Jakub Petrykowski blog

Process of change

Summary: Willingness and ability to change oneself are vital skills. By change I mean changing habits and acquiring new skills, not just acquiring knowledge. I realized that in my case the process of conscious change (or personal development) is usually sequential.

This post is about my experience with change, and a theory of change I came up with recently to describe it. While experience is hard to question, the theory is merely a proposition. I leave it up to you to relate it to your own experience and observation. I never bothered to verify it, though at this point I think it is quite an accurate description.

By change I don't just mean learning. Learning can be interpreted as acquiring knowledge, which for me is easy and definitely not enough to reach the end goal. End goal is usually increased happiness or improved effectiveness. Knowledge doesn't make people happier or more effective. Change does: new behaviors, better handling of emotions, more productive mindsets.

In this article, change is synonymous with removing bad habits, establishing good habits, and learning new skills.

I have become a bit of a personal-development freak over the past five years. Initially I focused on productivity at work. Over time personal growth in all areas of life became highest priority for me. I was unhappy a few years back, and I realized I really needed to change something. It took several years to see the effects, but I have almost revolutionized my emotional life, improved general attitude towards other people and established a few good habits. It took hundreds of hours of hard work, reading, talking to people, psychotherapy, exposure to risk, experiencing failure. It was worth it though.

I now believe that willingness & ability to change are vital skills, especially for young people. There are two reasons. First, such broad exploration is a good way to discover what we like the most. It is necessary to maximize our happiness. Second, it decreases the risk of falling behind others when the world around us changes - if we learn how to adapt quickly, we will be able to respond to potentially dangerous market shifts or social revolutions. It is beneficial for an individual to try many ways of living, many kinds of work, and many kinds of relationships in order to practice adaptation and learn more about one's own preferences.

I treat all contexts of change equally: it could be personal or work life, a small detail like daily routine or complex issues like the way we deal with stress.

Sometimes change occurs "automatically", without conscious effort on our part. For example, we change what we do when we move to live in a new place: new people, new job, new market conditions. You could call it "forced adaptation". I don't care about that. By definition, it happens to us once in a while. What I am concerned with is conscious act of changing how we live when we are not forced to change. A process in which we recognize we want to do something differently, and we find a way to actually do it.

In my case conscious change follows the following "model":

• Step 1. Realize there's something you can improve: a skill to learn; a bad habit to break; a recurring problem to solve
• Step 2. Have the motivation to change: recognize it's important to change and some urgency of this need
• Step 3. Learn how to change: what does the new behavior look like, research the topic, learn from others
• Step 4. Actually make the change: change a habit; learn & practice a skill

I do not mean to suggest that this model applies to everyone. Interestingly, I have found two papers (paper one, paper two) mentioning nearly identical model established by some psychologists in the 1980s. I haven't read the original papers yet, but it was fun to see that I came up with the same thought framework just by reflecting on my own experience!

It can take a lot of time to go through it all. Each step has its own challenges. Most importantly, there is a lot that needs to happen before actual change: I need to be aware of the opportunity to change, have the motivation, and know how to change. The model may sound trivial, but if I fail to go through steps 1-3 *explicitly* in my head, I usually don't succeed in making long-term change. Going all the way through requires admitting that I am not perfect, motivating myself, and perseverance to do the hard work.

Step 1 is usually triggered by challenges, suffering, reading, feedback from others or observing them in action.

Step 2 is mostly about deciding whether or not I want to change now. Without conscious decision to change, most efforts fail.

Step 3 is targeted research. I observe others, read books or the Internet, use formal training, sometimes come up with my own solutions or ideas. It is all about "How do I do it?" Sometimes it is as trivial as never lighting a cigarette again. Other times it is a long project involving buying books, talking to others, gathering more feedback on my behavior and coming up with tricks that will make change easier.

Step 4 is taking the effort to do things differently: stopping the bad habit, starting a new habit, learning and practicing a new skill.

Establishing habits is different than acquiring skills in that habits require perseverance, whereas  skills are more about mastery. I will probably write more about habits, since it is a fascinating topic, and a great life challenge for most people to change them.

