Boundaries
When Things Get Complicated
I get my drinking water from a water-can supplier. The way it works is that I place an empty water can outside my door at night and, the next morning, he replaces it with a full water can. I also have an extra full can in case there are delays. This system works out pretty well. I don’t have to worry about him at all. Place empty can outside, receive full can next morning - simple enough.
However, yesterday, the delivery guy took away the empty can but somehow forgot to leave a full can. Suddenly, there was no way I could get a full can. I had to worry about this water-can issue. I needed to call the supplier and explain what had happened and then remind him to place a full can even though there was no empty can outside my apartment. But there could be some complications - the supplier is not necessarily the same guy who delivers the cans in the morning, and that delivery guy may only follow the simple algorithm - see empty can, replace it. So, I needed to call again to make sure that he didn’t forget to inform the delivery guy.
All in all, a simple worry-free system suddenly occupied a decent part of my mind. I had to set aside time for it.
That led to the question: why did I start worrying about it now when I didn’t at all for the last few months? What caused the change in worrying?
The answer, I think, is that I had to do more mental work than before. A simple if-then system became an if-then-else-but-then-also-what-if-errors-occur system. The idea became more “complex”. I had to deal with multiple possible states of the world. There was the world where the water can guy fixed the problem without me having to call him - the best-case scenario. Then there was the world where I called him and he understood and fixed it promptly. Another world was where he disputed the earlier empty can removal and asked me to pay for the loss and we would have to arrange a meeting and work through it and maybe I would pay him. Another world was where he got the idea but his delivery guy didn’t realize that he had to place a full can without there being an empty can; so I would need to make further phone calls and maybe wake up early so I can be there when the delivery guy is around. And so on.
Hypothesis: “Mental load” for a system is proportional to the number of possible states of the system.
(What about their probabilities?)
The same idea holds for the “complexity” of a program. How many possible conditional branches do you have to worry about?
Note: We can ground that in the information-theoretic idea of “uncertainty” by realizing that if you have N possible outcomes and you consider them equally likely, then your uncertainty about them is N x 1/N x log2(N) = log2(N). It’s just a function of the number of states because we act as though a variable is likely to take any possible value. However, if you consider some values more likely than others, then your uncertainty lessens.
Worries and Complications
Hypothesis: Too much state to hold in your head at the same time -> anxiety vs not
Question: What causes worry - too many things in your mind or too many possibilities? Will you feel worried if you have a bunch of unrelated thoughts in your mind? I suspect not.
I think there’s something about not knowing what will happen - having several possibilities for some event - that worries us. Psychologists say that not being in control of a situation is what causes stress. Being uncertain is part of that phenomenon.
Wait. There’s another thing: if you have several tasks to keep track of, all of them uncertain, I think that’s even more stressful than just having one uncertain task. Plus, it matters how severe the risk is - a danger of falling off the roof will crowd out all your fears about your parking tickets.
So what is the full cause of stress? Number of uncertain possibilities in your mind?
Minimize Your Worries
Aim: Have as few things to worry about as possible. Keep your mind clear.
Maybe this is what minimalism is about. You’re trying to reduce state so that you have fewer things to worry about.
How to get minimum state everywhere?
Minimum State With Essays
How do I reduce the amount of state I have to hold in my head regarding essays?
Continuous Delivery
This is the general solution for having as little state as possible.
When you’ve released (and thus tested) your program recently, your new changes will be small in comparison and you can be confident that any changed behaviour comes solely from them, not the original code.
It’s the same idea as functional programming: when you don’t have to care about the state of the rest of the program, your job becomes a lot simpler.
It’s why doing the dishes after a meal leaves me relieved: I don’t have to look at which dishes are clean before I plan my next meal; I can just go ahead and make whatever I want.
Goal-setting leads to Fewer Worries
Why? Because setting goals means deciding which things you’re willing to give up. If you’re going to ride your bike in the evening, you can’t go swimming. If you decide to read a book, you can’t write an essay.
Therefore, you will have fewer things to hold in your mind. For example, if I decide that I’m not going to eat the carrots I’ve stored in my fridge, I don’t have to worry about their use-by date or how I’m going to fit them into my meals. One less thing to worry about. Ditto if I decide to not give a damn about the containers I bought online that turned out to be unsuitable. I could try to return them for a replacement, but I’ve decided it’s not worth the effort. Again, one less thing to worry about.
Thus, setting goals gives you a clear mind. You know exactly what you’re aiming for and what you’re not. You can focus on a few relevant things without pointless clutter.
Hypothesis: Which things do you hold in your mind? What do you worry about? Things that you care about and which you’re not sure will go your way.
