Category: Habits

Quarantine Shopping & The Diderot Effect – Why You Can’t Stop Buying Shit

It is a principle of advertising that people who make big life changes are susceptible to marketing. Events like birth, death, marriage, and moving all interrupt our normal patterns of behaviour and thereby open space to pursue new avenues of consumption.

In the wake of SARS-COV-2 pandemic, the world is undergoing the largest pattern interrupt in modern history. We’ve been collectively catapulted into the quarantine lifestyle, and the result is we are doing a lot of online shopping, often a lot more than we would like.

The Diderot Effect – How Identity Influences Your Shopping Habits

On a fundamental level, we buy more at ‘life events’ because we are doing things differently and therefore have new problems to solve. If we were perfectly rational, that would be the end of it. Each purchase would happen in isolation. To paraphrase Marx; for each need an Amazon order, and to each need an actual problem.

But we are not rational, and far from being mere tools in service of our goals, the things we buy are enmeshed with our self-image to the degree that a mismatched sweater or sofa can feel like a mismatched limb. This feeling of disharmony has the potential to catalyze a spiral of consumption in which we pursue a mental unity through unity in our possessions.

My own experience of quarantine shopping has borne this out. Does this sounds familiar….

I bought a kettlebell and now that it’s arrived; I’ve realized that I really need another one or two to do the same kettlebell workout I did at the gym. With that many kettlebells, I’ll probably want a kettlebell rack, and a pullup bar to decompress my spine, a new yoga matt so I can do yoga at home now, which of course means I’ll need a foam roller to get that fascia mobilized and so on…

Our knives weren’t as sharp as I’d like them. So I bought a knife sharpener. In the process of buying that sharpener, I thought “hey since you’re cooking at home more; you should get a nice paring knife.” So, I bought the sharpener and the knife, and now every time I stick that fancy knife in the drawer, I think what I really need now is a knife holder…

This tendency to seek unity of self through unity in our possessions was first noted by the French philosopher Denis Diderot and later named after him as the Diderot effect. Diderot first identified this phenomenon after he purchased a beautiful new robe. Almost immediately, the brilliance of his new garment cast a kind of shadow over his other possessions that made them seem shabby and out of place. The result was an epic shopping spree that nearly bankrupted him. He wrote,

“I was absolute master of my old dressing gown, but I have become a slave to my new one … Beware of the contamination of sudden wealth.”

The implication of the Diderot effect is that when we think we are just putting together our wardrobe or our living room, we are unconsciously toying with the fabric of our identities.

My Patagonia Habit & Diderot’s Two Principles

I first learned of the Diderot effect from a fantastic YouTube video by the Nerdwriter. In his video, the Nerdwriter points out that the Diderot effect is built on two psychological principles:

  1. “All the products purchased by a consumer aim to be cohesive with that consumer’s identity.”
  2. “The introduction of a new product, in any way deviant, can trigger a process of spiraling consumption.”

In my own life, I admit to a penchant for Patagonia clothing and other expensive outdoor gear that, within the confines of my sedate urban lifestyle – the most likely scenario for me ending up on a mountain top is falling out of an airplane – cries out for explanation.

The Diderot effect explains that I buy Patagonia because it has created an identity of environmentalism and outdoorsmanship, something I consume as much as I do the garments themselves. That is to say that even though I don’t do that much for the environment (certainly zero activism) and I don’t spend that much time in real wilderness, just by buying Patagonia clothing, I can feel like these things are part of who I am.

Buying Patagonia is, in a sense, an offering towards the person I’d like to be. And this is the unsubtle genius of their marketing approach. Would some other brand’s clothing do the job? Maybe, yes… actually, I don’t really know… And in the space of this uncertainty creeps the justification for building my identity around their branding. A process that ends with the rationalization that my money is going to go somewhere; it may as well go to them.

Attention and The Delicate Balance

The Diderot effect describes the way that we require the things we own correspond to the internal construct of identity. But the Diderot effect seems to me to be only one aspect of the way we project ourselves into the things we own and use.

Take, for instance, my recent spiral of gym equipment purchases. Having more than two kettlebells, a yoga mat, and a foam roller to go with them is still about me, but it’s about a different aspect of my identity then say, my fashion choices.

Our possessions act as something like a three-way mirror:

  1. They react, each upon each other, (coherence in the system);
  2. they reflect back on us, casting an identity back at ourselves (coherence with our internal identity);
  3. and they project outward to the world who we are (coherence in our outward identity).

My kettlebell problem is about achieving coherence in an externalized system (coherence in the system). This is an aspect of my identity because when I feel like I have a more complete system, I feel more complete, as if some good part of me has been externalized. By the same token, when a system is incomplete or even less than elegant, its failings are also a reflection on me.

I make this point to illustrate the fact that all our passions exist in a state of delicate equilibrium, both between themselves and against our own mental constructs of them. An equilibrium that is mostly maintained by an absence of attention. For if we look hard enough at any part of our lives, we’ll begin to see the possibility of improving some aspect of our systems, and that, as we’ve seen, has the potential to spark a chain-reaction of consumption. So be careful what you pay attention to.

Schrodinger’s Shopping Cart – How the Stuff You Need Creates the Things You Don’t

Another important implication of the Diderot effect is that that contrary to our intuitions, each purchase does not bring us closer to having ‘enough’ or being ‘complete’ but instead, takes us a step further down a rabbit hole of consumption.

