I want to explore my view on what success and failure mean.

As always, with language it comes down to semantics. We all mean something different when we talk about success. Everyone is viewing the world through their own filter.

What is important, is to examine what your definition is. Otherwise you can be unconsciously influenced and just wholesale adopt the definitions of others

A few definitions that may be possible

• Make a ton of money
• Have a high status career
• Fulfil all your desires
• Be a moral/good person
• Help people

There are many definitions, and they are all individual.

But success tends to be a way of saying that you’ve fulfilled whatever desires you have. Failure means you haven’t.

What’s wrong with success = fulfilling all your desires?

Suppose you fulfil all your desires. You’ve been incredibly fortunate (or arguably unfortunate). You’ve made money, have a high status job, even have a loving caring family. You might have struggled, been through mental breakdowns, destroyed relationships. You’ve built this edifice. You’re at the top of the mountain.

But you haven’t realised that you will have to climb back down.

But you haven’t realised that its impermanent. It’s all just wooden scaffolding, and one day it will all burn down.

I swear I’m not a nihilist. I’m the opposite. (I’m rationally optimistic)

Maybe a parable will help. This is a Taoist story

May be…

There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically. “May be,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed. “May be,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. “May be,” answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “May be,” said the farmer.

There is no good or bad, only thinking makes it so

The point of the parable is that life is inherently full of loss and gain. You can’t have one without the other by definition.

I’ve internalised this so deeply, that I always instinctively question any praise or criticism. Default thought that comes up is “Is that so?”.

If you choose to define success and failure that way and cling to it, then it causes a great deal of misery.

What’s the alternative?

Accept

In all things have no preferences Miyamoto Mushashi

I don’t tend to think of ‘success’ or ‘failure’ anymore. A more adaptive and useful framing is ‘learning point’.

There is no good or bad, only thinking makes it so. Reality just is. It’s just when our judgement ‘module’ comes online, that suddenly things are deemed good or bad.

You can see this in meditation. You might have this incredible pain in your knee while sitting. You’re struggling, resisting. All because you are ‘thinking’ without knowing you are thinking. Then suddenly you ‘see’ the thought, ‘this is bad’. And that awareness itself, just dissolves the struggle. Immediately. It becomes raw sensation, with ‘thought’ overlaid on top of it. Thinking without knowing you are thinking is the root. It can dissolve it instantly with awareness.

Events are largely up to your interpretation. Loss is not ‘bad’. It is just loss. Gain is not ‘good’. It is just gain.

This way of seeing, I realise is not the norm in society. I look at other people and kind of think they’re definition is weird (maybe I’m the weird one) and it causes a lot of misery.

Fortunately this view has been articulated in Eastern philosophies (and Western stoicism), which is why I immediately connected with them. They articulate it a lot better than me…

But I can tell you its pretty damn peaceful, and paradoxically I’m more effective with basically no ‘stress’.

Desire is not bad… but clinging to it without realising it will change can be unpleasant

Desire is inevitable.

Obviously we all have basic desires for food, shelter etc

But if you haven’t noticed, we also have a desire for security. A desire that things will remain as they are. That we will be untouched by grief, sorrow, loss.

We desire security in an inherently insecure changing world. Expectation and reality collide.

We want one side of the coin: gain, ‘success’, ‘money’. But we don’t want the other.

So we cling to desire and push against loss. Without realising that what goes up must also come down. I encapsulate this into the well known aphorism:

‘Desire is suffering’. It’s that clinging to one side of the coin, without realising that one must accept both.

So how do we think about desire?

Be aware of desires

Be aware of whatever desires you have. Because any desire you have is basically saying : I refuse to be content until this is satisfied.

So don’t have too many! Especially the small ones, like desiring someone to be slightly different because you don’t like something about them, or desiring better weather etc.

Don’t have small desires that accumulate and subtly make life unsatisfactory. Have larger desires.

What are my desires?

Thought this would be a useful exercise to think about.

I have desires in life. Things ‘I’ want.

• Large family
• Time and financial independence

Maybe I’ll get them. Maybe I won’t. But neither is good or bad…

TLDR : Use social media carefully, and drop it if not useful

There has been a recent tech-backlash by people in the industry. Issues to do with attention manipulation, the advertising model and ’the race to the bottom of the brainstem’ led by prominent technologists such as Tristan Harris

A summary of the literature :

• Social media is designed to deliberately maximise time on site and be addictive. You have top level psychologists working at these companies to ensure this. Examples : Youtube ‘watch next’, Facebook’s colour scheme, Pull to refresh, Snapchats’ stories features. This is discussed in several books.
• Several studies are being released correlating excessive social media use with mental health issues.
• The explosion of fake news. The word of 2018 was ‘fake news’
• Algorithmic selection of data resulting in echo chambers and promotion of confirmation bias
• Algorithmic selection of posts to promote outrage rather than nuanced discussion
• Outbreaks of violence driven by false information
• Advertising model misaligning incentives

You basically have an algorithmic supercomputer pointed at your brain trying to get you to maximise time on site

Social media is getting a beating. But I think it is here to stay.

