Discreet sets of information

A number of years ago I fell in love with the idea of the notebook. It had taken me a long time to understand exactly what a good notebook was, but once I got it I found it to be one of the most useful tools in my arsenal in life.

To make a long story short, when I was a boy I noticed my father and grandfather using notebooks in the electrical engineering field. They had these magical little books that they wrote in and checked constantly and it seemed to my young eyes that everything about their jobs could be answered in those little black notebooks. In fact, I was not the only person who thought this. Others would often ask to look inside my Dad's notebook to write down a formula or check a fact. Dad was always generous and allowed them to look, but that notebook was never to leave his side.

Years later I was working on a project that required me to learn an entire skill set in a very short amount of time regarding a manufacturing process. I simply could not remember everything and just started writing the most important facts in a notebook so that I wouldn't have to look them up again. After a year or so of this I had a notebook very similar to what my dad and grandfather had had. People asked to see it. A couple people, only half-jokingly, said they wanted to steal it.

I've been fascinated with the idea of notebooks ever since. Partly because I have failed to repeat my first success. Each subsequent notebook I started just became a mishmash of random information. Something wasn't right and I couldn't figure out what it was. However, I think I'm starting to get it.

First of all, the notebook is not the goal - it's simply a tool. If I spend all my time trying to make the notebook into the goal then I quickly lose interest. However, if it's a tool where I crank out the information I can't or don't want to keep in my head then it quickly becomes valuable. Part of the reason that first notebook worked so well was because I was under intense pressure. I didn't have time to think about the notebook, I was too busy learning the job.

Second, the notebook worked best when each page was a discreet set of information. I was building miniature "cheat sheets" in my notebook and over time it became the fastest way to find the information that I needed for that particular discipline. Even now, almost a decade later, I can open that notebook and find exactly the information I need. Sure, some if is outdated, but most of it is not and it is still one of my most valuable reference books.

As an INTP I love information, but I want it quickly, cleanly, and intuitively. I've begun using notebooks again and loose documents kept together in a folder as a type of folio. The most important part of this process though is to create a single-sheet design for each type of information that is uniquely suited to convey the information that I need as quickly as possible.

Whether the format is a notebook or a folio, I find that the art aspect of creating such a document appeals to me greatly and keeps me focused on what I am doing. Even mundane tasks can present me with a great deal of pleasure if somehow they are tied to one of my notebooks.

One final tip, the more "secret" my notebooks are and the longer I can keep them like that the more likely I am to be successful at developing them. If I tell other people about it or they find out then it's almost as if someone has taken a look behind the curtain - there's no reason to continue.

My notebooks are part of my secret world as an INTP. They are for me and for me alone. However, they are not the goal, they are the most beautiful and useful tools I have to achieve those things that I work so hard to do. They are the place where I deconstruct, synthesize, analyze, and convey the knowledge that I have learned.

Tuesday

This was a three-day holiday weekend (Memorial Day), but I worked all three days. On Saturday I worked the majority of the day, on Sunday I taught my Sunday school class, Monday I worked half of the day. None of that really matters.

What does matter is that I finally seem to have broken out of being stuck. I really hit the breaking point when I realized that I need to simply work the way that my wants to work. I can't fight what I am. I finally stepped back and made a simple set of rules to follow when doing anything. These rules seem to be universal, but more testing will be required:

1. Treat each day and situation like taking a day trip, or going to an event. Other things will have to be set aside so that I can focus on what is in front of me.
2. Take care of today's "annoying" items and get them completely out of the way.
3. Make a list of everything else on my mind that will need to be dealt with later. 
4. Get myself mentally ready to do what needs to be done. This may mean taking a break or stepping out for a while so that I can start making the mental shift and eliminate any latent emotions.
5. Clean the area of anything not involved with the upcoming task or project. Set it all aside, file it, shove it into a cupboard, whatever. Just get it out of visual range.
6. Set up the environment for close focus work.
• Get my "kit" of items needed for this project.
• Remove any remaining distractions such as noises, smells, etc.
• Limit potential disturbances as much as possible (phones, etc.)
7. Play the right kind of music for the task that I'm about to do.
8. Do the job in a way that it requires mindful physicality. There has to be a physical act related to what I'm doing that requires some focus on how I am doing as much as what I am doing. This may simply mean writing my notes in the most beautiful penmanship that I can.
9. Art must be in the work. It cannot simply be a task. There needs to be some kind of art or excellence tied to it. 
10. There must be an internal goal that is the target. It is not known to anyone else, but it is what I want. Moreover, I aim at this target without aiming. I focus on the mechanics while the back of my mind remembers the target.
11. Get "close" to the task. Give myself tunnel vision. Set apps to full-screen. Get closer to the white board. Get closer to the document. Whatever it takes to focus on the "sites" not on the "target". 

