Forever Grateful

 I should know better.   As I read or write my mind often wonders.  Sometimes I keep going.  Sometimes I quit in exasperation.   After quitting I find plenty of time to blame myself for not focusing. Honestly I should know better. I am making progress, though.  I am sticking to tasks even if it is struggle.  Funny thing is, I find my groove during some pockets of time.  I guess focus is something that can ensue. I don’t mind that.  Nor do I mind the euphoric moments after I finish my reading or writing.   Imperfect efforts trump not doing anything at all.

 In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport puts forth neurological, psychological, and philosophical arguments for deep work. Ric Furrer is the torch bearer for the neurological case for deep work.  Ric has set up shop in aaWisconsin where he crafts swords with his two hands.  Newport narrates that the steel ingots are initially about as thick as three smart phones. Patiently, Ric uses hammer blows to produce his work of art.  He finishes the work by quenching it in oil.  Ric derives immense pleasure from crafting swords he never gets to use. Citing the god father of flow - Mihayli Csikszentmihayli - Cal convinces us z that deep work can contribute to flow. Flow is an optimal state where we completely yield ourselves to the present.  Flow is accepted as a source of eudiamonia. Finally Newport introduces a work by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly to forward his philosophical argument for deep work.  Dreyfus and Kelly argue that the autonomous individual ...

Came back to work after the long weekend.   This one was a fruitful weekend.  I did quite a bit of reading and resting. Did watch some videos too.  My favorite was Ato Asnenafi’s podcast.  I did write about it last evening, so I do not want to go into it. Work today took quite a chunk out of my day.  If I allocate eight hours for sleep, I can’t get anything else done this evening. That paragraph looks out of place, but it isn’t.  The whole podcast was about eking out two to three hours of solitude each day. Solitude takes time to develop.  But I feel I will get there. One thing I noticed about myself: I get agitated and irritable as I write or drill on dara analysis.  But once the session is over, I am calm and at the same time grateful that I have applied myself on something

 This program was inAmharic.  It was presented by Ato Ashenafi Taye, a motivational speaker. From the get go, he made sure that I understood that time blocking is sin qua non of personal success.  It is the keystone habit of successful people.  Indeed, he assures me that all successful people carve a few hours a day to deeply think about their lives. You may have noticed that I write “he made sure I understood” or “ he assures me”.  This is no accident.  When he was presenting, he looks directly at the camera and addresses the audience as “you, the person watching this behind the camera...”.  I know my translation does not do justice to the effort he put into creating the episode as a kind of one to one session. In this one to one episode, Ato Ashenafi throws a simple math at me to buttress his points. Of the twenty hour I have daily, I should expect to allot 8 hours for sleep.  I am also expected to budget about eight hours for my daily work. ...

 I broke a few egg shells today as direct result of reading a couple of chapters from  Livewired  by David Eagleman. For example, the author narrated a story of Admiral Horatio Nelson.  Sometime after losing his arm, the admiral started feelin the presence of his arm. The admiral interpreted as life beyond life.  The explanation, however, was more prosaic and intriguing at the same time. It turns out unused real estate gets to be claimed by neighboring neurons.  The sensory neurons for the face expanded into the domain reserved for the lost arm.  Touching his face made him feel the presence of his arm.  No afterlife; this is due to architecture of the brain. New knowledge about how the brain works...few eggshells got broken due to this session. Me happy about that!

Sensory substitution demonstrates the adaptability of the brain.  As long as there is viable data, the brain work as with it. Take losing sight for example.  Braille system had been available for a long while.  Visually impaired people can read using the tips of the fingers.  

 Our brains change a lot.  In fact, reading Livewired, a book by David Eagleman convinces me that our brains are in continual flux.  In fact, reading the book and writing this blog alters my brain. Neuroplasticity is a common term used to describe this phenomenon.  However, the term does not capture the dynamism of brain change for the author.  He prefers live wiring as a more apt word to describe the ever morphing brain. I think this is more than semantics.  I think this is a wonderful way of expanding the frontiers of brain science.  I also think that minting more precise terms is a wonderful aspect of free thinking. Just think of the Orwellian nightmare in 1984, the dystopian novel.  The government was paring down the English language as means of thought conteol.  Of course the exciting frontiers of brain science will wither and die should such society emerge. Thanks to our free world, we witness the brain mint new word to describe its way...

