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Pandemic Pivot

September 27, 2020 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

The Past: Some Context

We live in a vast country. We are people of different ages, different ethnicities, different genders, different levels of education and economic circumstances, different histories, different (or no) religions, different experiences, different beliefs, biases, and political leanings, and different personalities. And we are just one country among many different countries on this planet.

We humans have a need for other people (one of only six things we can genuinely call needs), and we desire to have a sense of belonging. So we identify ourselves with various others: maybe the citizens of the country where we live, but also with other groups, both large and small, including immediate and extended family, circles of friends, fellow-hobbyists, co-workers, spiritual or religious organizations, business associations, and political parties.

Sometimes our loyalty to the groups we identify with can lead to an attitude of tribalism: us vs. them (those others). It’s not a coincidence that tribal mentalities are strongest in wartime. Is it also possible that extreme tribalism promotes a wartime mentality? It’s a question worth asking for several reasons, one of which is that it doesn’t seem we can blame our Pleistocene-era brain for our tendencies toward either tribalism or violence—at least not directly.

It appears that our ancestors gravitated toward violence only after they transitioned away from a nomadic lifestyle to what is referred to as sedentism or sedentariness (the practice of living in one place for a long time). Their—and our—allegiance may be more to the territory we have staked out and less to the people we have staked it out with.

Here in the 21^st Century, “territory” can have multiple meanings and associations, of course; it can be less geographic and more cultural, contextual, or even abstract. We are living in the digital age, as well as the nuclear age and the inter-connected age. That makes territoriality and tribalism more widespread and more dangerous than they have ever been—and a perfect breeding ground for the worldwide pandemic we’re experiencing now.

So this would be an excellent time to take a look around and acknowledge that there is only one tribe to be concerned about and that is the one we all belong to. This is certainly not a new or original thought, and it’s also clearly easier said than done. That doesn’t make the point less valid.

What makes the situation most pressing, even urgent, is that many of us are now quarantined, which means we are stuck in one place for a long time without knowing how long a time it will be.

The Present: A Plethora of Self-Soothing Advice

Remember the Eisenhower box? It’s that matrix with four quadrants:

#1: Urgent and Important
#2: Important but not Urgent
#3: Urgent but not Important
#4: not Urgent and not Important

Essentially, the purpose is to help us classify our to-do lists. According to its proponents:

What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.

The Eisenhower Box is widespread enough to have helped turn “urgent” into a dirty word. Could there be a link between our attitude toward urgency and our nearly pathological desire to avoid stress and so-called negativity?

The pandemic is, factually speaking, both urgent and important, so it falls into the first category. We don’t necessarily have a lot of experience dealing with such situations. And we’ve been sidelined, told to stay home if we can, for an indefinite period of time. Furthermore, we don’t know what the world is going to look or be like when we move back into it.

Responses to the situation vary: squirmy, angry, frustrated, worried, bored, depressed, content, etc. Some of us find ourselves with a lot more to do than before; others may be doing much less. But no matter our individual responses, the vast majority of advice being dispensed about how to cope encourages all of us to find calm, balance, and meaning (which hopefully are located within your home or at least on your property, since that’s about as far as you can go to look for them) and to treat yourself well.

Yes, these are trying times, disruptive times, uncertain times, in which we certainly do need to take care of ourselves. But this blanket focus on managing our feelings instead of solving the problems that contribute to them is absolutely not serving us. The world is in distress; bright-siding is not an appropriate response. Contrary to suggestions otherwise, lounging on the sofa watching Netflix is not actually contributing to saving the world.

If you’re OK, good for you. The more people who are OK, the better. But being OK is not an end, it’s a means.

These trying, disruptive, and uncertain times require something of and from us

The Future: Disturb the World

DREAM BIG

I’ve heard the optimistic belief expressed that we will somehow emerge from this better people in a better society. I have no expectation of a spontaneous occurrence of betterment. In fact, it’s more likely we will easily and quickly return to the situations and circumstances that led to this—or worse.

But I do believe we have the capacity to change that trajectory, or at least to begin the process—if we act intentionally and start now.

In order to do that, we need to use our imagination to generate a vision of what we want the world to be like, whether or not we have any idea how to make that vision a reality. We need a big, bold dream of a better world. We need a compelling vision we can share with others because it will take many people to create that kind of change. It will take many different kinds of people.

