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Month: November 2020

Eating the Frog: Revisited

Eating the Frog: Revisited

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Mark Twain once said, Eat a life frog first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day (side note: whether Twain actually said this is debatable).

Of all the productivity hacks I’ve tried, my favourite is eating the frog. The idea is that if you do your worst task (=frog) first thing in the morning, you can ride your wave of accomplishment through all your easier tasks, leading to a productive day. Makes sense: if you do tough work early, you can’t procrastinate on it. And personally, eating the frog in the morning has carried me through University life so far.

But what exactly is this frog? Though there is no consistent definition, most people define the frog as the most difficult, mentally strenuous task that must be completed that day. Some people have even gone to say that if you don’t eat the frog, the frog will eat you (yikes).

However, I’ve recently noticed that the days I eat the bad, ugly frog early on aren’t the days I remember at all. In fact, many of my most productive days I can hardly remember being pleasant at all. Rather, my best days have consistently been ones with:

  • A good night’s rest;
  • Some journaling and reading;
  • A bit of exercise;
  • New and interesting things learnt; and
  • Quality time around people I love.

And often, getting too caught up in being productive and doing good work leads to failing multiple of these conditions.

So tonight, I wonder: where does one draw the line between being productive vs. living a good life? Do the two need to be mutually exclusive? Can they be mutually exclusive? My guess is that the answer to these questions depends entirely on each individual and their dreams and ambitions.

On a slightly unrelated note, this eating the frog business reminds me of a piece by Marcus Aurelius in his meditations:

1. When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.

Let Doubt Avail

Let Doubt Avail

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Hello Eric, here’s a graph outlining your levels of dogmatism over the last few years:

The trend is pretty clear. Coming fresh out of high school (pre-2017), you felt like you knew what you were doing. Your identity and beliefs were set solid and you weren’t afraid to let others know. You respected others, but for those who disagreed with you, perhaps a little less so.

But then came second and third year Uni (2018-19), when you met people smarter than yourself, and you suddenly fell under pressure from questions like why? and what makes you say that? Your ideologies, which once seemed so strong, now began to show cracks.

And in 2020, when you had time to think due to an extensive lockdown, you realised you know nothing at all.

You realised you don’t really understand terms like capitalism, Marxism, communism or democracy. You realised you’ve been throwing around opinions laid out by your smart friends and have been defending ideas that you haven’t really thought much about.

And it’s unsettling, because now you’re chronically uncomfortable giving your stance on an issue as:

  • You know the issue is complicated, but you don’t know why;
  • You know there are factors at play you’re not aware of, but you don’t know what;
  • You know you should go and find out more, but you’re not sure how.

Hence your very low dogmatism and chronic decision paralysis.

But perhaps – just perhaps – waging war against convoluted hyper-rationality is something worth pursuing. Maybe in a society of excessive digital deduction, the tendency to consider other points of view is an advantage, rather than a hindrance. As Bertrand Russell, a champion of analytic philosophy, suggests quite passionately:

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid; and those with any imagination or understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

Let doubt avail.

My Antidote to Phone Addiction

My Antidote to Phone Addiction

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In the journey of living a good day, there are various villains one might encounter. For instance, sickness may whisper occasionally, melting your physical and mental strength; or its accomplice anxiety might pay you a visit, rendering you incapable of being rational.

But while sickness or anxiety are terrible in the moment, the flipside is that they usually go away. This cyclic period of battles and recoveries allows for multiple learning experiences, such that one can be better prepared to face them in the future. Cyclic natures like these tend to be found in many villains, though particularly dangerous genetic or chronic beasts are immune to this weakness.

Yet, there is one villain that I have frequently been bested by: phone addiction. This villain is sneaky because it has evolved to reside in objects that we increasingly rely on: our phones. So while other villains pop up periodically, this beast is something we encounter every day; and the more reliant we become on our devices, the more we feed the beast; and when the beast gets fed, it tears and rips at the curtains of our day until we are reduced to shreds of who we once were.

Okay, that’s a bit dramatic. But over the last few years, this has really been a huge problem for me.

However, I recently discovered a little antidote for this problem: the Screen Time Widget on iPhone. Basically, what it does is display your phone’s Screen Time on a home page so you can see it whenever you’re accessing your phone. This is what it looks like:

This is game-changing, for one of the most dangerous weapons of phone addiction is unawareness. Social media giants are terrifyingly good at keeping us unconsciously occupied on our devices, allowing the beast to feed through our consumption.