In this way, our consumption resembles something like an infinitely branching decision tree where each step forward opens the door to several more likely purchases. This means that that from a probabilistic perspective, buying a kettlebell is in effect a decision buy both the kettlebell and half a kettlebell rack.

This fact is no secret to retailers who are increasingly building and refining tools that capitalize on this principle, injecting it into the infrastructure of our online experience. The case in point being Amazon’s “frequently bought together” suggestions which feature on almost every page of its website.

Reinforcing the Habit – The Pavlov’s Shopping Drone

The psychological undercurrents of our compulsive shopping are neat. But to lay the blame squarely on these niceties of our psyche risks missing the more obvious but no less potent fact that shopping is itself habit-forming. We are sitting at home, bored as hell, and buying things is fun.

You know how it goes, you’re wandering around your apartment and something catches your eye so – a problem to solve! So you go online to find a solution, maybe you spend a few minutes (or a few hours) doing the modern equivalent of celestial navigation; comparing, contrasting and triangulating between, stars, reviews and prices until finally, target locked, and emboldened by strong drink and the prospect of free shipping and returns, you smash that checkout button, and you get:

A. the satisfaction of having solved the problem to a degree in your mind, and;

B. the joy of anticipating when that solution will come.

I presume that I am not alone in manically checking my shipping updates when I buy something.

Then, finally, the thing arrives, and you have the dopamine hit of opening it and playing with it, putting it in the neat little place where it solves your problem (maybe) and then roving around your home like a drone looking for the next thing to buy. And thus, with every purchase, you are reinforcing your Pavlovian predilection. 

Minimalist Mental Jujitsu – Hacking the Diderot Effect Through Identity Shift

While there are many powerful tactics to curb out-of-control shopping (get rid of Amazon Prime), one that combats the Diderot effect most directly is consciously shifting our identity towards one that values things other than consumption.

To do this, all you have to do is visualize solving the problem through a different identity. For instance, think of the minimalist version of yourself, the thrifty version of yourself, the survivalist version of yourself. How could that person figure out a way to solve the same problem with what they already have or at a fraction of the price?

I recently employed this tactic in my own life when after seeing the difference between chlorinated water and filtered water had on my sourdough bread, I decided I needed a water filter. To try and counter-act the urge to buy my way through this ‘problem’, I re-framed the problem to, how I could set up filtered water without buying anything? After some quick research, I realized I could boil the water and then put it into a container I already owned which could then act as my filtered water source for my drinking and cooking needs.

Looking at my problem in this way was helpful in two ways. First, in the short-run, the challenge to do it myself gave the little hamster on a wheel in my mind something to do without going online shopping. And second, in the long-run, I got the superior satisfaction that comes from MacGyvering through a problem, instead of just Amazoning it. I say superior because solving the problem through your own ingenuity endures in a way that goes far beyond the happiness you’d get from just pointing and clicking your way to a fix.

Whether it’s a minimalist or creative mindset, by shifting our identity, we hack the Diderot effect to our advantage. By re-imagining who we are, we perform a kind of mental Jiu-jitsu in which we flip satisfaction we would get from buying something into another container and in doing so, we become more complete by integrating into ourselves the virtue of the things we don’t have, instead of extending ourselves into the inevitable disappointment of buying another thing we don’t need.

Jack Dorsey’s Sauna Routine

Why Sauna

As humans, our ability to adapt to heat and cold has been at the core of our survival. We are the only primate that uses a technique called persistence hunting; the practice of running after our prey until it is exhausted. In effect, weaponizing the climate to our advantage. 

But while that may be true for our ancestors and traditional cultures, I certainly won’t be chasing down a wildebeest anytime soon. Quite the opposite, I wilt like an ice-cream cone as soon as the temperature starts to rise. Case in point, after a short run last summer, I spent the whole day in bed, head pounding from what I believe was a mild heatstroke. 

As usual, the yawning gulf between the human potential and my own pathetic reality sparked my curiosity.

Sauna’s Benefits

Experimenting with cold showers / ice-baths convinced me that the body can adapt to different temperature exposures and even learn to enjoy them. Could sauna do the same for heat?

Curious, I went looking through the interweb. There I found a video by Dr Rhonda Patrick explaining the potential benefits of a sauna practice. These include: 

  • Improved cardiovascular mechanisms and lower heart rate. 
  • Lower core body temperature during workload (surprise!)
  • Higher sweat rate and sweat sensitivity as a function of increased thermoregulatory control. 
  • Increased blood flow to skeletal muscle (known as muscle perfusion) and other tissues.
  • Reduced rate of glycogen depletion due to improved muscle perfusion. 
  • Increased red blood cell count (likely via erythropoietin). 
  • Increased efficiency of oxygen transport to muscles.[efn_note] Health Benefits From: https://tim.blog/2014/04/10/saunas-hyperthermic-conditioning-2/ [/efn_note]

Given the laundry list of benefits, and my own inclination to be better in the heat, I was sold. 

The only issue was dosage. How much saunaing did I need to do to before I could start getting the benefits? After no luck searching the internet, I found a Sauna protocol from an unlikely source.

Jack Dorsey’s Sauna Protocol

Jack Dorsey is the CEO of Twitter and Square. But, despite being CEO of two billion-dollar companies, he lives more like a monk than a typical executive.

Important Disclaimer:  The material on this blog is for informational purposes only. As each individual situation is unique, you should use proper discretion, in consultation with a health care practitioner, before undertaking the protocols, diet, exercises, techniques, training methods, or otherwise described herein. The author and publisher expressly disclaim responsibility for any adverse effects that may result from the use or application of the information contained herein.

