Author Archives: circleofpractice

My Struggle with Deliberate Practice

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Deliberate practice forces me to hold a mirror to my practice. It requires some form of feedback, whether from a teacher or by way of measureable results.

I find I don’t like being measured. And I don’t have a teacher; at least not one I meet with regularly that observes my practice.

It’s easy to get comfortable with practice; to go through the motions without paying attention to them. At that point it’s probably safe to say we’re not getting better at whatever it is we are practicing. Our practice is not without benefit, but is without improvement.

I’m at that point with what I call my “maintenance practices,” practices where my goal is just to do them.

How do you measure meditation? How do you measure the Five Tibetans? You either do them, or you don’t, right?

I read a fascinating post by Noa Kageyama, PhD on deliberate practice; maybe the best I’ve read. Let me see if I can apply some of his lessons to my own practice.

Suppose I’m doing the Five Tibetans tomorrow morning, and that I’ve done them every morning for the past five years. I’ve got the radio going, thinking about what I need to do the rest of the day, while my body goes through the motions of the exercises. Let’s call this practicing mindlessly.

Now suppose I’m doing those same exercises without any kind of background distractions, like music, an audio book, or television. I focus my awareness on my breath, my body, on counting the repetitions. I’m aware of my posture, balance, and form as I perform each repetition of the exercise. Finally I record the experience of my performance in a practice notebook. Let’s call this practicing mindfully.

See the difference? Even a maintenance practice can lead to improvement if we learn to practice mindfully.

When Life Gets in the Way of Practice

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Life is often turbulent, and the water gets rougher with each passing year. Some days it feels like there is no calm water, that there are only rapids, waterfalls, and hydraulics.

How do you practice when CHAOS screws up your day; or week; or month?

One thing that helps me is that my “maintenance practices” are rather short, so that even when life gets crazy, there’s really no excuse for me not getting them done.  These include:

  1.  ganpati kriya in the morning (11 minutes), followed immediately by the Five Tibetans (about 7 minutes);
  2. around midday I do sat kriya (4 minutes), pray (4 minutes), and some yoga or calisthenics of some sort (5 to 30 minutes);
  3. and kirtan kriya in the evening (12 minutes).

That probably doesn’t sound like much; in terms of “hard work” it isn’t. But it keeps me feeling good, fit enough, and healthy enough; enough for me.

Another thing that helps me is to prioritize my practices. I’m a stay-at-home dad, so maintenance practices come first, then household, writing, the mechanics of blogging (page design, etc.), research, and modeling (like statistical models).

Do first things first, and accept that last things can’t always be done today.

My daughter has had a headache since last Wednesday. As I write, we are at the emergency room at Children’s Hospital. This has definitely been a white water day: doctor appointment, chiropractor appointment, my own appointment, and now the ER. In between I’ve managed to fit in the maintenance practices, organize storage in the basement, and type this post in the waiting room.

Life isn’t all about getting things done. My daughter is much more important than any practice.  But the practices help me be a better father, and getting these small wins in the midst of chaos make me feel confident of a better tomorrow.

Practicing Through Depression

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I struggle from time to time with depression.  Not clinical depression.  It doesn’t prostrate me, and usually doesn’t last long.  But when it takes me my discipline flags and I find it difficult to get things done.

I am a morning person, and generally feel more energetic and productive in the morning.  So I try to schedule my “brain work” in the morning and more mundane tasks in the evening. 

But lately I’ve struggled with that routine.  The morning goes by and I find I’ve got nothing “done,” even though I’ve been working.  Maybe I’m trying to do research for a post, or summarize a book, prep work that takes more time than a morning will allow. 

If several days go by without making a post (and lately there have been many), I have a growing sense of anxiety and disgust with my lack of productivity.  Moreover there is little I can point to by way of evidence to my wife that I have been working.  If the days of depression drag on long enough, they can put me in bed.

I’m a stay-at-home dad, so I have a number of mundane tasks around the house that I am responsible for.  When the black dog takes me, if I can keep myself moving by doing these more mundane tasks, then the accomplishment of them begins to shore up my self-esteem.  I grow confident again that I can in fact get things done.  And my wife has evidence that I have in fact been working, and not just staring at the television or talking with friends.

This week I am making an experiment with my routine and scheduling the housework in the morning.  By noon I should be done, and have the rest of the afternoon to work on the blog, confident that I have already got my housework done.

How do you fight through your depression?

Basic Concepts of Social Capital

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Following is from Social Capital: Prospects for a New Concept by Paul S. Adler and Seok-Woo Kwon, The Academy of Management Review. Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan. 2002), pp 17-40. Via JSTOR.

Social capital has at least two perspectives: 1) the social relations existing within a group, such as the members of a church or the employees of a business (internal social capital); and 2) the social relations bridging one group to another, such as the relationships between churches or businesses (external social capital).

Social capital is capital in the sense that it has value, it persists, it can be accumulated or diminished, and it has a contingent future value.  The value comes from both the structure and the content of the ties between persons or groups.  That is, being well connected is generally better than being isolated, and being connected to resourceful, capable, trustworthy persons is better than being connected to persons without resources, ability, or trustworthiness.

