Have you been following the debate about mastery?
It isn't trending on Twitter or broadcast on CNN. In his 2008 book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell proposed that those who excel have spent 10,000 hours on deliberate practice. That means that anyone can achieve mastery if they spend about ten years attentively improving a skill twenty hours per week.
What an exciting result! He had data and put it together in memorable, surprising words. It's a beautiful insight into human progress. If you ever start thinking we aren't getting any wiser, spend a little while considering that the 10,000 hour concept arrived only 11 years ago, has spread well, and lays out a path for becoming much better at any chosen skill. That means that we now know how to create better results for anyone — which meets my definition of us becoming wiser.
Since then, people have been testing the 10,000 hour concept. They haven't disproved it so much as refined it, finding situations where it might take more or less time, looking for exceptions, and so on. (More advances in wisdom!)
On my own part, I've had mixed feelings about mastery. On the one hand, how lovely it would be to master a skill! On the other hand, I am broadly curious and enjoy spreading my attention between many subjects and pursuits — which means any single one may not receive enough of my time for me to reach mastery in it. When is it worth immersion in a single activity to bring it to mastery? What other uses of my time would I give up to gain mastery? These are worthwhile questions.
In the meantime, I needed to understand what mastery was. So I've been working on a definition, checking the words and rolling it around in my mind, and settling on this:
Mastery is fast, nuanced response to specific situations.
For example, suppose it's the guitar you want to master. Then a sign of mastery would be playing quickly, with variety in tone, volume, technique, matching the particular song and group you are playing with.
In martial arts, it's reflexive attacks, parries, and dodges that meet a particular opponent and their moves with the appropriate amount of force.
In coaching, it is seeing the person before you and choosing in the moment from a wide variety of responses to help that person move ahead.
A master doesn't always have to respond quickly, carefully adjusted for the current circumstances. But if someone can't, they are not showing mastery in that moment.
I'm open to debate on this! And one part is that I needed something more specific than "performing well."
Bonus definition, extracted from dictionary.com: Wisdom is "knowledge of what is true or right, coupled with just judgment as to action." I'd say wisdom is both knowing how to do something and choosing well what to do. And the 10,000 hour concept helps someone both know how to gain mastery and choose whether gaining mastery is worth it.
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
I Will Mess Up
Today I was watching a thread where John Scalzi commented on the Hugo for An Archive of Our Own and then apologized.
He's one of the good guys. He's a little younger than I am, far more engaged in public discussion of how to treat women and people of color well in the community of science fiction than I have ever been, and has a lot of experience with being a public figure. If he's going to misspeak at times, I definitely am too. Unless I stop speaking altogether, and that isn't good for me or likely to make the world better.
It is better than I engage and try than sit silent to avoid error. So I am going to mess up.
It's quite a relief to accept that, actually. It's also a relief to see Cory Doctorow arguing that neither our good actions nor our bad actions cancel out the others. We are imperfect. We act from what we know now. Some of it will be mistakes, or perhaps ignorant errors that will make future generations or even more alert contemporaries cringe.
I, in particular, have come with blind spots and upbringing and imperfect knowledge and I will mess up.
I'm human. The game is to keep trying to do better.
He's one of the good guys. He's a little younger than I am, far more engaged in public discussion of how to treat women and people of color well in the community of science fiction than I have ever been, and has a lot of experience with being a public figure. If he's going to misspeak at times, I definitely am too. Unless I stop speaking altogether, and that isn't good for me or likely to make the world better.
It is better than I engage and try than sit silent to avoid error. So I am going to mess up.
It's quite a relief to accept that, actually. It's also a relief to see Cory Doctorow arguing that neither our good actions nor our bad actions cancel out the others. We are imperfect. We act from what we know now. Some of it will be mistakes, or perhaps ignorant errors that will make future generations or even more alert contemporaries cringe.
I, in particular, have come with blind spots and upbringing and imperfect knowledge and I will mess up.
I'm human. The game is to keep trying to do better.
Sunday, April 07, 2019
Creating a Better Self
Atomic Habits is an outstanding book. It is clearly written, inspiring, actionable, and insightful. It contains information that is new to me – and I have read many books on self-development over many years – and states those ideas in a way that feels like I could do something with them. I want to do something with them! I very highly recommend it.
I'm restarting it, to incorporate more of the suggestions, and today I was struck by the identity concepts. "Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become." Isn't that beautifully stated? And it's central: who do I want to become? What goals would that person have? What habits would she practice to reach those goals and to express the person she is?
One of my very first posts here was that I am more of a net than an arrow. That was an identity statement. I believe I am a generalist. I like to spread my efforts among multiple goals. I enjoy having more than one focus for my attention, over the course of a day, over the course of a week, over the course of months or years, or over the course of a lifetime. However, all these statements are identities, and I could change them.
Here's another meta-belief: I believe that the likeliest way to change a value is to adhere more strongly to a higher value. In a class recently, someone asked me if my values had changed. It's an excellent question. I stopped and reviewed my history.
There is a bias for humans to think we thought the same way in the past that we think now. We don't remember how we thought before we changed our minds without an extra effort to do so. Knowing this, I looked first at how my behavior had changed, which is easier to observe. And I could see: I used to have a much stronger belief in having everyone follow the same rules than I have now. I've gained a value for diversity that now ranks higher than what I might previously have called a value for equal application of the rules.
