A response to just the first three questions. I’ve been at CFAR for two years (since January 2018). I’ve noticed, especially during the past 2-3 months, that my mind is changing. Compared to a year, or even 6 months ago, it seems to me that my mind more quickly and effortlessly moves in some ways that are both very helpful and resemble some of the cognitive tools we offer. There’s obviously a lot of stuff CFAR is trying to do, and a lot of techniques/concepts/things we offer and teach, so any individual’s experience needs to be viewed as part of a larger whole. With that context in place, here are a few examples from my life and work:
Notice the person I’m talking to is describing a phenomenon but I can’t picture anything —> Ask for an example (Not a technique we formally teach at the workshop, but seems to me like a basic application of being specific. In that same vein: while teaching or explaining a concept, I frequently follow a concrete-abstract-concrete structure.)
I’m making a plan —> Walk through it, inner sim / murphyjitsu style (I had a particularly vivid and exciting instance of this a few weeks ago: I was packing my bag for a camping trip and found myself, without having explicitly set the intention to do so, simulating the following day with an eye for what I would need. I noticed that I would need my camping spork, which I hadn’t thought of before, and packed it! Things like this happen regularly when planning workshops and doing my day-to-day CFAR work, in addition to my personal life.)
I’m willing to make trades of money for time, like paying for Ubers or shorter flights or services, etc. I used to have a pretty rigid deontological rule for myself against ever spending money when I “didn’t need to,” which I believe now was to my own detriment. I think internalizing Units of Exchange and Goal Factoring and sunk cost and willingness to pay lead me to a) more clearly see how much I value my time, and b) acquire felt “permission” (from myself) to make trades that previously seemed weird or unacceptable, to great benefit to myself and others. I notice this shift when I’m doing ops work with people outside of CFAR and they say something like, “No, it’s just impossible to carpet the entire floor. The venue doesn’t want us to, and besides it would cost a ton of money.” And I say something like, “Well, we really value having a cozy, welcoming, comfortable space for participants, and we’d probably be willing to pay quite a bit for that. What if we had $2k to spend on it—could we do it then?” and they say, “What… I mean, I guess…” Or I’m talking to a friend about paying for membership in a pickup basketball league and I say, “So I might miss one or two of the five games, but I’d gladly pay the full-season price of $130 to play even just two or three really good pickup games, so I’m definitely in.” and he responds with something like, “Huh, well I didn’t think about it like that but I guess it’s worth that much to me…” I feel excited at what seems to me like more freedom for myself in this area. Some good dogfood.
Something needs doing in the org and I have a vision for how to do it —> Just create the 80-20 version of my proposal in 5 minutes and run with that. (This one is insane. It’s wild to me how many things fall through the cracks or never happen because the only thing missing was one enterprising soul saying, “Hey, I spent 5 minutes on this shitty first draft version — anyone have feedback or thoughts?” so people could tear it apart and improve it. I had an experience last week of creating a system for making reference check phone calls and just watching myself with pride and satisfaction; like, “Whoa, I’m just building this out of nothing”. There’s something here that’s general, what I think is meant by “agency,” what I’d call “self-efficacy”—the belief, the felt belief, that you are one of the people who can just build things and make things happen, and here you go just doing it. That seems to me to be one of the best pieces of dogfood I’ve eaten at CFAR. It’s an effect that’s tricky to measure/quantify, but we think there’s good reason to believe it’s there).
I’m in a meeting and I hear, “Yeah, so let’s definitely take X action” and then silence or a change of topic —> Say, “Okay, so what’s going to happen next? Who’s owning this and when are we going to check in about whether it happened?” (Also insane. I’m shocked by the number of times that I have said “Oh no, we totally thought that was a good idea but never made sure it happened” and the only thing required to save the situation was the simple question above. This happens a lot less nowadays; one time a few weeks ago, both Adam and I had this exact reaction simultaneously in a meeting. It was awesome.)
Empiricism/tracking/something. Every time I go to the YMCA to swim, I log the time that I walk into the building and the time I walk out of the building. I started doing this because my belief that “I can get in and out for a swim in less than an hour” has persisted for months, in the face of consistent evidence that it actually just takes an hour or more every time (gotta get changed, shower, swim, shower, get changed—it adds up!), and has caused me stress and frustration. Earlier this year, Brienne and I spent some time working on noticing skills, working that into the mainline curriculum and our instructor training curriculum, as well as practicing in daily life. So I decided not to try to do anything different, just to observe—give myself a detailed, clear, entirely truthful picture of exactly how long I take at the Y. In the two months I’ve been doing this tracking, the average amount of time I spend in the Y has dropped by about 15 minutes. My perspective on “how much time it takes me to swim” has changed, too; from “God dammit, I’m taking too long but I really want to take my time working out!” to “Sometimes I want to have a nice, slow workout, sit in the hottub and take a while. Sometimes I want to move quickly so I can get shit done. I have the capacity to do both of those.” I care a little about the time, and a lot about the satisfaction, self-efficacy, and skill that came from giving myself the gift of more time simply by allowing some part of my system to update and change my behavior as a consequence of consistently providing myself with a clearer picture of this little bit of territory. That’s some sweet dog food.
