Tracking time is useful. Many people do it for work, especially if they are paid on an hourly basis. Timesheets are useful for all kinds of analytics and measurements, for project purposes, marketing, and goal setting.

Tracking time is limited though, and because of the way we think of time relative to work, it’s not the most helpful tracker when you are measuring certain things. Some measurements, like time, money, points, work in a numerical way. When we measure something like joy, or progress, we tend to need a narrative or a point system where we can see where we fall on a spectrum.

You know what that means, the spectrum measurement - it’s the “highly agree”, “agree”, “neutral”, or “disagree” scale. It’s only numerical in as much as we see the scale on the day we are measuring whatever it is that we’re tracking. If we’re having a bad day and we have a 1-5 point scale for each question, then where we mentally place the top of the scale is relative to how we feel. The same is true with the bottom of the scale, and it stretches the scale. Is there a better way to measure joy?

Tracking joy

I’ve done some courses, productivity courses. How to get better, be better. Improve myself. Because I’m not good enough. I need to be better. That kind of thing. It’s very funny.

Brendon Burchard has a set of questions to score yourself. I believe he uses them monthly. I’ve used the list, and I will use it again. But for now, I’ve put it down. Because I am struggling to see how it’s possible to track joy.

1. I managed my energy well today.

2. I chose to bring joy to this day.

3. I recharged throughout the day to stay energized.

4. I worked out today.

5. I wound down well tonight so I can sleep well.

Those questions relate to analysis of energy. He’s a world leader in the online coaching world. If you haven’t heard of him, I’m a little surprised. He has a lot of books, some great ones. I especially love the Motivation Manifesto. Because it doesn’t read like a self help book. I love manifestoes, and I love the style of writing in that book.

The questions above aren’t so much about joy, although one is - and it relates more to bringing enthusiasm than joy. Something he likes to say is that he’d rather you bring joy to his dinner party than a bottle of wine. I get that, but I’m not sure joy is something you can manufacture, like an attitude. Maybe it is, be easy on me, I may be old, but I’m new at this.

Another course it Marie Forleo’s Time Genius. The closest thing to measure joy, unless I’m missing one of the worksheets (she calls them “funsheets”) is a two column single sheet where you score whether today you lived in the world of time stress or the world of being a time genius. The time genius course isn’t just about being more productive and better at time management (that’s not why I took the course, that would be a waste for me, although others surely benefited from it).

The Time Genius course also shifts your perspective. Brendon works to shift your perspective, and Marie has a knack for helping you see the world in a less serious way. This is important. They are both high energy and positive like bouncing puppies (in a good way), but again, I’m still not sure that’s joy.

Can you track joy?

I’ll spare you the time stress analysis. So after I went back to my old courses, I wondered if I could create my own system for tracking joy, or scoring it. And after talking with a trusted friend, I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t make sense.

If you are joyful, you’re not tracking anything. What would be the point of going out and playing, and then coming in and analyzing how much fun you had? We had a laugh discovering how silly this is. Even journaling how “joyful” your day was…that’s a little counter intuitive to me.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with journaling. I love it. I do it, and I encourage people to do it. I journal mostly for productivity’s sake, meaning I plan and manage and track and retrieve data. I have a capture method and I migrate data. My notebook is not just a place to scribble. But I don’t see how tracking joy is possible. I could have a mood log, perhaps and make an entry, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Journaling

I thought that making a longform journal entry might be the best way to track joy. And by tracking joy, I mean that you had a good day, you planned or hoped to be more joyful in your day or your work or whatever, and at the end of the day you wrote down something about your success in that area.

Let’s look at this a little more closely, because there seemed to be an idea there, but I still don’t think it’s logical. Granted, joy isn’t logical, and that’s great. So why are we being rational about writing down whether or not the day was joyful or had moments

of joy, or even one moment.

Stick with me here, let’s say the day would rank as a “joy” score day in the books, whether you’re keeping track, or God has something write down his findings in a ledger, we can say you experienced a moment of joy. Great.

I don’t see the point of you going and writing it down. You just had a happy, no a joyful experience, so why do you want to go and do your homework now to make sure you logged it in a book? That makes no sense. If you wanted to go back on a sad day and see if the 16th of January had any moments of joy, then maybe that would be useful, or would it?

No, of course not. This is not about writing down when you paid the bills or when they’re due. What’s wrong with God tracking it? That makes more sense to me. I don’t think joy is something you can track, but it’s perhaps something you can plan.

Planning joy

The best we could come up with, was making a plan for joy. Oliver Burkeman, in his book Meditation For Mortals, says that you should treat your to-do list like a menu. Not a list of things you have to get done, but a list of choices you can make. I like that idea, it makes sense, and it takes off the pressure that you have to do it all.

I think list making is a great way to think out loud, and you don’t have to be rigid about getting it all done or stressing yourself out by seeing all the things you haven’t done yet. So if you use that approach, you could theoretically make a list of fun activities and pick one. If I were retired that’s probably what I would do every day for the first six months. I would write down all my favorite activities, circle one, and then make that my adventure for the day. Then nap, shower, and make dinner.

Okay, so if you take that approach to list making, then it’s possible to envision a way to plan joy. Or to take a feather from Marie Forleo’s cap and minimize time stress. I can’t remember who, but there’s a list making method where you pick five things. There are many, the 333 plan, the 3-5 list, and all similar approaches to getting the important and urgent things done today. Great.

The solution

If you take the list a the five things you have to get done today, as we said above, you might not like the look of it. But if you made that list in such a way that you could identify the joyful things on the list, meaning the things that are more likely to be fun or to induce some kind of enjoyment, then you could fill the list with less fun things.

For example, 3-4 of the items could be tasks that will bring you joy in some way, and 1-2 items that need to get done. The things that need to get done won’t bring you joy, but they will reduce anxiety, and with the lack of anxiety you’ll be more at peace. So, I don’t think you can track joy in any meaningful way, but you can perhaps meet the day with a proactive planning approach that will revolutionize your list making skills, and make it easier to start the day. Not to mention, you’ll be working on tasks that light you up and bring you joy.

Thanks for thinking this through with me. Let me know what you do to bring more joy into your life. Have you found a way to track the joyful moments, or to celebrate them in some way? Do you tell your loved ones about them? That sounds better than a joy log to me.

I’m not talking about the idea of free will, not the existence of free will. Whether you think free will exists or not doesn’t really matter here. Because we have a choice. The question, when it comes to free will, is how far does that choice extend.

Effortless and choiceless awareness is our real nature.

- Ramana Maharshi

So let’s leave aside the subject of free will for the time being. I’d like to explore the idea of training the self, programming the self. This is part of self trust, of intuition. Whether we’re discussing the true self or the ego doesn’t really matter either.

There is the self and the no-self. If we’re discussing Jung or Buddhism, it’s irrelevant. There is the ego and the deeper self, the public self and the true self. It doesn’t matter which self we’re talking about, because the conscious self needs to do some work here.

Choiceless action

The term choiceless action comes from the work of Jiddu Krishnamurti and from Ramana Maharshi. They talk about the action that happens. Let’s say, for the sake of discussion, that the action is something that happens, something that comes from the self.

Whether this action is our higher self, our true self, our intuitive self, or the subconscious self, it doesn’t matter. You can call it the will of God, you can call it free will - it doesn’t matter. The point is that something happens and it seems like a power that we have to observe.

When you see something very clearly, that seeing is the action. There is no gap between the seeing and the doing. That is choiceless action.

- J. Krishnamurti

One way to look at this, especially if you’re not into spirituality, is that the action happens as a matter of course when there’s a habit in place. That’s fair enough. Some might say there’s motivation to do something, some might say it’s an intuition, some might call it a lack of free will - the subconscious, for example drives us to action.

Making habits

It doesn’t matter the origin of the choiceless, intuitive action, because either way, there is a conscious mechanism of behavior change that occurs. What I’m getting at, is that the choiceless action may be related to habit. Or it may be something else, I don’t know. One thing is for sure, there is a simple way to make a habit.

When we follow the simple steps to change our behavior, it works. You can build a habit in a month. Some habits take less time, maybe half, and some take a few months. It depends. Let’s be clear, we’re not talking about addiction. If you’re quitting caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol, it’s a different process because addictive substances are involved.

I’m simply talking about the method of starting a habit like drinking two large bottles of water every day. You can do that easily and make it stick. It’s very simple, very easy, it takes very little effort, and by the time the habit is engrained, the brain has made a transformation. The brain chemistry has changed, new neuropathways have been created, and now you’re a person who went from always being dehydrated to someone who drinks enough water every day.

No decision

Congratulations, you now drink water on a daily basis. Again, putting aside the idea that now you have the urge to drink water because it’s a habit, or because it’s choiceless action, that’s what we’re doing. I don’t know enough about psychology to know if the subconscious is involved, or if willpower is different, or how that might impact free will, and it doesn’t matter.

Intuition is not a habit, it’s not programmed behavior.