That may be because I have a higher value for kindness, for treating humans well, than I have for fairness. Or it may be because I now spend more time around people who value diversity than people who value lawfulness.
When I made a mission statement, that was a clarifying effort to discover and enhance what is most important to me. In many ways, it was a discovery or creation or strengthening of identity.
James Clear, in Atomic Habits, inspired me to take the next step and ask, "What frequent actions would someone who valued this mission take?" I can think of a few. And I'll write more about them another day.
I'm restarting it, to incorporate more of the suggestions, and today I was struck by the identity concepts. "Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become." Isn't that beautifully stated? And it's central: who do I want to become? What goals would that person have? What habits would she practice to reach those goals and to express the person she is?
One of my very first posts here was that I am more of a net than an arrow. That was an identity statement. I believe I am a generalist. I like to spread my efforts among multiple goals. I enjoy having more than one focus for my attention, over the course of a day, over the course of a week, over the course of months or years, or over the course of a lifetime. However, all these statements are identities, and I could change them.
Here's another meta-belief: I believe that the likeliest way to change a value is to adhere more strongly to a higher value. In a class recently, someone asked me if my values had changed. It's an excellent question. I stopped and reviewed my history.
There is a bias for humans to think we thought the same way in the past that we think now. We don't remember how we thought before we changed our minds without an extra effort to do so. Knowing this, I looked first at how my behavior had changed, which is easier to observe. And I could see: I used to have a much stronger belief in having everyone follow the same rules than I have now. I've gained a value for diversity that now ranks higher than what I might previously have called a value for equal application of the rules.
That may be because I have a higher value for kindness, for treating humans well, than I have for fairness. Or it may be because I now spend more time around people who value diversity than people who value lawfulness.
When I made a mission statement, that was a clarifying effort to discover and enhance what is most important to me. In many ways, it was a discovery or creation or strengthening of identity.
James Clear, in Atomic Habits, inspired me to take the next step and ask, "What frequent actions would someone who valued this mission take?" I can think of a few. And I'll write more about them another day.
Friday, March 22, 2019
Building up Practices
While it irritates me to have too many practices dictated to me, especially when they are all supposed to happen "first thing in the morning," there are things I'd like to get done. So I've been trying to improve my habits.
One hack in the kit is to chain practices. Only one can happen first thing, but it could lead to another, and another, and another. Then another could happen, say, just after breakfast, and it could lead into another.
I had a few good days of chaining four practices before breakfast, then breakfast leading into three more daily practices – four if I count brushing my teeth.
Then I had a horrible backlash.
This is normal.
With all these practices in rubble around me, I have a good chance to review them, decide what is really important to me, and which ones were really helping.
I feel some urgency. I've had a couple minor but continuing health concerns that would yield to better self-care. And with Doug and I both out of work, I see a date when our savings will run out that gives me a deadline that feels heavy. So it does feel like very slow addition of practices, which I would normally recommend, isn't sufficient to meet current needs.
Slow additions would reduce those backlashes.
Nonetheless, here I go again.
One hack in the kit is to chain practices. Only one can happen first thing, but it could lead to another, and another, and another. Then another could happen, say, just after breakfast, and it could lead into another.
I had a few good days of chaining four practices before breakfast, then breakfast leading into three more daily practices – four if I count brushing my teeth.
Then I had a horrible backlash.
This is normal.
With all these practices in rubble around me, I have a good chance to review them, decide what is really important to me, and which ones were really helping.
I feel some urgency. I've had a couple minor but continuing health concerns that would yield to better self-care. And with Doug and I both out of work, I see a date when our savings will run out that gives me a deadline that feels heavy. So it does feel like very slow addition of practices, which I would normally recommend, isn't sufficient to meet current needs.
Slow additions would reduce those backlashes.
Nonetheless, here I go again.
Sunday, March 10, 2019
I Feel Better about Myself When I Write
I've been working on re-establishing some of the good work procedures I had in place before we moved. It's surprising how many of them were made easier by the surroundings I had carefully set up in my home, which was also my office. I've set my laptop up in a smaller, less central place (as Stephen King mentions doing in On Writing) and made a variety of other adjustments to my space and schedule, and I've been getting into the book and making progress on it much more regularly than I was two weeks ago.
That feels better. I say kinder words to myself when I am writing, and say fewer unkind things. I feel in accordance with my work in the world, and feel like I am serving. I have a sense of accomplishment upon completing even a paragraph that outweighs the accomplishment of spending hours on more laborious actions like massive housecleaning or someone else's editing.
While he was writing Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (a work which has my highest recommendation), Eliezar Yudkowsky talked about how writing an immense fanfic might seem a quixotic use of his skills. Then he sent us to a comic of which the punchline was, "I tried not doing it, and that didn't work." There we go. I've tried not writing. It doesn't work.
Whether that's because writing itself is the necessary action or because my current writing project is on the critical path to the difference I want to make in the world remains to be seen.
Marcus Buckingham gives a revisionist definition of strengths and weaknesses. He says that a strength is what strengthens you and a weakness is what weakens you. This is an interesting change of perspective on the more usual understanding that a strength is what you are good at and a weakness is what you find difficult. His definition is completely uncorrelated, at least to start, with the standard definition. Over time, it seems likely that practicing what strengthens you will also give you skill in it.
In either definition, writing is one of my strengths.
