Homo ludens

The range of human passions runs both broad and deep.

If it can be climbed up, slid down, flown, or ridden; if it can be thrown, caught, stacked up, knocked down, pushed, or pulled; if it can be assembled, dissembled, timed, measured, predicted, or drawn at random; if it can be discovered, hidden, organized, jumbled, or deciphered; whatever we can do with our environment, we will do it.

And whatever we do, we will make a game of it. Homo habilis, or “skilled human,” was the early hominid first associated with tool use. We, homo sapiens, are the “thinking humans.” But we can understand ourselves equally well as homo ludens, the game-playing humans.

The games we play, and the communities and subcultures we create around them, make us who we are. Within our games can be found all of our humanity. They teach us cooperation and competition. Communities built around games help us to belong, but also to stand out. Playing sports, we lose ourselves in the moment, achieve a flow state, and brush up against the infinite—our whole being a machine, mind fused to body as one, tuned to one activity in real time, and also outside of time. But games also teach us to strategize, to think long-term, to aim toward goals hours, weeks, or years away. Simon Sinek’s concept of the infinite game, with ever-changing rules and players, is as good a metaphor for life as any.

We tend to assign an air of seriousness to big games with mass appeal—once normal games that have been elevated to cultural events: the NBA Finals, World Cup, or Tour de France. And we sometimes denigrate the most niche games and communities as silly, nerdy, a waste of time. But I think the most niche pursuits reveal the purest beauty in our game play.

The next time you see the cup stacking, cheese rolling, or Tetris world championships on YouTube; or the cornhole world series on ESPN 2; or an ad for a local Magic, The Gathering tournament, don’t think of how many hours the competitors have spent with their plastic cups, or how many dollars on their card decks. They aren’t trading their time and money only to be the best at Tetris or cornhole. They’re trading it for belonging, community, and achievement in general, but expressed narrowly. And for a brush with the infinite.

The best part about a sabbatical.

As my sabbatical comes to an end, and I shift my attention to finding my next job, people have been asking me what has been the best or most rewarding part of this journey. The obvious answers are our wedding and honeymoon. But beyond those, the most rewarding thing I’ve done has been this blog.

Though I’ve fallen out of the habit lately—a dip in creative productivity that I’m taking as another sign it’s time to get back to work—when I was writing every day, a bit of alchemy started to occur.

I felt awakened to a new dimension of experience, which is exactly what I was seeking on this journey. Writing acted as an agent of sublimation for all my sabbatical adventures, pulling together experiences and relating them to each other, so a bigger picture could emerge as if through transmutation.

I hope to find a place for daily or weekly writing in my routine when I get back to work, though I don’t know what it will look like. For now, I’m recommitting to daily writing for the remainder of my time off.

Trains of thought.

As a kid, I used to lie in bed at night, thinking. I’d imagine things, tell myself stories, or replay the day’s events. Eventually it would be late enough that even my kid brain worried I’d be tired the next day, and I would tell myself to stop thinking and try to sleep.

The thing that usually tipped me off that I’d been “daydreaming” too late into the night was suddenly becoming aware of my current thought, and realizing I had no idea how I’d gotten there. When this happened, I’d play a game of retracing my mental steps before falling asleep. It would go like this:

“… velociraptor, that is definitely the best dinosaur. Wait why am I thinking of dinosaurs? I was thinking of basketball practice tomorrow.”

“… dinosaurs, which came from velociraptor, which came from Toronto Raptors … Vince Carter … I wish I could dunk … basketball practice tomorrow.”

Today I was reminded of how I used to play this mental retrace game. I was listening to my meditation app, and the guest teacher Joseph Goldstein retold a Buddhist proverb that compares the untrained mind to a waterfall, always tumbling down. The metaphor that’s more common in Western speech, he continued, is the train. We lose our ‘train of thought’ all the time, which can happen only when we’re identified with (lost in) thought, rather than observing thought. When our minds wander, Goldstein says, it’s like “hopping on a train, and never knowing the next stop,” or even like “falling asleep on a train and then awakening, not knowing where you are or how you got there.”

Awakening is the practice of breaking the spell, realizing you were lost in thought, and no longer being identified with thought. It was fun to remember back to being a kid, and realize that many nights lying alone, I’d been doing something like meditation practice, without knowing it.

Balance and Unbalance.

At Steve Jobs’s funeral, Jony Ive told a story about Jobs’s bottomless perfectionism:

As I’m sure many of you know, Steve didn’t confine his sense of excellence to making products. When we traveled together, we would check in and I’d go up to my room. And I’d leave my bags very neatly by the door. And I wouldn’t unpack. And I would go and sit on the bed. I would go and sit on the bed next to the phone. And I would wait for the inevitable phone call: “Hey Jony, this hotel sucks. Let’s go.”

