Category: Ramblings

Applications of the Yerkes-Dodson Law

I put the minimal amount of effort into the blogpost I could.  Did I do this because I was lazy?  No, I was not lazy this time.  Since this blogpost is about mental arousal and how much is needed and optimal for a given task, I am attempting to write with the proper amount of arousal.  I could write with more intensity, but that might be an overly large amount of arousal applied.  Why am I trying to write with the minimal amount of mental arousal?  Well lately I have been thinking about the Yerkes-Dodson Law and the whole arousal curve for peak performance.

According to Wikepedia the Yerkes-Dodson Law states that “The law dictates that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point. When levels of arousal become too high, performance decreases.” (Source)  My simple mind takes that to mean if I get too excited, then nothing useful is going to get done.  Other components of the law and research around it state that lower levels of arousal may be best for intellectually demanding tasks.  The theory also talks about the idea that different tasks have different optimal levels of arousal.  In general all this can be represented by a bell curve relationship, different tasks will however have different shaped bell curves.  There is some thought and research into the idea that different personalities may need different levels of arousal for peak performance.  Introverts seem do perform better with less arousal than extroverts for example. 

I don’t think about these facts often enough.  I like being a bit of a maniac, so my tendency is to try and pump myself up to do things more than I probably need to.  I feel as though myself and others would be well served to think more about where we are living on this arousal curve for the task at hand.  Knowing where we are on the curve, and knowing how to manipulate our position on the curve seems wise. 

For some tasks I seem to have mastered this moving along the curve and firing myself up to proper levels.  I can move my arousal up and down at will in the gym to lift heavy weights, all without getting too fired up and doing really stupid stuff.  With my more professional work tasks, I don’t move along this curve at will as easily.  When it comes to work I often attempt to just keep trying harder.

Trying harder seems to increase all the arousal symptoms.  It dumps more adrenaline at times it doesn’t need to be dumped and messes with cortisol too I suppose.  Instead of becoming more fired up, I think I tend to just flatline.  I don’t know if any of that is actually scientifically true, but it feels as though that is kind of what happens.  What I do know is that I should figure out how to be more conscious of how fired up I am while doing any given task, and then moving along that curve as needed to get to optimal performance levels.

Being introverted I suspect it would be useful for me to ratchet down the intensity in many things I do.  I can always crank it back up if I find the need to.  If my tasks are not going well I need to move one of the two directions though.  If one way doesn’t work, then well I should just try going the other direction until I know what proper mindset feels like for any task.  

In general I am very fired up to do well at the tasks I take on.  I want to succeed, I want to do a good job, and I am motivated to do such.  I suspect just by waking up and getting started on tasks I am rather close to being aroused enough to perform well.  My guess is too often I just pour gasoline onto a rather suitable fire and just make a mess of things. 

I could be wrong with all this, and I don’t even think that it matters.  I think the main point is it is good for me to find an optimal level of excitement to get things done well.  Knowing what this feels like and learning how to get to this state is undoubtedly a powerful skill to have at my command.  Whether the science is correct or not, if it is a useful frame to move forward then I will use it.  I am using the science to spur thought and experimentation, and that will go good places.

I feel like these are the things I should think about more often in my given day.  This blogpost flowed out easily.  This entire time writing this post I kept myself like mellow, and almost in a meditative like mojo.  Managing our own psychologies is important and this might just be one simple way to do that.

Managing your psychology can help one to be more focused, intentional and effective.  Without some degree of management, we are running around just doing stuff like zombies or maniacs, whatever we happen to be acting like that day.  Some people may do this automatically, others like me should probably think about these things more.  With more intentionality more can be taken from the day, rather than taking whatever just randomly happens.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerkes%E2%80%93Dodson_law

https://hbr.org/2016/04/are-you-too-stressed-to-be-productive-or-not-stressed-enough

https://exploringyourmind.com/yerkes-dodson-law-performance-arousal/

The Advancement of Perceived Status

I was taking a nice walk and listening to yet another fitness podcast.  The topic of the day for the podcast was answering listener email questions.  One of the questions that came up struck me.  I won’t go into the specifics of the question, because there is no reason to shame anyone here.  Although the question made me think.  In the email the man seeking help states he has worked out for over a decade, he proclaimed how serious he was, he stated he was an advanced lifter, then he proceeded to ask the most basic rudimentary questions imaginable.  I had to wonder, if  you’re so advanced, why did you have to ask this question?

