Does something look good or bad? It might depend on which pair of glasses you’re wearing.

A famous Taoist parable asks, “Who knows what is good or bad?” Here is the parable. Reading it takes 2 minutes.

There is a lot of negative thinking this year. I thought it would be interesting to practice thinking a different way. Could seemingly negative events be interpreted differently?

I’m purposefully ignoring more serious problems that could take place. I’m more interested in writing about everyday stuff.

Here are three examples (because the brain likes things in threes):

• My house is a mess
• I don’t make enough money
• People aren’t listening to me

Clearly each of these examples are unequivocally bad and not even worth examining, right?

My house is a mess

We hear this often. It’s a mess! I could have picked almost any noun—hair, desk, office, car, house. Untidiness provokes embarrassment.

Why does this situation prompt such an emotional response? Perhaps a messy house is interpreted as a metaphor for our character.

How could a mess be good? Well, the only people that have messy houses are those who have houses. In other words, homeless people never have messy homes.

To someone without a home, a messy house is a dream come true. To someone with a house, a mess is embarrassing. The next time the house is messy, maybe a feeling of gratitude can replace embarrassment. And then grab a duster.

I don’t make enough money

More money, more problems as a philosopher once said (probably not Mark Twain). We just got done talking about the stress of a messy house. Think about the stress of multiple messy houses!

In America, people are often judged by their job title and how much bacon they bring home. Bacon is delicious, but it is a poor measure of character.

I’ve fallen into this trap. I thought the dollar amount on my paycheck was a personal price tag. Higher = worth more. I thought my feelings of insecurity might decrease as my paycheck increased.

In fact, I became more insecure. I sensed a bigger deficit between my perceived low personal value and my pay. I did not understand what was valuable, and I did not understand what was invaluable.

“Invaluable” does not mean “not valuable.” (English is confusing.)

Invaluable means something really valuable. So much value it cannot be purchased with any amount of money. Examples include unconditional love, unconditional forgiveness, being included in the group (the brain likes examples in threes).

Think about the most important person in your life. Would you sell that relationship for any amount of money?

The things with the most value are often given to us for free.

People aren’t listening to me

Being ignored means pain, no two ways about it. So, what could be gained by being ignored?

Such pain might be the price paid for self-awareness, a very rare gift. Did exclusion result from doing something wrong? Do behaviors need to be changed, or amends made?

Profound personal change is possible. If someone say people can’t change, they haven’t seen what I’ve seen. 

But change is expensive, and the price is usually pain. The pain of admitting fault, experiencing vulnerability, feeling regret. Many are not willing to pay this price.

But for others, the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of changing.

Being ignored can be an opportunity. If you are at fault, pain is now motivation to change and become better. Change is now less painful than exclusion.

If you are not at fault, you can evaluate your relationships. Perhaps upon reflection, you choose to liberate yourself from investing time and energy into shallow relationships. Separation is less painful than a lifetime of being let down.

Finding the right pair of glasses

At a former job, unpleasant assignments were labeled “career opportunities.”

That label was applied sarcastically, but maybe it shouldn’t have been. Indeed, viewed with the right pair of glasses, those assignments would have looked like opportunities.

Wearing the right pair of glasses is important for a peaceful and satisfying life. Many things are not under our control, but our choice of glasses is.

At the end of the day, who knows what is good or bad? The answer is more likely based on a personal interpretation of the event than on the event itself.

Which pair of glasses are you wearing?

Deciding is easy for me. I have only one condition that must be met before I decide. I must be certain.

As you might expect, this condition becomes harder to satisfy as the number of options increases. In formal mathematical terms: As N ↑, 🙂 → 🙁 

I can see the pros and cons of all the options at once—a decision-making superposition. (This ability is not as useful as it sounds.)

Satisfying my one pre-condition should be simple. All it would take is a message from the future from the correct universe from a trustworthy authority validated by a licensed notary telling me the right answer. Why is that so hard?

I’m certainly not alone being uncomfortable with uncertainty. The stock market doesn’t like it, job applicants don’t like it, and Tom Petty doesn’t like it.

The entire insurance industry exists because of uncertainty and the anxiety it causes. Think you’re not afraid? Stop paying your premiums. There’s a quote out there attributed to Warren Buffett: “We pay a high price for certainty.” (He didn’t say that, but he said something similar.)

As someone occasionally put in a decision superposition, I’m fascinated by the Deciders—the people who make a living deciding. CEOs and Generals are the most famous examples, but it could be anyone. The world doesn’t wait until you feel comfortable, it’s moving on regardless. Meanwhile, the fate of your organization or your troops is on the line. To not choose is to choose death.

Things seem a little less life or death when I’m comparing sock brands, but the example is instructive. (I know blisters are serious but let’s put a pin in them for now.) Logically, a decision farther from life and death should take less time to make. Conversely, life and death decisions should take more time.

