Ethics

i met old friends at a wake

| jaylazzo

A friend of the family passed away Christmas of 2022.

He was my dad’s friend and father to 7 children who were also our buddies. We one by one went our different ways as we graduated university. Some went to the US, others stayed, some married, had kids. One from our side briefly dated one of theirs, and my brother is a neighbor to two of them in the US. But, on the whole, I haven’t seen most of those kids in over 30 years.

Until the wake of their dad.

I got to see all of the 7 back home, in the Philippines. The middle boy, M.V., was one of my best friends in college although we were from different universities. I got to meet his him, his wife and one of his daughters in 2015 in the US. Seven years later, today, I got to see the full extent of what my “nephews” and “nieces” have become, thanks to the hard work of their dad.

This is how his kids turned out. They all went to the best schools: Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Harvard, all on full scholarship. The two oldest girls, newly married, are employed as software experts in Google and Disney, one of whom is credited with a published VR technology. The oldest boy was offered scholarships in several top schools and chose Harvard.

M.V. though very intelligent was not what we call “academic”, but he in an extremely hard worker. He also had a little something to prove: middle children often do. I recall him telling me that he solved all the problems in one of his engineering textbooks and shared the answer sheet to his classmates. He married young right after college and migrated to the US, where he worked for a software company before founding his own consulting firm.

They never had a lot of money and they still live in a rented apartment. To raise 6 kids and give them good education they had nothing but hard work to rely on. It was not easy.

Education in the US is very expensive. The yearly tuition of just one kid could nearly wipe out one’s yearly salary. The only way his kids could get the education he wanted for them was through full scholarships. This is hell to process.

Aside from showing exceptional scholastic performance, there are tons of documents to fill out. This grueling chore has to be repeated every year. And every year, M.V. is audited by the universities, a process requiring even more paperwork. It was so hard that M.V. has closed his business in order to work full time administering the scholarships for the kids who are still studying.

The boy, M., in particular, is something. His SAT scores are perfect in math and nearly perfect in verbal, stratospheric enough to be offered full scholarships by several top schools including Harvard and Princeton. One question on the application form for Harvard asked “What did you in the summer, and what did you learn?”

M. could have done a regular summer job like most kids. But instead, the dad suggested that 1) his son design and build a product; and 2) that he shadow his dad in his consulting work. For the product part, M. designed and programmed an educational app that used virtual reality technology, with the help of his sister. For the shadowing part, he wrote that he spent the summer dusting the innards of computers.

For someone in high school to design and build a virtual reality app is impressive. But what I found more impressive was what he said he learned from shadowing his dad. M. wrote on his essay that he learned the value of preventive maintenance.

There’s a management adage called the 1-10-100 Rule. It says that it costs $1 to verify your work, $10 to repair a mistake, and $100 to control damage from use of the product. Preventive maintenance is that job, least glamorous, but that makes all function efficiently and effectively. It’s a minuscule investment all things considered.

Preventive maintenance summarizes the whole of M.V.’s strategy. He invested in the unglamorous job of filling out the tortured paperwork, but by doing so he also demonstrated what great work really involves. Work is grind, grind pays.

As to not having a house? “What does a house add to all this?,” M.V. asked me. “Nothing”. You don’t own a house until it is fully paid for, and until then it is a liability, not an asset. Grant Cardone, wealth consultant and author of The 10X Rule, has never owned his own house either.

Today their eldest daughter’s family lives in their own house. On Lake Tahoe, of all places. That’s very expensive, but it’s also very Google if you’re a top performer.

I’m so glad to have met M.V. again.

Then my phone rings; it’s his brother. M.V.’s siblings were downstairs in a shop called Marketplace, and were about to go to a karaoke bar. Could I drive M.V. there? I said, “Sure,” but changed my mind. “We’ll be done in about 15 minutes. Could you guys wait?”

They did. So M.V. and I went down to the ground floor, passing for cheese rolls first chez Mary Grace, which does not exist in the US, and I was able to say goodbye to the whole gang: Some of the Best Friends I’ve Ever Known.