That feels better. I say kinder words to myself when I am writing, and say fewer unkind things. I feel in accordance with my work in the world, and feel like I am serving. I have a sense of accomplishment upon completing even a paragraph that outweighs the accomplishment of spending hours on more laborious actions like massive housecleaning or someone else's editing.
While he was writing Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (a work which has my highest recommendation), Eliezar Yudkowsky talked about how writing an immense fanfic might seem a quixotic use of his skills. Then he sent us to a comic of which the punchline was, "I tried not doing it, and that didn't work." There we go. I've tried not writing. It doesn't work.
Whether that's because writing itself is the necessary action or because my current writing project is on the critical path to the difference I want to make in the world remains to be seen.
Marcus Buckingham gives a revisionist definition of strengths and weaknesses. He says that a strength is what strengthens you and a weakness is what weakens you. This is an interesting change of perspective on the more usual understanding that a strength is what you are good at and a weakness is what you find difficult. His definition is completely uncorrelated, at least to start, with the standard definition. Over time, it seems likely that practicing what strengthens you will also give you skill in it.
In either definition, writing is one of my strengths.
Saturday, March 02, 2019
Deep Frying
French fries. Doughnuts. Fried chicken. Some of the most crave-able, iconically American foods are deep-fried.
When we lived in Bend, there was a man who was an absolute artist with a deep fryer. I just checked reviews and Hardy is still making wings and burgers. Deep-frying is an art, and it can create wonderfully hot food with rich flavor.
And at some point I decided I would not deep-fry at home. It takes a lot of oil, a deep pan, a thermometer or the experience to judge the heat of the oil, and it spatters grease. I could trim a set of equipment and a body of learning and an extra cleaning project from my life and lean into someone else's skills. When I have a relatively infrequent desire for deep-fried food, I let someone else make it.
In miniature, this is an example of what it looks like to specialize. Others deep-fry well. I let them. I buy their art when I want it. We are both better off.
I'm glad to be a member of a civilization where someone else can do the deep-frying.
When we lived in Bend, there was a man who was an absolute artist with a deep fryer. I just checked reviews and Hardy is still making wings and burgers. Deep-frying is an art, and it can create wonderfully hot food with rich flavor.
And at some point I decided I would not deep-fry at home. It takes a lot of oil, a deep pan, a thermometer or the experience to judge the heat of the oil, and it spatters grease. I could trim a set of equipment and a body of learning and an extra cleaning project from my life and lean into someone else's skills. When I have a relatively infrequent desire for deep-fried food, I let someone else make it.
In miniature, this is an example of what it looks like to specialize. Others deep-fry well. I let them. I buy their art when I want it. We are both better off.
I'm glad to be a member of a civilization where someone else can do the deep-frying.
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
The Treasure Hour
Here's a partial list of actions that various authorities have recommended I do first thing in the morning:
My cats, of course, think my first action should be to feed them.
Only one action can be my first. The high competition among the possibilities suggests there is a lot of power in that first action. It's the one most likely to happen. It comes when I have willpower available and it sets the tone for the day. I have chosen several of these and continued them for months or years – sometimes, I've even set up a series of first actions arranged into a morning routine and continued that an extended period without a break.
I broke the string of my daily first actions when we moved. Since then, I haven't re-established a consistent first-in-the-morning priority. I do better when I have one. The feeling of accomplishment, and the molding of my life into a chosen form, gives me a boost. I start each day as a success, and that helps in many ways, some more obvious than others.
At this point, it seems rude to me for anyone else to decide what I do with that treasured first hour of my morning. I've heard a lot of arguments for competing priorities. Now it's mine to judge and feel my way into the choice that is best for me.
So I offer the same consideration to you. It may improve your life to choose and stick to one practice as the first action of the morning. To keep it for one week is a good foot in the water and for three months is a very solid trial.
What would you like to be the first thing you do each morning?
- Meditate
- Check blood sugar
- Drink a quart of water
- Write down my dreams
- Write a morning pages brain dump
- Practice yoga or stretch
- Visualize a safe zone
- Practice gratitude
- Drink water with lemon or vinegar
- Make the bed
- Eat
- Fast
- Sing
- Step into the sunlight
- Blog
- Work on a book
- Check my to-do list
- Write my to-do list
- Look myself in the eyes in the mirror and say, "I love you."
My cats, of course, think my first action should be to feed them.
Only one action can be my first. The high competition among the possibilities suggests there is a lot of power in that first action. It's the one most likely to happen. It comes when I have willpower available and it sets the tone for the day. I have chosen several of these and continued them for months or years – sometimes, I've even set up a series of first actions arranged into a morning routine and continued that an extended period without a break.
I broke the string of my daily first actions when we moved. Since then, I haven't re-established a consistent first-in-the-morning priority. I do better when I have one. The feeling of accomplishment, and the molding of my life into a chosen form, gives me a boost. I start each day as a success, and that helps in many ways, some more obvious than others.
At this point, it seems rude to me for anyone else to decide what I do with that treasured first hour of my morning. I've heard a lot of arguments for competing priorities. Now it's mine to judge and feel my way into the choice that is best for me.
So I offer the same consideration to you. It may improve your life to choose and stick to one practice as the first action of the morning. To keep it for one week is a good foot in the water and for three months is a very solid trial.
What would you like to be the first thing you do each morning?
Monday, February 11, 2019
Mindset
Saturday, while playing video games, I became curious about why I like this.