I want to explore if there is a way to use social media effectively. The internet and technology has democratised the tools of distribution. You can literally write code, write thought, create content without going through an intermediary. I think this is a net positive. But as with any new technology, there are growing pains.

These are just a set of rules and thoughts about using social media sensibly.

1. Understand that Nuance is Lost :

Use social media to link to longer form content, videos and discussions The click bait, 280 character, medium can only convey so much information. It is prone to misintereptation. People posting opinions without any real discussion. Just broadcasting a particular viewpoint.

This just leads to shouting without any real discussion. The solution is instead to use it to maximise serendipity by linking to external content.

Content like blogs, videos, essays etc.

On the internet, there are some incredibly smart people making content. Some of the best educational resources are on YouTube. The library of Alexandria is at your finger tips, it’s just lost in a sea of noise. It’s like we are living in Borge’s infinite library on the internet. We just need to separate the signal from the noise.

2.Careful of Who You Follow

You are the average of the 5 people you associate with most. Most of your views actually come from people to follow and admire. Either consciously or unconsciously you select pieces of information and choose to believe it rather than reasoning from first principles.

This is adaptive. If you were to reason everything from first principles you simply would not have enough time. For example, with the Big Bang, I take that as a given theory because I respect the work physicists do. But I couldn’t explain it from first principles. A lot of my beliefs I just take at face value.

So knowing this, who you choose to listen to is of paramount importance. You tend to simply adopt the values and habits of those around you. If you surround yourself with hard working people, it just ends up rubbing off on you.

I can’t tell you who to listen to. But always be skeptical, and where-ever you can, try reason from first principles.

3.Switch it off

Use tools like Screen-time to limit time on site. Deliberately make time to check it rather than impulse checking Apple is my favourite. To call me a fanboy is an understatement. Apple don’t make their money off time spent on their devices. They simply make money from selling devices. They have no incentive in the race for attention.

They’ve shown that they are thinking about these topics, with the release of tools like Screen time. You can limit the amount of time you spend on the sites, and you can schedule ‘downtime’ where you can’t access the app.

They have also made privacy a priority. For all these reasons, I’ve literally never owned an android phone. I went straight from flip phone to iPhone.

Regulate how much you spend on these sites. So many times, I’ve been lost in YouTube. I wake up and realise I’ve spent 3 hours watching funny cat videos. The algorithm plays me like a fiddle. Get some autonomy back, switch it off when you don’t want to be distracted.

4.Create rather than Consume

Use social media as a way to create and share rather than consume It’s really easy to consume content. Much harder to create it.

I think you learn a lot more from creating and doing rather than just reading or watching. If you want to learn how to code, go build something. If you want to learn how to take good photographs, start taking photos. If you want to learn how to make videos, go make a video. If you want to write, write something. Don’t just passively consume media.

One project of mine is to become a better writer, so I started this. I found I was just reading other people’s blogs or books. This is useful, but I learn infinitely more reasoning through topics myself, rather than just watching someone reason it through themselves.

Obviously you start off bad. But you learn through doing. For example :

Instead of using instagram to follow ‘influencers’ (only recently learnt that such a thing exists), you can post your own photos. I really admire Instagram and how they’ve democratised the art of photography. Anyone can take photos now, and post them. You can learn by doing.

5.Don’t trade the mind for the moment

Switch off or don’t look at your phone when talking in real life. You want to 100% be present I love computers. I pretty much spent my childhood on computers. But the computer didn’t follow me around in my pocket all day, providing limitless entertainment back then. It wasn’t a competition between engaging with reality and engaging with a computer.

When talking with someone, don’t look at your phone unless showing something etc. This is basic etiquette.

6.Use tech to educate, not distract

I can either pull out my phone and habitually look at Instagram or Facebook and mindlessly scroll.

Or I can habitually look at ‘Medium’ or the Kindle app, or Instapaper or certain subreddits, or insightful Twitter accounts, or listen to audiobooks or podcasts and watch educational YouTube videos

You can literally read the majority of written word, the stored collective wisdom of civilisations and generations on a black rectangle in your pocket. This is magic.

You can choose how to use tech. It is simply a tool.

Conclusion : Techno-optimistism

I think social media can be used more judiciously, as a way to follow people you really admire, and to keep in touch with friends and family.

The danger lies in not thinking about how you use a tool.

Hopefully I’ll rethink and revise some of my views on the topic in the future and update!

