The most important thing today

On Sunday Mornings, “Brain Food” arrives in my inbox. “Brain Food” is a weekly newsletter from Farnam Street Blog. It contains links to articles, podcasts, and books worth considering.

One of the links this morning led to an article about Ayn Rand’s short book “Philosophy, who needs it” with links to articles on “Grey Thinking” which led to “Second-Order Effects“ and other tools for critical analysis of the way that we think and the conclusions we arrive at.

For the past couple of weeks, Daniel’s been prodding me to identify the Most Important Thing Today (MITT) and focus on getting it done.

So today, I want to think more about this.

What is today’s MITT?

How do I decide?

Why does it matter?

One of the Most Important Things to do, one that never appears on my list, is “keep breathing.”

Writing this post is less important.

And in the Grand Scheme of Things (GSOT), neither matters all that much.

To an objective observer—should such a thing exist—I’m just a bit of chemical scum on a tiny rock spinning around a second-rate star.

But to me, I’m the center of the universe, and the most important things in the universe are the things that I do and the things that happen to me.

A wise observer can see that. It must be clear that I am the center of my universe. And so is that observer, and so is every other viewpoint.

We are each at once of near-zero and near-maximum importance.

It helps me to maintain those two viewpoints in my mind together.

It creates a framework or coordinate system. Everything that I do is both important and unimportant, vital and inconsequential.

And thus, everything also occupies all points between those extremes.

So what’s the MITT?

Right now, it’s writing this. Then it will be publishing it.

And after that? Let me think a bit.

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Awareness of awareness

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche says: “Awareness is always present. We are just not always aware of it.” Or words to that effect.

Every time that I hear him say that (or words to that effect), something changes. I’m delighted. Everything is the same—but different. It’s like a low-rez image suddenly turning high-rez, or a narrow-bandwidth sound suddenly going surround-sound. The content is the same, but the quality is better.

Quality! There we are again. I’ve written about that before. I’ll probably write about it in the future. It’s an important idea.

What will raise the Quality of this moment, this time, as I am writing this?

Merely being aware of its present Quality seems to make a difference.

I can change of the lens through which I experience the process through which these words appear.

Each lens is a different kind of awareness.

In one kind of awareness, the process of writing is taken for granted: “Yeah, big deal, I’m writing something.”

In another, it’s a mystery and a miracle: “Look! Words are appearing. Before my very eyes!”

In yet another, the experience is even more transcendent. The field of awareness is even broader, deeper, more detailed. There are not just words appearing but fingers typing, there is inhaling and exhaling; there’s a heart pumping; sounds arise and pass away; all of this at once.

More.

As the words appear, leaves are turning color. These things are not unrelated.

Water shimmers on the Salt Pond.

Not just typing but the sounds of typing.

All this and more happens on a tiny speck of a planet in the middle of an ocean of darkness, an instant in the span of billions of years.

So much to be aware of.

So little awareness of that awareness.

But that’s fine.

It’s possible to be aware of “things.”

It’s possible to be aware of awareness—which includes and transcends awareness of things.

That’s this morning’s meditation.

I’ll take that as a win, and move on.

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Nature's promise

Every time I go into Trade Winds Market and see this brand, I think, “What a dumb brand name. Nature’s only got one promise. Sooner or later, we’re going to die. That’s nature’s promise.”

Then I think, “I’ll have to write a blog post about that, one of these days.”

And then I go about my shopping.

Today, I wrote the post. This, of course, is it.

And now, I hope I won’t think that anymore.

Good luck, me.

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I want to start a revolution!

Photo by Clément Falize on Unsplash
When I was a kid I believed that God and I had a personal relationship. After all, I was one of the Chosen People. And even more special than the average Chosen Person.

I believed God looked out for me.

I believed that God communicated with me. He did not speak to me from a burning bush. Nothing that obvious. God was subtle. God sent me signs. My job was to watch for those signs, figure out what they meant, and change my behavior accordingly.

What kinds of signs?

Say, I didn’t do my homework. Say, then my teacher called on me. Then I’d look stupid because I didn’t know the answer. And then I’d feel bad.

That was a sign.

God wanted me to study. And I hadn’t. God had designed that whole series of events to teach me a lesson.