Of course there are colors and movement and story. All those items are give me pleasure, yet I am barely attracted to watching television. A recent theme of several personal growth teachings I've encountered is that we seek a feeling when we choose our goals and activities. So, how does playing games on my phone make me feel?
I feel competent, engaged, focused, and happy. No wonder I seek this activity and its feeling out. The games I like best feature frequent leveling, many small goals that I need to apply a little strategy to achieve, and rewards for achieving them. They often have some humor to make me smile. There's some competition against other players (which is the most challenging mode of play since humans remain more creative and flexible and insightful than game algorithms) but not so much that if I don't go all out to win that I will fall behind. Games where only those who spend the most receive any rewards quickly turn me off. And there's a small (but again, not critical) social element so I can cooperate with others.
In short, the games I like create an ideal work environment for me.
Here's the next question: could I maintain that feeling state while playing life? I've found that question productive already.
Of course there are colors and movement and story. All those items are give me pleasure, yet I am barely attracted to watching television. A recent theme of several personal growth teachings I've encountered is that we seek a feeling when we choose our goals and activities. So, how does playing games on my phone make me feel?
I feel competent, engaged, focused, and happy. No wonder I seek this activity and its feeling out. The games I like best feature frequent leveling, many small goals that I need to apply a little strategy to achieve, and rewards for achieving them. They often have some humor to make me smile. There's some competition against other players (which is the most challenging mode of play since humans remain more creative and flexible and insightful than game algorithms) but not so much that if I don't go all out to win that I will fall behind. Games where only those who spend the most receive any rewards quickly turn me off. And there's a small (but again, not critical) social element so I can cooperate with others.
In short, the games I like create an ideal work environment for me.
Here's the next question: could I maintain that feeling state while playing life? I've found that question productive already.
Monday, January 28, 2019
Bias
Today we played Bias Jeopardy at a class at the unemployment office.
As a veteran of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, as well as someone who interned at Decision Research in the 1980s and has kept up with the field, I did well at it. Plus, poker tends to illuminate a good number of them.
All the categories were types of biases and all the answers were specific biases chosen from a list we had names and definitions for in advance. All in all, we had a good time becoming more familiar with them.
I do recommend studying biases. It's fun, and helps make better decisions. I suspect a human cannot become entirely bias-free – there are too many, and we have inherited a legacy of fast, imperfect decision-making. Yet each one known gains a little more freedom and accuracy. And those benefits add up.
As a veteran of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, as well as someone who interned at Decision Research in the 1980s and has kept up with the field, I did well at it. Plus, poker tends to illuminate a good number of them.
All the categories were types of biases and all the answers were specific biases chosen from a list we had names and definitions for in advance. All in all, we had a good time becoming more familiar with them.
I do recommend studying biases. It's fun, and helps make better decisions. I suspect a human cannot become entirely bias-free – there are too many, and we have inherited a legacy of fast, imperfect decision-making. Yet each one known gains a little more freedom and accuracy. And those benefits add up.
Saturday, January 26, 2019
I Read Four Books Today
They were short and gripping. Django Wexler's YA series The Forbidden Library is remarkably adept and thoughtful. I admired the craftsmanship even as I rushed to see what happened next. I recommend these.
Not everyone can read four books in a day, even if the rest of the day's activities are limited, of course. Speed reading is a very high leverage skill. I recommend it as well.
I borrowed all four volumes from the library. I am very thankful for the library. The first two I had in ebook, then Doug and I went downtown to pick up the remaining two in print.
I couldn't bring myself to work today. Tomorrow I hope will be better. I did walk some, drink water, and eat decent food. I am starting my daily cooldown after this post, and that will help me have more will tomorrow.
Not everyone can read four books in a day, even if the rest of the day's activities are limited, of course. Speed reading is a very high leverage skill. I recommend it as well.
I borrowed all four volumes from the library. I am very thankful for the library. The first two I had in ebook, then Doug and I went downtown to pick up the remaining two in print.
I couldn't bring myself to work today. Tomorrow I hope will be better. I did walk some, drink water, and eat decent food. I am starting my daily cooldown after this post, and that will help me have more will tomorrow.
Friday, January 25, 2019
Alma-individuality
I enjoy English's word creation features. We have a powerful, adaptable language. When I look to the future, I imagine that someday we'll have a language that holds more reflection of the world, more easily. That process already happens – for example, "fractal" is in the lyrics of "Let It Go" from the Disney movie Frozen. It captures in one word the branching and rebranching at smaller levels of Elsa's ice forms.
The book I'm currently working on helps overwhelmed environmentalists find actions they can take to reduce carbon emissions. One of the concepts I explore is that different solutions suit different people, due to their circumstances, passions, budget, and so on. My first draft called such a unique set of personal traits "alma-individuality." It's a parallel coinage from "bio-individuality," the well-observed uniqueness of physical traits that influence how medical treatments work. One dose doesn't fit all, due to differences in weight, activity level, sensitivities, and many more aspects of human bodies. "Bio" comes from the Greek word for life. I knew "alma" from the phrase "alma mater" used to describe one's university, which I'd seen defined as "mother of the soul." So I used alma-individuality to mean "soul uniqueness." However, taking a quick look now, it seems "alma" actually derives from Latin for "nourishing" or "kind." Drat.
Well, it was quite a mouthful, and I admit I was fond of it. It rolls nicely off my tongue: alma-individuality, alma-individuality. Looks like "nous-individuality" or "psyche-individuality" would have correct roots. I do not take to either of them as well.
