December 15, 2024

Daily Log Digest – Week 49, 2024

2024-12-08

Missed reading a chapter for Meditations for Mortals yesterday. I ended up reading two chapters today to make up.

Meditations for Mortals Day Twelve

This chapter is titled Rules that serve life: On doing things dailyish, which seems kinda on point given I did not read a book chapter yesterday.

A much better rule – indeed, one I think more accurately reflects Seinfeld’s approach to his work – is to do things dailyish. I’m borrowing the word from Dan Harris, host of the meditation podcast Ten Percent Happier, who suggests it whenever people ask him how often they ought to be meditating. If you’re the ambitious type, ‘dailyish’ might strike you as a little self-indulgent. It isn’t. If anything, it’s the Seinfeld Strategy that’s self-indulgent, because at the moment you set it in motion, you flatter yourself that you’re going to be able to follow it impeccably, day after day – even though, were you to reflect on it, you’d probably agree that your life is too unpredictable for that, and your moods too much of a rollercoaster. ‘Dailyish’ is a much more resilient rule: it’s less of a high-wire act, where one mistake could end everything. But emotionally speaking, it’s an unsettling rule to follow – because doing something dailyish requires sacrificing your fantasies of perfection in favor of the uncomfortable experience of making concrete, imperfect progress, here and now. In any case, ‘dailyish’ isn’t synonymous with ‘just do it whenever you feel like it.’ Deep down, you know that doing something twice per week doesn’t qualify as dailyish, while five times per week does, and in busy periods, three or four times per week might get to count. So you’re still putting some pressure on yourself. But, crucially, what you’re not doing is expecting the rule to somehow force the action.

Meditations for Mortals Day Thirteen

This chapter is titled Three hours: On finding focus in the chaos

The three-to-four-hour rule functions, too, as a reminder of the profound truth that for finite humans the work is never done. A central point of the Jewish and Christian tradition of the Sabbath is that you have to stop anyway – not because you’ve finished, but just because it’s time to stop. How far you can check out of the culture of overwork will be context-dependent, of course. But regardless of context, you can choose not to psychologically collaborate with that culture. You can abandon the delusion that if you just managed to squeeze in a couple more hours of focused work, you’d finally reach the commanding position of mastering it all. The truly valuable skill is the one the three-to-four-hour rule helps to instill: not the capacity to push yourself harder, but the capacity to stop and recuperate, despite the discomfort of knowing that the work remains unfinished.

2024-12-09

Spent the whole day swimming in matrix math. I am trying to finish up the Math Academy course Mathematics for Machine Learning by Christmas. This means I have to do around 300 XP worth of work a day. Matrix math is laborious and prone to mistakes, and I am a champion at making blunders while solving math. I sometimes feel like beyond a point, you can't control your ability to make these blunders. It's just how my brain is built.

2024-12-10

Meditations for Mortals Day Fourteen

This chapter is titled Develop a taste for problems: On never reaching the trouble-free phase.

I suspect that most of us, except perhaps the very Zen or the very elderly, move through our days with a similar if largely unconscious assumption that at some point – maybe not soon, but eventually – we’ll make it to the phase of life which won’t involve confronting an endless fusillade of things to deal with. The unfortunate consequence is that we experience our ordinary problems – the bills to pay, the minor conflicts to resolve, each little impediment that stands between us and realizing our goals – as doubly problematic. First, there’s the problem itself. But then there’s the way in which the very existence of any such problems undermines our yearning to feel perfectly secure and in control. So we spend our lives leaning into the future, unconsciously deeming whatever’s happening now to be fundamentally flawed, because it’s marred by too many problems. And quite possibly deeming ourselves to be fundamentally flawed, too – or else wouldn’t we have figured out some way to eliminate all these problems by now? Yet the reality, as Harris goes on, is that ‘… life is an unending series of complications, so it doesn’t make any sense to be surprised by the arrival of the next one.’

A friend of mine vividly recalls the uplifting and energizing moment when, feeling burdened like Harris by the endless problems that seemed to get in the way of her doing her job, it dawned on her that the problems were the job. Anyone, or a piece of software, could do her job, if it weren’t for the problems. Her unique contribution lay in her capacity for solving them.

Beyond the mountains, there are always more mountains, at least until you reach the final mountain before your time on earth comes to an end. In the meantime, few things are more exhilarating than mountaineering.

2024-12-11

I went to a reading group today, organized by my friend Jasmine. I decided to read my daily quota of Burkeman at the reading group. It was also fun introducing the book to the two other folks that were there.

I also realised I was overextending myself by trying to do my MathAcademy course before Christmas. I was ignoring a lot of other important things and being grumpy to the people around me. So decided to do some replanning and reprioritising.