But what the Widget does is exactly the opposite: it provides a clear awareness of our phone usage. And my goodness, has this been amazing. Now, when I see my screen time creeping past an hour (thanks YouTube), I see the visualise the phone addiction beast growing and I set a hard stop for myself.

So, maybe it is this: the power of shining a light on this invisible, insidious beast, that is its weakness. And perhaps after enough blows to the face, I can look this villain in the eye and say that I’ve finally won.

“Maximus, to himself”: Interpretation

“Maximus, to himself”: Interpretation

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Trying something new with some poem analysis. Enjoy, and feel free to disagree with my interpretations – criticism always welcome.

“Maximus, to himself” by Charles Olsen (read by Charles Olsen):

I have had to learn the simplest things
last. Which made for difficulties.
Even at sea I was slow, to get the hand out, or to cross
a wet deck.
        The sea was not, finally, my trade.
But even my trade, at it, I stood estranged
from that which was most familiar. Was delayed,
and not content with the man’s argument
that such postponement
is now the nature of
obedience,

        that we are all late
        in a slow time,
        that we grow up many
        And the single
        is not easily
        known


It could be, though the sharpness (the achiote)
I note in others,
makes more sense
than my own distances. The agilities


        they show daily
        who do the world’s
        businesses
        And who do nature’s
        as I have no sense
        I have done either


I have made dialogues,
have discussed ancient texts,
have thrown what light I could, offered
what pleasures
doceat allows


        But the known?
This, I have had to be given,
a life, love, and from one man
the world.
        Tokens.
        But sitting here
        I look out as a wind
        and water man, testing
        And missing
        some proof


I know the quarters
of the weather, where it comes from,
where it goes. But the stem of me,
this I took from their welcome,
or their rejection, of me


        And my arrogance
        was neither diminished
        nor increased,
        by the communication


2


It is undone business
I speak of, this morning,
with the sea
stretching out
from my feet

I came across Maximus, to himself upon hearing the American writer Debbie Millman describe it as a “blueprint of [her] life”. And when a writer describes something as a blueprint of their life, I’m naturally curious.

This poem deeply struck me and so I’m going to try something I haven’t done before, which is a poem analysis. Here are three takeaways from this beautiful piece by Charles Olsen.

1. The things we never learn

I have had to learn the simplest things last. / Which made for difficulties.

This juxtaposition between learning the simplest things last hints at a struggle to understand the most fundamental of human qualities.

Sometimes I feel that the most basic questions like what it means to be a good person, or to love, or to be a friend are incredibly difficult to answer. It’s bizarre that convoluted questions like what the genetic locus for a rare disease is or the factors leading up to World War II can be discovered in a article or a book, but questions for fundamental questions on living seem more unanswerable every passing day.

2. The serenity of the present

I have made dialogues, / have discussed ancient texts, / have thrown what light I could, offered / what pleasures / doceat allows

It can be tempting to look towards history or past texts to find the antidote to difficult dilemmas. However, Olsen urges one to explore life through the act of simply living and mentorship:

But the known? / This, I have had to be given, / a life, love, and from one man / the world.

It’s unclear whether “one man” refers to God, himself or family, but the message remains: that engagement with the stories of the past is inferior to a life lived in the present.

3. The waters of life

It is undone business / I speak of, this morning, / with the sea / stretching out / from my feet

Finally, Olsen closes with an image that captures the root message of the poem and spurs a call to action.

Describing the sea as stretching out from my feet creates an overwhelming desire to ground oneself in a rapidly moving world. And though this may seem grim, perhaps we should rejoice at this thought. That while impossible trials and tribulations lay in front of us, we should seize the chance to live. To try, no matter how hopeless it seems, to live in the present, and to refine one’s relationship with the world.

No Doomscrolling

No Doomscrolling

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Recently, I noticed that my worst days are ones where I excessively scroll the internet. It kinda feels like swimming in the ocean: the water might feel refreshing at first – an amusing meme, or a cool life update on Facebook – but the deeper you go, the more dangerous and unpredictable it becomes. Sharks in the form of clickbait titles and fake news might slowly circle you, watching for a weak spot. And if you’re unaware, they can take you under. And when you’re under, it can be very hard to get out unscathed.

Here’s Merriam-Webster:

Doomscrolling and doomsurfing are new terms referring to the tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing. Many people are finding themselves reading continuously bad news about COVID-19 without the ability to stop or step back.

As a reminder to myself, here are five things better than doomscrolling to spend time:

  1. Read a book
  2. Go for a walk
  3. Get on the phone with a friend
  4. Play games
  5. Journal

… and probably a million others.