TAKE BABY STEPS

A big, bold vision generates creative tension. The bigger and bolder the vision (meaning the greater the difference between where we are now and where we want to be), the more creative tension is created. The more creative tension there is, the more dopamine is produced and the more motivated we are. Once we have a compelling vision of a desired outcome, we can begin to identify some objectives and then some actions we can take immediately. The best way to change the status quo is via repetition and perseverance—taking baby steps. Interestingly, taking action to make things better often has a side effect of making us feel better, but the reverse is seldom true.

As Serena Chan wrote in an article on complex adaptive systems:

Systems that are forced to explore their space of possibilities will create different structures and new patterns of relationships.

What new structures and patterns of relationships do you want to create for yourself? What do you want for the world? What can you contribute? What action can you take in that direction?

Hunting for Foxhogs,
I Find a Foxcat Instead

September 10, 2020 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

In the last chapter of Curious, Ian Leslie lays out “seven ways to stay curious.” Item number three on the list is “forage like a foxhog.” The foraging he refers to is for information. The question under consideration is whether it’s better to have a depth of knowledge (specialize) or a breadth of knowledge (generalize).

Eventually he connects these two approaches to a quote from Greek poet Archilochus:

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

Leslie suggests that these animals represent two different ways of thinking, neither of which is really better than the other: the hedgehog knows a lot about a little, while the fox knows a little about a lot.

The thinkers best positioned to thrive today and in the future will be a hybrid of these two animals. In a highly competitive, high-information world, it’s crucial to know one or two big things and to know them in more depth and detail than most of your contemporaries. But to really ignite that knowledge, you need the ability to think about it from a variety of eclectic perspectives and to be able to collaborate fruitfully with people who have different specializations. —Ian Leslie

So by combining the fox and the hedgehog, we get the “foxhog.”

Leslie devotes six pages to this discussion, at the end of which I was not entirely clear about the distinctions he was making beyond specialization vs. generalization. So I did a little research of my own.

Assumptions Were Made (but not by me)

The first thing I discovered was that this concept of the hedgehog and the fox is fairly widely used. That was a little surprising. Also surprising was the fact that although people seem to have definite ideas about what the concept means, it doesn’t appear to mean the same thing to everyone.

I listened to a 38-minute podcast of The Hidden Brain titled The Fox and the Hedgehog, which I found interesting and worth listening to. But it did not advance my understanding at all.

It turns out that Archilochus may have been the source of the quote, but we have no elaboration from him on its meaning. That credit goes to philosopher Isaiah Berlin and his essay The Hedgehog and the Fox published as a book in 1953. It was Berlin who first classified various philosophers, writers, and scientists as either hedgehogs or foxes. But the focus of the essay was Leo Tolstoy, who Berlin conceived of as that hybrid creature, the “foxhog” (although he did not, of course, use that term).

According to Berlin, Tolstoy was really a fox who wanted to be a hedgehog, and this internal dissonance was a source of distress to him. That would make Tolstoy a bad example of a “foxhog,” but Leslie does give us a few positive role models.

After checking out Berlin, I understood that Shankar Vedantam (the Hidden Brain podcast) had based his understanding of the concept of the hedgehog and the fox on Berlin’s essay. But other people had somewhat different ideas, and I was still trying to understand it in terms of types of thinkers—or leaders—or learners. The characteristics associated with foxes and hedgehogs by various proponents didn’t really hang together.

Enter the Foxcat

Eventually, I came across a different perspective based on an Aesop’s fable. It turns out there is a fable titled The Fox and the Hedgehog, but the moral of that story doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what Berlin or Leslie or any of the others are talking about. The fable that does connect is The Fox and the Cat.

This fable sees the fox and cat discussing the various tricks and dodges they know: the fox has many, while the cat says he has just one. The fox appears to have the advantage, until a pack of wild dogs attacks them both. The cat’s one bright idea—climb a tree to get out of harm’s way—rewards him by saving him from the dogs, while the fox—busy chewing over which of his bright ideas to act upon—remains rooted to the spot and is torn apart by the hounds.

