The 90% Rule

I've been learning various productivity rules of thumb that I think are useful, particularly for those perfectionists out there. I, for one, am one of those people who want so badly for things to be perfect that many things don't get done at all, so it's good to be reminded that doing less is often more.

1. The 90% Rule
Don't try to get a project 100% perfect...launch when it's 90% of the way there.

The reasoning is this: most people spend the majority of their time nitpicking at the very end, trying to get something just a little bit better, so they waste time they could spend on the next project (or napping!) on trying to make their current project flawless. Sometimes they don't launch it at all, and in any case it makes the work frustrating instead of fulfilling. The solution is to stop being a perfectionist and launch a project when it's good enough, and then move on to the next one. You end up putting two 90% projects out there in the same time it would take to put out one at 95% (or zero if you get too frustrated). This is a rule the founders of I Can Has Cheezeburger follow, which allows them to crank out lots of popular websites and have fun in the process.

2. 20% Time
Spend 80% of your time on core duties, and 20% of your time working "outside the box".

The idea here is that if you spend all your time looking at the trees you'll never see the forest. Most of our best ideas and innovations come when we're not working on anything at all, as this is what allows us to be inspired. So schedule away 20% of your work time to stepping back and thinking about what you can do different or better. Chances are you'll find more efficient ways to do what you do 80% of the time, or think of things you'd rather do instead. Like napping! Google lives by this rule, and most of their innovations are credited as being thought of during Googler's 20% time.

3. 4 hour work week
Focus all your energies into getting all your work done in a short period of time.

Ever notice that the busiest people seem to somehow get the most done? When you're revved up and focused you can usually crank out a lot more work then when you're lethargic and killing time. Yet our jobs usually schedule us to work long hours so we have enough time to do it all. So instead, reduce the number of hours you're scheduled to work, and then work fast and furious during that limited time. What you'll discover is that the less time you give yourself, the more you'll be able to do in that time, so that you end up accomplishing in one hour what you thought you needed 8 for. Also, by giving yourself less time to work, you focus on the things you really need to do instead of wasting time on the less important items. Once again, those guys who post funny cat pictures live by this. I'm not sure if you can really reduce your work hours to 4 a week, but you can certainly cut hours out and find out you didn't need them.

I wanted to include a fourth rule here, but in the spirit of the 90% rule, I'll end the article here.

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

Jonah Lehrer, writer for Seed Magazine, wrote a follow-up to his book Proust Was A Neuroscientist with a book about decision-making. It is written in a style you would find familiar if you've read Malcolm Gladwell -- anecdotes from exotic and seemingly diametric scenarios to illustrate common universal principles and wisdoms. Unlike Gladwell, Lehrer has a bent towards practical knowledge. The last chapter of his book How We Decide provides a practical set of guidelines on how to apply what he's learned about the prefrontal cortex and dopamine neurons to the way we make everyday decisions.

1. Simple Problems Require Reason
Contrary to popular thought, the more complex a problem, the less we should apply painstaking reason to it. Our prefrontal cortex can only handle 4 to 9 different factors at once, and beyond that we get confused and can be distracted by variables that aren't important. For simple problems like selecting a vegetable peeler, reasoning things out is simple enough for our conscious logic to handle and can help us avoid pitfalls our emotional intelligence makes, like loss aversion where we overvalue potential losses.

2. Novel Problems Require Reason
Our unconscious emotional intelligence is like a supercomputer, able to juggle seemingly limitless variables and find patterns amid complex situations. However, the dopamine receptors of this part of our mind can only learn from experience -- if we have no experience our intuitions cannot be trusted because we have none. In novel situations where we know we haven't encountered the situation before, it is better to ignore our emotional reactions and reason it out. Even if our conscious reason is limited in complex situations, it will still do better than a gut reaction to a problem the gut doesn't know what to do with.

3. Embrace Uncertainty
One of the bigger pitfalls we make when making decisions is rushing towards the comfort of certainty - it leads us to make brash decisions, intellectualize our way to a conclusion that is actually an unverified theory, and ignore facts that conflict with our predefined view of the world. Becoming more comfortable with ambiguity and complexity in our thoughts and feelings allows us to listen more openly to contrary facts and opinions, which makes us able to make better decisions. When a decision is complex and makes you uneasy, try to buy time when possible and give the problem time to percolate.

4. You Know More Than You Know
You can think of your unconscious mind as an opaque supercomputer, and your conscious reasoning as a pocket calculator. The supercomputer is able to tackle anything from how to throw a curveball to complex life decisions, but it depends on experience to learn and its decisions are made opaquely - you don't know how the decision is made, you just feel an urge or twinge of fear that tells you what you should do. The pocket calculator is slower and more limited, but the one thing it can do is doublecheck the supercomputer, which is handy in novel or simple situations. But when you are in a situation where you've spent countless hours practicing and training, you should trust your supercomputer to make a better real-time decision than your pocket calculator. In situations where you have expertise and lots of experience, go with your gut. If you want to tweak your performance in a situation, influence yourself in general terms like "play musically" or "go smoothly", rather than in terms of specific action, to continue to utilize your body's emotional knowledge.

