IMO good messaging tries to provoke thought, not tell people how it is.

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time:

• Summary = 3 mins

• All = 11 mins

Summary: I’ve come to believe that ‘Messaging’ is more important than ‘Message’. This is because your Message is wrapped in your Messaging. One key hack I have to not have your ‘Messaging’ not undermine your ‘Message’ is to try to have your message ‘provoke thought’ as much as possible (vs tell people how it is). 

Messaging > Message - because your Message is wrapped in Messaging

• Jingle: A piece of gold (Message) covered in sh1t (Messaging) is still a piece of sh1t. 

• But a piece of sh1t (Message) covered with gold on the outside (Messaging) is something people will look at, something people will consider. 

• So you’re messaging is more important than your message. 

• … or you can get people to discuss and consider a golden sh1t, but not sh1tty gold ;). 

• … also ideally your Message is gold and your Messaging is golden. 

  • Message = Idea

  • However if you are anything like me some of your ideas you think are gold… but turn out to be pieces of sh1t. 

• A golden, not sh1tty visaualisation:

• The point of discussing is often to stress test if something is a good idea or not (ie your Message is a piece of poo or not). So you need golden Messaging else you won’t discover in the discussion if your idea (Message) is a piece of poo or not. 

Outcome = 1. Your view (message) * 2. How you put forward your view (messaging)

• Key point: “2. How you put forward your view” can totally undermine “1. Your view” AND even yourself! 

• Message confidence = how confident you are that your view is correct

• Messaging confidence = how confidently the words you choose to represent your view are

• IMO typically it is better if your “messaging confidence” < “message confidence”.

• Counterintuitively I’ve found that that [“messaging confidence” < “message confidence”] typically means others are more likely to be on board with your Message much more than [“messaging confidence” = “message confidence”].

  • [“messaging confidence” < “message confidence”] = provoke thought

  • [“messaging confidence” = “message confidence”] = telling it ‘how it is’ (which IMO can rile feathers)

  • [“messaging confidence” > “message confidence”] = hubris (“have you heard this douche?”)

Examples of where it’s best to have [“messaging confidence” < “message confidence”]

• 1. So you can change your mind gracefully in the conversation (eg if in the conversation as new info comes to light)

• 2. If you end up being wrong 

• 3. So others can change their mind gracefully in the conversation

• 4. So you sound reasonable. You can't be certain about an Idea, so best not have Messaging as such. Understand that Ideas are complicated and act as such. 

• 5. If someone is new to an idea, being soft (provoking thought) is often better to get them up the curve.

• 6. Someone has an understanding of the idea but you think it’s a good idea and they think it is a bad idea. 

• 7. Someone has a different point of view to you on an Idea. 

• 8. You don’t get far by telling people what to do, you get people on board by provoking thought! 

Examples of different ‘Message Confidence’:

• Eg 1 - putting forward an new idea

  • High confidence Messaging: I think this is a good idea. 

  • Low confidence Messaging: What do you think about this idea? 

  • Comment: IMO you are much more likely to get people to consider and be onboard with the latter. 

• Eg 2 - putting forward a different course of action

  • High confidence Messaging: I think Option B is better because of [merit 1]

  • Low confidence Messaging: I think your Option A has [merit 2]. I’ve been trying to come up with other Options to consider. I think Option B has [merit 1]. Do you think that is fair? 

  • Comment: IMO if you are putting forward a different proposal to someone best to be super ‘thought provoking’ else you can come across as ‘i think you are wrong’ which often leads to a ‘negative sum debate’ (vs ‘positive sum discourse’). 

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Facts vs Ideas

• Fact = there is a right / wrong. Eg today is Monday, eg a coffee costs $4, eg a textbook costs $100.

• Idea = there is no right / wrong. Eg how to best spend a Monday, eg how to make the best coffee, eg how to best make a textbook. 

• Almost anything worth discussing is an ‘Idea’. 

  • IMO ideas can never not be improved, as such ideas can never be right / wrong. 

  • Therefore having Messaging that is 100% confident about an Idea being ‘right’ is likely a bad idea. 

1. So you can change your mind gracefully in the conversation (eg if in the conversation as new info comes to light)

• You come into a discussion with 75% confidence your idea is a good one. But in the conversation new information comes to light that means your updated view is 25% confidence your idea is a good one. 

• Keynes

  • “When events change, I change my mind. What do you do?

  • When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

  • When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

  • When someone persuades me that I am wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?”

2. If you end up being wrong (which you almost always will to some degree)

• If you can never be ‘right’ for an Idea then you can always update the Idea. Then you will always be ‘minimum some part wrong’. 

• So having [“messaging confidence” < “message confidence”] means you don’t look unreasonable in the future when you invariably update your view on the Idea. 

3. So others can change their mind gracefully in the conversation

• Let’s say that [You] are 75% confident an Idea is a good one. But the [Other] person you are discussing the Idea with is 25% confident the Idea is a good one. 

• Over the course of the discussion it [You] are able to explain your reasoning and the [Other] changes their view to be 75% confident the Idea is a good one. 

• If you start off with [Your] ‘Messaging = 75% confidence’ then you could well put the [Other] offside as they don’t agree and instead of wanting to listen to you they start to defend their view. You end up with a negative sum idea battle (debate) and do not seek ‘truth’. 

• From previous blogs: 

  • Negative sum = Debate = Neither side wanting to listen to the each other, instead trying to prove why their view is superior

  • Positive sum = Discourse = Both sides listen to each other and try to update their views when good relevant information comes to light. You both walk out with upgraded views on the Idea and are energised! You look forward to the next time you can have positive sum discourse! 

• IMO one key way to have ‘positive sum discourse’ is through having [“messaging confidence” < “message confidence”] = provoke thought.

• IMO one key way to have ‘negative sum debate’ is through having [“messaging confidence” = “message confidence”] = telling it ‘how it is’

4. So you sound reasonable. You can't be certain about an Idea, so best not have Messaging as such. Understand that Ideas are complicated and act as such. 

5. If someone is new to an idea, being soft (provoking thought) is often better to get them up the curve.

• You never know the context someone else has. IMO whether we like it or not we all have biases and preconceived notions. 

  • IMO the goal is: “Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.” Bertrand Russel. 

  • My characterisation of this quote is that you work on yourself to slowly learn more about the world, understand the experiences of others and thereby route out your biases. You see things how they are, not as you want them to be. IE eventually “Perception = Reality”.

•  As such IMO it’s best to have [“messaging confidence” < “message confidence”] = provoke thought Messaging so you don’t have someone get offsite due to context. 

6. Someone has an understanding of the idea but you think it’s a good idea and they think it is a bad idea. 

• See - “1. So you can change your mind gracefully in the conversation (eg if in the conversation as new info comes to light)”

• See - “3. So others can change their mind gracefully in the conversation”

7. Someone has a different point of view to you on an Idea. 

• Some things are not ‘0% confidence ⇔ 100% confidence’ for an Idea but a continuum. 

  • For instance: the best way to help the economy is through increased taxes vs the best way to help the economy is through decreased taxes. 

  • This is not ‘Option A’ is a good Idea or bad idea, but is Option A or Option B a good idea? 

• I love this model for explaining politics… and helping me explain this point :) 

• Link

• IMO both parties have the same goal, improving society. But often the left and the right have vastly different strategies for achieving the same goal. Eg Free Trade vs Fair Trade. Eg More taxes vs Less taxes.

• IMO we should all try to be pragmatists (do what works), not ideologues (predetermined answer). 

• If you say put forward Message Option B but someone is more ideologically aligned to Option A then they might not listen at all and enter into ‘negative sum debate’ mode if you don’t have very carefully chosen ‘Messaging’. 

• Visualisation fun:

8. You don’t get far by telling people what to do, you get people on board by provoking thought! 

• IMO ultimately one does not want loyalty (people who blindly follow you) but Loyal Opposition (people who build their own independent view point and convey it to you). 

• If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. No journey is long with good company. 

  • IMO good company = Loyal Opposition. 

  • Loyal Opposition = help you find your blind spots and ego distortions. 

• IMO Loyal Opposition aren’t order taking slaves. IMO Loyal Opposition are people who build their own independent viewpoints and engage in mutually positive sum discourse with those around them. 

• If you want to foster Loyal Opposition the IMO provoke thought (AKA [“messaging confidence” < “message confidence”]), don’t tell it how it is ([“messaging confidence” = “message confidence”]). 

A bit of my personal journey

• L1: Spending all energy on trying to figure out good Message (aka a good Idea). No conscious energy on Messaging. 

• L2: Think that Message Confidence should = Messaging Confidence. 

• L3: Believe that in 90% of cases [“messaging confidence” < “message confidence”] is optimal. AKA trying to be a ‘positive sum discourse partner’. 

• L4: Writing blogs like this trying to build other ‘positive sum discourse partners’... and as such ‘mutually positive sum discourse communities’. 

If you only take one thing away

• IMO your default should be [“messaging confidence” < “message confidence”] = provoke thought

• Be this in verbal or written communication. 

• Having any other default would be a… fault! 

There are no lightbulb moments. There are however earned secrets.

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 7 mins

Summary: Lightbulb moments are earned secrets masquerading as an instant. 

• Lightbulb moment = a point of searing insight where you a sudden large break through

  • Time needed = None / very little. You have a sudden large breakthrough. 

  • Knowledge about problem space required = Low.

  • Improvement of solution over existing outcome = Large. 

• Earned secret = where you put in the work to learn about an area and slowly over time small incremental advances present themselves to you through extended analysis that over time accumulate to be a ‘large breakthrough’ over the existing solution. 

  • Time needed = Large. Eg years.  

  • Knowledge about problem space required = High. All else the more knowledge you have (aka the more ingredients you have) the more new recipes you can create.

  • Improvement of solution over existing outcome = Small for each individual gain. However what happens is that you have many small wins that added together come to a large improvement over existing solutions. So when you launch a product it looks like a ‘large improvement’ and people might think that you had this one sering insight that made the product, but the product is really the outcome of years of small cumulative wins. 

Innovation is not magic. Innovation is a process, innovation is inevitable, innovation is predictable - blog link.

• Innovation = Earned Secrets

• What I used to think: you only have a few good ideas in your life. Ideas are limited.

• What I think now: you have as many ideas as you spend the time to generate. Ideas are limitless. 

• Jingle: Anyone can be innovative, because innovation is doing the work to earn secrets. It just takes a lot of time… but done well it’s oh so much fun! 

• Jingle 2: In anticipation, progress is gradual; in reflection, it is monumental. 

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Einstein: “I’m not smarter than others, I just spend longer with a problem than they do.”

• The more you know about a space * The better you are at strategic thinking = The more insights you have. 

• This doesn't mean you can't spend your time well generating earned secrets at high or low quality. 

Little insights accumulate into ways to take big steps forward. 

• For example: you might have 10 little insights (earned secrets) in one year but if someone comes back a year later and sees the next product you are building it looks like a big step forward. 

• Visualisation:

  • What happens in reality: 

• … but from the outside it looks the same:

• Secondary School for students is normally learning the earned secrets others created. Students spend almost no time on ‘innovation / earning secrets’. IMO this leads many people to think that ‘only special people can come up with ideas’. IMO this is not true!

• “If it’s humanly possible you can do it too.” Marcus Aurelius. 

An earned secret is obvious after the fact. If it's not obvious you haven't figured anything out. 

• Over time you nut out obvious solutions. 

• IMO only build obvious solutions. 

• The time needed to find something obvious can be small or large. The decision about whether to build something should be instant: is this obviously something we should build or not? 

  • Ok this is a big of an oversimplification. But much time is spent figuring out what you think you can build. Little time picking which of those things to actually build. Don’t built all your ideas / earned secrets. Build only the obvious earned secrets!

  • Sometimes you have an idea that you like but isn’t quite right. Then 6 months later you have another ‘earned secret’ and then the idea is ‘obvious’. 

Some quick thoughts on how to try and do high ROI earned secret generation: 

• Earned secrets = 1. Learn about problem space: academic research / existing solutions / qual / quant / intuition / first-hand experience * 2. Come up with solution sets: thinking / writing / talking / visualising / building * 3. Over an extended period of time

  • 1. Learn about problem space: academic research / existing solutions / qual / quant / intuition / first-hand experience

    • Areas: 

      • Academic research: look at what the PhDs have been saying about the world. Ph-ully ph-antastic in-ph-ite. 

      • Existing solutions: look at what users do to solve the problem (Job To Be Done) now and reverse engineer out the insights.

      • Qualitative: learn about a problem space through speaking to people.

      • Quantitative: look at user data and / or do quantitative surveys. 

      • Intuition: learn about a problem space through your intuition (what you think and see) and by munging all of the above pieces together and putting in any missing pieces and / or new ideas you have.  Best sentence ever. 

      • First-hand experience: Recognise the knowledge gaps through first-hand experience 

    • An example - secondary textbooks

      • Academic research: what does the academic research say about the misconceptions students have about algebra and how do we think about incorporating this in our Chapter and Lesson breakdowns? 

      • Existing solutions: 

        • How do existing textbooks teach algebra?

        • How do other curriculums outside of Australia teach algebra?

      • Qualitative: speak to teachers about and students about what works well and what doesn’t for algebra.

      • Quantitative: build a few samples of content and have teachers and students use it then track feedback on things like ‘tests’ and ‘NPS’. 

      • Intuition: take all of the above learnings and synthesize them into a hopefully cohesive step forward. Do I learn about a problem space in the order above? Sometimes ;). 

      • First-hand experience: a past teacher or students knows where students regularly get stuck in a certain maths problem

  • 2. Come up with solution sets: thinking / writing / talking / visualising / building

    • Areas: 

      • Thinking: eg listen to a podcast on a topic then just stop and think for 5 mins after the podcast and try to join as many dots in your head as you can. 

      • Writing: once a week on the things I’m trying to improve at (‘innovate in’ / earn secrets in) I write a blog of  ~1000 words. It’s an extended freeform extended thought. Done well writing is high quality thinking. I find this massively joins pieces together for me… and it’s fun. That is what these blogs are. 

      • Talking: I’ll set up weekly / fortnightly recurring meetings for things I want to talk about where the goal is ‘though exploration’ vs ‘decision making’. Love these, so much fun!

      • Visualition: this is often an orthogonal explanation to complement words, eg see visualisation for ‘earned secrets’ above. 

      • Building: you need to be building as well; balancing the ‘thought exploration’ vs ‘building’ in an interactive iterative mutually positive sum fashion :). 

  • 3. Over an extended period of time

    • An example - secondary textbooks

      • Not only do we build small individual pieces of content and test with teachers and students (eg Batch Size One content)

      • We also build textbooks every year and will hopefully do so indefinitely. So I’m very proud of the 2020 versions, but hope that the 2021 versions will be a big step forward. 

      • Possible Options: 

        • Option 1: take 2 years to build 1 textbook

        • Option 2: build a textbook in each year, so in 2 years have built two versions. 

        • Comment

          • IMO both options require the same work. However, option 2 provides more expansive learnings: 1) learnings from building alone + 2) learnings from user feedback. 

    • All else equal the more time you have spent on a problem the more chances you’ve had to generate ideas / earn secrets. 

    • I never plan to stop trying to improve education. This sounds like never ending fun to me. Something you can not improve indefinitely sounds boring! 

    • IMO the best things in life get better with time. IMO the best things get better because you made them better. 

If you only take away one thing: 

• Anyone can be innovative (come up with ideas). But you need to do the work (earned secrets) to come up with ideas. 

• Done well doing the work to earn secrets is fun… and new ideas done well make the world better. 

• So earning secrets = delicious and nutritious. 

• There aren’t ‘ideas people’ and ‘not ideas people’. This is another form of ‘fixed mindset’ / ‘learned help yourselfness’. 

Brain upgrading: increasing the rate at which you think!

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time:

• Summary = 2 mins

• Entire blog post = 10 mins

Summary: You can train your brain to read faster. This increases the pace at which you think. This has many benefits: 

• eg 1. As you can think faster you no longer need to devote 100% of your mental bandwidth to keeping up with conversations, making conversations ‘calmer’ / more engaging / less stressful.

• eg 2. You can get more done each hour. 

Overview:

• Just like your body, you can train your mind.

• The average person reads at 200 words per minute with 60% comprehension. A top 1% reader does 1,000 words per minute at 85% comprehension. Yes, more words AND more comprehension. This is not skipping words. 

• No one is born able to speak, let alone read, let alone read at 1,000 words per minute! 

• IMO anyone can get to read at 1,000 words per minute, it just requires training. 

• I constantly train my brain to comprehend information faster. 

  • My fav methods of training are speeding up Youtube, Netflix, Podcasts & Audiobooks. Details on how to do this below. 

  • I started off at 1.25x speed and thought this was fast. Slowly I’ve increased the speeds, it’s so much fun! 

• Learning to read faster increases the speed at which you can think. This has many benefits:

  • I spend ~2 hours a day listening at 5x+ speed (at a frenetic pace). The rest of the day I spend speaking with people at 1x speed. Being able to think faster allows the rest of the day at 1x speed to be much calmer. Eg instead of having to spend all of my mental bandwidth to just keep up with what someone is saying at 1x speed, I can listen to what they are saying AND think about what they are saying. While they are speaking I can think:

    • ‘Do I understand what they are saying?’

    • ‘Should I ask a clarifying question?’

    • ‘Ok, I think I understand what they are saying, how should I respond?’ 

    • Etc etc. 

    • Jingle 1: So listening to podcasts at a frenetic pace doesn’t make life more stressful, it makes life calmer!

  • It allows you to think faster so when by yourself you can get more done = more improvement to the world, more value added, all else equal more pay. 

• So training the mind to think faster = 1. Calmer in discussion with others + 2. More done when by yourself = better life :) 

  • Jingle 2: You upgrade your phone, why not upgrade your mind too?

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Delectable data (for Duncan):

• The average person speaks at 120 words a minute (2 words per second) - link. 

• The Guinness world record holder speaks at 637 words per minute - link. 

• The average person reads at 200 words per minute with 60% comprehension - link. 

• A top 1% read does 1000 words per minute at 85% comprehension - link.

  • Yes 5x the reading speed AND higher comprehension. This is not ‘skipping words’. 

  • 1000 words per minute is 8.3x as fast as the average person speaking. Wowsers, that’s a big wack of words! 

• There are reports of people reading at 1900 words per minute… and even up to 4000 words per minute - link. 

People watch the olympics and world’s strongest man competitions, well I want to want speaking and reading competitions :). The Olympics stokes nationalism? Speaking and reading competitions foster self improvement ;P! 

Just like your body, you can train your mind. 

• If you have never been running before you won’t run very fast.  But train every day for a marathon and you’ll get much much faster at running. 

• If you have never lifted weights before you are not going to be very strong. But if you go to the gym each day you’ll be able to get much stronger. 

Imagine if you had only ever ‘walked’ between 2 points before... but then you found out that you could run between two points and get there in 20% of the time. 

• IMO your brain acclimates to what is around it. Ie 1x average speaking speed (ie ~120 words per minute). 

• However IMO, just like your body, your mind can ‘run’ too. You can make your mind fitter (ie increase words per minute). 

• IMO doing so: 

  • 1. Increases how much you can help the world be better (ie all else equal the more you know the more you can help)

  • 2. Makes life calmer. 

What is a comfortable speed? 

• You know how if you have been driving on a freeway at 100 km/hour and then you go back to driving at 60 km/hour and it feels really slow. 

• If you have ever been a runner, do you remember when 10 km/hour was maximum exertion and really tiring. Then you got fitter and your max was 15 hm/hour, and now running at 10 km/hour feels pedestrian! 

• Well I’ve found the same to be true for listening to content and reading. 

How do I train my brain to increase words per minute? 

• I use text to audio programs and slowly crack up the speed. 

• Programs I use:  

  • Podcasts: I have helped create a podcast app that goes up to 32x speed (that is not a typo). It’s called OwlTail - link. If a person speaks at 120 words per minute 32x is 3,840 words per minute :)! 

  • Text to audio on iPhone: 

    • iPhone has accessibility functions that will read the text on any screen aloud to you. IT. IS. GENIUS! (... pity about the bars at Apple stores)

    • How to turn this on and use here. 

    • Unfortunately it caps out at 800 words per minute. That used to be way above what I could handle, not it’s below :(. Please Apple increase the maximum to 2000 :). Does anyone know the Apple engineer in charge of this? I’d love to talk to them about increasing the speed!

    • I really love the computer voices as the faster you go the more important the pronunciation is. Computers never mispronounce. Humans never pronounce 100% correctly. Initially I hated the computer voices… now I love them. Perfect pronunciation is particularly pretty. 

  • Audiobooks: 

    • I used to use Audible but this caps out at 3.5x. 

    • I now use the iPhone text-to-audio function in the previous bullet point to read Kindle books aloud. 1. It goes faster. 2. It’s easier to understand at speed. 3. Kindle books typically cost less than audio books. 4. When you hear a sentence you really like stop the audio and copy the words. You can’t copy the words out of an audiobook easily. 

    • Ie Kindle text-to-audio is better in every way for me and Audiobooks. 