Clearly there’s a moral there: act quickly and decisively when you have to, rather than endlessly turning over the various options in your head. —interestingliterature.com

In this story, the fox represents System 2, conscious processing, which allows for more possibilities but is also slow and energy intensive. The cat represents System 1, unconscious processing, which is fast because it acts based on habit and instinct: what worked in the past. (I especially like this because I frequently use my cat as an example of a creature who acts exclusively on System 1 impulses.)

Is There a Moral to This Story?

Neither the fable of The Fox and the Hedgehog nor the fable of The Fox and the Cat are directly relevant to Leslie’s idea about foraging for information. (I don’t think they’re relevant to Isaiah Berlin’s ideas about Tolstoy, either, but that’s another rabbit hole.) In terms of staying curious, I definitely agree with Leslie that breadth is as important as depth. “T-shaped knowledge” combines specialization (the vertical axis) with broad understanding in other areas (the horizontal axis).

The same could be said of System 1 and System 2 thinking: one is as important as the other. It’s important to know when to apply logical, linear, critical thinking and when to allow unconscious associative thinking.

But the moral of the story is that there’s no good reason for us to believe that we know what we’re talking about—or what anyone else is talking about, for that matter. We take the world at face value when we ought to question our assumptions.

Sure, curiosity may have killed the cat. But satisfaction brought it back.

What’s Your End Game?

May 6, 2020 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

I recently came across an article written a few years ago in which the author, a small business owner, asked that question.

Focusing on the end game—both in life and in business—is a popular idea attributed primarily to Stephen Covey. The second of his 7 Habits of Highly Successful People is “begin with the end in mind.”

Covey at least incorporates the concepts of imagination and desired outcome into his advice. But while the author of the article in question quoted Covey’s second habit, he was squarely focused on objectives, not on desired outcomes.

I think this happens a lot because desired outcome is a slippery concept for many of us, given that it’s intangible and involves imagination. Objectives, which are far less abstract, are easier to identify and talk about. And, of course, objectives are absolutely essential for getting where you want to go. The problem is that if objectives are all you have, they can end up stripping all the joy and satisfaction from your life.

That’s because objectives are a means not an end.

Once you settle on an objective to aim for, you can determine the steps you need to take to reach it. But before you can decide on which objective to pursue, you have to identify your desired outcome.

An objective answers the question what (what do you hope to achieve, accomplish, or attain). Your desired outcome answers the question why or so what (what difference will achieving your objective make).

If you already have an objective in mind, ask yourself:

What do I really want?
How juicy is it?
What difference will it make?
What will it be or feel like? Try to paint at least a mental picture by describing it in detail and with feeling.
What change in the status quo am I hoping to achieve?

The more clearly you can visualize your desired outcome the better you’ll be able to evaluate how likely it is that the action you’re contemplating is the best path to getting there. If it is, great! That clarity can be highly motivating. If it isn’t, that’s great, too, because you can change or revise your plan and save yourself the time, energy, and effort of going off on a wild goose chase.

The more time, energy, or effort it will take to attain your objective, the more imperative it is that you identify your desired outcome. The unconscious part of your brain is hooked on instant gratification, but changing the status quo tends to be gradual, mundane, repetitious, and tedious. Being able to remind yourself not only what you’re aiming for (the objective means) but also why it’s important to you (the subjective end) will go a long way to keeping you focused and on track.

In addition to being essential in creating transformational change and solving complex problems, the ability to identify your desired outcome is useful in everyday situations, such as responding to a social media post, accepting an invitation, choosing a book to read, or tackling your to-do list. It’s a truism because it’s true: it’s considerably easier to get what you want if you know what that is.

You Can’t Live Anywhere
BUT in a Bubble

October 28, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

A character in a story I wrote a long time ago imagines zipping himself closed inside a transparent bubble. As it turns out, we are all living inside our own transparent bubbles; most of us just don’t realize it. We take our experiences at face value. We assume everyone accesses the world the same way we access it, pays attention to what we pay attention to, sees the same colors, and has the same understanding of basic concepts.

Yes, we disagree with some people, but they’re so obviously wrong. The rest of us are on the same page, right?

The topic of the Monthly Meeting of the Mind (& Brain) this month was imagination. One of the participants commented that he has difficulty creating and sustaining visual mental images. The inability to form mental images is called aphantasia. It was identified in the 1880s but only named a few years ago, perhaps because it affects such a small percentage of the population. I can’t imagine being unable to create mental images! Visual mental imagery is an integral aspect of my sense of self and of how I function in the world. I couldn’t be me if I couldn’t do that.

