Personal growth (redux)

(I can’t put a link in the title, but this is the second blog post titled “Personal growth”; it’s rather different from the original here 1.5 years ago; I’ve grown a lot!)

Life’s a spiral curriculum. I have what David Burns M.D. calls the “weekend/holiday blues”: when I have real free time with no plans, I experience procrastination, depression, and anxiety, because I’m convinced the things I do to fill that free time aren’t worthwhile. Why am I convinced of this? Well, all of the incorrect convictions of the depressed/anxious are self-reinforcing thoughts; they’re traps– because I’m convinced what I do isn’t worthwhile, I procrastinate, discount the positive outcomes, end up concluding after the fact that it wasn’t worth all the hand-wringing, and then use that as evidence that other endeavors also aren’t worth it. It’s a cycle.

And why does it matter, anyway, if I fritter away the hours in an offhand way? I hold myself to a really high standard for personal productivity; I expect that every moment I spend ultimately contributes to achieving my goals for myself and for the world. If I do end up wasting time, I treat this as a grave error that I need to be hypervigilant about not repeating. I’m a perfectionist, and reading the CBT book might finally be thawing out the idea that bludgeoning myself for not always acting in the optimal way is helpful for achieving my goals. Maybe I don’t need to suffer so hard in order to learn and improve. Maybe I can relax, and still not one day find ten years have got behind me– maybe I already am running, maybe I have not missed the starting gun!

(I am haunted by the lyrics to that Pink Floyd song— maybe treating a psychedelic rock song as deep wisdom to personally live by isn’t in my best interests… The song’s protagonist thinks they are young and life is long and there is time to kill today, and that lying in the sunshine and watching the rain are acceptable uses of time, and in the song, they are dead wrong, and the penalty is to spend later life running and running to catch up with the sun, as their health deteriorates, shorter of breath and one day closer to death, and to see their plans come to naught or little, and die having done much less than they expected. But maybe the song is wrong, and it’s okay for me, a young person, to relax and enjoy myself, and still expect to have an enjoyable later life and accomplish a fair amount of my plans! God, how much more reasonable and less punishing an idea that is! How much more motivating, to not treat every leisurely moment as a failure of weak will to be atoned for later!)

And so what if I die having done less than I expected? I almost certainly will die with things I still want to do! Everyone does! That fact does not mean I should deprive and torture myself now. I will achieve more of what I want if I use a clean-burning source of motivation, not the fear of ultimate failure; if I remember that all I’m succeeding or failing at is what I want, and I decide whether to be satisfied with myself or push for more.

But anyway, the great irony in my weekend/holiday blues is that it’s in these uncomfortable lulls that I tend to tackle real personal growth, as a response to the unpleasant sense of not acting in my best interests (the unpleasant anxiety about unproductiveness seems to be deeply productive!). I was feeling anxious yesterday about wasting time, and decided to review my values and my vision, for the world and for myself, to make sure I was acting in line with achieving that vision. I wanted to compile the various sources here on this blog, so I’d have them all in one place– that was the original purpose of the blog, as a scratchpad for working out my life on paper. See below for a thorough account of what I consider “my best interests”:

Terminal values

This is the third time I’ve pasted these into this blog, and they haven’t changed since when I wrote them down on paper years ago. This is my consistent vision for what I want in the world. Link in section header goes to the first instance, where I paired them with my insecurities, which have changed (see below).

• Novelty
  • biodiversity
  • neurodiversity
• Pleasure/ Happiness (inc. awareness/ release from suffering)/Deep feelings (including suffering sometimes)
  • Love
  • Loving kindness
• Beauty in the world/ Aesthetic sense
  • efficiency in systems and objects
  • untouched green spaces
  • well-designed built environments
  • anti-Moloch: systems serving human values
• Humans not suffering
  • Domesticated animals not suffering

What’s Driving me

This is from an exercise at the beginning of my 6-week self-improvement program, where we identified unconscious drivers and a mission statement for what “game” we wanted to change in the “game changer” program. I found the 4 boxes of consequences/outcomes very helpful.

Themes that resonated:

• Connection
• Happiness
• Personal Best
• Success
• Exciting
• Empowerment
• Attractiveness
• Quality of Life
• Balance
• Fitness

Mission statement: I want to succeed in achieving my personal best quality of life.

Consequences of not living in accordance with my vision: Never knowing what I could achieve, missing out on cool opportunities
Pros of not living in accordance with my vision: Comfort in staying where I am, can prioritize my current success in work or charity

Cons of living in accordance with my vision: I might get overwhelmed and fail, I might gamble with what I have and lose
Pros of living in accordance with my vision: I’ll know I tried my best, I’ll have confidence in my decisions because they were deliberate

Punchy version of mission statement: Live my best life/ Be my best self; or; Don’t settle below my best

Rules to live by

• Figure out what you want. This is an uphill battle that lasts your entire life, and it is an essential first step.
• Engage on your terms. Get Gone, Get Got, Get Compact, Get Ready. Do not default. Do not let fear think for you. Exercise Agency. Choices are not made once, they are continuous. Action, not identity.
• Optimize. Overcome Bias. Seek real truth. No wasted motion. Let go of dead weight. Objects and ideas pay rent.
• Love freely. Forgive recklessly. Throw yourself into the unknown. Trust your gut. When you can, live with abandon.