What I really want to point out, is that I don’t think this has anything to do with intuition. I talk a lot about intuition, but let’s put that aside. I don’t think drinking water has necessarily become intuitive just because you’ve now made a new habit to do so. Perhaps I’m wrong, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s leave it out of the equation.

The point I’m slowly and painstakingly getting at, is that you’ve built a habit and the brain chemistry has changed. Perfect. Now let’s examine the habit. How does making a habit like this change our perception of having to make a decision?

Making decisions

Do you need to make a decision?

What we can say for sure, is that there is now a mechanism in place where fewer questions need to be made. Do you need to decide to drink another glass of water after the first one in the morning? No, because now you’re the type of person who hydrates. Not only do you drink a glass of water first thing in the morning, but you drink two. That’s who you are now. There’s no decision to be made.

In the space which thought creates around itself, there is no love. That which is sacred lies beyond thought, beyond the word, beyond all images. That is why you must understand yourself. Awareness is to be choicelessly aware of your thoughts, your feelings—not to deny them, not to say, 'this is right, this is wrong'—just to watch.

- J. Krishnamurti

Creating habits, discipline, accountability, and routine makes life easier. It makes certain behaviors more certain. If you have a routine of going to the gym every day at lunch, then you’re doing that. It’s pretty much going to happen.

If you write something down in your journal, an intention to go for a run after work when you don’t normally do that, then you’re 40% more likely to do it, just because you wrote it down. These are the kinds of conscious mechanisms that we rely upon to get us to do things that we need to do, that we think we need to do, and that are good for us.

Some questions

I’ve laid out quite a few assumptions above that I might normally include in an investigation like this, because it normally matters. It matters to me. Now, here are some questions to isolate the action of habit:

1. Does choiceless action have anything to do with intuition?

2. Does choiceless action have anything to do with free will?

3. Does choiceless action have anything to do with habit?

4. Does choiceless action have anything to do with willpower?

5. Does choiceless action have anything to do with routine?

If you were paying attention at the start, then you’ll pass the pop quiz by saying the answer to the first two questions don’t matter. It’s the last three questions that I’m concerned about here.

Automatic action

What makes action automatic?

Let’s jump to question number three, but first what is automatic action? Choiceless action is when you have a thought and action happens automatically. Some people call it automatic living, or surrendered action. There’s a thought, “take out the trash”, and it happens. Again, we’re putting intuition and free will aside.

Choiceless action means you never have to think or decide or choose what to do next.

Where does this thought come from, “take out the trash”? That’s what I want to get into, but what we need to clarify first, is that what makes the action happen is that there’s no argument. We all know the argument that can happen. Call it procrastination, blame, or whatever, there is often something that stands in the way of just doing it. Let’s assume, for the sake of this study, that there’s no argument, there is only action.

Habit

Okay, let’s dig into question number three. What is choiceless action? How does choiceless action relate to habit? This is really simple. When there is a habit, it starts with a trigger.

The trigger to drink water happens in the morning. In the example above, the person drinks two glasses of water every morning. That’s a habit. The trigger for the second glass is finishing the first glass. The trigger for the first glass might be coming out of the bathroom, or turning off the alarm, or brushing their teeth.

The habit, in a very clear sense, is a form of choiceless action, right? At first, there is a choice. I want to be a person who drinks more water, I don’t feel like drinking water, but I’ve made a decision to do this for a month, I downloaded a habit tracker app, and by God I’m going to make this happen. After a while there is no choice. The habit is made, the behavior is programmed. The action becomes choiceless.

Willpower

Now question number four. What is choiceless action, and how does it relate to willpower? We are told by contemporary productivity guru’s that willpower is something we have that gets depleted every day. You have a limited amount, they say.

That’s not how I see it. You have limited energy, I say, because you are a physical being. But you have access to unlimited energy, that’s the quantum field, that’s what some call source, or the Tao. But that’s not will, or power. Regardless of what you believe, we have energy, and willpower is the persistent focus of attention to focus that energy. Will is a statement of intent, so willpower is the repeated and consistent focusing of your attention on that intention, every time you get discouraged, distracted, or diverted.

I think we can resolve the relationship between choiceless action and willpower fairly simply. It’s possible that when choiceless action occurs, that it is in fact related to willpower, but it’s not willpower alone. There needs to be something that brings the thought to mind. That’s not willpower. Awareness shows us what needs to happen.

To understand what is, you must be free of the past. Observation is possible only when the mind is quiet, and it is only the quiet mind that can understand what is true. Such a mind is in a state of choiceless awareness.

- J. Krishnamurti

We may have limited willpower every day, but our capacity is fluid. Willpower is something that builds when we do something that we don’t want to do. The anterior midcingulate cortex is a pair of lobes in the brain that grow and shrink with our conscious action. When we do something we don’t like doing, something you don’t feel like, the lobe grows. If you have a thought, “take out the trash” or “it’s not my

turn,” and you don’t feel like doing it, but you do it anyway, is that choiceless action?

Routine

Question number five. How does choiceless action relate to routine? This is really simple. When there is a routine, it starts with a trigger. After dinner, I always take out the trash. I scrape the food into the trash, put the dishes in the dishwasher, and then I take out the trash.

This is a routine. It’s not really a habit, because I don’t do it every day. I do it every week, multiple times, but there’s no set day, no set number of times per week. It’s not something that I trained myself to do. When the trash is full, I take it out. Maybe some days there’s a bit of inner resistance, inner argument, but at a certain point I have to take out the trash.

The trigger is that when it’s full and I scrape the food into the bin after dinner, I take it out because I don’t want to forget. And my hands need to be washed, so let’s take out the trash first and then wash them. So we can say that choiceless action has something to do with routine. But is it habit? Meaning, is there choiceless action without routine and habit, or do I have to program it first?

Action with ease

Is habit automatic action?

When there is action without thought, with total clarity, what causes the thought? Is it the habit trigger? Is it the trash being full that triggers the routine and causes the action?

When there is action without decision, what causes it? There needs to be freedom, there needs to be space, and there needs to be enough willpower. If you’re totally depleted at the end of the day, yet you have a thought, “take out the trash” there will be resistance.

That resistance could be in the mind. “I’ll do it later”. That thought prevents the action. Or there’s not enough willpower and the body says no. Perhaps the mind is willing but you start to get up and you decide, forget it, I’m too tired. That’s valid. The action was interrupted. There’s no choiceless action.

Discipline

When there is choiceless action, there is no decision. There is simply action. The thought is the action. It’s seamless. There is no division. There is no mental fatigue, no resistance, there is only action.

Ego is tied up in discipline.

Is habit part of this event? When the action is seamless, it’s not a chain of actions. There is simply thought and action as one. Some people say that mood follows action. This gets into discipline - I am a disciplined person, therefore I will do something regardless of how I feel about it.

The feeling ‘I work’ is the hindrance. Ask yourself who works. Remember who you are. Then the work will not bind you; it will go on automatically.

- Ramana Maharshi

I left discipline out of the assumptions above, and out of the questions list because discipline implies effort. There is some effort in creating habit, but discipline is different. Discipline means punishment. It’s too much to get into here, so please review my other posts on the matter if that’s your interest. Choicessless action is not just about the lack of choice, it also comes with a sense of ease. That has nothing to do with rigidity or punishment.

Awareness

I didn’t include discipline in the list above. I think awareness is a better word in this discussion than discipline. Discipline implies rigidity. It’s authority, and we can say that routine and habit are authority. When the mind has been trained, the mind, the ego, the brain is the authority that ensures that you follow through on taking out the trash, or washing the dishes, or whatever it is.

The ego is an illusion - the ego, the "I" causes conflict, causes confusion, and creates the illusion that there is a decision to be made. When there is awareness, the ego dissolves, and the sense of duality disappears. Then there is no separation, there is no chooser or chosen, and there is no decision to be made. Therefore there is clarity and only action.

What is it that causes action with ease? Is it awareness? Is it habit? Is it love? Is it freedom? Can it be the body and brain alone, or is it something more? Is it awareness? Can you train choiceless action, or is it inherent in each person, and the cobwebs just need to be cleared away - the awareness just needs to be honed so that clarity can be found?

The reason this language is being introduced here, is because JK and Maharshi didn’t use the terms above. They’re dead. What did they mean?

What are your thoughts on choiceless action? Have you had experiences that relate? Do you see the action without decision as a mental and biological process, or something more inspired?

Monasticism is a wonderful thing when it comes to creativity, because there is that silence that supports you. There’s room to think, there’s no time to speak of. Time exists in a sequence, not in a dwindling account. First there’s breakfast, then there’s lunch. That’s time.

In the world we wish to escape from, when we’re romanticizing making art in some cabin in the woods, or some shed overlooking a lake, or at the porch of a beach house on a wild coastline, there’s a sense that we’ll never get it. That there is not time.

That’s the problem.

The problem is that we romanticize making art instead of normalizing it. Art is for special people, not normal people like me. In order to have the time and space and resources to make art you need to have it as a profession, you need patrons, you need a mind that’s free of the obstructions that keep inspiration at bay. Bullshit.

