Jakub Petrykowski blog

Thoughts on willpower, blood sugar and learning too fast

A few random thoughts:

• Willpower - is it a depletable resource? Or maybe it isn't? The article suggests it's probably a dead end. Based on my small experiments with diet changes, changing habits in my case requires environment control, self-education, self-awareness and planning. No moment-to-moment willpower necessary, and in fact if it comes down to that, I usually fail and eat that delicious but unhealthy treat/cookie/pizza.
• I've bought & tried a glucometer. Very cool device, allows you to test actual effects of food on your blood sugar. It's amazing to be able to perform an actual blood test yourself, at home, within less than a minute, using a device that costs around $20. Brilliant.
• I'm experimenting with eating food which has low glycemic index, and seeing how this affects my moment-to-moment energy level, focus, emotions and optimism. So far the results are very encouraging. If you don't know what it is, and you'd like to have more energy and focus on a typical workday, I recommend learning more about glycemic index. 
• There is a phenomenon I'd call "learning too fast". I've concluded that I was reading too many books, and analyzing various areas of my work and life too much, without acting. The way I evaluate it is by looking at the ratio of applied knowledge (change in a way I do things) to acquired knowledge (instructions on how to do things differently, taken from books, friends etc.). This ratio is appallingly low for me. I'd say that I apply maybe 5-10% of what I read in the last year, and that only includes advice that I decided to be meaningful and worthwhile. Rate of knowledge application is just as important as rate of knowledge acquisition. They don't need to be equal, but learning too fast compared to applying what you learn may lead to frustration ("I learned so much, but there are no improvements in my daily work/life") and is just waste if you dedicate lots of resources to it.

Self-control and hyperbolic discounting in humans

Summary: the way people choose smaller-sooner rewards or larger-later rewards is well modelled with hyperbolic discounting, as opposed to exponential discounting known from the world of finance. I am wondering if there's a technology we could use to make people choose larger-later rewards more consistently.

I did some reading on self-control recently, and so I found out about hyperbolic discounting through the book The Science of Self-Control. It shows an approach to self-control, along with its consequences for addiction.

If you like video, here's 3 short videos discussing temporal discounting (in order of appearance: no discounting, exponential discounting, hyperbolic discounting).

The key concept here is preference reversal. Apparently, humans (and some animals) tend to prefer larger-later (LL) rewards to sooner-smaller (SS) rewards if both are available in the sufficiently far future. But as time goes by, SS reward becomes disproportionately more valuable and at some point becomes the preferred choice - just because both are now much closer in time.

For example: in the evening we plan to get up at 7 am rather than 9 am, but in the morning that preference seems absurd and we prefer to sleep until 9 am. 

Put another way: instant gratification (smaller-sooner, SS) pleases the present self while delayed reward (larger-later, LL) benefits the future self.

The book presents the idea and lots of related research, along with how this relates to the development of addiction.

For those really interested: Hyperbolic discounting model contains a constant, the discount factor. The lower the constant, the more likely we're to choose larger-later rewards. Research on humans and various animals (e.g. pigeons) indicates that the more developed the animal, the lower the discount factor, i.e. the longer the perspective when making choices. Also, for humans, the older a person is the lower that factor is (i.e. experience makes humans do better choices over time).

I'm haunted by vision of a technology that would help people make better decisions. We usually know which option is the best in the long term, but we act against that judgement anyway. If there was something that would reverse the trend...

Now some tricks mentioned in the book include broadening time horizon when making decisions, or including commitment mechanisms (e.g. setting our environment up so that the SS choice would be more painful should we choose it in the future). However, they are all "soft" mechanisms, i.e. prone to manipulation by ourselves and in my experience simply don't work.

I'm wondering what would work, e.g. what technology or training.

Everyone wants to be around optimists

Summary: Most people prefer to spend time with optimists, but because pessimists are more numerous, and because optimists frequently avoid pessimists, few have the luxury of spending time only with optimists. Optimist and pessimists thus create separate clusters.

Sources: I've done little research on this topic, so I'll just point you to three topics which you can read about a bit on Wikipedia: Explanatory style, Optimism, Martin Seligman (psychologist who discovered the state of learned helplessness and seems to have worked on optimism & explanatory style), and a long article on optimism vs pessimism. 

