J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Category: Metaprogramming Page 14 of 29

Radical Responsibility and the Creative Process

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On June 24

In Creative Work/Career, Metaprogramming, Writing

I'm starting a new company called "BoozeSnap."

I’m starting a new company called “BoozeSnap.”

Yesterday morning I showed up at my writing desk not quite ready to work. I was in a foul mood, a little tired and lazy, and feeling distracted. Not just feeling distracted but actively looking for distractions (which, on the internet, are not hard to find).

After an hour or two of wasting time and wallowing in my bad mood, I figured out (for the eleven-hundredth time) that I had nobody to blame for my mental state but myself. I could have said no thank you to the 18-year-old Lagavulin my friend brought back from Scotland and poured freely at the D&D game. I could have attended one decadent social event instead of two. I could have eaten better, exercised more, and gone to bed earlier.

Radical Responsibility is a form of self-empowerment. To me the phrase means looking for solutions and possibilities instead of excuses, and never passing the buck. It means being ready, brave, and confident. It means exercising my free will (and rejecting fate, powerlessness, and inertia).

Of course, having an ideal and living an ideal are not the same. But the point of having an ideal is to stop pounding your head against the wall before you hurt yourself.

So … I acknowledged to myself and my family that I was in a terrible head-space (I had kind of been taking it out on them up to that point). I sat down and meditated for five minutes. I turned off the wifi on my laptop, opened my working document, reviewed my notes, started writing, and kept writing until I had met my daily quota.

Immediately my mood lifted. I read the work and felt excited by it. 27 days in a row working on my current novel (“don’t break the chain” in full effect). There’s no better reminder that emotions don’t have to control you than pushing through and doing the work anyway.

But There’s a Better Way …

Ideally, I shouldn’t have to expend so much willpower to get rolling. I wasn’t ready but I could have been ready. Artists can choose to be ready physically by being reasonably rested and fed (but not overfed — less is usually more when it comes to food and creative productivity). We can be ready emotionally by not getting entangled in other people’s drama (Polish saying: “not my circus, not my monkeys”), by avoiding disputes and the need to always be right. We can be ready with an abundance of ideas by paying attention to the subconscious mind, by meditating, and by consuming brilliant work by artists we admire. If depression is holding us back we can do something about it. If we don’t have enough time or a fancy working space we can fit in bits of work here and there; we can create a distraction-free zone in some little nook.

We could make an excuse for not being ready, but do we want to? Why not just be ready when it’s time to work?

The Perfect Excuse Guy

When I was in my early twenties I had a shitty temp job at a warehouse packing boxes. I also had a few techno and house tracks signed and published (one with a major label) and I was working on music about twenty hours a week. There was a guy at the warehouse, probably in his thirties, who was interested in electronic music and frequently asked me questions about how to get into it. I told him my story: I had saved up money to buy a keyboard, figured out how to plug it into my computer, taught myself MIDI sequencing, sent demos to labels, and so forth.

Anything I told this guy, he had a perfect answer for why he couldn’t do it himself. A keyboard was too expensive (I had saved over a year before buying mine). He didn’t have time because of his job (I was currently working the same job and producing music nights and weekends). I would try to explain to him how he could get around the obstacles he was setting up for himself, but he always had an answer ready. I would give up trying to convince him, but then he would start asking me about music production again. He clearly wanted to get into it himself. He wanted me to talk him into it! I tried, but the excuse part of his mind always won out, and finally I just refused to talk about making beats with that guy.

A different guy from the warehouse was a DJ. He heard I was producing tracks and asked if he could come over and check out my home studio. I said yes and we had a great production session — we exchanged quite a bit of knowledge in just a few hours. It didn’t turn into an official collaboration, but it left me wondering why the first guy never asked to check out my studio and see what it was all about (I had done the same thing with Josh Davis aka DJ Shadow a few years earlier when we both worked at Steve’s Pizza in Davis, California — Josh showed me his four-track + turntables recording setup which was an eye-opener for me at the time in terms of ways to make music).

I want to be the opposite of the Perfect Excuse Guy. I want to be able to produce and create even when I have shitty tools, no time, not enough money, no great ideas, inadequate skills, and a lack of natural genius. Because I just jump in and start. And then keep going. And then get better. And then keep going. That’s the guy I want to be, forever, no matter the field or the game.

