to be quite the safe haven. Communication was more difficult, and there were less people and more space between them. As technology and populations exploded over time, the advent of the city packed more people into smaller spaces. As a result, introverts likely found themselves in stressful situations far more frequently. Regular telephone calls, increased social interaction, and solitude that was much harder to come by.

Fortunately, technology today has actually managed to rescue the introvert, as Bump illustrates:

A brilliant first volley was the answering machine: ostensibly a device meant to ensure that a call wasn’t missed, it quickly became a tool to ensure that you could miss any call you wanted.

A puzzling point for an extrovert, but for the introverted among us, a brilliant one. As technology has grown, so has our ability to hide our introversion without anyone else (i.e. extroverts) noticing.

Bump, a self-described introvert, explains the distinction between these two personality types:

For introverts like myself, it takes energy to engage with other people. Doing so requires thoughtfulness. It’s tiring. Expending energy, for us, isn’t energizing. Please note: we’re not talking about shyness, some character flaw. The problem isn’t with the introvert — it’s with the demands you make on the introvert. An introvert can’t force an extrovert to sit quietly in a room and read a book, but extroverts (and the stigmas they’ve inadvertently created) can impose social demands with ease.

I’m not complaining, because I wouldn’t trade my introversion for any amount of gregariousness, but I believe an extrovert will never be able to fully understand what it’s like to be an introvert for the precise reasons Bump describes. Through no fault of his own, the extrovert can’t possibly know what it feels like to be physically and/or mentally exhausted after, say, an hour in a room full of strangers. The stigmas Bump mentioned are undeniably true. How can you possibly not like going to parties? The notion that someone could feel this way is nonsensical to many, and we introverts often come off looking rude and stand-offish, even though we don’t intend to be.

But technology has in many ways given us an out. Bump goes on to detail his four reasons why technology protects the introvert, and for the most part, I agree with all of them. The notion of essentially lying about what you did this weekend in a status message (Bump’s first reason) seems suspect, but it’s actually just a means to create the solitude the introvert needs. As such, a simple “Be back later” status can achieve the desired result: personal space and peace and quiet.

Serial communication in the workplace, Bump’s second example, is something not just limited to introverts. I’m sure we’ve all been in a situation where we email someone instead of calling, because the latter is a little too personal, or we might be slightly afraid of the impending response, or we just don’t have the energy to get roped into a twenty minute telephone call.

I used to pride myself on responding to emails instantly; it’s the kind of disciplined and respectful response I’d prefer from others. Plus, it helps keep my inbox at zero. But in reality, one of the main benefits of email is that it doesn’t require an immediate response, which contributes to a more relaxed correspondence. The same can be said for text messages; you can read a text and take your time to think about your response, which contrasts with the more rapid-fire cadence of a telephone call. While certainly not appropriate in all instances, these “slower” forms of communication have distinct advantages.

Bump’s third reason, that technology fosters serial communication everywhere else as well, is perhaps the most beneficial to introverts. Nowadays, communication is expected to be brief and to-the-point. After all, the crux of Twitter is its 140 character limit. People are used to this concision, and introverts and extroverts alike groan upon discovering a three-minute voicemail. The brevity of a text message has become the norm, personality type notwithstanding.

As twenty-somethings and frequent texters, we’ll often hear our parents shake their heads and mutter about how we always need to be connected, exercising that typical “kids these days” tone. Whatever happened to writing letters and talking on the phone instead of being glued to a little glowing screen? A valid point, but I would argue that reliance on the text message or tweet is rarely a character flaw displaying a rude aversion to human interaction, though that’s possible. Rather, texting allows me to be in almost constant contact with friends and family while maintaining the personal space I need as an introvert. I can still have a conversation and enjoy that human interaction without expending the energy a phone call demands. Texting allows me to preserve solitude while eschewing loneliness.

Bump concludes by pointing out that technology allows us to simply “push [our] thoughts out into the world, to be responded to at some undetermined future point.” In this way, technology has allowed the introvert to thrive. I’ve always been far more articulate in writing than I am in speech, and our always-connected world encourages that sort of thoughtful expression and reflection.

Bump’s essay, nor my response, are not in any way meant to be an attack on extroverts, and they are certainly not apologies for introverts or modern forms of communication. Bump concludes:

I speak of the struggle between introverts and extroverts in antagonistic terms. But it shouldn’t be considered that way. Extroverts, we love you. We just don’t want to talk to you all the time. Happily, we live in a time when the expectation that we do so is much lower.

I whole-heartedly agree. While technology is growing at a rate that may be scary to many, in some ways, it has allowed me to be more expressive, and thus truer to myself, than ever before.

Via Minimal Mac, who found it on Boing Boing