Don’t get me wrong, romanticizing is wonderful. We should romanticize life. But we don’t romanticize making dinner. If you haven’t eaten all day, except for a few stacks, some coffee, and lots of water, then by the time dinner rolls around you’re not romanticizing making it. You’re going to see what there is and put it together. Or you get take out. Or maybe it’s just one of those nights where it’s going to be tortilla chips and peanut butter. Yuck, but what else is there to eat?

What you don’t do is romanticize the daily things that have to happen. We are human. We express ourselves. That’s normal, and that can be romantic. Going to the bathroom isn’t romantic. Emptying the dishwasher isn’t romantic. So why is the idea of preparing a nice dinner romantic?

It’s romantic because we haven’t cooked in a while. And I mean cooking in the real sense. There are some people who consider pouring milk over cold cereal in a bowl as “cooking” but I don’t know what they’re thinking. You may not even be romanticizing having someone you love in the kitchen with you while you’re making this gorgeous meal, or spending time with them eating it, or hearing the compliments from your friends and family as they love what you made them.

What you imagine

You’re just romanticizing making the damn thing. Chopping garlic, laying out the lasagna strips, simmering the sauce, having a glass of wine - some in the sauce, some in you. And you’re picturing “no time”. It doesn’t matter if it takes 2 hours or 3 hours to make the meal, you’re just going to bloody well make it.

That’s what you’re thinking. Does this sound funny to anyone? It’s the same thing that advertisers and marketers do to us. We don’t romanticize about going to the bathroom, but if you’ve considered spending too much money on household items, that’s exactly what you’re doing in the store. Do I really need this soap dish? Ridiculous.

We play tricks on ourselves. Tricks are played on us. Yes, you need a soap dish. Well, maybe you don’t, but let’s say it’s practical to have one. That’s all it is. It’s a simple need, you go to the store, you buy it, and you use it. What’s romantic about that? Absolutely nothing.

What’s happened to us

Art has become precious. The reason you wish to cook is because you have no time and you’re tired of take out. You’re sick of frozen pizza and smoothies for dinner. That’s what’s happening. You are so time-conscious that you want time to go away. You crave the pleasure of cooking.

You desire something beautiful. Life is great when the mundane can be seen as beautiful, but that happens when we have a unique perspective on things. When we travel, for example. But when the same few choices of takeout is banal, and you don’t have the time or energy to cook, then of course you’re going to romanticize about it.

Scarcity

The mentality that there is not enough time, not enough stores to get the right ingredients or fresh ingredients, no good art supply store nearby, not enough time to go there and stock up on paint, not enough money to buy it, not enough space to make art, not enough focus to do it, let alone enjoy it - this is fear. This is lack, this is scarcity.

That is why you romanticize getting the fuck out of here and going away to where you don’t have to worry about time or money or work. That’s what is happening when you wish you could just leave your life behind and go record your album without distraction in a week in the woods.

This isn’t normal. Well, it has become normal, but that itself is not normal. That is sick. That is wrong, and that is uncivilized.

Normalize making art

Make art weekly

I don’t think it’s reasonable to suggest that people make their art daily. That would be great, but let’s get real. Not all of us can do daily, but we can make “weekly” happen.

For you, maybe it’s monthly. Maybe you’re one of those people who are able to carve out one weekend a month and work on your project. If you can, great. But chances are you can’t. Not because you don’t have the wherewithal to make the time and space for it, but because that’s not how humans are wired.

Let’s get back to the dinner thing - the reason we romanticize making art and making a beautiful delicious dinner is because those are our daily needs. We need to express ourselves, and we need to eat. That can be banal, or it can be ritualized.

Time is an illusion

It doesn’t make sense to plan to make art on a monthly basis because we don’t think like that. We don’t even do well with weeks. That’s why we have planners. Those notebooks where we won’t forget what we said we’d do.

We do well with today and tomorrow, and that’s it. You can go to the gym later in the week if you’re not a daily or every other day gym goer - fine. But if you made plans to do something once a month on your own, it would never happen and people would think you’re crazy for planning it.

That’s not romanticizing making art or making dinner, that’s delusion. Again, I’m not saying making plans for a monthly get together is a bad idea, it’s a great idea. Putting

other people into the equation blows the whole thing apart. We make art alone, and then we share it. Food is the same.

The only way making art once per month would actually happen is if you took a course. But now you’re not making art, necessarily. You’re learning something, you’re practicing something. Not that daily art isn’t a practice, it is -but in a different sense. It is the practice of making the practice, not of painting or writing poetry, or whatever the medium is. There’s a difference between being a practitioner and a student.

Normalize practicing “the practice” of making art

Why it needs to be daily

You need to work on your curiosity, your intuition, your craft, your thinking on a daily basis. Because it is about being, it is about becoming. This is how you do something. Forget about whether or not it’s a hobby, or if you’re an amateur or a professional - that doesn’t matter here.

I’m talking about getting away from romanticizing about the life you wish you had and moving towards your real life. That doesn’t happen once per week because that’s not how our brains work. If you can pull it off, then perfect - keep going until it becomes more or a daily practice. That’s the aim. Because then you become that.

Romanticizing life

I think romanticizing about having that life might actually get you there, but you’d have to approach it in the right way. Not wishing, out of scarcity, that you could have it, but actually visualizing it and making it happen. But let’s be clear, that reality won’t be a monthly thing unless other people are involved. And that’s a different story.

When we can stop wishing that our lives would be a certain way and start making them that way, I think we will start romanticizing in a different way. I think having a romantic view of your life is a wonderful thing, but I also think that when it comes from the wrong place it may be an alarm that shows us we haven’t lived that way in a while, and it’s time to start moving back in that direction.

Have a space to make art

I think the cabin can be a reality and not just a fantasy, but not in the way we think. I think there can be a daily shuttle to that place, not a monthly or yearly camping trip. That “cabin”, that space, would be better if it were the office, the spare bedroom, the basement, the walk-in closet you’re not using, that window where you can put a desk in front of it and sit there making something.

One last thought, . . . if you DO in fact have a cabin, and you make art there, then that’s absolutely perfect. That’s wonderful, and wouldn’t we all like to have one. But I’ll bet you also have a space in your daily life, even if it’s your laptop at the dining table, where you already have this practice. Bravo(a), and keep on practicing.

Thank you for being here.

Feeling great also helps my thinking. When I don’t feel great, I don’t think well. Negativity shapes my thought patterns. When there is no fear or anger, my intuition comes online and I notice it. I notice the effect that feeling and thinking has, I see the synergy between my thoughts and my emotions.

I’m learning to trust those sensations. Not to believe the thoughts or to trust the emotions, but to let them inform me. It’s not that there’s a voice inside me having thoughts or feeling things and feeding me choices - we all have that internal monolog of thought. And everyone experiences emotions that come up, whether we register them or not.

Intuitive

It’s only human to have an emotion, and then have a thought occur to them that’s prompted by the emotion. It’s a loop, and depending on how respond to that loop, we will have a different experience. This isn’t about schizophrenia, you don’t have to believe the thought that only crazy people talk to themselves. That’s not your idea, that’s someone else’s idea that you’ve adopted.

What does it mean to be intuitive? I mean, we are all intuitive, but not all of us use our intuition in the same way. Because we all have a different level of trust in our intuition. I’m ultimately talking about self-trust. The more you trust yourself, the more you’ll hear and trust your intuition.

So what does it mean to be intuitive? It means trusting what you think in a way that you cannot 100% explain with logic or rationality. In all honesty, I feel that it’s the most rational thing you can do. But that’s not what we’ve been made to believe.

Counterintuitive

What does that mean? What does it mean to be counterintuitive? Does it mean to go against your intuition? No, it means that it doesn’t follow logic. That’s what we think it means. Right?

If you tell someone that something is counterintuitive, you probably mean that it seems one way but it’s actually another way. I wish I could think of an example. In any case, if this is our working definition of counterintuitive, then we’re only looking at the situation from a logical point of view, which doesn’t take intuition into account at all.

You can’t explain your intuition to someone else. That’s the way it works. If you intuitively think and feel that something is right, then there’s nothing you can do to convince someone else other than by your conviction. So if we’re going to say that something is counterintuitive then we had better determine what that actually is, if it’s anything at all.

Perhaps counterintuitive is just a made up word to confuse us, to steer us away from our intuition and to reinforce the dominance of the left thinking brain and the left emotional brain.

Common sense

Let’s look a little more closely. Based on the definition below, one could say that something sound counterintuitive if it goes against their best thinking and common sense. What I like about the term common sense is that it has the word sense in it. It’s not fully thinking, and yet it’s logical, it’s rational, it’s something we can trust. It’s the sniff test. But if you don’t have any sense, then how can you be intuitive? Here’s the definition of counterintuitive:

coun·ter·in·tu·i·tive

/ˌkoun(t)ərinˈto͞oədiv/

adjective

contrary to intuition or to common-sense expectation (but often nevertheless true).

"this explanation sounds perversely counterintuitive"

I don’t think that intuition is commonly used enough to call it common sense. It’s become an upside down world. Normal has become a myth. Fact has become debatable. Common sense is no longer common.

