Tag: inspiration

Pleasure, sadness and reality

As an experiment, try and find the habits in your daily life that are driven by pleasure – you know the ones i mean – those things you do when you’re a little bit bored which give you that nice little buzz and dopamine hit.

It is difficult. It forces you to reflect on your actions and life, and it eventually forces you to recognise that pleasurable things are not the most fulfilling things, precisely because they are temporary and external. In this way, pleasure is different to happiness.

Pleasure is a momentary feeling that comes from something external — a good meal, a message notification, making love and so on. Pleasurable experiences can give us momentary feelings of satisfaction, but this feeling does not last long because it is dependent upon external events and experiences. Try and locate the pleasurable (not happy, remember) activity in your life and try to stop doing it for a whole day – I’m almost certain you’ll find it hard to do.

But pleasure is not wrong in and of itself – so why stop? Because we need to know how we feel without the constant pleasure seeking. Are we doing all these things because we are sad without them? And if we are in fact sad about something, shouldn’t we find a more permanent solution?

The trouble comes when we ascribe the pleasurable activities in our lives more value and power than we should. A drug addict gives heroine priority over everything else – she sees it as the source of her happiness and of her power in life. Similarly a bulimic ascribes power to food and the control thereof. In actual fact, drugs and throwing up give us but a temporary pleasure – not a true satisfaction. They are not the answer to any sadness that is felt.

Once we see the things we are deriving pleasure from, a useful next step is to reflect on how we feel when we do not have access to these things – are we happy or sad without them? If we are happy without them, then there is no real problem. Carry on living.

If we are sad without them, and furthermore if we rely on the activity more than we should – then something needs to change for the sadness to lift.

Reading better

There is simply too much to read. The internet is endless and ever growing.

That’s why companies like Facebook and Twitter have done so well. If you’re not sure what you’re looking for, if you’re bored or if you’re lonely, these companies will give you something to look at. It will link up with your social life, your browsing history and your location too, if you let it (yes, there is a choice). It will make you feel pleasure and excitement for a fleeting moment.

Calling the main page on Facebook and Twitter a “feed” is no coincidence. Like a baby screeching for mother’s milk, these companies recognize our thirst for connections and take the thought out of choosing what to read and what to consume.

But can we do better and can we read better? Any reading for a purpose is better than the default Facebook addiction. Managing what we expose ourselves to is a full time job but it’s worth it. Choose books and newsletters and RSS feeds. Choose active reading over passive consumption. Better yet, read something purely for the purpose of creating something.

The process is the end goal

Creating, learning, enjoying, believing, trusting, trying, selling, achieving: I am focussed on verbs today. The doing words. Sounds boring but hear me out.

Verbs are interesting because they imply an ongoing process. For example, the act of creating something is often focussed on the end result. You might say, “I want to create a novel”… or “I want to start a company” or “I want to learn a language”. We have tangible examples of things we want to emulate or to have which get us excited and elicit emotional responses. However, when we make the end goal the focus, it can lead to disappointment when it is not achieved early on. Rather, it is the process and ongoing nature of the achievement that should be the focus. If you “do creative stuff” for long enough then something creative will pop out the other side. Similarly, if you “do language learning stuff” for long enough then you will learn a language. The important part is the doing. The process. There is some comfort in this.

It might be a matter of letting go of an end goal, or rather letting go of a strict preconception of success and end goals, and focussing more on the process letting it take you where it may.

Waste and resource constraints

I find it very easy to be wasteful. I can spend money far easier than I can make it. If I let it, my house atrophies and falls apart so that water and energy leaks away. Netflix will line up episode after episode so that time ticks away.

Waste happens when I have plenty of choice.

The opposite thing seems to happen when I think I have less than I need. If I am stretched on a job I can put in superhuman efforts and meet a deadline. If I am running out of money, I can make ten bucks last for a long long time. If I have a clear idea of where I am headed, resource constraint is not so much of an issue. Sometimes it is liberating and let’s me achieve more than I set out to achieve.