Distractions from creative work

Summary: There are many distractions around us that make long stretches of work hard to attain. I noticed two non obvious things that keep me distracted from mental work: lingering emotions (like worry), and the urge to act on random objects in the environment. I consider it a skill to be able to work despite these more internal distractions.

I need a certain state of mind in order to be able to do creative work. There are many sources of distraction that can impede my ability to do that. Typical external sources are noise, cold, presence of other people, or technology features like incoming email notifications. I might also be in poor physical condition, tired, or after a heavy meal which leaves me feeling drowsy. But there are two other kinds of distractions that are perhaps less obvious, but just as harmful to productivity: shadows from my emotional life, and the urge to act on whatever it is I see. Let me explain in detail.

Let's start with emotional distraction. Last month I was moving from Switzerland to Poland. It was quite a complex operation: I had to find the next tenant for my apartment, give away or sell lots of stuff I no longer wanted, send my personal things to Poland cheaply and securely, deal with various government agencies. I tried blogging during that time, but I was unable to focus for more than half an hour, which makes writing very hard. My thoughts were dwelling on the move; I was stressed and worried that something might go wrong and I would need to stay longer than I wanted to. I had enough mental energy to write drafts, take notes and succesfully complete the move; I have come up with a couple new drafts for the blog, but editing was almost impossible. 

Another example from a good friend, Helmut. When an employee doesn't feel comfortable with something in his life, for instance because he is having personal problems or has just moved to a new town or country and is making effort to adapt to the new environment, you just cannot expect him to work as well as he could when not under this kind of pressure. Concerns and worries ("Do I fit here? Is it going to be fine with my wife? Will I find a good apartment to rent on time? Why is my close friend resenting me?") drain energy from us, and unless we resolve them or at least put them away for a few hours a day, we cannot be fully effective. Yes, you can push yourself and try harder, but for me this is not an effective strategy to do good creative work. Here is a recent example from k's blog, great resource on marketing, relationships and project management. She writes how her weekend gets "ruined" because of anticipation of an emotionally charged event. 

In my case, if I have something really important coming up in the afternoon, my thoughts tend to dwell on it unless I make conscious effort to convince myself that it's "handled" (e.g. I'm prepared for it and just need to wait). The more stressful the upcoming event, the harder it is for me to do quality, uniterrupted mental work immediately before that event. This effect is the strongest during the day of the event, and rarely affects me as much the day before or earlier.

It seems that the ability to focus on work when there are important, stressful upcoming events, is a skill - a skill one can learn, because I am definitely getting better at it over the years. I met people who seem to be able to work on anything nearly anytime, even if they are very stressed by personal issues.

When I realise that something is bothering me and prevents me from focusing on the task at hand, I do as much as possible to resolve the issue. I like being in control, but there are many situations when things don't really rely just on me, but also on other people. I can't possibly expect to positively resolve every single matter in my life on my own. Delegation needs to be practiced not only for effectiveness, but also from the perspective of trust. "Relax. It is going to be fine." I keep saying to myself. I am learning how to be more relaxed about things that come my way, especially those I can't really control. I had conversations with several people about this last month, and they all said that one of the skills they consciously practice is exactly this: letting go, getting more relaxed, not agonizing over small matters.

There is another tricky kind of distraction I am vulnerable to: the tendency to start thinking about any object I just happen to look at. There is some urge in me to act on whatever it is that my eyes see. No matter what my current task, I am likely to drop it and start acting upon another object or piece of information. It is a powerful phenomenon. It seems as if I am conditioned to treat *every* piece of information in the environment as potentially important, even if I had seen the very same thing many times before and had already decided to ignore it. Instead, when I look at it again, I am inclined to consider doing something about it, which causes me to drop whatever it was I actually wanted to do. The object can be an advertisement, a plate, a note, a book, a printout - virtually anything.