  • Video on a computer:

    • With this bookmark you can speed up videos (eg like Youtube, Netflix) to 16x before it breaks. 

    • Add the following as a bookmark in Chrome: 

      • “javascript: function changeSpeed(){var newSpeed=prompt("Enter playback rate:","4.0");if(newSpeed!==null){var videos=document.getElementsByTagName('video');if (videos.length>0){for(var i=0;i<videos.length;++i){videos[i].playbackRate=newSpeed;};}else {alert("No videos found");}}}changeSpeed();void 0”

    • I find it quite entertaining watching people moving around at silly speeds on YouTube :). 

  • Text to audio on a computer: 

    • GhostReader is my weapon of choice here. 

    • Annoyingly they only go up to 800 words per minute here too. 

  • Turning any article on the web into an audio file that you can listen to as a podcast episode

    • Ever had a 10k word article online you don’t get the time to read? Or even a 500 word article? 

    • I use a program called Narro to turn this article into an audiofile that I can listen to in any podcast client. 

    • This is also GENIUS. FYI I do my listening on my commute to work and also while exercising.

I think of three different models for listening to / reading content: 

• The modes: 

  • 1. Growing your maximum

  • 2. Comfortable listening (typically 80% of max)

  • 3. Normal speaking speed 

• I’ve slowly been increasing the words per minute I can handle for years. I’m up to about 1000 words per minute. 

What do I do? 

• Each morning I listen to 1.5-2 hours of audio as I do exercise and commute to work. 

• Phase 1: increasing max comprehension speed. 

  • I normally start with something a bit lighter and that I don’t care if I get 100% of. 

  • I’ll listen to this at a new maximum speed, eg 6x speed. 

  • I don’t get 100% of what is being talked about, this is about growing my maximum and it takes physical exertion to try and understand. Eg close your eyes and concentrate! 

  • I normally do this for about 30 mins of 1x speed content (this is 5 mins of time at 6x speed). 

• Phase 2: comfortable listening where I want to take in as much of the content as much as possible

  • After ‘Phase 1’ I then wind back the speed to 80-90% of maximum. 

  • Just like after driving at 100 km/hour and then coming back to 60 km/hour where things feel slow. I find the same for podcasts, after running at max everything seems comprehensible, calm and relaxed…. At something like 5x speed! Ha! 

  • Using this technique I’ve slowly been able to crank up max speed. I’ve hit the max in every podcast player I used after a while. With OwlTail we pushed to create a really fast speed up algorithm, and now we have 32x :)! Don’t know if I’ll ever get there!

  • Personal story: 

    • I started speeding up content in 2011. I remember at the time I was proud that I could listen at 1.25x for podcasts. 

    • Then I heard about a person doing 2x and was like ‘WTF, how could anyone listen that fast?’

    • Now I’m annoyed that Apple’s build in text-to-audio on iPhone maxes out at 800 words per minute (6.6x average person speaking speed). 

    • I’m no different to you, I’ve just been training myself for 8 years. The difference is that 8 years ago the max speed you could get was 2x. So I hit the ceiling really quickly and had to wait until the technology improved. 

  • *aside: I have been finding ‘3rd party’ stress signals to let me know if I’m stressed or not. One of my 3rd party stress signals is how good I am at paying attention to podcasts in the morning? 

    • Eg If I have to cut speed back to 50% of max then I’m normally very stressed. This is a signal to stop listening to podcasts at all and just chill while at the gym; and to make sure I’m very gentle to myself that day. 

    • It’s funny, when I’m not stressed listening to podcasts gives me energy. 

    • When I am stressed not listening to podcasts gives me energy!

• Phase 3: the rest of the day when speaking to people at 1x is way calmer as my mind is capable of going much faster than 1x speed because of the upgrades I’ve done. 

  • It’s funny, I go to the gym to be good to my body and to train my body. 

  • But I’m also at the gym being good to my mind (making time on average calmer) through training my brain to comprehend faster. 

  • So the gym is for my body and my mind :)! 

“Life is not about time management, it is about energy management.”

• Is listening to content at a frenetic pace going to be more than offset by the calmness it gives during the day? I made a quick model for y’all :)!

• Comment: 

  • The time I spend pushing a new max is less than 10 mins a day. 

  • The time spent at work is WAY longer than this. Even if I did ‘only’ 1 hour of talking to people at work a day this is still a positive energy exercise for me. And I normally do much more than 1 hour of speaking to people at work. 

  • The model above suggests that the time spent listening faster is net positive for your energy. 

• But more than this, listening faster means you think faster. 

  • All else equal, thinking faster means you get more done. 

  • I think one of the best hacks to a good job is to ‘help make the world better’. If you think faster => should get more done to help improve the world => enjoy job more => this is energising :)! 

    • So listening faster for me each day: 

      • 1. Makes the time I talk with others at work more energising and 

      • 2. Makes the time I don’t talk with others are work more energising (because of getting more done through thinking faster). 

    • Wins all around people :). 

  • Selfish lens: if you think faster => get more done => add more value => all else equal get paid more. 

• To be healthy you need to have good physical health and good mental health. So go to the gym for your body and  your mind… at the same time :)! 

The more you know about something the more interesting it is.

• I’ve talked about this in blogs such as this one. 

• If you take in knowledge per hour => all else equal you know more about the world per hour => the world becomes more interesting more quickly => you like consuming information more :). 

Agreeable Disagreement - A Key Life Skill

By Duncan Anderson and Kat Gentry. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 7 mins

Summary: Agreeable disagreement = look to update one's opinions (ie is open minded) + look after the common good (vs narrow self interest) + look to falsify (ie find reasons why what you believe is incorrect vs confirmation bias) + give yourself and others enough rope to change your minds gracefully + publically change opinions and explain why

Facts vs Ideas 

• Fact = there is a right and wrong. Eg today is Wednesday. Eg a coffee costs $4. 

• Ideas = there is no right and wrong, there is just your current best view on the idea (opinion) that can always be upgraded. Eg how to best spend your wednesday. Eg how to best make a coffee. 

  • Jingle: if your opinion cannot be ‘right’ (ie cannot never be upgraded), then the only thing you can be right about is being... wrong. Ah haha!

“Be hard on your opinions. A famous bon mot asserts that opinions are like assholes, in that everyone has one.  There is great wisdom in this, but I would add that opinions differ significantly from assholes, in that yours should be constantly and thoroughly examined.” Tim Minchin. 

• Not all your facts are right :(

  • You cannot personally originate all of your facts. You need to rely on others. Eg have you personally been collecting data on if the climate is warming? Or do you rely on the 97% of scientists who say that it is? I personally haven’t been tracking weather patterns. But I’ve seen documentaries like Chasing Coral and Chasing Ice as well as seen that glaciers have been receding with my own eyes. I’m comfortable to go with the 97%.  

  • As you cannot originate all your facts you need to rely on others for some of your facts. IMO it’s therefore super important to try and know which of your facts are wrong! 

  • “You can choose your opinions (ie point of view on an idea), but you cannot choose your facts.” Said someone I can’t remember! 

  • IMO your ideas and opinions (views on ideas) are built on facts. So try very hard to falsify your facts. 

  • Falsification = trying to disprove something. If you cannot disprove it therefore is correct! 

  • The foundation of a good life is as close an understanding of reality as possible. All else is built on top of this! If your facts are wrong nothing else can be right! 

  • IMO some of my facts are wrong. I don’t know which ones. Help me try to route them out. I’ll try do the same for you! 

• Your opinions can never be ‘right’ :)

  • “One cannot accept that on every story there are two equal and logical sides to an argument.” Edward R Morrow

  • I used to try and figure out what my opinion was and then justify justify justify. 

  • Now I’m constantly trying to find how I can:

    • 1. Upgrade my opinion, and

    • 2. Find where my current opinion works and where it stops working. 

      • “Everything works somewhere, nothing works everywhere.”

  • Confirmation bias = the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or strengthens one's prior personal beliefs or opinions.

  • Confirmation bias = disregarding information that goes against your opinions. 

  • I used to think that changing my mind on an opinion was real bad. I used to do confirmation bias. 

  • Now I think changing my opinion on an idea is real good. I try to not do confirmation bias.

  • “Changing your mind is a super power.” Ray Dalio. 

• IMO to live a good life you 1. Need to have your facts right and 2. Be constantly upgrading your opinions. 

  • If you can’t agreeably disagree with yourself and others I think it’ll be much harder to achieve this! 

  • As such IMO agreeable disagreement is a key life skill. 

  • I try to cultivate my ability to agreeably disagree with myself. I try to cultivate this in others. I try to agreeably disagree with others. I try to have others around me who agreeably disagree. 

  • This, I hope you can agree, should put you in a good pedigree! 

Opinion Dominions

• L1: You have no opinion

• L2: You spout other peoples’ opinions

• L3: You generate your own opinions from a mix of other peoples’ opinions

• L4: You research independently to form your own opinion

• L5: You research independently to form your opinion AND you listen to other peoples’ opinions for context and potential learnings

• L6: L5 + you discuss opinions to find where they break and so you can upgrade yours’

• L7: L6 + you listen to your network to understand the stories other people tell themselves, then let this fine-tune your opinion of how the public opinion interacts with the zeitgeist

• L8: L7 + help others upgrade their opinions

Your opinions work for you, you don’t work for your opinions.

• I used to try and slavishly justify my opinions on ideas. 

  • *aside: 

    • I sometimes refer to opinions as ‘little theorems that help me navigate the world better than not having them’. I try to know how the theorem helps, how it hinders, where it works and where it doesn’t. 

    • I think the work ‘theorem’ is far more ‘growth mindset’ than is ‘opinion’. 

    • In my opinion, I should use the word ‘theorem’ instead of ‘opinion’ ;). 

• Now I try to have my opinions help me navigate the world. 

• I try to have my opinions make me a better person and improve the common good. 

• Reasonable people can have different opinions about what is the best strategy to help the common good. 

• I think that if someone is trying hard to figure out what is best for the common good then awesome! If someone is looking after their narrow self interest then not so good! 

• Having many reasonable views on how to improve the common good is… good. Trying to tear down a reasonable view that helps the common good that isn’t your view (opinion) is… bad. 

• Good > Bad. Haha ;)! 

I used to like people who agreed with me. Now I like people who thoughtfully disagree with me. 

• I used to think that if you had the same opinion as me you were smart… good looking, had a strong moral compass, a good work ethic… you were just generally awesome ;P

• Now, I care not about what you think, I care about how you think. If you are trying to help the common good, if you are trying to falsify, if you are trying to update your opinion and help others update their opinion then awesome! 

• Thoughtful disagreement = agreeable disagreement. 

Give the other person enough rope to change their mind gracefully. Give yourself enough rope to gracefully change your mind. 

• IMO you are not having word combat where two opinions enter and one leaves. 

• You are trying to have positive sum interactions. 

  • Negative sum = debate

  • Zero sum = discussion

  • Positive sum = discourse

• Positive sum = you enjoyed discussing different opinions / theorems with someone else and look forward to doing so again. Negative sum… not so much! 

• You are not going into the discussion trying to change their opinion / theorem. You are trying to see how you and they might be able to upgrade your respective opinions / theorems. 

• IMO you can never be ‘right’ about an idea. Your theorems / opinions can and IMO should always look to be updated. 

Changing your mind is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of self awareness. 

• Often, if a politician changes their opinion on an idea it is career ending. 

• IMO a prerequisite for someone becoming a politician should be that they have publically changed their view (opinion) on multiple ideas. 

• If your view on ideas can always be updated, the only thing you can be right about is being wrong (that your opinion is unupdatable). 

• Not only do I want to change my opinions when it makes sense. I want to publicly explain why I’m changing my opinion (how I’ve been able to upgrade my theorem). This is not something I’m ashamed of, it’s something I’m proud of. I didn’t use to think this way. 

• I hope to upgrade my opinions indefinitely. I hope to help others do the same. I hope others help me upgrade my opinions indefinitely. This definitely sounds like fun! Indefinite, definite, fun! 

… is it agreeable disagreement, or disagreeing agreeably? I think we can all agree that the latter is disagreeable! 

• PS I love playing with language. Just so much fun! A good sentence gives me as much joy as eating a chocolate!

Experience points: through cultivation you can get 100x the value from the same activity!

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 6 mins

Summary: for most tasks it’s possible to take something from menial to meaningful. Doing so isn’t just rewarding, it’s also a great strategy to get good quality!  

“The more you know about something the more interesting it is.”

• EG 1: Sport. If you know nothing about a sport it’s not very interesting. If you have master level knowledge about the sport it’s likely very very interesting! Watching the same sports game could have 100x the ‘experience points’. 

• EG 2: A TV show. I could watch a TV show and have a bit of escapism, relaxing. Or I could watch a TV show and appreciate cinematography + costumes + character development + moral conundrum + character dialog etc. 

For the purposes of this blog let’s just say there are two types of tasks:

• Tasks with a ceiling: factory worker making standardised widgets, hit play on a TV remove, open a door

• Tasks without a ceiling: making a coffee, writing a book, being a friend

I’m going to argue that you can massively increase the experience points you get from tasks without ceilings.

• Watching a sports match can go from ‘-1 experience points I would rather not be doing this’ to ‘the most rewarding and important thing in your life +100 experience’. 

  • I had friends for the AFL Grand Final in 2019 vomiting from worry the night before the game. 

• To reiterate, the exact same experience can go from ‘-1’ to ‘+100’ experience points! 

• Also, 100 points is an artificial number here, there is no ceiling! 

The best things in life get better… because you make them better. 

• “Every year of your life should be the best year of your life.” 

  • For me, the main way I try for this to be the case is not to have a more expensive car or a higher paid job, but better relationships and more rewarding work. 

• Scrumptious = Delicious + Nutritious 

  • The best things are delicious and nutritious

  • The best things are laughing and learning

  • Then best things are selfish and selfless

• My relationships get better not because I have a new friend, but because with my existing friends we jointly figure out how to make our time more delicious and nutritious. Eg talking about more topics in more depth with more fun! 

• Work improves not because I’ve gotten a promotion or paid more, it improves as I find ways to make it better with others around me! 

• In effect I am the limit. My life improves as much as I am able to improve it. My life is as scrumptious as I make it! 

• Friendships

  • 20 year old Duncan got bored after a period of speaking to someone, now for my good friends each hour gets better as we develop more and more fun things to chat about. 

  • 15 years ago a good friendship was 1-5 experience points per unit of time. 

  • Now a good friendship is 20-50 experience points per unit of time. 

  • Same people, same amount of time, 10x+ the enjoyment :)! 

• Work

  • 20 year old Duncan thought work would be like school / university, a tax I had to pay so I wasn’t homeless. It would be ‘-1 experience points’. 

  • Then I found that work could be interesting, something that I would do not only if I was getting paid. Work was ‘1-5 experience points’... but it was still not as good as holidays. I wanted to retire ASAP! 

  • Now Edrolo has 5x the ceiling for ‘experience points’ it did 4 years ago. 

    • Honestly the highest experience I have is Edrolo, something like 100-200 experience points per unit of time. (Aside: there are highs and lows, work currently gives me the highest highs and the lowest lows)

    • I think the ceiling 4 years ago would have been 20-40 experience points. So Edrolo work is ‘5x the experience possibility / ceiling’ of before. 

I used to think that life was about ordering from the menu well. Now I think life is about making new items for the menu. 

• I didn’t know that I could massively improve my relationships. 

• I thought a job was ‘set’, the amount of experience points possible couldn’t change. 

• I’m not saying that others can’t help you, IMO the best is an infinite massive multiplayer game. It’s just that I now believe the world I inhabit is mainly built and defined by myself and those I interact with. That we can make things as awesome as we want! 

• Life is so much better than 5 years ago it’s not funny. But on the outside it looks pretty similar:

  • Same friends

  • Same company

  • Same job title

  • Similar pay

• I honestly now believe I can make my life 100x better and I don’t need anything money can buy to do this! 

• There are two people that live to 80 years old. But one might have had 100x the experience of the other. 

  • Is it possible to double the amount of experience points you have had every year? Ie each year have as much experience as all of your life up to that point? I don’t know… but it’s worth a try ;). 

From ‘menial’ to ‘meaning’:

• Coffee

  • Menial = making coffee can be a repetitive minimum wage job. 

  • Meaning = making each coffee is an opportunity for creating art. Little changes here and there, enjoyment and reward for all! 

• Wine

  • Menial = repetitively making alcoholic grape juice with the same process again and again.

  • Meaning = people come and watch others making alcoholic grape juice, when the winemaker has a holiday they go to Bordeaux in France to see how other winemakers do things for fun. Yes on their holidays they go look at people doing what they do for work! 

• Writing a book

  • Menial = very painful with lots of writer's block and low quality product

  • Meaning = after JK Rowling has finished a book do you think she thinks ‘hmmm, i’ve made a book now, what is my next challenge?’ IMO for Rowling making a book is as challenging and rewarding as she makes it. 

• Making content for a textbook :) 

Enjoyment => quality

• Is it your job to make your job enjoyable? 

  • I think it is your job to do this… I also think it is your coworkers job to do this as well… it is everyone’s job :). 

  • Enjoyable jobs aren’t just some ‘nice to have’. IMO they are an key way to get quality outcomes! 

  • Edrolo content specific: IMO it’s everyone’s job to figure out how to build the systems to repeatedly make high quality theory and the language and models for which to communicate so that collaboration is also rewarding. 

• I love this framework from Neri Oxman.

• Science => make quality tools / ingredients, frameworks, etc / language

• Engineering => assemble tools into logical recipe with machine to make content

• Design => make the machine work smoothly and consistently

• Art => enjoyable, beautiful end content

• So effectively done well being ‘SEDA’ means you go from:

  • Menial work => Meaning

  • Low quality => High quality

  • Not enjoyable => Enjoyable

  • Low quality collaboration => High quality collaboration

• Effectively you can increase the ‘experience points’ you can get per unit of time.

Team Players and Team Leaders

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: There are some jobs which are single player games (eg an Author, Academic) but the vast majority are multi-players games. IMO to have a team function well you need to have Team Players and Team Leaders. 

All teams, be it sport, work, family, need different “positions” or roles to succeed.

• A great AFL team has people with different roles, who may focus on slightly different things, but share the same overall goal and vision

• In families and friendship groups, everyone plays slightly different roles, but will be there to support each other

• Work teams are no different.

People play different roles in a team. Roles are not necessarily mutually exclusive or static either. To have a successful team, individuals have to be Team Players, regardless of their role. There are also Team Leaders. A Team Player is obviously many things. This is just one lens!

• This is my attempt at a short blog… it’s shorter :)! 

Team Player = 1. Loyal Opposition + 2. Disagree but commit + 3. Think of themselves and the collective + 4. Understand that collective happiness is needed for individual happiness + 5. Has a Team Leader

Jingle: If you are on a team… it’s not optional to be a team player ;)! Being a team player ultimately means that you are able to enjoy doing things that individually you wouldn’t like as when you see the bigger picture is the overall best path forward! 

• Individual lens only = do not like the initiative

• Collective lens = now do like the initiative because you can see how it all fits together

+++++++++++++++

Details

1. Loyal Opposition

• There is always opposition, you have two choices, loyal or disloyal

  • Loyal = will bring things of contention up in a way that tries to have them be addressed and solved

  • Disloyal = will only talk with others about areas for change and not let the people know who are involved about your opposing thoughts to be able to try and improve. 

• Problem size: small / medium / large

• Bring up anything medium+ close to real time (ie not a month later)

• Bring up smalls if you think they’ll go to a medium. 

• Loyal opposition is positive sum for an idea. Loyal opposition is positive sum for a company. 

• Full blog here

2. Disagree but commit

• It is not possible to agree on everything. Having a diverse team with different lenses and experiences helps improve a team drastically, so naturally there will be points of disagreement. And on top of this the optimal path of learning is often to test the idea with end users (ie not endlessly talking in a room about what to do). 

• If people cannot disagree and commit it’s very hard to get things done. 

• How and when someone disagrees (loyal opposition) is totally crucial. 

  • For example picking the right audience to disagree to is crucial. 

  • Soft and soon. Start small and soft and slowly increase your disagreement if you feel it is warranted. IMO do not come out of the gate with a medium or large response to something. Start with a small, then medium, then large! 

  • Not everyone can know everything, not everyone should know everything. 

  • This might mean that you disagree up (to management) but commit down (to directs).

3. Think of themselves and the collective

• Secondary school and university are normally single player games. People have not needed to think beyond themselves. 

• If you are playing a multiplayer game IMO you have to think of all parties. Let’s give a quick example of the different parties: 

  • Yourself

  • Your team

  • Management

  • The entire company

• Unfortunately it is not possible to always have every party be happy in isolation. But I’ve found that if I look at all parties and see that this proposal is the best overall then I’m ‘happy’. In short, the ‘personal lens’ might not be exactly what I want, but the ‘collective lens’ shows this to be overall the best compromise so I’m then ‘happy’. 

• Ie ‘Collective Lens’ > ‘Personal Lens’. 

4. Understand that collective happiness is needed for individual happiness

• Collective Liberty ⇔ Individual Liberty continuum. 