Oddly, I suspect other authors have made this same confusion about "alma" meaning "soul." Seems like William Morris or some symbolist fantasist used Alma to name a character who represented the soul.
Now I need to fix this in the rewrite. A couple of my beta readers tagged "alma-individuality" as cumbersome, which is fair. This is one of those cases where a writer, in this case me, needs to let go of bits she is fond of that aren't truly serving the work. I'm considering "soulprint." Possibly individuality, as is, or uniqueness would work. They will all require some reworking of sentences, which will probably be for the best, eventually.
Good new terms, like fractal, make us smarter. Alma-individuality, alas, probably only complicates something that could be clearer and shorter, no matter how much I like to say it.
Alma-individuality, alma-individuality.
The book I'm currently working on helps overwhelmed environmentalists find actions they can take to reduce carbon emissions. One of the concepts I explore is that different solutions suit different people, due to their circumstances, passions, budget, and so on. My first draft called such a unique set of personal traits "alma-individuality." It's a parallel coinage from "bio-individuality," the well-observed uniqueness of physical traits that influence how medical treatments work. One dose doesn't fit all, due to differences in weight, activity level, sensitivities, and many more aspects of human bodies. "Bio" comes from the Greek word for life. I knew "alma" from the phrase "alma mater" used to describe one's university, which I'd seen defined as "mother of the soul." So I used alma-individuality to mean "soul uniqueness." However, taking a quick look now, it seems "alma" actually derives from Latin for "nourishing" or "kind." Drat.
Well, it was quite a mouthful, and I admit I was fond of it. It rolls nicely off my tongue: alma-individuality, alma-individuality. Looks like "nous-individuality" or "psyche-individuality" would have correct roots. I do not take to either of them as well.
Oddly, I suspect other authors have made this same confusion about "alma" meaning "soul." Seems like William Morris or some symbolist fantasist used Alma to name a character who represented the soul.
Now I need to fix this in the rewrite. A couple of my beta readers tagged "alma-individuality" as cumbersome, which is fair. This is one of those cases where a writer, in this case me, needs to let go of bits she is fond of that aren't truly serving the work. I'm considering "soulprint." Possibly individuality, as is, or uniqueness would work. They will all require some reworking of sentences, which will probably be for the best, eventually.
Good new terms, like fractal, make us smarter. Alma-individuality, alas, probably only complicates something that could be clearer and shorter, no matter how much I like to say it.
Alma-individuality, alma-individuality.
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Musings for Myself
One of the reasons I started blogging again is that Rohan Rajiv, at alearningaday.blog, divided blogs into ones for oneself and ones for the world. I found a lot of freedom in deciding to blog for myself. I let go of sticking to a single topic, worrying about what other people would think, trying for good SEO, and other aspects of writing a blog intended to grab the world's attention.
Of course, I am still respectful in public. I have a care for saying only what I wouldn't mind if the world heard about. Words on the Internet are permanent, to some degree, anyway. And I have principles – I prefer not to use a private forum to be meaner than I'd be in public, anyway.
Another reason I began blogging is that moving thoughts from my head to somewhere more visible heals me. Writers save ourselves, too.
It's an interesting tension, between speaking and being kind, sometimes. I think the world is full of such tensions, and the middle ground between them is the most creative section of the common garden. That's one reason why my name is Paradox.
I can even let go of crafting well-formed essays in each posting.
Here's another day. In no particular order, I've recently been thinking about:
Seanan McGuire, and how Charlaine Harris called her intelligent, and it surprised me, because I think of all authors as intelligent, generally, so what about Seanan McGuire brought that up in particular? She certainly has a strong grasp of science. Her worlds are congruent – the world-building in Every Heart a Doorway, for example, shows attention to the second and third order effects of the laws of that universe. She also is willing to question tropes. And reuse them in fresh ways. And her writing continues to improve – her prose is more graceful, her stories seem more individual, she says new things about her worlds and lets her characters grow. Continuous improvement suggests self-reflection and attention to her work as well as the vast amount of practice she puts in. Yes, all of that could call another writer to remark upon her intelligence. I would have remarked on her passion and sheer volume of work first.
Doug has been reading to me out of Atomic Habits. James Clear creates some memorable sentences that recapsulate existing knowledge to make it more actionable. That is good writing.
I do like the more even day/night lengths of living closer to the equator. Somewhat less humidity serves me, too. Yet this climate is more inviting to walk outside in – yes, even in the rain, which I find soft – and that may outweigh those benefits. We shall see.
Of course, I am still respectful in public. I have a care for saying only what I wouldn't mind if the world heard about. Words on the Internet are permanent, to some degree, anyway. And I have principles – I prefer not to use a private forum to be meaner than I'd be in public, anyway.
Another reason I began blogging is that moving thoughts from my head to somewhere more visible heals me. Writers save ourselves, too.
It's an interesting tension, between speaking and being kind, sometimes. I think the world is full of such tensions, and the middle ground between them is the most creative section of the common garden. That's one reason why my name is Paradox.
I can even let go of crafting well-formed essays in each posting.