So, how can we reclaim what it means to be counterintuitive, if we don’t have common sense? Either we need to set aside the word counterintuitive until there’s enough of a consensus that people actually know what you’re talking about it when you use the word correctly, or we need a radical transformation, including an audit of common sense.

Thanks for thinking through this with me. What does your common sense tell you?

Courage

The way to freedom is courage. The way to courage isn’t always clear. But it’s simple when you’ve already gotten somewhere because you have systems in place. Courage is about showing up even when you’re afraid – in fact only when you’re afraid. Otherwise it’s not brave.

Success

The people who were successful in doing brave things were focused on the value of being brave. They got really clear that being courageous was more important as a value than being successful. They were in the moment, not focused on the outcome.

Being systematic

It helps to follow a checklist. When you haven’t done something in a while it’s scary to get back into it. What helps is being ritualistic. If you follow the checklist, by the time you’ve gotten most of the way through it, you’ve gotten yourself into the frame of mind to do it.

Ritual

Persist

The thing that gets you going easily in the morning is usually momentum, which comes with repetition. You have the confidence-competence loop to rely on. When you don’t, you need to get courage somehow. Habits have to start somewhere and that means saying no to something. When you’ve created a ritual, you have the intention to overcome resistance.

Consistency

This is what happens when you’ve been doing something for a while. You’ve been showing up somehow, whether it was following a ritual, or just gritting your way through. Now you have some momentum, and so you don’t need to rely on courage so much to get yourself going.

Ritual courage

When you don’t have consistency to fall back on, you always have discipline and organization because you’ve spent a lifetime building those blocks. What you need is the guts to do the work and to rely on those skills – you’re not lacking them, you’re just out of the habit. That’s ok. We all fall out of the habit, and we should, if we’re a human living a human life. Be brave.

When you’re intensely aware, you’re likely in the right side of the brain. When you’re deep in thought, it’s likely that you’re in the left. If you want to get deeper into this, then I’m happy to do so, and I’ve done that to various degrees about certain aspects of humanity in past writing.

My objective today is to take a look at why we might lean towards being more intuitive. One reason might be to avoid or manage anxiety.

Anxiety

What is anxiety? Well, it might be a little different than you think. You don’t have to be diagnosed with a general anxiety disorder to “have” anxiety or to “be” anxious. Everyone experiences (I didn’t say “suffers from”) anxiety. It’s a normal emotion. Remember, I’m talking about the feeling of anxiety, not the state of anxiety. Emotions come and go.

Here are some examples of anxious thoughts:

• If I always stay worried about this thing then I will be safe

• If I stop thinking about my work then I’ll never get it all done

• If I remember my mantra then I’ll always know how to center myself

Anxiety has a self-defeating logic that makes us believe we can attain safety by always being vigilant. That means making things predictable, that means no surprises, that means making accurate predictions and detailed plans. Sound familiar?

Anxiety is not necessarily what you think it is. Anxiety is sneaky. Once it starts, the thought / emotion loop keeps it going and we end up in an anxiety spiral, as Marth Beck describes. We can do this indefinitely based on the way we’re wired - this is not fear, as I’ve said before. Fear happens quick, and then it’s gone.

Emotions

Fear is an emotion. Emotions come on and are gone in a couple / few minutes. Anything that lasts longer than that is a feeling, which means we are holding onto it.

We need to feel our emotions, but we don’t need to think our thoughts. 

When an emotion comes up it’s important to process it. Feel it, let it happen, and release it. Let it go. If you let an emotion go up into your head it will produce thoughts, and those thoughts will create more emotion which create more thoughts and then you’re stuck in a loop.

Anger is especially vicious in this way because it comes on so fast. You have to be really aware to control anger - poor choice of words, because you’re not controlling the emotion. You’re recognizing it and managing it. You divert it from your brain. You feel it in the body and stay with it to make sure the emotion doesn’t turn into a feeling.

If you hold onto an emotion too long, that’s a feeling. If it’s been 15 minutes and you’re stewing, that’s a feeling. That’s a mental and emotional loop. Do that enough, and it becomes a state, like a state of anxiety. Do that long enough and it becomes a personality trait - you become known as an anxious person. Read Brené Brown for more on this.

Control

What anxiety sounds like

What does anxiety do? Anxiety says that if we just do one thing, then we will be safe. The following phrases might sound familiar when you’re at work:

Here are some examples of what anxiety says:

• If I just build a morning routine of meditating then I will avoid procrastination

• If I just have a habit of completing the open procedure for the office then I will have a higher billing rate each week

• If I just follow a morning ritual of checking off this short list of focus list items then I will have a more productive day

• If I just follow the office standards deadline checklist then I will suffer less from perfectionism when I try to complete a deliverable and get it out the door

• If I just use the consultant coordination protocol then the team will perform better and meet deadlines more often

• If I just migrate my task list each month and keep up with my weekly action list then I will be more consistent

• If I just follow the steps outlined in my notebook / self-help book / employee manual / guru’s guide then I will be better at x, y, z

Anxiety tries to control things, because it thinks that outcomes can get achieved by following certain rules.

Some other examples of anxiety might sound like:

• If I just put x amount in my 401k each month I will be able to retire

• If I just take my shoes off at security then everyone will have a safe flight

• If I just exercise then I will be fit / hot / healthy / happy / energized

• If I just floss twice daily my teeth won’t all fall out and I won’t have thousands of dollars in dental bills in middle age

• If I just have one glass or maybe no more than 2 then I won’t feel crumby in the morning, or if I just drink on the weekends, or just socially, etc., etc., etc.

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Intuition

How does intuition help? Intuition is trust, it’s leaning on the self, it’s recognizing that we are not only the content of our consciousness. Your consciousness, the content of it anyway, is your thoughts and emotions, your memories. The things you

think of as you - your identity, your age, your name, your culture as Eckhart Tolle points out.

When you recognize that you are not only what’s in your mind you can be open to what else you are. When you are who you think you are, then you have no room to be who you are becoming. Another way to say that is, when you think of yourself only as what you think of yourself, then you’re in a very limited reality.

You know who you are. You know it. If you’re really stuck in overthinking then that thought will feel foreign. We’ve all been there - you might say, “I don’t know who I am anymore” or you might feel conflicted or confused because you don’t know what you’re favorite chocolate is, or you might just feel like you’re very indecisive.

What intuition looks like

When you stop thinking you take off the pressure to be who or what you think you are and should be. When you let go of the anxiety you have room to feel what’s happening, and then you can escape the mental-emotion loop. When you do that, you have room to hear your intuition. When you do that, you are more free, you are less trapped in your mind.

When the analytical mind is operating, you’re aware of time. When intuition is open, no time. When the cognitive mind is active, you’re in planning mode. When intuition is operating, curiosity can lead the way.

This is an over simplification to make a greater point. The point that if you want to build up your intuition, stop thinking so much, and stop worrying so much about the future, which is called anxiety - worry is stress about the past, and Brown says, and anxiety is time stress about what’s to come.

Intuition helps, because then we can get to creativity, which is the antithesis of anxiety. As Beck says in her book Beyond Anxiety, when anxiety is operating, creativity cannot operate, and vice versa.

Thank you for following along. I know we didn’t get too much into intuition, but it’s important to realize what’s in the way. Look at older posts or stay tuned for more about developing your intuition.

Militaristic / authority words

1. Discipline

2. Bravery

3. Weakness

4. Optimization

5. Efficiency

6. Achievement

7. Integrity

8. Sacrifice

9. Honor

10. Respect

Take a look at number 2 above and number 2 below. Do they sound like the same word to you? What about number 3 above and number 3 below. Do they sound like opposites to you? You can review other words in the respective numbered slots and see how they compare.

Creativity / emotionally intelligent words

1. Self-discipline

2. Courage

3. Vulnerability

4. Authenticity

5. Engagement

6. Joy

7. Wholeheartedness

8. Compassion

9. Self-accountability

10. Patience

This is fun. Let’s do some more. Do any of these words sound like something you say to yourself on a daily or weekly basis? Maybe you need to rethink that a little bit.

This list is convention corporate business / productivity words

1. Commitment

2. Duty

3. Analytical

4. Responsibility

5. Strategic

6. Perseverance

7. Planning

8. Execution

9. Deliberate

10. Achieve

The words in the list above are so common in the workplace and in our lives. They all revolve around us producing more, better, faster, more efficiently. There’s little emphasis on the human and so much emphasis on how the human can “be better”.

Authoritative language

There is a denial of our common humanity and our interconnected ness that only makes us more vulnerable when you look at the list above. It’s so clear that the meanings favor individuality, but in service of what? The greater good? No, the business. There’s no sense of unity, of wholeness, only a duty for your service to the authority above you.

To be clear, I’m mostly talking to generation-x folks, probably…because if you’re a generation-z, then you might not have the same toxic relationship with some of these authoritative words. What I mean is, whether you use the word discipline or self-discipline, it doesn’t really matter. You need it. Go get it. Just don’t overdo it, okay?