  • In a country, do you lean more towards collective liberty (freedom for the country, ie well functioning government that gets things done etc) or towards individual liberty? 

  • From Will Durant (whom I have a mega mental crush on). If you lean too heavily towards individual liberty you have anarchy. If you lean too heavily towards collective liberty you have the government stifling the populus slightly. 

• In a company sense, you need to have a happy company and happy people. But without a happy company all people are unhappy. However you can have some unhappy people and a happy company. 

• So if you think of the different parties above (Yourself,Your team, Management, The entire company) you have to have the company be happy long term else no one else is happy. 

• In other words, the good of the organisation is paramount, with a dead Edrolo no one can be happy!

• The more senior you are the more delicate you need to be with voicing dissent. You need to say one thing to senior people and another thing to people who report to you. This is not duplicity, this is looking after the common good.

5. Has a Team Leader

• You need a leader not a manger for things to work

  • Managers = tell people what to do

  • Leaders = are authentically vulnerable, admit mistakes / fail openly, change course when the information necessitates. If you don't do this people won't disagree and commit. 

• In the early days, as people are learning more and more about the company etc, leaders may need to put on more ‘managerial’ hats, to get people up to speed. But ultimately, you want leaders.

• Each company is different, there isn’t one structure of system that works everywhere. “Everything works somewhere, nothing works everywhere.” 

  • However in the fast majority of companies managers / leadership will have the final say. 

  • As it’s not possible to have everyone always agree, so disagreeing but committing is a part of life. 

  • Decisions in hindsight will turn out to be incorrect (or need course adjustment). In my experience, when this happens the people who made the decisions need to 1. openly show that a decision is being changed (not change without saying) + 2. Explain the key learnings + 3. Explain the reasons for the change + 4. Explain the new decision + 5. Have input where appropriate! 

Positive sum principles increase the opportunity set

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 4 mins

Summary: 

• Good (positive sum) principles increase the opportunity set

• Bad (negative sum) principles decrease the opportunity set

• No principles is anarchy and therefore a very small opportunity set. 

• Rearticulation delectation (i think I’m going to try and include more of these): often the 1st order outcome of a principle is to restrict something, but done well this rectriction has 2nd order benefits of increasing the opportunity set way more than the 1st order restrictions.

Rule vs Principle:

• Rule = no interpretation, follow to the letter

• Principle = interpretation required, figure out how to apply for a positive sum outcome

All successful societies they know of have had rules / principles. 

• So it’s not a question of whether or not to have rules / principles. 

• It’s a question of what they should be and how to regulate them. 

A few examples of rules / principles: 

• That you need to pay taxes

• That you discuss with your manager your plan for the week

• There are speeding laws

• That you make every effort to attend company all-hands 

People often see first that a principle is ‘stopping’ something from happening. People often miss that what is stopped hopefully allows much more to occur than what is being stopped (ie is positive sum). 

• As with almost everything, there is a 1st order outcome that is immediately visible to a principle. Zooming out and looking beyond, there is often a 2nd order outcome, sometimes even a 3rd or 4th etc. Our aim is to think of more than just the 1st order outcome and optimise for the greater good ie. positive sum.

• We have FAR more rules / principles for society today than we had 200 years ago. Now lawyers end up specialising in just one part of the law (eg mergers and acquisition, employment law, litigation, etc). 

  • 200 years ago in western europe there were 400 jobs, there are now 500,000+ and growing in a first world country. There are many more laws (restrictions) than there were 200 years ago… but there are also now many more things one can do than 200 years ago!

  • There is almost nothing I want to do that I can’t do in Australia! And there is way more to do than there was 10 years ago! THIS IS AWESOME!!!!

  • In my opinion things are improving… however I feel the overall sentiment is that society is regressing :(. 

• At a company you normally need to speak with your manager about your plan for the week. 

  • This means you can’t just do whatever you want whenever you want. But done well it means:

    • that you have a second opinion on where to best spend your time and thereby spend your time better, and 

    • that you can coordinate better across the company than if no one speaks to anyone about their plans. 

  • In other words, done well speaking with your manager about your plan for the week is a better outcome than not doing so. 

  • An analogy: a football team has a coach. Done well having a coach means the team performs better than not having a coach.

  • Or… doing so done well improves the outcome for the ‘common good’ and is therefore in your interest. 

• You have to pay taxes. 

  • But doing so allows the government to fund healthcare, welfare, police, education etc. 

  • If we didn’t have this we’d have much more unrest in society. Unrest does not allow for progress! 

  • Having free education (vs not) allows many more people to reach their potential. Doing this grows the economy and helps with stability. This means everyone wins. 

  • So done well your taxes: 

    • allow you to earn more in the future than if you didn’t pay them. Wait what, so me paying taxes = me earn more? IMO yes if your taxes are spent well. 

    • AND it helps others contribute more (eg through your taxes funding healthcare, education, etc) so they then pay more taxes, so the economy grows, so you can earn more! Wait what, so me paying taxes => others reach more of their potential => earn more => economy grows more => I earn more. IMO yes if your taxes are spent well. 

  • “Democracy without education is mobocracy.” Churchill. 

  • ‘Mob rule is anarchy.’ Plato. 

  • Taxes done well = improves the common good and is therefore in your interest… but you might just see the government taking part of your salary! 

• Comment:

  • Explain why the 1st order outcome of a principle which can be viewed as restrictive ideally has a 2nd order outcome of increasing the possibility set way more than the 1st order decrease! 

  • If you don’t do this, often people will just see what is being ‘stopped’ and will likely not be supportive of the ‘1st order restrictive principle’! 

IMO we don't live in a nanny state. We live in the best state humanity has ever been in! 

• IMO overall society seems to be moving forward and upgrading principles. 

• Don’t hate principles that stop you from doing things. Hate principles that decrease the opportunity set, and love principles that increase it! 

• Haters gonna hate, players gonna play… in a system with good (positive sum) principles!

Narrow vs broad self interest: the common good is uncommonly good

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 5 mins

Summary:

• Secondary School and University are typically single player games. 

• The vast majority of companies are multiplayer games. 

• To do well in Secondary School normally you just look after your personal interest. 

• Do do well in a multiplayer game typically you need to look after the the overall best outcome, aka ‘the common good’. 

  • The ‘common good’ may or may not align with what is best from a ‘narrow’ view for your personal self interest. 

  • However IMO once you can see the bigger picture, you normally want to adjust what you think is best for you to do. Ie after considering more than just your circumstances you can often change what you personally want to do.  

• So:

  • Broad self interest = common good

  • Narrow self interest may or may not = common good

I love a good framework (mental model). This is Lawrence Kohlberg’s Moral Development Framework.

• Optional: 

  • Who is Lawrence Kohlberg and is he friends with Robert Kegan (another person with developmental frameworks I like)? 

  • Lawrence Kohlberg served as a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago and at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. He died in 1987 and was a professor at Harvard until his death.  

  • Robert Kegan is an American developmental psychologist and Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development at Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he taught for forty years until his retirement in 2016. 

  • 2016 - 40 = 1976. So it appears that both Kegan and Kohlberg were at Harvard's Education department for 11 years of overlap? I hence deduce they knew each other! I hope they were friends and discussed much. I would love to have been a fly on the wall listening to their conversations! 

  • BTW I love learning about the professors of education departments of big universities, they have done some sweet sweet stuff! 

    • Learning = lovely. 

    • Education = engaging.

    • Learning about education = engaging loveliness 

Company example: 

• The different parties:

  • Individual

  • Your team

  • Management

  • The entire company

• Narrow self interest = what you believe is best to do considering only your individual perspective

  • This may or may not be the best overall outcome for all the different parties.

• Broad self interest = the best weighted overall outcome taking into account each of ‘individual’, ‘your team’, ‘management’ and ‘the entire company’, AKA the common good. 

  • Often when taking into account the perspectives of all parties one can see that one's view just for themselves (ie individual) may not align with the overall best outcome (ie looking after the common good). 

  • After having looked at all parties one often then adjusts what one thinks is the best course of action. 

• The common good = good for you

  • IMO we are not trained in multiplayer games, so we aren’t trained to try and understand the multiple parties and how to see what works for each of them. 

  • As such our narrow self interest doesn’t always align with the common good.

  • Basically: 

    • At times your narrow self interest = best thing for you to do

    • At times your narrow self interest = worst thing for you to do (ie the 2nd order consequences for other parties outweigh any 1st order wins for yourself thereby making you less happy / well off)

“The path to hell is paved with good intentions.” 

• Or… the path to hell is paved with good 1st order intentions and unforeseen 2nd order consequences. Super catchy right?

• Or… the path to hell is paved with a narrow self interest that doesn’t align with the common good (aka broad self interest). Super duper catchy! 

• Good intentions don’t always mean good outcomes. 

  • I believe that it is not ok not to have good intentions. 

  • But I believe that ‘just having good intentions’ is not enough. You need to try and consider what ‘good outcomes’ are for all relevant parties. 

  • In short, you need to try and understand where things are now, and then if your proposed change will mean that the overall outcome (the common good AKA broad self interest) will improve or not. 

• IMO almost everything has second order outcomes. 

  • If you don’t know what they are they are likely to get you. 

  • IMO it’s almost always worth at minimum a few minutes of trying to see possible second order outcomes.

IMO it is everyone’s job to try and look at the world from all parties, and to try and look after the common good. IMO looking after the common good IS looking after yourself.

• Good intentions don’t always mean good outcomes. If I look back at times for ‘avoidable plain’, two areas popup again and again: 

  • 1. Miscommunication. Communication is HARD! Eg did I confirm understanding by asking someone to rearticulate? 

  • 2. Not considering the full picture AKA common good AKA broad self interest. Eg did I only look at part of the picture?

• For years I’ve been trying to consider the outcomes for the relevant parties for each situation. I’ve found that one doesn’t remember to think about what is best for oneself… but one can at times not remember to look through the lenses of all relevant different parties. 

• So I think we should constantly remind ourselves and others to do so! Together we can help each other be better! 

• Jingle: if you want work to be a party, don’t forget to consider the relevant parties! 

On the first day of my first job post University the big boss said: “it is not good enough to do a good job, you have people know you are doing a good job.”

• IMO good leaders need to act for the common good. 

• IMO good leaders explain why what they are doing is the interest of the common good. Without doing so people can often only see the world from their perspective! 

• Leader = Coach

• “We are all players, we are all coaches.” :) 

+++++++++++

Details 

Family lens: 

• The relevant parties:

  • Me

  • My siblings

  • My parents

  • The family dynamic

• Thoughts:

  • I think if I always did exactly what I wanted my family would have long since ditched me. 

  • However I think that I’m much better off for having my family around. 

    • 1. They are here to support me (as am I for them)

    • 2. They tell me when I’ve got my head stuck where the sun don’t shine… which I'll eventually find out about. So the sooner the better. Ie they remove downside. 

    • 3. They add upside. They help me find out about things I wouldn’t have (learn), help me laugh, they help me have perspective! 

  • Example 1: 

    • When I was a single digit human mum used to effectively force me to eat my greens. While I didn’t like it I now think she was right. 

    • I wasn’t allowed to play video games or with friends until I had done my homework (mum would check). I didn’t like this but I paid the tax (doing homework). 

    • In short, mum was right, mum knows best... mum is the best! If little Duncan was allowed to do exactly what he wanted whenever he wanted he’d be much worse for it today! 

  • Example 2: 

    • My family live in Melbourne, but I lived out of Melbourne for 5 years (from 25 to 30). 

    • When I got back I wasn’t seeing the family regularly, eg 5-10x times a year. 

    • For a couple of years now I catch up with the family weekly. Sometimes I’m really up for it, others time really not.

    • ~50 catch ups a year vs 5-10 has meant we have much deeper relationships and the amount we can help each other with is wildly more than before. So basically if I selfishly just did what I wanted then I’d catch up much less. But catching up more has increased the amount we can help each other with and meant we want to catch up more. Common good > narrow self interest.  

Company lens:

• The relevant parties:

  • Individual

  • Your team

  • Management

  • The entire company

• Thoughts: 

  • Narrow self interesting = doing what you think is right just for the individual

  • Broad self interest = doing what is right overall for the different parties. 

  • Ideally you have each of the 4 constituents having a good outcome. But sometimes you cannot have this, so you have eg 3 of the 4… or even 2 of the 4, or even 1 of the 4 being positive as the best outcome for the ‘common good’. 

  • Without a happy company (eg a dead company or eg a company that has to do downside headcount) then you cannot have happy individuals. So normally you have to look after the company’s best interests so anyone one else can have ‘good outcomes’. 

    • Further analogy: if a country is unhappy (revolution) then no individual can be happy. 

  • If you are in a big company, it is likely that at any given moment there are discontented people for one reason or another. But if you have an unhappy company then normally you’ll have everyone being unhappy! 

    • If the company is unhappy then all people are typically unhappy. 

    • If the company is happy then it allows others to be happy, but doesn’t guarantee so. 

  • … so looking after the common good is… uncommonly good! 

  • Example: 

    • Let’s say that someone wants to spend 3 months coming up with a plan for their project. 

    • However doing so roadblock work for others, meaning that other people in the company do not have work to do which means they eg may not have income for 2 months. 

    • As such while in an ideal world the person would like to spend 3 months planning, they are happy to compromise to 1 month so that the other person doesn’t have no work for 2 months. 

    • Narrow interest = I want to do 3 months of planning

    • Broad interest = we can still get a lot done with 1 month of planning and I also get to have good outcomes for others so I’m happy to shift! 

Developmental Framework Fun - a collection of other’s frameworks

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 7 mins

Maturing = learning from your own mistakes

Maturing = importing the learnings of others

• A 100,000 word book can change how you think about the world. 

• A 10 word quote can blog your mind.

• … and a mental model (framework) can put your mind into the stratosphere. 

  • Mental models lead to maturity? 

DA development stages 

• I used to try and ‘just get better’ based solely on my own 1st hand experience. 

• Then I tried to read books, listen to podcasts etc.

• Then I added framework finding. Framework finding = fantastic fun! 

  • Below are some frameworks I’ve found over time on human development

• Now, I also try make my own mental models (that is a lot of what doing these blogs are about)

  • I find that making models is more fun than even finding others awesome models! 

Jingle: mental models make for mad metacognition

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The frameworks

Kohlberg’s stages of moral development.

A few years ago I didn’t think of the competencies of ‘Emotional Intelligence’ as sequential levels. Eg Self-awareness => Self-regulation => motivation etc etc. It’s obviously not exactly how things are, but I feel there is some value to looking at the world this way!

Michael Commons model of hierarchical complexity.

Ok I’m just going to stop as this is more than enough for now IMO. haha! 

Learned help yourself-ness - learn this and you can do anything

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 6 mins

Summary:

• Learned helplessness = you cannot improve at new things without a curriculum and / or teacher (coach)

• Learned help yourself-ness = you can improve at new things even without a curriculum or teacher (coach)

  • There is always a pioneer. 

  • What someone in a first world nation (like Australia or the US) does today has almost nothing to do with what humans did in hunter gather times. This is the accumulated outcome of ‘learned help yourself-ness’. IE people doing new things that had never been done before. 

  • We can all do things that have never been done before. This, IMO, is bloody effing sweet! 

  • You can help yourself. You don't need anyone else to help you to make progress (although that doesn't mean others can't help). 

  • On a more micro level, almost nothing I’ve ever done at Edrolo had I ever done before. 

  • Growing up I didn’t know that ‘I could do things that had never been done before’. I wish I knew that at an early age. 

IMO two of the key questions philosophers have been asking for millenia are: 

• 1. What does it mean to live a good life? and 

• 2. What is the common good?

One equation I have for a good life: 

• Good life = 1. Having the tools you need to build a good life * 2. The right stories that you can use those tools to build the life you want * 3. Get on with building!

• IMO you cannot expect to be given a good life, but you can try to build one! 

• We are told stories from birth (socio-cultural indoctrination). For example studies show that east asian cultures have a far more ‘growth mindset’ towards mathematics than do western cultures. IMO you get to decide what stories you want to live by, you don’t have to take the stories that others tell! See “Story = Reality Distortion Field”

• Jingle: sing yourself sweet lullabies. Don’t be a slave to the stories of others! 

Three ‘Stories’ that I believe are key to a good life (these are DA definitions - ie not necessarily what you’ll see elsewhere)

• Story 1: Hard work (vs entitled) 

  • “Nothing will work if you don’t.”

  • It’s better to work smart (eg deliberate practice), but no work = no good (outcomes)! 

• Story 2: Growth mindset (vs fixed mindset)

  • Growth mindset = you are not born good or bad at anything, you get good at what you work on. 

• Fixed mindset = you are born good / bad at things and cannot change. 

  • Eg somehow you might be born at ‘expert’ in maths (skipping novice, competent and proficient) even though no one can walk or talk at birth. 

• Growth mindset = you can improve at anything you try when there is a curriculum and / or teacher (coach)

• Story 3: Learned help yourself-ness (vs learned helplessness)

  • Learned help yourself-ness = you can improve at new things even without a curriculum or teacher (coach)

    • This doesn’t mean that curriculum materials or a coach won’t help. What it means is that there aren’t any necessary prerequisites for progress to be made in something you have never done before. 

    • You can carve your own path and create your own curriculum 

  • Learned helplessness = you cannot improve at new things without a curriculum and / or teacher (coach) [aka victim mentality].

    • ‘I can't help myself. Only others can help me.’

  • One of the key ways the world gets better is by people doing things that have not been done before. So we need ‘learned help yourself-ness’. 

  • To do this you can't always have a teacher / coach around

    • Too much support at minimum stunts someone's growth, at worst deprives someone the opportunity to grow. 

    • Sometimes to doing something new, means there is not someone around who can coach you

    • If you are not reliant on someone to grow you, then you are the master of your own trajectory

    • Even if you do have a coach around, sometimes the optimal amount of support is no support (see energising expectations). 

  • Flailing is not failing. Giving up is failing... or not even trying at all because you don't have a curriculum or coach (aka Learned Helplessness)

  • Some quotes for y’all: 

    • “The biggest risk is taking no risk.” 

    • “You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.” 

    • “Self belief is a core ingredient to succeeding in anything.”

    • "Whether You Believe You Can Do a Thing or Not, You Are Right" - Henry Ford

    • “The highest leverage activity any human can have is inspiring other humans to do what they’re capable of” – Austen Allred

    • “If you’re trying to eliminate all risk from your life, what you’re actually doing is eliminating all possibility from your life.” Snowden

    • “For what it’s worth: It’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start over.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald

    • “A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.” — James Allen

IMO what is one of the skills in shortest supply? The ability to to make progress on something you have never done before and/or do something that no one has ever done before. AKA Learned help yourself-ness. 

• I think some other names for ‘learned help yourself-ness’ are ‘thinking from 1 st principles’ and ‘problem solving’. 

• IMO this is the ultimate skill. Get good at this and you'll be able to do anything. 

  • Effectively achieving mastery in learnt help yourself-ness  would mean you’ll never not be able to get a job. 

• The more people we have in the world who are able to do things that haven’t be done before the better the world will become with useful innovations

• The lack of learned help your selfness is a topic I see in the education zeitgeist, ‘how do we teach entrepreneurship in schools?’

  •  IMO one key component of entrepreneurship is ‘learned help yourself-ness’. 

Counterfactuals - a personal note

• I try to only work on things that wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t doing them. 

  • For example Australia needs more houses, but if I, DA, was making or not making houses there would still be more houses. 

  • However I don’t see anyone trying to change education the way we are at Edrolo. 

  • As such, I’m more attracted to working at Edrolo. 

• If you want to do things that wouldn’t happen if you weren’t doing them then to me it’s axiomatic that you will need to do things that haven’t been done before. So basically you have to have ‘learned help yourself-ness’. 

• More than that, I basically don’t want to work on anything that I know how to do (aka have done before). Most often I believe the place I can help the most is doing something that hasn’t been done. It used to be scary, but now it’s oh so fun! 

• IMO learning to help yourself make progress at something brand new is learning to help yourself to fun! 

• Fun is not overrated! Fun = Fantastic!

Learned help yourself nations

• There is a wonderful book called on Israel called “Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle”.

  • Israel is a country of 9 million people yet it has more companies listed on NASDAQ (the major US tech stock exchange) than anyone else other than the US. 

• IMO one expression of learned help yourself-ness is entrepreneurialism. Other examples of learned help yourself-ness: making music, making a sweet spreadsheet for paying royalties, hiring people, standup comedy, Mustang recipes, etc etc. 

• As above there is a push to try and teach entrepreneurialism in schools. I think this is a good idea and something that can be done better than it currently is!

• Venture Capital is money to help fund startups. While not perfect, the amount of Venture Capital deployed in a country is a deceent proxy for entrepreneurial activity in a country. 

• Some graphs:

  • 2017 data

• 2015 data

• Yes, Australia is not doing well :(. 

• If you look closely you’ll see that the actual numbers for Venture Capital deployed per country vary. However, it’s widely regarded that Israel has the highest VC deployed (ie invested in startups) per capita followed by the US and that both are more than 10x+ what happens in Australia. 