Here is an example. My mind recognizes the object and starts "producing" action items or questions related to it. "Should I do something about it? Is it important? What do I do with it now? Oh, perhaps I should read that article." Or "I should give it to that other guy." Or "I should remove this and all similar items from my to-do list. Oh, wait, I already killed that project, why is it here in the first place?" When asked, I do know that it is irrelevant, or has no real benefit to me. For instance, I believe that more than 90% of TV news content is junk. Yet, when I'm at the airport, news on a TV screen will attract my attention almost every time. Same with pretty much any place where I spend a lot of time and have stuff accumulated by myself (at home) or by other people (in the office, e.g. office "decorations", whiteboards filled with ideas by other people etc.)

This kind of distraction does not seem to depend on the type of object - virtually anything in my immediate environment is enough for my thoughts to go astray. If this happens too often, I get little work done. This is perhaps the most pervasive and brutal intrusion that happens to me every day. It does not seem to heed to any priorities that I set to myself whatsoever. My attention follows information regardless of its relation to my goals. It is as if my mind was a constantly running processor of incoming visual information and little more. Unless I direct my attention to a specific goal and I manage to keep it there, I am bound to wander off in a semi-random direction just by virtue of walking around and having my eyes open!

As you can imagine, I feel quite vulnerable to these two types of distractions. In order to contain that chaos, I plan ahead enough to not worry about the stressful events too much (i.e. handle them well in advance if possible). I also started practicing meditation. One effect of meditation is supposed to be improved control over those distracting thoughts or impulses, whether they are triggered by something I happen to look at or by something in my memory that keeps bugging me. I will write a bit more on meditation in another post.

Not all activities are affected by these kinds of distractions. I don't face the problem when I'm running errands in the city or doing the dishes. 

Being sligthly forgetful is not a major life issue, but it can be annoying when I need several hours in a row to move a creative project forward. Projects I work on are increasingly of that nature, and I would like it to stay that way, so the ability to focus will be critical in my life going forward. I wonder to what extent other people have the same experience. Paul Graham's essay about maker's schedule and Lifehacker tips for managing distractions suggest that many people face the same challenge, and that technology is frequently an additional source of distractions.

Tools for note taking

Summary: In the last post I explained what I use notes for. Today I give you more detail on what kind of information I put in them and what software I use to keep notes, as well as a text file format I adopted to keep the notes organized.

The kinds of information I keep:

• to-do lists. Examples: errands to run, bills to pay, things to learn about, videos to watch, interesting web links to follow. Sometimes detailed, project-specific to-do list is necessary to move the project forward effectively.
• notes to self like "tell person A about B because he/she might find it interesting"
• active projects & priorities for them (consequence of learning the Getting Things Done method and exploring some other time management techniques)
• observations about my own behavior & emotions (a.k.a. personal diary)
• what my acquaintances said or believe in, based on our conversations
• feedback I received from others
• thoughts on what worked or didn't work in certain life situations (a kind of self-feedback)
• rules of behavior I consider worth adopting (more on these rules in a separate post)
• knowledge extracted from conversations / trainings / books; detailed book notes for some non-fiction books
• things that might be very cool to experience in the future, e.g. volunteer in a poor country, start a local community workshop for kids, fly a plane, or visit that cute girl I met in Beijing last year
• ideas for products, business or society improvement
• questions I would like to know an answer to, some examples: How could we turn every person with a cellphone into a participant of scientific experiment (source of data points) in important fields like medicine, economics, psychology or energy? How much time people waste every day by dealing with ineffective post office and government agencies that have poor procedures, and what realistic changes could be developed to minimize that waste so the whole country becomes more productive? What makes me think that what I consider a waste of time (like watching tv news) is indeed waste of time for other people; evidence?

Tools I use for note taking, with emphasis on GMail and Google Docs due to their accessibility from any place in the world and apparent reliability: 

• Gmail: I sent short emails to myself with notes and links; the ones I want to keep & process later are then labeled appropriately (e.g. 'blog' if it's a candidate for a blog post). 
• Google Docs: I keep one main document where I add all new notes regardless of their kind; I also have a couple satellite documents, each focused on one kind of information or specific one topic. 
• mobile phone: AK Notepad is a good Android app. It is fast, simple, reliable and free. It has a useful "Share this note" feature which allows for very quick emailing (useful since Gmail is my main online storage area for text aside from Google Docs)
• occasionally, a simple text editor on a laptop if I don't have an internet connection
• ietherpad.com is an interesting tool, offspring of EtherPad. It was intended as a realtime online collaborative text editor, but I use it on my own. The reason is that it records the text as it is being typed, character after character, and allows the user to "replay" how it was being typed in form of animation. Very fun and revealing of my own writing process.
• paper notebooks of various sizes to take notes when in town, in a training, or on the bus. Typing on touchscreen mobile keyboards sucks. Voice input on Android has too low quality to be practical.

