Tag: food for thought

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Thoughts

How to be more open to more ideas

Random thoughts at night while in reservist.

Recently my wife asked me: “how is it that we both read the same thing, or attend the same event, and yet the insights you glean is deeper than me?

I realised that I have change my approach to any form of incoming information these days. I consciously try to interact with an open mind. The point of reading is not the agree with everything the author says, but to be open to new perspectives, ideas and approaches that I may not have considered or dismissed previously. I also try not to be too quick to dismiss an idea just because it sounds ridiculous on the first pass.

As with many things in life, an idea exists on a spectrum. It is very rarely that someone is just outright wrong about something, it is way more likely that the idea is just a suboptimal solution for a given problem. Since everyone’s situation and context is different there is almost always a completely acceptable reason for the “wrong” conclusion that someone ends up with.

When I try to distill down the thoughts and actions that I take when given new information, I think it boils down to these few things.

  1. Am I too proud to admit that there’s a chance I could be wrong?
  2. Can I see it making any sense given multiple situations?
  3. Do I agree with the author’s approach?
  4. Am I willing to step out of my comfort zone to try the approach?

For example, I recently read a book named “How to talk to anyone”, that there’s a method of eye contact known as epoxy eyes where you have your eyes completely glued onto a person to show interest. My understanding of eye contact is that I should not maintain it for long periods of time because it can be off-puting, but the author suggests that there are positive effects when done correctly.

I am open to the idea that I could be wrong about what I know of eye contact, and I can imagine it making sense when trying to court a partner. I do not know if I agree with the author’s approach, but I am willing to step out of my comfort zone to give it a shot. And then through experiencing it I am able to better judge if this bit of information has any usefulness in my life.

That’s all, just needed a place to dump my midnight thoughts.

Categories
Thoughts

I enjoy being terrible at things

I enjoying being terrible at things… at the start. I don’t enjoy staying terrible at it. So recently my friend invited me to play tennis and I was extremely hesitant at first; because I’m a complete newb and I’m worried that I’ll injure my wrist with all that table tennis muscle memory.

I was pleasantly wrong. Gave it a shot last week and I’ve just came back from my second session today. It has been so long that I’ve been this shit at something. It’s honestly a refreshing experience because as I get older, I realise that I’m less open to new experiences and often stay within my comfort zone, only doing things within my area of expertise. Looks like I’ve been missing out on life.

However, I feel it is important to experience new things with people of similar experience level. If I were to be absolutely thrashed in my first session, it would most likely crush any motivation for a second session. (it would also be really boring for that advanced player). It is really exciting to improve with a group of like-minded and similarly-skilled people.

I draw similarities with a TikTok I saw recently about how we should seek mentors that’s within our skill/situation range. i.e. If I’m starting a new business, I wouldn’t look for a mentor who is coaching people with millions. Instead, I should look for someone who can get me from $0 to the first $10k, and another person who can help me get from $10k to $100k, and someone who can get me from $100k to $1 million.

It’s the realisation that we need different groups of people at different stages of our lives in order to progress from where we are, otherwise we’ll just stagnate. It’s not that one group of people is better than the other, but it’s necessary for each group to exist in our lives in order to grow (and of course, those people will do their own growing as well).

Would I be playing tennis with this group of people a year or two from now? It’s unlikely. But they are the folks who help get me from zero to one, and I hope to reflect upon this period of time as a fond memory in the future.

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Books Thoughts

Practicing mindful openness

Prologue

As I grow older and learn more about the world around me; I noticed that a contradictory process has been happening at the same time. As I figure out more of what’s right and what’s wrong, what are things supposed to be, the more I become closed off to other possibilities. I wish to grow with an open mind; how can I do that?

Let me start from the beginning of my thought process.

Inception

I’ve recently started to read more books as a response to: "hmm, I haven’t been utilizing my Kindle much, it’s such a waste to leave it sitting there". Hence I started my journey of crossing out books that has been sitting on my Todo list for the longest time (e.g. The War of Art).

That was followed by "Atomic Habits" (re-reading it before my reflection) and "Your Money or Your Life" (WIP). I was introduced ideas of how to continuously achieve more; and consumerism: about how we have all fallen into the idea of more is always better. These are conflicting ideologies in my opinion but yet I fully agree with both of them. The acceptance towards this dichotomy of ideologies is giving me a lot of internal conflict because it’s messing up with my value system.

Awareness

When I thought deeper into it, I realized that it is only possible for me to accept both of them at once because this is something new to me. I haven’t formed my own belief of what is right or wrong for me yet. This led me to think about: "how many times have I rejected an idea/solution just because I already have my own pre-conceived notion of what is right?". The answer is probably a lot more than I’m willing to admit, which scares me more than I’m willing to show.