• IMO Americans are not born 10x as entrepreneurial as Australians. 

• IMO Israelis are not born 10x entrepreneurial as Australians… From a standing start 30 years ago. 

  • Israelis didn't somehow eat different food and somehow become 10x as entrepreneurial as Australians vs nothing 30 years ago. 

  • On top of this Venture Capital per capita in Israel has been increasing significantly as well. Ie Israelis are significantly more entrepreneurial than they were 10 years ago. 

• Israelis have learned how to help themselves. Now most everyone in Israel knows they can help themselves and their entrepreneurial ecosystem goes from strength to strength. 

• IMO you can have your own leaned help yourself-ness go from strength to strength. IMO you can help others learned help themselves-ness go from strength to strength. 

• I don't know why Australia wouldn't want to have the strongest ‘learned help yourself-ness’ culture in the world. As an example this should mean stronger new job creation, higher average income and much more! 

• … Imagine if you could get into every classroom…

• … Imagine all the people… Learning to help themselves, woo hoo-ooo!

• … Ok one more. “Fortune favours the bold.” Fortune favours those with a learned help yourself-ness mindset. 

Diverse Teams vs Diverse People

By Duncan Anderson and Katherine Roan. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: the broader your ability to empathise with humanity the better your ability to help humanity. Just like you can get better at playing a video game, you can systematically improve your ability to understand others. 

Only your 1st hand experience VS Importing the experience of others VS Building profiles that represent different segments of people allowing you to ‘masquerade’ as someone else: 

• L1: non diverse human = only has their first hand personal experience to draw upon

• L2: diverse human = systematically imports the experience of others (eg walks a mile in others shoes through reading, speaking to them, podcasts, documentaries, etc) and thereby broadens their ability to empathise.

• L3: ‘L2’ + ability to masquerade as other types of people = builds experience sets into defined profiles one can inhabit = one creates profiles from the imported others experience that she / he can draw upon to see how a type of person would view the world

  • Eg create the following teacher profiles: P1: Traditional vs P2: Hard Worker Traditional vs P3: Innovator Teacher. 

  • This means that if you are making a textbook you ‘pretend’ to be each of the profiles (ie if I was this type of teacher what would I see)

  • I find this extraordinary fun. 

  • One of the best parts is figuring out the areas of similarity and difference for the profiles!

• L4: is able to use the experiences of others to adapt their communication to each individual type 

  • Eg. speak the language of the traditional teacher to help them see why this idea is an upgrade to their current practice/ thinking

  • Eg. help the traditional self identify areas for improvement 

  • Sometimes you can empathise with  their experiences, but this has not made you change your practice/ execution in any way

  • If that’s the case, it won’t seem like you actually ‘understand’ and therefore you won’t be able to help

1. Problem space * 2. Skills => 3. Solution set

• I used to try and acquire knowledge by reading a book on eg ‘problem solving’ or eg ‘direct instruction vs enquiry based learning’. I still do this, but I also try and acquire the ‘experience sets’ of others and systematically build them into profiles I can inhabit. 

• 2. Skills = knowledge

• 1. Problem space = ability to understand others and see the world as they see it. 

• It doesn’t matter how good your skills are if you have a limited problem space you will be able to get limited solutions! 

• This requires you to understand  their lens, but also have the capacity to observe their patterns of behaviour and match it up with their articulation  of their experiences

  • People will tell you that they see things a certain way/think a certain way but sometimes their actions may not align

    • The beauty then comes into being able to see where the disconnect is and why

    • This also gives you an idea about their baseline

• If I’m now trying to help others, first I try to understand them. 10 years ago Duncan wasn’t really trying to do this. My goal is to understand others better than they understand themselves. I’ve found that many of the decisions I made in the past were for part conscious and part unconscious reasons. Slowly through self examination I’ve been able to lower the unconscious part. I find that you can help others discover about themselves too! 

• Jingle: I’m not trying to figure out who I am, I’m trying to understand as many different types of people as possible! 

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Details

They say that diverse teams get better outcomes than monolithic teams. 

• Basically, the more diverse the life experience set of a team the better it's ability to understand humanity and therefore come up with quality solutions.

• Your own personal experience is a valid part of the picture. Your own personal experience is not the entire picture.

…but what if an individual can systematically increase their ‘diversity’ AKA ability to understand humanity? 

• Everyone has their own unique experience… and so does everyone else! I believe one can systematically try to understand others and important the experience of others, thereby broadening one’s understanding of humanity. 

• Each week I try to look at ther world through at least one other person’s eyes. It’s so much fun! Below are different strategies I use to do this.

• L1: Non diverse human = only had their personal experience to draw upon

• L2: Diverse human = 1. Has their own experience to draw upon + 2. Systemically imports the experience of others 

1. Problem space * 2. Skills => 3. Solution set - it doesn’t matter how good your skills are if you have a limited problem space you will be able to get limited solutions! 

• For myself, school and university were mainly about learning skills like maths, science, history, articulation / writing, engineering, economics etc. 

• To me a crucial part up a good life is learning about people! If you want to help yourself IMO learn about yourself. If you want to help others, IMO spend significant time trying to understand them!

• A model for problem solving: 

  • 1. Problem space * 2. Skills => 3. Solution set

  • Comments: 

    • 2. Skills = maths, science, history, articulation / writing, engineering, economics etc

    • 1. Problem space = how much you can understand humanity (ie yourself and the context and experiences of others)

    • If you have only your own ‘problem space’ / ‘experience set’ as an understanding  then you will be at a massive disadvantage when trying to help others. 

    • If your problem space is small (or part of what you need to understand) it will severely limit the solutions you can come up with. 

    • IMO the bigger your problem space (ie ability to understand humanity) the more diverse the solution sets you can come up with.

  • IMO one learns about economics, about extraordinary people. One should also learn about humanity as broadly as possible. It helps you understand and grow yourself. It helps you help others… and it’s just super amounts of fun! 

• Jingle: I’m not trying to figure out who I am, I’m trying to understand as many different types of people as possible! 

Building profiles from the imported experience sets you gather

• I do two types of learning: 

  • 1. Just broad learning about different people (eg what it has been like to live through the Syrian civil war, being in jail and seeing how education can help, living in indian slums, what it’s like to be Taylor Swift) 

  • 2. Learning about people + building profiles from the learnings that I can inhabit and masquerade around in (eg for different teacher and student segments in Australia). 

  • Comment: 

    • In some places I’m trying to be ‘an inch deep but a mile wide’. 

    • In other places I’m trying to be ‘an inch wide but a foot deep’. 

• L1: Non diverse human = only had their personal experience to draw upon

• L2: Diverse human = 1. Has their own experience to draw upon + 2. Systemically imports the experience of others

• L3: A human who can masquerade as others = 1. Has their own experience to draw upon + 2. Systemically imports the experience of others + 3. Creates profiles from the importing of others experience that she / he can draw upon to see how someone

Strategies for learning about yourself and others (full details below):

• Learning from yourself - passively experiencing things, but also reviewing your experiences to deepen understanding. “You don’t learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences.” Basically a lot of why one does something is ‘subconscious’. By systematically examining oneself I believe you are able to slowly make the subconscious conscious.

• Learning about yourself through others -  how do other people see you and how well does that  match with that you think about who you are

  • I think this is fun because they usually pick up things that you wouldn’t otherwise see about yourself - even if you are reflecting on your own experiences

• Learning from others you interact with - don’t just talk to others, talk about how they are feeling and why they have responded in different ways :) 

• Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes - you can import the experience of others through books, documentaries, movies, podcasts etc. Some media is pure escapism, some is allowing you to view the world through others eyes. I love both, I didn’t understand about the later when I was 20 :(. Each week I try to look at the world through multiple new people’s eyes! Some people want to visit a new city or cafe, I want to look at the world through 3x new perspectives (ie people’s eyes who I haven’t done so before) each week. THE. BEST. FUN! 

• Building models in your head for the different types (segments) of people you are trying to help - 

  • Different types of people will respond differently to the same stimuli. Trying to understand how to group people and how they are different is EPIC fun and also IMO epically valuable for your ability to help people. 

  • I’ll give you a quick example of types / segments of people I think about at Edrolo: 

    • Teachers: 

      • Traditional

      • Traditional - hard worker (does lots of extra work but in ‘traditional’ ways)

      • Innovator (is trying new things)

    • Year 7 Maths Students: 

      • I don’t like maths, I think I’m really bad at maths. 

      • I don’t care about school. 

      • I try and maths but struggle.

      • I try and maths and succeed. 

  • Comment: 

    • Overtime I’ve slowly teased out these segments and trying to understand what makes each different from a ‘problem space’ point of view. When I’m speaking to people one of the first things I’m trying to do is figure out what segment they fall into and / or if my segments need to be updated. 

    • Every question I ask is me trying to figure out which segment someone is in and / or updating the segment profile. 

    • I try to ‘know the people we are trying to help better than they know themselves’. Ie you might have a better understanding of of why they make decisions than they do because they have non-trivial portions of their decision making done subconsciously.

    • This is SUPER AWESOME FUN! 

  • Visualisation: 

• Comment: 

  • I’ve found that to help more doesn’t necessarily take more effort. To help more you need to know how to help! If you can find the commonality then you can normally hit ‘three birds with one stone’. 

  • People normally have some commonality and some differences, trying to understand what is hard but so rewarding. 

  • I find that normally 2-5x profiles of people will cover 80-90% of the problems space. Having one monolithic view for everyone is likely too much of an oversimplification, having 10x I find way too difficult to actually use. 

  • For instance if I’m thinking about making a textbook I ask: 

    • “How would a Traditional Teacher see this?”

    • “How would a Traditional Hard Worker Teacher see this?”

    • “How would an Innovator Teacher see this?”

    • Asking this for 10x profiles times can actually make things unwieldy for my poor little brain! 

Harvard Professor Kegan’s model of Adult Development: 

• This is a bit dense, but stay with me :)!

  • According to Kegan only 1% of people get to ‘5th Order: Self Transforming’.

• Comment: 

  • One articulation I have of ‘Self Transforming’ is someone is able to understand multiple different types of people’s approaches to eg learning or economics or relationships etc. 

  • “The opposite of a profound through is not a falsehood, it is another profound truth.”

  • While people will likely have some commonality, there are also likely some areas where they have completely different approaches to the same stimulus (plurality). 

    • “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” 

  • So basically a ‘self transforming’ human has built multiple segments of people and can understand how each segment might approach the same problem differently. Ie ‘they can hold many identities and embrace the paradoxes.’

  • Basically, I’m not trying to figure out what is right or what I want. I’m trying to figure out the different types / segments of people and what works and doesn’t for each segment and why. 

Detailed strategies for increasing your ability to understand others (ie becoming a ‘diverse human’): (FYI I try to do each of the following every week)

• Learning from yourself: 

  • A: Passive learning from myself: I experience things.

  • B: Active learning from yourself: I replay 1x+ event per week where I felt strong good emotions and 1x+ I felt strong negative emotions and understand why. See Post Game Analysis :). I will normally do this by running chronologically through the event and trying to explain exactly what drove each part. I find that many many things occur in my subconscious (ie that I wasn’t aware of at the time) and I’m able to better understand when I slowly replay. 

  • C: Actively learning from yourself with others: I replay an event (Post Game Analysis) with someone else and work with them for their view of what happened. This is ‘B’ + talking with someone else. I find that for some reason it’s normally much easier to see things in others than in yourself! 

• Learning from others you interact with:

  • D: Active learning from others you interact with: I replay 1x+ event per week where I interacted with someone else who felt strong good emotions and 1x+ you interacted with someone else felt strong negative emotions and explain why. This is Post Game Analysis where someone else is the focus. 

  • E: Actively learning from yourself with others: This is ‘D’ + talking with others (ie not by yourself). 

• Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes:

  • F: Consume media: read books, watch documentaries, listen to podcasts, watch movies and TV shows specifically designed to broaden your empathy with humans. 

    • For example there many many podcasts and documentaries on being a teacher. You can understand the experience of Math to English, from rural to city, from Australia to Japan. It’s just epic! 

    • Example 1: The teaching gap - goes through how Germany vs Japan vs The USA approach teaching Maths at a country level. It’s extraordinarily interesting. 

    • Example 2: Revolution school - is a series on turning around an Australian schools

    • Example 3: This documentary series is on people in Indian slums is seriesly interesting. 

    • Example 4: College behind bars - is about inmates in New York getting college educations. It’s extraordinarily fascinating. 

    • 10 years ago Duncan used to only ‘import’ the experience of extraordinary people (eg successful entrepreneurs, politicians, business people, musicians, etc). While this is useful in learning what to do… I’ve found that it’s not necessarily that useful in learning how to help others.

    • Example 5: White Right - this is about disaffected people joining the white supremist movement in the US. It’s really interesting to see how people are preyed on to join movements like this. 

    • Example 6: Therapy podcasts such as ‘Dear HBR’ or ‘Where Should I begin’.

• Building models in your head for the different segments of people you are trying to help. 

  • Background: IMO the goal is to ultimately understand others better than they understand themselves. Many people only know part of the reason why they make decisions, I believe that one can systematically try to understand others and thereby help them wildly more! 

  • G: For example at Edrolo I might have the following segments for a teacher:

    • Traditional

    • Traditional - hard worker (does lots of extra work but in ‘traditional’ ways)

    • Innovator (is trying new things)

    • Comment:

      • When I’m speaking to a teacher I’ll be trying to figure out what segment of teacher they fit into and updating my model of each segment. 

      • I try to then be able to ‘look at the world through each segments eyes’. That is I’m constantly building and updating models for each segment, then if I’m trying to make textbooks I’ll think “ok, let’s pretend to be a ‘Traditional Teacher’, how would they view this? Ok, how is this different to a ‘Traditional - Hard Worker Teacher’ and an ‘Innovator Teacher’?”

      • This way every time I speak to a teacher I’m able hopefully to improve my understanding of the different types of teachers (ie empathyise better) and as such help more. 

  • For example at Edrolo I might have the following segments for a Year 7 Maths student: 

    • I don’t like maths, I think I’m really bad at maths. 

    • I don’t care about school. 

    • I try and maths but struggle.

    • I try and maths and succeed. 

    • Comment:

      • How you make a product for each of these segments could be really different. 

      • Classrooms typically have 25 students, and typically some kind of student interaction is good. 

      • I believe that if you think carefully you can actually build products that help each one of these segments significantly better than existing outcomes. 

If you only take away one thing: 

• IMO trying to better understand yourself and others is crucial for trying to help yourself and others. 

• 1. Problem Space * 2. Skills => 3. Solution Set

• I used to only proactively spend time improving my ‘2. Skills’ (eg data analysis, writing, business frameworks, etc), now I try to proactively increase my ‘1. Problem Space’ understanding each week through the following:

• L1: actively trying to examine and increase understanding in my own experience

• L2: actively trying to examine others experiences

• L3: building the learning you have of other others into separate segments and creating models for how different segments of people operate so that you can systematically broaden your ability to empathise and help

• L4: picking the right tool to help depending on the segment you’re interacting with

Geniuses: built not born

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: Genius (master) = 1. Determination + 2. Obsessive interest in a topic + 3. Hard work + 4. Problem Solving Ability + 5. Making things

• 5. Making things = not just reading about something without actually actively creating eg making a Mustang. The equivalent in Physics would be only learning what others have done without writing a PhD thesis. IMO you should import others wisdom and then try to build on top.

IMO geniuses are built not born. 

• Can you go to school or university and learn something? Yes. 

• The more learning you have done the more you know? Yes. 

  • What you can learn is a function of what you know. Ie the more you know the more you can learn. 

  • What you can do is a function of what you have done. Ie the more you have done the more you can do. 

• Genetics determine things like your skin colour and height, do they determine ‘smarts’?

  • Are geniuses children also geniuses? 

    • Eg are Bill Gates children geniuses? They are standard. 

    • Eg are Ada Lovelace (widely regarded to have invented computer programs) children geniuses? They were standard. 

    • Eg are Einstein's children genuses? They were standard. 

  • The children of geniuses are typically ‘standard’. IE genius is not inherited (born), genius is built! 

• For all ‘geniuses’ I’ve looked at closely (be it academics like Danny Kahenman, musicians like Taylor Swift, sports people like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods or Lewis Hamilton, entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Elon Musk, politicians like FDR, Chruchhill, Lee Quan Yew, etc) you find that at an early age they started actualising the ‘genius equation’. Ie doing all of 1. Determination + 2. Obsessive interest in a topic + 3. Hard work + 4. Problem Solving Ability + 5. Making things

• If you have not played a video game at all and your friend has played for 100 hours who is likely to be better? 

  • IMO no one is born good at anything. When you are born you can’t walk or talk. 

  • In education there is a concept of ‘fixed vs growth mindsets’. 

    • Fixed mindset = born good / bad at something

    • Growth mindset = you are good at the things you have cultivated

      • Someone is not good or bad at maths. Someone has ‘cultivated themselves at maths’ or some is ‘yet to cultivate themselves at maths’. 

• IMO anyone can be a genius, you just need to do the work. 

The standard story society has vs what happens

• IMO what happens: you start as a novice in everything, and then cultivate yourself to whatever point you want. 

• Be it maths ability, video game ability, violin, empathy, communication, creativity, problem solving, etc etc. 

• The standard story of society: someone is born a genius or not.

• Ie that they start out already above a master! 

• I like to think that I get better at the things I put effort into! 

• Jingle: to become a genius you don’t need a wish granted by a genie, you need to muster the work to become a master!

I’m going to try to stop using the words ‘smart’, ‘dumb’... and ‘genius’

• IMO ‘smart’ has heavy imbedded ‘fixed mindset’ connotations. Ie someone is born smart or dumb. I just don’t think this is the case. 

• Instead I’ll say ‘someone has cultivated themselves to be strong at empathy / maths / writing etc’, or someone is a ‘master’ at something. If you are a master you have done the work to master something! 

  • Dumb = Novice

  • Smart = Expert

  • Genius = Master

• Honestly, I think the human race would be much better if we got rid of the words ‘smart, dumb and genius’...

• … so the human race is ‘dumb’ or having these words and I’m ‘smart’ for trying to stop using them ;P! Sorry, I might have just undone any good work I tried to do!

• I’m using the word ‘genius’ because I think the standard story is that someone is born a genius or not and I’m wanting to juxtapose this implicit view vs one's ability to upgrade oneself! 

+++++++++++++++

Details

This blog was inspired by this article titled ‘Genius’ (optional read)

• I like most of it. 

• The bit i differ the most is the part about ‘natural ability’. I’m of the school of thought like Jo Boaler that natural ability is insignificant vs the upgrades one does to oneself. Effectively I believe that unless you have a significant hardware mental handicap the starting place we are birthed with is negligible vs the upgrades we do to our minds. Eg I remember when I struggled with 1.5x speed podcasts in 2011, now I can do 6x! 

Earned secrets = you do the work to figure something out and discover a ‘secret’ that is ‘obvious after doing the work’. 

• In short innovation is not a lightbulb moment, it’s the product of the Genius equation :) 

Earned secrets - Physics example

• If you want to contribute to Physics you don’t just have a lightbulb moment and then suddenly have a breakthrough for joining Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. 

• First you need to learn about Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. 

• Another way of looking at things: 

  • Model: 

    • Secondary school level knowledge

    • University level knowledge

    • Masters level knowledge

    • PhD level knowledge

  • Comment: 

    • IMO you can’t expect to add to physics knowledge with secondary school level physics knowledge. 

• Visualisation (that Daniel Tram showed me :) )

Earned secrets - Edrolo example: 

• I try to help improve education. As such I think it makes sense to try to do the work to try to become an ‘Expert’ / ‘Master’ in education research. 

• I now read a heap about education. I didn’t do much reading about education before 2016. I have no idea why. Honestly, it’s embarrassing. Maybe I had read a total of 10 books on education before 2016 and maybe 50 hours of podcasts. I now do this every 4-6 months! 

• To say that I think this reading has helped me is the understatement of the year. It’s basically the reason I’m writing this blog! 

  • Honestly I’d say I was a ‘Novice’ / ‘Competent’ in education research in 2016. I think I’m around ‘Proficient’ / ‘Expert’ now. 

  • I spend ~10 hours a week doing upgrades to myself, probably one third of this time is devoted to ‘education research’ at the moment. I’m assuming at some point this portion will go down, eg I don’t know if I need to get to ‘Master’ level. But right now learning more about education has made me want to learn more! 

• I think I’ve gone from decidedly average at my ability to build education products 4 years ago to building now what I consider to be seriously exciting stuff. 

• I think I’ve gotten wildly better at building education products through ‘the genius / master equation’. Ie i’ve built myself to be way better than before. 

• Master (genius) = 1. Determination + 2. Obsessive interest in a topic + 3. Hard work + 4. Problem Solving Ability + 5. Making things

• The two key things that are different are in 2020 vs 2016 are: 

  • “2. Obsessive interest in a topic”

    • I do 10 hours a week of 1x time human speed reading of education resources. 

    • “The more you know about something the more interesting it is.”

    • Each hour I do is more interesting than the previous hour. 