You may wonder why I use standard text editor instead of specialized software. I tried lots of different note-taking and to-do list software like Evernote, Remember the Milk, GMail Tasks or products built by 37 Signals. I find them all inadequate. They are too tedious and too slow to use for the high volume of notes I maintain. Since I no longer distinguish between short "to-do" items and all the other kinds of notes, most of the features of these software tools are useless. In contrast, a simple text editor is flexible and efficient. It can keep a to do list, priority list, and tags (labels) for the items if necessary. Keeping a hierarchy is possible with nested bulleted lists. Headings make creating visual groupings easy. Text can be formatted as needed; copying and pasting always works; rapid editing of multiple items requires minimum keystroke overhead.

Text document by itself is not great for organizing the notes though. I am experimenting to work around that. If a document I keep becomes large, it is hard to keep track of what is a to do item, what needs to be tackled soon, what is just an idea etc. just by looking at the screen. In order to contain that chaos of a file consisting thousands of lines of text, I adopted a simple tagging system. Most entries in a document are single line items, so I add tags (labels) at the beginning of each line:

todo, money: some bank errand to run
productivity: some rule how to be more effective at knowledge work
feedback: John said I should take things less seriously

A colleague of mine, Mathieu, wrote a script (thanks!) that extends Emacs text editor such that I can filter the document by any tag within a few seconds. When I do this, all non-matching lines disappear. I can then keep adding or editing the lines I want to focus on, which rarely extend beyond one screen. Very useful tool. 

I am now working on extending that concept of editor with filters and tags such that the items are persistent (more like a database) and shareable, but still can be worked on as a text file for efficiency. The goal is to build a good knowledge collection and sharing tool. If you are a software developer who values tools like delicious.com and you would be willing to help me develop such an online tool, I will be delighted to show you what I got so far. Let me know.

I review the todo-style notes daily, and the other ones every few weeks. I remove the ones which are no longer relevant, but the main document only grows over time. When a lot of material on a certain topic accumulates, I usually create a separate file just for that topic, and invest much more focused effort into that area.

To summarize, the mindset I adopted is that in order to learn effectively and keep my commitments to people I need to keep good notes somewhere. Writing things down while they are in my working memory is the best way I know not to forget the best ideas, and promises I made. Having them in one place is practical, as suggested by David Allen in Getting Things Done method. Most notes turn out to be useless later on, but the cost of taking them is so low compared to the value I derive from them that it's a no brainer.

Taking notes is useful

Summary: I take a lot of notes. They are useful in many ways: they aid thinking, make writing for publishing easier, weaken the load on memory, and allow for unbiased self-reflection on past behavior.

I take a lot of notes. I was taught to take notes at school, but over time it has grown into a very strong habit which I apply to all areas of my life. I can no longer recall a day on which I did not take at least a single note.

Notes are a great extension of memory, a tool for learning. Whenever I hear something interesting, or I have an idea, or I spot something worth learning about (e.g. a person's name, a product or a concept), I am likely to forget that very quickly. So I take a note on my phone or in a notebook, and never worry about forgetting these little things. Next time I review my notes, I may choose to ignore some of them, but information is there. This general approach to collect information in a written form instead of memorizing it is probably my most important takeaway from the Getting Things Done method.

For example, a few months ago I started taking detailed notes from books. Previously it was normal for me to forget most of what I read; I was only able to recall the main thesis of each book. Notes turn out to be a simple way to keep & share the learnings from books. For audiobooks I take notes in a paper notebook. With Kindle, I highlight key passages with the built-in software function. Taking notes when reading paper books is hard. I can't keep a book in my hand and write at the same time; it is impossible on the go. This is one of the reasons I prefer digital books over paperbacks.