Conventional social language

Let’s make another list of words. See what you think of this one:

Let’s call this the list of contemporary economics / social governance words

1. Quality

2. Power

3. Specification

4. Protocol

5. Morality

6. The funny thing is, this list kind of piddles out…let’s make another one

When you start to list the words that define the way things are, the list isn’t that long. I’m sure I could keep going, but my study shows that these words are far less loaded than the words above or below.

For example, quality isn’t descriptive of anything. In fact, when people say, “it’s a

quality item”, they’re not actually saying anything at all. It’s as stupid as saying ATM machine, which is absolutely redundant. One isn’t saying enough, and the other is saying too much.

Quality is a neutral word. It’s a word waiting for a descriptor. Whereas discipline implies punishment, and self-discipline implies learning. Loyalty implies following blindly, and sovereignty implies power over yourself. Now, of course, loyalty and sovereignty don’t mean anything one way or the other on their own, but it’s the context that matters. So think to yourself, in what context have you heard these words used? That'll give you a clue as to their usage in society.

Egalitarian language

Okay, let’s do one final list of words. Let me know in the comments which one is your favorite.

This list is inspired by Brehon law, the law of Ireland for over 1,000 years

1. Sovereignty

2. Worthiness

3. Wisdom

4. Fairness

5. Equity (as compared to ownership)

6. Truth (as compared to fact)

7. Justice (as compared to law)

8. Unity (as compared to individuality)

9. Entitlement (as compared to right)

10. Solidarity (as compared to loyalty)

11. Peace…this list goes on, and on,…and notice that I said as compared to, not as opposed to

What I discovered is that there are far more words in our language that support a more egalitarian way of law, ownership, wealth, property, and ways of managing this world together.

When you look at the militaristic words vs the artistic words, the first two lists above, we have the very same ideas, but they’re skewed either in the direction of authority and obedience, or towards the expression of the artist and the support of the artist’s contribution to the community. Contribution, that’s another good word.

What other words would you add to the lists? What words around work as so toxic that you’ve removed them from your lexicon? What words have you redefined?

We need confidence in our ability to make decisions in the future, and we need the ability to move forward now. Projects that take months or years present difficulties because we cannot plan too far ahead.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it if you have to with the same weapons of reason that today arm you against the present.

- Marcus Aurelius

There is no certainty. There never is. Death and taxes, they say. Or maybe only death. Other than that, anything can happen at any time, so the pointlessness in worrying about anything becomes quickly apparent. And absurd.

If you’re aware that you’re worrying about particular things that might happen, and you’re planning for what you might do, you might as well consider all the possibilities. Asteroids that missed detection, or perhaps falling space debris is a better example. Why not worry all the time, go for it.

Planning

I run into the problem of making project schedules and planning out into the future. The problem is that I believe I can make that happen. Ridiculous. There are too many factors clearly out of my control. I’m not the only party involved, approvals need to be made, and there are authorities that need to be included.

Assuming anything is really just a guess so everyone can have an idea of what to expect. But those expectations are merely that. And when do you update them? It often seems like an exercise in futility. Plan the work, and work the plan. Well, how often do you work the plan?

If it’s somewhat futile to work the plan, then at least don’t spend too long doing it. This is where the left brain can really become a problem. It’s wonderful, it’s good at this job, but don’t spend too long here. The left thinking brain will eventually enlist the powers of the left emotional brain, and then we start to think like insurance agencies, to hedge our bets. That’s when you know you’ve gone off track.

Plan enough

Put something down

Plan for success. Plan for the project, plan for the team, and plan for yourself. Put it on paper, and let it go. Know that you’ll need to revise the plan, because certain bridges you’ve been planning to cross have suddenly materialized.

Milestones

When you start planning you make assumptions. You can rely on them. Someone gave you reliable information, and it cannot be confirmed until it’s time to cross that bridge. The assumptions you made were good enough.

Cross the bridge when you come to it.

Milestones on large projects can only always be assumptions. When others are involved, even when you’re the only one involved, the best you can do is to make assumptions. They will change, because that’s not the only thing going on in your life.

If a pandemic comes and everything changes, then you need to update the plan. You always need to update the schedule, but if materials are hard to come by because shipping is off, manufacturing is off, pricing has changed, you still need to account for it. Let’s be clear, you were always assuming something. The pandemic just makes it clear that you were perhaps making more assumptions than you’d originally thought.

Getting back to work

Put the pencil down

At some point you have to stop updating the schedule and get back to work. Anxiety has the tendency to pull us into a planning spiral. There is a point in the planning, or rescheduling exercise where we can jettison ourselves into orbit. We can come back to producing whatever it is we are producing with vigor.

We can recognize that this planning is all theoretical and we’ll feel more control, more agency; we’ll find find the certainty we are looking for by taking action, not by hedging our bets and worrying if our assumptions were wrong.

Strategizing

Certainty about what’s going to happen is not on the table, but our minds cleverly anticipate what we can do to move toward a certain future - a particular future. We cannot be sure, but we can move with confidence. Perhaps this course of action worked before, let’s try it again.

The planning exercise always comes to a point where we can see the next step. That’s the off ramp. That’s the moment to stop planning and start doing. When you’ve been arranging the pieces on paper, you can see how they all fit together. You know what pieces are complete and which one’s are in progress. It’s logical to work on developing the pieces in progress

The schedule is the list

This approach is better than any list, in a way, better than any triage you’re doing. The schedule is what shows you the chess pieces that have been taken and the one that are still on the board.

You can see the bridges that need to be crossed, but they haven’t materialized yet, so you don’t know where to move. But you do know what preparations to make, and you can get busy doing that.

Letting go of planning

Planning paralysis

Planning paralysis is real. You’re going to have to deal with it, I’m sorry.

Well, okay - it’s not real. It’s clearly an illusion. You’re going to have to get past the illusion. Better?

Do it, move past it, shake yourself off, and move on. When you do it all, this isn’t something you can delegate. And anything you do at a high level must be done completely. If you’re doing it well, you’re showing the team all your work. You must have a schedule.

The analytical side is so useful in making schedules. And lists. Forget lists, that’s for another day. But when enough analysis has been done, the plan has been worked, the schedule has been updated, then it’s time to launch back into production mode.

Spring into action

There is a natural ability, in the analytical mind, to execute your list after you’ve made it. This is the way out of the planning spiral, if you’re in one. Don’t believe the thought that you don’t know what to do next, you do. This is intuitive.

Appreciate that it is an unfolding process. This is the curriculum.

- Ram Dass

Yes, I know, there are many steps and some are in a critical path sequence, but it really doesn’t need to be that rigid. This is where the intuitive mind is powerful. The left thinking brain has just done the schedule, the left emotional brain just started

worrying about getting it all done, and the right thinking brain sees exactly what to do next. Trust that thought.

Trust the planner

Trusting the planner means leaping into action. Jump off the cliff. You can’t even see the water below, because not all of the information is available, we haven’t come far enough to make a number of decisions to advance the project toward key milestones. That’s ok.

We can see enough now to move forward. We have a plan, let’s move forward. The right thinking brain eases us into the right emotional brain. The right emotional brain is kind. It sees the good planning work the left thinking brain has done, it’s grateful to the left emotional brain for giving us the sense of urgency that we may fail because we cannot see too far into the future, and it trusts the self - the right emotional brain.

Intuition

Trust yourself

The right emotional brain, as Jill Bolte Taylor describes in her book Whole Brain Living, is us. Usually. It’s a bit like the ego. It’s the person, the social self. It experiences the world.

This is the one that’s good at doing the work. Picking up the other pencil, or pen, now that the planning has been done, and doing the production work to make it all happen. The right emotional brain is expansive, it’s where we enter flow. That’s what we’re looking for. More about that here.

You have power

We can trust our mastery. That isn’t just confidence, it’s a source of power.

When you come to the top, then it is easy, even though it is hard.

- Herman Hesse

If you’ve gotten this far, if the tools and techniques and practices and processes above sound familiar to you, if they remind you of your creative life then you have mastery in something. You don’t just wing it. Well, sometimes you do, and the trick is knowing how - when. For more on mastery, read here.

No excuse

If you’re stuck in planning mode, you have no excuse. It’s difficult, because the fear is there, you see how much you have to do, but you also have that nugget from the analytical arranger in your mind. The one who can propel you from the schedule to the drawing board.

When you don’t have that schedule done, which springs you into action so you can execute, you always have other options. Don’t feel you need to update the theoretical schedule just to find motivation. Start anyway. Use an hourglass. Or a quarter hourglass. And let me be clear, you can start any way, or you can start anyway. There’s no excuse. Soon you’ll be so focused that the anxiety vanishes and becomes almost invisible.

Trust the right brain, both the thinking and emotional right brain. Trust the self - the person who has an interest in whatever part of the work that lights you up. Allow it to be curious and enjoy the work - the visual side of things, the physical components. More about curiosity here.

Inspiration

Inspiration may come at this point. It will help. But it may not come. In fact, it’s not likely to come. That’s ok. You have your intuition, and that’s what gets you to do the work. Not the worry or sense of urgency or anxiety. I mean, that might work (or you might think it works) for a few years, a couple decades.