The Entertainment-Education Symbiosis

The Entertainment-Education Symbiosis

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For most of my life, I separated entertainment and education into mutually exclusive categories.

The entertainment category contained TV shows I grew up watching like How I Met Your Mother, Hell’s Kitchen and Pokémon. Shows that while funny, didn’t really stimulate my brain all that much. Songs, plays and comics also found themselves strictly in the entertainment category.

On the other hand, the education category was largely dominated by difficult books. Stuff like math textbooks, physics handouts or huge works of history. Stuff that while packed full of knowledge, were mind-numbingly boring.

But of course, the domains of entertainment and education can intersect in wonderful ways. One of the greatest gifts I’ve received in my life is the gift of enjoying literature. Books have made me weep with sorrow, laugh with delight and fume in anger, all while having my worldview changed in miraculous ways – arguably the greatest form of education.

This symbiosis between entertainment and education was also recently illustrated in a podcast conversation I enjoyed between Yuval Noah Harari and Tim Ferriss as they discussed the Netflix show Black Mirror:

Yuval: I think that Black Mirror, at least some of the episodes in Black Mirror, are some of the best discussions that I’ve seen of certain dangerous tendencies in current technology. Some episodes are just fun. San Junipero, I think it’s an extremely good episode, but it describes the reality, which is so far away from us that it’s not really relevant to any of the discussions here.

But if you look at Nosedive, and maybe the Chinese got the idea for their social quality system from Nosedive, but it’s such a powerful and important episode.

And so television, while still being the source of some pretty trashy shows, can also be a powerful means of discovering fresh worlds and new ideas. There’s a certain degree of engagement enabled by music, lighting and actors that books cannot replicate, giving TV the potential to showcase ideas in a unique light.

Thus, I’m pretty excited about the future of content creators. The potential for this entertainment-education symbiosis to engage, entertain and educate a huge audience is pretty amazing.

Soft Fallacies and Excessive Reason

Soft Fallacies and Excessive Reason

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Logic – the process of reasoning using facts and inferences – is the common language spoken within rational discussions. Whether one is debating theology, philosophy or science, logic is often the judge on whether one argument is more sound over another. Any logical blunders can singlehandedly destroy an argument.

These breaches of logic are called logical fallacies and come in many forms. Common examples include:

  • Strawman: misrepresenting someone’s argument to make it easier to attack e.g. After Will said that we should put more money into health and education, Warren responded by saying that he was surprised that Will hates our country so much that he wants to leave it defenceless by cutting military spending.
  • Slippery slope: asserting that one small action will lead to a chain of related events, culminating in a significant effect, and therefore one shouldn’t do the small action e.g. Colin asserts that if we allow same-sex couples to marry, then the next thing we know we’ll be allowing people to marry their parents, their cars and even monkeys.

While there are many different types of fallacies out there, I’ve always felt some to be less definitive than others. These ‘softer’ fallacies, while still breaches of logic, don’t always lead to a dismissal of the argument, for occasionally, there are other issues and biases in conflict.

Perhaps the most interesting of these soft fallacies is the appeal to emotion fallacy, where one aims to manipulate an emotional response in place of a valid argument. In situations like this, one encounters a dilemma: whether to sacrifice one’s deeper feelings in place of logic.

The problem of this argumentum ad passiones is that logic in the present moment can be deeply flawed. In his bestselling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell examines the ‘gut feeling’ that we all encounter, and how these feelings often provide a better means of operating over using pure logic. He writes, addressing the hyperrational state of our society,

We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We’re a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don’t really have an explanation for. Later on, Gladwell concludes:

There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.

In the pursuit of truth, logical fallacies provide a strong defence against implausible ideas. Yet, to solely rely on reason as a mode of living doesn’t come without its own dangers. As Yann Martel put it in Life of Pi,

If you stumble over mere believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe? Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.

The Garden

The Garden

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You’re having a bad day.

You spent all night playing a video game and woke up this morning with two hours of sleep. Grogged, you couldn’t find your schoolbooks and so you missed your usual bus, and the one after that. When you finally get on the bus, you look forward to your first class, math, where you can sleep at the back. Your favourite teacher is there, because she just leaves you alone.

But when you finally make it to math, you find your usual teacher replaced with the teacher you utterly detest. Mr Gibson. Welcome to the fires of hell.

From the start of term, Mr Gibson’s always been up your ass. The first time you met, he scolded you for being two minutes late. Two minutes?! And the second time, he told you off for having messy hair. Like that matters…

And so since today you are 30 minutes late and are still rocking your bed hair, you can feel what’s about to come. When you walk in, Mr Gibson abruptly stops his spiel on fractions and you feel his eyes on you, then the clock, then at your hair. You embrace yourself to face the fury of a demon.