Notes are also helpful when I write for others. I have been publishing on a number of topics for several years now, mostly through blogs. Notes are the raw material for writing. They are ideas, observations, questions, sometimes concepts or names to explore further. The more notes I have, the easier it is to pick something and expand it into a good post for my blog. 

Writing in general is a great tool for thinking, and taking notes frequently facilitates my whole discovery process. To a large extent, notes guide my learning. Writing not only allows me to record my thoughts, but it also shapes them. I frequently read and edit my notes; I remove things I no longer agree with, add new material, or rephrase statements that just do not sound right. It does not matter whether given text is intended to be published or it is just for my own consumption; notes always contribute to the thinking process. I highly recommend "Thinking on Paper", a book that aptly explains this aspect of writing.

Another use of notes is treating them as a simple diary. I frequently write about what happened on a given day, how I felt about some issue, or what I thought about some matter, personal or professional. These notes are a great tool for self-reflection. As months pass by, they provide an unbiased view of what I really thought and felt in the past (remember that human memory frequently gives inaccurate recollection of our emotional past). That way I can spot spotting trends in my own behavior and act on the ones I find negative.

I will share more detail on how exactly I keep & work with notes in another post.

Making friends in a new country is hard

Summary: finding new friends after moving to a different country is a skill that requires conscious effort.

I spent the last 20 months living in Zurich, working for Google. I learned three things during my stay in Switzerland: that I need frequent contact with close friends to stay happy; that maintaining relationships at a distance isn't nearly as nurturing as meeting friends in person; and finally, that it is hard to create new network of friends in a foreign country. 

At home, in Wrocław, I never had to consciously "create a social network". I have several friends there, mostly from high school, college, and work; then there are friends of those friends that I met. It was always more than I could possibly ask for, or maybe even handle.     

Living abroad, however, weakened these "original" relationships. They no longer nurtured me the way I wanted them to. Even frequent visits to Poland did not help much. So I realized I need to find new friends. Easier said than done! I did not create such a network of friends until now, and I was becoming a bit unhappy because of that.

I did meet a lot of new people through work - in fact, I probably shook hands with at least four hundred people, and I could easily name a hundred with whom I actually worked. I made a few good friends at Google, some in Switzerland, some in California which I visited a couple times. However, these relationships rarely extend beyond casual time together at work, when we meet for lunch or a coffee. I do not get connected to local society at all. A byproduct of spending lots of time with people from work is decreased motivation to learn the local language, since everyone at work speaks good English. 

I do not have the usual "hooks" into society, like school or friends of friends, because most Googlers here are expats just like I am. They have been living here not much longer than I have, and most still only know a few locals. 

On a typical day, I do not feel like going out and just meeting new people; I am not used to this, but even more importantly, I do not have much time or energy for that. Why? Well, working as product manager is a difficult, emotionally draining job; after work I need time for myself  - a lot of time! I rest, play, reflect, read and write. By the time I am ready to engage in social activities again, it is Sunday evening.

I talked about this with a few coworkers. They said they have the same difficulty; some also pointed out that there is something about Zurich and Switzerland in particular that makes socializing with locals harder - a closed culture. I do not know whether this is true; I have little comparison. 

I now consider creating a social life in a new city a skill - skill that requires planning and conscious effort. I will work to develop that skill, since I would like the freedom to live in many different countries during my lifetime. When deciding to come to Zurich for work two years ago, I simply did not think that I need to treat making local friends as a separate important project. A valuable experience.

Outcome bias

Outcome bias is the tendency to evaluate the quality of a decision based on the known outcome of that decision. If result is good, we think the decision was good; if result is bad, we think that the decision was bad.

This conclusion is perhaps a simple one, but very often it is meaningless. As Nassim Taleb nicely put it, any information acquired after a decision is made should not be used to judge the quality of that decision! 

Outcome is one such piece of information that is only acquired after the decision is made - and yet we seem to have a very hard time disconnecting decisions from their outcomes; we have a tendency to judge them together.