Jack meditates for 2 hours each day, walks an hour to work, each way. Eats one meal a day and takes ONLY cold showers.[efn_note] Jack on the Ben Greenfield podcast: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/lifestyle-podcasts/time-saving-workouts/ [/efn_note] A cornerstone of his monastic health regiment is daily heat and cold exposure. 

His routine starts with a 3-minute ice-bath in his coldtub. After the ice bath, he moves to the sauna for 15 minutes and then repeats it 3 times.

  • Cold: Ice Bath With Circulator at Chiller 37F / 3C
  • Heat: Sauna 220F / 104C
  • Duration: Cold 3 minutes / Sauna 15 minutes 3 rounds 
  • Frequency: Everyday usually in the evening

Jack credits this routine as being among the most important things he does for health and wellness.

Suggested Modifications

Jack Dorsey’s sauna routine is extreme. It also involves some pretty expensive home-gear. Your first sauna forays will likely be at a local gym. Here are the modifications I would suggest for anyone just starting out: 

  • 220 degrees is HOT! Unless you have your own sauna, it will be hard to find one that’s 220 degrees, and you probably wouldn’t want to start that hot anyway. 
Joe Rogan 200+ degrees is hot – don’t try this at home.
  • Because your sauna will be cooler, 20 minutes is likely closer to the right amount of time. Stay in until you feel some slight discomfort but don’t overdo it. I find that 20 minutes at (180F / 82C) can be tough. 
  • Most of us don’t have ice baths or cold plunges at our gyms, but we do have showers. A 3-minute cold plunge is a near equivalent to a 5 minute cold shower.
  • Going into the sauna wet means it takes longer to heat your core temperature. So dry off with a towel after your cold exposure or do sauna first.

Sauna Benefits: Frequency vs Intensity?  

There is also the question of frequency versus intensity. Is it enough to just go to the sauna every day for 10 minutes? Or are the benefits a result of the sessions intensity – a function of both the temperature and how long you stay in it? 

Both matter but based on my reading and experience, intensity is the more important of the two. For example, a study by the U.S. military found that exercising in the heat was the most critical factor for predicting whether someone would become heat adapted.[efn_note] Human Adaptations to Heat and Cold Stress: https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/p012427.pdf [/efn_note] 

I advocate for saunaing until it’s slightly uncomfortable (See Disclaimer – Don’t Kill Yourself). The more often you can do it, the better but once or twice a week should be enough to start seeing benefits. 

Jack’s practice is at the extreme of frequency and intensity. But like I said, the man is a monk.

———————–

The Power of Negative Habits

One commonality among people’s New Year’s resolutions is that they are mostly positive actions. Exercise more, eat better, learn the piano, spend more time with family, or just tackle the project that’s been nagging you all year.

This is interesting because giving up a negative habit usually has a far greater impact than an incremental positive habit. If picking up a new good habit might make you 1% better, dropping your worst bad habit will make you 10% better.

This begs the question, if we really want to be better, why do we ignore our negative habits?

I believe we favor positive over negative resolutions because aspirations are more attractive. They are also more marketable. It’s much easier to sell trying something new than it is to sell giving something up, so we are both more aware of and more attracted to positive changes.

Negative habits are difficult because they require self-awareness to identify. They are also ingrained in who we are and often because they satisfy some deep need within us.

To use the body as an analogy, starting a new positive habit is like adding another digit to your hand, probably a little helpful in certain situations. While eliminating a negative habit might be compared to amputating a necrotic limb; you relive your body of a life-threatening burden but a burden that is nonetheless a part of who you imagine yourself to be.

As you go about trying to achieve your resolutions this year, it’s worth reflecting on whether there is a negative habit that’s getting in your way. If there is, it’s likely that same habit is sabotaging other aspects of your life as well.

Recognizing it is the first step towards making significant, and sustainable improvements.

How I’m Tracking Habits in 2019

The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken

Warren Buffett

Daily habit tracking is something I’ve wanted to do for years but I could never find a method that worked for me.

Journals lay forgotten under my bed. Apps on my phone started off well enough but eventually I’d miss a few days and find inputting the data extremely cumbersome. Excel spreadsheets saved on a mac were not compatible with my windows machine or had different versions, etc.  

But in 2018 I cracked the code. I’ve finally found a service that syncs across all my devices that’s easy to use, and best of all it’s free!

The answer, you may already have guessed, is Google Sheets.

It’s not perfect. It’s not fancy, it’s not pretty but it’s easy to use and it’s everywhere I need it to be all of the time.

Here’s a quick Pros and Cons rundown:

Pros:

  • It’s available on all my devices
  • It’s easy to use
  • It’s easy to play catch-up on
  • I can easily manipulate the data
  • I can change what I track from month to month (this has been very important)

Cons:

  • It’s not beautiful
  • Doesn’t come with pre-packaged visualization tools
  • Doesn’t come with pre-packaged analytics tools
  • Can take a few seconds to load when you have multiple tabs
  • You have to create a new sheet each month
  • Doesn’t have any notification features
  • You have to know how to use a spreadsheet

Bottom line, it works for me and I think it will work for you, if you give it a chance.  

The Evolution of My Tracking Format

Here’s a little context on how my use has evolved.

In early 2018, I started using Google sheets to track outgoing sales activities for work. Then I realized I could use the same template to track my health habits on a daily basis, as well.