The reason why I'm writing about it is because I think it's such a brilliant description of attitudes of people around me -- emotional and verbal (explanatory!) attitudes. I used to be on both sides of the spectrum at different times in my life, and I also have spent lots of time with both very pessimistic and very optimistic people. I have seen how these groups affect me, and what kind of emotional reality they create in me. I was moved by the simplicity of the distinction dr Seligman describes in his short video below. You can guess which group I decided to stick with :)

Definition: Who's an optimist and who's a pessimist? Watch the first minute of the video below.

  

Definition summary:

When a pessimist has a bad experience or a setback, he thinks:

- It's going to last forever

- It's going to undermine everything

- It's my fault.

An optimist with a bad experience thinks:

- it's temporary

- it has little to do with me

- it only affects one small part of my life

Now reverse each one for reaction to a positive experience.

Now a few thoughts based on my personal experience.

• once you get this explanation in your head, it gets very easy to quickly spot optimists and pessimists around you - just listen to how people explain their life circumstances, problems, successes and failure, how they distance themselves (or not) from external forces like weather, boss, job, politics etc.
• it might look like optimists are irrational, even delusional. It very well could be. I think this is not a problem for most optimists, because it mostly applies to their life's history -- not to their plans! For example, when an optimist is planning what to do next, he'll generally see things quite similar to everyone else - but he'll get so much more motivation and support from their (perhaps completely inaccurate) beliefs!
• for the most part it is the optimists that share smiles with everyone for no apparent reason, speak in excited tones about anything, and generally appear to have a good day more often than others 
• I don't care if there's a "pure pessimist" and a "pure optimist" out there - it's more important to classify someone's general explanatory style as mostly pessimistic or optimistic.

Here's why I think this model of optimistic vs pessimistic attitude is such a useful tool for handling relationships with others:

1. optimists share lots of joy, hope, happiness, smile and - broadly speaking - positive emotions with others. It's not to say that they only share these things, but typical meetings of optimists have this positive tone. 
2. pessimists share concern, worry, critical analysis, stories of problems and - broadly speaking - how life is a burden to them or to others, and how things won't ever change for the better.
3. because of 1. and 2., almost everyone prefers to spend time with optimists
4. there are fewer optimists than pessimists in societies (I also believe that for example in Poland the ratio is at least as bad as 4:1 for pessimists, or worse. This is a hunch though - no analysis done.)
5. many optimists have much more power in life than pessimists (they have more energy/hope to try new things, more friends, better jobs, more money, thus more freedom) and realize that they can choose who they spend time with. Not surprisingly, they wall off pessimists because pessimists steal positive energy and introduce too much anxiety and frustration into optimists' life.
6. clusters of optimistic people are created. pessimists cluster together as well, probably because having pessimists around is better than having nobody
7. many people spend most of their life without a single optimist around them (I believe it's completely destructive), falling into learned helplessness in important areas of life   

And a few concluding thoughts (again, these are my own hunches and combination of opinions of some of my mentors - not research-backed results!):

• It might be possible to change one's style. I can't say I have a clear example in my mind though! If any of you do, I'd love to hear the story :)
• it should be relatively simple to fake optimism when interacting with others, at least for a while, and in fact some aspects of this attitude are shared in many self-help, team-work and communication resouces. I'm not sure how to fake emotions, but for verbal communication some typical tips are:
  • do not complain. DO NOT COMPLAIN! It's so trivial, but apparently so hard to do (I still do it from time to time, then apologize for complaining to the people around me and quickly change the topic :). There's a fine line between complaining and sharing one's bad experience :) Perhaps just laughing and making a joke out of it is all that it takes...
  • when trouble comes, become "constructive', i.e. admit that you/someone has a problem (one of the hardest things to do for humans :) and focus on finding & executing a solution (not just finding and rejecting every single one after critical analysis, without trying :)
  • praise others, even for small accomplishments
  • praise yourself, even for small accomplishments
• if faking works for a while, perhaps it works longer term, too (it's just practice in looking at life events in a different way and paying more attention to good things)
• family is first important environment where it's possible for someone to be surrounded exclusively by pessimists.

Happy optimizing your life :)

The need to explain and our brain's terrible ability to satisfy that need

Whenever something happens and is observed by people, sooner or later a question pops up.

"Why?"