 I was intrigued by the message on the thumbnail of this video  (326) ውድዬ ከጀርባዬ ሳትሆን ከጐኔ ናት። የውዳሴ ዲያግኖስቲክ ባለቤት @dawitdreams - YouTube .  It was written in Amharic.  Translated into English phoenetics it reads "Menekakat Sayhon Menkat New Yalebin".  I have included a screenshot of the thumbnail below.  Menekakat, with the extra syllable means getting motivated.  Menkat, on the other hand, means waking up.  The title plays on Amharic words to underscore the purpose of this speech. From the introduction, we learn that Ato Dawit had challenge paying rent for his living when he was getting ready to get married.  He overcame that and many other challenges to become a businessperson whose companies employ a total of 1100 people. As he was introduced, the host reminds the audience of the saying behind every successful man there is a woman.  He amends the adage to there is a woman on the side of a successful man.  Through this deft sentence, he ...

These days I find myself switching between multiple audio books.  I don’t seem to settle on one and read it through.  I keep feeling like a bee that wandered into a bed of flowers.  I feel the bee’s intoxication. One of the audio books I wandered into is Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup. In that book, he discusses a counterintuitive idea of developing a minimum viable product.   Our world is in constant flux.  For startups it does not make sense to hedge their bet on long term product development.  It is better to develop a product without bells and whistles, or a minimum viable product.  Who knows, you can make your luck that way. As an example, he cites avatars that his group was trying to develop.  They wanted the avatars to do things like move around screens and jump over obstacles.  In other words, they wanted them to do what characters in The Sims did on a screen. Eric and his group did not have the resources to pull such a feat.  Inst...

 I used to be captivated when I read that some of our prestigious writers and speakers alotted a healthy slice of their mornings to journaling.  I used to write quite a bit, giving myself a grandiose but arbitrary target of a thousand words a day. I used to feel the stress of hitting my target without really worrying about the quality of the content.  Although done to emulate the writer’s life, although ddne as a kind of homage to the professionals, I miss those days.  I miss writing them.

 I am beginning to see that I have more choices than I am willing to acknowledge.  For example, I could be listening to bouncy music instead of crafting this humble prose.  Indeed, it is easier to see my present situation as incongruous. For example, the headlights of 602, the bus going to Medical Transit Center, is shining towards me from my right.  I am sitting on a metal bench next to number 5’s stop as I type this onto my iPad.  I feel tiny droplets of water on my face as if from someone’s spittle. Definitely incongruous but also affably personal.  This is my life now...and this is not a statement or manifesto.  It is just a humble way of letting the now into my morning. As I finish this piece, I hear the mild rattle of a bicycle’s chain.  I look up to catch a faint impression of a fellow human being.  Nothing grandiose nor paltry about that presence...just another piece of the now infiltrating my morning.

 I am not sure where I have read that I cannot be the right judge of my written works.  The feedback has to come from outside.  That argument was replete with interesting examples. For example, Picasso was known to produce many sketches or drawings before settling on a final piece.  One would think that progress would be linear as he went through many iterations.  But no.   Often, his earlier  iterations influenced his final product. Experimentation, it turns out, is better than planning.  Executing a nascent plan, it seems, is better than waiting for better things to come. Although we may use our judgements to refine our work, having the courage to push out a piece of any type of work is more critical.  A bias for action is more important than finesse.

 A few weeks ago, I was listening to James Clear talking about growing a seed.  Time is inbuilt into that seed; you cannot rush it.  You must tend to it; but you cannot rush it. That is how I am beginning to view my blogs.  I cannot be an overnight expert.  Growth has a process and it starts by showing up.  That is the first trick, the trick of all tricks if you think about it, I must master first. Content matters, for sure.  But showing up trumps content development in the long run.

 My blue tooth headphone has become my constant companion. Audio books zip into my thought process at 2x speed or more sometimes.  The other morning, I was going through the Just Cause chapter from Simon Sinek’s book The Infinite Game.  I have listened to that chapter before so I went at it at 3x speed.  To my surprise, I was able to pick up many of the words - because I listened to the content before, for sure.  Yet, I liked the novelty of prose rushing into me at that speed. It is thanks to my companion, my blue tooth headphone. This morning, I was listening to Cal Newport’s podcast on slow productivity.  At 1.75x the words moved a bit slower.  I can reflect in between the message.  Somehow this made time move much faster.  Is this flow?  I wonder. I like my new companion.  It expands the menu items for my day.  And it is not podcasts alone...some othe music I listen to help energize myself.

 I love writing.  Here is another morning for another session.   Loving what I do is important.  Being good at it takes work.  As  long as I love what I do, my work is a labor of love.  I welcome that.