“That’s stupid,” you might say. “Of course if you don’t study, you won’t know the answer. And, of course, the teacher had to call someone, so, of course, it might have been you. And, of course, if you don’t know the answer, you’ll look stupid—because you are stupid. And, of course, looking stupid and being stupid should make you feel bad.

“No need for God in any of that.”

And I will agree. The explanation of what happened is complete without God sending messages.

If all you want an explanation, God is an unnecessary embellishment.

And Occam has a razor that says “Entities should not be multiplied without necessity.” God is an unnecessarily multiplied entity.

But what if you want more than just an explanation? I was a kid. I wanted to feel safe. I wanted to feel looked after. And I suppose I wanted a better story— one that made me feel special.

The story I told myself that God was sending me messages provided all of that.

Maybe it was just Dumbo’s feather. But so what?

Modern messages

Sunday, I went out to check on my boat, bent down, and felt agonizing pain in my lower back.

It’s happened before. Not often, but it happens.

I’ve got a bunch of tricks that always work. I little bit of stretching, some ibuprofen, maybe 15 minutes curled up in bed, and I’m okay.

I staggered back to the house, did my routine, and the pain went away, For a while.

The next morning it had returned, with double force. None of my tricks made it go away.

I spent most of the day in bed popping pills and distracting myself. By the end of the day I was well enough to get in the car and drive down to the chiropractor for an adjustment. It seemed to help a bit.

But the next morning (this morning) I got up and the pain was back.

Not as bad as the previous morning, but bad enough.

I decided to think differently.

I decided to believe that the pain was not an affliction, but a sign.

Maybe not a sign from the God I had believed in as a kid—I’m too sophisticated or too jaded or too egotistical for that—but I decided to believe it was a sign.

It was not a meaningless event. It had meaning.

Something, I imagined, was trying to get me to pay attention.

Hey, paying attention is not a bad idea, is it?

So why not tell myself that story.

The meaning of the message

Now what was I to pay attention to?

Well, mortality, of course. Pain and death. And the meaning of life. And gratitude for my generally good health.

All worth paying attention to.

And then I thought: I’ve got a few things that I want to do before I die, pass on, become no more, cease to be, expire and go to meet my maker, become a stiff, bereft of life, rest in peace, push up the daisies, kick the bucket, shuffle off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and join the choir invisible. Before I become an ex-me. (To paraphrase Monty Python)

I want to start a revolution inspired in part by this song (and its author.)

A revolution! Don’t we need one? Don’t I want to start one? I do.

And I’ve been given a sign.

I’ve been reminded.

“We’ve been called by coincidence, so maybe we’re the ones.”

Maybe I’m the one.

Maybe you are, too.

It’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.

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Keep the Fun in Funeral

Today Bobbi’s writing group got together in memory of one of their group who—to paraphrase Monty Python ——had died, passed on, was no more, ceased to be, expired and gone to meet her maker, was a stiff, bereft of life, resting in peace, pushing up the daisies, kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.

Bobbi asked me to read the group the obituary my brother and I had written for my Dad.

“Do you have it?” She asked.

“Hey, I’ll Google it,” I said. I remembered I’d found an archive of the obit in an online archive of the local newpaper: the Panama City Bugle or Star or Beach Buggy.

So I queried Google, and Google found this memorial website—which I’d forgotten that I’d created.

Thanks to Bobbi for reminding me to look. And holy shit, thank you, Google, for finding it!

The link goes to a page containing series of articles themed on my Dad’s passing. It features the entire obit, pretty much as Mark and I wrote it, duplicated below for people who can’t be bothered clicking links.

168 Year Old Bastard Dies

Not part of the obit, here are the family in-jokes behind the headline.

First, Dad was a preemie. In those days, preemies died. Early, I mean. So they didn’t register his birth. Apparently, you could, in those days.

About six months after he was born, they figured that he wasn’t going to die anytime soon. So they registered his birth.

So Dad had two birthdays a year: the day he was born, and the day his birth was registered. We celebrated both. 84 years (per the birth registration date) times two birthdays a year means he died after his 168th birthday.

Get it?

Second, Dad’s mother was forced into a marriage in Hungary, left on her wedding night, and emigrated to the US. She married Dad’s father but had not divorced her Hungarian husband.


Hence the marriage was illegal.


Hence Dad was a bastard.


But a nice one.