Which actually brings me right back to the book chapter I read

Meditations for Mortals Day Sixteen

This chapter is titled The reverse golden rule: On not being your own worst enemy

Some might object that it’s a sign of immense privilege even to be able to contemplate spending the day doing what you feel like doing. And of course this is true, so far as it goes: almost everyone’s situation will impose certain limits on their freedom to follow their desires, and it’s much worse for some than for others. But it’s important to see that this objection itself is often the inner taskmaster in disguise, seeking to make you feel bad for taking advantage of whatever freedom you do have. There’s no prize for failing to spend your time as you wish, to whatever extent you’re able, out of a misplaced sense of solidarity with those who cannot.

In any case, treating yourself a little more kindly needn’t be anywhere near as self-indulgent as those of us with an allergy to ‘self-compassion’ tend to assume. It’s not about narcissistically declaring yourself to be any more deserving of an easy life than anyone else. It’s quite sufficient a challenge to seek to follow what the philosopher Iddo Landau calls the ‘reverse golden rule’ – that is, not treating yourself in punishing and poisonous ways in which you’d never dream of treating someone else. Can you imagine berating a friend in the manner that many of us deem it acceptable to screech internally at ourselves, all day long? Adam Phillips is exactly right: were you to meet such a person at a party, they’d immediately strike you as obviously unbalanced. You might try to get them to leave, and possibly also seek help. It might occur to you that they must be damaged – that in Phillips’s words ‘something terrible’ must have happened to them – for them to think it appropriate to act that way.

2024-12-12

Meditations for Mortals Day Seventeen

This chapter is titled Don’t stand in generosity’s way: On the futility of ‘becoming a better person

Many of us believe we ought to be kinder or more generous, to give more money to charity, spend more time volunteering, or in some vaguer way ‘become a better person’ than we currently are. The Tibetan Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa’s point is that this isn’t necessary: you needn’t try to transform yourself into someone who feels more love for humanity, and it’s probably impossible anyway. You just need to find where you already feel warmth or tenderness, then go from there. And your penchant for Mexican food is as good a place to start as any other.

2024-12-13

Meditations for Mortals Day Eighteen

The chapter is titled Allow other people their problems: On minding your own business.

“What I eventually figured out – not that it ever seems to get particularly easy – is that other people’s negative emotions are ultimately a problem that belongs to them. And you have to allow other people their problems. This is one more area in which the best thing to do, as a finite human with limited control, is usually not to meddle, but to let things be.”

Before we go any further, it bears emphasizing that the people you’re worried might be angry with you or bored by you or disappointed in you almost never are. They’ve got their own troubles to worry about. According to stereotype, people-pleasers are self-effacing types, and yet there’s something strikingly grandiose about the notion that your boss, client or coworker has nothing better to do than pace up and down all day thinking bad thoughts about you – or that your presence at a social gathering has the power to ruin it for anyone else…

The Paradox of Optimization

Some snippets from an AI generated summary

The Modern Fixation on Results The narrative then transitions to examining how modern society measures success almost exclusively through tangible outcomes. We've created a culture where progress is defined by measurable achievements and visible improvements. However, the podcast questions whether this results-oriented approach truly leads to contentment, suggesting that those who find genuine fulfillment are those who can embrace the journey rather than fixating on the destination.

The Optimization Trap The discussion then delves into how modern society has become obsessed with optimization. Every moment of our day has become an opportunity for improvement or productivity - from optimizing our morning routines to maximizing our sleep efficiency. The speaker particularly highlights Silicon Valley as the epicenter of this "hustle culture," where the pressure to constantly innovate and multiply value has become all-consuming.

The Cost of Constant Optimization This section explores the paradox of optimization: the more we try to optimize every aspect of our lives, the more we rob ourselves of genuine satisfaction. The younger generation, in particular, has internalized this mindset, viewing any "wasted" time as a cardinal sin. This perpetual drive for improvement has led to a state of constant restlessness, where people are always looking ahead to the next goal rather than finding joy in the present moment.

The Gender Ideological Divide

I had logged about male loneliness in Nov. On similar lines, I came across this article from Jan 2024 in the FT: A new global gender divide is emerging #masculinity #gender

In countries on every continent, an ideological gap has opened up between young men and women. Tens of millions of people who occupy the same cities, workplaces, classrooms and even homes no longer see eye-to-eye.

This was accompanied by an interesting X thread.

Ally Louks PhD Thesis Abstract Analysis

Dr Ally Louks, who was trolled on X for her PhD thesis titled Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose. Somebody on X did an excellent deconstruction of the abstract, and I feel like this could be a great way to deconstruct any abstract of an academic paper. Very insightful.

2024-12-14

Bengaluru Literature Festival

Spent the day at the Bengaluru Literature Festival. Met friends, attended sessions and bought books. Fun!