On Schopenhauer’s pessimism

| jaylazzo

Some people like to brainstorm and innovate, create and imagine, but are not comfortable when reality sets in, i.e., when actual effort needed is much higher than expected. They realize that actual costs are higher, time required is higher, they have mess to clean up and finishing touches to be placed. They realize every stakeholder has a different interest, and even every team member has other concerns of greater priority to him. Especially for some creatives, they can become uncomfortable when their idea becomes another’s, when it has been changed to become something very different from the inspired idea.

It might appear that most people may be called “dreamers” with respect to some issues, and “realists” with respect to others. I do not think it’s that simple. Rather, we always see outside realities through a subjective lens. This is why two observers of the same event will have different interpretations of it. The same person will interpret an event differently depending on his emotional state, and will interpret differently depending on his will.

That’s more or less what I got from a brief introduction to Schopenhauer.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German philosopher best known for his work The World as Will and Representation, in which he characterizes the phenomenal world — the world in our head — as the product of will. Most people consider him a pessimist because, pondering on the subjects of loneliness, solitude, boredom, he concluded that only pain was real and true happiness was the absence of pain.

Schopenhauer may have been extreme in saying the outside world has little to no value outside of a negative, but our thoughts do matter a lot. Happy or sad, your thoughts determine your behavior, and your behavior changes your world.

How, then, do we change thought?

Schopenhauer’s answer: detach yourself especially from selfish desire. For as long as it is conscious, this Will that is inside us will always seek self preservation and will always be frustrated. Therefore, the only way to be free from frustration is annihilation. As this is not practical, we opt for something like it that is: asceticism, and failing that, compassion.

As Steve Magness wrote, Do Hard Things. Don’t purchase everything you fancy, and don’t quit too easily. Be generous to others, but don’t be too soft on yourself.

Although it doesn’t look like a Schopenhauer tool, Zen meditation serves a similar annihilating purpose. The Zen practitioner removes all thought at least for the time he is meditating. Whether he is sitting in meditation or practicing flower arrangement or making a sword, the practitioner is focused on the present. By staying there, he annihilates two common distractions: worry, which is thinking in the past; and anxiety, which is thinking in the future. In a duel, a samurai does not think about dying, but only about cutting. It doesn’t serve the samurai to be worried or anxious about outcomes.

Schopenhauer may have said that happiness is not real. So what? Pleasure and pain are like chiascuro in painting. Pain is not to be avoided at all costs. Neither is it to be sought for its own sake. It can be experienced with resignation, or chosen. No pain, no gain.

Is there useless pain? If you Will pain to be useful, it will be useful, even if you did not choose it. But if you set your Will against pain, Schopenhauer says you’ll always be frustrated. Schopenhauer’s pessimism at least to me is far from negative.

As a scientist, I aim to make life better through science. And I go through the pain of experimental failures, funding rejections, broken instruments, to get there. Everyone can say the same thing. It’s practically what makes a pro a pro: their ability to do, to persist donig hard things.

Even in Schopenhauer’s landscape, is there a position where the view is nothing but beautiful? No. Instead, in his and anyone’s landscape, if you remove all the shadows and grays, what interest would that landscape have? Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, a painting attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, is interesting not only because it is a beautiful painting of ships and farmers. But if you look at the lower right corner you will see Icarus drowning. Bruegel is telling us that tragedy is part of truth.

Well, he’s also saying that no one really cares about your drama, Icarus.

At least for us living, pain and pleasure may be a matter of where one stands. This suggests that seeing is itself an act of creation! Of course, we do not create the subject, but we create meaning by seeing what we see. A trained person draws more from the same experience as a novice. But the novice begins his path to expertise by exposure and feedback regarding what he saw.

Hence, the “expert’s perspective” businesses will pay millions for. It’s not their IQ, not their degrees. It’s their experience, sculpted, refined by criticism and dialogue. For this reason, it would be wrong to say, as many young people do, that all opinions are equal.

Sometimes the best one can do is to appreciate things from afar. Without research, without getting involved, without commitment. Because as we said, “spectating” is NOT doing NOTHING. Since a good part of reality is in our head, what we put in there is a product of work. Everything, therefore, matters. Looking at an Oreo may not be like looking at a Bruegel, but I once attended a show where the poet read out a shopping list in a truly inspired way.

There is very little one can do that is totally indifferent and ineffectual. But it would be a true pain if one never sought the benefit of conversation.

On procrastination and dreaming of bicycles

| jaylazzo

Is it the case that having many interests promotes procrastination?

It would seem that having interests makes it painful to consider other tasks. According to this reasoning, having an interest other than the task at hand distracts. But this reasoning is nuanced. Although it may be true that having many other things in mind can be distracting, the problem is not with those other things but with the task one struggles with. This new task may be too large, too “difficult”, too complex. The mind protects itself, and puts a barrier that makes it easy to decide to postpone action.

It’s safer to run away, to procrastinate. The mind stays clear of danger. Let’s just not do anything. It’s a wise strategy sometimes. Perhaps the problem will disappear by itself, or somebody else will handle it. That is certainly something to hope for when one has too much on one’s plate. Which would be a problem in itself: not knowing how to manage priorities. And to manage emotions. Casually hoping a problem would go away when one’s priority is to deal with that problem is a problem of mismanaged emotions. Deal with it. Deal with it not by thinking about it but by acting on it.

Accounting is not an easy skill. I used to find Accounting very painful just to think about. But I came to love it. How? I acted, starting small. I bought a basic textbook, did all the exercises, and saved them as Excel templates that I still use today. On the other hand, intermediate accounting is daunting because I never studied it; I did not need it for my regular work.

Many other things cause pain, such as thinking about repairs in the house. I don’t have a system. A system would involve, say, scheduling a repair and preparing the materials the night before. This is an example of breaking the daunting task into familiar fragments — how much skill does it take to gather tools?

In short, the hard part is to begin, and the solution is to begin with a simple fragment of the whole and let momentum do the rest. In other words: “When you feel lazy about going to the gym, just think about putting on your gym clothes.”

Leadership roles are certainly more complex. They involve objects, people, how people relate to objects and how they relate to each other. But even for a CEO, a very complex work can be cut into fragments. Divide and conquer.

Another way out of procrastination is to obey. One can obey other people, or one can obey one’s to-do list. We often obey against the grain, sometimes even against our perceived self interests. But we can see why acting from obedience — whether it is in response to a boss’ demand, or to one’s own to-do list, works: action kills pain.

I do not know why action has that effect. It appears that action and fear are incompatible. A hunting dog does not feel its fleas. There, alone with one’s thoughts, one will soon discover a million reasons not to act where risk and difficulty are involved.

So, act. This is no way guarantees success. But even failure is relative — it’s just feedback. Failure is essential to success, for who can do anything well without feedback? One is almost sure to fail when one takes on too big a task. It’s still feedback, but it is reckless to set oneself up for failure. Again, the problem is not having too many things on one’s plate, but in poor planning and mismanaged priorities.

I once met an engineer who handled about 30 projects; he seemed to be doing a good job. He does have a good team. Teams multiply action. In fact, I’ve been thinking how one might write a hundred books in 10 years, and the answer is “ghostwriters”. But even a system of ghostwriters will get a poor share of one’s resources if one also employed assistants in so diverse fields that teams don’t benefit from the work of other teams. It’s still better to focus on related tasks, and leave the unrelated tasks few and for purposes of rest and recreation.

I like to bike. But last night I dreamed I was on a bicycle that became more and more difficult to pedal even though the ground was flat. The fact that failure is essential to success is an uncomfortable thought that sometimes shows in dreams.

But even in the dream I’m on the bicycle. That’s what matters.

I can own this space

| jaylazzo

I wish I could own this space.

But that’s where the problem is. Se arrependimento matasse. Regret kills. Suicide really. I don’t want to think of it that way. I’ve made mistakes, I’ve wasted time, and I don’t have as much energy, inspiration or even talent even for the Bom Combate that I find myself in. I’m not making excuses for these defeats that makes my disappearance from the scene a good price to pay for all my stupidities.

What I am talking about is owning the real space I was MEANT to own. Like every one born, I have a reason for being born. A reason for being born is a concept that only makes sense when one believes in God. In my case, that purpose is this: I was meant to sanctify my work (whatever that happens to be, wherever that happens to be), sanctify myself in that work, and sanctify others through my work. Whether I actually own that space or not, belief in a God-given purpose should lead to the conviction that conquering this space possible, following his simple logic: if God brings you to it it, He will bring you through it.

God provides. If I still don’t own that space it’s because I’ve put obstacles.

The biggest obstacle is the feeling that it can’t be done. I could think that the road blocks are just too many. Or that I’ve done too many mistakes for me to even be minimally credible. Or that there is not time to make a dent or even to repair the very problems that are contributing to my lack of progress.

A lack of faith. Not an absence of faith, but a lack of it.

I guess God has considered all that when He called me. And you I’m not really getting out of this mess of road blocks; that’s life. I know, though, that I will have to pay my dues because that’s how the world works. Quitting or procrastinating only delay my progress — they don’t remove the road blocks down the road, which seem to actually become bigger for lack of experience dealing with previous ones.

It is an obstacle to despair about how beautiful life is even with this mess and everything.

I know I’m not praying enough. By not praying I sever the connection with the thoughts that alone allow me to sever despair from road blocks.

God understands I can’t solve it all.

But then let’s get it down to essentials. The last thing we need is a person who asks: “What’s the point?” I simply just have to fight the Bom Combate, fool that I am.

It is therefore certain: I can still own the space, if only because I make the effort to remove obstacles inside me. Weeds. They keep growing all the time. Perhaps my ground is fertile for weeds. But I may simply just have to remove a little everyday. Maybe the rules are that simple.

Again, through faith. They’re never that simple otherwise.

Emotional trash of worry and anxiety

| jaylazzo

“Existe um lixo emocional: ele e produzido nas usinas do pensamento. Sao dores que ja passaram, e agora nao tem mais utilidade. Sao precaucoes que foram importantes no passada mas de nada servem no presente.”

Anxieties and worries are reactions to signals. Sensors. They suggest to us decisions we could make and take actions that are thoughtful and useful. But they can also stimulate an internal debate that amplifies the original feelings, drowns out reason, and leads to rash decisions.

A trained mind will know how to stop this unproductive internal spiral. It may react with worry and anxiety for maybe a fraction of a second, say. BUT WILL NOT DWELL on it. Instead, anxiety and worry could even lead to clear judgment. This is because judgment flows from reason. The urge to calm the pain can short-circuit or bypasses reason.

I understand this process quite clearly. Putting it into practice in the face of strong negative emotions, however, is not easy. That is because emotions can inspire memories and learned reasonings that reinforce those feelings causing me to buckle through a vicious cycle where emotion leads to more emotion.

Say a person criticizes me. I will react with anxiety to that. In the right frame of mind this reaction would last for only the time needed to assess whether to take that signal seriously. From here, I should shift to an assessment of the situation it signals. I’ve learned over the years that many things that cause worry at the start can be dealt with reasonably.

But some worries and anxieties are habitually stronger than others. The fear of rejection by peers is one of these. This habit has diminished considerably over many areas, but it is still something that causes me to get irritated when criticized (even by well meaning people) and fearful of getting into a situation where I might get criticized. How I managed to take on leadership roles with this fear is a testament to the power reason can exercise when not overwhelmed by emotion.

One might argue: “Isn’t instinct an action that flows directly from feeling?” I think this is a productive “short cut” when the stimulus is a familiar one, and familiar in the sense that one knows one can handle it. It is when the stimulus is unfamiliar and the perceived threat so strong — because unfamiliar — that the problem of thoughtless action arises. This reasoning also suggests a way out of being held captive by emotional habits, and that is to work at it. The more exposes oneself to challenges just a little above one’s abilities the more one realizes that threats are not as big as they seem. This realistic knowledge of one’s abilities in the face of given levels of challenge is the basis for true confidence. That is, in contrast to bluster, which often can just be a way to cope with fear.

Sometimes this works.

Always choose God

| jaylazzo

Once again, out of town. I just love going out because it is restful. I like to stay away from the house for a while. For whatever reason, say I don’t like being with certain people there, I just admit it because taking a step back is the first step forward to licking the problem.

I found this lovely little book that I hope will improve me a lot. Perhaps I’m not an extrovert, but I have some things I can share with the world, so let’s just maximize that area of strength. I think I can work in the direction of improving my social skills. But I should not imagine there is one right way of understanding social talent. I would rather emphasize where my talents and interests really lie, because those are the areas where i can ENJOY PRACTICING.