A response to just the first three questions. I’ve been at CFAR for two years (since January 2018). I’ve noticed, especially during the past 2-3 months, that my mind is changing. Compared to a year, or even 6 months ago, it seems to me that my mind more quickly and effortlessly moves in some ways that are both very helpful and resemble some of the cognitive tools we offer. There’s obviously a lot of stuff CFAR is trying to do, and a lot of techniques/concepts/things we offer and teach, so any individual’s experience needs to be viewed as part of a larger whole. With that context in place, here are a few examples from my life and work:
Notice the person I’m talking to is describing a phenomenon but I can’t picture anything —> Ask for an example (Not a technique we formally teach at the workshop, but seems to me like a basic application of being specific. In that same vein: while teaching or explaining a concept, I frequently follow a concrete-abstract-concrete structure.)
I’m making a plan —> Walk through it, inner sim / murphyjitsu style (I had a particularly vivid and exciting instance of this a few weeks ago: I was packing my bag for a camping trip and found myself, without having explicitly set the intention to do so, simulating the following day with an eye for what I would need. I noticed that I would need my camping spork, which I hadn’t thought of before, and packed it! Things like this happen regularly when planning workshops and doing my day-to-day CFAR work, in addition to my personal life.)
I’m willing to make trades of money for time, like paying for Ubers or shorter flights or services, etc. I used to have a pretty rigid deontological rule for myself against ever spending money when I “didn’t need to,” which I believe now was to my own detriment. I think internalizing Units of Exchange and Goal Factoring and sunk cost and willingness to pay lead me to a) more clearly see how much I value my time, and b) acquire felt “permission” (from myself) to make trades that previously seemed weird or unacceptable, to great benefit to myself and others. I notice this shift when I’m doing ops work with people outside of CFAR and they say something like, “No, it’s just impossible to carpet the entire floor. The venue doesn’t want us to, and besides it would cost a ton of money.” And I say something like, “Well, we really value having a cozy, welcoming, comfortable space for participants, and we’d probably be willing to pay quite a bit for that. What if we had $2k to spend on it—could we do it then?” and they say, “What… I mean, I guess…” Or I’m talking to a friend about paying for membership in a pickup basketball league and I say, “So I might miss one or two of the five games, but I’d gladly pay the full-season price of $130 to play even just two or three really good pickup games, so I’m definitely in.” and he responds with something like, “Huh, well I didn’t think about it like that but I guess it’s worth that much to me…” I feel excited at what seems to me like more freedom for myself in this area. Some good dogfood.
Something needs doing in the org and I have a vision for how to do it —> Just create the 80-20 version of my proposal in 5 minutes and run with that. (This one is insane. It’s wild to me how many things fall through the cracks or never happen because the only thing missing was one enterprising soul saying, “Hey, I spent 5 minutes on this shitty first draft version — anyone have feedback or thoughts?” so people could tear it apart and improve it. I had an experience last week of creating a system for making reference check phone calls and just watching myself with pride and satisfaction; like, “Whoa, I’m just building this out of nothing”. There’s something here that’s general, what I think is meant by “agency,” what I’d call “self-efficacy”—the belief, the felt belief, that you are one of the people who can just build things and make things happen, and here you go just doing it. That seems to me to be one of the best pieces of dogfood I’ve eaten at CFAR. It’s an effect that’s tricky to measure/quantify, but we think there’s good reason to believe it’s there).
I’m in a meeting and I hear, “Yeah, so let’s definitely take X action” and then silence or a change of topic —> Say, “Okay, so what’s going to happen next? Who’s owning this and when are we going to check in about whether it happened?” (Also insane. I’m shocked by the number of times that I have said “Oh no, we totally thought that was a good idea but never made sure it happened” and the only thing required to save the situation was the simple question above. This happens a lot less nowadays; one time a few weeks ago, both Adam and I had this exact reaction simultaneously in a meeting. It was awesome.)
Empiricism/tracking/something. Every time I go to the YMCA to swim, I log the time that I walk into the building and the time I walk out of the building. I started doing this because my belief that “I can get in and out for a swim in less than an hour” has persisted for months, in the face of consistent evidence that it actually just takes an hour or more every time (gotta get changed, shower, swim, shower, get changed—it adds up!), and has caused me stress and frustration. Earlier this year, Brienne and I spent some time working on noticing skills, working that into the mainline curriculum and our instructor training curriculum, as well as practicing in daily life. So I decided not to try to do anything different, just to observe—give myself a detailed, clear, entirely truthful picture of exactly how long I take at the Y. In the two months I’ve been doing this tracking, the average amount of time I spend in the Y has dropped by about 15 minutes. My perspective on “how much time it takes me to swim” has changed, too; from “God dammit, I’m taking too long but I really want to take my time working out!” to “Sometimes I want to have a nice, slow workout, sit in the hottub and take a while. Sometimes I want to move quickly so I can get shit done. I have the capacity to do both of those.” I care a little about the time, and a lot about the satisfaction, self-efficacy, and skill that came from giving myself the gift of more time simply by allowing some part of my system to update and change my behavior as a consequence of consistently providing myself with a clearer picture of this little bit of territory. That’s some sweet dog food.
Hope this gives you something to chew on ;)