But when it doesn’t work anymore, your intuition is the one telling you it was there all along. That’s when your intuitive approach will be revisited. More about intuition here.

Intuition

Your intuition is yourself. It’s the part of you that you can trust. It is trust. It doesn’t have any doubt that there will be success.

The left brain, the cognitive mind, the part of you that needs certainty (even though we established it’s not possible) needs to let go.

Trust the self, the moment, the work in front of you, and go. Do it. Love it. Trust it.

Bruce Lee became infamous in the martial arts because after mastering Gung Fu he combined multiple arts, taking the best of each and abandoning what was not useful for combat. That is the definition of efficiency.

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

One of the most significant design principles is to omit the unimportant in order to emphasize the important.

- Bruce Lee

He was ruthless. Lee got rid of the beautiful kata’s (forms) found in Karate and the other arts (tiger, mantis in Gung Fu. The cultural components were let go because they were not useful to him. This made him powerful. That’s what a master does.

Elegance might be a better word for what he did. Lee said that real fighting is ugly. He’s right. It’s not beautiful and perfect, there’s no artful crane pose - that’s a mechanism that helps you remember the move, the flow, the sequence. It’s beautiful, and it makes practice fun. But in fighting, not so much.

Design

Good design is elegant

When you look at your objective, you can easily see what bait to cut. This is true in any design. If I want my jeep to perform better, I’ll get rid of unsprung weight, I’ll minimize the breakover angle, if the winch is on the front, the the suspension in the back can be looser to compensate for the winch weight in the front so the vehicle sits level. That’s because the winch is heavy, is at the front of the vehicle, and pushes the nose down…because if the front springs are as tight as the back, then it’s not even, although it was before I put the winch on. So you adjust the back suspension. Design is full of adjustments.

One of the most significant design principles is to omit the unimportant in order to emphasize the important.

- Dieter Rams

The adjustment that made Lee fast was not having to reset into the forms during a fighting sequence. You don’t know what your opponent is going to do next, so you have to be ready, which means response time is critical. That means that you eliminate any unnecessary movement.

Music

If your muscle memory is to perfectly make your arms into the shape of a crane then the beauty of the pose compromises the effectiveness of the strike and the speed of the transition between one strike and the next. It’s like jazz. If I’m play rhythm guitar and I’m backing up the lead guitar player then I know exactly what chord is coming next. I know what my hand is going to do to get into position most efficiently and I can anticipate the transition based on the timing of the song.

That doesn’t happen for the lead guitar player. If I’m playing lead guitar then I’m improvising. I’m relying on the rhythm guitar player to keep steady so I can jump around and focus on the line that I’m playing, the riffs that I’m improvising, the spontaneous moves I’m making. When I play lead, I don’t know what I’m doing yet. I’m responding.

Playing lead guitar is the musical equivalent of fighting in the martial arts, whereas playing rhythm is like martial arts training. One is expected, and the other is an unknown. It’s not a complete unknown, because there are parameters we know, which means there are things we can anticipate. But it’s the unknowns that present the risk, and we can minimize the risk by being more efficient, more elegant in our approach.

Efficiency

Being ruthless gives us an edge. Innovators like Lee have an advantage because it put him in a league of his own. His style was new, so it was like mixed martial arts. JKD combined American boxing, Japanese Shuto wrestling, Thai boxing, and other arts…grappling, etc. so that any JKD fighter could compete with any martial artist. Or any combative art, for that matter, whether it’s street fighting, military training, or anything else.

Efficiency always comes at a cost. The price of efficiency is often not discussed. If a developer wants the architect to cut cost then the aesthetics will be affected deleteriously. If the building needs to be more cost effective, then the structural performance needs to be reduced to the code minimum - why overbuild? The developer is concerned about the bottom line, so why make the building stronger or more beautiful than is necessary? Why, indeed.

The same is true for a martial art like Jeet Kun Do (JKD). But the question remains, what’s the objective? Do you want to fight or practice? Do you want to compete or protect? Do you want to teach or innovate?

Another view

Another way to look at efficiency is to call it elegance. Now, elegance isn’t exactly efficiency, but let’s take a look at usage. The more elegant something is, the more beautiful it is, in a sense. That means that if I, as a designer, make one thing perform multiple tasks, then it is elegant. In fact, it’s efficient. You see this in permaculture. It’s a design principle.

If you’re going to have chickens, then they’re an addictive input if all they are is a pet. If you get eggs, then they’re useful. If their droppings provide compost in hay, then they serve two purposes. If they are free range and they eat the rotting fruit under the fruit trees, then they serve at least three purposes.

You can say the chickens provide more value than those three purposes alone, because the waste from the fruit trees (let’s call it abundance instead of waste) serves as food, and you don’t have to feed them as much. Since you love them, there’s an additional benefit. This kind of system is elegant rather than efficient.

Elegance

Efficient design isn’t always good

You can say the feed / waste component is efficient, but that’s a ruthless way of looking at it. We don’t need to use that kind of strong language, because remember, you love the chickens. Maybe they’re also going to go in the freezer, so you might not want to get too attached. So maybe you don’t name them.

Let’s step back - forget the butchering chickens part for a minute so I can make my point. If we consider that the chickens that we love aren’t worth the money we pay to feed them, then the strong use of the word ruthless fits when we talk about efficiency in that way.

What do I mean? I mean that when I thought about getting cats I was thinking about my grocery bill. I was counting up how much I would have to pay to feed them. Now that I love them, I don’t care how much they eat because I want them to be happy. I’m not just concerned about the food bill, I’m looking at the bigger picture.

The big picture

If we think about the big picture we can say that sacrifices must be made. You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, right? So if you want JKD to be efficient, then you make it uber functional and you remove the aesthetic components.

There’s a triangle called the good, fast, cheap triangle. You can pick two. If you want it good and fast, it won’t be cheap. If you want it cheap, then it won’t be fast, or it won’t be good. Do you want it fast and good - it’s going to cost you. This all presumes fair business practices.

Good design should be environmentally friendly and promote a sustainable lifestyle.

- Dieter Rams

The other way to look it is to throw fairness out the window. The rocket was mass produced in Germany in the most efficient way using slave labor. That is pure efficiency, but it comes at an astronomical cost. There’s no way to even calculate that cost. But if you’re thinking in terms of time, of scale, of global conquest, then you’re not thinking about cost in terms of money. You’re looking at a much bigger picture.

Elegance over efficiency

Efficiency has its place. Efficiency is ruthless. I love efficiency, and I value many other things, including human life and human happiness. Let me be clear that all people are humans, not subhuman or less than. And more importantly, I care about people valuing what I create, and what others create.

I don’t like to throw pearls before swine. I value what I make, and I don’t want people to have it if they don’t value it. Why? Because if they don’t understand or relate to my values, then they’re likely to think that I’m charging too much, that it takes too long, or something else that doesn’t fit into my equation for a successful exchange.

If you don’t care about slave labor being used then you’re not going to be careful about what coffee you buy, or what chocolate you buy. If you value humans, then you’ll buy a brand like Tony’s Chocolonely. There are many makers like that, I don’t mean to make an example of them.

Value

To me there’s elegance in value. There’s a synergy that happens. If I pay a little more, then the people who make the thing or the service that I’m paying for will have a little bit better quality of life. That makes sense to me. If I don’t care about the lives of the people making the thing, then what difference does it make if they’re slaves or not, right?

I don’t mean to get too far into value here - what I’m trying to do is to compare and contrast efficiency and elegance. They’re similar, and while I value what efficiency can do, I don’t always value it. Because it can destroy my life, not just someone who’s been made to leave their family, watch them die because they weren’t able to work, and then work hard to make weapons for a cruel oppressor.

If I am efficient to the point where it ruins my life, my health, my peacefulness, then what’s the point? It might be better to be a little less efficient in my work and have an elegant approach to my life. Perhaps if my life and work are balanced, there will be a net improvement in my work that surpasses the effect of being more ruthlessly efficient in how I get my work done.

Here’s to elegance. While efficiency can be great, sometimes when a design is elegant it meets the objective just as well, and perhaps even better than a more efficient one. Thank you for reading.

I’m not scared at all
There is fear and I allow it
I feel scared but it's not who I am

I love fear because it makes me feel alive
I welcome the anxiety
because the anticipation 
feels like excitement
in my fingertips

My tingling nerves 
make me
widen my eyes

The light comes in differently
Time slows down
I see more detail

There are so many things 
happening at once
in a fluid dance.
I sit and watch them, waiting
but there is nothing that needs to be done

I'm so grateful
for this beautiful body

Objectivity matters

Comparison is death, yet objective measurement is critical for growth, there’s no denying that. We need a measure of how productive we are, crops are, schools are, and perhaps that’s all the word really means, just another perspective or use.

Brando says that we won’t spend the money to study why people would do something like that, which obviously leads directly into why there are so many school shootings and nothing done about them. In any case, this has everything to do with efficiency, because behind every good capitalist economy is an efficient manufacturing machine.