Then, in April, Kevin Rose released copy of his health tracking sheet. His formatting was way better, so I switched over to using his. This is the original sheet he shared:

Download it here

Over the course of the year, I’ve made some adjustments and additions to Kevin’s sheet based on what worked for me. This is my sheet for January 2019:

Download it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CmrO5pwaNcoYQSD75N0XKwMVdEu-fgvdGzZTg97lZ8w/edit?usp=sharing

Kevin’s sheet and mine differ in ways that may not be apparent at first glance.

Tracking Inputs Vs. Outputs

Superficially, Kevin’s is more complicated because it tracks so many different things.

But more importantly, Kevin’s sheet tracks both inputs and outputs. For example, he tracks things like weight, and blood glucose. Which is fine. Kevin’s sheet is supposed to be a health-dashboard, not just a habit tracking sheet.

My health sheet is simpler in that it tracks fewer variables. This is a choice that I’ve come to through trial and error. More data is nice, but it can also create noise that obscures signal. It also takes more mental energy and time to catalouge.

Most important though, is that from my perspective, the variables I choose to track are what I’d call critical and influenceable input variables.

In other words, I track what I think are the three most powerful levers I can pull to influence my health and energy levels. (Someday I’ll write a post on that goes deeper into why I’ve chosen these.)

How I Use It

The best thing about Google Sheets is that it’s everywhere I need it and always updated.

It’s on my cell phone as the Google Sheets App.

And it’s on my web browser as either as shortcut on on the bookmarks bar or just a click away from my Gmail account.

This makes me feel like there’s no excuse not to do it and I have been!

That’s it. If you try it, let me know what you think.

Why Motivation Doesn’t Work

The Motivation Mindset And Its Discontents

“Discipline equals freedom” – Jocko Willink

When a task is painful and the outcome is uncertain, it’s often the case that motivation seems to somehow vanish. At such times, stepping away to improve our strategy seems like a reasonable way to rekindle and reconnect with the feelings that lead us to the work. This is one of the ways we fall into the trap of over-strategizing but it also speaks to a deeper misunderstanding of the role that motivation should play in achieving our goals.

When we approach our goals with what I’ll call the Motivation Mindset, we expect that our motivation to reach our goal will translate into motivation to do the work necessary to achieve it.  

For example, the motivation mindset assumes that because we’re motivated to learn French, we’ll also feel motivated to spend hours learning to conjugate French verbs. It’s also the reason people say things like, “he just didn’t want it badly enough.” when someone fails to achieve something. The flaw with this approach to our goals is that it places too much stock in the durability of motivation.

Motivation is a treacherous currency because it is a fundamentally forward looking emotion. It is a why, why you’re doing something. Motivation concerns itself with the future and because we are quick to discount the future in the face of difficulty, it is fundamentally fickle. As such, relying on motivation will almost never get you through the work required for a worthwhile goal.

An alternative, and in my experience superior approach is to approach our work with what i’d call a Discipline Mindset. Which is to say that we should expect that, irrespective of our initial motivation, discipline will be required.

Motivation and discipline differ in that if motivation is about the future then discipline is about the present. If motivation asks why, then discipline asks how? How will I get through the drudgery of conjugating verbs? By drinking a strong coffee and not getting out of this chair for an hour.

It is a subtle distinction, but I would argue it is a worthwhile one because in essence, a disciplined mindset creates more realistic expectations. The result is that instead of feeling like we’re doing things wrong because we’re bored, tired and pissed off, we can begin to recognize those emotions as signals that we’re doing exactly what we should be.

Discipline Creates Motivation

There is a further relationship between discipline and motivation that’s worth exploring. It’s how, in certain circumstances, discipline can lead to a renewed sense of motivation. This occurs when disciplined output provides high-quality feedback which in turn leads to truly productive adjustments to our strategy.

As we observe said adjustments creating real changes in the efficiency and/or efficacy of our work, the result is motivation to do more work. Which is to say that when we feel more confident that our plan will work or we’ll feel better while we do it, we feel motivated to follow through and execute.

Put in terms of the Sisyphus Matrix, motivation is the feeling we get when our perception of a task moves from Task t1 to Task t2:

This is why people spend, and often waste money on “gear” and its equivalent. It creates the expectation of a more pleasurable experience and thereby the motivation to take another shot at the work. Unfortunately, for things that require true skill, better tools often provide only a minor improvements to our process and our motivation quickly dissipates.

Authors Note: This piece originally appeared as part of the post Avoiding Procrastination – Genius, Productivity & The Sisyphus Matrix but in order to make it more accessible (shorter), I’ve republished it here. 

Do The Worst You Can

The thing that we learned, though, is that: every one of our films, when we start off, they suck.

– Ed Catmull, President of Pixar and Walt Disney Studios

Do the worst you can.

We often poison our ambitions by comparing our first attempts to others finished products.

In doing so we fail to recognize that almost everything great started out bad. All masterpieces start as sketches, all films as rough drafts, all books as outlines.

Give yourself permission to do the worst you can and then make it better.

Don’t give up before you start.

P.S. Checkout this blog post about how the Oscar winning movie Toy Story’s early drafts were terrible.

60 Days of Meditation With The Muse Meditation EEG Device

We all know someone who meditates. And we all wonder if it actually does anything for them. And more importantly, if it would do anything for us.    