Why did Facebook succeed? Why did that guy die so early? Why did her marriage fail? Why didn't I win the competition? Why did she reject me? Why did noone prevent Hitler from raising to such power? Why won't people buy the product? Why did I get the headache?

I ask this question myself all the time, and I see that others do, too. In every aspect of our lives, we ask this question, often without noticing.

What's amazing is that we almost always find an explanation, and we do so instantly. Isn't that ridiculous? Exactly how is it possible that we always think we know why something happened?! Where is this illusion coming from?

Ask anyone from tech industry about the reasons of success or failure of some high profile company and you'll see that they have no trouble answering. In fact, most of the time they won't even reflect on the process - they will just start producing hypotheses (without presenting them as such) and, if prompted, also "evidence".

I know hate being wrong. I was wrong so many times before... and though I don't like it, I know I will be mistaken in the future, too. It was somewhat painful to read books like "The Black Swan", "How we know what isn't so" or "Stumbling on Happiness". They all discuss the matters of false belief, illusion of correctness, cognitive biases and unpredictability or lack of explanations in our lives. Also I have a friend who was a great guide for me in how I changed the way I think of "correctness", credibility etc. of our explanations. Thanks, P. :) These were worthy lessons.

Some typical answers when someones asks about reasons behind success, failure or certain behavior of other people: 

• "They were first to market so they had the first mover advantage."
• "They were later to market, so they learned from first mover's mistakes."
• "They didn't listen to their users so they failed to satisfy their needs."
• "They didn't listen to their users who weren't able to express the real needs so they satisfied those real needs better."
• "He's mean. He's just showing me that he's got the power here."
• "He was distracted. Surely he didn't want to hurt my feelings."

And on it goes... We do it all the time. Our brains are good at producing stories that "fit" what we see. 

It may be worth realising that:

• most of the time these explanations are false
• most of those explanations are very general and biased, not taking into account the silent,  contradicting evidence (cases where the opposite happened, but which are unknown or aren't recalled in a given moment) 
• often we aren't even aware of the fact that we are in the "explaining" mode. It usually feels like discussion of facts (which are known & seen) and feelings (our internal states we usually know best) where in fact it's a discussion of unknown and hidden processes we rarely have any information about.
• our brains do all of this nearly effortlessly and automatically
• our brains create the illusion that those explanations are correct (because they "make sense") and important (i.e. worth paying attention to, worth defending when others challenge them)

It requires extraordinary effort & humility to not fall into this trap. What it means?

• try to "catch" myself when I try to explain an event or even excuse something
• once I catch myself, actively stop myself from "explaining". Go on with without an explanation. It's hard, but yeah, just live with the facts for a while, and accept them for what they are.
• accept that I will never know true cause of most of what happens around me, and especially I may never understand (or noone may!) the causes of complex events. Some complex events include Black Swan events, such as which company becomes dominant in some industry or why some guy wins the election and the other doesn't. It also includes much smaller scale and trivial events, such as why someone looks at me in a certain way, why I get rejected by a girl, or why I have a headache tonight.
• have the courage to say "I don't know" when others ask me questions like: "why did you do it?", "why did you quite your job?", "why did you like this movie?".
• have the courage to say "I don't know" when I am perceived as an expert in some field of work, and someone wants me to explain causes of some process I am not 100% sure I understand very well (through deep experience with the nature of this process).
  
  For example, when someone asks me a question "why is usability testing with other people better than having a good designer just evaluate the interface?" I can explain the process with confidence because I spent a couple of years doing both and observing others do both, and I know the typical blind spots of an expert which contribute to the value of observing other users work with the application (even if I don't fully understand why those blinds spots still exist despite expert's years of practice!).
  
  When someone asks me "why is Twitter so popular?", even though I read dozens of articles about it, I have some data on Twitter, I have been working "in the field" and spoke about this and similar sites and processes with many people, I realize that without the perspective of Twitter owners, lots of data on internet users behavior and traffic patterns, analysis of tweets' contents en masse etc. it may simply be impossible to tell what the real reasons are.
• luck / chance is a hidden force we are poor at detecting and understanding, and very frequently we see patterns in noise 

The practical observation for me is that more often than not it's much more productive to keep experimenting (try different approaches and observe the results). If it's hard to get to real causes, what's left is simply trying and seeing what sticks. The benefits are that it's harder to delude yourself (results are observable facts ; what you did is observable fact and repeatable). It is sometimes better to treat people's motivation and behaviors as black boxes, and just see "when I do X, what happens is Y", and try as many X's as possible to learn what gives you the result Y you like.