    • I now LOVE reading about education. 

    • Here is a summary of the best education books I’ve read in the last 18 months (please note that about half my consumption is books and half podcasts, so there is much more going on than just these books. And these are the ones I finished)

      • Grouping

        • What works may hurt

        • Changing Australian Education

        • Urban myths about education

      • Grouping

        • Ultralearning

        • Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

        • Teacher proof

      • Grouping

        • The Teaching Gap

        • How I wish I’d taught maths

        • What School Could Be

      • grouping

        • The Paideia Proposal  - Mortimier Adler

        • Reimagining education for democracy

        • The art of learning - Josh Wazedzki

      • Grouping

        • What's Math Got to Do with It

        • In search of deeper learning

        • Why knowledge matters

      • Grouping

        • Making kids cleverer

        • What does this look like in the classroom

        • Creating the schools our children need

      • Grouping

        • Educating Australia: Challenges for the decade ahead

        • The learning rainforest

        • Theory of instruction

      • Grouping

        • Motivating and inspiring students

        • Seven Myths about education

        • Trivium 21c

    • When do I do this? 

      • In the morning when I’m commuting to work and when I'm at the gym. 

      • It’s at the point where I wake up now and can’t wait to get into a book or podcast on education :). Education = awesome! 

      • It has made the gym fun! Gym now = good for my body + good for my mind :) 

    • Just like in physics, I believe to add to a field the chance of doing so is wildly higher the more you know about the field. 

    • I’m not saying you can’t add to education without reading things (aka importing the wisdom of others), I’m just saying the chance of doing so is wildly higher if you know more!

• “4. Problem Solving Ability”

  • See this blog

  • The best thing I’ve done to level up problem solving ability is write blogs like this all the time. I publish one externally a week but probably write the equivalent of 1-4x internally a week that are specifically to do something like ‘Year 7 Maths recipe’. 

• What does my daily practice look like? 

  • Every morning I read 1x chapter from 2x separate books on education. 

  • I also listen to 1-4x podcast episodes on education. 

  • I find this wonderful to broaden my understanding of education, and not get tunnel vision. It also helps me ‘stand on the shoulders of others’. “It’s good to learn from your own mistakes, it’s better to learn from others.”

  • Without doing this reading I find that it is easy to overweight your current point of view and not constantly consider multiple perspectives. 

  • In some respects: 

    • Reading = constantly considering multiple points of view

    • Not reading = having only the one point of view / solution playing in your head which often leads to tunnel vision / confirmation bias. 

“I’m not special, I’m just passionately curious.” Einstein

• Master (nee Genius) equation  = 1. Determination + 2. Obsessive interest in a topic + 3. Hard work + 4. Problem Solving Ability + 5. Making things

• “I’m not special, I’m just [obsessively interested in a topic].”

• As above I don’t think there is such a thing as genius, just people who have done a lot of cultivating of themselves in certain areas… some of whom become masters! 

  • ‘Masters / geniuses’ are people who have cultivated themselves to be extraordinary extent in an area. This is done through systematic upgrades. The sooner you start the better, most ‘geniuii’ start close to birth so it looks like there were different from the get go. 

  • I have been trying to hard core upgrade myself with respect to education for ~3-4x years now (before I was doing upgrades in things like ‘startups’ and ‘problem solving’). 

  • I discovered the love of learning when I was 22 (post university :( ). I wish I discovered it when I was 2 like some people did! Imagine how much cool stuff I could know by now! 

The more you know about something the more interesting it is.

• Purpose = Find a way to make the world better => take on responsibility => get meaning => have happiness

• I’ve found that reading on education has wildly improved my ability to find ways to improve education. 

• … educating myself has massively increased my ability to improve education :) 

• I think that everyone at Edrolo should read lots about education :)!

• Purpose done well is fun fun fun. 

• Reading about education has gone from ‘mildly interesting’ to ‘get out, that is awesome!’. 

If you only take away one thing: I think anyone can become a ‘genius’ / ‘master’

• I don’t think anyone is born a genius. I think geniuses (masters) are built not born. 

• IMO don't worry about what you are good at. Worry about what you want to be good at. 

• IMO the word ‘genius’ has imbedded fixed mindset connotations :(. 

• “Acquiring wisdom is a moral duty.” Munger. 

  • Wisdom = valuable knowledge

  • Valuable knowledge = knowledge that can help improve the world. 

• Becoming wise = Genius (master) equation = 1. Determination + 2. Obsessive interest in a topic + 3. Hard work + 4. Problem Solving Ability + 5. Making things

• Becoming wise = awesome scrumptious fun 

• One MECE I have for life: 

  • 5 days a week of purpose

  • 1 day a week of peace

  • 1 day a week of play

• Becoming a valuable master practitioner (ie someone who helps improve the world) is IMO a really good strategy for a quality outcome in ‘purpose’ time. 

• IMO anyone can become a master (genius). IMO there is a strong reason why you should want to do the work to become a master. 

• Master = Genius = Munger = Kegan’s Self-Transforming = Plato’s Philosopher Kings

Post Game Analysis - an essential tool for improving life

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: Without reviewing how you acted (Post Game Analysis) you cannot accurately know or improve your ability respond not react. High quality Post-Game analysis must include an attempt to understand your internal signals (body sensations, your emotions, your mindstate and your thoughts). 

Overview

1. External Stimulus * 2. Internal Signals * 3. Picture of what is going on * 4. Processing => 5. Outcomes

• You need “2. Internal Signals” to have a quality “3. Picture of what is going on”

• Without a quality “3. Picture of what is going on” it doesn’t matter how good your “4. Processing” you are stuffed! IE therefore “5. Outcomes” will be poor. 

A MECE for “2. Internal Signals”: 

• Emotions - what emotions you have going on

• Thoughts - what thoughts you have, not just being your thoughts, observing them! 

• Body Sensations - your emotions often show up in your body as physical feelings

• Mindstate 

  • Example of mindstate: tired, frustrated, worried, calm, excited. IMO mind state is analogous to ‘attention type’ (see Attention Control blog). As with Attention Control I find there is an optimal mindstate for each circumstance, I try to figure out what this is and embody it.

  • How is mindstate different to emotions? An emotional is a moment-to-moment reaction, while a mindstate is more sustained and pervasive

    • Emotion versus mindstate

    • Joy versus contentment.

    • Anger versus resentment.

    • Sadness versus depression.

  • Your mindstate is often affected by the emotions that come in. Let’s say you are in a ‘calm mindstate’ and then a ‘frustrating event occurs’, it could well be that at the end of this your mindstate becomes frustrated… but it doesn’t have to be this way :)  

  • Your mindstate also affects how you process things, eg the wrong mindstate will process thoughts and emotions in a counter productive way. Attention Control = 1. Developing many different types of attention (mindstates) * 2. Being able to have the type of attention (mindstate) that you want at any given time. 

How I’m trying to change: 

• 10 years ago Duncan: external stimulus => subconscious thoughts => go with first idea that came to mind (react not respond)

• Goal: external stimulus => real time awareness of internal signals (the external stimulus for thought, emotion, body sensation and possible change in mindstate) => considered processing of external stimulus and internal signals => conscious chosen response. 

• Levels:

  • L1: go with first thought that comes to mind.

  • L2: consider multiple thoughts and pick the best one

  • L3: external stimulus => low res internal signals => process => considered response. 

  • L4: L3 + high res signals (eg not just frustrated but pensive etc)

  • L5: can see others signals

  • L6: L5 + can see their processing. 

  • Comment:

    • The key way I try to level up is by cultivating my ability to sense and process with Post Game Analysis. 

What is Post Game Analysis?

• This is where after a meeting you chronologically go through with someone else what happened in the meeting for yourself and others

  • What was my mindstate and how did it change over the meeting

  • What was I not aware of real time (hint: most things)

  • Did I respond and not react

  • Can instead focus on thoughts, body sensations, emotions

  • Then do this for others. 

Visualisation time:

• What I try to do in a meeting:

• What 10 years ago Duncan used to do in a meeting:

Jingle: if you don’t do Post Game Analysis… do you even know what game you are playing? 

• “You don’t learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences.”

• Hopefully your life is long and you will play many games (have interactions with others). If you improve at the ‘game’ this should make your life much better. 

• I try to do Post Game Analysis at least once a day. 

• Post Game Analysis once a day keeps poor meeting outcomes at bay! 

Ok, the ultimate goal: 

• Pre Game Plan (ideal mindstate, expected logic path) discussed with others

• Play Game (planning is essential, but plans are useless. This means that no plan survives first contact so you need to be adapt effectively immediately)

• Post Game Analysis with others

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Details

Your Mindstate (attention type) affects everything: 

• Stimulus input emotion * Current Mindstate => Output Emotion * Output Thought * Output Body Sensation * Output Mindstate

• Input thought * Current Mindstate => Output Emotion * Output Thought * Output Body Sensation * Output Mindstate

• Comment: 

  • Point 1: 

    • When you are in a meeting with someone else speaking it’ll be sparking off ‘input emotions’ and ‘input thoughts’. 

    • When you are thinking it’ll be sparking off ‘input emotions’ and ‘input thoughts’. 

    • When you are writing it’ll be sparking off ‘input emotions’ and ‘input thoughts’. 

  • Point 2: 

    • IMO you always have a mindstate. If you don’t know what it is then you are at “L0: are unaware of what the signal is saying (subconscious)”

    • Your mindstate (one rearticulation of ‘attention type’) is always affecting what you do. 

    • The more aware you are of yourself and your environment IMO the higher your ability to shape yourself and your environment. IMO you can’t expect to be given a good life, but you can try to build one. 

    • IMO when people say you can ‘observe your consciousness’ this is one articulation I give. 

    • Mini-Jingle: Being mindful of your mindstate allows marvellous moments! 

  • Point 3: 

    • But more than this, cultivating your ability to access (experience) your body sensations, to understand and experience your emotions, to understand and experience your thoughts improves your life! 

    • Blind people aren’t born with better ears. They cultivate their ability to hear more. 

    • Sommeliers aren’t born with better paletes. They cultivate their ability to taste and smell more. 

    • Empaths (highly sensitive individuals, who have a keen ability to sense what people around them are thinking and feeling AND / OR be strongly in touch with their emotions, both from depth and breadths perspectives) aren’t born able to sense how others are feeling. Empathy is built through practicing trying to understand others (see blog). 

    • Higher quality input signals = more ability to experience life! 

My goal is to be aware in real time of all of my ‘input signals’ AND to be aware of others ‘input signals’ as well: 

• Sweet Signal Segmentation:

  • L0: are unaware of what the signal is saying (subconscious)

  • L1: are aware of the signal but only at low resolution (eg mindstate =  tired, frustrated, worried, calm, excited)

  • L2: are aware of the signal at high resolution (eg mindstate = small frustration called disappointed. Eg mindstate = large frustration called disaster)

  • L3: can do L2 ‘real time’ vs ‘after the fact’ (you can observe your consciousness, ie see the 4x signals real time)

  • L4: can see the signals that are going on in others (you can observe others consciousness, ie see the 4x signals real time)

What is the hopeful outcome of this? 

• ‘High resolution internal signals’ * ‘Real time’ * ‘Highly Accurate’ => High definition surround sound life

• What was DA like 10 years ago: ‘Low resolution internal signals’ * ‘After the fact’ * ‘Low Accuracy’ => Low definition mono sound sometimes good sometimes bad life

• ‘Shaping how you respond not react’ * ‘High resolution internal signals’ * ‘Real time’ * ‘Highly Accurate’ => High definition surround sound energising (vs draining) life! 

  • “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Viktor Frankl

  • “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Viktor Frankl

  • “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Viktor Frankl

• I want to be able to respond not react; to be able to figure out the optimal mindstate for a circumstance and then to be able to cultivate this mindstate. 

  • I don’t believe you can be expected to be given a good life… but I do think you can try and build one. 

  • For thoughts on optimal mindstates for different events see ‘Attention Control’ blog.

What 10 years ago Duncan used to do in a meeting:

• What did this lead to: 

  • I might not have answered the question asked.

  • I might have had word choice and tone (messaging) that didn’t reflect my intended message (honestly, I find accurately articulating oneself almost impossible, it’s just a question of how far out you are from what you wanted. I hope to have messaging <10% different to intended message).

  • I wasn’t considering multiple options for how I could respond in the discussion and then deciding what which option I wanted to go with.

  • I wasn’t aware of my mindstate and how it was affecting things. 

  • I wasn’t trying to figure out the most helpful mindstate (eg if you are speaking to someone who is having a bad day be very different to if you are giving them critical feedback. eg you should have a different energy / mindstate for taking part in a group discussion vs presenting to a group, etc)

  • I was not trying to construct logic trees in my head or on a whiteboard to understand what was going on in the discussion. I wasn’t trying to systematically direct my thoughts to make progress. It was just a random pinball machine. I was just hoping to have ‘high quality thoughts’. 

  • Basically I wasn’t trying to observe my consciousness, I was my thoughts. 

  • I wasn’t listening to what others were saying, I was listening to what I was hearing aka Duncan’s warped version of whatever he feels like ‘seeing’ at that moment. IMO your mindstate is warping everything that comes in, if you aren’t aware of your mindstate then you can’t try and counter for the distortions it creates! 

  • I wasn’t trying to build a picture of others consciousness (their signals, their logic tree). 

The vision of what I try to do:

• “You can observe your consciousness.” See all 4 signals in high definition real time (mindstate, thoughts, emotions and body sensation)

• You can observe others consciousnesses. 

• You can construct logic trees for yourself real time, a logic tree for the discussion real time and logic trees for others and then compare and contrast them to see what is going on! 

• Observing consciousness categories AKA IMO you want to be able to do more than ‘just keep up with discussion’. 

  • L0: not keeping up

  • L1: keeping up

  • L2: keeping up + can start to think about the discussion

  • L3: L2 + can see a map of the logic tree of the discussion and weigh different options in your mind real time

  • L4: L3 + can see your mindstate, thoughts and emotions and respond not react

  • L5: L4 + can see others dashboards above their heads and see why they are thinking and doing things

  • L6: will stop discussions to talk about ‘why the discussion is going the way it is’ not just ‘the discussion’. 

• Comment

  • I’ve slowly cranked up the speed I listen to podcasts / audiobooks. In 2012 it was 1.25x, now I’m at ~5x. Apparently top 1% readers do 6.5x speed (I’m hoping to get to be at top 1% speed in 2020) 

  • What this has done is meant that I just think faster now. Your mind acclimates to what is around it. Basically if you’ve only ever been on a treadmill at walking speed you can’t go faster. But if you run every day and slowly increase the speed you’ll be able to handle WAY more. 

  • In a group discussion I’m spending the 4x extra speed I’ve been able to cultivate on 1. Trying to observe my consciousness, 2. Observe others consciousness and 3. Constructing logic trees for myself and others! 

  • Then when I get to review if I was doing a good job in ‘post game analysis’ it’s the BEST fun ever! 

    • Slowly I get better at understanding myself and others! 

    • If you have never spend time trying to understand yourself with post game analysis what makes you think you’ll be any good at understanding yourself? 

    • If you have never spend time trying to understand others with post game analysis what makes you think you’ll be any good at understanding others? 

A wonderful visualisation from Sheldon that I was struggling to find where to include!

If you cultivate your ability to have quality internal input signals you’ll be able to live a ‘high definition surround sound life’. 

• You don’t need to spend more time on something, spend more money, find a new fun activity. You’ll be able to get way more ‘experience’ out of EVERYTHING! 

• Imagine you have needed reading glasses to see your entire life but didn’t know it. Then you go to the optometrist, they give you glasses and all of a sudden you can see! 

• Imagine you’ve only ever listen to music through a wall. Then you get to listen to it at the source. 

• Are you saying I can get 10x the ‘experience’ out of  the same stuff? Yeah! And increasing ‘experience’ for the same activities ALSO allows you to adapt the activities and how you ‘respond not react’ to upgrade even further! 

How to cultivate “‘internal input signals”

• Post game analysis of specific events by myself

  • Deconstruct the game from ‘1. Inputs’ (body sensations that came up, emotions that came up, mindstate going in and how your mindstate changed over the course of an event and thoughts). 

    • 1. Do a blow by blow chronological deconstruction of the event

    • 2. Then play ‘if I had my time again I’d do things differently’ and reconstruct how you might be able to go from disgusting to delightful! 

  • Mini-Jingle: You can make a dogs breakfast of an event, the outcome might have been disgusting… but you can turn this around. Disgusting + deconstruction + reconstruction => delicious degustation! 

• Post game analysis of specific events with others 

  • “We are all players, we are all coaches.”

  • Most of my 1:1s are ‘post game analysis’. Such an epic way to upgrade yourself, upgrade others, enjoy yourself and build deeper relationships! 

• Systematic reviewing of how I am (taking my temperature) by actively trying to explain my ‘internal input signals’ a few times a day. 

  • I have a wonderful spreadsheet named ‘modus operandi’. 

  • In it I note 2-3x times a day what my ‘internal input signals ‘have been. 

  • Let’s say it’s midday and I’m in the modus operandi spreadsheet doing a review of the morning. I note: 

    • What body sensations have I had this morning and how am I feeling right now? Are there any second order learnings from these body sensations (ie what could have driven the body sensations, ie the root cause that the body sensations could be a proximate outcome of).

    • What emotions have I had this morning and how am I emotions am I feeling right now? Are there any second order learnings from these emotions (ie what could have driven the body sensations, ie the root cause that the body sensations could be a proximate outcome of).

    • How has my mindstate been and evolved this morning and what is my mindset right now? Are there any second order learnings from this (ie what could have driven the body sensations, ie the root cause that the body sensations could be a proximate outcome of).

If you only take away one thing from this: 

• I was ‘fused with my mindstate / thoughts / emotions’ until about 5 years ago. 

• I had no idea I could observe my thoughts, emotions and mindstate. There was no observing, I was my thoughts, I was my emotions etc. 

• I was just trying to ‘think faster and smarter’. 

• I started reviewing how meetings went after… at the beginning it was just things like ‘word choice’ and ‘tone’. Slowly it’s turn into all of this fun :) 

• Slowly I’m more able to observe my internal signals!

Hierarchy of disagreement and message metatagging

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: when discussing whether to go ahead with an idea, misunderstandings can occur. To improve communication, I try to first explain if I agree / disagree / undecided about the core premise and then put forward new information to consider and explain how it affects my view on the core premise. I’ve found that just putting forward ‘new information to consider’ without context for how it affects the core premise can confuse and frustrate others. By clarifying the hierarchy of disagreement, communication is improved and the right decision is reached. 

Hierarchy Of Disagreement from Paul Graham: 

Theory: Let’s over simplify! 

• You are discussing whether or not to go ahead with an idea. 

  • For example: Whether to introduce a carbon tax in Australia. 

• This idea has one central point and one non central counterpoint. 

  • For example, the central point is that the carbon tax will reduce emissions. The non-central counterpoint is that there will be an increased cost for taxpayers. 

• Central point options:

  • 1. If the central point is True - go ahead with the idea

  • 2. If the central point is False - do not go ahead with the idea

• Non central counterpoint options: 

  • 1.  If you discover that the non-central counterpoint actually outweighs the central point. Do not go ahead, discovered to outweigh the central point. True, but cannot work around - do not go ahead.

  • 2. If the non-central counterpoint is True, but able to be worked around - go ahead

  • 3. If the non-central counterpoint is False - go ahead with the idea

• When do you go ahead or not?

“Never ascribe to malice that which can be ascribed to miscommunication.” 

• There is always miscommunication. The best you can hope for is 10% misunderstanding. 

• Sometimes it’s 0% understanding (they don’t know what you are saying). 

• In the worst cases it’s -100% understanding, ie others literally think you meant the opposite of what you intended :(! 

• That’s why it’s important to clarify the nature of your disagreement, ie whether it’s with the central or non-central point and thus affects or does not affect your opinion on whether the idea should go ahead.

• This becomes doubly important when you put forward new, additional points. 

Metatag any new information

• Theory: 

  • What I try to do when saying something = 1. Is this about a central point or non central point * 2. For the central / non central point do you think we should go ahead / not go ahead / undecided * 3. Then out forward your new information

  • What I used to do when saying something = *only* 3. New information

• Example 1: 

  • What I try to do: I agree with the central point and currently think we should go ahead with this idea. However there is a counterpoint that I think we need to consider which is X, while X is not good I think we can work around it and it still means we should go ahead with the idea. 

  • What I used to do: I think we need to consider X. 

  • Comment: 

    • If you just say ‘I think we need to consider X’ others might think you believe the central point is invalid and then start saying why ‘X is not relevant’. IE they are unable to engage with your comment in a productive way because they don’t know where it fits in the broader picture. 

    • IMO one needs Loyal Opposition. Loyal Opposition = people who help you stress test ideas and improve your understanding. People who tell you when your head is in a place it shouldn’t be ;)! People who help guide you towards ‘truth’. 

• Example 2:

  • Two parties are discussing whether to buy a house or not.

  • IMO what not to do: 

    • “I think there will be a recession in the next 2 years causing house prices to drop 30%.”

