Priceless takeaways from my off-site in LA
I've been at an off-site for three years.
Every morning starts with coffee and toast in the conference room.
Then the music starts playing and the Superego jumps up on the table and shouts:
What do we want?!
BETTER IDEAS!
When do we want them?!
When there's a market for them!
(record scratch)
In the movie "Museo", a potential buyer (L) tells two desperate sellers (R) that there's no market for what they're selling.
They have something priceless on their hands.
Does that mean it's worthless?
I've spent much of my life trying to think deeply. (Hi wide cords from the Gap on Roosevelt Ave!)
I was taught from an early age that if you can get to the root of a problem, if you can get radical, you can make a difference.
For the last three years I've been thinking as deeply as I can.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far.
#1) Deep thinking only gets harder.
Doesn't matter how much you do it, it only gets harder. What gets easier is the set-up. The falling down and getting up. That's a matter of habit.
But the work itself – the part where the "good stuff" happens – remains as daunting today, at age 45, as it was when I was just learning the ropes at 15.
Example: I know to tell you that "learning the ropes" is a nautical expression. I can also confirm that each voyage into the unknown is just as scary as the last. The unknown is always the unknown. Otherwise, you're on a pleasure cruise.
I have no idea where I'm going because I have never been there before.
The best position for deep thinking is on your knees. In the storm. You steered into.
Deep thinking means living in a state of tenderness.
It's being in distress.
For one, the truth is often concealed in pain. It's buried in our scars. The things we are afraid to talk about. Or don't yet have the words to express.
Deep thinking also means you're constantly looking for trouble. Because that's where the anwers are – inside the problems.
But the simplest reason why it gets harder – perhaps the root of the problem – is that it hurts to think. Literally.
Deep thinking is creative destruction. It's rewriting reality. It's rewiring yourself.
To think deeply you have to take both feet off the ground and let your momentum take you to where you must end up: flat on your ass, in deep pain.
To be just off balance,
facing backwards but looking ahead
About to feel great pain.
It can never get easier.
So how does one get "better" at something that has to remain hard?
By choosing pain. Again and again: choose pain.
Experiencing distress while thinking is a confirmation that you've found a deep vein.
Pain means it has not been said. Pain means it needs to be said.
I see a hand going up – oh, no, just scratching your nose.
What's that? It's an itch that won't go away?
Yes, I know the feeling!
So... where were we?
Cats.
#2) Deep thinking means you're often lost.
Or it feels like you're going in circles.
You keep finding things that don't seem to belong where you're going.
But they do. You just have to carry them together.
Here's a pro-tip from the Germans: Weltanschauung.
"a comprehensive conception or theory of the world and the place of humanity within it. It is an intellectual construct that provides both a unified method of analysis for and a set of solutions to the problems of existence."
LOL, that sounds deep.
Really, it's just the name for the rocks you keep in your pocket.
For me, deep thinking means stumbling upon a great many ideas. Rough ideas.
Most of them don't belong on the path I'm headed. But I don't throw them aside, I collect them.
(Because I don't fucking know where I'm going. See above!)
The work of deep thinking is not just the discovery, it's the grouping and the sorting.
This requires a WIDE TABLE and the ability to EXPAND ONE'S WORK SURFACE.
(If you're into the scientific management of labor, the above sentence is my Christmas present to you.)
When you group these "random" ideas properly, you can rub them against each other.
They polish each other.
If I had tried to limit my scope three years ago to just one deep idea, I'd have gotten nowhere.
By allowing myself to build out a worldview, populated by multiple stories, I was able to return, time and again, to the essential questions that were animating my search.
I never lost momentum and every tangent returned me to my starting point from a new direction; with an additional vantage point.
#3) The process is the product. The filter is the finding. The set is greater than the sum of its parts.
A series of iterative lithographs from 1945: “At the sixth stage, Picasso reduces the intensity of the network of lines running across the creatures form. The main discovery in this stage is the displacement of weight and balance between the head and the tail of the animal. Upon understanding that aspect, the next plate features the removal of the extra lines on the torso which have served their purpose.”
One explanation for why this process of endless returning works is that history is itself a spiral.
This is not some academic bullshit. Literally, a billion people subscribe to it:
"Saṃsāra is a Sanskrit word that means "wandering" or "world", with the connotation of cyclic, circuitous change.…a "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence".
(10,000x times deeper than any PT Anderson movie.)
OK, they're playing the Daft Punk anthem again.
Time to get back to my off-site.
What do we want?!
BETTER IDEAS!
When do we want them?!
When there's a market for them!
I tell this joke because for some time I've been carrying around a rock in my pocket called "market maker".
It has a specific meaning in finance but it's part of a general function in human society: making something out of nothing.
The projects I've developed are radical. That was my purpose. And the market for radical ideas is... hard to make.
But life is short. And for most people, nasty and brutish.
#BONUS TAKE-AWAY
What's the point of trying to do something easy? There isn't any. It's literally pointless.
Here's some Air Supply:
I know just how to whisper
And I know just how to cry
I know just where to find the answers
And I know just how to lie
I know just how to fake it
And I know just how to scheme
I know just when to face the truth
And then I know just when to dream
And I know the roads to riches
And I know the ways to fame
I know all the rules
And I know how to break 'em
And I always know the name of the game
But I don't know how to leave you
And I'll never let you fall
And I don't know how you do it
Making love out of nothing at all
Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to Divertidos: