For the past few years I’ve read Logan-stuff, and felt a vague sense of impatience about it, and a vague sense of “if I were more patient, maybe a good thing would happen though?”. This year I started putting more explicit effort into cultivating patience.
I’ve read this post thrice now, and each time I start out thinking “yeah, patience seems like a thing I could have more off”… and then I get to the breakdown of “tenacity, openness and thoroughness” and go “oh shit I forgot about that breakdown. What a useful breakdown.” It feels helpful because it suggests different avenues of improvement, that each feel a bit more manageable.
I think I have the most to say about “openness”, which I think is maybe what I most struggle with.
I don’t know that the “desire for closure/certainty” resonates. I think for me it’s more like “antsy to get back to the action”, and sometimes “being triggered and feeling specific resistance to a thing-I-could-be-open-about”, and sometimes “just being bored.” The thing I want doesn’t feel like “certainty” it’s more like “good enough to get back to some other thing, even if uncertain.” (Maybe this is secretly still about uncertainty but it doesn’t feel like it right now)
Hmm, let’s try to call to mind some examples:
Triggeredness/Defensiveness. A recent example, responding to a comment on my post with a defensive need to clarify “I already thought of that!”. I noticed later that this was kinda closing off opportunities to learn more about whatever distinctions the commenter may have seen. (I recall this pattern coming up in the past, on LW and Facebook)
Boredom/Antsiness. While doing Purposeful Practice, and trying to slow down so I can both perform a skill perfectly and do some introspection on what’s going on when I mess up, I just feel wanna DO THE THING FAST.
Desire to share my frame (at the expensive of either original seeing or listening to someone else’s perspective). I don’t have a specific example onhand but I think this comes up a lot. This feels routed through wanting to feel/seem smart and get attention or something.
“Open” vs Undirected
I think there’s an overall issue of… not really believing that the time I’d need to dedicate to persistent open curiosity would pay off.
Hrm, I guess I notice some confusion here. I’m not sure if I’m conflating Open Observation, Open Curiosity (vs Active Curiosity, or “tunnel-visioned” curiosity). I think maybe a distinction not quite articulated here is “open” in the “not tunnel visioned, seeing from many angles” sense, and “open” in “undirected, you’re not trying to achieve a goal or look at any particular type of thing.”
My brain feels pretty sold on “open” curiosity and “open” observation (although still not 100% sure if those are different). What my brain doesn’t feel sold on is “undirected” attention. I believe some good things will happen if I let myself undirectedly observe things, but… I don’t really buy that it’ll be as useful as a more directed version of that. I look at the raven acrobatics anecdote and am like “cool, but… idk the raven acrobatics doesn’t actually seem that useful.” What sort of things would I do that are analogous that’d actually help me?
Note on Perceptual Dexterity
Unlike Tenacity/Openness/Thoroughness, I did remember Perceptual Dexterity as a concept, but I totally forgot it was in this essay.
I notice the section on it feels relatively self-contained. I think it’d be kinda useful to have a post that’s… literally just that section copy-pasted, with the title “Perceptual Dexterity.”
Or, like, maybe make an idealized Best Version of Perceptual Dexterity Essay that could possibly be. But, one thing that I think really helps with learning “patient observation” is, well, to be continuously reminded of patient obseration. I think having a larger number of lower-effort posts that keep it in people’s mind.
For the past few years I’ve read Logan-stuff, and felt a vague sense of impatience about it, and a vague sense of “if I were more patient, maybe a good thing would happen though?”. This year I started putting more explicit effort into cultivating patience.
I’ve read this post thrice now, and each time I start out thinking “yeah, patience seems like a thing I could have more off”… and then I get to the breakdown of “tenacity, openness and thoroughness” and go “oh shit I forgot about that breakdown. What a useful breakdown.” It feels helpful because it suggests different avenues of improvement, that each feel a bit more manageable.
I think I have the most to say about “openness”, which I think is maybe what I most struggle with.
I don’t know that the “desire for closure/certainty” resonates. I think for me it’s more like “antsy to get back to the action”, and sometimes “being triggered and feeling specific resistance to a thing-I-could-be-open-about”, and sometimes “just being bored.” The thing I want doesn’t feel like “certainty” it’s more like “good enough to get back to some other thing, even if uncertain.” (Maybe this is secretly still about uncertainty but it doesn’t feel like it right now)
Hmm, let’s try to call to mind some examples:
Triggeredness/Defensiveness. A recent example, responding to a comment on my post with a defensive need to clarify “I already thought of that!”. I noticed later that this was kinda closing off opportunities to learn more about whatever distinctions the commenter may have seen. (I recall this pattern coming up in the past, on LW and Facebook)
Boredom/Antsiness. While doing Purposeful Practice, and trying to slow down so I can both perform a skill perfectly and do some introspection on what’s going on when I mess up, I just feel wanna DO THE THING FAST.
Desire to share my frame (at the expensive of either original seeing or listening to someone else’s perspective). I don’t have a specific example onhand but I think this comes up a lot. This feels routed through wanting to feel/seem smart and get attention or something.
“Open” vs Undirected
I think there’s an overall issue of… not really believing that the time I’d need to dedicate to persistent open curiosity would pay off.
Hrm, I guess I notice some confusion here. I’m not sure if I’m conflating Open Observation, Open Curiosity (vs Active Curiosity, or “tunnel-visioned” curiosity). I think maybe a distinction not quite articulated here is “open” in the “not tunnel visioned, seeing from many angles” sense, and “open” in “undirected, you’re not trying to achieve a goal or look at any particular type of thing.”
My brain feels pretty sold on “open” curiosity and “open” observation (although still not 100% sure if those are different). What my brain doesn’t feel sold on is “undirected” attention. I believe some good things will happen if I let myself undirectedly observe things, but… I don’t really buy that it’ll be as useful as a more directed version of that. I look at the raven acrobatics anecdote and am like “cool, but… idk the raven acrobatics doesn’t actually seem that useful.” What sort of things would I do that are analogous that’d actually help me?
Note on Perceptual Dexterity
Unlike Tenacity/Openness/Thoroughness, I did remember Perceptual Dexterity as a concept, but I totally forgot it was in this essay.
I notice the section on it feels relatively self-contained. I think it’d be kinda useful to have a post that’s… literally just that section copy-pasted, with the title “Perceptual Dexterity.”
Or, like, maybe make an idealized Best Version of Perceptual Dexterity Essay that could possibly be. But, one thing that I think really helps with learning “patient observation” is, well, to be continuously reminded of patient obseration. I think having a larger number of lower-effort posts that keep it in people’s mind.