The way I do things has been changing. Rather than spending effort using System 2 to figure out what to do all the time, I've been gardening to let System 1 take over.
Chatting in a kitchen in the evening after my first mushroom trip, some of us were making soup. I realized an odd thing. I was here but had to be over there. And once I was, I had to cut some veggies. Where to move and what to do felt obvious, getting up and moving cost nothing. It was the path of least resistance by far. This is basically what I believe the Dao feels like. Especially because with eyes closed, I could see droplets of light flowing between us. I could sense them going to far away family and friends. Debts of love and care. But that's for another time.
Your environment can focus and diffuse, constrain and direct. It's way harder to get things done if you're interrupted every 5m, or if you're uncomfortable all the time. Working alone on a dissertation, it's easy to lose structure and have to think hard about what to do at any given time. So I've been saving my single-pointed effort. Sparing it mostly to set up my environment and letting auto-pilot handle the day-to-day. What I think wu wei is, although I never looked it up.
Make your bed and erase a source of chaos. Keep your desk clean. It's not just about physical environment, it's about energy flow along the day. Leave your phone in the hallway instead of exerting to deny it. Block twitter for the same reason. Have your gym bag ready so it's extra easy to go. Prep your food in advance !
Working, have a rough plan, define next actions when stepping away to make it extra easy to come back and keep going. Write thoughts down for later. TAKE BREAKS. Wake up at the same time every day. Eat at the same time every day. Work at the same time everyday. (if you can) Predictability at the base of Maslow's pyramid leaves you room to improvise elsewhere.
If you're uneasy and can't focus, feel it out. Solve emotional hang-ups, apologize for regrets, sit with anxieties. Do some Focusing to find out what's wrong. Feel into your world. Feel into it unapologetically. Trust your instincts, they're pretty good at social dynamics and dealing with their human.
Ideally, by carving these paths, you can get into flow just living your life. Imagine that...
Make space for yourself. Rest. Be bored; lay on the hammock without paper or screen. Let thoughts arise. Get to know the problem well enough and System 1 will spit out a solution. I like to think about System 2 as this very precise needle that can do math with a few terms, microscope into things and fix imperfections in the weave. System 1 is more like this pile of slosh that gives you good approximate answers for hard problems. It has color, texture, light, viscosity, and does massive matrix multiplications reaaaaally fast. It's just harder to steer, feedback is slower. S2 is like a tool, S1's more like a ship, and if you're good at S2 I bet you've been avoiding ol' S1.
Cultivate centers, generators of negentropy. Keystone habits, places, relationships where you put attention into them and they radiate order. Everybody knows making your bed unlocks a bunch of other positive feedback loops. My friend Jessica says in her experience, "solving" doing the dishes does the same for group houses. These things where if you do them, a cascade of other things fall into place.
Notice what your surroundings... want. What they want through you and thus make you want too. Notice the floor and clean it if it's dirty. Be meticulous with your health, it feels good. Same with appearance, style, aesthetics. Same with the vibe of your room and other dwellings. Check up on people, sync your models a little bit. Are they doing as well as you? What could you do for them? Happy wife happy life; happy neighbor happy day-bor. Stay grounded. Give things space to flourish through you. Be inspired.
Sep 10, 2021