2021 Update : How and Why You’re Using Social media

Why (in order of importance)

• Incentive to create something
• Keep up to date with lives of those you interacts with IRL
• Para-socially follow creative individuals for inspiration
• Validation (some part must be acknowledged) – being seen

How

• Don’t have the app installed on phone
• When I want to make something, I open it and post
• Active use > Passive use

All of the below are extensively backed up with research and in the interest of getting across a message, I’ve omitted referencing.

This information is taken from a couple brilliant books I’ve read called ‘Make it Stick’ and ‘A Mind for Numbers’.

1) Retrieval

Re-reading is not learning. Re-making notes on a topic is not learning. Re-making mind maps by referring to your notes is notlearning. Highlighting your passages and reading them is not learning.

You learn by quizzing, by answering questions. Forcing yourself to actively engage your mind in trying to answer a solution. This feels hard. Learning is meant to feel hard. Rereading is easy. Rereading is a waste of time.

2) Spacing

Spacing is the opposite of ‘massed practice’ which is cramming.

Spacing instead involves doing questions, every day over a long period of time. This is called ‘spaced repetition’. Ignore your intuition- it tells you to keep going over an answer again and again till you are ‘fluent’. But that is a false sense of fluency. That information has gone into your short term memory only, and has not been consolidated into your long term memory. To get information into your long term memory, you need to revisit it in spaced intervals.

Anki is a great tool for this.

3) Interleaving

Interleaving is the concept of ‘mixing up your quizzing’. This means answering questions not in an obvious structured order. For example :

A baseball player practices by hitting 15 straight balls and then hitting 15 curve balls. He will do better at practice. But in the long run, he will not develop competency to hit a curve ball.

Another baseball player practices by setting the machine to randomly fire curve balls. He will do worse at practice. It will be more frustrating. But over the long run, he will learn more.

Mix up your questions sets. Don’t do them in a logical order. This is hard. It forces you to think, to strain. It will feel slow compared to ‘massed practice’. #

4) Elaboration

Elaboration is the concept of explaining concepts in your own words. See the ‘Feynman technique’.

This involves relating a concept to your own life outside of class, creating your own examples and metaphors.

For example, to explain angular momentum: an ice skater speeds up her rotation as she brings her arms closer to her body.

5) Generation

Generation is the concept of trying to answer a questionor solving a problem beforehand, instead of just reading the solution. Have a go at a question/problem, even if you get it wrong, as long as you get the solution you will remember it a lot better than just reading the solution. Studies even show that if you delay getting the solution (waiting for the answers till the end of a quiz) it will ingrain itself deeper into your mind.

6) Reflection

This involves ‘journalling’ on what you have learnt. Asking yourself questions such as :

What did I do wrong?’ What did I do right? How can I improve next time? For example : you might see a patient on ward rounds as a medical student. If working on your communication skills, write down your process. How could you frame a question in a simpler way? Are you speaking too fast or too slow?

7) Calibration

Calibration is aligning your view with objective reality. It is too easy to lie to yourself. You might read over some text, and say ‘yeh, I know this’. Or you might just skip a question saying ‘I definitely know this’. This is called the ‘Illusion of knowing’- where re-reading text gives you a false sense that you know some material.

To get rid of this bias, test yourself. Do quizzes, answer questions. Exams and test results are concrete measures. This keeps you tethered to reality.

If your grades are bad, this is another indication that you are doing something wrong. Don’t take it personally. Look at it objectively. Exams are there to be a compass; something you periodically check to see if you are moving in the right direction.

8) Mnemonic devices

This is obvious. We’ve all been taught this. But use it, it is powerful. One caveat is, these are used only for recall. Mnemonic devices are not a substitute for understanding aconcept. They are simply a tool to help recall information and organise it in your mind. A mental filing cabinet.

Examples :

ROYGBIV to remember the colours of the rainbow.

Mnemonic devices can also be visual. If you want to read more about this, see the loci method. This is visual mnemonic device that has been used for thousands of years to organise large amounts of information. It is a technique used by memory champions. I’ve used it to memorise a deck of cards. It works.

9) Focused vs Diffuse Thinking

This concept is more pertinent to solving problems and creativity rather than memorisation. There are two modes of thinking.

Focused thinking is where you are deeply concentrated on a problem. You’ve got the blinders on and are closed to other possibilities. You need this mode to get work done.

Diffuse thinking is thinking that happens subconsciously in the background. Where your mind is still working on a problem in the background. This often leads to those ‘aha’ moments either in the shower, or when taking a walk or exercising. It allows you to step back and find a new way of looking at a problem.

To optimise problem solving, you want to switch between the two modes. This means – work intensely on trying to solve a problem… then walk away. Literally go take a walk. Your subconscious will work on the problem.