Luckily for us, Jobs channeled his personal unbalance into a company that tilted the world’s expectations of personal technology products. Jobs famously said that the world is a better place with Apple in it, which is true. But, as Ives noted later in his remarks, the effort took a toll on Jobs and those around him. It’s not always an easy way to live.

All of us would do better work if we were a little more naturally Jobsian. But most of us would also be less happy. One skill I’ve tried to cultivate at work is to constantly raise my own expectations, and to ask over and over again, “Why can’t this be better?”

Luckily for me, this takes effort, it doesn’t come naturally. I don’t have to live with a pathological design sensibility when I’m not at work, and neither do my friends and family. But there are other ways in which I’m unbalanced; over the years, I’ve tried to recognize them, and figure out how to use them to my advantage–instead of fighting it, to throw my weight against something in the world that needs to be shifted.

For introverts like me.

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, I want to share another tip from the Tim Ferriss Show. This tactic will be helpful to introverts like me. And it will help you be a better, more authentic person!

All introverts know the feeling of wanting to exit a conversation at a party. It’s not that you don’t like someone, or that you’re uninterested. You just need a break. Yesterday, podcast guest Kevin Rose shared the best, and kindest, tactic I’ve ever heard for bowing out. Rather than awkwardly dancing around it, hit your desire head on. Here’s what you say:

“There are a few other people here I need to catch up with, but before I do, I really want to hear more about [that last interesting thing you said.]”

This accomplishes three things:

Signal. Gracefully let the person know you’d like to exit the conversation.
Complement. Boost the person by showing you’re listening, and that the things they care about interest you.
Bonus time. Unlike all other tactics for exiting a conversation, you’re not trying to end the conversation now, and you’re not making an excuse. You’re telling the truth. And you’re displaying genuine interest. The end of the exchange is re-framed. Now, you both view the next few minutes as worthy investment of even more time together, because you’re both enjoying the conversation.

Of course this all works better when you really do care and really are interested. This is something I’ve had to work on, and maybe that will be another post. For now, the best trick for really caring about what any person is talking about is, ask better, deeper, more direct, more interesting, and weirder questions.

Live 10th Anniversary Random Show with Kevin Rose — Exploring What’s Next, Testing Ozempic, Modern Dating, New Breakthrough Treatments for Anxiety, Bitcoin ETFs, Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul, and Engineering More Awe in Your Life (#733)

The podcast where I heard this tactic. And here is the book where he heard it.

How to avoid regret*.

(*At least, how to avoid regretting your own prior commitments.)

Two tactics:

“Hell Yes, or No.”
“Pretend it’s tonight.”

I believe Derek Sivers coined these two related ideas. But I heard them secondhand on the Tim Ferriss Show and from Seth Godin, respectively. They are both rules that you can impose on yourself, to avoid committing to things that you’ll later regret signing up for.

“Hell Yes, or No” means, if you’re about to say yes to something, it should be obvious yes, a slam dunk, a no-doubter. If you’re wavering, trying to talk yourself into it, feeling pressured, saying yes out of guilt … any or all of these, feeling even a hint of doubt … then it’s a no.

The second tactic, “Would I do this thing tonight?” reduces the number of future things you commit to, by raising the salience of your own daily energy level, which most people tend to overestimate for their future selves. When you’re invited to do something next week / next month / next year, it’s easy to say yes. Future You tends to never be tired, overwhelmed, in the mood for a night at home. Current You thinks only about the virtues of the proposed commitment. Current You sees the proposal as an opportunity, and forgets or ignores the cost.

But Future You will have stuff going on. Future You will not be as poised, calm, and energized as you imagine him to be. So impose the rule and ask yourself, would I change my plans, drop everything, make the drive … whatever, in order to do this thing tonight. It’s a special case of “Hell Yes, or No,” that works better specifically for time commitments, social plans, events, etc. Because even though you’re obviously busy this week, it’s hard to remember that you’re likely to be equally busy, that week. This trick will reminds you. It forces you to make salient what it actually feels like to plan your day around an event, to move things around amidst real-world logistics, not the Platonic Ideal of a Calendar week. If the thing were happening tonight, and you’d happily drop whatever else was going on and move commitments to attend, say yes. If going tonight sounds like a slog, chances are it will feel that way in a few weeks, when it’s time to get up and go. So just politely decline.

How to access Beginner’s Mind.

A theme of my sabbatical has been learning—either gaining new skills or improving existing ones. I’ve been practicing writing, meditation, and golf. I’m taking my first improv class. I’m swimming again after a long break, and just got out of the pool for the first time this year. Finding my stroke and getting comfortable in the water took some effort. Though I’m not qualified, I gave my mom some tennis lessons, which made me focus on the instruction I’ve received in the few lessons I’ve taken. I tried horseback riding for the first time, and fly fishing for the second. I went skiing and focused on my form, and felt as capable as I ever have on skis.