It is important, very important, to love practice. This can’t be overemphasized. That could be reading, writing, doing math, practicing the guitar, practicing data analysis. Whatever, it must be enjoyed, and you should be able to tell from the start that “this is the sort of practice I enjoy doing”. As soon as you can identify that, that would be a helpful resource for when discouragement comes.

Sand does not flow back up the hourglass; neither can you force sand to go through before their time. My attention is on the sand that goes through the hole, one at a time and in its own time. Focus on the present. Whatever I might or might not have done in the past is buried there where it should not be regretted upon nor enjoyed. The past today has no meaning save for a memory that hopefully is helpful. The future is nice for a vision, but I can’t live in that one either.

So, in a sense, even if it might seem that existence is dreary, I’m really recreating my life everyday! To put it more truly, I’m in front of the opportunity to do God’s will everyday. I could recreate my life as I want, or I could do what God’s plan requires of me. God wants to recreate me in the Image of His Son, that’s what the will of God ultimately leads to. Any other way of acting would be a false recreation.

It would be a false recreation to aim for an image or a situation in the future that is against the will of God. I shouldn’t plan to sin. I shouldn’t look forward to it. And even where sin is not concerned, there are certain activities, pastimes, hobbies that do not lead to me being recreated into the image of Jesus Christ because they waste one’s time.

A choice often presents itself before me: to deal with a person, or to withdraw. To do good or to do nothing. To show love or to withhold it.

At the bottom is WANT and DESIRE. At the bottom is the question: What do I choose to love right now? At the bottom are only two answers: God, or myself ahead of God. It’s rarely other than that. The rare exceptions DO NOT MATTER, such as do I eat chicken or pork. But those choices that are not indifferent, that do indicate a love or a hatred for a PERSON or persons, those are the choices that matter.

When I choose to WANT something, I should really ask WHO am I choosing?

A man with a pure heart chooses GOD CONSISTENTLY. No matter, whether it’s a big thing or a small thing, the man with a pure heart chooses GOD. That’s it, can’t be any simpler than that. Perhaps we can make it more complicated, but I do not think God had complicatedness in mind. If anything, He probably wants me just to “push the button” or to “swallow the red or the blue pill”, and the He does most of the rest. I could for example choose to waste time with a friend against utilitarian logic and God would make it right no matter what. This by the way is the logic of obedience done for love of God.

So, learn to see that every choice that matters is a choice for GOD or for SELF. If today were the last day of my life it would be in my interest and in the interest of the world that i choose GOD TODAY. Don’t think about tomorrow or yesterday. CHOOSE GOD TODAY, RIGHT NOW.

This is not going to be easy because choosing oneself is a natural instinct and one willed by God Himself so that we take care of ourselves. No problem. If we must do that, and I think this happens a lot, then do it because of love for GOD! I will choose this or that for myself because I am choosing GOD through those things. I will choose to love others for the same reason; at least I will avoid choosing to love others because I needed some favor or because it makes me look good.

That something so ordinary could in fact be a choice for God can be difficult to understand for one used to the idea that loving God is all about going to church. Again, I think God is simple, not complicated, and He wouldn’t want us to be complicated either. That’s probably one reason why Jesus Christ chose to become a man. It makes it a lot easier to imagine human friendship when we think of Jesus as Friend. A relationship with God is universe-level, but it can’t be more complicated than befriending another human.

Friends want the best for their friends, even to the point of making them suffer, as they themselves suffer for imposing punishments. But stop thinking of Jesus only as the Punisher. If anything, the Punisher role would not be like any earthly punisher’s role. Even in things as bleak as that, God is LOVE, and this never ceases, never for a moment.

It would be wrong to lose hope. One could lose hope by substituting one’s criteria for God’s. Simple as that. It’s also a lack of faith. Often, it’s a lack of love as well. Settle this issue, and I am sure I will come to love even the people I would rather avoid being with in the same room.

Ego is the Enemy

| jaylazzo

I’m lazy in certain ways. I’m not lazy when it comes to things in which I have some control. But where I’m afraid of failure, rejection, and being let down, where there’s a threat to my self esteem, I procrastinate or, worse, quit. This conditions appears in matters that are professional and personal, even in ordinary relationships.