Here is one example of how outcome bias manifests. You play Texas Holdem poker with a bunch of friends. There are five players. You look at your cards, you got ace and queen. Not bad! You raise preflop and get one caller. On the flop you hit two pair. You bet a lot, the other guy raises you, you go all-in, which happens to be a big re-raise. The other guy thinks for a moment, and eventually calls. He shows an ace and a five, which only makes a top pair. You are way ahead... In fact, you have more than 98% chance to win if the cards are properly shuffled. You get relaxed and wait for the other two cards. Unfortunately, two more fives pop up, and he hits a full house. You are very upset - the guy made a terrible call and still wins a huge pot.

But it gets worse. The guy nods his head with a smile and says: "I made a good call." You get furious, and you want to rip his head off. "What an idiot! He had such a tiny chance to win, and he thinks he made the right decision just because the outcome was good. Moron!"

Well, he may be a moron, and he certainly is a victim of outcome bias. In poker it is actually good for you if other players are clueless about outcome bias, but in other areas of life, like business or government, I would rather have people be more resistant to it.

Outcome bias makes it difficult for us to learn how to make better decisions, especially when risk is involved. And how often do we make decisions which involve no risk anyway?

How often do you read that certain investor must have a great market strategy "because" he is having great financial results? How often do you see someone claiming that they possess great skills at their job and "kick ass" with the "proof" being market success of a product they have just launched?

The problem with the outcome bias is that usually many hidden factors play a role in determining result of an action. Outcomes are clearly visible to us, so we use them as a proxy to evaluate a decision. But we do not really know why things go certain way. We just believe things are easy to explain.

Listen carefully to explanations of events and decisions people give to you, and you will learn a lot about how they think. I am concerned when people I care about are unaware of this bias. I accept that I do not know the quality of my decisions. I do not assume that decisions I am taking are good just because results are good, and vice versa. Most life situations are far more complex.

Try Wikipedia for more information on the outcome bias and other cognitive biases. "Fooled by Randomness" and "The Black Swan" provide a lot of anecdotes on related topics, and there are plenty of scientific articles about the phenomenon.

Writing skills

Most non-fiction books I read are too long, many are poorly written in general. Authors routinely repeat themselves, play with anecdotes and explanations that do not strengthen their arguments, or describe several nearly identical examples when one would suffice. I recognize that it is especially challenging for a non-native speaker to write well, and some of the books I have been reading recently were written by people for whom English is second language. However, isn't it the editor's job to help with that? And what about those many well educated, native speakers? I do not see a connection between the quality of the author's insight and the quality of his writing. 

Clear, concise books are priceless. I admire 37 signals team for their short, fun and informative "Rework". I regret that "The Black Swan" is so hard to read, because it probably makes many people abandon it or not recommend it to others (despite its great content).

When a book I'm reading is too long, but seems to have valuable content, I try skipping parts that are just illustrations of an argument the author had already made. When it is just poorly written - which often implies poor structure - it is hard to skip large fragments without risking losing important content.   

I realize I will have to work hard to become a good writer myself. I have always enjoyed writing and it seems to be growing in importance in my life. This blog is an exercise in writing just as much as it is a tool for recording and sharing what I learn. I am spending considerable time editing each post even after it is published. I share some of the articles with a friend or two before publishing to get feedback - a practice I borrowed from Paul Graham. I have recently read "The Elements of Style". I am now experimenting with Etherpad as a tool to find out a bit about my own process of writing. Here's an example of what it can do for you (hit the "Play" button). I also started reading "Thinking on Paper", a book about how the process of writing not only allows you to record thoughts, but also facilitates thinking and discovery. I welcome your feedback on my writing style.

Learning about emotions

Summary: I have been learning about various aspects of emotional life proactively for more than a year now, and I point you to a couple of great resources that I found helpful throughout that time. Jump to the end of the post for the links.

I have been studying some aspects of the science of emotions for over a year now, though in a rather unstructured fashion. It all started a few years back when I first realized that the greatest challenges I am facing in my life are part of my emotional life. I began to understand that if I want to be a happy, self-reliant and valuable individual, I simply have to learn how to regulate and use my own emotions, and how to deal with the emotions of other people. For the most part of my life I was oblivious to my own emotions: I was not aware of how I felt, why I felt that way, and how it affected my behavior. Moreover, I had no clue what other people felt, or what it meant, except for more obvious, extreme emotions like someone shouting at me. As you can imagine, being emotionally blind did not make me the happiest guy around.