Action

Thankfully, awareness and consciousness is usually always the first step to breaking out of being oblivious to my own biasness. My current proposed solution for such short-sightedness is…

  • keep reading a variety of books
  • keep communicating with people who have different ideas and perspectives on life
  • don’t live in an echo chamber/bubble
  • don’t be quick to judge opposing ideas
  • accept that moderate internal conflict is good for growth
  • accept that almost everything is a spectrum instead of binary

Closing thoughts

It’s not often that I feel this level of revelation, and it does make me feel like I’ve been living my life "wrong". But hey, better late than never right? I still have another 2/3rds of my life to make the changes and reap the benefits.

Also I just thought it would be funny to have a section called "Closing thoughts" when this post is about openness.

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Learning Thoughts

Communication is hard

Recently watched something from CGP Grey on YouTube again that really clicked in my head and just wanted to note it down on my blog in case I forget about it.

From 1:42 to 2:28

If there is anything I’ve learned from thousands of spoken words, it’s that human communication is hard. Way harder than people think. Precisely because people think it’s easy. You just say the words and the other person hear them and bam! Understanding! Alas, no. Words are fuzzy things and you don’t realize how poorly you string them together until you are forced to listen to yourself saying those words. And even if you’re happy with your string of words, you just don’t know how those fuzzy patterns of sound will pattern match in someone else’s brain. Human communication is a dance, and a dance requires partners. We all create content and I think we should all keep that in mind and be much more willing to work with the intended intention of our interlocutors.

CGP Grey

This really clicked in my head because there are so many occasions where I felt that I wasn’t communicating the thoughts in my head across effectively and I search high and low for the right combination of words that I hope would make sense to the others, often following up with “did that make sense to you?”.

But this also made me realize the many other occasions where I thought that I had explained something that seemed obvious to me and simply assumed that the other party understood exactly what I meant.

It also made me aware that many disagreements where the other party said something I found offensive and they said, “that’s not what I meant!”, and I retorted with, “but that’s what you said”; is a counterproductive response which doesn’t help the situation. Being aware of this made me think that I should’ve held my feelings and judgment at the moment and clarify with, “well, what do you mean then?”, and give the benefit of the doubt that the other party simply chose the wrong string of words to express their intention. Alas, it’s not that simple all the time because humans are complicated and will often obfuscate their intentions for various reasons; but simply being aware of this will at least help me navigate the murky waters of communication.

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Thoughts

FFT: Worried that I’m getting jaded

Food for thought used to be a series in my old blogs for something that I just dump my random musings, I’m reviving it now because I’m in a new phase of life.

Up until recently, I felt that people are jaded/spoilt when they spend “unnecessarily” on things they want instead of things they need, or getting the more premium option when the normal option would’ve worked fine.

But after reviewing my spending trends across the past year, I feel like I’m starting to become that kind of person. For example, taking a cab used to be: “I’ll take a cab only if I’m really tired or it’s really just way too troublesome to get there”. Nowadays it’s more like: “I’ll take the public transport only if I’m feel energetic and I feel like it”.

Analysis

I’m attributing this change to having a job, and not having many obligations (yet). “Adult money” as me and my partner would like to call it, is dangerous to us. Given the means, there is an increasing number of things where it does not makes sense to spend the extra/time and effort when money can solve it.

When I think about money as a function of my life energy that I’m exchanging for, I want to spend the remaining life energy (and time), on the things that I truly care about. When I’m meeting friends, the part that matters is meeting the people, not the travelling to the destination. If I can find a tool that gives me a better working experience, it’s worth the extra because it reduces the friction of doing “something”, which has a multiplicative effect on the consumption of life energy.

function of life energy: spending X amount of life to get Y money.

I feel that the relationship between income and the amount someone is willing to spend on conveniences is approximately proportional. The (rough) graph drawn below shows the relationship, and I feel like I’m breaching into the conveniences territory which prompted this FFT post.

income vs amount spent on convenience graph

This also reminded me of The Last Bit in the Container post I’ve read may years ago. TLDR; squeeze your toothpaste if it only takes a few seconds, else it’s not worth it.

Light bulb moment

Have I been misunderstanding those people who have been spending for convenience and quality of life? Is this because that I have not reached the same phase of life as them?

Who/what else have I been misunderstanding?

Moments like this really make me hit the pause button and think really hard about my life.

An interesting conversation I had sometime ago was an advice to “be kind to the older folks in IT” even though sometimes their ideas/suggestion may seem very outdated. It’s because their reality has been shaped by the experience of working with the older systems and they have learnt many lessons the hard way; instead of dismissing it as “irrelevant in current context”, it could just be an old solution to a still plausible problem (that we may have missed).

I feel like I’m experiencing the “You’ll understand when you’re a parent yourself” moment before becoming a parent.

Getting back on track, I don’t think I would change my spending drastically even with this realization because I’m still able to justify for them. What I would do instead, is question myself: “would this money be better spent invested in something?”.

(Ending off this post as I sip coffee on my new $20 thermos mug)