Of course you can produce explanations, and perhaps discover the real ones in the process. So much the better - you can then explain it and teach it to others. But it's not really necessary to live day-to-day.

I know that it's hard for me to supress this "explanation machine". I often feel ashamed after I play the guessing game just because someone asked me the question with this word "why" and I didn't notice what I'm doing. Sometimes we are experts about the process - but more often then not we aren't, and so is the case of other people. When others claim that something happened "because" - especially for big, significant events - take it with a grain of salt, and treat the explanation as a random hypothesis, not as a statement of fact. People don't discern well between facts and opinions, and explanations are stated very frequently as facts. Don't believe them, because most of the time they are people's interpretations and guesses of invsible, complex and unknown processes.

Most people don't know what will make them happy because they never try anything

I had an interesting conversation about happiness with a bunch of guys.

We touched on a number of related topics, such as perception of the "rat race" in business. When asked about his definition of that phenomenon, one guy said that he thinks almost everyone in modern society works very hard to get more and better stuff which makes for a bad market for employees. In particular, people work to get better stuff than their friends or neightbours have. They work very hard and sacrifice a lot of time and freedom in hope that certain things and experiences (marketed through mass media over the years) will bring them happiness. 

I don't know if I agree with the part that people work for the sole purpose of realizing those misguided dreams --  but I agree about the part about dreams themselves.

I think that most people want to be happy in a similar way, but they live in a certain way hoping or believing that these things like bigger plasma TV or better car will bring them happiness.  The problem is that most people live in a way that is so similar to each other and so commoditized that what they believe will make them happy is in fact a product of strong forces such as marketing of international brands or most prominent "desired lifestyles" in a given society. 

What is missing for most people is actual experimentation. Many people have limited experience in major areas of their life. They live  in one city in their home country for decades; they are rarely if ever exposed to foreigners, and definitely never for an extended period of life. They only ever worked a regular, full time job, not trying freelance or starting their own business, or even being a manager (which is usually a radically different job from being an individual contributor). They are focused very much on a single industry rather than trying various different industries. They have few (if any) friends from outside their "class" / social circle, and they don't seek much more.

I have seen people from my parents' generation and people from my own generation whose life looks like a museum to me: it hasn't changed at all in the past 10 years or more. It is amazing to me. They do same things, eat the same way, dress the same way, have the same items at home ( most of which they never use but won't part with it), unchanged beliefs (!), no new friends etc. etc.

I think many people are not content with their life in part because they never really explore the world, so they can only get happy through luck. They never try finding a job /partner / place / hobby long enough to get a great match with their personality/abilities etc. They let mostly other people, especially the family, mass marketing and the media to produce their dreams of happiness.  That indeed could lead to consumptionism and "rat race", since it serves big brands and employers very well. People will work hard to get the cash for something they hope will make them happy.

Another piece of this is also the fact that we humans suck at predicting what will make us happy. Also there's some research on motivation at work, its relation to rewards etc. but I don't care here too much about motivation - I'm just saying I am a strong believer in experimenting with different things, trying different jobs and places etc. I'm not particularly good at acting on my many ideas of what might feel nice (i.e. I am afraid to try some new hobbies for example), but I've tried lots of different jobs in many places, met lots of people and actively working on meeting more and more diverse people etc. And I like this a lot. I think I am as happy a person now largely because I never settled and I learned a good deal about my own preferences. 

Now perhaps many of those who work hard eventually get happy when they get "it". The "it" they wanted not because they experimented a bit and found something they like very much, but the one that was programmed into them by their information environment: family, media, marketers. But I think most people never get it, and of those who do, many are still unsatisfied because what they were after didn't fit them, or doesn't fit human nature at all.

When I was preparing for my trip, nearly everyone said "wow, it sounds great and daring and interesting, I wish I could go, it must kick ass". Well, guess what. For me it didn't. After a week I was bored with sightseeing and tired with moving around all the time. I missed people from my hometown again and I decided to go back and stay in Wroclaw during the winter, despite high "hopes" for having nice warm weather in the Polish cold months.