Here's another day. In no particular order, I've recently been thinking about:
Seanan McGuire, and how Charlaine Harris called her intelligent, and it surprised me, because I think of all authors as intelligent, generally, so what about Seanan McGuire brought that up in particular? She certainly has a strong grasp of science. Her worlds are congruent – the world-building in Every Heart a Doorway, for example, shows attention to the second and third order effects of the laws of that universe. She also is willing to question tropes. And reuse them in fresh ways. And her writing continues to improve – her prose is more graceful, her stories seem more individual, she says new things about her worlds and lets her characters grow. Continuous improvement suggests self-reflection and attention to her work as well as the vast amount of practice she puts in. Yes, all of that could call another writer to remark upon her intelligence. I would have remarked on her passion and sheer volume of work first.
Doug has been reading to me out of Atomic Habits. James Clear creates some memorable sentences that recapsulate existing knowledge to make it more actionable. That is good writing.
I do like the more even day/night lengths of living closer to the equator. Somewhat less humidity serves me, too. Yet this climate is more inviting to walk outside in – yes, even in the rain, which I find soft – and that may outweigh those benefits. We shall see.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Bellingham
Doug and I are finding Bellingham nurturing and beautiful. We've been warned that people who come here often don't want to leave. Like Eugene, Oregon, where we first went to college, many graduates want to stay. This fills up the entry-level jobs and then... they start looking for other creative contributions to make to the economy. The result is lots of restaurants and funky handcrafted businesses. Bellingham is in full flower with breweries and brewpubs -- more than 30 in a town of about 80,000. Midland had zero, probably because local law didn't encourage them. Or maybe because the brewpub culture had never taken hold.
Doug likes hearing seagulls here. There are fir and birch trees growing thickly along the road. The birch, especially, gives me the strange sensation of nostalgia for that one short vacation we took in Finland. Because we expected to find work in Seattle, our storage unit is in Lynnwood, a northern suburb of Seattle, about an hour and fifteen minutes from here. We like being close to our family here, and we like the town. We now look at job opportunities here as well as in Seattle.
We are on the third floor of a condo complex. The stairs feel less of a stretch to me every day. I make a point of reaching the ground at least once a day. Our two cats have been surprisingly mellow about no longer going out – when we lived in Midland, Banichi moped if he couldn't go outside. So far, the balcony plus the hallway a small ways outside the condo have been enough for him.
The water is very good here. Doug has a glass teakettle. It has remained pristinely clear for multiple weeks here. In Midland, the water would leave a deposit every single boil. And that's after we ran it through a reverse osmosis system.
All in all, it is good to be here. With our own place, a new network of friends, and our work systems rebuilt, we'd be better off here than in Midland, for sure.
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
Writers Save Each Other
I borrowed No Time to Spare, Ursula LeGuin's collection of essays from her blog, from the library. This helped me, too. In it, I found she had gained the desire to blog from another writer, José Scaramago, with whom I was previously unacquainted. His work did her good.
I've lost track of how many writers appreciate Stephen King for On Writing. We bless Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, for showing how to take writing one step at a time. We read each other's blogs – Neil Gaiman and Wil Wheaton kept my soul alive through dark days – and tweets – Laurell K. Hamilton is constantly showing in public that the work is what you do, day after day. I revere Lawrence Block's Telling Lies for Fun and Profit for the grace of the words and the deep, kind acceptance in it. John Scalzi and Steven Barnes teach us to respect others – and in the end, that lets us respect ourselves, too.
Writers save each other. I particularly know the science fiction community, where I first felt at home, and where there is a long history of gathering and fandom and helping each other out. I am the most minor shade of "pro" yet that peer group has shaped me substantially in directions that I value. The breathing community of shared words is profound and transformative.
If a writer's word reach someone who isn't a writer, they may help, and they are less likely to come back. Sometimes the reflection from another writer is exactly what I need. And yes, I am a writer.
I've lost track of how many writers appreciate Stephen King for On Writing. We bless Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, for showing how to take writing one step at a time. We read each other's blogs – Neil Gaiman and Wil Wheaton kept my soul alive through dark days – and tweets – Laurell K. Hamilton is constantly showing in public that the work is what you do, day after day. I revere Lawrence Block's Telling Lies for Fun and Profit for the grace of the words and the deep, kind acceptance in it. John Scalzi and Steven Barnes teach us to respect others – and in the end, that lets us respect ourselves, too.
Writers save each other. I particularly know the science fiction community, where I first felt at home, and where there is a long history of gathering and fandom and helping each other out. I am the most minor shade of "pro" yet that peer group has shaped me substantially in directions that I value. The breathing community of shared words is profound and transformative.
If a writer's word reach someone who isn't a writer, they may help, and they are less likely to come back. Sometimes the reflection from another writer is exactly what I need. And yes, I am a writer.
Monday, January 21, 2019
Better Today
Today felt lighter when I woke up. I've had a productive morning, taken a couple steps that loomed too massive to attempt on the last few days. It's good to get some things done.
I don't really know how much of feeling better comes from the ways I worked to take care of myself and how much comes from time passing. I wouldn't try the experiment of not taking care of myself by choice. I don't recommend anyone else volunteer for it, either. Sounds unethical to me.
I am still tired earlier than say, in August. Continuing the self-care. Hope to take more useful steps tomorrow.
Be kind to yourself. Whatever you can do is a victory.
I don't really know how much of feeling better comes from the ways I worked to take care of myself and how much comes from time passing. I wouldn't try the experiment of not taking care of myself by choice. I don't recommend anyone else volunteer for it, either. Sounds unethical to me.
I am still tired earlier than say, in August. Continuing the self-care. Hope to take more useful steps tomorrow.
