Almost all of us have experienced this restless energy within us, which sometimes just feel like a high, sometimes its just like a feeling when we just want to make a change of sorts, when we don’t want to go back to work after our holidays, when its just simply anxiety or depression the odds are stacked against us, then our mind is restless. It can be both on the spectrum of happiness and downright depression as well, in both cases to find any use of this energy that is out of control or trapped within us, it will be good to have some ideas that can help us with it. Here are my thoughts:
- Feedback Loops
We must create feedback loops for the things that we really wanna improve ourselves in for a range of criteria that are important and valid for us such as creativity, passionate existence, customer experience, product quality, work performance, motivation at work etc.
Whether its improving an existing discipline or inventing an entirely new science or discipline, the feedback loops will be the magical ingredient of driving growth, because this is the hallmark of a range of approaches which we sometime call iteration, informed information, Control groups, scientific method itself. The books Bounce and Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed are great read on this subject.
- Quantifying using Numbers and Visualization Models
As much as possible we must use basic numbers, pattern recognition practice initially to start with, to map our daily activities, different aspects of our life & work etc. Visualization models are key since they inform some higher purpose, deep rooted ideals etc. Because to visualize numbers on their own is impossible, you need parallel mental models to drive each other and then stabilize them in practice through numbers and for the repeatability, iteration etc.
- Alternate courses of Action
Wherever possible we must have the awareness and as much as possible elaboration in the forms of numbers when we choose to make an action. Its not important that we make the right or best decision, what’s important is that we learn to select from different alternatives. This will develop the mental muscle of decision making and gradually improve the confidence in our choices too.
- One foot in front of the other
Life in practice is always going to be one foot in front of the other, to have the mental discipline of continually doing so in everyday lives is one of the hardest things you will ever attempt, but also the simplest, most powerful once you have learnt. This could be done periodically (this could be of any length, ideally must be driven by some benchmark such as decreasing satisfaction at work) in our professional lives, in our personal lives and for our other emotional aspirations such as pursuing a hobby, improving the quality of our personal lives, interpersonal relationships etc.
Steve Jobs have basically done it for gauging his everyday life every few days check out his Stanford Commencement Speech on Youtube. Its going to be hard but once you have developed the courage, trained your mind, have experientially found it out for yourself, that its not mortal to change the elements of life, that the fear was clearly unfounded, the results will be exponential.
- In the film The Martian, the protagonist says “At some point, everything’s gonna go south on you… everything’s going to go south and you’re going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem… and you solve the next one… and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home. All right, questions?”
“You have to put one foot in front of the other”, those are the exact words of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezoes, which says a lot of the effectiveness of this approach. Check out this article
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/09/jeff-bezos-says-you-should-have-this-mindset-to-be-successful.html
- Going back to the basics or first principles
All of us have enjoyed some form of success, happiness, found love, expressed love or anything personally meaningful in some way though even at the micro level, may be only for a fleeting moment (Rachel Platten – Fight Song on YouTube). The greatest challenge in life is that when things don’t go your way, or when you undertake new projects, there are risks such as you have been let down, low on motivation or even where you are just high from past successes and have inflated ego. It will be always worthwhile to go back to some of these principles which will be still holding out true for you, whether that be some form of truth, some idealization, some form of business rationality etc. You can always use them again, remind yourself, motivate yourself or even warn yourself.
Check out the following talk on such ideas by David Goggins on Youtube “How to Make Yourself Immune to Pain | David Goggins on Impact Theory”
The three examples that I would give to elaborate this point would be:
Arsene Wenger restoring the form of Aaron Ramsey, after his horrific leg break, and a couple of underwhelming seasons in premier league. When asked about Aaron Ramsey turn of form, he explained that it was simple he asked Aaron Ramsey to focus on the basics again, getting his passing right, getting his movement right, basically not trying to do too much. Just focus on the basics of playing football. It makes sense because having your leg broken and a couple of years wasted out of your generally limited playing career, a footballer is likely feeling down or demotivated, or even worse when he or she thinks that you have to make the lost ground very quickly, what seems like extreme motivation on the surface or feel as such, but it can be a mere disconnection with yourself.