I tried and it wasn't nearly as fun as I thought it would be. Now I know. I was really surprised by the outcome. 

Now, out of those many people who said it must kick ass etc., how many would actually love a trip like that? Because maybe many would be like me - just get bored or tired, or both. So now I learned something about my preferences. I still may go somewhere if it gets really really cold and I have something specific to do which I could do elsewhere for a month. But I will be careful not to go for a random trip to random places where the main purpose will be to "see places".

In other words, it seems to me that we are prone to overestimate how great some things actually feel, especially if they are outside of our own experience. Moreover, people believe in what media and marketing produce too much. The outcome of media and ads is that many, many people have the same mental image of reality, same dreams etc. But it's not clear that if these dreams come true, the people who have them will actually feel great.

It's probably healthy to test our own dreams.

Meditation - personal experience

Summary: a few words about my experience with meditation plus some resources about its long term effect on cognition and emotions.

There are many types of meditation. This practice has a long history (counting in thousands of years) and is a part of several major religious traditions, such as Hinduism or Buddhism. My interest lies in cognitive and emotional benefits of meditation. I did not try any of the formal meditation paths, and I am not interested in its religious or spiritual background. 

I got interested in meditation when watching videos about the neuroscience of emotions. They mentioned meditation as an interesting example of a long-practiced tradition that has been shown to have positive long-term effects on human cognition and emotions. It got me curious that meditation has something to do with the interplay between prefrontal cortex and the amygdala (regions of the human brain), in particular that it may improve control we exhibit over our emotions. 

Soon afterwards, I participated in a training session for Googlers authored and delivered by Philippe Goldin, researcher at Stanford.  The workshop was a mix of theory and practice. Some of the exercises were basically a form of guided meditation. It was the first time I actually "meditated", even if only for a few minutes. It is an interesting experience, and I am convinced by several mentions by businessmen, book authors & scientists that it is worth trying out as part of my daily routine. I haven't made it a habit yet, but I want to.

The practice itself is very simple. You sit in a quiet place and close your eyes to make concentration easier. You stop doing anything else - talking, working, having fun, watching TV, listening to someone, whatever. Meditation is all about not doing. What you are left with is your body and your mind, nothing else. Some experience a moment of awkwardness ("what, am I supposed to do nothing and just listen to my own thoughts? weird"). I haven't. Perhaps it is all too natural for me, because I am a natural born thinker and tend to be with just my thoughts every day, though not in a structured way and without trying to eliminate distracting stimuli as much.

OK, so I am sitting there on my bed or a chair, with my eyes closed. That's not it. Not yet. The point is where I put my attention. There are a few different ways I can do it.

I can focus my attention on breathing. This was part of the workshop in Google. I am supposed to just feel the air flowing into my airways, at the tip of the nose. In and out. In and out. Calm. Quiet. In and out. Easy to start with.

After a few seconds attention drifts away. Suddenly, the train of thought comes in, and my "head" starts to think about something else - an upcoming meeting, how hungry I feel, something that worries me, etc. The key is to learn to catch this loss of focus as soon as possible.

It is all about attention.

Another point to focus on can be my body in general. I try to connect to how I feel, physically and emotionally. Hungry? Cold? Stressed? Uncomfortable in my body position? Is there some pain?

Staying connected with how I feel many times a day is a useful takeaway. I don't need more than a few seconds of focused attention to realize how I feel. I do it many times a day, sort of a checkpoint system. If there is some strong emotion or discomfort, I can act on it. Meditation built this sense of self very quickly.

Another very interesting form of meditation if directing my attention on the train of thoughts itself. Thoughts come and go. I focus on what kind of thoughts come into my attention. Something pops up. Oh, there is this meeting I am having next week. Am I going to get the decision I want? How do I prepare? Who do I need to talk to? Anxiety... stress... at some point, deliberation about the meeting ends. It slowly fades away. 

Immediately, another thing pops up. Jason! Damn!  I was supposed to call him yesterday, and I forgot. He's going to be mad. I am angry at myself. What a fuckup! I know how important it was. How could I have forgotten? After a few seconds of rumination this topic fades away, too. And this process continues. I let my thoughts go run my head, unguided and unattended to. I do not decide what to think about next. I just keep "looking at my thoughts from a distance". 

