Spring Reading (and Listening)

When the unyielding rainy weather keeps us indoors

The gloomy weather in the PNW is the price to pay for our beautiful nature. This year’s prolonged spring rainy weather has given me something extra: the enforced indoor time, and inspiration, to dive into the world of reading.

Photo by Matias North on Unsplash

I love to read, and it doesn’t take much for book reviews and excerpts to entice me to purchase or subscribe. However, once I start reading, I am a picky and somewhat slow reader. And my reading list has perpetually grown; my pile of books—physical or digital, owned or loaned—has morphed into three categories: those finished within a few days of starting; those started/stopped a few times and put away for re-visit at a later time; and those started and ultimately decided not for me. I have read what belonged to all three categories in the past few months. To avoid making this post too long, I will share my notes on only two books instead of everything I opened—the two that exceeded my expectations and left me with plenty to ponder upon.

A bit of irony right off the bat: Eyal is the same author who wrote Hooked, How to Build Habit-Forming Products, a book said to be recommended by virtually all the big tech companies (dah) and was a WSJ best seller. Talk about the products that were built aiming at distracting us! No wonder we are all hooked, and, distracted all the time!

This book was recommended to me by a previous co-worker a few years back. I bought the audio version but never got around to listening to it until one morning last month, when I had to do a 3-mile walk on the treadmill instead of hiking a real trail. It succeeded in keeping me engaged, throughout the 50 (otherwise boring) treadmill minutes.

Using the author’s quote of the philosopher Paul Virilio: When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck. Here comes the redemption for helping to build habit-forming products: this new book wants to teach you how not to be distracted (a.k.a. hooked) by unwanted devices, internal or external.

I disagree with the author in his claim that it is solely the responsibility of the users to manage their behavior and habit-building, not the company or engineers who built the habit-forming product. However, my disagreement didn’t prevent me from noting several valuable takeaways, as someone who is suffering constant distractions. (Hey, no judgment please, and be honest: who isn’t distracted in this fast-paced digital world filled with ubiquitous AI?)

Early in the book, Eyal and Li confirmed something I had always suspected—when we are pointing our fingers at some digital devices, there must be some personal issues that are at play.

Identifying the internal triggers that lead you to external distraction is the first step in managing your focus: what pain/fear/anxiety are you trying to avoid and run away from? Greek philosopher Epicurus was once quoted that “By pleasure, we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the mind.” Ancient Greeks thought that part of the curse of being a fallible mortal was our incessant desire to want more.

Next time when you think you are surfing the net because it gives you pleasure, consider the possibility that you may be driven by the desire to free yourself from the pain of wanting … something. Let’s identify that *something*, shall we?

We as human beings are prone to what’s called the negative bias: bad is stronger than good. We get bored easily with “good” and we ruminate about “bad” more often than we should—our brain favors dissatisfaction over contentment and we are more motivated to avoid losses than seek gains. Losing hurts more than winning feels good.

Is this why we are afraid of changes and avoid taking risks? Next time when we blame ourselves for being lazy, we need to understand we are wired that way, and it takes effort to guide ourselves towards changes we believe will bring us more “good” than “bad”.

It is just as important to identify the distractions, as to find out the tractions for the life you intend to live—what are the distractions distracting you from?

By being intentional about the tractions, we may be able to deal with distractions and overcome them. If we can’t eradicate external triggers, can we learn to live with them balanced with things that are meaningful to us?

Eyal and Li then proceed to share the so-called hacks in the book, and I think that’s where the most value of this book lies. These hacks may not be new (I devised similar ones in my previous corporate work life and most recently mentioned in my Feb 5th post about smartphones). They are tried-and-true methods in helping you to regain control amid all the distractions—the distractions of emails, meetings, group chats, bosses, co-workers, and even friends. Some hacks are more useful for people who are juggling multiple demands from the workplace and family; some hacks are useful even for retired folks like myself:

• Plan your schedule by time-boxing your schedule. Not all time spent on digital devices is evil, as long as it is within your conscious time planning. Your schedule should reflect your values and your priorities. It was interesting that the company slogan at Slack, the one that developed the AI-powered communication platform that’s used by more than 80% of the Fortune 100 companies (according to Slack’s own market analysis), was “Work hard and go home”. It is an interesting twist to “Work hard and play hard”. This is not about play, but about prioritizing your energy and attention, about *disconnect*. It is further understood at Slack that it is NOT POLITE to send messages outside of working hours.

• Don’t read from the web, don’t fall into the trap of clicking bait. I can’t tell you how many times I fired up my browser or app intending to read one article or research on one subject, only to find out that hours later I have visited so many unintended websites, read so many unrelated articles, and (with a bit shame to admit) watched a few ads on products I did not know I wanted. More often than not, I didn’t finish my original project in the first go around. Download what you intend to read, then read offline.

• This one is mine: Fulfill your desire for validation with friends IRL (In Real Life) instead of strangers in the cyber world. Facebook’s first president Sean Parker admitted that the social network was designed to manipulate user behavior as a “social-validation feedback loop”. Let’s face it, we all need some validation from time to time. I don’t perceive it as insecurity; rather, I see it as our innate desire for relevance as human beings. Eyal and Li pointed out in the book that “The nutrients the human psyche needs to flourish are autonomy, competence, and relatedness”. It is not coincidental that similar conclusions were discussed in the next book I read, The Happiness Hypothesis.

