Today's tech both propels and drags
#156 - maybe a bit too much sugar
Hi there,
I am careful not to make the blog a cooking journal, but the food is irresistible.đ
The week gone saw some gorgeous jam biscuits, and you wouldnât believe the source - an ASDA magazine! To quote a lovely fellow chorister - the delicacies were for choir - âfirm on the outside and fluffy on the inside, they are gorgeousâ. I am getting better at putting my own spin on recipes, while simultaneously having my eyes affixed to the recipe (or increasingly, an all-knowing LLM).
Beyond baking, the week began with sweets and a wholesome Diwali at home, and continued with a series of career events and lectures. The week ahead promises to be intense, with midterms peeking round the curtain.
Highlight of the week: Diwali, no questions asked. Gorgeous food, well-made sweets, pouring of hard work - thank you Mum đ - and some fireworks too. And now we wait for Chr⊠đ€«
Leaving the nest and arriving at university means greater independence, both in the big things you choose to do and the everyday choices you make.
The autonomy is palpable. I can spend the entire day watching cooking videos and not go to a lecture - and no one is going to bat an eyelid. (I donât do this⊠youâd hope thatâs obvious.)
I think my life has become more digitised - Todoist over a paper diary for tasks, iPad over notebooks for notetaking, wearing headphones more often and for longer stints of time.
The marvel of todayâs technology is seamlessness, connectivity and speed. For generations, we have been obsessed with efficiency and capitalist forces driving the cogs to go faster and more furiously.
And this has driven benefits - it takes seconds to call my friend thousands of miles away. I have access to the worldâs best writing on demand (including mine, of course). Any information-based question can be resolved as quickly as youâd like, as thoroughly as youâd like.
However, with speed and innovation comes greed and profit.
It costs essentially nothing to act on any thought you have, immediately. The time from thought to action has been downsized from a mountain to a pea.
As weâve discussed, this is fantastic when it comes to productive thoughts and needle-moving ideas. The concepts of real-time audience feedback and adaptive iterations have become real. The potential for growth feels limitless.
However, as Iâve commented on before, there is another side to the coin. The stickiness of distractions has risen exponentially - it is far too easy to see/think of a shiny new toy and then reach for it, moving away from what you were supposed to be doing.
Some examples: you think of a song (an âearwormâ) and you can immediately ask Google Assistant1 to play it for you. If you like the sound of a classical music piece, you can look up where to watch it in a concert. You think of something you need to buy on Amazon, and you can transport yourself to the virtual shopping aisle. I open my phone to check the time, see a WhatsApp notification and enter a long conversation.
Letâs contrast this. My mum fondly remembers the one hour every Friday night, when people would gather around the TV. The single TV channel would then play Indian cinema songs, splashed with a few new ones - and that was the only fix of music videos for the week.
Why is this a problem? Because anything worthwhile and worthy is built on focus. The ability to direct effort towards a particular task or idea, actively not spending time on other activities you could pursue. Steve Jobs puts it more elegantly.
Focus is saying no to good things.
Giving your mind the space to think, uninterrupted, is how you will solve tasks and how we will solve the great complex challenges the world faces.
More dangerously, this elimination of transaction costs paves the way for a lack of independent thought. We see this through scrolling, a means of escapism and procrastination. And again, the amount of energy you need to put into accessing hundreds of cute baby videos - yes, a soft spot - is virtually nothing. Your evolutionarily energy-conserving mind doesnât stop you - you are going to âfeel happierâ and it doesnât take anything to do.
A darker thought is outsourcing all of our cognitive strain to ChatGPT. I think about this when I reach for it for cooking advice. âAm I really going to learn as a chef if I keep asking for guidance and recipes? Is my growth and self-learning through making mistakes and reflection being inhibited?"
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It is worth noting here how I talk about thoughts, how you observe them. The gold-standard analogy for this comes from Headspace. Your thoughts are sailing on a continuous horizontal stream. You are sitting on a bench, in front of the stream, watching them go by. The speed may change, the weather may vary, and the thoughtsâ frequency and types will cascade - but you are merely observing them. You are not your thoughts.
Thereâs more benefit in observing and simply witnessing thoughts coming and going. At the start, we chase after some and resist some. But as we get better at observing, we see that thoughts come and go; they are fleeting and they are just thoughts - they donât define us. All we need to do is witness them in every moment.
So, whatâs the solution?
Learning to sit still on the bench and look - I am improving at âcatching myselfâ. âAh, Iâm reaching for my phone to check for a new WhatsApp message to distract myself. I did that only 10 minutes ago, I absolutely do not need to now - there is nothing urgentâ. And then you deal with the itch - I tend to surf the urge.
Create artificial friction - this is simple. Stop greasing up the cogs, and it will take more effort - which we donât like - to act on the urge. Put the phone out of sight. Close the email tab. Have a notebook and pen to write down all the to-dos that pop into your head. This is the 3rd Law from James Clearâs Atomic Habits - âmake it easyâ
Speed is great, it allows us to create more value and complete more in a given time. However, it is this very speed that can hinder us from achieving more, by taking us off the rails and down an alley we donât need. Making roadblocks and learning to spot and ignore the alleys is what will make us get to the end of the road and keep making our journey.
Wasnât that nice? Iâm glad I didnât end up having time to write last weekend: letting this idea marinate has produced a piece Iâm rather proud of.
Podcast of the weekđïž
What Now with Trevor Noah: Roy Wood Jr. Gets Real About Fear, Fame, & Fatherhood
Two hilarious comedians come together for a very rich conversation. Not many actionable insights (for me at least), but a fascinating discussion.
What Iâm grateful for this week đ
The ASDA staff member who didnât bat an eyelid to lend me a ÂŁ1 coin for the trolley - incredibly helpful.
Quote of the week đŹ
Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose. Lyndon B Johnson
Have a great week, maybe some Halloween shenanigans too - donât let the cold spook you.
Adi
Yes, I use Samsung.