Author Archives: circleofpractice

Tie your Practice to Natural Cycles

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An oscillator cycles between states, or varies periodically, like a pendulum that swings back and forth, or like the rotation of the earth, or the vibration of a piano string.

Human beings oscillate in many ways.  Whether by breathing, or sleeping, or the beating of our hearts, our lives are full of cycles.

Coupled oscillators influence each other and tend to synchronize.  If you can tie your practice to one of these, the natural oscillation will tend to reinforce your practice.  But I suspect that if practice is free floating, it is less likely to be accomplished, or may even be dampened by the other rhythms of your life.

The most likely times for practice are at or near those times that are “fixed:” when we get up, just before we eat, just after work, and just before bed.  Even though we may do those things at irregular times, we generally do them every day.  They can serve as anchors in our mind, “Ok, now it’s time to get up and meditate, or go to lunch and run, or go home and play the piano, etc.”  These times of day are themselves oscillators that we can set our biological practice clocks to.

On the other hand, those are often times when we’re hungry and our will power is correspondingly low.  When I’ve failed here, it’s usually because I succumb to hunger.  So maybe we eat something like an orange or apple to tide us over.

Carving out multiple times in the day for practice isn’t easy.  There aren’t a lot of polymaths walking around.  Having a biological, circadian rhythm to tie them to can make it more likely they get done.

Open the Mail

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It may seem strange to think of cleaning house as a practice, but I absolutely do.

For some of you, cleaning house is as easy and natural as falling out of bed in the morning.  But for me it has always been a struggle.  I can remember being a college student, and looking at my room knee deep in papers and trash, completely fed up with my life as a slob; yet having no idea where to begin.

One of my favorite books on practice is Steven Pressfield’s book, “The War of Art.”  I love this passage from his book:

When I lived in the back of my Chevy van, I had to dig my typewriter out from beneath layers of tire tools, dirty laundry, and moldering paperbacks.  My truck was a nest, a hive, a hellhole on wheels whose sleeping surface I had to clear each night just to carve out a foxhole to sleep in.

The professional cannot live like that.  He is on a mission.  He will not tolerate disorder.  He eliminates disorder from his world in order to banish it from his mind.  He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.

Every day I fight two battles.  One is to write at least one essay.  The other is to process the mail.

I hate the mail.  It is pile of decisions that have to be made one after another.  And each decision requires subsequent actions: recycle, shred, file, record, pay a bill, or write a letter.

And if you put it off, the pile quickly becomes a tower of Babel, a black hole of chaos and entropy.  Just the sight of such a pile can immediately suck the life right out of my day.

Hence the keystone habit of my household practice is to process the mail every day, and don’t stop until every decision and action has been taken to its penultimate step.

Practice and the Meaning of Life

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How do we make sense of the world?  Where does meaning come from?

What are trials and tribulations?  What are those memories of life you most cherish?  Oddly for me, they are often those things suffered through.  Especially those where I entered into a deep darkness, and finally after many trials and tribulations, find myself in a breaking dawn of bright sunshine, green grass, and the fresh smell of spring.

We practice those things we care about doing well, or those things we think are important.  And practice is often frustrating, can even be discouraging.

Practice is suffering under control.  It is pain with a purpose.  It is the legitimate suffering neurotics avoid.

When we hang onto our practice through thick and thin, we become aware of our own perseverance, of our power to endure, and of the value of our goal.

The longer we endure, the longer it takes to reach, the more meaningful it becomes; and the more meaningful our life becomes.

On the other hand if we say something is important to us, yet we don’t practice it, in what way is it important?  Anything important takes time, and the way we spend that time is the way we practice.  No time means no practice.  No practice means no importance.

What am I saying here?  This is where journaling can help.  Take a moment to step back.  What are you practicing?  How are you spending your time?  What is important to you?  Are they in alignment?  If not how can you bring them into alignment?

I think a midlife crisis often comes of practicing things that don’t matter, to acquire things that don’t last, to put points on a scoreboard that doesn’t count.

But the practice itself will have taught you the discipline, the persistence, the faith, and hope necessary to change the pursuit of success into the pursuit of significance.

Why wait?

Trust Your Practice

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There will be days when your practice seems futile, when all your work feels like cutting diamonds with a blunt instrument.  You write down a plan, take your measurements, practice the cuts, and then your first cleaving strike shatters the stone into a million worthless flakes.

Failure is part of the practice.  Failure is the feedback that makes your practice better.

It is perseverance that changes your blunt instrument into a razor’s edge.  It is perseverance that changes your frustration into the patience necessary for the tree that is you to blossom and bear fruit.

The hardest part of practice is trusting in its efficacy, even as your progress flattens out, as it inevitably will.

Look at figure 38.1 (actually the first figure in the paper) in this link to Ericsson’s paper, “The Influence of Experience and Deliberate Practice on the Development of Superior Expert Performance”.  Notice the curve labeled “Expert Performance.”  That curve appears logarithmic to me.