Behind this question, of course, is the idea of how productive we are, for our own purposes or to serve something greater than ourselves. We (the country, the economy, people who do studies and tell us the results) are obsessed with behaviour. How can we understand behaviour so we can manipulate people to buy deodorant, as Marlon mentions, or to motivate corporate workers to perform better, to become better team members.

Corporate personality

In the 1920’s or 30’s the Myer’s-Briggs test was developed to establish exactly that, but it failed to predict the productivity of American workers, so it was abandoned. Now psychologists use the Big 5 test to categorize human behaviour. The corporate mission to understand how humans work and operate in a group has been outsourced outside of psychology.

You can go to Gallup and buy a Clifton Strengths test to find out your top 34 strengths, or to take the test in order to determine what all are, and buy the results of only your top 10. Why would you do this? Well, you wouldn’t, unless you’re a small business owner who wants his employees to be happy and placed in positions that suit them and their strengths.

Why corporations study personality

Or you would be the human resources manager of a corporation who is doing their job, and perhaps uses the test results as a reason to give a salaried employee a disciplinary action, and a performance review in order to test their resolve and make them quit so they don’t have to fire them and have their unemployment insurance account take a hit.

So, what do we think? Is efficiency a good thing, bad thing, or neutral? Is it any different than productivity? Productive, but on another level? Do we need both words, or are we fine with ‘productivity’? Is there really a difference?

Is efficiency just a fascist word that was hammered over and over to make Jews in a missile factory work faster and faster because the slowest one would get hung from the rafters as an example? Mussolini made the trains run on time, but is that efficiency or just standard functionality?

If the trains aren’t running on time, hypothetically, is it because basic bitches run them, or because it doesn’t matter? Italian trains are still beautifully and fantastically on time, but Italy’s not fascist anymore, despite the government’s current far right leaning. So, you don’t need fascism to have order. But…is that the same as efficiency?

So what do you say, is efficiency over the top, or to be expected? Vote, and leave a comment if you have more to say on the matter.

If I were a prolific novelist, or the fastest swimmer, a fantastic designer, or someone who lost 100 pounds in 3 months, you’d be more interested in what my morning routine is. Wouldn’t you?

What’s the secret?

I remember being in the 2nd class, I must’ve been about 7 or 8, and a boy in the class was very good at drawing. All the other boys were crowded around - I went to an all boys school, unfortunately, and we were all watching him go.

I asked him, “what kind of pencil is that” or maybe it was a pen, I don’t remember. And I don’t know why I wanted to know, but I’d like to think that it wasn’t me wanting to know what kind of secret pen it was, as if I needed some kind of invisibility cloak to do something as simple as make a drawing.

Simplify to Amplify.

- Marie Forleo

I want to believe that I asked because I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a magic pen, that if he could do that with any old pen, then I could too. What’s left, if I use the powers of deduction, there’s talent and skill. I didn’t know about talent then, I was just a boy.

Discipline

I thought of discipline in a whole new way, a less oppressive way. Sometimes discipline is too much like obedience. There’s something in us that wants to be free, and it’s tired of authority. Tired of the authority that abuses us, including the authority of the mind.

Sometimes there’s a rebellious nature inside that says, “no!” even though we know we want to do the thing. I don’t know if it’s the ego, or the inner child, or just a stupid thought that is trying to ruin my day and not let me follow my plans. So sometimes I think, “you know what I need, is a morning routine, because then I won’t have to think or be motivated - I’ll just do it!”.

If I had to do the same morning routine every day, I’d want to stick a fork in my eye.

- Marie Forleo (click the link)

What’s worse than creating your own morning routine, is following someone else’s. It’s one thing to try to see if you can do the same morning routine as some athlete that you admire, someone in your own sport, someone who trains the way you do and gets

results that you want. Fine, that makes sense. It’s another thing to do something just because someone is advertising it. That makes me skeptical, not of them, but of myself. Don’t I trust myself to do what I want to do, instead of following someone else?

Intuition

Don’t you already know what to do? It seems like for most things, we don’t need someone to tell us know to do. We know that in order to be fit and healthy, we have to eat well and exercise. That’s a no brainer. It’s also a little bit intuitive - a part of you says, “don’t eat ice-cream” even when you know you’re not supposed to, you said you wouldn’t buy it for a while, but you really want it.

I love to have a bowl of ice-cream right when I come home from the store. Because the parts around the edge of the container and the top are soft. Not soft like soupy, but it gets that way in the bowl and I like it that way.

Don’t we know what needs to happen? If so, then why can’t we make it happen sometimes? The problem a lot of the time is that we need accountability. I want to, we have the gear, the time, the commitment, but there’s just that last little push we need. No, it’s not motivation, or discipline, it’s engagement with others - it’s competition, it’s being regarded as someone who tried, it’s camaraderie, and it’s social accountability.

I didn’t mention the word hack, and I don’t need to. As Marie would say, if I hear about another morning routine hack or biohack or burrito hack, I’m going to stick a hacking fork in my eye.

When you cannot make a choice, you are confused. You cannot decide. You suffer from indecision. When you think about something and you pay attention to it, you see very clearly what the choice is. That is freedom. But is it freedom to choose?

If you are free to make a choice, and you’ve decided on a choice, but you are conflicted about it, are you free? Is freedom the freedom to do something, or the freedom from something?

Freedom is a natural response to awareness. When you are aware, it’s clear what the choice needs to be, the choice makes itself. Freedom is the freedom to allow what needs to happen, not to force a choice based on rules and responsibility.

If you are free to choose, but your choice is limited, then you’re not free. You have a decision to make. Which decision are you going to make? Do you have to choose? When there is clarity, the choice is made for you.

Are you free to choose? If you are the one choosing, then are you free? What if you are the obstacle to the clarity needed to make a choice? If you are the chooser, then you have to make a decision. You feel you are free to choose.

If you are the decision maker, how do you choose? You choose rationally. You make a deliberation, you weigh the options, and you arrive at a choice. You see which choice is the best, given the criteria, and you choose.

Is that rational? If you are the one choosing, then you are taking freedom into your own hands. It’s your freedom. We see freedom as having options. The more the better.

When you have to choose, are you free? Having a choice is not about having freedom or having agency. You always have the ability to choose, but is that freedom? That’s the question.

If you are given multiple choices, and you are told that you’re free to choose, and then you’re judged for your decision, is that freedom? Having a responsibility means having an obligation, perhaps a moral obligation. That means you are not free, you have to choose along party lines or religious lines. Is that freedom?

If the choice is clear, then it is clear outside of any boundary. If there are boundaries, how is that freedom? The choice will be different depending on where I stand. If I only consider myself, then the choice appears to be one option, whereas if I consider the whole, I see another choice as more valid.

Freedom isn’t the freedom to choose, freedom is the freedom from conflict.

What you think isn’t always up to you

It’s time to for us to better understand how we think.

You can’t control your thoughts, but you can control which ones are at the front of your mind. This is a subtle shift, but a powerful one to understand, especially if you suffer from overthinking and anxiety.

Epictetus said, “we are disturbed not by what happens to us but by our thoughts about what happens to us”.

Control your mind

To say you can stop your thoughts, as Byron Katie says, is to think you can stop the wind or the waves. You can’t control your mind, but you can condition your mind and you can manage how you think.

Mind control

When you believe certain thoughts, that’s when you know you’re not in control - that’s the subconscious mind. Unconscious thoughts are a handful. Let’s not go there. What you can do is to notice your thoughts and question them. That is an extremely powerful practice. What do you believe?

What we think isn’t necessarily what we think. We pick up thoughts and ideas like germs. If you don’t cleanse your mind then you need to ask yourself, “what was I thinking?”. Question your thoughts, question your beliefs.

You believe what you think, so it’s important to have filters surrounding what thoughts you focus on. Wherever you put your attention is where your energy flows. So be careful. There’s nothing wrong with thinking, but overthinking is problematic. Meditation, or contemplation, or pondering on a thought is a wonderful practice.

Analysis

The mind is sharp, it cuts like a surgeon’s blade, but do you really need to be dissecting anything right now? Maybe there’s a problem you need to solve, but do you really have any control over it, or do your thoughts have control over you?

Is this is situation where thought can contribute, where strategy is the way forward, or is it best to just wait, to see what happens, to receive more information first?

Think about it.

Have you ever been driving to the library and you find you’ve gone to the store instead? That’s your mind not paying attention. You had an intention to go to the library, but you went to the store instead. Because you go to the store more than the library and you forgot to pay attention.

Don’t worry, it happens to all of us. We zone in and out. But when the mind is clear, we know exactly what we’re doing. And if it’s really clear, we are aware, and we are open. We are free.

Motive dictates choice.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Are you free to decide? Who makes the choice of what to do next? How does the decision come about?

When the mind is free to observe without any choice or any motive, the mind sees that any choice would be the outcome of my conditioning. Motive is also an artifact of my conditioning. When there is freedom to observe this happening, there is truth.

That is simply an observation. Without the observer. The motive, the choice, is authority. It’s fear, it’s conformity, and obedience. The observer, when he is identified with these thoughts, is not free to act. When there is freedom there is action.