The four kinds of meaning

Source, but with heavy interpretation/contextualization by me:

1. Purpose– this is future-oriented: “leaving the world better than you found it”; getting to Heaven; career success
2. Justification- This answers the question, “why live at all?” My answers: life is fun! and- “ab illo cui multum datur, multum requiritur”: I have a duty to give back some of what I’ve been given.
3. Efficacy- This means getting things done, having agency over the world. Asking what I can do differently; having something to fight for
4. Self-worth- The idea that your are valuable and important. “You are worth so much more than your productivity”; “go forth and be a blessing”, the idea that every human has equal human value and worth.

What I want out of life

This is transcribed from a little brown notebook I keep important thoughts in, and it’s probably time it made it into a more legible format than photos of that page on my phone.

• Awareness; the bliss that is merely existing
• a deeply fulfilling life partnership with lots of time devoted to it
• making the most of my time with my parents
  • making them proud (or at least, doing things that are in line with their dreams for me)
• deep friendships
• a connection with nature (potentially achieved through travel)
• a connection with humanity
  • through travel
  • through altruism and mutual aid
  • through reading
  • through living a moral, blessed, or Godly life
• agency over the world and the future
  • meaningful work
• novelty, novelty, novelty!
• joy! not suffering! health, prosperity, and good fortune!

also, what I want out of my career:

• progress and change
  • lifelong learning
• variety
• sustainability (it must not be soul-sucking)
• time for family and friends
• optionality
• agency
• helping people, like I’ve been helped, with teaching and mentorship
• a mission I believe in
• a work community with friends and fun

There are some other things in the little brown notebook I’d like to transcribe at a later point, about my skills and interests, but I think they’re sufficiently far from this topic that I can save them for another post.

Four Dreams, from Radical Candor

Radical Candor has a framework for 3 introductory conversations between manager/direct report, which I think are really helpful not just to career growth, but to personal growth (because, as I examine below, the same strategies apply!) The author advocates for uncovering your real goals, which she calls dreams, and then aligning your career choices with achieving those underlying personal goals, rather than setting a separate set of career goals disconnected from your personal/emotional reality. It’s an important insight– it sets you up to use your career as a fulfilling part of your life, not the other way around. Here are the four visions of the pinnacle of my career I uncovered as part of the 3 introductory conversations.

1. Being a semi-retired consultant who provides advice to new technology startups, but mostly homesteads; grows my own food, makes my own furniture, potentially lives in a commune. I may have squeezed this one into a “career” when it would also fulfill the dream to just live with and support innovators. This dream also involves housing my parents on my property, building my own house, and various dreams for the property itself, in its different iterations.
2. Being part of a revolution (for example, like finding a plant gene as part of the Green Revolution). Playing some small part in a major move in technology that vastly changes human quality of life for the better.
3. Being a startup co-founder (not a sole founder/ CEO type)– being the brains/ get-shit-done part of someone else’s bold new idea. Being the partner that enables a genius.
4. Running a pub or a B&B: creating a space for community and hospitality; being the lifeblood of a local economy and supporting local creators and businesses directly.

I’m doing this a bit backwards, but in the first of the 3 conversations, the report tells their manager their life story and the manager extracts main drivers that motivate that person. It’s very intimate, but a very generous and kind thing for one person to do for another, and I think my manager, as an intelligent and sensitive person, did a really good job extracting what drives me:

1. Strong desire to be wanted/useful, make friends, and be part of a community
2. Desire to have control over own life and freedom
3. Wanting to be challenged and recognized
4. Enjoying things I’m good at
5. Driven by future outcomes
6. Wanting to make the world better
7. Wanting to understand the world around us

Things I would do if I didn’t have to work (and had lots of money and so much time I could take it at my own pace)

This is an older list than many of the other sources, and comes from my actual diary, the extra-raw emotional one.

• get 80,000 hours career advice, perhaps personalized
• study faces from public streets and subways and draw them
• make a capsule wardrobe and complete outfits
• adopt more cats
• participate in a community
• run a blog and newsletter
• host dinner parties
• see more performances
• go birding, kayaking, backpacking; see more of the outdoors
• make friends
• paint
• study more college subjects
• take yoga classes to the point of becoming an instructor
• go on a meditation retreat
• fly home to see my parents more often
• complete my bucket list (and reading list)
  • specifically, visit India
• fine dining!
• make furniture/ homestead
• grow food
• really travel– spend long spans away from home without a clear agenda, immerse myself in the local culture

“Ten Things” by Paul Baribeau

In response to the lyrics of this song, I made a long list of things I want to do before I die, places I want to be, books I want to read, songs I want to hear again, things that are wrong with my life, things I love about my life, things that hold me back (an updated version of the original insecurities in this post), mistakes I have made, and reasons why it’s good to be alive and I never want to die. Same spirit as my favorite things.