Be kind to yourself. Whatever you can do is a victory.
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Another Day
I had hopes for today. Then, a fairly small emotional blow hit me, and I couldn't get started on my work again.
I'm trying to take the self-care steps that mean I will be able to work tomorrow. A little exercise, some decent food, plenty of water, kind thoughts about myself. There's an abyss where my slip leads to horribly unkind thoughts about myself. That doesn't help.
We did some housework, always useful. I read the blogs of a couple writers, which do show that the work is hard and if you want to succeed, you keep at it. I'm thinking about resilience, which is the ability to step up again after a setback. There it is again, the temptation to be unkind to myself that I wasn't as resilient as I'd like to be. Onward.
Tomorrow is another day. I do hope that I will complete more work and contribute to the world more tomorrow. I hope I will be kind to myself and the people around me. I hope good news and gentle weather will come my way.
Meanwhile, tonight I'll work to get a good night's sleep in my safe and warm lodgings, and rise tomorrow and try again.
I'm trying to take the self-care steps that mean I will be able to work tomorrow. A little exercise, some decent food, plenty of water, kind thoughts about myself. There's an abyss where my slip leads to horribly unkind thoughts about myself. That doesn't help.
We did some housework, always useful. I read the blogs of a couple writers, which do show that the work is hard and if you want to succeed, you keep at it. I'm thinking about resilience, which is the ability to step up again after a setback. There it is again, the temptation to be unkind to myself that I wasn't as resilient as I'd like to be. Onward.
Tomorrow is another day. I do hope that I will complete more work and contribute to the world more tomorrow. I hope I will be kind to myself and the people around me. I hope good news and gentle weather will come my way.
Meanwhile, tonight I'll work to get a good night's sleep in my safe and warm lodgings, and rise tomorrow and try again.
Saturday, January 19, 2019
Something Breaks Before Something Else Can Begin
I had a job I absolutely loved. After more than a year of working via short-term contracts with The Author Incubator, I came on full time with them last February. It was intense. There was lots to learn. I was the primary contact for up to twelve authors at a time as they took their first drafts to published ebooks. I loved my authors, their desire to help, the fast pace, and my coworkers.
My association with the company ended on September 20th, when the CEO decided to use all local talent. As a remote employee, my gig was up.
I think the universe had to arrange that. I was serving my mission in various ways. (You can read the mission statement a couple posts below.) Each of our authors had a mission to help specific clients with a narrow problem, and by supporting those authors to helping their tribes, I was working to improve the world. However, it was not as direct a way to accomplish my mission as it could have been. None of the authors was working on reducing carbon emissions, which is the aspect of ensuring the vitality of the human game for the long term that feels most critical to me now. I'm working on a book that addresses that problem, which I could not attend to while working at TAI.
Between losing that job (and its income) and my next business, there's a confusing and scary place. When I gain enough perspective, I know that confusion and fear are normal when ending something old and starting something new. Other times, I am simply confused and scared.
It seems like the entire system of the United States – perhaps even the world – is in that dim and smoky place between one set-up that used to work and the one we need to meet new challenges. I wish us all a chance to find our way through.
My association with the company ended on September 20th, when the CEO decided to use all local talent. As a remote employee, my gig was up.
I think the universe had to arrange that. I was serving my mission in various ways. (You can read the mission statement a couple posts below.) Each of our authors had a mission to help specific clients with a narrow problem, and by supporting those authors to helping their tribes, I was working to improve the world. However, it was not as direct a way to accomplish my mission as it could have been. None of the authors was working on reducing carbon emissions, which is the aspect of ensuring the vitality of the human game for the long term that feels most critical to me now. I'm working on a book that addresses that problem, which I could not attend to while working at TAI.
Between losing that job (and its income) and my next business, there's a confusing and scary place. When I gain enough perspective, I know that confusion and fear are normal when ending something old and starting something new. Other times, I am simply confused and scared.
It seems like the entire system of the United States – perhaps even the world – is in that dim and smoky place between one set-up that used to work and the one we need to meet new challenges. I wish us all a chance to find our way through.
Friday, January 18, 2019
Times of Change Are Times of Loss
I have been sad recently. It's possible that Doug and I will soon have a better situation than we have ever had before. And, at the moment, we are no longer employed and no longer home owners. I feel the loss of the systems that I built about myself in my home. They let me accomplish a lot, with my tools arrayed about me, and my habits cued by my surroundings. It's been much harder for me to take on tasks. I am grieving, not just the income, and the home, but the effectiveness I had. I am grieving the competent self I was.
I notice that I feel more like writing when I am sad. The movie Inside Out suggested that the use of sadness was to inspire help. It also inspires introspection and reflection. With my old systems broken down, I'm open to new systems, willing to step out of activities, habits, even ways of thinking that I didn't question when I was in place.
Rohan Rajiv recently speculated on his great daily blog, https://alearningaday.blog/, that we can write to the world or write for ourselves. I am writing for myself here. And it feels like I may do it regularly for a while.
I notice that I feel more like writing when I am sad. The movie Inside Out suggested that the use of sadness was to inspire help. It also inspires introspection and reflection. With my old systems broken down, I'm open to new systems, willing to step out of activities, habits, even ways of thinking that I didn't question when I was in place.
Rohan Rajiv recently speculated on his great daily blog, https://alearningaday.blog/, that we can write to the world or write for ourselves. I am writing for myself here. And it feels like I may do it regularly for a while.