For more information, check out last week’s post. Thank you for being here.

We are suffocated with ideas.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti (JK)

Ideas are thought, which is memory. Memory is the past. We must let go of the past to have freedom. This is clear. We move from the past into the present moment. We have experienced the past, and we let it go. It shaped us, and now we can be free in it. Not free from it, yet there is freedom. That’s an important distinction.

We are ever trying to build a bridge between action and idea.

- JK

Can action happen without an idea? Yes. Idea is thought. Thinking and action go together, yes. But not always. Action can happen on its own. That is choiceless action.

Form

Ideas are forms. Thoughts are forms. The self is a concept, a form. The “me” is also a concept, and a very powerful one. Extraordinarily powerful. Do not underestimate the power of form.

Some forms you can see, others you don’t. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have power. This is the most obvious thing in the world to us. Like time - you can’t see it. You see the sun and the moon, you see the hands of the clock, you see your hair grow in a few weeks.

But that’s not time. Those are facts. The fact of the sun, the fact of your hair. Time is a concept developed in the mind of man.

Form is an illusion. You are in the body, yet the self", the “me” is a concept. That form is not real. You are real, there is a you, a “self” that is real. Of course. But this you that you think is you, at least some of the time, is a concept and is not real. Therefore form is an illusion. You can find this out for yourself.

Learn to be free in form rather than free from form. Freedom is the freedom to be in form without railing against it.

- Ram Dass

If you can let go of form, if you can shift from one self to another, then you are shifting form. But you are still in form. Therefore you are in form, and not free from it. You are in the body, in the form, and yet you can be formless.

Love is action

When there is love there is action, and the action is liberating. Where there is freedom, there is action. When action is driven by an idea, the action can never liberate you. This is an extremely important point.

Love is not the thinking about the person that one loves, for then it is merely thought. You cannot think of love. You can think of the person you love or are devoted to - your guru, your image, your wife, your husband; but the thought, the symbol, is not the real which is love. Therefore love is not an experience.

- JK

Ideas control action, which also means they limit action. Love isn’t like that. When we cling to ideas we cannot experience life. Then we are living in thought. In time. We are trapped. Love is liberating in that way. Love is action. It’s a single process.

Truth does not come from ideas. Only when you go beyond ideas can you find truth. As Dave Whyte says, in his poem “Just Beyond Yourself”, half a step into self-forgetting and the rest restored by what we’ll meet. Truth arises, and brings us what we’re missing when we’re out of balance.

Intuition

The Hawai’ians call the still voice inside, na’au. Au means light, and the message that it brings is na’au’au, or the spiritual light. Na’ua means guts, or a gut feeling. We have 3 brains, the one in our skull, the one in our heart, and the one in our gut. All three locations have neurons, brain cells.

If you follow the brain, you’ll get in trouble. If you follow the heart, you’ll get hurt. If you follow your guy, you’ll always follow the truth because God is speaking to you, that’s what they believe. Your na’au speaks directly, quietly, only once, and firmly. You have to listen for it, but first you need to quiet down the noise.

When you bring attention to whatever it is you’re doing, to whatever situation you’re in, and if you have space for that attention, awareness will rise, and out of that awareness you may find truth. If you feel like you have a decision to make, then you won’t once the truth has been revealed, because the truth is, there is only one direction you need to go, and you may be a little confused right now.

Do you have the patience to sit and wait until the mud settle, and the water is clear enough for you to see what’s really happening around you, to see the truth?

There are no wrong answers, I just want to see what people think. All are welcome.

Thanks for stopping by. There are lots of posts here about creativity. I hope you stick around, there’s much to do.

I read books about free will at university in philosophy classes. All I took away of any value had to do with ethics. The free…

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Meditation means without effort

To sit and meditate sounds like you’re doing something. When you sit at your desk and think, you’re doing something. There’s a movement of thought, which takes time. Thought is time. Meditation, in a sense, is the absence of time.

If you consider doing vs being, you are. You are being, right now. How is that different than meditation? Meditation is a quality of being. There’s no “doing” in it.

Meditation is an extraordinary thing, if you know. I’ve talked to various types of people who meditate, Tibetan, Hindu, Buddhists, Zen, you know, all the rest of it. It’s all a conscious deliberate effort.

It isn’t something you do for the love of it. You know, you can love and yet be selfish, but I mean in the sense, to do meditation without conscious effort.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1984 at Brockwood Park

Doing implies effort. Effort is work. Meditation is not work. Let’s put aside the term “deliberate”, because deliberate means conscious, it means intentional. Intention implies the future, it implies an outcome. Conscious implies attention.

"The now contains the past, the present, and the future." - JK

If you are doing, then you are doing something towards a desired outcome. If you are simply being, then there is no outcome in mind. While it’s worth noting that now contains past and future, when you are meditating, you are meditating now. I’m not saying now is all there is.

Is meditation neurotic?

I love the way JK talks about human neurotic behavior. He didn’t mean, I don’t think, neurotic is the sense of neurosis, but in the way Jews talk about being neurotic. It’s a playful use of the word. This is not serious. And yet it is the most serious thing.

Neurosis is a psychological condition referring to a mental illness - now, whether we say that a mental illness is real or not, and I’m not disputing there are real mental illnesses, but what I think he means is the obsessive practice of sitting down for an hour per day or doing yoga for 30 years and not getting anything out of it.

There is a way, as Iris Murdoch, who spoke with JK in 1984, puts it that any means that one adopts towards goodness is likely to become a barrier. The same is true for people in religion - some go because they are seeking spirituality and leave with morality. That’s not what they were looking for, but perhaps it feels like a substitute.

The quality of breath

I love to meditate on what meditation is. And I was just thinking about how the breath is an anchor, because it’s so easy to recognize. It’s stronger than your heart beat. But there is a degree to which we actively breathe.

There are some breaths that have an active component. When you push the air completely out, your lungs partially inflate naturally. You have no control over the air being sucked into your lungs. That moment takes no effort.

Consciousness

Exploration

Meditation is an exploration of the field of consciousness. That’s my opinion, you may not agree. The dictionary defines meditation as contemplation or to ponder. That

implies thought.

What is consciousness?

The content of consciousness is its content. Therefore there’s no division as consciousness separate from its content. I can extend or widen the consciousness, horizontally or vertically, but it is still within that field. I can extend it and say, God is immense. That’s my belief. And I’ve extended my consciousness by imagining that it is extended. Whatever thought has created in the world and inside me is the content.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

It’s worth clarifying that JK was not religious. You don’t have to be. That’s what people like about him - no dogma, no doctrine, no method. Don’t believe him, think for yourself, find out for yourself. No guru, no therapist. You. Find out what you think.

Contemplation

Whether I’m contemplating thought or not engaging with thought, am I meditating? If I’m walking down the street and I have an idea in my head, I’m wondering what I think about that idea, I notice what other thoughts come up. The same happens when I’m driving long distance, or inn the shower. I’m not necessarily engaged in the thought, but it’s there and I let it be there. I notice what else comes up and certain dots connect, I might even get a stoke of wisdom - something may occur to me that I have never thought about, and it might be extremely impactful. I may need to write it down. Is that meditation?

I’m sitting with my eyes closed and I notice the thoughts until there are no thoughts. Am I meditating? When I want to see what there is beyond thought, above thought, is that meditation? If I have a glass of wine and I’m enjoying it, and then I have another, my mind slips below thought. Is that meditation? No, that’s not meditation - the absence of thought isn’t necessarily meditation. Meditation transcends thought.

Thank you for reading. Feel free to drop a comment below.

Have fun

It’s important to enjoy your work, and I do, because I love what I do, I have good clients, I have a great office setup, I have a wonderful home, my cats are wonderful to be with, the financials are setup so that I can make enough if all goes well, and my wife is supportive.

Despair

It’s what happens when every day is the same. So make sure your routine is not suffocating you. Enjoy the seasonality in your work, and change your schedule as much as makes sense. See friends some days, and drive different routes when you go to town. Wire new synapses.

All balance

In a way there’s no such thing as balance, but really what it means is balancing the three parts of your life – your work, your personal life, and your spiritual life. When you are at work, be 100% at work. When it’s your free time, that means not thinking about how to optimize something in your work flow during your personal time.

How To Enjoy Life

Enjoy work

That means doing it regularly and not doing it too much, too long, or in a stressful way. Don’t take the work too seriously. The job is to worry about schedules, and you can dedicate a small part of your day or week to that. Do it in the afternoon when you’re shipped the deliverable.

Have fun

Do something different on the weekends. One day per weekend go to the mountain or to a different beach or 4-wheel driving or something fun and new. Try a different snorkel spot or something new. Walk on a new path, go to a new coffee shop or place for lunch.

Meditate

You can meditate anytime, anywhere, with anything. When you meditate in your professional life, it’s good for your job as well. You might have better ideas, your mind will become more relaxed, and it’s good for your spiritual life. Meditate for a short time, and when it happens many times, even a large container will fill with one drop at a time. A 5-minute daily practice for 30 days. Your stress, depression, and anxiety will be reduced by 30% (per a Rinpoche).