Several years ago I learned about misophonia, also called soft-sound sensitivity. For people with this condition, ordinary sounds the rest of us easily tune out, such as chewing noises, tapping, or rustling paper, can be deeply disturbing. People with misophonia may have such strong physical and emotional reactions to certain sounds they curtail their activities to avoid them. Many more people are affected by misophonia than by aphantasia.

A few months ago I created a handout with a chart using four different colors, including a dark green. So many people saw the color that was clearly green to me (and my computer program) as black or gray or brown that I changed the shade for subsequent copies. These weren’t instances of color blindness, just different visual interpretations.

And then there’s the experience of anger. A lot of people believe anger to be a negative emotion, to be avoided, mitigated, or managed—certainly contained. But others, including me, find that anger can be energizing and even motivating at times. When I described getting angry about an aspect of my health/heart conditions to a friend earlier this month, she tried to persuade me of the value of acceptance. (If you know me, feel free to laugh now.) But I often experience anger that is about something—as opposed to anger at someone—as productive rather than destructive.

That Pesky Four-Letter Word

Lastly there’s a word common to all of us, and whether we use it or someone else uses it, we assume we know exactly what it means. The word is goal. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz begins one of his chapters* with this paragraph:

Choosing wisely begins with developing a clear understanding of your goals. And the first choice you must make is between the goal of choosing the absolute best and the goal of choosing something that is good enough.

Does this paragraph make sense to you? Did you sort of nod (at least mentally) in agreement? Apparently it made sense to him.

You could call what Schwartz is talking about a preference, a strategy, a drive, an inclination—you could call it a lot of things, but goal is definitely not one of them. The definition of goal is:

the state of affairs that a plan is intended to achieve and that (when achieved) terminates behavior intended to achieve it.

A goal has an end point. (Visualize a goal post if you can.) It represents a significant change from your current state of affairs, which is why it requires a plan. Once you reach that end point, you no longer need to keep taking the steps you outlined in your plan to get there.

Semantics, you may say. So what?

Well, Schwartz is talking about taking an action that involves choosing something. The most important thing to determine when you’re choosing something is what is your desired outcome not what is the method you are going to use to make the choice. And that’s a lot more than semantics.

So you may know what a goal is and how to set and achieve one. Or you may think getting gas on the way home from work—or making the absolutely best choice—is a goal. In any case, you probably assume others define the word the same way you do.

My Particular Bubble

I can and do create vivid mental images (don’t have aphantasia). I’m bothered by the reverberating bass sounds coming out of speakers in cars next to me at stoplights or the apartment next to mine, but I don’t have misophonia. I can distinguish dark shades of green from black or brown. I don’t experience anger as an entirely negative emotion. And I have a good understanding of what a goal is and how to achieve one.

These are all things I now know are not the same for everyone else. But there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of things I must assume to be the norm for everyone. It’s part of the human condition. It’s also one of the reasons I have always been interested in learning about temperaments or personality types—not for the purpose of “putting people in boxes” but to understand perspectives that are so different from my own.

Your view from your bubble, like my view from mine, is unique. The conditions inside your bubble, like the conditions inside mine, create our personal experience. Rather than taking everything at face value and assuming our experiences or interpretations are valid for everyone else, we might be better off adopting the perspective of one of my former clients, which is:

Isn’t that interesting?

*The subject of this chapter of Schwartz’s book will also be the subject of my next blog post.

Dueling Mindsets:
Productivity vs. Creativity

March 8, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Is it better to have an uncluttered desk or a messy desk? Does it depend on your personality? Or does it depend on the job you have—or on your habits or circumstances?

We all have our own tendencies in regard to clutter and organization (which may or may not be associated with personality), and we’ve also developed habits that we probably have opinions about. But whether an uncluttered desk is better than a messy desk depends on whether you’re aiming to be productive or to be creative.

Note: Sometimes create is used in the sense of produce or make, so the terms are often used interchangeably. That’s not what I’m talking about. Nor am I using creative as a synonym for artistic.

In the Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World, David Eagleman and Anthony Brandt write:

We master what is and envisage what-ifs.