I’ve tried meditation a few times but it never took. I figured it was because either I couldn’t stick with it because I can’t seem to stick to anything or because I was doing it wrong.

So when I saw the Muse Brain Sensing Headband, I thought it would be a great opportunity to challenge myself to dive further into meditation.

I set myself a challenge. Meditate everyday for 60 days and see what happens.  

Why the Challenge

The potential benefits of mediation 

  • Increased ability to concentrate
  • Increased emotional resilience 
  • Better mood 

See if meditation would become a habit

Studies have indicated that it takes about 60-90 days of regular practice for something to become a habit. This challenge was an opportunity to see if meditation could become a habit

The chance to observe how meditation changes as I get better at it  

In a previous post, I discussed how skill changes the experience of things. Part of the attraction of this challenge was the chance to observe how my experience of meditation would change over the course of the challenge.

See if I could be consistent

Meditation is a great challenge for people who struggle with consistency because it requires so little. No need for fancy clothes, or equipment. No showing up to a gym or studio. All you need is a quiet place, a timer and time. In other words, No Excuses!

Of course, I made things slightly more complicated than that but the point is that you don’t have to.

How I Did It

Meditation Type:

Breath Awareness – There are many types of meditation. Being acquainted with breath awareness meditation, that’s what I decided to do. If it’s good enough for Yuval Noah Harari, it’s good enough for me.

Wim Hof Breathing – I used the Wim Hof breathing method as a way to prime myself before meditation. Numerous people have expressed that doing this prior to meditation improves their experience of meditation.  

Tracking Tools:

Google Sheets – Google sheets is my favorite tracking tool by far. It’s on my phone and any computer that I can get my hands on so there’s no excuse for missing a day. I put together the below simple spreadsheet for tracking my daily meditation practice.

It has columns for the date, duration of the meditation, Muse % calm score and notes. In the last few days of the challenge, I added column to record my own subjective score of how the meditation session went.

Muse Headband – This headband is a EEG device. It measures your brainwaves and translates the results into sound. Ideally, this sound provides feedback that tells you when you’ve fallen out of a meditative state so that you can bring your attention back to whatever your object of concentration is.

Using the Muse brain sensing headband was an opportunity to add an objective measure of meditation progress to what is usually a highly subjective experience.  

Notable Results

Muse headband data 

One thing I was hoping for was to observe a trend in the results provided by the Muse headband that aligned with my subjective sense of my meditation performance. No such thing occurred.

To the contrary, I had many sessions where the Muse headband indicated I had been calm for a high % of the session when in fact my mind was all over the place or I was daydreaming.  

I’m convinced that the Muse headband has little ability to detect whether or not someone is in a meditative state. It can detect if you’re moving around or materially distracted but it can’t tell the difference between daydreaming and meditation, at least for me.

The Phenomenon

By far the most interesting result occurred towards the beginning of the challenge.  

Specifically on day eight, in the hours after the session, I experienced what I can only describe as a deep and profound sense of well-being. It was a feeling seemed to encompass my entire body, a relaxation into the concept that everything was ok and I was happy to be where I was.

This feeling lasted for only an hour or two but it was so distinctly different from my normal state of existence and unique in that I could not account for it by anything other than the morning’s meditation.  

Looking back, it’ impossible to say whether this was a placebo effect or a real change in my mental state as a result of my meditation practice. I continued to hope that the phenomenon would repeat itself but it didn’t.  I did have some good meditation sessions but nothing like what experienced that day. 

I can say though that if that feeling could be an even intermittent result of a meditation practice, then I would say sign me up for two!  

Missed three days

I missed three days during the challenge. No excuses, I just forgot. The best way to combat this happening was to do first thing in the morning. Life tends to get in the way otherwise.   

Sitting down became easier 

Once change I noticed was that sitting for long periods became easier. At first, just doing a 15 minute session would leave my back and knees screaming. By the end I could easily sit for 20+ minutes without experiencing a distracting level of pain. 

Wim Hof Breathing

Wim Hof breathing method definitely seems to make meditation easier and/or more pleasurable. Doing the breathing beforehand felt like clearing the mental palate before sitting down. I was still prone to distraction and it didn’t make every session a success but it helped prime me for what could feel like a daunting task, especially when going over 20 minutes in a session.  

Diet, Sleep & Time of Day Matter

Diet, sleep, and time of day seem to meaningfully affect the quality of my meditation sessions. If I’d been eating poorly or had a long weekend of drinking, it felt much more difficult to concentrate. It was also harder to just get myself to sit down at all.

The time of day also seemed to play a big role. If I was tired I would often slip from meditating into dreaming. Most of my meditating was done first thing in the morning and I found that on many days my anxiety seemed to mount as the session progressed. 

This might be the result of rising stress hormone levels first thing in the morning. The effect could also possibly be attributed to a waning of whatever psychological state is induced by the Wim Hof breathing exercises I did before the session.

Whatever the cause, I still recommend doing meditation first thing in the morning if you can. 

Increased concentration

I can’t say that my concentration improved in any objective sense. But I can say that I did notice that when I got distracted I would remind myself that just as in meditation I needed to return my focus to the work, even though it wasn’t the most interesting thought in my head at the moment.

It would be interesting to find an objective measure of concentration and test it over the course of another challenge. 

Habit Not Formed

Meditation did not become a habit for me as a result of the challenge. While I’m definitely less intimidated by the prospect of sitting in silent concentration for 20+ minutes, I have no desire or compulsion to meditate when I wake up in the morning. Maybe it takes 90 days for me to make something a habit or maybe I need to try a different form of meditation. 