 

Newness and perseverance

The decision to give up on something is easy to make and it is also absolute. At one point you are engaged in something, with all the possibilities and trials and tribulations implied, and then you are back at zero. You just stopped.

Often a decision to stop is because the thing you are doing gets difficult. We convince ourselves that a Rubik’s cube is too hard, or that the alarm clock went off too early and we haven’t had enough sleep. We stop engaging and move on to something else (or to more sleep).

To frame it another way, rather than stopping because something gets hard, we stop because it is no longer new and exciting. Sooner or later, any activity or relationship loses its feeling of newness, its novelty. There is a comfort in starting something fresh, an excitement, and also a lack of pressure – how can we be good at something if we haven’t been doing it for very long? The novelty fades and what we are left with is a reflection of how well we are doing. It’s easy to drop the ball and stop playing if we are not happy with what we see.

To quote Seth Godin: “Two things you might take away from this: First, there’s solace in finding someone who has done it before, whatever “it” is you’re trying to do. Knowing that it’s possible and studying how it was done can’t help but increase the chances you’ll stick it out.

Second: huge value accrues to the few able to actually do a thing for the very first time.”

Imagine you kept at it and got it right? No need to imagine, just keep at it.

All the masters – the power of collation

I have a great book called “1001 albums you must hear before you die“. The pages guide you through pop music and cherrypicked albums from the 1950’s onwards.Collation is an art form in itself, and this is the best example I have to show. Poring over the pictures and reviews brings out the nostalgia in spades.

The era of the album is all but over but here is a record of how great it was.

These were the masters, and their masterpieces. If you are an aspiring musician looking to learn your trade and tradition, you might want to start here. The same applies to all good work of course. Who were the masters, and what exactly did they do so well?

 

 

Ability versus skill

I am learning how to swim again. I used to swim in teams at school until the age of 13, and then I just stopped. Last year I entered a triathlon and felt like I was nearly drowning on the swim leg so I resorted to breaststroke. Not exactly “captain speedy”. I decided to enlist some help.

My point is that I have to believe I can improve through practice and learning. It was so tempting after that triathlon to say I was just “not a swimmer” and that those who swim fast have the right genes for it. However, from that point of view, it’s a short step to copping out of anything and also to something altogether more sinister such as racism and eugenics.

Ability is inherent, but not so important. Skills are learned, and largely dependent on culture and attitude. I will be a better swimmer if I train.

 

Congestion

One of the most frustrating situations is congestion – gridlock. I recently went to Johannesburg for a day of meetings. I wanted to organise 4 different meetings with clients and potential clients while I was in the city, but the traffic situation meant I could only plan for 2 meetings in the whole day. Congestion of roads.

Apparently it only takes four people in a hundred to choose not to drive on the roads each day to ease gridlock. A 4% decrease in mindless cramming let’s the traffic flow.

Bear with me here, but I think our brains work in similar ways. If we take 4% of our time spent on marginal ideas, distractions, wastes of time – and instead spend it on a few minutes of good stuff – imagine the cumulative effect? If you stopped watching TV for just 10 mins a night of reading good books – every night – the ideas would flow. If you stopped scrolling through your Facebook feed for just 10 mins of creating something new every day – imagine the cumulative effect.

The kicker is that once we start with something productive and force ourselves to do it for 10 minutes, we are far more likely to keep doing it.

Ease the congestion and noise in your brain for just a tiny amount each and every day. It works.

Owning a masterpiece

It’s in every art collector’s dreams to own a piece of history. It defines a gallery to show off a master’s work. It is considered a massive show of generosity to lend one out as has recently happened with a Monet picture (link) …But…

But far more interesting is trying to create your own masterpiece. Clearly we can’t all be Monet or start a movement like the impressionists did. However, we can refine our skills and take the necessary care over a piece of art to call ourselves its master. Some questions to consider in creating your own masterpiece:

  • How much do you know about the history of what you are creating? What came before the piece you are working on? Influences? Track record?
  • Why are you making what you make? For profit? For Community? For Impact? Surprise? Delight? Efficiency?
  • Where’s the risk in your work? Was it guaranteed to work or could it have failed?