My brain often wants to treat a decision as if my life hangs in the balance. My life will be destroyed if I buy the wrong socks, so I will look at socks for one year if that is what it takes. If my current socks vaporize that is an acceptable loss.

My brain is telling me to pursue the perfect decision. But a perfect result assumes that 100% of relevant information can be known. What if that’s not true? Maybe Donald Rumsfeld knows the answer.

When a decision arises, I could make a Punnett square of Knowns and Unknowns. Or I could take the easier (if less geometrically pleasing) route of becoming comfortable with uncertainty.

“Comfortable” does not mean “enjoy.” It just means accepting that the amount of control I have on outcomes is small. The universe is large and filled with many forces besides my will. Having a perfect understanding of all these forces will never happen. The math is the same whether I acknowledge it or not. (Force equals mass times acceleration if you want to experiment for yourself.)

Fortunately, most decisions turn out ok if a bit of critical thinking is used. Even better, I’ll only die once, so that caps the amount of fatal decisions I can make at one. (That’s comforting, right?)

As for my sock problem, the costs of a poor decision are low—an additional sock purchase. Pick a brand and go with it.

Or hold out for certainty. Or pull a Kobayashi Maru, change the game, and stop wearing socks altogether.

Previously I wrote an article about how less is more. You’ll be pleased to know that I’m putting my words where my mouth is — I’ve been following an intermittent fasting routine for a couple months.

I employ the 16/8 routine – going without food for 16 hours and eating during the remaining eight. I eat lunch around noon and wrap up eating by 8 PM (not to brag, but I added those hours in my head). I’ve even fasted 24 hours a couple of times.

I find it easier to eat nothing than to eat a little. And I’d rather eat nothing than most foods considered “healthy.” Remember, less is more, and you can’t eat less than nothing. (My crack research team is looking into this assertion. Preliminary reports appear to confirm it.)

Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m doing this. I mean, am I punishing myself?

No. Fasting for me is not punitive. It started because I was looking into different options for managing inflammation. My first choice was uploading my consciousness into a robot, but apparently we have not yet reached the singularity.

I looked into some conventional methods. Surgery intrigued me, but I didn’t have six million dollars to become one of those six million dollar men. So that was out.

Going full robot didn’t work. Going bionic man didn’t work. Great! Only alternative options remained… like diet. I resisted at first but I kept reading about the effect diet has on many areas of life. Sleep, brain function, hormones, inflammation, microbiome. Apparently diet can even effect your weight.

“Eating healthy” gets a lot of focus. But what is often overlooked is that periods of eating nothing contribute benefits in addition to those gained through healthy eating alone.

I was as surprised as anyone that the food I eat (or don’t eat) actually matters. It seems achieving a healthy lifestyle by eating unlimited ice cream is unlikely. (This was a devastating conclusion. I’m still hoping this finding is part of the replication crisis.)

It’s worth noting that my prior experience with mindfulness was invaluable in starting my intermittent fasting routine. I’d had practice observing what I was thinking or feeling in a particular moment. Prior to my decision to fast, I observed what I was feeling when I wanted to eat something. I can say with non-scientific precision (but feeling the confident backing of the Pareto principle) that 80% of my desire to eat came from feelings other than hunger.

I know you are shocked right now. People eat for reasons other than hunger? In my case, the following feelings prompted the desire to eat: anxiety, loneliness, sadness, pride, happiness. It seems that when things were bad, calories were comforting. And when things were good, nothing provides the icing on the cake like icing on a cake.

After a few weeks of observations, I knew that my mind’s main objection — that I would be too hungry — was bunk. I can confidently say that after months of fasting I don’t need to eat as often as my mind tells me. Getting to noon without eating is not an issue. The only days where I even think about it are days when I feel stressed or I’m busy in the morning. But I’m onto you brain, you can’t trick me!

My diet is not perfect. I’m no stranger to self-criticism, so I could focus on how I’ve not yet adopted the perfect human diet 100% of the time. But I think it’s fair to say that over the past few months I have made progress. I am better than I was yesterday. And more importantly, I have found something that will give me results if I use it. There is a solution, as they say.

I’m as disappointed as many others would be that the solution didn’t involve pills, infomercials, gadgets ordered from Amazon — solving problems with money instead of effort is more fun. But I suppose I’m grateful that there is a solution at all.  The alternative to a solution is… no solution. Research has shown that most people prefer their problems to be solvable.

Fasting is cheap and simple, exactly the opposite of what my monkey mind typically comes up with. So I’ll continue to fast because I find it beneficial. And I’ll continue to look for research that proves, in actuality, unlimited ice cream is the healthiest human diet.

“Less is more” is a cliché. It’s mostly delivered jokingly when something is small. The implication is that less is bad.

In the old days, no one said less is more…because nobody had more. There was no expectation of more to fall short of. No one expected a large but received a small.

In the todays, more is the default. Everything is more – portions, houses, wardrobes. Less must be actively chosen. Without daily pruning, more takes over.