Milton Arthur Wolf passed away at his new home in Panama City, Florida, on Friday, February 4th, when the muse really left him for good. Milton and his wife Judith had moved to Panama City from Baldwin, New York, where they had spent the past forty-seven years. The move and his passing appear unrelated. Milton had celebrated his 168th birthday when he died.
Milton Wolf was a graduate of the Pratt Institute. He founded three companies and recently received an honorary degree as Doctor of Scatology. He was also a founding member of the American Cacological Society and its first President.

He is survived by his wife, Judith, and by his three children: Michael Wolf (his favorite son) of Hopkinton, MA, Dr. Mark Wolf, MD (his best son) of Panama City, FL, and Zorina Worthman-Wolf (his flower child) of Palo Alto, CA (where else?) He is also survived by six grandchildren, a rumored great-grandchild, numerous friends and relatives, and everyone else who isn’t currently dead.

His ashes will be interred at Econfina, the Wolf family farm on February 12th, following a memorial boat ride and barbecue. The family requests that in lieu of flowers that contributions be sent in small unmarked bills to the surviving members of the family.

Milton Wolf was a wonderful man with a great sense of humor. He would have written something like this obituary himself if he had thought of it in time or hadn’t been dead when his kids thought of it. Instead, it was written by his two sons Michael Wolf, Founder, Publisher and Editor-In-Chief of The Wolf Report, and Mark Wolf, who is not Founder, Publisher, and Editor-In-Chief of The Wolf Report, but does hysterectomy much better than Michael does. Editorial assistance was provided by Judith Wolf. (Judith, don’t encourage them!!!)

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NaNoWriMo re-redux

It’s almost November.

November is National novel writing month. NaNoWriMo.

Last year more than 300,000 signed up to write a 50,000 word novel in November.

I tried in 2010 and succeeded in 2011.

50,000 words is 1666 words a day. About 7 pages. Less than an hour if you keep at it. If you miss a day, you can catch up on the next day. Or you can get ahead.

They say, “Write what you know about.” They should know, I guess. In any case, I did.

The result was the story of a man (a lot like me) who sets out to write a 50,000-word novel and finds God. Or God finds him. Or they find one another.

On the say, there are struggles and distractions, but in the end, the guy in the book finishes writing the book he’s writing.

And in real life, so did I.

You can buy a copy for $15.00.

Or you can send me an email, and I’ll send you a PDF.

Last year I decided to write another book and announced it here and here.

And I didn’t finish.

Maybe this year we’ll find out why.

If you’d like to connect with me through NaNoWriMo (to write along with me or to cheer me on, or to hoot at me,) sign up for NaNoWriMo (email, Facebook, or Google) and buddy with me (“WolfReporter”)

See you in November.

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Or cick here

Or here

Or don’t.

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Quality writing

I’ve written before about the process that takes place when I write: how the writing simply appears.

My writing?

I call it “my writing.” but is it? How could it be “mine” when “I” didn’t do it? I sat and invited it, and it appeared.

“Well,” you might say, “you had to sit your body down for it to appear. You had to open your computer. You had fingers on the keyboard and allow your fingers to type the words that come. If you had not done these things, the writing would not have appeared.”

“Perhaps,” say, “but why call it ‘mine?”.

Perhaps there’s a reason. I call it mine, not for my own benefit, but for the benefit of others.

Quality writing

There’s a lot of writing out there. Some is good. Some is not. The difference, as I wrote, is Quality.

The writing that appears in front of me has a certain Quality. It the initial Quality is not sufficient, then I decide not to accept it and decide to wait for something closer to the Quality that I want to arrive.

The writing that appears in front of other people (or that “they” might say that “they” “write”) has a different Quality. So to label some writing as “Mike’ Wolf’s writing” is to say that it has the kinds of Quality associated with other “Mike Wolf” writing.

I’ll go with calling it “my writing” if only for that purpose. But I didn’t write it. I just filtered it for Quality.

Are congratulations due?

“Then I shouldn’t ever congratulate you on a good piece of writing, or an especially thought-provoking idea,” you might have said.

Indeed, you would certainly have said it if your name had happened to have been Daniel, and you had been chatting with me about this in a Hangouts channel.

“You can congratulate me,” I might have and did reply. “I did sit down. I did tune in. I did decide what had enough Quality and what did not. It’s like congratulating the head of a publishing company for the kinds of books it publishes, or the head of a record label for the music they put out. You can do that.”