So what’s your story? Are you ready to be radically responsible for your own mental state and creative output?

Motivation Force Multipliers (3 Ways to Sustain and Expand Energy)

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On June 3

In Advice for Young People, Creative Work/Career, Life Purpose & Goals, Mental Health, Metaprogramming

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How can we leverage any sparks of “natural” motivation we might have (our interests, passions, and desires) into steady and dependable motivation that does not fluctuate with our mood? How do we keep working when external rewards are few and far between (for example anybody who is starting out in a new career)?

I spent a few hours last week getting an error fixed for a particular Loöq Records music release on a particular website. The correction involved a number of emails, comparing spreadsheets, auditing code in our database software, rescheduling promotional activities for the release, and so on.

Fixing the error had nothing to do with my love of music production (my original “passion” that led to co-founding a record label). It was just work that had to be done. I didn’t mind doing the work, and then I started to wonder why I didn’t mind doing it. What elements were “bridging the gap” between my love of making beats and this laborious administrative fix that was taking up my time?

“Passion” is never enough to create and sustain a career or an organization. There are always boring bits; there are always difficult bits. You will never accomplish much if you rely only on your “natural” motivation (the things that interest you and excite you).

It’s a no-brainer to organize your career (or careers) around the facets of existence that you find most compelling. But how do you transform this “natural interest” into the kind of day in, day out drive and energy that propels you forward, regardless of external rewards (or lack thereof) and internal mood?

First, if you’re not feeling motivated, it’s important to determine if the problem is external or internal.

If there’s no flow …

If you are really having trouble getting motivated in a particular life area, it might be time to reevaluate. Maybe you should be doing something else instead. There is no merit in grinding away year after year if you are not experiencing any significant external rewards (money, prestige, appreciation) or internal rewards (pleasure, excitement, satisfaction, sense of meaning, enjoyable anticipation of external rewards) from the work.

It’s important to carefully consider major decisions about life areas (jobs, relationships, artistic goals) when you are depressed or discouraged. If possible, fix your brain chemistry first, then make the decision. This is easier said than done, as a heinous job (for example) might be the cause of depression or anxiety. If you’re not sure, ask your family and friends for advice. If they all say your job sucks, your job probably sucks. Some problems really are external (like abusive partners, or dangerous working conditions, or lack of demand for your product or service), and have nothing to do with your mental state or attitude.

For me, this happened with DJing. I had a good run, but at a certain point the “grind” aspects outweighed the rewards. So I stopped.

But if the problem is in your head …

On the other hand, if you basically enjoy the work (or life area), and nothing is obviously messed up about your situation, but still need a motivation “pick-me-up,” consider these three approaches:

1) Serve others

I often ask myself “Who am I serving?” when I work on something. When I work on Loöq Records, I serve the both the artists and music fans. It’s not charity work, but I do remember what a huge deal it was to release my first record on a label, and I try to create good experiences for artists on our label (with good communication, fair royalty rates, and sharing ownership of the process/artistic control).

Bottom line: I feel more motivated when my work is connected to a community, and when I’m empowering others as well as myself.

2) Go for greatness/highest possible quality

Quality doesn’t guarantee success, but releasing sloppy work pretty much dooms a project to failure. If nothing else, going for “great” allows you to feel proud of your work. Before I release or deliver a final version of something, I try to ask “is this the best I can do?” Usually the answer is no, and I’m back to tweaking, editing, or even starting from scratch.

This doesn’t apply to drafts and sketches. Sometimes it’s good to get something rough out there to your trusted inner circle. How else are you going to know if it’s worth pursuing further? Not every idea has to reach completion.

It’s not a good feeling to get feedback or a review that points out an issue that you were already aware of (especially of a “finished” product or release). Why didn’t you fix it? Avoiding that feeling can be a good source of motivation. You probably already know what needs to be fixed and improved, so do it!

Bottom line: pushing up the quality bar almost always increases my desire to work on something.

3) Challenge yourself/blast through your self-imposed limits

Do you ever catch yourself saying “I’m not …” (creative, musical, organized, good at math, etc.)?

How hard have you tried to achieve that result or state of being? What evidence do you have that you truly “can’t” do that?

I’m not saying everyone can be good at everything — obviously not. But it’s easy to underestimate yourself, and it’s easy to be lazy.