In one talk I attended last Aug 2022, the speaker suggested that we could build relationships more easily within activities that revolve around our interests. I quickly thought “Am I really good at this? Am I really capable of running a drum circle, or a jamming session?” The answer to the questions was: not at this point.

Why not? One reason is the fear of feedback. The only way to be good at something is to get feedback. Take the djembe: a simple instrument, something I love. But I could never have true confidence until I receive feedback about the level of my skill and the quality of my music. I do not receive this because I do not expose myself to feedback!

I’m not playing publicly because it is risky. Playing FOR AND WITH others necessarily brings with it the possibility of disagreement and negative feedback. This is supposed to be good, but it isn’t, for me.

The enemy has been and always will be EGO. And it is the most difficult enemy to fight. Why? It may be my mind is programmed to reject negative feedback, considering it an insult and a direct attack at my competence, my intelligence, even my character. One way I avoid feedback is to avoid especially those activities where feedback is most helpful, i.e., activities I’m no good at.

The problem with the programming idea is that the relationship between feeling and action is not clear. I went looking for models. Steve Magness, in the book Do Hard Things, suggests a model to explain why some keep a clear mind under discomfort while others break down.

Stimulus -> Feeling -> Internal Debate -> Urge -> Decision (quit/pursue)

In this model, an uncomfortable situation gives rise to feeling, which then affects an internal debate, which then urges the person towards some action, to quit or to continue. According to this model, negative feelings bias the debate and urges quitting or procrastination, especially if the person perceives the task to be a lot more difficult than anticipated. However, when this difference is not big, the debate is more calm, the urge to quit less strong, and the decision then tends towards proceeding.

This mechanism suggests several ways out. One may interpret the Stimulus as fun or exciting, an opportunity rather than a threat. One can lie about the Feeling and say that it is “bullshit”, all while embracing its reality. When one is calm, one can then trust one can carry out the Internal Debate more reasonably, which calms the Urge and makes a decision more clearly thought. If the decision is to quit, then it would be a thoughtful action, one that was not rushed by need to kill the pain.

An interesting form of stimulus is another person. Even thinking about certain people can cause strong negative feelings. Aside from the fact that there is almost always something to like about anyone, not controlling this thought about people can lead to rash judgments (which are also rush judgments), and destroy one’s social skills.

I do not wish to go on living with this handicap.

accentuate your differences

| jaylazzo

“To do something original and to do something well, whether it is appreciated by others or not, that is what being human is really all about and it is alone what justifies the self love that is genuine pride.”

The next time you consider procrastinating, consider the cost. Passivity and lack of creative effort, lack of pursuit to be good at something extraordinary that sets you apart, is a sure formula for mediocrity and mental illness.

Perhaps this is relative. You should consider whether you have more to lose by being passive and by not being different.

You have already been set apart. You have been set apart by your profession, your set of talents and skills, and your experience. God wants to color the world with all these different talents in different people. Some will be more brilliant than others, but it was never God’s intent that a color should be less beautiful than what it was meant to be when He placed them in that part of the canvas. Even the greys, whose purpose is to give naturalness and volume to even the most brilliant of reds and yellows.

One sets himself apart already by being oneself. For no one has been born or ever will be born who has your exact way of thinking, feeling, and doing. Your means of expression, the way you put words together, the way you articulate your interpretation of events around you, these are all unique. There is always someone, even within your vicinity, who appreciates these things that you bring, and there is always something to appreciate in another. In many ways, people will come to like at least the fact that you bring something different. Colors complement.

Even the people we truly dislike at some point we also appreciate even just because of their difference.

Hence, it is good to accentuate what makes one different, and also what makes one similar. One who is plagued with doubts about whether people like him or disagree with him should keep this in mind. The next time someone asks you a pointed question, consider this an opportunity to express yourself in your unique way. In many ways, the message itself might be less important than your view.

This is particularly useful to you because you tend to be in performance mode, always concerned that you say something intelligent or witty. That is NOT THE POINT! Wit is not what you do but how your words resonate. Hence, you can’t really deliberately censor yourself to be witty. YOU JUST GO AHEAD AND SAY THINGS, focusing on the message. Let’s leave it up to others to consider whether what you said was intelligent or witty.