Second example is Elon Musk when they started Space X, the initial quotes were taken by the team from leading space Agencies, they were quite expensive. Elon Musk encouraged the team to investigate how much actually making those rockets cost in the first place. When numbers were done it was at a much lower cost than what they were quoted. Though Space X was largely founded on the premise of reusing the old rockets. Sometimes a return to the basic rationality is all you need. This form of rationality is not some universal principle, or you read about it in the business books or it cannot be taught, each one of us have this by instinct, by our experiences or by our values within us. Its about finding out have worked for you before in the life, or what you have learned earlier in the life. We must be wiling to return to these basics and sometime to calibrate ourselves.
Third example here would be of Jeff Bezos “Day 1” mentality, when asked about Amazons work culture, he was quite candid to stress that it will always be Day 1 at Amazon, because Day 2 is stasis and death. From what I understand from this Day 1 approach is that its almost always about why you started doing a thing in the first place, what was the motivation, how did you engaged with the problem, most importantly what was the enthusiasm that drove your actions. Once we can bring the same thing to our work lives, our passions, our life everyday there is hopefully no stopping to our growth, freshness ever, unless we decide to do so!
- Other ideas
Some of the other ideas are which are highly useful in thinking are:
Limitation of Work – Life balance
Basically, what it suggests is that you have two lives separately, that you have two different approaches to spending your life time, that you work to live a life. While that might be factually true and has been a hallmark of last century. The idea that might be more valid right now is work/life harmony as some people have suggested, in a more global world, with much more advanced tools as mankind at our disposal such as technology, flexible work, independent contracting, or even more broader ideas that we don’t have experience of yet. This collective expansion has been occurring in our basic philosophy of life now for a very long time, now we want to find our passions, start meaningful businesses, be in great jobs which reflect our personality.
Work Life Harmony is to create an overlap of personal values, enthusiasm, passions in both of our these lives. There will always be those who chase extremes where for example we wanna be passionate toward our work to the same extent as we are towards some lover, there is nothing wrong with that. But going back to the basics which demand that nothing of this sort will happen overnight, then thinking in the terms of creating more harmony across our basic types of life we can begin to work towards it gradually, it’s a good start.
Check the following video on Youtube “Lead the Life You Want: A Big Think Mentor Workshop, with Stewart D. Friedman”
Finding passion of life by Living it
All of us at some point have spent a lot of time wasting time, which is a lesser crime as opposed to wasting focus, wasting our life satisfaction or not being in the moment trying to search for our passion, look for it, think our way to it. I have done so for the last 8 years of my life in principle. Now I have discovered some new ideas, firstly just from the frustration of never being able to find mine, and then through new research by introduction to new thought leaders, that in fact finding passion of the life is almost inadvertently a result of well lived life. If you could find a way to live a meaningful and passionate life in personal capacity first of all or whatever other kind of lives you have access to, you are likely to start a process of self-awareness, self-knowledge that take you down the route of understanding more about yourself thus more likely to finding your passion, yours truly unique passion. The greatest advantage of this approach will be the sheer originality, creativity that it will encourage within you to discover and practice.
My greatest takeaway personally for myself so far in the form of an idea or thought experiment has been that if you are thinking about designing a product, a service, a business model, money or even a sports or anything like that, you are not thinking right. If the focus is not internal such as what are you feeling, what your imagination tells you, what lights up you, what thoughts actually move your body, you are not thinking straight till that point, till then you have been only thinking from a socially conditioned mind. Only reaching this point discovering the precise feelings, emotions, motivations, now you can begin to think about what will you do with it, how it can become a part of your reality, how you can share it with other people. That’s a win, that’s a true passion or more likely to be nearer it. But as long as you can be honest with yourself and truthful (mental muscles), be self-aware about all of this, you can repeat this process as many times you like. You can call this approach Design thinking or Life Design or Living life by Design, but it seems to be working so far for me.I know this because I go to my sleep every day happier, and wake up happier, just in a bartending job.
Check the following Video on Youtube “Dave Evans: “Designing Your Life” | Talks at Google
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