“The fact that I don’t do the writing doesn’t mean I have no part in its creation. I’m essential. But just not in the way you might think.

That’s what happened here.

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Solving for X

Photo by Taylor on Unsplash

When you are discontent with your life’s conditions, you can follow one of three strategies:

You can change your mind so that you don’t remain discontent—or the dissatisfaction becomes less severe.

You can change your behavior so that you no longer experience the conditions that cause discontent.

You can change the world around you, so those discontenting conditions no longer exist.

These are not exclusive strategies.

You can do more than one.

The question is: if X is what must to change to remove the discontent, how can we solve for X?

Changing your mind

It’s always possible and sometimes easy to change your mind And sometimes merely changing your mind can be a complete and satisfying solution.

But not always.

Sometimes it’s just the first step. Changing your mind will almost make it easier to change your behavior and change the state of the world.

You might not want to change your mind, but if changing your mind would make it easier to change things beyond your mind, then changing your mind would be an excellent place to start.

You might believe that you can’t change your mind. But if you believe that, then it’s just because your mind’s been conditioned to believe that it can’t be changed.

The belief that there’s nothing you can do is called “Learned helplessness.”

And it can be unlearned.

To change your mind, solving for X means finding what it takes for you to change your mind.

X is you.

Changing your behavior

The conditions of your life are partly the result of accidents and partly the result of the choices you’ve made. Your circumstances are the result of your past behavior.

Your behavior has a cause. It’s the product of your mind. So to change your circumstances, you must change your behavior, and to do that, you must first change your mind.

And not just any change will do. It must be a change that leads to behavior that will change your circumstances.

If you’re trying to change your behavior, solving for X means finding what it takes for you to change your mind so that your behavior changes in the way that you want it to change.

Once again, X is you.

Changing the world

The state of the world is not the product of your mind. It’s the result of the laws of nature and of the actions of other individuals.

The world will not change of its own accord. Some individual must do something to change the world.

You cannot directly control what others do, but you might influence them indirectly. But only if you do something different from what you have done in the past.

Since the way you’ve behaved in the past has not caused others to behave in ways that make the state of the world closer to the way you prefer it, you have to change your behavior and interact with others more effectively.

And to change your behavior to what it has been to what might bring about the state you desire, you once again need to change your mind.

Solving for X means discovering how you might influence others to change what they do; that means changing the way that you interact with them, and that means changing your mind.

Once again, X is you.

No way around changing your mind

The only way to change the circumstances of your life is by changing your mind and your attitude, or your mind and your behavior, or your mind and others’ behavior by changing your mind and your behavior.

You are the only one who can change your mind.
You are the only one who can change your behavior—and you do it by changing your mind.

You are the only one who can bring about a change in the world—and you do it by changing your behavior, and you do that by changing your mind.

No matter what course you take, when you solve for X, X is you.

You still have choices

X is you, but you’ve got choices.

You can choose to change your attitude or leave your attitude unchanged and change your behavior and try to change the behavior of others.

You can change your behavior by using more skill or by using force.

You can influence people by finding common interests and negotiating with them or by wielding power and bullying them.

There’s no one way to solve such a problem once you’ve realized that it’s yours to solve.

When you solve for X, X is always you.

My ideal

I’d like always to be able to change my mind in whatever way would result in the greatest good and the least harm.

I can’t always know the best way to do that, but I can generally get a good idea.

And I haven’t always been able to change my mind—even when I’ve known how I want it to change—but practice has made me increasingly able to do so.

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Applied mindtravel--a how-to guide

Photo by Daniela Cuevas on Unsplash

A while back I wrote this post: Mindscapes and mindtravel

Today I discovered I’d written a how-to guide and never published it.

Easily fixed.

Building the itinerary

Get a notebook (or start a document).

Whenever you have a moment of feeling really good, record it in the notebook. Date, time, something memorable about it. Give it a name. Whatever might help you get back there easily.

Once in a while, remember some great places you’ve been. Add it to your list of places.

Imaginary destinations

You can create imaginary destinations, too.

Invent them and put them in your notebook and travel to them just as you can to “real” ones. Maybe you’ve got some already. I’ve got a few.

Hey, it’s your mind, after all, and you get to decide what in your mind you want to call real.

Since it’s all imaginary anyway, you get to choose.

Practice

Periodically, pull out your notebook or list and practice mind-traveling back to those places and times.