So, once you decide that you don’t care about something, that you’re investing your scarce resources elsewhere, then it doesn’t matter whether it goes your way or not. It’s irrelevant.
This is probably how boundaries lead to calmness. When you decide what you’re not going after, like a career in cricket or singing, you don’t need to worry about whether it happens or not. Ditto for reading a book when you’ve decided to write an essay tonight. You can’t do both and writing is more important, so you’re ok if you fall behind on your reading.
In short, how to feel calm? Have less things to worry about. Decide what you’re willing to give up and you won’t have to track it anymore.
Corollary: If you want a lot of things to happen, you will have a lot of things to worry about, and you won’t feel calm. (“lot” is subjective)
Set goals -> decide what you don’t care about -> less state to hold in your mind vs not
Opportunity Costs are Counter-intuitive
Why is this so counter-intuitive?
Because we don’t view actions as alternatives. We don’t realize that if we do one at some time, we can’t do the other. It feels like we can do it all. We can have a great professional life, social life, physical health, sporting skill, cooking skill, and so on. But we can’t. Not all of them, not to their full potential.
What makes actions mutually exclusive is that you only have so much time or money. If you spend a thousand dollars on a Dell laptop, you can’t spend that on an Apple laptop. However, if you don’t think about the costs of an action, it can feel that you need to be doing all of them.
Clarity is the First Priority
There are two factors when it comes to decisions: clarity and goodness.
Decisions can be clear and good, clear and bad, or unclear. Clarity is the high bit because if you haven’t made a decision at all, it doesn’t matter whether it would have been good. A decision has to be made for it to pay off.
Lesson: To be clearer, have a default decision.
Decide what you’re going to have for dinner if you can’t think of anything else. Make up your mind about your study plans if nothing better turns up.
It doesn’t matter if your default decision is relatively bad, have something lined up. It’s ok to make poor decisions sometimes. It’s better than not making a decision at all - what they call paralysis by analysis. You don’t have to make the choice with the maximum expected utility at all times.
Always Have a Default
Test: You should never have a situation where you don’t do anything at all because you’re not able to choose. Always have a default.
Corollary: Your plan for your day is your set of defaults for each time period.
It doesn’t mean your activities are set in stone. It’s just that if nothing better turns up, you know what to do. The same goes for a diet plan. Have a default dinner menu.
You don’t even have to fill your plan with your top priorities. If you’re rushed for time, just mark some half-decent options. But don’t leave it empty - that’s when powerful memes like Youtube videos, Reddit, or junk food move in.
Similarly, have a default for your essay. Yes, it can be a butt-ugly expression of your beautiful ideas, but it’s better than a blank page. This is what I was getting at with my “Hello World Insistence”. At each point, have some default version for your program.
And this is what Continuous Delivery gets at with its insistence of having a released version at each point. The reasons go beyond averting paralysis by analysis, though. Knowing that the previous version is correct simplifies your work and makes error detection easier. But staving off indecision is worthy in itself.
How to Notice Boundaries
Hypothesis: Go through stories of boundaries being upheld and boundaries being broken. That way you’ll notice when things look like boundaries are being broken or upheld.
(Maybe the former alone will suffice.)
It’s a simple case of category recognition. And for that, I believe you need to have stories in which that category is used.
For example, if I always go out for exercise at around 5pm, then when I’m indoors at 5:30pm, I’ll feel that something is wrong. I’ll notice my boundaries being broken. However, if I never go swimming on a regular basis, I won’t even notice that I haven’t swum in around a month.
Hypothesis: Perhaps you need to carry out those activities on a regular basis (or on some recognizable basis) so that you can notice their absence.
Why it’s important to say No
Hypothesis: That’s how you define your boundaries.
If you say yes to a wide variety of requests and have never said no, then that still allows the hypothesis that you’re ok with everything. Remember the scientific method - keep testing till you get a no.
So, you have to draw a line. Tell them which music you don’t like, lest they think that you’re ok with any music. Tell them which actors you think are stupid and which beliefs you think are low-status.
Anxiety
Hypothesis: anxiety <- not investing enough time and effort - i.e., wanting it to be done instantly and without much effort
Observation: apartment search, NRO account conundrum (imagine if I had set aside three weeks to handle it), essay writing, etc.
Lesson: Set aside enough resources for the task and you won’t feel anxious anymore.
Schedules are Testable
Hypothesis: Schedules let you test whether you’re following them. You can tell if you stopped watching TV shows by 11pm. However, if you just distribute your time among activities like a pie, you may not be able to tell how well you’re following it.
comments powered by Disqus