If we place productivity in the domain of “what is” and creativity in the domain of “what-if,” that can give us a sense of the distinction between the two. Both mindsets are equally powerful—meaning they provide us with the ability to do something or act in a particular way—but only when we apply them appropriately.

Productivity Mindset

Mastering what is: sometimes velocity is power.

The productivity mindset is all about making the most efficient use of your resources (time, energy, effort, etc.). It is associated with speed, performance, output, and production. It is the mindset of getting things done: finishing projects, completing tasks, meeting deadlines, and reaching goals. The productivity mindset is effective for achieving measurable results.

It is the best mindset to have when:

You know what you’re doing.
You know how to do it.
The tasks or objectives are clear (understandable and unambiguous).

It isn’t necessarily a good mindset to have when:

You aren’t sure what needs to be done.
You aren’t sure how to do it or if you can do it.
You haven’t clearly defined the problem or you’re trying to solve the wrong problem.

Some things to remember about productivity and the productivity mindset are:

It makes use of the brain’s attention network. That kind of focus requires System 2 attention, which is limited.
Because System 2 attention is limited, your productivity will be greatly enhanced by organization, preparation, and delegation.
Practice saying no. Distraction is detrimental to both focused attention and productivity. Eliminating distractions and interruptions and setting boundaries can boost productivity.
Acting deliberately—thoughtfully, carefully, and intentionally—can help ensure successful results or outcomes.
Pitfalls to over-use or inappropriate use of the productivity mindset include: doing for the sake of doing (checking items off a list), absence of reflection or awareness, failure to develop a vision, a tendency to lose track of the vision, and taking action when stopping or pausing would be a better choice.

Creativity Mindset

Envisaging what-if: sometimes wandering is power.

The creativity mindset is all about seeing existing ideas or objects in a different light, generating new and better solutions to new or old problems, and connecting the dots in novel ways. Whether in business, the arts, science, or your personal life, the creativity mindset requires flexibility, imagination, originality, and inventiveness. The definition of a satisfying end result may be more subjective than objective. The desired outcome may be altered or transformed as you wander toward it and your perspective changes.

It is the best mindset to have when:

You aren’t following—or don’t have—a blueprint, set of guidelines, or format to go by.
You haven’t yet determined or defined the full scope of the project, idea, or problem.
You are either open to, need to, or want to arrive at an innovative solution.

It isn’t necessarily a good mindset to have when:

The best outcome amounts to reinventing the wheel.
You’re facing a deadline and the existing system or guidelines are good enough.
It’s a ploy to help you avoid making a commitment, taking action, or making a mistake.

Some things to remember about creativity and the creativity mindset are:

It makes use of the brain’s default mode network, which includes mind wandering, free association, spontaneous cognition, and other System 1 processes we’re not consciously aware of.
System 1 processing is non-linear and doesn’t produce results according to an external time frame.
Practice saying yes. Distraction—and even daydreaming (what’s called “positive constructive daydreaming”)—can be more helpful than harmful to the creativity mindset.
Pursuing ideas, interests, or trains of thought that seem far-fetched or disconnected may turn out to provide the missing link or lead to an aha!
Pitfalls to over-use or inappropriate use of the creativity mindset include: drifting and dreaming (losing your way), continually second-guessing yourself, not meeting deadlines or being unresponsive to others, focusing on vision to the exclusion of action, and failure to contribute anything useful or meaningful to the world.

Both Mindsets

Of course you undoubtedly use both of these mindsets, sometimes on the same project or process. You may have a preference for one over the other, or you may simply have more experience with one of them. But it’s much easier to achieve the desired results or outcome if you identify what you’re trying to accomplish and which mindset is the best one to get the job done.

Both the productivity mindset and the creativity mindset function best when they have a target: a clearly defined—and juicy—desired outcome or vision. You can move the target, but you won’t get anywhere satisfying without one.

Both mindsets also function best when you:

Develop supportive habits and routines—and maintain them.
Take breaks throughout the day and get enough R&R and sleep.
Move! Exercise, walk, dance, or hike.

As for your desk:

A messy desk is distracting and can hamper your ability to focus and process information. So if you want to be productive, clear your desk.
But a messy or disorderly environment can help you “break free of tradition,” according to researchers, which can lead to fresh insights and a free flow of ideas. So if you want to be creative, don’t clear your desk—or maintain a “creative” space to work in.