Mindtravel to safety

Once you’re good a mindtravelling, you can mindtravel to safe places from shitty places.

Here:

1. Remember you can mindtravel
2. Remember a good place to go to—or pull out your notebook
3. Mindtravel there.
4. Enjoy the experience and then mind-travel to another and another.
5. Do that until you feel like it’s unlikely you’re going to be being snapped back to the shitty place

Then carry on.

A historical note

I found a draft of this post my StackEdit files.

Did I post it? Or didn’t I?

East way to find out. Search the blog. Turns out I posted something like it:
Mindscapes and mindtravel

Complete it or delete it, right?

And then a victory lap.

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Celebrate every success

A recent post, Victory laps: complete it or delete it, was about victory laps. This one is about training my brain and creating systems.

Turns out, I’d come across a variant of the advice—“take a victory lap” earlier. I’d written about it here

I’d watched a video on “reinforcing goal-directed habits’ (here) that compares training q brain to training a dog. You can’t train a dog to step on a particular square unless the dog’s reward for doing it closely follows the dog’s action. You can’t train yourself to write a term paper when the reward comes months later.

Instead, reward yourself every step of the way. Good sentence! Good paragraph! Nice edit!

Why not. (Good sentence!)

I said: (Good!)

What he said made a lot of sense. I write, and write, and write, and never give myself the kind of enthusiastic reinforcement that he recommends.

What he’s doing is conditioning himself. And I realized that I need to recondition myself.

So I did. I went to a different place to write, worked hard at debugging myself, changing my behavior and rewards, and managed to get six posts written—and posted.

Repeat: and posted. That’s a month of typical work. And I felt great!

Good quote!

And then what happened? (Good question!)

Amazingly, with such success behind me, that practice disappeared. (Good!)

WTF?

This post: Why all productivity systems stop working explains it in part. The other part is this: productivity notions don’t work until they’re turned into systems. (Yes!)

My blog seems to be full of good practices that I’ve learned—or maybe not learned. Maybe just encountered and recorded. They could have been turned into productivity systems. But they were not.

Maybe it’s time to learn the things Past Me has encountered and recorded and turn them into systems.

I could make a regular practice of rereading what Past Me has written and put some of his hard-won insights into regular practice for the benefit of Future Me.

(Yay! Time to get this wrapped up and posted.)

(Victory lap, coming up)

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Quality

In this post, Being, doing, having, I wrote about what happens when writing appears:

Then, after the writing appears, I read what has appeared. And then I judge its quality.

Quality!

That’s what it is.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

From out of the depths of the unconscious appears a memory of Robert M. Pirsig’s book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM). I’ve read ZMM several times. Or several Past Me’s have each read it once.

ZMM and Pirsig’s other book Lila are about quality. Or, as Pirsig says, Quality. With a capital Q.

What is Quality?

I know what Quality is to me. You know what it is to you. So does Pirsig.

Quality is what’s important.

In his books, Persig describes what he calls his Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ). Here’s part of the description, from Wikipedia:

Quality,” or “value,”… cannot be defined because it empirically precedes any intellectual construction of it, namely due to the fact that quality (as Pirsig explicitly defines it) exists always as a perceptual experience before it is ever thought of descriptively or academically.

Quality is the “knife-edge” of experience, found only in the present, known or at least potentially accessible to all of “us.” Equating it with the Tao, Pirsig postulates that Quality is the fundamental force in the universe, stimulating everything from atoms to animals to evolve and incorporate ever greater levels of Quality.

According to the MoQ, everything (including ideas and matter) is a product and a result of Quality.

So quality is all around us. And we know it when we see it. And it is the fundamental force in the universe.

Works for me.

Quality writing

I don’t cause the words that appear on the screen to appear. I sit. I intend. They appear.

But after they appear—and sometimes as they appear—I read them. And here’s where I do something. I make decisions.

I make Quality decisions.

If the writing that appears has “insufficient Quality”—and I know what that means—then I intend that something better appears. Then I wait for it to appear. If I’m typing, I wait for my fingers to make some words appear. Words with greater Quality.

Lather, rinse, repeat until what manifests has sufficient Quality. Then I may move to publish it.

If I don’t get the necessary Quality, I may abandon what I’ve started.

But that’s all that I do. I’m a Quality gatekeeper.

I say: this has enough quality to post.

And so I will.

And then, a high-Quality victory lap.

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