But he simply tells you to sit down.

For a second, you can’t believe it. Did you just escape death? But you don’t hesitate at this chance for freedom, and jolt to the back of your class, rest your head against the desk and sleep on your bag, just as you usually do.

When you wake, the class is empty. You look up, rub the sleep out of your eyes, and see Mr Gibson looking down on you. You feel a sinking feeling of despair. So this was your plan, you think. To execute me alone, so nobody can witness…

But instead, Mr Gibson looks at you for a while. Then he pulls a chair over and sits opposite you on the desk. With some effort, you look back. And for a split second, you see the eyes of your father in them. Those kind, compassionate eyes. Eyes which you haven’t seen in over a decade.

“I’m sorry I’m late…” you mutter. But Mr Gibson says nothing. To fill the silence, you continue rambling.

“I think my dog ate my schoolbook, and I spent ages looking for it. And my bus left without me, and then so did the next one, so that’s-”

“Tell me…” Mr Gibson interrupts, “do you like school?”

“Well no sir,” you reply honestly. “I just come here because I have to.”

“And who tells you that you have to?”

“Mommy”.

“What do you enjoy doing?”

“Playing games.”

“So why don’t you skip school and play games?”

“Well, because I can’t.”

Mr Gibson stares at you intently, seeming to wait for more. When you give no response, he makes a small sigh.

“Have you ever seen two rosebushes fighting?” The question takes you by surprise. You shake your head.

“It’s quite a remarkable sight. While rosebushes don’t exactly punch and kick like some animals, it’s a complex struggle nonetheless. If there is only one patch of good ground, but not enough space, the roots of the roses twist, turn and battle each other to survive.”

“People,” Mr Gibson continues, “are kind of like these rosebushes. We have roses we want to plant and grow, but sometimes these roses fight one another, and the resulting struggle can be terrible. One rose may destroy the other, or both may never grow to their full potential.”

At this, you feel a growing tension inside your body. One you’ve never felt before. Like there’s knots being dug up from your innermost soul. The feeling makes you very uncomfortable.

And then you begin to see Mr Gibson’s words in action. You see your rose of luxury. The rose that wants to be happy, crush noobs online and have no responsibilities. But then you see your rose of duty. Your duty to please your mum. To get educated. To give back to society. You see these two roses fighting it out. And recently, your luxury rose has been winning.

But you feel like there’s more. That there’s so much more. That somehow, your abusive uncle plays a role, that your dad dying from cancer plays a role and how you living in poverty plays a role. That there are various pieces of the puzzle that make up you, except you don’t know where they belong.

“My dominant rose,” Mr Gibson says quietly, “is integrity. As a teacher, I believe the greatest good I can do is to make sure you students become morally upright members of society. But to cultivate this rose meant I had to let some others die. Like my rose for being liked. Or for being lazy.”

You begin to understand. When you look into Mr Gibson’s eyes now, you don’t see the devil, but just another human trying their best to make the most wonderful garden. And you begin to realise that everyone is making their own little garden unique to them, and that’s totally fine.

You go home that day and take a long nap. In your dreams, you see a wide forest of giant trees, with roots as thick as your arm. And in the middle of the forest, you see a wonderful garden. A garden of roses, white orchids, daisies and dandelions planted perfectly next to each other. And to the side, you see a tired, old man. The gardener. He looks up to you with tears in his eyes, and smiles.

Two Conflicting Rosebushes

Two Conflicting Rosebushes

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The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson is a short fantasy novella that I recently devoured. The story follows a thief who is given 100 days to forge a soul for the Emperor, who has been left brain dead. As the thief struggles with the enormous task and plans an escape, we encounter themes such as faith, politics and greed.

One of my favourite quotes from The Emperor’s Soul occurs halfway through the story, where the thief reflects on the impossibility of forging a soul. The quote is this:

“No person was one single emotion; no person had only one desire. They had many, and usually those desires conflicted with one another like two rosebushes fighting for the same patch of ground.”

Two Roses by Sea Son on Amazon Music - Amazon.com

I don’t know what it is about roses, but this imagery made my heart flutter for a second. I’ve previously written about the contradictory nature of humans, but this image adds a layer of beauty to the inconsistencies we see in ourselves and others. That while contradictions can be terribly frustrating, perhaps it is good to accept the conflict for what it is: a consequence of our splendid and beautiful complexity.

Check out The Emperor’s Soul on: Amazon, free online pdf, Goodreads