If you want to progress, create a simple, smart daily program for yourself and stick to it. If you are serious, commit to that program for five years.

If you don’t have any results after five years, then maybe your efforts are better spent elsewhere. But with any less of a commitment, saying “I can’t …” or “I’m not …” is just self-defeating talk.

Challenge yourself. Make a 5-year commitment to become the kind of person you want to be, and work towards that daily.

Bottom line: it’s tremendously energizing to become something that you weren’t, to do something that you once could not do, to shed the skin of your old self and assume a new form.

What are your own techniques to refocus your energy and increase motivation?

Why Is It Important to Define Your Life Purpose?

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On May 21

In Creative Work/Career, Life Purpose & Goals, Metaprogramming

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It sounds intimidating, to define the purpose of your life. It also sounds unnecessary. Why not just live? Why not just enjoy life, and take each day as it comes?

I don’t think there is any ultimate purpose to life beyond what we decide is important. I think James Altucher puts it well in this post:

“People get depressed now if they feel they are not fulfilling a purpose in life.

Here’s what I think purpose is: the universe doesn’t know anything. So it cut off tiny pieces of itself to go out there and experience things, any things, and then come back home when they were done.

That’s it. So whatever you are experiencing today, good or bad, the universe is learning and happy and grateful to you because it is exploring new things about life.

BAM!

No other purpose.”

I don’t believe in any kind of singular, universal purpose (not even the poetic purpose Altucher describes), but I do feel better and live better when I live by my own principles. What do I think is important? How much am I willing to bet on those values? How ’bout everything. All in.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, in a beautiful response to a question on a reddit (“What can you tell a young man looking for motivation in life itself?”) gets to the core rationale for defining one’s own purpose in life:

“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.”

Love, meaning, and motivation all work together. You can discover what gives life meaning (for you) by listening to your heart (in fact I think this is the best way to discover meaning). For Tyson, increasing personal knowledge and reducing human (and perhaps also animal) suffering reflect his core values (codified into purpose, or “main philosophies” as he puts it). He advises the young man looking for motivation to decide what is important to him, and then act on it.

If the word “purpose” rubs you the wrong way, consider defining your “core values” or “life philosophy” instead. For you, what gives life meaning?

Motivation and Goals

Does motivation automatically flow from purpose and meaning? Not necessarily. Low motivation can be a sign of low dopamine in certain parts of the brain, depression, and/or overstimulation.

But jacking up the neurotransmitters involved in motivation doesn’t actually lead to productive or helpful activity unless there are already well-established habits in those areas (yes, the movie Limitless is a fantasy). For example, bromocriptine is a powerful dopamine agonist. Side effects include gambling and compulsive shopping. Reward-seeking behavior, in other words, but not really what most people think of when they think about motivation. Drugs like modafinil can enhance concentration, motivation, and cognitive abilities, but come with disruptive and potentially health-damaging side effects. Videogames are designed to jack up reward-seeking behavior, and sometimes the dopamine boost can overflow into other life areas. But just as easily, videogames can suck time and energy, providing the feelings of motivation and drive (achievements! points! levels!) without any real-world effects.

Goal-setting can also temporarily increase motivation, but if a goal isn’t purpose-driven, the motivation boost will be short-lived. If I don’t care about money very much, setting a “goal” to become a billionaire isn’t going to do squat. Even if I come up with a plan and work that plan like a maniac, I’m going to lose steam if I don’t actually care about becoming rich. Goals shouldn’t require motivation, they should provide motivation. And goals only provide motivation when they line up with life purpose/core values.

Here’s my own system for turning purpose into action. Feel free to steal it (I’ve stolen all the bits from other people).

1. Make a 5-year commitment that is true to your life purpose (and/or values and/or life philosophy). Where do you want to be in 5 years? As Steve Pavlina points out, we often overestimate what we can do in a single year, but underestimate what we can do in five years.

2. Choose a single actionable goal that supports your 5-year commitment. Give yourself a target date. If it appeals to you, set up additional rewards (completing the goal will be a reward in itself) and “kick-in-the-butt motivators” (I prefer this phrasing to “punishment”) around the goal. For example when I was trying to finish the first draft of my most recent novel, I promised myself I wouldn’t consume any alcohol until I finished (which resulted in this post, and also finishing my first draft).