5. Think About Thinking.
Lehrer emphasizes this as the single most important principle to take home. What allows is to improve our decision-making is being able to go back and consider not only the decision, but the methodology behind the decision. Look at past decisions and note if they were made emotionally or rationally, and which worked better in what situations. Become a Student of Error, and start thinking of errors as learning tools rather than things to be avoided at all cost or discarded. When we take this attitude, we learn to make better decisions over time as we increasingly maximize the mental tools we have.

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Malcolm Gladwell's The Outliers

Contrary to the trend of past books where he tries to boil down complex processes into a few simple rules (The Tipping Point, Blink), Malcolm Gladwell argues for greater complexity in his book The Outliers. Attacking the straw dog which is the notion that Success is the result of Genius and Hard Work, Gladwell says there are a host of interrelated factors to success:

1. Meeting the Intelligence Threshold - an IQ at or greater than 115-120. Past the threshold IQ doesn't correlate with success in the long run.

2. Effort - the rule of thumb is 10,000 hours to develop a genius-level expertise in a given area. 10,000 hours is an abnormal amount of time to dedicate to something.

3. History - It helps to have been born on the cusp of a scientific, industrial or social revolution in history. A disproportionate number of the world's richest men in history and the tech world's CEOs, for instance, were all born within a few years of each other.

4. Luck - For that matter, personal timing means getting a lucky break -- having matured physically around the right times for an athletic season, getting access to a blossoming technology right when it came out, knowing someone in the music business.

5. Culture - Born from a cultural background that encouraged certain helpful traits like delayed gratification, persistence, assertiveness, communication, belief that hard work pays off in the end, and a comfortable relationship with authority. Your cultural background creates general personality traits which can help or hinder development. An example of hindering traits is the Appalacean "Culture of Honor" which encourages violence in response to verbal sleights.

6. Parenting - Having parents who practiced concerted cultivation, which means taking an active interest in encouraging success. Without it a child is at a disadvantage.

7. Awareness - Being aware of you cultural and parental biases allows you to bring them to a conscious awareness and overcome them. You can take steps to re-normalize to embrace a more successful life approach. This is perhaps the most important factor - that by being aware of where you come from, you can become who you want to be.

Life And The Creative Process

I attended a talk on wednesday at The Interdependence Project, and it was all about Buddhism and the creative process, centered around two books: The Way of Zen by Alan Watts, and Coming From Nothing by Lee Worley.

Lee Worley says there are 4 stages of the creative process:
1. Be open to a new idea or experience with a fresh mind
2. Trust and go with the experience for a bit rather than trying to
fit it into a pattern you are familiar with
3. Keep taking chances with your actions even after doubt and second
guessing has creeped back into your awareness
4. When a project is complete, let it go, to give room for the
next thing to arise

I was seeing that this creative process is helpful to your life as well as your art. It's an approach that is chasing synchronicity -- an intuitive and open way of approaching experience; a Couldn't Care Less Mind; the Taoist approach of going with the flow, and the Zen approach of doing without doing; no big deal living. When you are open to new experiences, don't pigeonhole those experiences into old paradigms, keep taking chances when doubt comes, and let go of the past, you give yourself the opportunity to make connections with new people, get out of your routine, and really live.

Central to this approach is the importance of awkward space. Like that moment when you're sitting on the subway but you're not listening to your iPod or reading your book or doing some other distraction and you're not trying to avoid everyone around you. It is awkward for a few minutes but then someone talks to you and you make a new friend, all because you let that empty space open for something to happen. Awkward space can be hard to live in at times but it lets new and good things unfold into the breathing room you create in your life.

The DJ

I was thinking about techno/DJ artists and their particular strength, in comparison to other musicians. DJs tend not to create original material, and yet they are every bit a musician as any other type of artist. But they are specialists. In making any song, there are certain elements that when put together could be said to make a great song. This is not a perfect list but it works for this mental exercise:

1. Lyrics
2. Melody
3. Performance
4. Sonic quality
5. Arrangement

It's important that a song have good words and a catchy melody. I'm okay and lyrics and have a knack for catchy melodies so I make a good singer-songwriter; this is my specialty I'm also a good singer but my instrumental virtuosity is limited and spread out over multiple instruments, so I make an average performer. But my recording engineer skills are barely passable and my equipment is low-end (though decent these days due to the speedy improvement of home recording technology), so the sonic quality of recordings I make aren't the best. I'm also not that great at arrangement though I'm learning to arrange elements to build energy in a song.