More is even sold as the way to get less. Consider body fat. We’re told the best way to get less is more gym memberships, more equipment, more diet products…

More has become so big it’s unmanageable. There are books and videos and seminars on how to get away from it. Tim Ferriss, David Allen, and others talk about how to simplify life so you can actually complete a task during the day.

Marie Kondo wrote a popular book called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. A one-sentence summary is that people have too much junk and will be happier if they throw most of it out.

I’ve even seen advocates of less in an unlikely place – venture capital. Surely more funds wouldn’t hurt a startup company.

In his book Secrets of Sandhill Road, venture capitalist Scott Kupor cautions business owners on accepting too much money. Paradoxically, more cash can hurt the company in the long run. Business owners with too much cash don’t have to prioritize spending. Since they can buy more, they spend more, and waste more.

Speaking of paradoxes, there is one called the ‘Paradox of Choice.’ Decision making becomes harder as options increase, to the point where people can’t make a decision at all.

A famous experiment demonstrates the paradox. Researchers set up a stand to sell jam. First, the researchers offered 6 flavors. Next, they offered 24. They found consumers were 10x more likely to buy jam when there were 6 flavors as opposed to 24. Additional flavors paralyzed people’s decision-making process.

If fewer flavors of jam is helpful, so is eating less of it. In fact, eating less of anything is helpful. Preliminary research is showing that restricting calories extends lifespans.

Furthermore, fasting—eating nothing—shows better long-term results than eating less. People report feeling less hungry when they eat nothing than when they eat a little bit. Eating zero is easier than eating just one.

What about money? More income has to be better. Well…people feel better until about $75,000 per year. After that, money stops affecting quality of life.

But we all know we should avoid eating too much and that money isn’t the source of happiness. Having fulfilling personal relationships is what matters. We should just accumulate as many contacts as we can.

Or should we? Researcher Robin Dunbar says the average person only has enough cognitive capacity to maintain around 150 meaningful contacts, 50 of whom we’d call friends, 15 of whom are good friends.

Some people dispute this finding, but it makes sense on a conceptual level. We have only so much time and attention to spend with other people.

So…maybe less actually is more? It can be said sans sarcasm? Satisfaction can be found right now, where we are, with what we have?   

It would seem so.

“You can never get enough of what you don’t need.”

Eric Hoffer

“‘Enough’ is a feast.” 

Buddhist proverb

Which New Year?

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to write more articles. I just checked my output for the year, and it would appear I haven’t started yet.

Maybe I’m waiting until December to start, since I’d still have time to write something this year? Perhaps I was conducting an experiment on inertia, and I couldn’t write until the results were in? Actually, the “new year” I was talking about was the Zoroastrian New Year, which begins March 19.

If you believe in the multiverse, all those things are true somewhere. Bur for this universe, it’s just hard for me to come up with topics.

My problem is starting articles, not finishing them. So I had a massively creative idea and came up with a topic about…my failed attempts to write more this year.

Cause & Effect

I’ve already detailed 50 reasons I haven’t written more, but I left out a few.

• It’s hard for me to generate topics (but easy for me to repeat things).
• I read that, ideally, a blog post should be 500 words. I assumed that was a lot of words without checking.
• I’m a perfectionist. I put off writing to avoid the pain of writing imperfectly and the possibility of other people reading my imperfections.

The causes of the above problems are obvious:

• I spend approximately 0 minutes a week generating topics.
• I forgot about the word count function in the word processor I use (brand names won’t be used without compensation).
• I fell into the trap of listening to that guy in my mind that criticizes everything I do. My life goes better when I don’t listen to that guy.

The solutions to the above causes are similarly obvious:

• Spend > 0 minutes a week generating topics. Deposit those topics in a “bank” and withdraw one when needed.
• Find out how long 500 words is…I just did. 500 words is about 1.5 single-spaced pages, including subheadings. Not exactly the Odyssey.
• The brain can only do one thing at a time. If I’m writing I’m not listening, so this problem solves itself. (It doesn’t always pay to be a better listener.)

Alchemy

The best way to write more is… to write more. This article is me writing more to write more (my next article will be on tautologies).

The ancient art/science/fraud of alchemy was concerned with turning lesser metals into valuable ones (e.g., lead into gold). Writing resembles non-fraudulent alchemy—it actually does turn something of lesser value into something of greater value.

Alchemical writing turns disparate electrical impulses in the brain (lesser value) into a communicable message (greater value). It is theoretically possible to communicate a written message to every person on Earth, and even to people who will be born in the future.

My problem is that I hesitate to write unless I think other people will find my writing valuable (i.e., “interesting”). However, this is a results-based measure of value—the outcome is not controlled by me.

A better measure is process-based—where I control the results. I am in control of whether I write or not. If my measure of value is that I spent time creating something and did the best I could do, anything I write is inherently valuable.

I posted an article! Let’s see if I can post another one soon—2 in a row officially counts as a win streak in my book.