I don’t know the man who asked this question, nor do I care to pass judgement on him.  I know nothing of him, however his question had me thinking more about the perceived status we give to ourselves.  I have no doubt that this man views himself as an advanced lifter, and maybe he is.  We want to look like we are advanced, we want to look like we have lots of answers.  Being an expert is good, but we are rarely experts, and when we are experts we are not experts at many things.  We can limit ourselves because of a perceived status.  We can fall into the trap that just because we view ourselves as “advanced” that we may not need help with a very basic thing or learn about something basic.

I have had my own failings with trying to have a perceived status.  I wanted to be an expert web developer, I wanted people to think I was an expert.  I often perceived myself as more than I was.  This limited my career development.  I was reluctant to spend time on the basics.  I had done some more advanced things, so I did not want to “step backward” into basics.  This hurt me long term.  There were more gaps in my learning and skills than I would like to admit.  I wanted so desperately to have some sort of status that I limited myself. 

I would have had a much better run of things if I had accepted the level I was at.  If I didn’t let some attitude about status into my head.  I know I would have filled my learning gaps much faster and been a much better web developer.  The status I perceived myself to have got in the way of reality and doing what I most needed to do.

A danger lays in perceiving more or less than reality.  Imposter syndrome is the other side of the coin here.  Folks with these issues perceive themselves at a lower level than they are.  This limits them.  An honest evaluation of skills and abilities is always the best.  Status carries with it more. 

Status is often about ego.  No one cares how big or strong the listener asking the question in the podcast was.  Status is often for ourselves.  When we improperly perceive a status for ourselves, we will limit ourselves.

Embracing The Craft

I was listening to an episode of the Tim Ferris podcast where he was interviewing Adam Savage the other day and became struck with a point Savage made. He spoke about his early days of being an actor, and the difference between himself and the other actors.  He essentially stated that he wanted to be an actor, but the others wanted to perform the craft of acting.  He was not as interested in the craft of it all.  This story really got me thinking about a lot of things in my own life.  I thought about the craft versus the work of the things I have pursued.

I have rarely embraced the craft of things.  I think this contributed to many of my failures.  I wanted the product of the work, I did not want the process and the craft.  Wanting the product of the work is a good thing, as is embracing the path.  At times I did embrace the craft.  In my career I have failed to embrace the craft at virtually every turn, in retrospect the only place I might have really embraced craftsmanship was lifting weights. 

In lifting weights I have embraced the craft in a pure way.  I enjoy almost every workout, it has become a great source of joy.  I enjoy becoming better at exercises.  I enjoy the practice of really dialing in my form.  I indulge in hours and hours of reading, watching videos, and listening to podcasts around fitness.  As I have gotten older, I enjoy all this even more and more.  I am content in the knowledge that I may ever only apply 10% of the fitness knowledge I have gained.  I enjoyed gaining muscle, and gaining strength, but these have not a huge focus for the last decade, I lifted because I was a lifter.  I did the things around lifting, because I did them.  This was all very easy to do.  I enjoyed lifting, it is a really fun thing for many people.

Having seen what this looks like in my lifting, I have never seen the same craftsmanship and embrace in my career.  The same kind of things, the same depth of experience has never happened for me in my career.  My career has been dictated by the end goals, by impatience.  I like to think I have worked hard, and tried to do things the right way in my career.  I don’t believe there was some moral failing on my part.  I was never as into things as I maybe should have been.  A lot of people can succeed without embracing their craft and career, I don’t think I am one of those people.  For me, I am at a place in life where the craft of things must be embraced more. 

What does embracing the craft look like?  There are a lot of things it means to me.