Acceptance before expectation

| jaylazzo

I’ve been trying to apply a little more discipline with the use of my time. I did accomplish something of minor importance: I know what the next publications will look like, and I have the texts and outline. It’s not that hard to see the end. I should have done this a long time ago. I might have come up with more publications if I did, and I would have achieved a bit more continuity with my work.

Another thing I realized is that it is not so much the amount of time spent. What I mean is, it is not so important for me to have a clear budget about the amount of time to spend on a piece of work. If I think in terms of time budgets I start thinking about a given amount of pizza and then apportioning. No. It seems that it is more important to have a slice — any slice, right here, right now. That is, the present. It is better to get on doing something than obsessing over the budget. Perhaps doing so would mean that some things would not get done — now. They could get done later. But having done something now, for say just a few minutes, could result in an output whose significance is not measured in time but in clarity. In other words, I might have achieved a lot in my work even if I just wrote one or two paragraphs of a paper a day, because that would be clear rather than remain nebulous in my dreams and plans.

I understand that this is not a universal law. But it may be an expression of this one: that it is often much better to execute. In other words, the hard thing is to execute. We could say that it is not so much about having a bias for results, but a bias for execution. Sometimes it is better to just jump in with a simple and incomplete plan. Of course, sometimes it is good to have detailed plan especially where complex coordination or other people are involved. People with contrasting interests, expectations, expertise.

That said, we could make an analogy between problems and plans. There are 4 kinds of problems: simple, complicated, complex and chaotic. Plans are the same. Any problem or plan can be cut up to some extent. A complex plan/problem could be cut up into complicated or simple components to be addressed in turn. Even if not having the complete view from the start could mean that certain outputs will eventually have to be rejected, still, something was achieved: clarity. This, incidentally, is something we see in movies. They are very well planned, but sometimes the director will take random shots, cut out great shots, etc.

A bias for action precedes a bias for results. You can’t have results without action.

So, it’s a good idea to look at your problems and your plans and then ask yourself what kind of action can be taken right now. For an experiment that could mean something like “do a PCR” or “design a primer”. That’s simple, they build up experience. A lot of the results from these “trials” were never enter the final results, but the effort is never wasted in the end.

In human relations this is even more true. Relationships are simple, complicated, complex or chaotic at various levels and perspectives. I realize most people are complex, because of different interests, individual experiences and motivations are involved.

It can be dangerous to see human relations as anything other than complex. There are chaotic relations, toxic ones, I have some of those, and for very good reasons I do not want to pursue them beyond what is official. Dealing with people can’t be boiled down to having “expertise”, nor boiled down as consisting of simple issues. People are very complex, not just complicated. Well, people themselves can be simple, but that is probably from their point of view. We can’t presume to accurately predict or read people.

So, how do we deal with them? First of all, LISTEN more than speak. When you listen take note of what is said and what is implied. It is very important in human relations to understand what a person is really asking when they ask you a question or a favor.

For example, a colleage asked me to pray for her because a typhoon was about to hit their province. On the surface it sounds like a simple request. But under that, there is an invitation to pursue a conversation. I addressed the surface request only.

When we see the world as a reflection of what’s inside us, that simplifies a lot of things, for us. We are able to assign explanations to what we observe, and even assign motivations. None of these might be correct because in fact the world is something other than a reflection of what we have in the mind.

Simplifying is convenient for looking at other people, too, with the same danger that how we see others reflects how we see ourselves.

Take this amusing example from The Office. The boss, Robert California, said EVERYTHING IS SEX. Clearly a simplification.

Robert California used sex as metaphor for the Darwinian process of natural selection. To him life is a question of advantage, competition, power, survival, people giving and taking. Standard Darwin. BUT, and he differs from Darwin here, the competition is taking place in the mind. An individual who sees the world as competition sees HIMSELF IN COMPETITION WITH OTHERS. More than that he sees a need to win. Which can be in the form of recognition, respect, being heard. If that’s what’s going on in his mind then we can describe his internal life as really a play where he is the main protagonist.

It’s very convenient and it is a strong temptation to see the world as a reflection of what goes on inside us. This can be very dangerous for all the errors in thinking this can cause. It can also cause people to oversimplify human relationship problems, reducing them to EXPECTATIONS. What are expectations if not how people correspond to your idea in the mind?

Better than EXPECTATION is ACCEPTANCE.