The closure of a group is the degree to which the connections of an actor in the group are themselves connected with each other.  The more closed a group is, the more trust there will be and the more enforceable the norms of the group will be.  On the other hand, the brokers (those who are known and trusted) in a more open or sparse group will tend to have more power than they would otherwise have in a closed group (because they control the flow of information and resources between disconnected nodes or groups).

The benefits of social capital include access to information, both internally and externally; influence, control, and power in the form of political IOUs or bridging disconnected groups; and solidarity, i.e. strong norms and beliefs combined with a high degree of closure that leads to lower monitoring costs and higher commitment.

The risks involved with social capital include investment of time and resources in establishing and maintaining relationships that may bear little fruit; project teams with strong ties may be less productive than those with weak ties because they are less costly to maintain; bridging capital becomes less valuable as the actor’s contacts become more connected themselves; solidarity can become a liability when an actor lacks any external ties to the group, or other nodes in the group become dependent on the actor.

Switch by Chip & Dan Heath

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Switch is about how to change behavior, whether of individuals or organizations or societies.  The book is full of research and case studies to help you do just that.  It’s well worth a read; I know I’ll read it again.

They use Jonathon Haidt’s metaphor (which he in turn took from the Buddha) of the elephant (our emotions) and the rider (our reason) to represent the tremendous inertia involved in accomplishing change.

Change in behavior requires three things: clearly state the desired behavior (direct the rider); engage the emotions (motivate the elephant); change a hard problem (teaching people to think differently) into an easy problem (give them smaller popcorn buckets), i.e., change the situation by shaping the path.  The trick is to accomplish all three simultaneously.

In order to direct the rider, we need to learn to look for behaviors that lead to positive outcomes.  They point to research that indicates human nature tends to do just the opposite: we focus on behavior that leads to negative outcomes.  Looking for positive behaviors is itself a learned behavior that requires some practice.

We need to clearly describe for the rider what the critical moves are in order to accomplish the positive behavior.  The most successful goals are behavioral goals, not outcomes.  Until you can describe an idea for change as a behavior, you’re not ready to change.

Show the rider his destination in a way that captures his imagination.  In other words, show the rider how changing his behavior will change his identity.

The elephant has all the inertia.  That inertia is the embodied feelings of the elephant.  To move the elephant you have to move it emotionally; visually, sensually, or via a story.  Numbers won’t move the elephant.

Another way to motivate the elephant is to make it think it’s almost there, that the destination is close.  Break a large task into small steps, and get the elephant to move one step at a time.  Make the change small enough they can’t help but score a victory.

We adopt identities throughout our lives.  Make your change a matter of identity rather than consequences.

The Dilettante’s Dilemma

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I am, without doubt, a dilettante.  I would prefer to be a polymath, but have thus far lacked the determination and resolve necessary to attain mastery.

My life has been very circular as a result of this nature.  I find myself picking up and laying down the same tools over and over again to learn the skill required to master them.

I plow for a season and begin to plant, but then grow frustrated when the seeds I’ve planted don’t seem to grow.  Then I neglect my furrows and let them run wild with weeds while I go looking in the mountains to see what’s growing there.

On the other hand I’ve made peace with myself in this regard.  I accept that I am interested in many things, and won’t be content to focus on one.

Now I find that once again I’ve lost patience with my labors, and doubt whether this blog will ever generate an income, let alone a living.  My fear drives me to consider plying other wares such as modeling or building social capital or hiring me out as a temp.

But even without an income, I like the fruit this blog is bearing.  It forces me to synthesize my thoughts, to wrestle my demons onto at least one page of written text on a regular basis; and to expose them to public approbation or ridicule.

Nor do I need to give up those other fields.  I may not be able to plow them as hard as I could if I focused on one.  But an ecology needs many different plants and animals to be systemically healthy – and so do I.

So I will try to hew a triune path through the wilderness of my desires: of blogging, modeling, and building social capital.  Three I hope will lead to mastery, and blessings to those along my way.

Flow (P.S.) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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The book is about the “flow state” of consciousness: what it is, how it comes about, and the consequences of its presence or absence in a person’s life.

In particular it describes the current existential malaise of western society, describes the flow state, and presents it as a kind of tonic both for the individual and for society as a whole.  It discusses flow in the context of physical, mental, vocational, and social activity, dealing with the accidents of life, and meaning making; and how it can heighten the enjoyment of each.

He defines the flow state as: “…a sense that one’s skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand, in a goal-directed, rule-bound action system that provides clear clues as to how well one is performing.  Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems.  Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted.  An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake, with little concern for what they will get out of it, even when it is difficult, or dangerous.”

Flow activities, “…have rules that require the learning of skills, set up goals, provide feedback, make control possible, facilitate concentration and involvement…”

The book is often cited as one of the seminal works of positive psychology.  At times, particularly in the beginning of the book, it feels like a harangue.  But the insights found in the later chapters are worth waiting for.  The content is useful and applicable to one’s own life.  While I may not read it again from cover to cover, I am certainly likely to refer to it from time to time.