3. Commit to a daily practice (don’t break the chain!) that moves you closer to your goal. If you can, complete this practice early in the day, when your willpower and concentration are at their highest. If you don’t have that luxury, just carve out some time every day. Even an hour a day of focused work will get you somewhere.

Even if you don’t choose this kind of structured approach to living your life, it’s still worth it to choose your own purpose in life. At the very least, you’ll have something to fall back on when the “What am I doing here?” question pops into your head. And oh yeah, you’ll live longer.

Your Computer is a Gateway to Other People’s Agendas

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On April 30

In Creative Work/Career, Metaprogramming

This cat's day is shot.

This cat’s day is shot.

Until recently, the first thing I did in the morning was turn on my computer. I would then begin a very predictable series of actions: check email, look at news headlines and maybe skim an article or two, check a few sites related to various hobbies, look at the front page of reddit (and click on most of the links), read social media feeds, check my calendar and task lists, check music sales numbers and blog page views, and so on. Probably 25% productivity/work related items, 75% entertainment & news (I consider 95% of the news I consume to be entertainment; only about 5% significantly affects my creative or work activities or worldview).

Luckily, the necessity of getting my kid ready for school would cut the internet browsing short. On good days, once she was off to school, I would disable the wireless connection on my laptop and transition quickly into my morning work (writing, music production, or sometimes work for clients). On other days, I would continue aimlessly browsing the internet, “doing” this or that, effectively wasting part or all my morning.

Sound familiar? Those of you who are self-employed (or unemployed) may relate more than those with the defined structure of a regular job.

When you choose to be self-employed, you gain a tremendous amount of freedom. You also take on the burden of managing your own time and tasks. It’s difficult! Ten years in, I’m still working on my systems. Not just systems for getting things done, but systems for capturing ideas, turning ideas into action, and staying motivated.

The other day I realized that the very act of turning on my computer often translated into giving up part of my free will. Unless I started with a very clear intention of what I was going to do, I would lapse into “habitual use mode.” I would lose track of my own agenda, and instead fall under the influence of other people’s agendas, including:

  • people asking me to do things, or promoting things to me (most of my email)
  • news and entertainment stories that major corporations think will capture and hold my attention (and draw my attentions to ads)
  • advertisers wanting me to buy products and services
  • the opinions of my friends, associates, and other people I follow via social media

These things are not “bad,” per se. I use my computer to track my tasks and calendar, and to communicate with my clients and business partners, and also with my family and friends. So checking various inboxes and my schedule is important. I enjoy seeing what my friends and acquaintances are up to, and what they find to be interesting or notable. Clients asking me to do things is how I make a living (mostly). Family, friends, artists on Loöq Records, and even random acquaintances asking me to do things; that’s not a problem either — usually I’m happy to help.

But on some level I knew that starting my day with the vastness of the internet and requests from other people was not healthy. My own intentions and goals were sometimes getting lost. So I decided to try a new routine.

The New Routine

1. Immediately after waking up (around 7am), meditate for a few minutes.

2. Take some free-form notes in a paper notebook, including dream fragments, ideas for various projects (including music, blog posts, and fiction-writing), priorities and to-do items for the day, random thoughts, etc. Go back and forth between note-taking and meditation until my mind is clear, my subconscious has had its say, and my intentions for the day are well-formed. Maybe my wife and daughter wake up before this process is complete, but even if I just meditate and take notes for a few minutes, it’s an entirely different way of starting the day than turning on a screen and going into reactive mode.

3. Morning routine (make coffee, brush teeth, shower, get dressed, get kid dressed, family breakfast, make lunch, etc.). You know the drill. POWER MORNING BOOM.

4. Around 8:30 am (kid is at school), turn on computer and phone, check messages, tasks, and calendar. Organize day and prioritize tasks. Put out any fires that need extinguishing, respond/complete tasks that take 2 minutes or less (flag or create tasks for everything else). If there is time, check social media and/or news sites, blogs, etc. (I allow myself to do more internet browsing in the evening; at night I’m less inclined to go overboard on internet use  because I’m not procrastinating).

5. Start work, no later than 9am.

Even if I don’t manage to start work by 9am, the important change here is the order of things. Starting with a few minutes of meditation and note-taking sets me up to have clear intentions and goals for the day, and prevents me from slipping into a habitual/reactive mode.