Suppose the trajectory of expertise is logarithmic.  If the 10,000 hour rule is true (it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert), and we take the base 10 logarithm of 10,000, then we get log10(10,000)=4 to be the benchmark or threshold of expertise.

Now notice that log10(10)=1, log10(100)=2, log10(1000)=3, and log10(10,000)=4.  In other words, just 10 hours of deliberate practice yields 25% of the skill of an expert, 100 hours yield 50% of the skill, and 1000 hours 75% of the skill.

It takes another 9,000 hours of deliberate practice to acquire the last 25% of skill required to become an expert.  Can it be that it takes nine times the practice to be an expert that it does to be merely competent?  Perhaps that’s why so few of us are experts.

Progress beyond 1,000 hours comes extremely slowly.  It takes more than determination to be an expert.  It takes faith and hope; the faith that your practice is making you better, even when is no visible sign that it is, and the hope of finally mastering that which brings you joy.

The End of Practice

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Why do we practice?

I first began to learn to practice when I began to play football.  I was skinny, weak, and slow.  I didn’t play much, and didn’t play well when I did.

The shame of it drove me to exercise, and the anger of the shame made me work hard.  I got bigger, stronger, and faster.  I played more, and played better when I did.

My best friend got kicked off the team for smoking at the end of my junior year in high school, and I quit out of despair.  I decided I wanted to be a Jedi Knight, and practiced yoga and karate.  I suppose I wanted power.

I went to college.  All the things I was interested in were very mathematical (besides writing of course.  I couldn’t possibly earn a living as a writer.).  The only problem was I wasn’t very good at math.  I hated math through grade school and junior high.  It seemed the most tedious subject on earth.

I decided I’d better get good at math, so I could learn the things I was interested in.  I discovered mathematical beauty, and changed my major.  I worked hard, did well, and made some friends with others so enamored.

One of my math buddies turned me on to the Russian authors, and I fell in love with books.  Ten years later I discovered audio books, and I spent the rest of my mundane moments in the ether of words.

My practice hasn’t made me an expert; it hasn’t even made me a master.  But it has made me happy.

A Model of Practice

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Models are an abstraction of reality.  A model well made can help us understand how the thing modeled works, or how things modeled work together, or provide us with a lab for experimenting or practicing new things without real world consequences.

A model can be as simple as a thought experiment, such as Einstein chasing a beam of light.  Or it can be as complicated as the computational models used for whole genome shotgun sequencing.

What does this have to do with practice?

Models help us understand things, especially with regard to inputs and outputs, with cause and effect, with observation and inference.

Building a good model requires careful observation.  Careful observation involves using as many of the senses as possible, measuring the inputs and outputs, describing qualities, and noticing changes.

The flight simulators used by the military and airlines are nothing but carefully designed models that replicate the cockpit experience of flying as closely as possible.

We can put these ideas to work in our own practice.  Consider recording the time you begin practice, and the time you stop.  Were there any distractions?  Was there any noticeable progress?  Try to describe the experience as closely as possible.  What kept you from practice?  What structures could you put in place to make avoiding practice more difficult?

Are you more likely to practice if you do it first thing in the morning, or as soon as you get home from work?  Are there certain rituals you can invoke that prepare your mind and body for practice?  If a practice goes particularly well, or poorly, get out your practice journal and try to describe what was different.

Try to write a succinct statement of what a perfect practice looks like and feels like.  Include any rituals of approach, of warming up, of cooling down, and writing down any insights gained from your practice.

Build a flight simulator of your own.

The Enneagram as Practice

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The enneagram of personality is a powerful means to self-discovery and self-acceptance.  The practice takes time and discipline to bear fruit, but is worth the effort it takes to learn.

I first became acquainted with the enneagram about three years ago at a seminar on spiral dynamics.  I asked the presenter whether focusing on the various memes wouldn’t lead to making comparisons of oneself with others, and hence to psychological dissonance.  She replied that such might indeed be the case with me, and that I would do well to be aware of it.

Her reply really pissed me off.  And try as I might, I couldn’t seem to shake this feeling of anger.  I tried breathing through it.  I tried to focus all my attention on what she was saying.  But still I was positively glowing with anger.

At the lunch break she was sitting at a table with an open seat, so I sat down across from her and told her of my reaction.  She asked me a few questions about myself, and then told me she thought I was a “4” on the enneagram.  Turns out fours are driven by envy, or rather a sense of inadequacy.  They focus on what is missing from their lives.

In spite of being aware of my jealousy since college, and thinking I’d overcome it, I immediately sensed the truth of what she was saying.  The anger went out of me like water from a flushed toilet.

I began to learn about the enneagram, and something called shadow work, coming to terms with the least desirable aspects of myself.

There’s a saying in psychology that goes something like this, “Whatever gets repressed gets expressed,” or “if you don’t express it, you project it.”