The intriguing part is that after a while there are gaps between thoughts. I observe a thought as it fades away. Then, before the next thought shows up, there is blank space, a pause, silence. It lasts a second or two. As I practice longer and longer it gets a bit longer, too. Sometimes I can stay without a thought for as long as ten seconds. This state is very fun.

There are two effects I achieve using meditation. 

It help me stay calm. When my head is full of thoughts, or my body full of emotionally based sensations, a minute or two of meditation allows me to clear my head and calm myself. Simple, valuable effect.

Second effect, which requires me to spend more time meditating, helps me gain distance from everyday things so that I can see them from another perspective.

These are short term effects. I have meditated maybe a couple dozen times so far. It isn't in my daily routine yet.

Like I wrote before, ability do creative work without distracions is critical to me. I consider meditation to be a tool to help build that capacity. If there are other benefits, so much the better.

Interestingly, research suggests that meditation is supposed to have long term benefits for our emotional health. The fact that meditation is strongly grounded in most long lasting religious and philosophical traditions of the world suggests that there are real benefits to it. Dalai Lama, for example, whom I had the pleasure to see in a short lecture session in Centennial Hall in Wroclaw last week, meditates daily. 

Here are some videos depicting the concepts of mindfulness and meditation, and related research:

• "Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation"
• "Mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn" 
• "Mindfulness Stress Reduction and Healing" 

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.

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.

Long-term vs instant gratification in daily habits

Summary: There seems to a big gap between what I'd like to see myself doing and what I'm actually doing.

When making decisions about what to do next, I frequently follow this mental path:

"I should get X done... Well, maybe later. I'll do Y instead." (And I proceed with Y.)

Usually, activity X isn't fun and feels like a chore, even if I believe in its positive long term effect; activity Y provides instant gratification.

I do not fully understand why the gap is so persistent or why is it so big. I feel like when in focused state I am able to come up with solid decisions and plans, but when I am given a choice to execute on those plans, I tend to choose lowest effort activities instead.

I explain it to myself as "lack of discipline", "lack of perseverance" or "lowest effort decision making". I envy those who can play for the long term.

I talked about this to a bunch of friends, and they see the same gap in their own lives. Similar realization is expressed here and there in popular culture. Take the movie "Scent of a Woman":

Now I have come to the cross-roads in my life. I always knew what the right path was. Without exception, I knew, but I never took it. You know why? It was too damn hard. Now here's Charlie. He's come to the cross-roads. He has chosen a path. It's the right path. It's a path made of principle that leads to character. Let him continue on his journey. 

(Quoted thanks to IMDb community: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105323/quotes?qt0272334)

Some examples where this feeling kicks in:

 

• eating healthy. I tend to eat a lot of junk even though I believe health is critical long term and I desire to be in good health. I know how to eat healthy (to a degree), but unless I have it in easy access (e.g. cafeteria at the office serving something healthy and tasty), I usually eat whatever is easiest to get and whatever tastes best. Which usually means junk.
• exercise. I have extensive periods of almost complete lack of any extensive physical activity, despite having read significant amount of books based by researchers that convinced me of its importance. Exercise makes me healthier (that I read in books), and it makes me feel better (that is from experience). But most of the time I avoid it, unless it's a very enjoyable experience, like playing soccer or going for a bike ride after a long break.
• prioritizing at work. I tend to fall into the trap of acting on urgent matters first even though after even a little thinking the set of tasks I consider important is entirely different. It's a constant battle between incoming stimuli or requests and what reasonable plans made in isolation from those stimuli.
• other changes in behavior. Whenever I come up with a new rule for my own behavior through intellectual process (reading, talking to people, introspecting), it takes weeks if not months to implement it. For instance, I'd like to get more social and spend less time on individual entertainment activities (watching favorite TV series or playing computer games).  I have seen the benefits, and I believe this is good for me. But I tend to stay within my regular habits and do the thing I used to do before. There are habits I never managed to change despite several attempts.

There's a big difference between my actual behaviors and what I consider optimal strategy for myself. It seems to be concentrated around changing habits, a few areas where I'd like to act differently.

Now, I have a long-term strategy I am willing to commit to. How do I play that strategy rather than falling into instant-gratification behaviors that deviate from it?