What’s your morning routine? Do you look at  your computer or phone immediately? What kind of “first action” best establishes your outlook and energy for the day?

If you decide to make a change in your routine, please feel free to share your experience and results here.

 

Goals Should Provide (Not Require) Motivation

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On January 6

In Life Purpose & Goals, Metaprogramming, Personal Updates

Goals should electrify the brain.

Goals should electrify the brain.

Over the last couple years I’ve been experimenting with different systems for setting and achieving goals. During that time I’ve hit some walls and changed my mind more than once. Here’s a summary of my current thinking:

One area that I haven’t discussed in detail is that motivational value of the goal itself. Several times, I have selected a goal that seemed to align with my life purpose, but then found myself swimming upstream when it came to taking action. The parameters I set around the goal (target date, reward) had no effect, because my core motivation was lacking.

If the goal itself doesn’t energize you, no trappings applied around the edges are going to light the fires of your motivational engine. Goal-setting doesn’t work as a hammer to pound yourself into something that you’re not. At the best, goal-setting adds structure to something you already want to do.

Steve Pavlina has a good post on this subject. I don’t agree with everything in the article, but Steve makes an excellent point in that the point of goal-setting is not to control the future. The point of goal-setting is to energize you in the present moment.

Energizing and Actionable

Steve’s post references SMART goals (a concept made popular by Peter Drucker), which stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (Steve is not in favor of the SMART system). I think the SMART criteria are reasonable in the context of employee management (Drucker’s field), but they make less sense for individuals trying to “level up” in a particular life area.

My own criteria for goal-setting are that a goal should be:

  1. Energizing (providing motivation rather than requiring it)
  2. Actionable (the goal is such that you can immediately plan and take actions in pursuit of the goal, including setting up a task system and schedule that will in all likelihood lead to reaching your goal, as long as you do the work)

The goals I end up choosing for myself usually end up being SMART goals as well, but for me the SMART acronym isn’t that helpful. It misses the most important thing (that a goal should be energizing, providing motivation), and five criteria are just too many too remember (even with the help of the acronym).

“Today You” vs. “Tomorrow You”

The human brain is comprised of layers, with each layer relating to a different set of functionality. The inner layers are more primitive, and provide motivation and capability to eat, hunt, defend ourselves, claim territory, procreate, and otherwise pursue our reptilian and mammalian prerogatives.

The outermost and most recently evolved layer, the neocortex, enables conscious thought and the ability to understand and visualize time outside of the present moment.

Sometimes human motivation becomes a battle between primitive instincts to sleep, eat, and rest vs. more abstract/cerebral motivations (prepare for the future, work on a project that may offer long-term benefits, etc.). This schism could be considered “today you” (that part of you that is interested in immediate sensory satisfaction) vs. “tomorrow you” (the part of you that considers future consequences of present actions).

Goal-setting tilts the scales in favor the neocortex (“tomorrow you”). This doesn’t necessitate total self-denial. “Today you” can be easily satisfied with good food, adequate rest, time with friends and family, and other animal pleasures. Life occurs in the present, so it doesn’t make sense to endlessly defer gratification. But goal-setting can provide a line of defense: a minimum level of effort dedicated to improving circumstances over time (even if it means minor, occasional discomfort in the present).

Motivation and Brain Health

If your life is devoid of excitement and nothing excites you, you are probably depressed. When I experience a lack of ambition and motivation it’s a red flag for me that my dopaminergic system is out of whack, and that I need to take immediate steps to increase BDNF, encourage neurogenesis, and resensitize dopamine receptors. My basic strategy in this case is to become more paleo (eat less sugar and starch, decrease artificial light and go to bed earlier, exercise more intensely, spend more time with friends and family, and reduce screen time). On top of this I eat more curry and oily fish (turmeric and DHA both increase BDNF, increase neurogenesis, and improve brain health). When I take these steps I generally notice a marked improvement in attitude and motivation within a week (and sometimes just after a day or two).

Personal Update

My own goals continue to center around fiction writing. Though sometimes I feel (as a 44-year-old trying to start a career as a novelist) like I’m tilting at windmills, I recently completed a 2nd draft of novel that I’m reasonably pleased with, and I’m working towards what might eventually become a novel-writing system.

Good luck with your own goals, and Happy New Year!

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