Shadow work begins with being aware of what’s going on in your body.  What emotion are you feeling and where is it in your body?  As you become aware of this you can move into it and accept it, “Oh yeah, I’m feeling jealous,” or “I’m feeling inadequate.”  And somehow that recognition and acknowledgement allows me to exhale.

That’s my ego’s defense mechanism engaging.  But that’s not me.  I am in that ineffable witness beyond labels that experiences these thoughts and feelings, and yet transcends them.

Falling Down Dream Steps

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A big dream is a great leap from wherever you are now.  If you try to clear that gap in one terrific long jump, chances are you’re going to take a big pratfall.

I want to write a book; a great leap from where I am now.  A few weeks ago I read Stephen King’s On Writing, and decided to give up something that was working for me, namely this blog, in order to work on something that is at least two quantum leaps from where I am now, i.e., writing a novel.

So instead of writing a good 300 words a day, I had one day where I wrote 1000 words, and lots of days of nothing.  My confidence went from about a six out of ten to zero.

I tend to bite off more than I can chew.  Instead of eating the elephant one bite at a time, I make like a python and try to eat the whole thing at once.  When it doesn’t work I don’t change my strategy, I look for another elephant.

That at least has been my modus operandi for the first half of my life.  It hasn’t worked.

So I’m back to what was working for me: write one coherent 250 word essay each working day.  And on top of that, I’m now going to add this “dream step:” write 250 words of dialogue each day.  Once I can consistently achieve both, I’ll take another dream step.

The python strategy is for comics books, where Peter Parker can get bitten by an atomic spider and turn into Spiderman.  Michael Phelps didn’t get bit by a spider, or struck by lightning.  He just followed a careful plan of small wins that eventually led to 22 Olympic medals.

Dream steps are the stairway to heaven.

Divide and Conquer

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In my last post I suggested that a group should divide when it reaches 10 to 12 people in size.  The reason for that division was that the lack of bandwidth available beyond eight people strangles any discussion of ideas.

The fact is most “successful” groups do not want to divide.  The group is successful because the members share an interest, enjoy one another’s company, and develop friendships.  Division threatens all those things.

Most of us have memories of being divided into a group that was “left out” in some way.  If told to divide, people will choose to be with those members of their group that have the most “status.”  That is, those with the most attractive characteristics, such as ability, attitude, gregariousness, etc.  Those with the most status will crowd into one group, leaving those with least status behind in the other.  Folks in the second group are going to feel left out, and are likely to drop out if there is no compulsion to attend.

But if from the beginning the group practices the ideas of talk dancing, bandwidth, and the Occupy Wall Street hand signals, then it is likely that by the time the group is large enough to divide, everyone in the group will have become more confident, more bandwidth-aware, and more like a talk dancer.

If this is true, then randomly dividing the group in two might actually work.  It would take some research to make this determination for certain, but it does seem plausible to me.  Maybe you alphabetize by name and divide in two.

Moreover if the group can meet in a place that can accommodate a few divisions before bursting the walls, then those original ties can be maintained in the committee of the whole while new acquaintance can be deepened in the small group breakout sessions.  And even if the committee of the whole does burst the walls, it could rent out a larger space periodically (say quarterly or annually) to renew those ties that are split by group mitosis.

Think of all the ideas and goodwill that could be mobilized around a mission in a self-organizing and self replicating way: 12, 24, 48, and 96 connected members in just four iterations.  Divide and Conquer.

Optimal Conversation and Group Mitosis

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How can we optimize the conversational experience of a group, and once the group gets too large, divide the group in such a way that the conversational quality of the two groups is maintained?

The quality of a conversation is directly proportional to the number of ideas presented and understood therein.

Ideas increase with both the number and diversity of participants.

Understanding requires dialectical inquiry, which in turn requires bandwidth.

I define bandwidth to be the number of minutes in one hour each person has to communicate her ideas to the others in the group in such a manner that each person has an equal opportunity to speak.  For example, a conversation between two people shares one channel of communication and each has thirty minutes of bandwidth.  A conversation between eight people shares 28 channels of communication and each person has about one minute of bandwidth.

When the group forms, members are familiarized with the ideas of talk dancing, bandwidth, and with the Occupy Wall Street Hand Signals.  The group is responsible for the conversational flow, and those who do not respect the bandwidth of others should expect to be called to order by the “wrap it up” hand signal from others in the group.

My own experience suggests the optimal group size to be about 8 people.  Eight people can have a lot of ideas.  More than 8 people in a group imply less than a minute of bandwidth for each person.  It’s hard to express an interesting idea in less than a minute.  By the time you get to twelve in a group there is less than thirty seconds of bandwidth available.

I would suggest that a group divide in two when it reaches about ten people, and certainly no more than twelve.  Let the group elect a ballot counter.  Then each person write down their own name together with four (if there are 10 in the group) or five (if twelve) others they would like in their group.  Then divide the groups so that everyone has at least one person they wanted in their group besides themselves.

If there are persons with less than five votes then there are those with more than five.  Pair off the ones with the most votes with those with the least.