Overall thoughts

On some days doing 20+ minutes of meditation actually felt good but I didn’t see enough benefit in my day-to-day living to convince me that meditation practice was something I have to keep doing. Nor did it become a habit as I hoped it might. 

That said, I remain fascinated by “The Phenomenon” experience described earlier. If a believable person could convince me that, that type of feeling was the inevitable result of a meditation practice, then I would definitely sign up for another challenge.

What I Would Do Differently

Give yourself a subjective score

I wish I’d given myself a subjective score for each one of my practices. Even if you have an EEG device, a subjective score can be a useful tool for making a relative comparison of your results over time.

Increase the intensity

If I could do this again one variable I would want to experiment with is the intensity of my practice.

The book Altered Traits seemed to suggest that breakthrough levels of skill often occurred when meditatiors went for intensive retreats. Perhaps it’s necessary to immerse even more deeply in order to “level-up” at meditation.

Get a coach

Over the course of the challenge, I noticed a persistent anxiety as to whether or not I was doing things “right”. Despite reminding myself that the challenge was more about consistency then performance, it kept creeping back into my thoughts.

Next time, I think getting a coach would be helpful for allowing myself to feel like I was on the path to getting better at meditation. 

Resources For Doing This Yourself


Ray Dalio On How To Run A Meeting & Other Business Tactics

Reading a book is easy. It’s much harder to take what’s in the book and incorporate it into our lives. I like to tackle this problem by distilling books down to a few tactics that I can implement quickly. 1

In a previous post, I outlined 4 ways that you can make better decisions using Ray Dalio’s life principles. In this post, I’ll outline what I think are the most impactful and actionable tactics from Dalio’s work principles.

Here they are:

1) How To Run A Meeting

“Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.” ― Dave Barry 

Dalio often describes his organization as an intellectual version of the Navy Seals, and it’s clear from his Principles that like the military, he has an affinity for structure. So it shouldn’t be surprising that he thinks the most important part of running a meeting is to be clear about who is in charge and what the meeting is supposed to achieve:

Make it clear who is directing the meeting and whom it is meant to serve. Every meeting should be aimed at achieving someone’s goals; that person is the one responsible for meeting and deciding what they want to get out of it and how they will do so. Meetings without someone clearly responsible run a high risk of being directionless and unproductive

– Principles, Work Principle 4.4 – A

Dalio’s second Principle for running effective meetings is to assign someone to keep track of both responsibilities and the conversation flow. Said person ensures that any tasks to be done are assigned to specific people and not forgotten. They also ensure that the meeting doesn’t veer too far off topic.

Be careful not to lose personal responsibility via group decision making. Too often groups will make a decision to do something without assigning personal responsibilities, so it is not clear who is supposed to follow up by doing what. Be clear in assigning personal responsibilities.

– Principles, Work Principle 4.4 – H

Watch out for “topic slip.” Topic slip is random drifting from topic to topic without achieving completion on any of them. One way to avoid it is by tracking the conversation on a whiteboard so that everyone can see where you are. (Emphasis mine)

– Principles, Work Principle 4.4 – F

Applying Dalio’s tactics may make people feel uncomfortable at first, but in the long run, it will reduce peoples anxiety about meetings because they’ll know how they’re expected to behave and that their time won’t be wasted.

2) Use Standing Meetings

Our true priorities are defined by where we spend our resources, and that most often means where we spend our precious time. Too often though the distractions of daily business pull us along low-value tangents that take ours and others time away from where it would best spent. Dalio has found that the best way to avoid these distractions is to habituate your time allocations by setting standing meetings. For instance, if your company priority is sales, you should have a weekly sales meeting.

Use standing meetings to help your organization run like a swiss clock. Regularly scheduled meetings add to overall efficiency by enduring that important interactions and to-do’s aren’t overlooked, eliminating the need for efficient coordination, and improving operations (because repetition leads to refinement). It pays to have standardized meeting agendas that ask the same feedback questions in each meeting, (such as how effective the meeting was) and nonstandard meeting agendas that include things done infrequently (such as quarterly budget reviews).

– Principles, Work Principle 13.3 – D

3) Use Daily Updates To Stay In Sync


Use daily updates as a tool for staying on top of what your people are doing and thinking. I ask each person who reports to me to take about ten to fifteen minutes to write a brief description of what they did that day, the issues pertaining to them, and their reflections. By reading these updates and triangulating them, (i.e., seeing other people’s takes on what their doing together), I can gauge how they are working together, what their moods are, and which threads I should pull on.

-Principles, Work Principle 10.6 – C

Imagine if you woke up every morning instantly knowing what everyone in your company intended to work on that day and everyone else knew the same thing. Appealing, because of how incredibly efficient that might make everything, right? And, at the same time, kind of terrifying because you don’t want everyone looking over your shoulder judging what you intend to do every day.

The latter concern was why I first resisted using daily updates. I told myself, “I’m competent. I don’t need someone looking over my shoulder to do the right thing.” But now that I’ve been using it for a few months, I’ve come to see the value in it.

For me specifically, it’s as simple as sending my colleague a list of things I intend to work on each day. And in addition to it being a useful communication tool, it helps me organize my day and prioritize what I need to work on first. By contrast, my old habit of jumping into my email first-thing would lead me down a rabbit hole that didn’t necessarily reflect my priorities.