At some point I decided I needed assistance in solving my day to day struggle. I reached out to a psychologist, and was lucky enough to meet a very good one. I slowly became aware of my emotions. I began to see how circumstances affect me, and how my own behavior affects others. It was a true revelation. I consider the successful completion of this learning process the most important event in my adult life. It has given me the freedom and the tool to actually start changing my life for the better.

Soon after my curiosity kicked in, and I began to read a lot on the topic. Based on written word and reflection on daily interactions with a few good friends, I started building skills and understanding that would help me control and use y emotions in the best possible way. I explored the topic of emotion from a variety of perspectives, mostly through popular science books, Internet websites and my own "practice" (talking to people, using a diary to have trusted experiential reports, therapy).

Here are some of the best learning sources on emotion that I found so far which I can heartily recommend if you find yourself a victim of your own emotions a bit too often:

• Daniel Goleman's books "Emotional Intelligence" and "Social Intelligence", are a great overview of the many aspects of emotional life (both within a person and between people), importance of emotion regulation, and description of physiological mechanisms that underlie emotion - along with pointers to research papers on pretty much every topic a dilettante might want to explore further 
• "Drive" by Daniel Pink and "Nudge" by Richard Thaler deal with the science of motivation and decision making in certain important scenarios; I don't like the style of the books, but results and concepts they cover have consequences for many areas of our daily life
• "Stumbling on Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert is a wonderful story on how and why we are unable to predict what will make us happy and even misremember our emotional past 
• mindfulness and meditation is an interesting area that has shown promise in training our emotional muscles; one good starting resource are recordings of Google talks, including a talk by Philippe Goldin titled "Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation", and two talks by Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn" and "Mindfulness Stress Reduction and Healing"  
• "Predictably Irrational" and "Upside of Irrationality" by Dan Ariely are stories of research showing that humans are not rational animals; heuristics and cognitive biases are closely related to behavioral economics research which is central topic of these books 
• Paul Ekman's research into facial expressions and body language, with simple (but introductory) online training in recognizing emotions from brief facial expressions, and books describing these topics in detail: "Unmasking the Face", "Emotions Revealed" and "Telling Lies" (I only read the first one so far; it's tedious to read but thorough) 
• in general, fields (or buzzwords :) that are of particular interest of mine now are: cognitive neuroscience, behavioral economics and whatever else can be helpful in making better decisions, improving my communication, emotion regulation and other interpersonal skills 
• support and feedback from close friends, family and some of my colleagues were, not surprisingly, very important; this was the playground, and the mirror
• interaction with a psychotherapist was definitely the most intense and transformative experience I have had so far; it involved a lot of effort on my own part, and spanned a long, tumultuous period of my personal and professional life, which invoked all kinds of emotions; this depends a lot on the therapist and personal preference - I was lucky to find someone whose style matched mine very well

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I read "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. A fascinating book.

It took a while; it is not an easy read, nor is the style particularly appealing to me. The message of the book, however, is profound. I feel compelled to re-read the book (which is very rare) to understand it better. I am also humbled: I want to share with you what I have read, but I am not sure I can do it in a way that will encourage you to read the book. And you should read it, so that you become aware of the black swan problem, and manifestations of the many other human-conceived (!) problems related to it. 

I'll only cover the main point of the book here, which is the Black Swan itself.

In short, all events in the world are divided into two realms: Mediocristan and Extremistan. 

Mediocristan is where no single observation (in a big enough sample) can significantly affect the aggregate. Height of humans is a simple example. If you take a few hundred people, and take their average height, there is no human whose height would significantly disrupt the average if added to the sample. Height/weight of people, or life expectancy, are from Mediocristan.

Extremistan is different. In Extremistan, a single new observation can completely disrupt the aggregate. An example is stock market. You may have a stock that stays steady for years, and than on one day it skyrockets by a few hundred percent, which makes returns on that stock from all time before that day (say, +75% since IPO) get dwarfed by returns from that single last day (say, +300% on a single day).

