3rd sept 2013

I’m convinced that good book summaries and quotes are important. It’s startling to go through a good book and then find that it’s almost criminally under-shared. It seems to me- and I don’t want to be condescending about this, but it’s a little hard not to seem it- that most people don’t do the reading. They just stay on top of current affairs and news that’s passed through many different hands. It’s the information dietary equivalent of eating nothing but processed food. Junk food. It starts to affect your health and you start feeling kind of sick- ay least I did, which is why I left Facebook and generally tried to keep a low profile.

How many people who talk about Lee Kuan Yew have actually read his memoirs? I think it’s important that you do if you’re serious about wanting to be constructively involved in ‘serious discussion’, or if you want to have a well-informed opinion.

I think it’s a little messed up for me to go around having discussions about things I don’t really know very much about, especially when information is so freely available.

Take the Great Paper Chase article me and the wife posted on sharankaurner.wordpress.com. It’s spreading pretty quick now. I knew it was going to happen the moment I found the article. Here’s why.

OB Markers is a book by a former Straits Times editor, who had close working relationships with people in power. He saw things others wouldn’t or couldn’t.

Yet because he’s an editor, he’s not “sexy”. The general public doesn’t immediately realize how valuable his perspectives might be. I bought the book at least partially on indirect recommendation from Bertha Hansen, whose writing and thinking I admire.

So I was reading OB markers and it’s full of interesting and valuable quotes (which I will be sharing soon, in a blogpost). I’m pretty sure that very few of these quotes and insights, if ANY, are in popular imagination. I bet the same applies to say, SR Nathan’s memoirs. Why?

A lot of people aren’t interested in doing the reading. It takes a certain appetite and disposition to sit down with a thick bloody book that doesn’t immediately promise to be interesting, valuable, exciting. All of that is the reader’s responsibility more than it is the author’s. (Speaking fron the perspective of someone who reads to investigate, learn, expose, reveal. Quality of writing makes a huge difference in absorption rates. Every writer should write as compellingly as possible. I break this rule myself because I’m writing with an express purpose, not for mainstream public consumption. I write for me. But the moment you write something that you want others to read…)

The people who DO read these books are a minority to begin with. Of those that do, many simply skim through it, reading the way a couch potato might watch television. Going through the motions, just enjoying the experience of reading words and turning pages. They might not really be present. They typically forget the details and nuances of whatever they’ve read. They might struggle to then talk about the book to others- all they can say is whether it’s good or bad, to what degree.

Some of those that read… take it a little more seriously. They analyse. They question. They consider implications. They make comparisons. They clash ideas against one another. They come up with interesting perspectives that are somehow superior to what they had before.

But not all of these people share. In fact, I’m horribly certain that most of them don’t. I bet that some of the best minds that make the best connections and associations are uninvolved in broader communities. I married one. Every single day my wife stuns me with her amazing questions… which she then keeps to herself.

So what seems trivial- writing book reviews/summaries- becomes a remarkable thing, because so few people actually do it. I mean, if people really read self-help books and followed the instructions, we’d have many more successful people around. Ohviously, most prople just skim through them and it’s business as usual almost immediately afterwards. No lasting change. You need lots of focus for that. Careful attention. High volumes and lots of repetition.

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I guess I feel pretty good. I walked away from Facebook because I felt like I had nothing meaningful to say, and I was being overwhelmed with overly processed noise. I needed silence and peace to clear my head. I felt a little uneasy but it seems pretty clear to me now that the answer is reading- reading that follows curiosity.

FATIGUE. I got tired of Adapt when it got to the really big issues like global warming and financial crises. I AM interested in those things- in fact I think I’ve always been interested in pretty much everything- but I experienced a sense of “this doesn’t help me, this isn’t what I need.” I have more skin in the game now. I have a job and bills to pay, and those are my priorities. I need to get better at my job and avoid falling into the trap of just coasting along. To do that I need to develop self-mastery and discipline, and engineer my environments such that they help or force me to learn whatever it is that I need to learn so that I can then get myself into a position to be able to do anything about financial crises.

Why care about such big ideas, anyway? I used to love them- theories of large complex systems had me enthralled. They’re just beautiful to contemplate. They gave me a glimpse of a wondrous world, they helped me see just how fabulous reality is. How rich, how marvelous.

But I think there’s a saturation point to that. There are diminishing returns to awe and splendour if they don’t influence action. I have to build and participate in the world, not simply observe it or conceive of it. I don’t simply want to watch the NBA all day while sitting in my couch. The fat and unfit sports commentator is a grotesque mental picture. Once you’ve seen enough of the game to realize that it’s a beautiful game, the natural progression should be to play it. Watch and learn, yes, but also do and learn. A well-lived life with lots of exercise is much better than a sedentary life with lots of ESPN. It’s possible that the fat slob watching ESPN understands basketball better than the kid playing it with his friends after school… and yet– no, right?

Understanding is not knowledge. You can know how to do something better than somebody who understands it. Practically speaking.

I mean, practical knowledge is all that matters in practical living. At least that’s what I’ve come to believe in. One should know how to make good decisions. Knowing how to manage one’s time effectively is far more useful than knowing how financial crises happen. Besides, if you’re really good at managing your time, you’ll them be able to find time to read up avoid financial crises. If you CAN’T manage your time, however, then no amount of knowledge about financial crisis will save you.

This is a huge problem. I never learnt discipline, focus, time-management. While I now intellectually acknowledge them as important and valuable, a part of me resents the world for not having taught or given it to me. This is irrational of course, and it’s obvious when I’m in a reflective state of mind. But it’s not always so obvious.

Resentment: what the fuck was I learning in school when I didn’t know how to focus? Isn’t the ability to focus pretty much the most important skill in life, from which all other skills are built? Steve Vai said that success at guitar or anything else was about focus. How do you get fit? Focus. Focus and change your environment. It’s really the most important game of all. Focus focus focus.

I had an app called write or die that would force me to focus on writing- in terms of sheer volume- because it had a ticking meter that would go down. Clearly I need more ticking meters in my life. I don’t pay attention to the passage of time. I don’t value time. That seems to be the pressing problem. That’s partially why writing in notebooks was so effective- I was a log more conscious then of the passage of time. But my smartphone is always with me, so I should use this. How do I combined the powerful effect of pen and paper with the convenience of my smartphone to ensure that I appreciate and manage my time? How do I learn to focus? Tactics are almost irrelevant.

So that’s the grand game then. The only game worth playing. Learning how to focus. I need to track moments. Rather than having deadlines looming- which is depressing and a constant reminder of my incompetence and failure- I need something to build. Don’t break the chain is too trivial.