Not since childhood have I been exposed to such steep learning curves across so many activities in such a short time. It’s fun, and it’s exactly what I wanted out of this period away from work.

I’ve also noticed the compounding effects of learning in parallel across disciplines. When you try to improve across a mix skills—some completely new and some well-established—your mind can tune into the learning process in a deeper way. You can bring the beginner’s mind even to things you’ve done since childhood (like swimming, for me). This means noticing more interesting details in each activity, while somehow simultaneously being less distracted by thoughts in the moment. It’s a great feeling, and one of many good reasons to always be learning new things.

Riding a bike always makes me feel like a kid again. It’s an easy shortcut to that magic feeling of flying, carefree, looking at the world like it’s brand new. Stacking so much learning into such a short period feels like riding a bike. I hope to never forget this feeling.

An epiphany, but more so.

I’ve been trying to find the word to describe a particular phenomenon. The feeling is when you hear something for the first time, and it immediately and permanently changes your worldview. It’s similar to a flashbulb memory, but it’s knowledge rather than memory.

This is more like knowledge you’ve been primed to receive, with the background experience to solidify it, until you hear it distilled into an ultimate truth. For example, a mentor once told me, “I can’t teach or manage for ambition. By the time I meet an employee, nature and nurture have already conspired to give them some amount of ambition and hustle.” Hearing that felt like knowledge I’d never forget, that I’d always believe, both new and not–like I’d already sensed a version of it but couldn’t articulate it. But now, with the clarity my mentor provided, I’ll never lose that insight. It’s like pulling back the curtain on a ground truth, seeing it for the first time in its axiomatic clarity. What’s the word for that profound, transformative experience?

I asked ChatGPT, and it couldn’t come up with anything specific, but coined a phrase, “intimate resonance.” I like the phrase, but still felt like there must be an existing word that was closer to this feeling. I asked Claude, which first suggested “epiphany.” Which is close, but somehow smaller, and not personal enough. Epiphanies don’t always feel profound and direct. I asked Claude to try again.

“Ah, I see, there’s an even more specific term that captures that deeper, personal resonance you’re describing – “satori.”

Satori is a term from Zen Buddhism that refers to a profound, intuitive understanding or sudden spiritual awakening. It goes beyond just an epiphany or realization of a truth. With satori, there is a very personal, intimate connection and recognition of the truth that is being revealed. The key elements of satori that fit your description are:

It’s not just an intellectual understanding, but a deep, almost visceral recognition of the truth.

There is a sense of the truth “clicking” on a personal level, like it was always there waiting to be discovered.

The knowledge immediately feels integrated and embodied, not just an abstract concept.

It produces a profound shift in perception and worldview that feels permanent and transformative.

This feels exactly like the feeling I’ve been trying to describe, and searching to name. I’d like to learn more about satori in the context of Zen Buddhism.

PS–Score one for Claude 3 … on this particular task, their free model seems to outperform ChatGPT’s paid model. This makes me want to explore Claude 3 Opus, their Pro version.

Wisdom gets truer the more you believe in it.

You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day—unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.
Dr. Sukhraj Dhillon

I saw the above quote in a book years ago. At the time, my interest in meditation had begun, but I had not practiced very much or very consistently. The advice sounded nice, but I couldn’t imagine believing it myself, let alone following it. I was just too busy, and the things I was busy with just too important.

Years later, this advice still sounds difficult to follow. But it also feels (to me) more achievable, and much truer. Its meaning has deepened for me as well, such that I can now read this quote in several ways, all of them seeming true.

I think this is a good definition of wisdom in general. Wisdom is a type of knowledge that gets truer the more experience you have with it, the more you believe in it, the more you adhere to it.

When the Spirit moves you.

In The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), psychologist William James wrote:

It is true that we instinctively recoil from seeing an object to which our emotions and affections are committed handled by the intellect as any other object is handled. The first thing the intellect does with an object is to class it along with something else. But any object that is infinitely important to us and awakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be sui generis and unique. Probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. “I am no such thing,” it would say; “I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone.

James is saying that we resist pointing the intellect at matters of the heart, or in this case the spirit. He goes on to say that although this reaction is normal, it’s unnecessary. We can separate the “existential” analysis (what is the thing, where does it come from, how does it behave) from the “value” analysis (is it good or bad). In the end, the value analysis for mental states is intuitive. We can tell the good states from the bad. We don’t need to prove it with science. But in his time, people twisted themselves in knots trying to find anatomical or otherwise deterministic support for arguments that were, at bottom, value-judgments. And people still do this today.