As I started to put this into play I found flow in each of my tasks. Each step was critical to my success. 

Anxiety and mindfulness

I was reading a series of posts about dealing with stress today at the Refuge and hit on something that I think is important not only for dealing with stress but also for doing tasks and progressing with projects. Here's the whole post. NRJC had just suggested that exercise is a great way to deal with stress. I completely agree, but I began to dig a bit deeper...

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I think NRJC is right, but in a way different than just physiology (and I completely agree about the secondary physical/psychological effects of exercise). Unfortunately, I have a hard time getting myself to exercise because I treat it as a task to be completed. On the other hand, there is something to some exercises that can be very calming for me. In fact there's an analogous situation that has a lot of similar attributes that I find comforting. Let me see if I can put it together.



The analog is driving a car on a long trip. Out where I live it's not uncommon to drive on freeways or highways for a couple hundred miles (typically four or five hours of driving). If I take that trip alone and I do it right I find at the end of the road that I am extremely calm, relaxed, and focussed. I'm "centered". I hadn't really put that together with exercise until this morning when I started dealing with my own minor panic attack. 



I think of a panic attack for me like a thinking storm. It slowly builds and the dark clouds start to come in from the horizon, but before I know it my mind is racing and filled with thousands of thoughts that I simply cannot control. External pressures of the expectations of others are like a storm surge making it even worse. I soon feel overwhelmed and that fight or flight instinct starts to kick in hard. When I was teenager (or a teenanger) I put holes in a few walls, found myself screaming at the empty house, and raging internally. It got so bad that at times I dropped out of the world for days on end. Nobody knew what was going on or how to help me. Like NRJC I am very aware of how dangerous this emotion can be in myself. My temper is something to behold and I keep a very tight rein on it. 



I am still struggling with my storms, but at least now I'm gathering some intel that seems to be helping. So here goes...



First, I have to make up my mind that right now I am going to deal with my mental health. I have to recognize that I'm in the midst of a thinking storm and that I need to deal with it. Everything else is of secondary importance because if I don't handle it soon I am going to be useless to the world. 



Second, what seems to be the most important is to engage myself at multiple levels all at the same time. This is where I see the relationship between me driving long distances and the right kind of exercise. Here's the ideal situation I have found so far:

1. Be alone. I need to be apart. If I am with others then I have a wall up or I'm playing chameleon to their personality.
2. Not only do I have to be alone, but I also have to know that I am not going to be disturbed. When I drive I silence my cell phone. If I exercise I tend to go somewhere where other people will simply not be or where I don't know anyone. The key is that no part of my life can intrude new information during this time period. It's mine alone.
3. Have stimulating music playing. I love a lot of different kinds of music, but for this I really need complex classical music. I need the complexity of the music to give my brain something to jump around inside of and not become bored by. For a while I find myself listening to the cello and the brilliant complexity and skill there. Then I am listening to the violin. Then the flute. Then the kettles. Then a horn. Then I race back to catch the cello again. My mind is constantly carried along. The very best music will invoke mental images unbiden that give me all the more to pay attention to. I have found some blues and jazz does this too.
4. There must be mindful physicality. In the car it's the constant adjustments to keep the car on the road, the speed changes to handle the flow of traffic, and the situational awareness of all that's happening. If it's exercise then it has to be a low-to-moderate aerobic exercise (walking a bit faster than usual, etc.) that does not require a great deal of thought and should not be overly exerting where it's unpleasant. Instead, it should be an almost subliminal, but effortful physical motion that tells my mind "Pay attention to this. Keep doing it carefully. Make an adjustment here. Make an adjustment there." Exercises like weight lifting, intense aerobics, etc. are not good enough for giving me that sense of flow I need.
5. Controlled breathing can be another way of giving the mind something else to think about.

