Tag: psychology

The All-Or-Nothing Reflex

I meant to do that.

Kia and I noticed a new behavior on the part of our daughter, right around the time she started to walk and carry things. If she was carrying, say, a glass of milk, and she spilled a little bit, she would immediately dump the rest of the milk on the floor. At first we thought this was accidental, but it soon became clear the action was deliberate; if a little bit was going to spill, then all the milk was going on the floor.

She’s just turned two, and this all-or-nothing reflex is still in effect. She and I were playing with Duplo blocks (the oversize Legos), and she had just constructed something she wanted to show Mommy. Running into the other room, she dropped the creation; it broke into its constituent parts. Instead of crying, she ran back to the table where we were working, dumped the box of Duplos onto the floor, and then swept the remaining Duplos from the tabletop onto the floor, until every last one lay underfoot. The entire time she wore a look of grim, dire concentration; knit brow and pursed lips.

OK, I get it. It’s unsettling to think that you’re not in control of life (randomly dropping things), so you reconcile your physical environment so that it feels like you’re in control (I meant to deposit all the Duplos on the floor). Child Psychology 101, right?

What I found unsettling, after thinking about it, was that I still do this. As do most adults, I think.

Why not break all of them?

The illusion of willpower is a rickety contraption, prone to constant breakdowns. We do what we can to bolster the sense that we control ourselves and our lives. Human beings are in the uncomfortable position of being 100% responsible for our own lives (whether we accept the responsibility or not), while not being 100% in control of our own bodies and minds. We say things we don’t mean to say. We eat things we don’t mean to eat. We’re sometimes nice to people we don’t like, and mean to people we love. We make plans and then do something else, or do nothing at all. In every way the ship is big but the rudder is small; we want to control ourselves (and, even more frustratingly, others), but the best we can do is nudge.

Examples of the all-or-nothing reflex:

altogether quitting a new diet or eating plan after a few cheats
quitting an exercise plan after missing a few sessions
not going to class or stopping studying after falling behind in coursework
never calling a friend because you’ve owed them a call for a little too long
abandoning a creative project after hitting a difficult patch or getting stuck

We’re all familiar with these behaviors, right? All basically equivalent to dumping your milk on the floor …

There is always a motivation for self-destructive behavior. How do we subconsciously benefit? The benefit of the all-or-nothing reflex is that we maintain the illusion that we’re in control, that we’re calling the shots. We also avoid the burden or willpower expenditure of following through with the original plan (rebuilding the Duplo creation, literally or figuratively picking up the pieces).

This picture adequately represents the warring motivational subcenters of the human mind.

Zooming out, it’s worth analyzing our own self-destructive behaviors — even the minor ones. If we consistently sabotage our own success in any particular area of life, there’s probably something we fear about change in that area. What burdens do we imagine success will bring? Are those fears realistic, or can we preserve the things we like about the status quo?

Willpower as a Commodity, Part I

By J.D. Moyer

On January 15

In Metaprogramming

Willpower in action

I’m considering two metaphors for the concept of willpower; willpower as a commodity and willpower as a muscle. I think the second metaphor is closer to the way that most people think about willpower. Willpower is something that can be exercised and strengthened. A person can toughen themselves up. Try hard, and you get better at trying hard.

I think this view is mostly false. Hard things get easier because you get better at them when you do them. Skills that have a steep learning curve, that feel difficult when you’re acquiring them, aren’t going to feel hard for that long. Why not? You can’t have a steep learning curve without having a short duration. If you keep at it, the hard feeling part will pass relatively quickly.

So is willpower a commodity? Is it a raw resource, valuable, scarce, and non-renewable, with multiple potential applications? I think this metaphor is much closer. You can renew your willpower by sleeping, and to a lesser extent with breaks, pep-talks, and sugary snacks, but in a given day willpower is basically non-renewable. Willpower can be drained by any number of innocuous-seeming tasks, anything that requires mental concentration, enduring the unpleasant, complex decision-making, or resisting temptation. Answering complicated email, having to interact with people you don’t like, searching for the best airline ticket deal, trying to NOT eat that doughnut, making lunch for your kid when there’s no food in the house — all these things can drain your willpower quicker a bullet hole in a gas tank.

Some people seem blessed with an abundance of willpower. They have incredible powers of concentration, they can stoically endure the most unpleasant conditions, easily stick to the most spartan of diets, effortlessly delay gratification, and regularly complete grueling exercise programs.

Other less fortunate souls struggle with attention-deficit-disorder and are defenseless against all forms of indulgence. They have to gear themselves up to get the littlest thing done. If there is cake, they will eat it. If there is Scotch they will drink it. If there is the internet, they will waste time on it.

People less naturally endowed with willpower might in fact be the luckier group. If they want to achieve anything, they will quickly learn that they have to guard their willpower against theft and to conserve against waste.

Those born into the first group might stoically labor their entire lives, getting much done but achieving nothing, because they are never forced to develop good willpower management skills.

Personally I think I started somewhere in the middle (by nature and/or nurture) and I’m trying to better use my available willpower with smart willpower management. So what do I mean by that?

IMO willpower management has two sides:

Stopping the Leaks
Doing What’s Important

I’ll cover both in my next post.