4) Use Process Flow Diagrams

Dalio’s ideal is a company that runs like a machine. At its core, a machine is a set of processes. Using process flow diagrams can help you visualize the different processes that make up your organization. These visuals help managers understand how resources will be allocated and interact with each other. But more importantly, they help ensure that everyone understands how the organization is expected to run and their role within it.

Understand that a great manager is essentially an organizational engineer. Great managers are not philosophers, entertainers, doers or artists. They are engineers. They see their organizations as machines and work assiduously to maintain and improve them. They create process flow diagrams to show how the machine works and to evaluate its design. They build metrics to light up how well each of the individual parts of the machine (most importantly, the people) and the machine as a whole are working. And they tinker constantly with its designs and its people to make both better.

– Principles, Work Principles, 10.1 – B


Process Flow Diagrams. Just as an engineer uses flowcharts to understand the workflow of what they’re designing, a manager needs a Process Flow Diagram to help visualize the organization as a machine. It might have references to an organizational chart that shows who reports to whom, or the org chart might supplement the Process Flow Diagram (PFD). Ideally the PFD is made in a way that allows you to both see things simply at a high level and drop down to low level. 

– Principles, Appendix

Since reading Principles, I’ve used process flow diagrams to visualize a number of personal and professional activities. I find that creating visual representations allows people to communicate more effectively about complex processes then they could otherwise.

 

 

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If you enjoyed this post, check out these other posts on Ray Dalio’s Principles:

Ray Dalio’s Principles – 4 Steps To Better Decisions

Ray Dalio’s Secret Sauce – The Truth Machine & The Good Life 

 

  1. The difference between tactics and strategy is strategy tells you what you should do, tactics tells you what to do. In other words, a strategy is the more general goal and tactics are the things you do to make that goal happen. ↩

Ray Dalio’s 4 Steps to Better Decisions

In a previous post, I described Ray Dalio’s Truth Machine and formula for a good life. For those who haven’t read it, “Truth Machine” is my term for the core process Dalio has used to become a billionaire investor and achieve everything else he has in life.

One drawback to Dalio’s process is that it involves multiple steps and coordination. Such complexity makes it tempting to dismiss it as a method that’s only suitable for sophisticated organizations. I think that’s a mistake.

In the interest of making the process actionable for regular humans like you and me, here are four things you can do today to help implement Dalio’s process in your own lives:

1) CREATE AN ADVISORY BOARD

For most of us – myself included – critical feedback even with the best of intentions, often feels like criticism. We have a natural tendency to dislike people who criticize us and because other people want to be liked, they often refrain from giving us the kind of feedback we need. Thus we have dynamic where people don’t like getting critical feedback and people don’t want to give it. As a result, we often have situations where we don’t get good outside input when we should.

This dynamic is similar to the problem people face when it comes to exercise: e.g. because we don’t exercise, we have no energy, and because we have no energy, we don’t feel like exercising. And as in the case of exercise, the best way to break the cycle is to create a habit or ritual out of the thing we’d rather not do.

To make a habit of critical feedback, I suggest creating an advisory board. Write down the names of at least two other people whose opinions you value. You don’t have to tell them their new roles, just schedule recurring discussions with these people at least once every three months. Buy them coffee and ask them for their unfiltered opinions when it comes to your most important decisions.

But remember, most people won’t automatically give you the kind of honest feedback you’re looking for. You have to ask for honest feedback and demonstrate that you’ll accept it as a way of improving yourself and your decisions. Don’t make people regret being honest with you.  

2) USE PERSONALITY ASSESSMENTS

“You must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” – Richard Feynman

A core principle of Dalio’s process for getting what you want out of life is that you must know yourself. But because our egos make it difficult see ourselves objectively this is much easier said than done. To paraphrase the great Richard Feynman, you must know yourself, and you are the hardest person to know.

Personality assessments are the best tool Dalio has found for building a base of self-knowledge. These tests are useful because they take the conversation about how we are out of own heads and into a space of more objective measures. Dalio has had himself, his family, and every employee at his firm take multiple assessments to help them better understand themselves and one another.

Start by taking one of the following three tests that Dalio has his employees take. 

Myers Briggs Type Indicator

Link: https://www.mbtionline.com/TaketheMBTI

Cost: $50

Time: 15 minutes

Workplace Personality Inventory – II

Link: https://us.talentlens.com/workplace-personality-inventory-ii

Cost: $24-$28

Time: 30 minutes

Team Dimensions Online

Link: https://www.discprofile.com/products/team-dimensions-profile/

Cost: $39.95

Time: Unknown

Once you’ve completed an assessment, examine your results and see how they match up with your self-image and personal track-record. Then consider asking trusted friends or colleagues if they think your results paint an accurate picture of you.

3) FOCUS ON CONSEQUENCES NOT DIFFICULTY

For most problems, we decide whether we need help based primarily on how difficult it feels to determine the right answer. Instead, we should use how important it is to make the right decision as the test of whether we seek other people’s input.

Really bad outcomes are likely to happen not because the decision was hard, but because we were overconfident about an important decision that seemed easy. Shifting the focus from how hard the decision feels to how important it is to get right can help us determine when to call in reinforcements and ultimately make better decisions.

Even when a very important decision feels like a no-brainer, it’s worthwhile to ask for help.