It's essential that there's just enough pressure be put on the mind to keep it rolling along. Interestingly, I have found that reading the right kind of book does this too. If it has enough depth in plot and intricacy in detail I find my mind playing the book like a movie and it keeps me rolling along. After a few days of reading good books I am much calmer and happier. Very few movies or television shows can do this for me. However, I have found that sci-fi has the best chance of making it happen. Again, it's all about having enough complexity that my mind is properly distracted for extended periods.

I used to be a martial artist (I have since had an injury that makes it nearly impossible to continue) and I found that katas helped too. Katas are a series of complex motions intended to teach proper technique and to string different techniques together. They can also be used while visualizing attackers. What I found was that a sufficiently complex kata would cause me to fall into that state of flow. I had memorized it and so I didn't have to think about what to do. However, it was still complex enough that I had to be mindful to keep it moving properly. By visualizing the attackers I was adding another layer of thinking for my mind to go through. Proper breathing added another layer. If I was alone with music playing I could repeat it over and over and end up feeling deeply calm afterward. It strikes me that Tai Chi and Yoga can do the same thing although I always found them a bit too slow to fully engage my mind properly.

Another place I can find this is in marksmanship. I like to shoot small bore rifle and pistol and also air rifles and pistols. These disciplines require the same things: exclusion of outside interruption, general focus on multiple variables simultaneously (safety, breathing, trigger control, body position, environmental conditions, etc.), and a challenge that requires focus but not being overwhelmed by any one single item. It's enveloping and I can spend hours at the range carefully firing at targets. Of course in that environment I avoid the music, but wearing the earmuffs gives me a sense of isolation. Afterward I am completely relaxed and centered again. I have done a little work with a bow and arrow and it's a similar experience.

Hmm....now that I think about it, that's really the state that I want to be in when I am doing anything. I wonder if these "rules" aren't applicable in other situations as well. For some reason my mind just jumped to the image of a Japanese tea ceremony and to writing Chinese calligraphy.

My workload

That guy looks like me, except his office appears to have more natural light than mine. :-(

I'm stuck again. I have a pile of work to do and just can't seem to break through to productivity again. Why why why? Well, the title of the blog is...

1. Sleep. Yeah, it hasn't been so good lately. Not because I can't sleep but because I just haven't slept much lately. I could if I'd just give up and crash, but when I'm stressed I need a few hours before I go to sleep to "process". When I'm really stressed I feel like I need all night. 
2. I have no idea what to do next. This is a real pain. The next action should be the right next action and it's all really vague at the moment. 
3. Seriously, that picture looks like me. I have a backlog of work that would make your eyes bleed if you could see it. There are so many things that are undone in my personal and professional life right now that it's kind of frightening. 
4. It's not like I haven't been doing anything, it's more that I haven't been doing a lot of things that are useful in the long-term.

#2 is probably the one on my mind the most right now. I've had some real breakthroughs in my work lately, but they only have gotten me so far. The next step has to be taken and I just don't have that great of an idea of what to do next. 

Now that I think about it, probably the right answer is to get all the information in front of me and just look at it to let my mind start analyzing it in that mysterious way that it does. I think I'll pull everything out and start tacking it to my white board so I can see relationships and flow. Maybe that will give me some idea of how to move forward...I hope. 

People are systematic

I was reading this article today and was struck by the line "The trick to dealing with [people] is not to think of them as human beings, but as systems that you have to make act the way you want." Now, this can be taken way too far, but there is a nugget of truth there.

People are not machines where you can guarantee outputs based on inputs. Humans always have choice, even if they choose not to exercise it, but people do work systematically. They tend to do things a certain way and according to a certain process because that has worked for them in the past. In that respect it is possible to predict with a high degree of likelihood what a person will do in a given circumstance.

There are a few tricks to doing this though. First, this is observational science not hard science. It is statistical and so I keep in mind that there's always the possibility that things will go differently. It's like betting on a roll of a pair of dice. If given a choice I'll always bet that the dice will come up to total seven because that's the statistically most likely number to come up. However, I'm always ready to assume that I may get something else.

Second, I begin to observe the person and analyze them. Since I can't control what their particular situation is I try to gather as much mental information as I can so that I can get the core ideas down. Soon I have a framework of how the person thinks and works. From there I can work with them in the way that they prefer to work. I can give them inputs with a high degree of knowing what the outputs will be.