The author writes:

"What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable."

Black Swans are from Extremistan.

Most of our social and economic world is in the realm of Extremistan. Wealth, income, social status, wars, politics, success in business, book sales, etc. all have properties of the Extremistan. 

The problem is that people mistakenly believe that these matters are from Mediocristan (which is very strongly connected with Gaussian statistics). That lack of awareness of the distinction between the two makes people especially susceptible to negative Black Swans in almost all areas of life.

Now, Black Swans by definition cannot be predicted - but being aware of which area of your life has what properties (Extremistan or Mediocristan) can help you not to be a sucker. 

Why am I so excited about this book?

First, it has proven me wrong in a way that made me feel better. That is rare. Rarely I feel better after someone proves me wrong about something! I was not wrong in my absence of awareness of the black swans - I was wrong in falling for what the author calls "narrative fallacy", and in my Platonic attitude towards life: my general preference to prefer theories and elegant analytical concepts (mental models) over empirical, a bit dirty approach to "doing" things.

Author advocates empirical skepticism. I was always a skeptic, allright - much more so than almost any of my friends (most of which are otherwise educated, smart people). But I was a Platonic skeptic - basically, an idiot wanting the world to fit my thoughts rather than someone trying to adjust my thoughts to the world.

Second reason of excitement comes from the feeling of vindication. "I was right." I have always felt that people have no clue why things happen certain way, that most of the predictions people make are worth nothing, that people do not realize the extent to which randomness drives events, and that people believe too much in their ability to explain events. I am a skeptic, I have an inquiring, analytical mind. Most people don't. Groupthink, well sounding explanations, hindsight bias etc. are all things I had to deal with somehow, and I thought maybe I was being stupid? I was always able to provide several alternate plausible explanations for every one provided by my adversaries - but they never gave up, they were sure they got it right. 

The author suggests that I'm not wrong. Of course, I have committed many of the same intellectual crimes as the people I considered to be "stupid" - but hey, at least I am honest enough to now say that I don't know something, and that I cannot predict the future. I used to be a pure Platonic skeptic. Well, I will now rethink my attitude... and hopefully be more of an empirical skeptic. But I realize there is much more depth to my rather vague feeling that people suck at making proper conclusions from events.

I will keep working on the book; as usual I took lots of notes. The book is deep, and may have applications to most areas of life. Just reading it once is not enough for me. It'll take the time to really process it. I'm really grateful to the author. I read his previous book, "Fooled by Randomness", but even though it touches almost the same topic, it had less content and was far less convincing.

Some links:

• Nassim Taleb's website and Twitter account
• Wikipedia article on the Black Swan based on the book

If you read the book, let me know your thoughts. A big "thank you" goes to the author of the book.

Lost luggage handling by Lufthansa

Summary: my luggage got lost at an airport some time ago. Lufthansa handled the situation nicely and I got my bag back at home only a few hours later. It actually improved my opinion of the company.

I was on a Lufthansa flight from Munich to Zurich the other day. I had one bag checked which did not arrive with me in Zurich. I reported it at the lost & found desk. I showed my ticket, the clerk looked it up on the computer and said that it's already being loaded onto the next flight to Zurich, which would arrive in an hour. I was assured I should get the bag delivered at home within two hours. So I got on a train, and indeed I got the bag by taxi around 2.5 hours later.

While I was waiting, I was able to check the bag's status in an online application, so I even knew when it was picked up by the taxi driver. 

I was not happy about having the luggage lost, but I was very happy about the way situation was handled, in particular how quickly it was found. Having an online application to check what's going on was also useful. I really needed the contents of the bag the same day, so I was impatient.

The fact that they were clearly in control of a situation was important. They knew where the bag was and had a good plan for fixing the issue. My anxiety ("What if I don't get it back?") was addressed nicely by up to date information from the lost & found team and by an online application which gave me a sense of control. 

Overall, very positive experience with Lufthansa and Zurich airport staff. Now this might be typical scenario with lost luggage, but the fact I only experienced it once with that particular company and they handled it well has improved my opinion of Lufthansa.