4) BEGIN A MEDITATION PRACTICE

When Ray Dalio was in his 20’s, he punched his boss in the face on New Year’s Eve and was subsequently fired. Clearly, emotional self-control was not his strength then. And yet today the ability to rise above our emotional selves is an integral part of Dalio’s process. For his transformation from brawler to master truth seeker, Dalio credits his practice of transcendental meditation.

Meditation is complementary to Dalio’s process because it is fundamentally self-awareness training. By resting our attention on an unstimulating rhythm like the breathing or chanting a meaningless word, we can observe how subconscious thoughts arise and create emotional experiences. Through practice we learn to recognize and separate our attention from the emotional pull of our thoughts. That separation allows for better focus on the quality of our ideas and more open-minded dialogue with others.

Following Dalio’s example and beginning a meditation practice is something anyone can do to set the stage for better decision making. Having said that, although meditation can seem as easy as sitting on a pillow, developing a practice takes time. Below I’ve listed some helpful resources for taking the first steps to beginning a meditation practice:  

Oak Meditation (Free)

Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oak-meditation-breathing/id1210209691?mt=8

Headspace (Paid)

Link: https://www.headspace.com/headspace-meditation-app

MUSE Meditation Brainwave Detector (Paid)1

Link: http://www.choosemuse.com/

Transcendental Meditation (Paid)

Link: https://www.tm.org/

  1. I hope to have a post reviewing this item soon ↩

 

My Favorite Tools For Escaping Social Media and Taking Back Attention

Social media is addictive. That it’s addictive is not an accident: Social media is built to be addictive. In the same way casinos design slot machines, the companies behind services like Facebook, Tinder, SnapChat, and BuzzFeed spend billions of dollars researching how to maximize your time spent on and continued use of their products. After all, more time on their sites = more advertisements served = more profits – it’s just good business.

But what’s good for Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth is not what is good for our lives. Social media habits can rob us of our ability to concentrate, to get sh*t done and even disrupt our relationships.

The good news is there are new tools that can help you take control of both how you use social media and your ability to focus. After a few weeks of experimenting with a number of these tools, I’ve achieved a level of social media use that lets me get the most out of what good these services do offer while maintaining control over my attention during the most productive hours of my day.

Here’s what I’m using:

Freedom App (Paid) 

An app called Freedom is the best tool I’ve found for taking control of media use and attention. Using VPN technology, Freedom allows you to control when and what you can access, across all your devices. Freedom lets you to block not only apps like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat but also specific websites, as well.

What really makes Freedom powerful is the level of control it gives you. It allows you to create customized lists of blocked services and then associate those lists with schedules that can be specified to times of day, days of the week and different devices.

For example, I created the above Blocklist titled “SansGmail” to block a number of social media services. I then associated that Blocklist with the below schedule to restrict those services from  6:30am to 8:00pm, Monday through Saturday, just on my phone.

By scheduling blocked-out times in advance Freedom allows you to stop relying on your finite supply of willpower to change. I made progress changing my social media use before using Freedom, but this app is what has allowed me to automate those changes to the point that they now feel like a habit

Strict Workflow Chrome Extension (Free)

The Strict Workflow chrome extension is a simple but effective tool for re-training yourself to focus and avoid mindless content while working. The app inserts a timer icon into your browser that will block any websites you specify for a set amount of “work time”, followed by an interval of “break time”, when nothing is blocked. For example, you would set the timer to block Facebook, Twitter and other news sites for a 45 minute work interval, followed by a 15 minute break interval.

After just a few months of using this extension, my ability to concentrate has improved dramatically. That said, at least once a week I still find myself reflexively going to Facebook or Bloomberg and I’m happy that all I have to do is press the timer to cut me off and keep me focused.

Turn Off Notifications (Free)

For anyone who wants to decrease their social media use turning off all notifications is an easy first step. Let’s face it, there’s no reason for your phone to buzz every time someone likes the latest photo of your lunch.

Similarly, moving social media apps from the first page into the depths of your phone can make it easier for you to resist the urge to sign into these services. If nothing else, having to swipe or click through numerous screens will make you more aware of how often, and how much time you spend reaching for social media dopamine hits.

Deleting Apps Method (Free)

Ok kids… time to turn off the Instagram……

Do you remember when your parents would tell you to turn off the TV for the night? I do. And I’ve adopted a similar strategy for tuning out habit forming apps like Instagram. I delete the app every evening, reinstalling it during my approved viewing hours at night, then delete it again before going to sleep.

I started doing this because I became so disgusted at how reflexively I checked Instagram. I realized that just seeing the Instagram app on my screen increased the likelihood that I’d try to open it, whether it was blocked or not.   

Airplane Mode (Free)

When I first started to take control of my ability to focus I used a combination of the Strict Workflow app and my phones airplane mode. Many people will balk at the idea of being completely cut off from their cell-phones. But if you do any kind of thoughtful work it’s more important for your career that you find a way to keep your attention on producing quality then it is to take every call the instant it arrives.

Placing your phone on airplane mode and setting a timer for 30 minutes is a great way to begin practicing attention and deep work habits.

One Day At A Time  

Habits are hard to change. It’s a rare person who can go to sleep one night saying they are going to be different and jump out of bed the next morning a changed man or woman. In reality we change incrementally: Bad habit’s don’t just stop, instead they are modified or replaced with more benign ones – one day at time.

I wrote this post because using these tools to change my social media use and take back my attention has changed my life. Being free of the mindless urge to look at Facebook, Twitter or Instagram is like having a whole other compartment of your brain freed up. I couldn’t be happier with the results and I think you will be too.