Things I want to do

c.f. Bucket list (also for Places)

Places I want to be

• my parents’ home, with them
• snuggled in Partner’s arms
• the Louvre in Paris
• India, among monkeys and elephants
• Hawaii
• on a Pacific reef
• Glacier national park
• in an Alpine meadow (in the Alps)
• the African savannah
• Borneo
• Amsterdam

Books I want to read

c.f. Reading list (plus some items on here that are not on that list, or this one! This is far from comprehensive). Thinking about the songs I want to hear isn’t really uplifting or motivating for me, so I’m leaving it out.

• Waiting for Godot
• Anna Karenenina
• the Kama Sutra
• The Tale of Genji
• The Botany of Desire (and other Michael Pollan books)
• Radical Acceptance
• Gandhi’s Autobiography
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities
• Cat’s Cradle
• A Scanner Darkly
• The Satanic Verses
• Gravity’s Rainbow
• Seeing Like a State
• Inadequate Equilibria

Things that are wrong with my life/ things that hold me back

The via negativa has been taken out of this post and put in this newer post— this post is only about the positives. The song also has a line: “Think of all the mistakes you have made in your life, be sure that you never repeat them”, and I did write out these mistakes, but I find thinking of the specific actions too painful to be productive, so I have pulled out and generalized the underlying causes of those mistakes instead, like I would do for a mechanical failure analysis, which I think is a much better strategy.

Things I love about my life, reasons why it’s good to be alive and I never want to die

These are not comprehensive, nor are they in any particular order. Some overlap with my favorite things.

• my wonderful loving parents
• hugging loved ones; thinking of people you love
• the abundance of books: good libraries, my personal library
• Reading fiction; science-fiction
• the movies; popcorn
• my parents’ acceptance of me and my lover
• my partner’s beard and hair, the smell of his hair, his cooking, the way he smiles when he’s excited
• Baby Cat, her stripes, her white paws, her multicolored toes. Cats in general.
• My good taste in food! Good food! Being full. Cheese!
• Friends! Being in a group of friends
• Apartments, cozy kitchens, happy memories
• Knowing the city, visiting small businesses, walking familiar, well-lit streets
• Being able to hike; the use of my limbs
• Swimming, running, the beach
• Satisfying experiences and Happy memories
• Falling asleep
• Complaining to people; people being friendly; eye contact
• Working somewhere I’m proud of
• Genuinely liking my coworkers
• Having the respect of my peers
• Being able to be myself
• Getting praise
• Being loved
• my brother
• My neighborhood and all the weird people like me in it
• Discretionary income I can spend at restaurants
• Free time to read and write
• Comfy, good-looking clothes: my purple parka, the sherpa-lined flannel, the dark, rich-colored flannel shirts, the stretchy leggings my mom made
• Music!
• Agency
• Reducing others’ suffering
• International travel
• Girls: their pretty faces, long eyelashes, smiles, smooth and tanned skin
• laughing babies
• the feeling of sun on my skin
• The sounds of rain and frogs and crickets and guitar
• warm water, hot showers, hot springs
• spinach artichoke dip
• soft clothing
• beautiful vistas, sunsets
• waterfalls, the moon
• lizards, coral reef fish, monkeys
• the endless variety of insects

Conclusions and next steps

The central insight of CBT, and of fluid intelligence generally, is that you can use problem-solving skills on any problem; they are general and transfer from your work to your daily life and vice versa. Summarizing, getting the important things together in one place so you can assess them as a whole and draw out key conclusions, is one of these problem-solving skills, which I’ve used to approach the problem of how to live my life above. This is only a start– there’s quite a lot of synthesizing to be done about the “how” of acting in my best interests

As a more concrete planned follow-up, today (the day of this post) I also came up with the idea of using an engineering decision-making tool, the Pugh chart, to compare alternatives for my body weight management strategy. This led to the insight that I would be better off on the whole if I stop weighing myself, and if I do that, even better if I stop logging calories/macros. This was really hard for me to accept; but I’ve started implementing it (writing from an edit a week later) and I am actually better off! Score one for rationality!

I also wanted to do a personal growth exercise recommended in the CBT book: writing a short essay about why constantly critically evaluating my use of my time isn’t actually in my best interests. I’m remembering, though, that personal growth is work just as much as engineering problem-solving is work, and I’m getting a bit tired, so perhaps I will stop writing/working for today and take a break and read an enjoyable book on the immune system for a bit.