The biggest trick though is to be detached. As an INTP I have a high level of empathy with people. I have a naturally strong "theory of mind" for the person across from me and I feel what they feel. This can quickly be exhausting. So, I need to break things up a bit. I have to decide what is important to observe and what is not and filter out the noise. Only then is it possible to accurately deconstruct and systemize what I have learned.

This can be most helpful in business. Most people work with expectations. In its most extreme form you end up with a government bureaucracy where every little banal thing has a form that must be filled out perfectly or it gets sent back. While we can (almost) all agree that this is ridiculous, there are varying degrees of this mindset. People need specific information to take action. They need specific requests to be able to switch into the right mindset to do what you need.

In business people say things like, "That's not the right way to do that," "That's not my job," "Well, he didn't get me what I need," or "How was I supposed to know that?" These are all indicators that the person was observing the situation from a particular system, did not recognize the input, and failed to produce the desired output. Because of this expectation on their part I can build a useful procedure or system on my end to get the desired output.

I think of these people as "black boxes". I input x, y, z and I'll most likely get product 983. If sometimes I get product 783 instead then I look to see how I can improve the inputs without trying to fix the black box. What if I also input a and b? What if I input items in the order z, x, y? I experiment a bit until I get the highest degree of predictability as I can. Then I accept some minor variation in the system.

Doing this allows me to objectively see people. This keeps me from being frustrated by them and experiencing a lot of uncomfortable emotions. It also allows me to minimize contact with people, increase my own effectiveness, and generally make my life easier.

What's the process I go through? It's simple really:

1. What do I want to get out?
2. What does the other person most want to get that also gets me what I want?
3. How can I most effectively and efficiently give that to them?
4. Test - assess - improve - repeat.

Afraid to Start

I'm stuck. I hate being stuck. Every once in a while this happens, but it's been happening a lot more lately...as in, for a decade now. I get started on a project. I get it rolling and people start to rely on me. Then what happens? I get stuck. I procrastinate. I can't start. I won't start. I spend all of my time trying to figure out how to do the job perfectly without ever actually doing anything directly related to the job.

I have strategies to combat this, but they all sound hollow when the time comes. I stare at my computer screen or the stack of papers on my desk. I want to do the right thing, but I can't. I just keep staring.

The guilt starts to build up in me, then the frustration, finally I just shrug and accept it. Another day lost. Another day I can never get back spent fighting myself.

All I can think of is to go into the office tomorrow, shove everything to the side, and go back to my old morning routine. What choice do I have? Stay in the same stinking place forever until everyone knows that I'm messed up?

I want to go curl up in a corner. Only problem is, I'd be right there with me.

Why don't I want to work on this stuff? I think a lot of it is how mundane it all sounds. I'm facing a bunch of customer-service items, not anything truly challenging. What's there to research? What's there to occupy my mind and keep me engaged. It just seems like a horrible shade of gray. If it were black or white I would be fine with it, but the gray just goes on forever.

There has to be something of interest to do with it all. I just can't for the life of me figure out what it is. Guess I'll surf the web for a bit in search of enlightenment. Maybe the answer is out there....yeah, like it's been there for the last ten years and I haven't found it yet?

Broken people

For a long time I tried to fix the people around me, but I finally realized that all people are essentially "broken" and because of that they are often afraid, frustrated, selfish, angry, and hurting - just like me. What people need more than to be "helped" is compassion, patience and kindness.

One thing I think INTPs short-change themselves on is their compassion. Because we can enter into the mind of the other person we can be very empathic and feel their hurt, sadness, frustration, and everything else. Our natural instinct is to either run away or "fix" the problem as if it were actually our problem. But it isn't, we can't fix it and we care too much to run away.

I guess in some ways it's like being a faithful golden retriever. Imagine the picture of a sad little boy sitting under a tree. The dog quietly comes up, sits close, gently puts his head on the boy's lap, and shares in the emotion. It's almost as if he begins to weep and mourn with the child. Occasionally he licks a hand, but he knows all he can do is be part of the experience with the one he loves. There's no judgment, no attempt to fix the problem, no desire to be somewhere else, just a gentle kindness and steady devotion.

Seek to understand and care, but don't try to repair.