What makes a DJ unique is that the DJ has specialized entirely in Sonic Quality and Arrangement. A DJ masters equipment and software that allows him to create interesting sound effects and improve the presentation of the material, to levels that regular analog sound engineers can't touch with live music. And the DJ spends countless hours learning how to arrange beats and sound samples in a way that builds up, releases, and rebuilds emotional energy. Anyone who has listened to U2, Fat Boy Slim, or Daft Punk knows how well their songs build in emotional power and intensity through the song. This is the musicianship of the DJ -- they have abandoned Lyrics, Melody and Performance completely in chasing down what may be the underlying backbone of all music -- Energy.

The Three Jewels Applies To Any Pursuit

In Buddhist philosophy, monks take refuge in The Three Jewels -- the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. These are the three foundations of Buddhist Practice -- the Buddha, his teachings, and his community. But in general The Three Jewels can apply to any personal path.

1. The Buddha
This means setting someone to aspire to become, and to believe one can become. This might be a hero or inspiring person in that field, a teacher you study with, or a vision of yourself at a later time. So for instance, if you are a bass player your Buddha might be Flea, or if you are a businessman it might be Steve Jobs. In any case you don't worship your Buddha; rather, that person is an inspiration and helps you keep sight of the person you wish to become by your efforts.

2. The Dharma
This is the body of teachings in a given area. It means that you must be constantly returning to the well of knowledge to grow and develop yourself in that field. For a bassist this might mean lessons, instructional videos, and practice; for a businessman this may mean trade journals, conferences and seminars, and books. Your learning becomes a personal resource to turn to as well as a way to connect to the field and the role you play in the larger picture.

3. The Sangha
This is the community you get involved in -- colleagues, clubs, friends, bands, scenes. Even in seemingly solitary pursuits it is important to find and form communities in your field. They provide a place for learning, teaching, and networking; provides external motivation and support; and perhaps most importantly, connects your pursuit to the outside world, making it take on a meaning larger than the strictly personal. Finding a Sangha and broadening the context of a pursuit beyond your own personal world, while sometimes scary or intimidating, can also be more fulfilling, as well as lead you down rewarding paths you may not have run into otherwise.

There are, of course, risks to each Jewel. Picking the right inspiration, the right teachings, and the right communities is just as important as choosing one at all. And if a group, person, or methodology does more harm than good, drop it and find what works for you. The whole point is to become engaged.

Bliss Routine

The following meditation routine was originally taught by Craig at a Dharma Punx session. You willneed to block out 30-40 minutes in a relatively quiet area. A particularly good session will produce a mindstate of feeling complete awareness, concentration, and elation in the present moment. Even if you don't get an amazing experience out of it, this meditation will still be helpful in relaxing you and helping you to be more present. The routine is as follows:

1. Sit in a comfortable posture with your eyes closed and ground yourself fully, keeping energy in your spine to stay in an upright posture while allowing the rest of you to relax.
2. Scan your body from top to bottom and systematically relax areas of tension, starting with your eyes, jaw, shoulders, chest, stomach, arms, hands, legs, and feet.
3. After a few scans, note what cannot be relaxed at this time. From this point on, accept that remaining tension and don't even regard it as tension. You are in the most natural state you can be in at this time, so accept it as your current state and move to the next phase.
4. Begin bringing your attention to the breath. Pick a particular spot to focus on, like the spot where the air exits the nostrils or the expanding area where the air flows into the lungs. Watch that area.
5. When thoughts come up note them and gently move your attention back to that spot of the breath. If a line of thought completely derails you, you can briefly re-ground yourself, do a quick scan, and then return to the breath.
6. Continue focusing on following the breath and returning to the breath for the next 20 minutes or so. During this time continue to relax your body and bring your awareness more and more into your body, regarding the chatter of your mind as harmless noise as you exist wordlessly within your body, following the breath.
7. When you feel your concentration is good, scan your body again and pick a spot that feels particularly grounded and stable. This is often a chakra point, like the spot between the eyes or the belly button. Move your focus from the breath to that empty, grounded and stable point on your body, and start to really focus and concentrate on that spot. Let that spot ground you inside your body even more fully. You can do this for the next 5-10 minutes.
8. Towards the last 2 minutes of the session, move to the last phase. Open your concentration to all sensations in and around your body at once. Feel your breath, the aches in your back, the numbness of your legs, the air around your head and arms, the tension in your chest, the sounds around you and behind you. Accept it all and enter a state of complete awareness in this moment.
9. Open your eyes and let the visual sensations in as well. Compared to the narrow focus of the breath or the spot you picked, all the sensations of the body and senses are vivid and enveloping in the present moment.
10. To close, take a few deep breaths and then take a bow to thank yourself for the practice you are doing.