The Reward Is The Job – Do You Want The Reward?

By J.D. Moyer

On January 11

In Creative Work/Career, Electronic Music, Life Purpose & Goals, Metaprogramming, Music Business, Writing

Clubbers in Oslo

I’ve been thinking about “long-tail” careers and the people who pursue them (myself included). For careers where there is no “average” success, “long-tail” describes the success curve distribution. Most musicians, artists, writers, and athletes are never going to get much in the way of fame or fortune, while a few extremely lucky and/or talented individuals are going to get the lion’s share of the rewards. So you don’t actually want to end up on the tail … you want to end up as high on the slope as possible (if fame and fortune are what you’re after).

My hypothesis is that the “rewards” of a successful long-tail career are mostly illusory. If you generate a NYT bestseller or Top 40 hit or get picked up by a big league sports team, then of course you get paid and get famous, but what you really get is the JOB of being a professional writer or musician or ball player. So you had better like the job itself; the day-in day-out nitty gritty of consistently performing at a high level.

About six years ago I fell into a long-tail career of being an electronic music DJ. I had co-produced an album (Jondi & Spesh – The Answer) and our label (Spundae) arranged a North America DJ tour to help promote it. The only problem was that I didn’t know how to beat-match (seamlessly mixing two songs together by adjusting the tempo and manually synchronizing the vinyl or CD’s). Beat-matching is no longer a required DJ skill (these days laptop DJ’s can let the computer beat-match for them) but back in 2004 it was a non-optional part of the skill set.

Spesh arranged a “DJ boot-camp.” For weeks he trained me in the mystical art of beat-matching. Imagine a kung-fu training montage, but instead Shaolin monks with swords and spears, think of two white dudes in a studio garage with Technics 1200’s and Pioneer CDJ’s, drinking lots of tea.

The boot-camp worked, more or less. At the end of training, my skills were not world class, but I could get away with mixing records in front of a nightclub crowd (and in most cases not clear the dance floor). During that tour, Spesh pulled more weight behind the turntables, but we played some good shows. Opening for James Zabiela at Circus in LA was especially fun. Amazingly, we were well-paid for these gigs, stayed in the best hotels, and were ferried about in limousines. Ridiculous!

You have to realize that most DJ’s “work their way up” with blood, sweat, and tears, and would kill to have the kind of opportunity that was handed to me. It would be like playing a game of pick-up basketball and getting offered a position on the Lakers, without even having to try out.

On top of this incredible luck, Spesh and I had the additional good fortune of already running our own successful electronic music event in San Francisco (Qoöl). Spesh, along with our talented residents and guests, had built up the crowd for years. Returning from that first tour, I had a resident DJ slot to step into, along with an enthusiastic home-town crowd. I took advantage of the opportunity, continued to improve my skills, and had a great time playing at our own party and at other parties around San Francisco. Spesh and I (well, mostly Spesh) organized a European tour, and we played at clubs in London, Bristol, Hamburg, Berlin, Eindhoven, and Oslo.

Jondi & Spesh were even voted among the top DJ’s in San Francisco from Nitevibe’s popular poll for several years running. For someone more comfortable in the studio behind a computer monitor than on a stage in front of a throbbing crowd, it was all somewhat unreal.

So, was I a DJ? I was acting like one, and externally I was doing all the things a professional electronic music DJ does. I was playing gigs, I was getting paid, I was writing and releasing dance tracks, I was listening to hundreds of free promo tracks emailed to me every week by hopeful producers and labels, and (along with Spesh) I was running my own record label and weekly electronic music event. But I never really felt like a DJ. I had no problem with the label manager or music producer roles (and still enjoy those), but the DJ role never really clicked.

I had gotten a glimpse of what the next level of success looked like, and it didn’t appeal to me.

I don’t like airports. I don’t like sleep deprivation. I don’t like crowds. I don’t do any drugs except for the occasional nootropic. I’m happily married and don’t want to chase club girls around. I don’t adjust quickly to jet-lag. I don’t like hustling for gigs. And I don’t like listening to hundreds of bad dance tracks to find a few that I’ll feel good about playing out in front of hundreds of people.

In short, I’m ill-suited to handle any of the hardships of that career, or appreciate any of the rewards.

OK, that’s not altogether true. DJ’ing is REALLY FUN. There’s nothing like playing great music in front of a great crowd when you’re in the flow. But I’ve admitted to myself that I have no interest in “taking it to the next level” with that particular activity. In fact, I’m going to take an extended break to focus on writing fiction and writing music and running Loöq Records.

I suppose it’s possible that if I had a run of success in one of those other areas, I might get disillusioned with all the hard work involved. Maybe at that point I would run back to DJ’ing. But I think I’m better suited to these other paths, especially writing. I like working long hours in quiet solitude. I like creating characters and worlds. Revisions are difficult, but also satisfying.

I don’t know what the future will bring. I’m going to keep writing every day and do everything I can to become a professional writer. I would love to be able to write fiction for a living. If it means getting up at six am every morning and locking myself in a room until I’ve written 2000 words, so be it. That sounds like fun to me.

Tag: psychology

The All-Or-Nothing Reflex

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Willpower as a Commodity, Part I

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The Reward Is The Job – Do You Want The Reward?

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