  • IMO what to do: 

    • “I think we should buy a house, but I think we need to be careful not to overextend ourselves. We are due a recession, so I’d only be comfortable buying a house if we could get through a recession financially.” 

Jingle: metatag your message to have marvelous meetings! 

Strawman vs Steelman...or how to make sure that your contribution is valuable

• What is Steelmanning?

  • This is finding ways to improve the central point.

• What is Strawmanning?

  • This is talking about a non central point (ie whether it is true or not does not mean one should go ahead with the idea or not) and saying that because this point is negative that the entire idea is a bad one. 

  • Example: 

    • IMO most things have some benefit and some cost. 

    • For example you can fly from Melbourne to Sydney but the plane might crash. However for me the risk of the plane crashing doesn’t mean that flying to sydney is a bad idea. 

    • Strawmanning would be saying ‘the plane might crash so we cannot fly to sydney’. It is a one dimensional argument that doesn’t see the broader picture and falsely can try to get an incorrect conclusion. 

Story = Reality Distortion Field

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: IMO you cannot expect to be given a good life, but I try to systematically build one. A key component to this is creating the right stories for yourself and others and thereby ‘distorting’ your reality to continually be better and better.

Overview: 

• Steve Jobs is famous for ‘having a reality distortion field’. 

  • My characterisation of this is that he was a great storyteller and would change how others viewed the world through stories. 

  • IE before speaking to Jobs, someone would think that an idea didn't make sense, then after speaking to Jobs they would like the idea because Jobs had changed the story around the idea. 

• Background 

  • Positive Sentiment Override Point = the point at which the positive events mean you do not care about the negative events, ie you have ‘Positive Sentiment Override’. 

  • For employment: Danny Kanheman says that for the average paid job this point is 3:1 (or 75% of events). For example if you work for 4 hours and 3 are positive but 1 is negative you do not care about the 1 negative hour, you have Positive Sentiment Override for it. However if your job was 1:1 (aka 50%) then working for 4 hours would be 2 hours of positive and 2 hours of negative. If the Positive Sentiment Override point is 75% then you would care about the negative hours, and you might look for a new job. 

  • Romantic relationships: John Gotteman says that for an average romantic relationship the Positive Sentiment Override Point is 5:1 (or 83%). So if you have 5x positive interactions and 1x negative interaction you do not care about the negative interaction because of the 5x positive interactions. You have Positive Sentiment Override above 83%. 

  • Monogamy: the standard story is 100% faithful. So you might have 99% positive interactions with your partner (aka above Positive Sentiment Override) but then you find out they have been unfaithful 1x time. This means that you no longer want to be with them. Ie for sexual relations the positive sentiment override point might be 100%. 

  • Textbook: if Edrolo made a textbook with 75% of questions and answers being factually correct I don’t think schools would be happy. We aim for 100% factual correctness and have ~10 layers of checking currently! 

• Outcome = 1. Raw experience (positive / negative) * 2. How you process ‘Raw Event” * 3. Positive Sentiment Override Point. 

• Stories are given to you by society (socio-cultural indoctrination) or you can build your own stories. 

  • Standard Society Story = 1. You are given the positive Sentiment Override Point + 2. You are given what events are deemed positive / negative (reality distortion field) 

  • Personally chose story = 1. You choose the Positive Sentiment Override point + 2. You choose what events are deemed positive / negative (reality distortion field) 

  • Comment:

    • For the longest time I didn’t know I could build my own stories. I was just trying to get a good “1. Raw experience” set. I didn’t know you could “2. Change how you process events” (aka turn a negative event into a positive event) and “3. Change the positive sentiment override point. 

• You don't work for stories, stories work for you. 

  • IMO for many many events in life you get choose if they are positive or negative, I'm not saying this is easy to do but it is possible!

The ‘Reality Distortion Field’ - changing how you and others 1. View the world and 2. Process events

• The better the story you can tell, aka the lower the ‘Positive Sentiment Override’ point AKA the more you care AND the more you can learn from an event the more likely you are to process a raw event as positive! 

• Yes, I believe that with the right story you can change how you process ‘raw events’ and turn what was ‘negative’(required you to give) into  positive (where you ‘getting and giving and get’ with the right story. 

• You get to have your cake and eat it too: 

  • Having cake = the lower the positive sentiment override the more likely you are to be enjoying something (eg with a job at 1:1 AKA 50% positive sentiment override point you are more likely to enjoy than if the positive sentiment override point is at 3:1 AKA 75%). 

  • Eating your cake = even though being more likely to enjoy something (lower positive sentiment override point) you are ALSO more likely to process a raw event as positive thereby making it EVEN less likely that you will get to the positive sentiment override point and have a positive overall experience. 

• In equation form: 

  • Stronger story and ability to learn => Lower positive sentiment override point (aka your story has distorted reality)

  • Stronger story and ability to learn => More likely to process raw event as ‘positive’ (aka your story has distorted reality)

• In visual form:

• In short, I believe with the right story almost anything is ‘positive’. With the wrong story almost anything is negative. 

To change the world first you need a story about how it can be better.

• Hopefully the future is better than today. The world doesn't get better by itself, it gets better because people make it better. 

• IMO to enjoy life and to help others enjoy it is important to build stories that ‘distort’ (aka change the world) from how it currently is. 

• People will work towards something if they think it is worthwhile (ie if the story is good enough). 

  • “The man with a why can withstand any what.” Viktor frankl. 

• Get epic at stories for yourself, get epic at stories for others, get epic at stories for your work. Imo doing so is crucial for ‘distorting’ aka ‘changing’ the future and enjoying life!

Jingle: 

• IMO a core characteristic of a leader is the ability to create and tell new stories! 

• “Storytelling is the not-so-secret ingredient that makes the difference between being a manager and being a leader.” 

  • Managers tell people what to do.

  • Leaders inspire people to do (through stories).

• “Those who can change your view of the world they can get you to change the world!” DA!

Read on for examples of stories and how I think about part of this at Edrolo. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++

What is a story?

• Story =  1. Short term + 2. Long term

  • Good story

    • 1. Short term - you have learned (not that you had a good year or bad year, but have learned). Learning is the key lead indicator to progress. So you must be able to explain to others how you have learned. 

    •  2. Long term - that the possible impact to humanity is bigger than it was a year ago. 

  • Bad story

    • 1. Short term - we can make money, market share had gone up

    • 2. Long term - that your competitive position vs other companies has improved

• IMO a crucial skill of a leader is to be able to tell good stories (aka narratives around anything). 

  • Company Example: Story = 1. Short term + 2. Long term

    • 1. Shorter term = are we making progress. 

      • The key lead indicator to progress is learning. 

      • So either you have 1. Gotten better in the last year and can clearly articulate how and why in a believable manner that people can get behind. 

      • OR 2. You can show that despite not getting better (eg market share down, client retention down) you can show what you have learned and while this means that you will make progress shortly. 

    • 2. Long term = the destination how the company can improve humanity has improved year on year. 

      • IMO the job of all businesses is to improve humanity. 

      • Each year IMO it is crucial to expand the vision of the company so that the long term destination of what the company can do is better than before. 

        • IMO human’s needs and wants are limitless. 

        • IMO the rate of innovation is accelerating. 

        • As such it is therefore possible to expand your company vision each year. 

  • Personal Example: Story = 1. Short term + 2. Long term

    • 1. Shorter term = are improving and / or learning

      • For yourself or others you need to be able to 1. Show how they are better than they were a year ago or 2. Have learned a stack about ‘what not to do’ vs a year ago so that they will be better soon. 

      • Being able to articulate this for yourself and others is crucial. IMO one should systematically extract learning and codify. 

      • “You do not learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences.”

      • Three of the avenues I look to extract and codify learnings:

        • Blogging - writing is thinking. I don’t have a learning and then write it down, I don’t understand something so I write about it and then slowly figure out my thoughts. Ie writing gives me the learning. Then I systematically rewrite the blog AND get someone else to deeply review it. Also I put systems in place to have my learnings 'become unconscious habits’ and also reread blogs multiple times in the future. 

        • A podcast - I speak in a podcast here. Then after each podcast episode James (the person I do the podcast with) systematically deconstruct the podcast and give each other feedback. Honestly, this is more fun than doing the podcast. IMO recording oneself speaking and then reviewing it is EPIC!!!!

        • Post meeting game analysis - at work I systematically have others deconstruct 1-5x meetings I am in a week to extract learnings. IT IS SO MUCH FUN! This is ‘giving * getting’. I also try to do this for others. 

    • 2. Long term = having a vision longer term for what you want to be

      • This is just that you believe you can add more value to the world in the long run than you did a year ago. 

      • Normally this means 1. You know more and 2. You have more capabilities AND you know how to put them to good use eg in a company with an expanded vision! 

• Comment: 

  • IMO you need to build these stories for yourself AND for others. 

  • “No one gets to tell you what you like, you get to decide.”

  • IMO you get to make your own stories in your life. 

  • IMO getting great at making stories is key to building a great life. 

The story you have can mean you don’t need to have as many positive experiences

• Example 1: “You walk with two people, a good person and a bad person. Both can be your teacher, what to do and what not to do.”

  • You have a “negative” experience. 

    • 1. You can take it as a bad experience and be unhappy about it. 

    • 2. You can figure out the learning from it and what not to do (“it’s easier to be smart by not being dumb”) so in the future your life will be better because there will be less of the ‘negative’ event. 

  • Comment: 

    • IMO whether you learn from an event is up to you. 

      • You can take lessons out of anything… or nothing. IMO some people unfortunately only have learning done to them, they don’t teach themselves things. 

    • “The good learn from anything and everyone, the average only from themselves, and the stupid already know everything.” Socrates. 

• Example 2: How much you get paid at a job can seriously affect your ‘positive sentiment override point’. 

  • For example, if you get paid $60k a year you might be ‘unhappy at your job’ and be thinking about leaving. 

  • But for the exact same job if you were to get paid $600k you might be ‘extremely happy’... in fact there might be almost no job you wouldn’t do for 40 hours a week for $600k a year. Eg clean toilets at the airport for 40 hours… for $600k a year you might ‘happily’ do it! 

  • Comment: 

    • In other words the Positive Sentiment oOverride Point isn’t set. IMO, you get to choose! 

• Example 3: You mind a friend's house, they have a new pet dog, it wakes you up every 90 mins during the night and either needs to be fed or has been to the toilet in the house which you need to clean up. 

  • You do not enjoy minding your friends house. This pet is making your life worse. You have had a negative experience and cannot wait until your friends are back so you do not need to look after this dog. 

  • Vs. You have your own newborn child (... or you own a newborn… haha). It wakes you up every 90 mins because it needs to be fed or has been to the toilet. Despite being very tired you enjoy doing this because you are helping something you care about. You are hopefully going to be able to make this child’s life much better and doing things like helping it every 90 mins while tiring  Is accepted.

  • Comment: 

    • How much you ‘care’ about something can meaningfully affect whether you will process a ‘raw event’ as positive or negative. 

    • If you care HEAPS then IMO it is much more likely that you will have a story that can process a raw event as positive. 

    • IMO you get to choose the story you have around an activity and the story can determine if you process a raw event as positive / negative. 

• Overall comment: 

  • I care more and more about Edrolo each year. Each year the story has gotten better (aka progress has been made and long term how much I believe Edrolo can positively impact the world has increased (ie the possible destination of edrolo has improved)). 

  • Also, I like to think that I’ve gotten better at learning from events year on year. Slowly I get better at extracting a learning from a ‘raw event’ and tuning it into a principle (eg this is much of what blogging is for, aka extracting and codifying learnings) so that I can systematically look to ‘implement the learning’ in the future. 

  • What this has meant is that more and more ‘raw events’ get processed as ‘positive’. 

Positive / negative vs Getting / Giving & Getting / Getting - “The best things are selfless AND selfish.” 

• The concept of ‘Positive Sentiment Override’ reduces events into either positive and negative. 

• However I’d like to propose that there are 3 categories of events. 

  • 1. Positive = getting

  • 2. Getting and giving = selfless and selfish

  • 3. Negative = giving = sacrifice 

• Comment: 

  • IMO the best category is “2. Getting and giving = selfless and selfish”

    • On average before the agricultural revolution the world was zero sum. IE there was a fixed amount of animals roaming around and berries on the tree. If you got more berries someone else got less berries = zero sum.

    • On average the world is now positive sum. Ie in a partnership the outcome should be more than the sum of the parts. Ie 1+1=3. IMO the excess output above the sum of the individual parts should be split fairly (see blog on Partnership Economics). 

      • Effectively, done well helping someone out IS helping yourself out. 

      • Giving happiness to someone done well IS giving happiness to yourself. 

      • AKA done well giving = getting. So I try to give (and get) lots. And I also don’t feel guilty anymore about others ‘giving to me’ if I believe they can also getting from it. 

    • I try to only engage is ‘positive sum partnerships’ (eg a meeting, eg coworker relationship, eg business deal, eg friendship)

  • For me, the more you care and / or can learn about something the more likely you are to see ‘giving as also getting’. 

    • For example most people care a LOT about their child. Therefore getting up 5x times during the night might not be a burden (giving), it might be worth it (giving AND getting). 

    • For example, helping someone who is struggling at work might not be an annoying impediment slowing you down (giving), it might be helping you learn about where they are struggling and improving both the other person and yourself (ie giving and getting). 

  • So basically over time with increased caring and ability to learn I’ve been able to change how I process ‘raw events’ at edrolo. 

    • It’s time to visualise this :). 

• I’ve been able to reframe what was previously just giving to being both giving AND getting

• I’ve been able able to find ways to turn experiences which were just getting into seeing how they’re both getting and giving which is a deeper experience

Onwards and upwards!

+++++++++++

Addendum fun - ignorance is bliss? 

• You get given stories by society. Eg find a partner, have children, etc.

• Is making your own stories better than just taking the standard story? 

  • The future will be different to today. Hopefully better than today. 

  • The world changes because people change it. So find a way to help build a better future! 

  • This means that the stories of today won’t work, and frankly the ‘standard story’ might not fit you.  

• It’s easier at first to just take ‘the answer’. When you can change the story it means that you doubt yourself and you think ‘well maybe i shouldn’t be treating this event as ‘positive’, maybe it actually is ‘negative’. 

  • But IMO you will question things at one point, it’s best to be constantly changing and upgrading stories. 

  • IMO the sooner you start questioning, the sooner you’ll have stories work for you and not you work for them. 

  • They say philosophy is about asking the right questions, not giving the right answers. I now love that I get to change many many of the stories! It’s the best! But I also love that the stories will never be done, that they will always be a work in progress. I used to like the comfort of fixed stories, but now I like the challenge of of stories I can always change :). 

  • IMO it’s best to be constantly building yourself, 2 steps forward 1 backwards. 

    • Eg trying always to do upgrades but realising in hindsight that some of the upgrades you were putting in are actually downgrades :(. 

Helpful vs harmful inner voice

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: Your inner voice is always with you, it can help or hinder you. You work on being good at your job, IMO you should work on having a healthy inner voice!

Warm up thoughts: 

• The only person you are with your entire life is yourself. 

• If “culture happens by default or by design.” then, your inner voice happens by default or by design. 

• “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”  – Pascal 

  • According to Pascal, we fear the silence of existence, we dread boredom and instead choose aimless distraction, and we can’t help but run from the problems of our emotions into the false comforts of the mind.

• “Busyness is their silence.” 

  • Some people never sit with their inner voice, they do things constantly to drown it out. 

• “If you are lonely when you are by yourself then you are in poor company.”

IMO your inner voice is always consciously or subconsciously affecting everything.

• Your inner voice happens by default or by design.

  • IMO one should spend significant time listening to one's inner voice. 

  • IMO one should spend significant time sculpting one's inner voice. 

• Jingle: if one does not have a healthy inner voice, one will have to pay invoices for the wrecking an unhealthy inner voice does! 

Healthy inner voice = essential life element

• To have a good life IMO, one should…

  • Work for something you believe in, i.e. have a good job

  • Eat well. 

  • Sleep well. 

  • Have quality relationships...

  • … and IMO you should have a quality relationship with oneself… AKA a healthy inner voice! 

• As a 25 year old I spent: 

  • significant time working to build a good career.

  • significant time on building quality relationships.

  • significant time to be healthy; trying to eat, exercise and sleep well…

  • … but I spent zero time on my inner voice. Frankly, I wasn’t even really aware I had one! What a dumb dumb! 

  • In fact, you could say I spent ‘negative time’. 

    • From time to time my Inner Voice said ‘we are lonely, we have FOMO, we are going to mess up building Edrolo and more…’ and I promptly drowned it out as much as I could. 

• IMO healthy inner voice = essential life element

• To me it’s as important to spend time on your inner voice (i.e. your relationship with yourself) as it is with your relationships with others. 

What I now try to do - work with and on my inner voice

• 1. Listen to my inner voice and understand what it says (see below for examples on how to do this)

• 2. Come up with a plan for what I want to change in my inner voice

• 3. Spend the time to change my inner voice

• Comment:

  • This is effectively ‘therapy’. In some respects ‘Therapy = Improving Inner Voice’

  • I’ve no idea why society didn’t tell me to work on having a healthy, helpful inner voice. 

  • Be a good friend, be good at your job… be happy society said! 

  • I wish I figured this out earlier. For me, improving my inner voice has improved everything! If I look back now, I believe I was ‘treating proximate causes, not the root cause’ for many issues. The root cause was my inner voice! 

  • Have a healthy, helpful Inner Voice! 

Does the idea of 3 days of being totally alone with your thoughts (ie not speaking to anyone, no internet access, no reading, no working and no TV, etc) scare you? If so IMO you are likely not totally cool with your Inner Voice. 

• In hunter gather days, eating used to be ‘famine or feast’. As such they say you should fast (2 days not eating) for your body once a month. 

• Human’s used to live in tribes of 150, didn’t have the internet or smart phones, and effectively do the same thing each day (hunting and gathering). Ie your mind had heaps of time by itself. 

• Once every 3 months I try to spend 3+ days totally with my own thoughts (aka 100% of time with inner voice). At first it was scary, but now I look forward to it so much! I always learn so much about myself, it’s AWESOME! 

• For a mini version try 12 hours of not speaking to anyone, not reading anything and no internet! 

+++++++++++++++++++++

Details

Inner Voice = 1. Engaging externally + 2. By yourself + 3. Knower of things

• The inner voice is obviously many many many things! I’m going to attempt to articulate it with this equation… which is most certainly not all encompassing, but hopefully helpful! 

• Inner Voice “1. Engaging externally” (how you engage with the external world) = 1.1 Better / inline / worse than things actually are + 1.2 Biases

  • “Having the closest understanding of reality possible is a core foundation to be able to build a good life.”

    • Perception + Evaluation + Decision => Outcome

    • Inner Voice IMO can seriously affect ‘Perception' + ‘Evaluation’. 

  • “We are all biased… and those who don’t think they are biased are the most biased of all!” 

    • 1. Better / inline / worse than things actually are

      • Being able to have a quality ‘intuitive feel’ for if an idea is good / bad is key! Ie having as close a perception of reality as possible. 

    • 2. Biases

      • -L1: I don’t have any biases (yes you do, everyone does)

      • L0: I am ok with the fact that I have biases but I don’t know what they are

      • L1: I have found my major biases

      • L2: ‘L1’ + I try to ‘lean against’ my biases to be as ‘impartial’ as possible (ie actively counter for my biases)

      • L3: ‘L2’ + I have discussed externally with people close to me about my biases

      • L4: ‘L3’ + I work with others to help find my biases

      • L5: ‘L4’ + I have set up external regulators (ie other people) to help me counter biases

      • Comment: 

        • I know that I’m biased towards ‘first principles thinking’ so when ever I see someone ‘reason by analogy’ I can start to discount their view… but often ‘analogies are a core way to explain something, not necessarily the core way to justify something’. 

        • I’m aware of this bias and try to counter myself discounting when hearing analogies AND have other people (external regulators) help with this bias. 

• Inner Voice “2. By yourself” (how you are by yourself)

  • Confidence in self

    • Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. We ritualistically underestimate how well things are actually going. 

    • Other times we think we are the ‘sh1t’, i.e. overestimating ourselves!

    • “You are never as good as you think you are on your best day, you are never as bad as you think you are on your worst day.”

  • I’m lonely

  • FOMO

  • Doesn't protect your ego.

  • Allows you to be vulnerable. We all make mistakes, IMO the problem is hiding from them (denial) and / or not being able to admit them to others. 

  • Allowing introspection

  • Stops you from trying new things. 

  • Tells you what you like and / don’t before you even try. 

  • Gratitude ⇔ Worry productively 

    • IMO we shouldn’t accept everything (eg be grateful everywhere), there are something that are sh1t and not addressing them is silly! 

    • However there are some things that are great… be grateful about greatness!

    • Getting this balance right is hard, but you can tune it through ‘gratitude practice’. 

    • Brian Doyle: “People Don’t Know We Appreciate Them Unless We Show It.”

    • Reframing Helped me Feel Lucky Instead of Resentful 

• Inner Voice “3. Knower of things” (this is a bit analogous to your subconscious) 

  • In some respects I think of my Inner Voice as my ‘subconscious speaking’. My subconscious knows many things.. 