After the Ecstasy The Laundry, by Jack Kornfield

The most impactual sections of Jack Kornfield's book After The Ecstasy, The Laundry are not written by Kornfield at all -- rather, they are the first-hand accounts of Catholic Nuns, Buddhist Monks, Jewish Rabbis, and Hindu Mystics, in their own words, as they describe both their ecstatic religious experiences and their all-too-human struggles. Many modern spiritual works read like a how-to-manual on how to achieve a permanent state of happiness and bliss, whereas Kornfield's goal is to expose the spiritual path, warts in all, for both its imperfection and its grace. Nor does Kornfield insist that Buddhism is the only path -- though his focus is on the buddhist path he seeks to highlight the familiar experiences and struggles common in all walks, both in his discussions and in the revealing and tender accounts he shares of others.

The most suprising revelation in the book is Kornfield's assertion that even beings who are enlightened still have struggles, doubts, depressions, prejudices, and family troubles after their awakening. Kornfield even warns us that those teachers that claim to have achieved a flawless ascent and tell us we can too have done more damage than anyone to the buddhist practice. Kornfield's assertion brings into questions our assumptions about what it means to be enlightened. We would like to imagine a Buddha to a Saint to be perfectly wise, moral, and faultless. In reality, though, enlightenment is a fundamental shift in how we approach ourselves and our world, but work remains to be done to apply that new knowledge to everyday struggles. To know something and to act upon it are two very different things, and life tends to throw us challenges that would cause problems for any human, regardless of their spiritual development, simply because we are still human. Buddhism and other spiritual paths transform us in amazing and satisfying ways, but it does so within the humbling confines of the human condition.

That there are qualities to life and being human that no amount of spirituality can overcome is the humbling goal of Kornfield's book, and in a larger sense the goal of Buddhism itself. Life is beautiful and precious, but it is also harsh and painful and this pain is completely unavoidable. Even a loving enlightened being will still suffer, struggle, and die. To accept this deeply painful truth is the path to transforming this life into something that is deeply powerful and fulfilling. Life is not conquered by conquering, it is conquered by utter defeat. In that defeat grows grace, love, rapture, and a lasting happiness.

THE SECRET

Despite being extended into a full-length book, the vast majority of The Secret can be easily condensed into a page of text without leaving anything out. Much of the book is alternative phrasings of the singular concept or self-promotions on how effective this concept is. The book's internal self-promotion is in keeping with the main concept, which posits that a positive attitude towards something will make it more effective. Here is The Secret:

The Law of Attraction: For human desire, like attracts like. When the mind wishes for something the universe provides. Hence wishing for positive things and keeping oneself in a positive frame of mind will attract positive things to that life, and vice versa.

However, the universe only recognizes the positive or negative energy of a wish, not the exact phrasing of the wish. So for instance, if you are constantly worrying about being in debt and are making wishes to yourself like "I hope I don't go into debt" the universe only hears you focusing on debt and gives you debt. So positive wishes must be accompanied by a positive attitude and optimistic frame of mind to attract positive results.

To cultivate a positive frame of mind, the book recommends visualizing the thing you want and fantasizing that it is already yours. It also recommends getting out of negative attitudes and bad moods as soon as they arise because bad moods attract bad things to happen. Relaxation meditation, remembering happy moments of one's life, and doing enjoyable activities are recommended to bring one back into a positive state of mind.

Debates about the true effectiveness of positive thinking aside, the biggest flaw in The Secret is that it is a tool presented without accompanying moral guidance. If one wants to be rich or have a new car, sexual partner or job, one is simply encouraged to wish for those things, without questioning the true value of what one is wishing for. The book focuses very strongly on using The Secret for material gains, and does not discuss or encourage making wishes for the benefit, joy, or well-being of others. Even if The Secret works, it is an empty tool, allowing people to continue to focus on and wish for frivolous things -- new cars, theme park rides, lottery winnings --- that they do not really need for their own happiness.

Every City Has A Word

In "Eat Pray Love", Elizabeth Gilbert has gathered some interesting ideas -- one of them is that each city has a word. That is, each major city has a word that defines the undercurrent or essence of that city and its general inhabitants. For instance, Rome is SEX -- it is a city of relationships and delicious food and sensual sculpture and architecture, and people go to Rome to live a life of the senses. New York City is ACHIEVE, whereas Los Angeles is SUCCEED, which are very different things. Brussels is CONFORM.

In this same fashion, each individual has a word that describes their core essence. When someone's word does not match up with the city he or she lives in, that city may not be the city to stay in. My word might be YEARN or IMPROVE. What is yours?