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
My Mission Statement
For some time, Doug has had an elegant and concise mission statement: To make a material contribution to the creation of a spacefaring civilization.
My own guiding star has been harder to put into good words. It wanders this way into a forest of giant sunflowers of abstraction then that way into into a meadow of tiny purple bellflowers of specificity. A few concepts remained central: wisdom, long-term survival of the species, sharing/spreading. Sometimes the concepts of home or income would appear.
One of the problems was teasing out the difference between my mission and the pieces I knew I needed to have in place to live and thus make progress on it.
It was after reading one of Steven Barnes' blog posts (and I highly recommend you look at his work, here) that I suddenly integrated the pieces in a strong and connected way. I've had this on the wall for some weeks now, and it has remained inspiring and true to me. It takes more than one sentence. The headings place everything in its proper plane. Have a look at this, my mission document:
My own guiding star has been harder to put into good words. It wanders this way into a forest of giant sunflowers of abstraction then that way into into a meadow of tiny purple bellflowers of specificity. A few concepts remained central: wisdom, long-term survival of the species, sharing/spreading. Sometimes the concepts of home or income would appear.
One of the problems was teasing out the difference between my mission and the pieces I knew I needed to have in place to live and thus make progress on it.
It was after reading one of Steven Barnes' blog posts (and I highly recommend you look at his work, here) that I suddenly integrated the pieces in a strong and connected way. I've had this on the wall for some weeks now, and it has remained inspiring and true to me. It takes more than one sentence. The headings place everything in its proper plane. Have a look at this, my mission document:
Purpose
To help the human game run as long as possible
Foundation
To take care of myself so I can act
First Circle of Concern
To run my household in a way that nourishes the people in it and contributes
to our health, wealth,
and the environmental sustainability of the world at large
Second Circle of Concern
Sharing knowledge and wisdom so that others contribute
to sustaining the human game, too
Underlayment and Energy Source
Having enough income to power all these goals
That does it. That's where I want to go and what I need to get there. I've been feeling a lot more focused and clear since I sorted this out.
Monday, August 08, 2016
How I Think About Prosperity
A few centuries ago, almost everyone had the same job: surviving. This meant growing, gathering, or hunting food and providing oneself with shelter and building bonds with your community and raising children and taking a little time for stories or music or other arts. Each human family created very little beyond what its members needed.
Suddenly, in geologic time, humans started becoming very efficient at providing themselves with food -- which was previously the largest portion of daily needs. That freed up time for us to make more interesting clothes and start writing down our discoveries. It began letting some people divert their time from food tasks to trade and medicine and painting and many more new specialties. With more hours to spend on fascinating new pursuits, those who delved deeply into them became very good at them. Think of how much more someone who works full-time healing others learns about how to do it and how much better he or she becomes than one who does it in the spare hours from farming. Imagine this extra efficiency spreading to every pursuit, until someone gets the idea to print pages from moveable type rather than writing them by hand or the idea to automate and power the weaving previously done with simple tools in off hours.
So, prosperity comes when people have time beyond what they need to spend on survival tasks, and that use that time to create trade goods.
Also, the more people have this surplus time, the more prosperity they create. It would do no good to be the only human in a continent who knew how to make everything that our current civilization builds. If everyone else was busy farming to survive, that knowledge could not recreate the lifestyle we take for granted. At best, the knowledge holder could teach some of that knowledge to some of the neighbors and help a small community live a little better. Hoarding the knowledge would do very little good at all.
So, in my model, the more others are prosperous, the more prosperous I will be myself. A fair market is an efficient way to let people with one advanced skill trade with people with another advanced skill.
There's no room in my idea of prosperity for making trades that make either partner worse.
And this model implies that the most valuable way to spend one's time is in the activities that create the greatest value for the greatest number.
Happy green candle day! Wishing prosperity to myself, to you, and to all the world.
Anna
Suddenly, in geologic time, humans started becoming very efficient at providing themselves with food -- which was previously the largest portion of daily needs. That freed up time for us to make more interesting clothes and start writing down our discoveries. It began letting some people divert their time from food tasks to trade and medicine and painting and many more new specialties. With more hours to spend on fascinating new pursuits, those who delved deeply into them became very good at them. Think of how much more someone who works full-time healing others learns about how to do it and how much better he or she becomes than one who does it in the spare hours from farming. Imagine this extra efficiency spreading to every pursuit, until someone gets the idea to print pages from moveable type rather than writing them by hand or the idea to automate and power the weaving previously done with simple tools in off hours.
So, prosperity comes when people have time beyond what they need to spend on survival tasks, and that use that time to create trade goods.
Also, the more people have this surplus time, the more prosperity they create. It would do no good to be the only human in a continent who knew how to make everything that our current civilization builds. If everyone else was busy farming to survive, that knowledge could not recreate the lifestyle we take for granted. At best, the knowledge holder could teach some of that knowledge to some of the neighbors and help a small community live a little better. Hoarding the knowledge would do very little good at all.
So, in my model, the more others are prosperous, the more prosperous I will be myself. A fair market is an efficient way to let people with one advanced skill trade with people with another advanced skill.
There's no room in my idea of prosperity for making trades that make either partner worse.
And this model implies that the most valuable way to spend one's time is in the activities that create the greatest value for the greatest number.
Happy green candle day! Wishing prosperity to myself, to you, and to all the world.
Anna
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