The Talk Dancer

Aside

I have described conversations as one person in a group having an idea and everyone else in the group responding to that idea; then the next person in the group having an idea and everyone else in the group responding to that idea, and so on.

You may reply that conversations don’t actually occur in the way I’ve described.  For example, in a group of 12 people maybe one person has an idea, and only two have a response.  I would argue that everyone in the group has an idea, and everyone has a response.  But that some don’t give voice to either.

That brings me to an idea I’ve been wrestling with for years:  the talk dancer.

The talk dancer is someone who brings everyone in the group onto the conversational dance floor.  He is able to fill an uncomfortable silence with an interesting idea or question that provokes conversation without dominating it; he is able to make those present feel safe enough to participate, and draw ideas or responses from those who are reticent.

For a group to thrive it needs a talk dancer.

I think one of the problems with dividing a group is that if one half does not have a talk dancer, then chances are that the half without a talk dancer will wither and die.  And because talk dancers are such stimulating people to be around, everyone wants to be in the talk dancer’s group.

Moreover I think talk dancers are drawn to other talk dancers because they both share a love for good conversation.  If the group divides, the talk dancers will probably want to be in the same group.  So to add insult to injury, when the group divides one group will likely have all the talk dancers, while the other group has none.

I have not quite figured out how to deal with this dilemma.  I’ve thought about having a secret ballot, and have each person in the group nominate the other persons in the group they think are talk dancers, then have the two with the most votes separate to form new groups.  Or perhaps rank everyone in the group, and sort the odds into one group and the evens into another.  But I’ve never put these ideas to the test.

Constraints on Conversation and the Size of a Group

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Have you ever been in a group, and wondered why that group never grows beyond a certain limit?  It begs the question, ‘How many persons can be in a group before a conversation in which everyone participates becomes nearly impossible?’

Suppose you and I have a conversation.  Our communication is bidirectional: you have an idea, and I have a response; I have an idea, and you have a response, and so on.  I believe this is referred to as a channel of communication.

Now suppose Phil joins our conversation: you have an idea, Phil has a response, and I have a response; Phil has an idea, I have a response, and you have a response; I have an idea, you have a response, and Phil has a response, etc.

You have a channel of communication with me, a channel with Phil, and Phil has a channel with me; three channels of communication.

Suppose Gordon joins the three of us.  With four of us, you have a channel of communication with Phil, a channel with Gordon, and a channel with me (3).  Phil has a channel with Gordon and a channel with me (2).  And finally Gordon has a channel with me (1).  That is, with two people there is one channel of communication; with three there are three, and with four there are six.

What we are doing here is finding the number of combinations of N persons taken 2 at a time.  There is a formula for this:

N! / [ 2 * (N-2)] = N(N-1) / 2

This is a quadratic equation, which of course is nonlinear.  With eight people in a group, there are 28 channels of communication, or 4.5 times as many as there are with four.

In other words, we need to be very sensitive to the length of our conversational “bursts” as the size of our group grows.  With two persons in a one hour conversation, they could each talk for four fifteen minute bursts and still complete an entire conversational cycle (you have an idea, I have a response; I have an idea, you have a response).  With eight in a group, that maximal burst time is reduced to thirty seconds.  With twelve persons, that time becomes fourteen seconds.

Building Social Capital – a Thought Experiment

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I am particularly interested in finding a way for kids to discover for themselves the joy of learning.  I think for me the joy of learning began with a book I enjoyed reading, and then finding another one like it; and then another, and another.  I wonder whether I could help a child do the same.

Suppose I work with a school to find three children interested in reading a book with me, or maybe let them read three different books.  Maybe we meet once a week to talk about the book(s), with me guiding them in a conversation, asking them questions and so on.

I could ask them what they can glean from the title of the book, ask them to state what the book is about in one or two sentences, what are the important ideas are, what they’ve learned from the characters, and so on.

Suppose I teach them what it means to be a talk dancer, and get them to practice talk dancing in our group.

After we read a couple books I ask them whether any of their friends might like to join us.  If we get say eight kids reading together, and there are two kids I think might be reasonably accomplished talk dancers, I split them up so that there is at least one talk dancer in each group.

Now instead of leading the groups directly myself, I encourage them to lead themselves knowing that each group has a talk dancer.  I linger outside the groups, listening to their conversation, encouraging them, and maybe interject a question if their conversation appears to languish.

If we can repeat this process over and over again, perhaps even inviting people outside the school to attend, such as kids from other schools, parents and grandparents, etc, what would be the resulting social capital?

With each division, the number of persons involved would roughly double.  They would be forming bonds, building trust, and discover how much can be learned and enjoyed from discussing books with other persons.  And every group that started from the root group would be connected to all the other groups; that is, at least one person from each group would know someone that could link them to all the other groups.  In just 6 such iterations, there would be over 100 persons involved.  That’s a lot of social capital.