P.S.: It turns out that the word “indistractable” is not considered a “formal word” in most standard dictionaries. I guess time is moving faster than our language can keep up with!

P.P.S.: As it also turns out, internal triggers come before external triggers, and the power to overcome distractions comes from within.

Bonus: I learned about an interesting tool for those of us finding it hard to commit to focus - FocusMate

Anyone here care to experiment with it with me? 🙂 How about sharing your hacks to fend off distractions?

The New York Times article on Johnathan Haidt’s new book The Anxious Generation led me to The Happiness Hypothesis, one of four books he published.¹ (I have not read Haidt’s latest book yet.)

In the Introduction titled “Too much wisdom”, the paradox of “abundance”—quantity undermines quality—immediately grabbed my attention. To paraphrase Mr. Haidt, "Whatever wisdom we encounter will not transform us if we don’t have the time to savor it, take it to heart, engage with it, ask questions, and work it into our lives.” This reminds me of what Psychologist Herbert Simon once said: “The wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes … Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

Later in the book, Haidt returned to the discussion of wisdom in this quote from Marcel Proust:

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

This reads to me like a lyric version of Robert Sternberg’s research finding, that knowledge comes in two major forms: explicit and tacit. We acquire explicit knowledge in schools and from books and lectures. Wisdom is based on the tacit knowledge (of knowing how) acquired without direct help from others. Wisdom forms personal values; wisdom is connected to what perhaps is Haidt’s most famous metaphor first mentioned in the Introduction: The metaphor for the human mind of divided and sometimes conflicting parts, likened to a rider on the back of an elephant. In this metaphor, the elephant is the autonomous self, the emotion; and the rider is the conscious and rational mind which has limited control over the elephant. Haidt is inferring that the explicit knowledge is the rider, the rational logical thinker; and the tacit knowledge—wisdom—is discovered by the elephant, the physical and emotional you.

I felt like a veil was being opened and it beckoned me to explore further.

There are many more gems in this wonderfully written book: like how we are wired with reciprocity, hypocrisy, and self-serving bias; like the progress principle —pleasure comes more from making progress towards goals rather than from achieving them; like the saying from Seng ts'an 禪宗三祖僧璨—“If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against”. You will have to read the book to discover them yourself.

As a writer, and someone who enjoys being a storyteller, a few things Haidt pointed out struck a chord stronger than others.

We have all heard about Nietzsche’s “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” While what Nietzsche said may not be true under all circumstances, Haidt pointed out that adversities do seemly benefit people in three possible ways: they reveal our hidden abilities; help us to separate “fair-weather” relationships from true, loving ones; and change our priorities and philosophies toward the present and people around us. Haidt called it “post-traumatic growth”.

If adversities were what drive our growth then it begs this pressing question—Must we suffer? (That’s just my VoiceOver.)

Citing psychologist Dan McAdams’ three-level personality theory Haidt also points out that human beings are fascinated by stories and we create an “evolving story that integrates a reconstructed past, perceived present, and anticipated future into a coherent and vitalizing life myth.”

Wait, is that how we write our own stories? (That’s me thinking I have uncovered the reason for my newfound passion.)

This life story of ours is written by (remember the elephant and rider story?) the rider in our consciousness as we interpret our behavior, so the story is more or less like a work of—as Haidt calls it—“historical fiction that makes plenty of references to real events and connects them by dramatizations and interpretations that might or might not be true to the spirit of what happened”.

This makes me feel so much better when (and if) I am finally ready to write that memoir of mine! (That’s me breathe a sigh of relief!)

Alright, I do have a quibble about the book. It is a book that blends elements of self-help, philosophical discussion, and psychology research, and there are times I just wish it was more storytelling and less research paper or lecture-like, and the last couple of chapters were weaker than the earlier ones. You be the judge of your own reading experience.

I almost always read with music playing, sometimes it plays just in the background, and sometimes it jumps to the foreground and makes me stop reading for a while. Last night, it was Mahler’s Symphony No.2, Leonard Bernstein’s Mahler Symphony No.2 with the London Symphony Orchestra to be specific, that stopped me in my reading track.

A little bit on Mahler. He was an Austro-Bohemian composer and conductor, one of the greatest of his time (1860 - 1911). He wrote ten symphonies (No.10 was unfinished). While the playing time varies by conductor’s interpretation and chosen tempo, all of them are expansive in length and complexity. Symphony No. 2 in C minor, often referred to as the "Resurrection Symphony," is one of his most expansive and emotionally powerful works, said to be a towering achievement in the symphonic repertoire, renowned for its epic scale, rich orchestration, and profound exploration of existential themes and of death, resurrection, and transcendence.²

This particular performance recording is over 90 minutes in playing time, not for a casual music listener. But if you want to get a feel of Mahler, and, Bernstein’s musical power, here is a short clip of the final minutes of its finale, the 5th movement.

It brings me to tears every time I watch it.

And, if you have watched the movie Maestro, and wondered how Bradley Cooper’s conducting is compared with the real maestro, here is a clip providing some interesting analysis.

As to my opinion of the performance in the movie? I like Bradley a lot but his “ecstasy” made me cringe ;).

1. Read about Dr. Prof. Haidt and his book on Wikipedia here.

2. Here “resurrection” has a more universal spiritual meaning than any direct relation to Easter or the Christian scripture.

Spring is indeed here, evident from the cherry blossoms at the Portland Waterfront.

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