  • If I make time to listen to my inner voice / subconscious it normally has many pertinent things to tell me. 

  • The things that it tells me I typically need a plan for. Eg if an incident at work keeps coming up then I know I need to do something about it. 

    • Option 1: could be just to ‘accept’ it. I’m worrying when I shouldn’t, so consciously accept. However one shouldn’t accept everything, this is akin to meaning nothing in the world should change! Thinking you and the world are unimprovable! 

    • Option 2: I have an insufficient plan for what to do. So make a plan! 

      • If I'm in a good place and I don't have a plan I’m unhappy. 

      • If I'm in a bad place and I have a plan I’m happy. 

      • Plan = happy. No plan = unhappy.

Does the idea of 4 days totally alone with only your inner voice scary? If so IMO you should sit with your inner voice and see what it says to you. 

• How do you spend time only with your inner voice? For example go to a silent meditation retreat. 

  • No speaking to anyone.

  • No reading anything. 

  • No watching anything. 

  • No phone (no messaging, phone calls, internet, etc)

  • The only thing you are allowed to do is journal in a notebook as this is a conversation with yourself… a conversation with your inner voice. 

  • In short you stop feeding your mind anything and then don’t try and control where it wants to go! 

    • Most people are feeding their mind something at all times of being awake: work, speaking to a friend, reading a book, watching Netflix, etc. 

• What happens? 

  • Stage 1: there is all the ‘buzz’ of what has been happening in your life (ie what you have been feeding your mind) that kicks around. It will take a while for the echos of what you have been feeding your mind to play out. 

    • Here your ‘your subconscious / inner voice’ is acting but along with all the things you have been feeding your mind, it’s often in the background where you aren’t aware. 

  • Stage 2: your subconscious / inner voice is now running the show. It very important to note that you don’t want to direct your mind where to go, ie consciously think about certain things. You want to ‘let go of the rheins’ and see where your mind wanders. 

  • Comment: 

    • In Stage 2 I can listen to all these things my ‘Inner Voice / Subconscious’ thinks I should consider… it’s totally EPIC! 

    • I’ve come to believe that my Inner Voice has heaps of things for me to know about that I should be working on. 

    • It ranges from: 

      • Biases

      • To places where I should be less confident / more confident

      • To fears

      • Hopes and dreams

      • That I’m tired

      • Instances where I think I’ve acted in a counter productive way

      • Instances where I think others have acted in a counter productive way

      • Trump! 

Other ways to spend time with your Inner Voice: 

• Meditation (can get to the point my inner voice can speak to me after 15 mins normally. Ie the first 15 mins are getting to ‘calm’. Then after this there is space for my Inner Voice to speak)

• Massage (it’s like meditation, ie quiet time to allow my inner voice to stop being drowned out)

• Counselling with qualified therapists (you can try and look for your inner voice as well as making space for it to come out and talk to you), 

• Counselling chats with your friends (one of my fav things, the best friends I’ve found are way better than therapists as they know you better) 

• Journalling (in some respects this is a conversation with yourself, talking with myself is SO MUCH FUN. I seriously have no idea where it’s going to go!)

• 2 hours in a sensory deprivation tank (again this is meditation or massage by a different name)

• Just do nothing! Ie don't feed your mind anything for 24 or 48 hours. Most weeks I try not to speak to anyone (in person or by phone) for 24 hours. I call this ‘Duncan Day’. It’s a day where I have a ‘date with myself’ for the entire day. 

  • This is crucial, this is a new activity type… and exactly what I used to try and avoid! 

  • I used to try and avoid time by myself, now I try really hard to carve out a day just with myself a week! 

  • You check in with others and ask ‘how are you going?’ Well I now do with with myself ‘how am I going?’ Let’s have a 3 hour conversation with myself (often through journally, or just going on a long walk by myself, etc)... I learn so much about myself! This is ‘listening to my inner voice / subsconscious’. 

• Go for a walk / run for an hour and don't listen to anything. 

When you learn things about yourself (eg biases, eg that you are caring in a place counter productively, eg that you believe someone isn’t aware of how they are acting in a certain circumstance, etc etc) I try to write it down and consider if I should actively try to change this. If I do then I build a plan and action the plan! 

• A plan for myself is often ‘making excellence an unconscious habit’. 

• A plan for others… depends! But hope is not a strategy! IMO trying to help yourself and others is one of the most rewarding things in life! 

If you only take one thing away: go on dates with your inner voice.

• One way I look at my life is a series of ‘dates’. 

• I now have ‘dates with myself’. For instance I have a date with writing / blogging each week. I look forward to it so much. 

• I have a date with my inner voice each week. Eg I’m allowed to exercise and listen to a podcast… but I should also have a date with my inner voice which might mean exercising with no podcast! 

• Time alone with my innervoice used to be negative sum / draining… but your inner voice is always there consciously or subconsciously. It took much work, but now I look forward to dates with my inner voice! 

• You could say that 20 year old Duncan was in an unhealthy relationship with himself… I like to think 35 year old Duncan is in a health relationship with myself! 

Writing is problem solving

This is an article written for LaunchVIC about me. You can find the original here.

You can find my blogs here.

How writing helped Edrolo's founder solve his trickiest problems

When confronted with complex problems, this founder begins writing to dig up new and undiscovered solutions.

If you’re facing a difficult problem, one way to start untangling the solution is to write.

That’s how Duncan Anderson, co-founder of edtech firm Edrolo, finds he can articulate and solve complex, meandering problems, as well as communicate at scale to his company and stakeholders.

“Rid yourself of the inbuilt schemas you’ve inherited from the education system about English,” says Anderson.

“Writing is thinking, and the more you write out your problems, the more you’ll start to slowly figure them out.”

Anderson was grappling with some high level difficulties when he suddenly saw the link between communications and problem solving.

“Maths is just communication times problem solving displayed in numbers, science also uses numbers to communicate the parts of a chemical equation,” he says.

“So I started writing words to get the problems out of my head and laid out, and I found I could articulate things better in writing than by talking.

“After starting to write, I immediately begin thinking in a more strategic way.”

It was the process of extracting thoughts and ideas out of his head that enabled Anderson to begin breaking issues down into their components and discover new ways in which to think about them.

“Writing has fundamentally leveled up my ability to problem solve,” he says.

“Literally for any problem I don’t have a good answer for - and I know when I don’t - I just start writing it out.”

Give your mind some room

While our brains are incredible and mysterious, we often reach limits of how many different, yet connected thoughts we can hold in our minds.

Anderson points to research first published in Nature Neuroscience Journal, which suggests we have four working parts in our memories to solve problems.

“Sometimes, the more you think about something, the more confused you get,” he says. “And that’s because you’re trying to synthesise more than four pieces.”

By writing out the parts of the problem you’re struggling with, you can make space in your mind to consider more pieces.

As such, writing isn’t just a better way to communicate, it’s a way of solving problems with more than four moving parts.

“Even just knowing what problems you actually need to solve is quite hard too,” says Anderson.

“The better you can articulate the jobs to be done, the better your results and solutions will be,” he says, adding that Clayton Christiansen’s 1997 book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” gives founders a powerful insight into establishing which jobs need to be done.

How? (To code is to write)

While we pour words from our keyboards every day, Anderson says there’s a faulty blocker stopping people working in the science and technology sectors from fully leveraging this powerful problem solving tool.

“Lots of us have been taught, since school, that writing well is getting a 10/10 in English,” he says.

“But to start with when I write, I’m not talking about beautiful words or nice syntax, I’m talking about writing as problem solving and just getting thoughts onto a page. I find some people get trapped thinking they are not an English or humanities person.”

Anderson uses coding as an example, arguing the practice itself is a form of communication.

“When you’re coding, you’re effectively writing a little program, aka blog, to solve a problem you have,” he says.

“Developers give each other code reviews all day, and whether they know it or not, they are looking for good quality writing and when they find it, they know immediately that’s sexy code - aka writing.”

Writing in a clear way is the same, he says, especially when using it to unravel a complicated idea or share a conclusion. And just as in coding, the simpler and clearer the program, the more powerful the results.

“How much CPU do you need to spin to crunch your code?” he asks. “A good program - or blog - will accomplish the same outcome with a quarter of the amount of resources and many less lines of code.”

“The equivalent of resource hungry program is the cognitive load in a human, as in, how much effort is needed for a person to understand your blog or email? Try and write so your recipients use the least amount of cognitive load.”

Formatting

Not everyone is going to sit down and knock out thousands of words in a morning, but Anderson says the key to getting started is to open a document and just start by describing the problem you have.

“You need to think and then translate what you’re thinking into words,” he says. “Who cares how it sounds to start with, who cares what it looks like, the point is to begin using words as solutions to problems.”

Anderson tends to write in spreadsheets, a method that looks dense to the outsider, but helps him organise and assign thoughts to different problems.

“You figure out your structure as you go, but it’s incredible how your brain will begin suggesting different formats,” he says.

Perhaps a table, a chart, a list or a flowchart could better organise your thinking and thanks to the beauty of multimedia web pages, there are thousands of programs designed to help you insert and edit different assets.

But while writing is a powerful communication tool for large groups of stakeholders, Anderson says unravelling the problem itself and then crafting solutions is the best part.

“I need to stay flexible because I never know where I’m going,” he says.

“It’s like this little journey and it’s really fun. Writing helps you let your brain wander but captures how it got there.”

Duncan Anderson’s writing can be found here.

Tips for a blank page

1. Start as if you were writing a diary entry. By describing the situation or how you’re feeling, you might find the problem itself will emerge and you will be able to distinguish your own behavioural biases. No one ever has to read it.

2. Give yourself a Q&A (like Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, How much?). Answering top level questions will definitely throw up more questions which are likely to target your thinking to a more precise area of the problem.

3. Don’t show, or do show. Remember, this writing is a process to get you to a solution. You don’t have to show anybody the work, it’s just a way of exercising new ways of problem solving. But getting feedback on your thinking by sharing can sometimes spark a whole new team discussion. Your call.

Tips to writing simply

1. Read what you’ve written out loud. This will help immensely with clarity and will help you write the way you talk, as if you were explaining a concept to your Mum. You’ll find the gaps or the unclear bits very quickly.

2. Build up your vocabulary. We are limited when we cannot describe what we need, want, see or understand. Give yourself more words as tools that offer range. Each word is a solution to a problem. They are inherited wisdom from past generations. The more words you know the solutions to problems you have.

3. Dispense with jargon. A widespread vocabulary doesn’t mean bogging yourself or your readers down in technical language. Einstein said, if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it enough.

Layer multiple overlapping models together to understand the world

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: the world is too big and too complicated to understand everything at full resolution. Use multiple overlapping mental models to give yourself a quality understanding! 

Almost every idea can be represented as a 3D Model with Pieces and Instruction Set (see blog). 

Almost every idea can be mis-represted as 3D Model with Pieces and Instruction Set.

“The best lies are half truths.” 

• One model can give you a false feeling of a better understanding of the problem space than ‘no mental model’, but one mental can be really dangerous. 

  • False confidence can get you into much more trouble than ‘i have no f!@#ing idea what is going on here’. 

• If you are only using one model you are by definition an ‘idealog’. 

• We all have blind spots and ego distortions.

  • A single model should illuminate some blind spots and ego distortions… but also likely create new blind spots and ego distortions. 

  • Strict adherence to one model / ideology is typically dangerous. Idealog = has blind spots and ego distortions as only one way of looking at a problem space.

• So… use multiple complementary overlapping models (2-5x) to explain a given problem space.  

• *Aside: I love the above square / circle / cylinder model as an example what happens in messaging around politics.

  • The left say that ‘it’s a square’. And in isolation when you listen to them it makes sense. 

  • Then you hear someone from the right say ‘it’s a circle’. And in isolation when you listen to them it makes sense. 

  • How can both the left and right make sense on the same topic but often same totally different things? The best lies are half truths. Often it’s not a square, it’s not a circle, it’s a cylinder :) 

  • IMO wanton misrepresentation is NOT OK! 

  • “Please take your circle and take your square and stick them in your cylinder ;P”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Details

The world is complex, you cannot understand everything at full resolution. 

• You need to make approximations (mental models) that improve your ability to make sense of the world more than they hinder. 

• “All models are wrong, some are useful.”

  • Newtonian physics is an approximation (eg Momentum = Mass * Velocity). It is a model for the world that is not perfect but in many places it is very useful. 

  • Chemistry is an approximation (eg CH4 + 2O2 => 2H2O + CO2). People don’t know if this is true, but it can be a very useful way to understand the world. 

• “Everything works somewhere, nothing works everywhere.” 

  • Make sure you model (map) fits the terrain. Don’t bluntly fit a model you have everywhere. 

  • "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” 

  • If all you have is a hammer, it’s a recipe for getting sore fingers from using the hammer too much and incorrectly! 

    • Person 1: “Hey I think we need to microwave this…”

    • Person 2: “No no, I’ve got my hammer, let’s hammer the sh1t out of it. It’s hammer time!”

“The closest possible understanding of reality (ie a true reflection of reality) is the core foundation needed to build a good life.” 

• If you have a poor understanding of reality then anything you build on top of this ‘foundation’ is ‘shakey’. 

• “Do not prescribe before you diagnose.”

If ‘all models are wrong, but some are useful’ how do we try and get the best understanding of the world we can? Model on and of models… marvelous :)  

• L0: not using mental models, just pure intuition. 

  • Jingle: ‘our strategy for doing well is to be lucky’

• -L1: using one mental model that doesn’t fit the problem space

  • Description: is more of a hindrance than a help. 

  • Visualisation: 

• Jingle: ‘It’s hammer time b1tches! Definitely the best way to make a china vase is with this hammer I have!’

• L1: using one mental model that fits the problem problem space. 

  • Description: you get a false sense of confidence as moving from ‘L0: no model’ to ‘L1: 1x useful model’ normally means you find a bunch of blind spots and ego distortions. 

  • Visualisation:

• Jinge: ‘look at me, I figured some sh1t out… but pride cometh before a fall!’ 

• L2: 2x models that fit the problem space but don’t overlap

  • Description: at times I find it can actually confuse me more having 2x non-overlapping models for a problem space than just one as I can’t get a grasp on the overall size of the problem space or the places where an individual model stops working. 

  • Visualisation:

• Jingle: I have bought a knife and a gun to this fight. Both are useful… but who am I fighting and where are they? 

• L3: 2x models that fit the problem space AND overlap (aka compliment each other)

  • Description: you can start to see a cylinder vs a square. 

  • Visualisation:

• Jingle: “I have bought a hammer and a screwdriver, I think we should be able to get this job done.”

• L4: 2-5x complementary models that fit the problem space and provide you with a high quality understanding

  • Description: I understand where the problem space starts and ends, I know here my models start and end (ie their strengths and weaknesses AKA blindspots and ego distortions) and I can layer them together to get a quality 3D understanding of the problem space.

  • Visualisation:

• Jingle: I have a toolbox full of 50x tools, and I’ve picked the right tools for the idea. This means I’m not a tool, but a box full of ways to help your idea!  

• L3: too many models that mean you can’t understand how to layer them together. 

  • Description: you want the simplest way to understand a problem space. The more moving parts (pieces) the harder it is to join them together into a quality solution. 

  • Visualition: 

Jingle: what the smart person does in the beginning, the stupid person does in the end. 

• Overall Jingle: model your understanding… so you can understand your models

  • Yes I’m proud of this! 

“You don’t know what you don’t know.” 

• IMO it’s best to assume you are wrong until proven right. 

• IMO the best chance of having a ‘high quality understanding’ of the problem space is through 2-5x quality overlapping mental models. 

• IMO it’s best to have ‘external regulators’, ie people that help you know when your head in your cylinder. Constantly cultivate external regulators. 

• IMO it’s best to have external quantitative metrics that will confirm if your understanding is correct (eg if Edrolo expects to get majority market share in textbooks and we don’t then our understanding is wrong). IMO don’t worry about being wrong, worry about not finding out if you are wrong. 

  • “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble; it's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” Mark Twain. 

… wait for it, an overlapping model to explain explaining with models. OMG so meta :)

• L0: no model so don’t have an understanding of the problem space

• L1: 1x model but you have non trivial blind spots (ie incomplete understanding of problem space, ⅓ you are unaware of, ie 1/3 is a blind spot) and you have non trivial ego distortion (ie ⅓ you think you understand properly but you are incorrect). 

• For the ⅓ with an ego distortion you see a ‘circle’ but it’s actually a ‘cylinder’. 

• L2: 2x overlapping models.

• You decrease blind spots and ego distortions. 

• L3: 2-5x quality overlapping models.

• I think that it’s effectively impossible to have 100% understanding of the problem space with zero blind spots and ego distortions. Ie a perfect reflection of reality… so I go at 90%+ problem space awareness with 90%+ true reflection of this. 

• Rule 1: don’t fool yourself. Rule 2: you are the easiest person to fool! 

• Jingle: don’t be a model fool, use models fool! 

  • Yeah I’m also happy with this one! 

In search of the next top imperfect model

• Sometimes models that help you explain your problem don’t come from your direct problem space

  • To learn how to teach better, don’t look at the best teachers, look at human behaviour

  • To learn how to make more money, don’t look at making more of what you’ve got, look at how to problem solve better 

• I think a good way to find potential models for your ‘runway’ is to find your doppelgangers in a  different area of the world and give it a twirl 

If you only take one thing away: 

• If you can’t model your mind you’ll end up in a mental muddle! 

• One model can will likely misguide you to believe you have meaning (solid understanding)

• Multiple (2-5) models layered together will mean your generated meaning is magnificent!

Consciously upgrade your mind’s operating system, it makes everything else better!

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: 

• An analogy I like is that your mind has ‘an Operating System and Applications’. 

• You can look to improve individual Applications (eg maths ability, knowledge of a topic)

• OR you can look to improve ‘Universal Elements’ that upgrade all Applications (ie upgrade the Operating System)

To upgrade your OS you want to be: 

• 1. Quality at being Calm

• 2. Awesome at Emotional Self Awareness

• 3. Special at Emotional Self Regulation

• 4. Righteous at Responding Not Reacting

• 5. Epic at Empathy (Emotional Awareness of Others)

• 6. Amazing at Attention Control (to be able to focus on what you want in a way you want)

• Comment: this is obviously a non-exhaustive list of ‘Universal Elements’... some might call this a non-universal list of ‘Universal Elements’ ;)

10 years ago Duncan didn’t have the concept of ‘Universal Elements’ and ‘upgrading your Operating System’. 

•  I used to spend all my time doing things like reading (knowledge acquisition), writing (communication practice) and looking at models to explain the world. 

• Now I want to get to minimum sufficient on all ‘core areas’. If you are a chef you might need a ‘great knife skills application’. The Applications needed vary per person, the ‘Universal Elements’ don’t! 

• Jingle: Getting to sufficient in the ‘Universal Elements’ means you’ll never be left out in the elements getting sufficiently crapped on by the universe! 

How do I think about improving at ‘Universal Elements’?

• Read below… come on do it! 

• One big way however is ‘meditation’ and ‘mindfulness’. For me, the two are interlinked. Yes I’m beating this drum again! 

• Another big avenue is ‘Post Game Analysis’ aka ‘reflecting on events by yourself and with others’. “You don’t learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences.” 

  • I try to review minimum 1x event a day by myself and 1x with someone else. Post Game Analysis is the best tool I know to improve myself and other. We are all players, we are all coaches. Give upgrade gift opportunities to yourself and others. 

  • The lenses I use for post game analysis: 

    • What was my and others mindstates and how did they shift over eg the meeting? Mindstates (eg stressed, excited, calm, annoyed, etc) effect everything. 

    • What was the logic path? You can typically find you or others misinterpreted something that this is really interesting to see. You can typically find yourself or others going off down some irrelevant rabbit hole! 

    • Did I or others have any interesting emotional responses at any point? Typically you’ll see yourself or others respond / react to something that is really telling about your / their underlying beliefs / expectations. 

    • Respond not react. Did you or someone else consider, as they would have liked, the circumstances and then respond in a manner that they would if they had their time again? If you don’t answer that you would redo something for every 1+ hour long meeting I think you are in denial! 

• I don’t think anyone would not think it’s important to improve at the ‘Universal Elements’. If you don’t have a plan to improve and are not spending time on levelling up ‘Universal Elements’ what makes you think you’ll improve? 

• I spend 1-4 hours a week on trying to improve my mental Operating System (Universal Elements). It’s much fun… a universally rewarding activity if you will!  

++++++++++

Details:

Firstly, the mind is the most complicated thing in the known universe. So these thoughts are just that, ideas that can hopefully help you get a better understanding of your mind and how to have it work with you, not against you :)!

Your mind is with you all day every day, through everything you do. 

• I used to focus on increasing my knowledge through eg reading. 

• I used to focus on improving my communication through eg writing, speaking with others. 

• I used to focus on improving my problem solving through eg acquiring and making mental models. 

• IMO ‘how your mind is’ is analogous to the Operating System, each of the above is an application that runs on the operating system. 

• If you upgrade the Operating System you upgrade all Applications. 

The two most common forms of meditation are: 

• Meditation = focusing on breath

• Meditation = focusing on the body

• I know I’ve already written about Meditation, but there is much new below! Hopefully these new thoughts will help humans :) 

• So what can doing meditation for 10-20 mins a day do for me? IMO massively upgrade your Operating System though upgrading all of the mentioned ‘Universal Element’. Ie massively upgrade everything in your life! 

What is my ideal ‘meditation practice’?

• 5-10 mins when I wake up typically a song or with Buddify

• 1 mins breathing meditation each hour with Apple Watch breathing app. 

• 5-10 mins mid afternoon guided with Smiling Mind, Headspace, etc

• 20 mins in the evening unguided or with Sam Harris’s Waking Up app. 

• Comment: 

  • How often do it get ‘ideal’ done? Almost never. 

  • A good day is 80% of ideal. 

  • A bad day is 20% of ideal. 

Calm: 

• Meditation = focus on breath = let go of what every is going on in your mind, once you have let go of everything you are left with calm. 

• Levels of calm: 

  • L1: After 10-20 mins can let go of what is going on in your mind and get to calm 50% of the time. 

  • L2: Can get to calm in 5 mins 75% of the time. 

  • L3: Can get to calm in 1-2 mins 90% of the time. 

  • L4: Even despite massively rough seas (external environment) you can get to calm in 1-2 mins 90% of the time!

• Imagine that you are frustrated about something, then you just bring out your practiced calm ‘muscle’ and are able to melt the frustration away on cue. 

  • This is what meditation can do for you! Melt frustration away on cue! 

• Have your mental states work for you, not you work for them! 

  • IMO being able to be calm when you choose improves everything at work. 

  • Being calm improves problem solving (put one foot in front of the other, not expending unnecessary energy being frenetic (ie not calm)) 

  • Being calm improves group discussion (able to not get riled by someone's comment)

  • Being calm improves when you are presenting (eg not having frantic disconcerting tone) 

  • Being calm improves your ability to switch tasks (eg you aren’t all flustered coming into a new task and thereby find it harder to concentrate)

• Why would you not want to be good at calm? IMO spending 10-20 mins a day cultivating calm is an epic investment in upgrading your operating system! 

• Dampeners vs Neutral Vs Inflamers

  • When the seas inevitably get rough, what do you want to do? Make things worse or help navigate to calmer waters? 

  • IMO one of the most important characteristics of a coworker is that they can dampen. IMO this is much harder than you think. IMO if you don’t think you’ve ever inflamed a situation then you are unaware of yourself (see observing consciousness below). 

Body Awareness - aka Emotional Self Awareness

• “Your body can’t lie, but your mind sure as f@#$ can.” 

• One major type of meditation is a body scan. This is scanning through the body to see what sensations there are. 

• Typically how I meditate during 5+ min meditations: 

  • Step 1: focus on breath until I have been able to let go of everything else (you’ll feel your mind calling you away, I focus on my breath until it stops pulling me strongly away with thoughts). This can happen in 2 mins… sometimes it doesn’t happen in 20 mins. 

  • Step 2: scan body - ie looking for different sensations in the body. The longest I’ve ever done a body scan for is 40 mins… but people do it for hours! 

  • Step 3: this step varies, I often don’t get to this, eg might just stay on body scan. 

• Your emotional states are reflected in your body. 

  • The most basic stuff is sympathetic / parasympathetic nervous system. 

  • From Wikipedia: 

    • The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is one of the two main divisions of the autonomic nervous system, the other being the parasympathetic nervous system. 

    • The autonomic nervous system functions to regulate the body's unconscious actions. The sympathetic nervous system's primary process is to stimulate the body's fight-flight-or-freeze response.

  • Eg if you are tense / stressed you’ll have shorter breaths, raised heart rate, tension in muscles, adrenaline kicking around, etc. 

• Why do I scan my body each day? 

  • I’m trying to build what the baseline of my body feels like. Ie a detailed ‘map’ of how it normally is. 

  • Then I’m trying to notice any differences in my body vs baseline and then use this to inform what my emotional state is. 

  • When I do a meditation body scan I’m 10x+ more aware of the different sensations in my body than when not looking for them (ie at all other times such as in a group discussion meeting). 

    • If I’m frustrated I normally feel tension right in the centre of my chest. The number of times I only realise this when I meditate is astonishing…ly annoying! 

    • If I’m feeling worried there is this weird flatness in my torso. 

    • Happiness somehow registers as relaxedness in my shoulders. 

  • Then when I find a sensation I’m trying to figure out what it is and what is says. 

• Steps of body scan:

  • Step 1: look for sensations

  • Step 2: try to identify what emotion this sensation represents

    • There is low, mid and high resolution of emotion identification. 

• Step 3: trying to figure out what the root cause of this emotion is (ie where it came from)

• Comment: 

  • It’s the best fun detective game ever! 

• Levels of body scan: 

  • L1: when doing a body scan in a 5 min+ meditation, I can only pick up emotions that are ‘Large in size’ and at ‘Low resolution’. Eg I am large stressed (intense) about time deliverable. 

  • L2: when doing a body scan in a 5 min+ meditation, I can only pick up emotions that are ‘Medium+ in size’ and at ‘Mid resolution’. Eg I am Stressed - soft about time deliverable which

  • L3: when doing a body scan in a 5 min+ meditation, I can only pick up emotions that are ‘Small+ in size’ and at ‘High resolution’. 

  • L4: I can get a read on my body in shorter 1 min meditations. 

  • L5: Cultivating your ability to read your body for sensation (signals) means that you have a better quality read on what is happening at all times. I’m normally ~10% as aware of body sensation then when I’m actively looking for them in a meditation body scan, but hopefully I can recognise a ‘Large’ emotion real time and then figure out my course of action :). Body scans in meditation increase my ability to get signals from my body. While ‘only listening’ to my body in a body scan I can hear much more than eg when I’m in a group discussion meeting, I can still pick up more because of all the cultivation I’ve been doing during meditation! Ie cultivating ability to sense my body during meditation allows me to have higher awareness during non-meditation times! Yay! 

• In short, IMO your body is an epic place to get signals on your emotional state. Cultivating your ability to be good at this is KEY to Emotional Self Awareness! 

• IMO one can cultivate anything, maths ability, how good you are at a video game, empathy, creativity… your ability to know what you you are feeling! 

• To me, Emotional Self Awareness is effectively a sense (eg like sight, sound, touch, taste). A blind person typically has cultivated their ability to hear more than average. This isn’t because they were born with better ears than average. They have built their ability to isolate echoes etc. 

  • Just like you can cultivate your ability to hear, one can cultivate their ability to understand the sensations in their body. 

  • IMO meditation is a core practice for this. 

  • IMO you can go from ‘what are emotions’ to ‘many high quality signals’. It’s like a body scan goes from seeing things only in low resolution with 12 different greys to high definition 4k with millions of colours. 

  • Jingle: A high def life allows you def get high on life! 

• How to get good at emotional self awareness

  • Meditation

  • Post Game Analysis. If you are anything like me others will be able to see much in you that you can’t see in yourself. 

Emotional Self Awareness levels and practices

• The levels: 

  • L1: can get some signals from body scans

  • L2: can get high quality signals from body scans

  • L3: can get low quality signals after the fact when not doing body scans (eg while working)

  • L4: can get high quality signals after the fact when not doing body scans (eg while working)

  • L5: can get low quality signals real time all the time (ie when not doing body scans + but also from your mind, not just body)

  • L6: can get high quality signals real time all the time from my avenues (eg body & mind).

• How to level up Emotional Self Awareness (aka Practices): 

  • Meditation (body scans)

  • “Post game analysis”: replaying events to see how you can do them better from a communication, emotional, logical and state of mind viewpoint. I do this with others and myself many times a week. Sometimes through speaking, sometimes through writing! See this blog. 

Observing your consciousness:

• IMO a core tenant of mindfulness is that ‘one can observe one's consciousness’. 

• I honestly had zero idea what this concept was until 5 years ago. Then when I first encountered it I thought it was crap. How could one not be aware of what is going on in ones head, isn’t this the only thing one can’t not be aware of? 

• Have you ever had someone point out something to you about a conversation after the conversation and you are like ‘oh yeah, I didn’t see that at the time?’ Well IMO this is what is going on in your head UNLESS you spend mega amounts of time trying to cultivate being aware of things real time. AKA your ability to observe your consciousness. 

  • “Post Game Analysis” is effectively observing your consciousness after the fact. IT IS THE BEST FUN!

• I now believe that for most of my life I was a passenger for most of what was going on in my head. I had a tiny (eg 10%) real time understanding of what was going on (but I thought I had the full picture). After the fact, if I tried to replay events or discussed them with others, I normally got another 10% of what was going on from an “communication, emotional, logical and state of mind” viewpoint. So I might have had a 20% understanding of what was going on in my head. 

• Observing your consciousness categories: 

  • L1: not able to see what is going on real time or after the fact in any of “communication, emotional, logical and state of mind lenses”

  • L2: not able to see what is going on real time but can see how I was after the fact in any of “communication, emotional, logical and state of mind lenses” (eg in Post Game Analysis)

  • L3: able to see 50% of what is going on real time in all of “communication, emotional, logical and state of mind lenses”

  • L4: able to see 100% of what is going on real time in all of “communication, emotional, logical and state of mind lenses”

  • L5: L4 + I have confirmed with others that my perceptions of what is going on align with theirs (‘Rule 1: do not fool yourself. Rule 2: you are the easiest person to fool’)

• Comment: 

  • I don’t think I’ll ever be able to see 100% of what is going on. 

  • On a good day I can see much of what is going on. This is typically when the seas are calm. 

  • On a bad day, I can’t see much at all. This is typically when the seas are rough! 

  • When is it most important to be able to see what is going on in your mind, aka ‘observe your consciousness’? 

    • When the seas are rough as typically the rougher the seas the more ones automatic ‘reaction’ might be counter productive. 

    • It’s always best to ‘respond not react’. But if the seas are rough one might be stressed, or frustrated, or hurt and then your ‘state of mind’ might negatively affect your ‘reaction’ that could further inflame the situation. 

  • The best way I know to help with being self aware (aka being able to observe your consciousness) this is to expect yourself to be fallible, to assume that that you’ll likely have the lowest quality (accuracy) self perception the more ‘worked up you are’ (aka not calm). 

  • Then you need to have external regulators, ie other people who help you realise how you are. 

  • “Be kind to yourself, be kind to others. Kindness is my religion.” Da Li Lama. 

  • “Get external regulators for yourself, be an external regulator for others. Having external regulator is my religion.” DA 2019 ;P! 

  • … oh and do constant Post Game Analysis! 

Responding not Reacting: 

• The route to responding: 

  • Getting good at being aware of what emotions you have going on

  • => get good at understanding what is driving the emotions.

  • => good at regulating emotions

  • => high ability to Respond not React! 

• IMO emotions are signals. You get signals from your environment, you also get signals from your emotions.

• The more you can understand your emotional signals the more you can understand your environment and yourself. 

• Respond not React: 

  • Mindful (responding) : Perception Of Logic (eg understand the idea being put forward) + Perception Of Emotions + Evaluation => Considered Response

  • Mindless (reacting) : Didn’t fully grasp the idea being put forward + Unaware of what external emotional signals are going on + Unaware of your own emotional signals => Unplanned Reaction

    • Ever find yourself saying shortly after you’ve done something ‘I wish I did that differently?’ 

• We don’t always get to choose our environment… but it’s possible for us to always choose our responses. 

• Some Viktor Frankl quotes :)

  • “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

  • “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

  • “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

• Responding not Reacting levels:

  • L1: I can retroactively evaluate an event, see the signals, see my evaluation and how might want to do things differently and therefore what my ideal response would have been. AKA am good at Post Game Analysis. 

  • L2: I can real time Perceive the signals (logical and emotional) however I can’t Evaluate real time in a manner I’d like. After the fact I replay the event and can see how I’d do things differently. 

  • L3: I can real time Perceive 90%+ of the signals + I can Evaluate the signal and formulate an above sufficient response real time + I can articulate the response above sufficiency. 

  • L4: ‘L3’ + I have confirmed with others that I was Perceiving, Evaluating and Responding at high quality. 

• How to get better at ‘Responding not Reacting’

  • Meditation to get better at emotional self awareness

  • Post Game Analysis. Replaying events by yourself and with others to get better at Perception and Evaluation. “You do not learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences.” 

 Empathy (Emotional Awareness of Others)

• The better you get at Emotional Self Awareness the better you get at understanding others… but you can do more than this! 

• I wrote an entire blog post on ‘Empathy’. In short: 

  • Empathy is built by practicing trying to understand others.

  • Replay events (Post Game Analysis) with others and thereby see how they were looking at the world. 

    • So yes. Post game analysis helps you improve yourself… and helps you understand others more! 

    • It doesn’t matter how the game (event) turned out, if you do Post Game Analysis you will get a win win outcome :). 

  • Try to look at the world from others shoes and then compare what you thought with the actual person (ie see if your synopsis lines up). See blog post here. 

• Empathy Levels: 

  • L0: you aren’t actively trying to take the perspective of others

  • L1: you have been reviewing your own actions (Post Game Analysis) with others to 1. Learn more about yourself and 2. See how they respond giving feedback how you respond (ie you are trying to get a 2nd opinion on how someone else would have responded). I call this modeling empathy for yourself (ie getting others to help). It’s a softer way before you try to understand others. 

  • L2: you are actively trying to review how others acted after that fact (ie post game analysis by yourself) 

  • L3: a big step, now trying to help and do post game analysis where instead of you being the person discussed, another person is being discussed. 

  • L4: you start to tune your ‘empathy radar’ and become more aware of yourself and others real time, then during the game you try to help yourself and others. 

  • L5: ‘L4’ + doing a debrief afterwards of how your ‘real time efforts’ went (ie hopefully helping not hindering). IE post game analysis. 

Attention control:

• I also have written an entire blog post on this! See link here. 

• In short: 

  • There are many types of activities in the typical job (problem solving by one’s self, group discussion, presenting to others, providing feedback 1:1, etc). 

  • Each activity type has an optimal attention type. 

  • Learning what the optimal attention type is and how to do it well it hard work… but without doing the hard work of getting good at this you’ll make your work(days) unnecessarily hard! 

• Levels of Attention Control:

• -L1: have the same approach to every activity

• L0: know there are different activities and should have different approaches (types of attention) for each activity. 

• L1: know what activities make up 80% of my role and the ideal attention type for each activity

• L2: are able to consistently have right attention type for the activity at hand!

If you only take one thing away: 

• 22 year old Duncan wanted to do a good job, at the time that meant focusing on quality output. 

• Then I realised that I used applications to make the output like ‘knowledge’, ‘communication’ and ‘model ability’. So I focused on improving these applications. 

• Finally I realised that these Applications run on an Operating System (aka Universal Elements), and that upgrading the Universal Elements was key. 

• My goal is to try and figure out all the major components I need to do a good job (Applications, Universal Elements, other, etc), and then to get myself to sufficiency+ in each component. I wish I started working on the Universal Elements much sooner!  

• To upgrade your OS (Universal Elements) you want to be: 

  • 1. Quality at being calm

  • 2. Awesome at emotional self awareness

  • 3. Special at emotional self regulation

  • 4. Righteous at reacting not responding

  • 5. Epic at empathy (understanding others emotional headspace)

  • 6. Amazing at attention control 

• One key way to improve all these areas is Meditation and Replaying Events (Post Game Analysis). 

Onwards and upwards! 

Attention skills vs Attention kills

By Duncan Anderson and Sheldon Kendrick. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: your job likely involves many different activities, learning how to be great for each activity type is… good! 

• Pay attention to how you allocate your attention

Overview:

Another visualisation (since we should always be able to visualise something in two different ways) would be:

A high quality sportperson can move quickly and appropriately up and down the attention line. 

To be really great at any task you should be able to move quickly to the appropriate position on the attention line. AKA know what type of attention is optimal AND be able to embody is ASAP. 

It is highly likely that your job involves many different activities and therefore that you’ll need to have many different types of ‘attention’. Example activity types: 

• Problem solving by yourself

• Group discussion meetings

• Presenting to others

• Providing feedback to someone 1:1

• Listening to ‘empathize but not apologise’. 

• Comment: 

  • I’d counsel against providing the same ‘attention type’ for when problem solving by yourself to when providing constructive feedback. 

Attention Control = being able to point your energy where you want, how you want and with high resolution.

• Being able to have the right approach (attention type and control) for the right activity means being madly skilled. Having the same approach (attention type) for all activities is madness, and often means the possibility of a good outcome is killed! 

• Mindfulness = Quality Attention Control = having the right attention type for the situation at hand. 

• Mindlessness = having one approach to all situations and / or no self awareness. 

• Jingle: “Having a default is a fault.” 

• “To the person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” 

• It’s not ‘hammer time’, it’s ‘I have many tools in my toolkit, let me carefully pick the right tool for the time and use it very well’... if that isn’t super catchy then I don’t know what is! Some might call it a killer catchy! (Yes I’m enjoying using the same word for opposing meaning!) 

• Cultivate Attention Control… because it’s cool! 

+++++++++++++

Details

A sports analogy (taken from Eric Harrison… who is wonderful :) )

• “Top sportspeople consciously develop a wide range of attentional skills.”

• “A team player needs to be able to switch from a tunnel-vision, spotlight focus when making a shot, to a wide-angle fluid attention when sensing what is happening on the whole field.”

• “An athlete needs to be able to mobilise what is called ‘preparatory attention.’ This is when he / she stops, clears their mental space and imagines a few seconds ahead to a desired outcome.”

• “A good sportsperson is able to turn their level of arousal up or down as required. They can recognise when they need maximum arousal and when they can mentally cruise (if the ball is far away). High arousal sustained for too long will make they brittle and jumpy. This is when athletes choke. Low arousal on the other hand leads to boredom and distraction.”

• “All the above attentional skills are essential for the conservation of physical energy. Because of poor self-monitoring, many athletes run out of puff before the end of the game, and so do many parents and office workers.”

“Athletes are frequently taught these attentional skills. Nonspecialists like us tend to haphazardly learn them as required over a much greater range of activities, but the process is similar.”

Jingle: Don’t be haphazard, be hip to avoiding attention hazards! 

It’s table time! A table used well is a totally terrific tool! 

How can one cultivate one's ability to get good at the different activities (ie have awesome attention control)? 

• 1. Know the major activities types for your role. 

• 2. Attempt to articulate the optimal approach for each activity (attention type). A few examples: 

  • Problem solving by yourself => 1. High intensity + 2. Low need to be aware of others

  • Group discussion meetings => 1. High intensity + 2. High need to be aware of others + 3. Optimise for learning from discussion (not yourself

  • Presenting to others => 1. High intensity + 2. Energy you have while presenting is very important

  • Providing feedback to someone 1:1 => 1. High empathy + 2. High need to be aware of others + 3. Optimise for understanding of other

  • Receiving feedback from someone 1:1 => 1. High emotional self awareness + 2. High emotional self regulation + 3. Concentrate on understanding not responding (and hopefully not reacting

  • Listening to ‘empathize but not apologise’ when someone is unhappy => 1. High empathy + 2. Try to help other with emotional self regulation + 3. Dampen don’t enflame (get to calm then try to figure out what to do)

  • Doing email => you need to manage your energy. In an attempt to this I stack energising and draining tasks next to each other to balance out (see this blog). Email is a quality ‘recovery’ low intensity activity that I layer strategically to offset ‘high intensity’ taks. 

  • Concentrated vs Diffuse problem solving modes

  • Support vs Leave along vs Push vs Intervene and what approach is best for each

• 3. Meditation. Yes you’ll see me on this train a bit more :). See my blog post on meditation. 

  • Meditation = increased ability to be calm (this is key for all of the above, if you are tense / stressed in any IMO it’s worse)

  • Meditation = increased emotional self awareness (especially important in discussion meetings and when presenting… and just always!)

  • Meditation = increased emotional awareness of others

  • Meditation = increased ability to focus (this is building your stamina to remain on the attention type your choice)

  • Meditation = increased ability to let go of things (ie switch tasks efficiently) 

• 4. Replaying events to see how you can do them better from a communication, emotional, logical and state of mind viewpoint. 

  • This is one of my key 1:1 activities, ie replay an event with another to deconstruct. This is ‘post game analysis’. See this blog post. 

  • I also personally pick one event that went well and one that went poorly and write to deconstruct them each week. It’s so instructive :)! Don’t be destructive, deconstruct so you can instructively improve. 

  • “You don’t learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences.” 

What are the levels of Attention Control:

• -L1: have the same approach to every activity

• L0: know there are different activities and that one should have different approaches (types of attention) for each activity. 

• L1: know what activities make up 80%+ of my role and the ideal attention type for each activity

• L2: are able to consistently have right attention type for the activity at hand!

If you only take away one thing:

• Good outcome = Doing the right things * Doing things right

• If you don’t know the right kind of attention for the activity at hand… then you are likely not doing it right! 

That’s it people!