I must be patient.  This is biggest thing for me.  If I am not happy where things are at, then I want change now.  This desire is fine, but I can’t let that desire for instant change to govern things as much as I have in the past.

I must pursue repetition.

I must pursue the craft daily if possible.

I must accept that I don’t always need to see the ROI immediately of everything.  I must seek knowledge and skill for their own sake. 

I must emotionally and mentally accept the craft. 

Embracing the craft for me, must be a pursuit, I need to look for ways to embrace it more.

I must accept I must embrace the boring to get to the cool.  The bigger the base the higher the pyramid can be.

For me when I embrace the craft of something the results are a lot better.  I think we know in our hearts when we have really embraced something.  This embrace creates results, peace, and more fun for me, and isn’t that what I want from everything?

Daily Nehemiah 3: Am I Bi-Winning?

I gave him all the answers, how to get strong, how to hit the weights.  I offered all sorts of help, all he had to do was show up.  Anything I could do I offered.   He won’t do any of it.  I gave him all the answers and he will choose to fail.  I hope I am wrong.  He doesn’t want it, he wants to look like he wants it.

How many times have I been offered and given the same degree of help by others?  Do I have all the answers?  Do I know how to do the things I am trying to do?  Have people helped me and given me all the answers?  Do I have everything I need for massive success served to me on a silver platter?  Do I choose not to do anything about it?  Do I not want it?  Do I want to lose?

Recognizing help when it is presented is a skill.  Giving up things like pride and just taking help is a skill too.  Loving things like pride more than winning, well that is just stupid.

Do I want to win?  Or do I want to look like I want to win?

The Coder’s Creed

This is my code. There is much other code, but this code is mine.

Code is my best friend. I must master the code as I must master myself.

My code is useless without me. Without my code I am useless. My code must be clean it must be bug-less. It is an instrument of good, capable of doing great things for the betterment of my life and the lives of others.

My code and I know that the language and framework matter not. My code and I know that the problems my code solves is what matters.

My code is alive; my code is life. I will learn my code; I will learn the subtleties of the languages, the frameworks, and designs it contains. I will navigate along the stack, I will not fear its components, and with my code by my side we shall master the solutions we create.

With each commit, stronger we shall grow. In times of despair, we shall push to master, we will not fear our version history, for we master our own destiny.

This is my pledge, my creed, stated before God and man alike. With this code, we shall spread hope and love, never despair. We are masters of data, it will be bent to our will.

So be it until all the things are fixed, all the data is secure, and the age of code has passed.

 

Coworking Has Failed Us

Membership is up, the coffee is flowing, the television and paper covers the press releases, but something is missing.  There has been a lot of spin, a lot of hope, a lot of dreaming, but the delivery has been less than stellar.  Before we had coworking in the form of MatchBox here in town, we heard a lot of words like “tech, art, innovation, collaboration, entrepreneurialism, revitalization, vision.”  Before there was a building, we were buying into an idea, a bit of vision, and what we hoped to be fun.  We knew there would be two things being built, one was a building, the second and the much more important part was the community.  Over a year later, I get the feeling I am still waiting for the community.  I will be the first to admit I am a delusional maniac, so maybe I was hoping for things that were just not going to happen.

We knew there was a lot of community building to do.  There also was a lot of ambiguity about what this community would be.  Everyone thought and hoped it would be something cool.  I feel like we are still waiting on the cool.  Yes there are some cool things happening around here.  We are having Verge events, Startup Weekends, tech meetups, writer’s nights, and there are some really cool people coming through this place.  There still feels like there needs to be more.  The conversations, the energy, the ambition in this community are just mediocre.  In fact at this point coworking is a failure.

I see very little happening in this place that was not happening before.  My approach and viewpoint is definitely from the tech side of things.   From that perspective there is nothing happening here in this building that we were not making happen elsewhere.  In fact our attendance was similar if not more for events we were holding elsewhere.  We have a multi-million dollar facility and have turned it into zero momentum.  In fact the spark in these circles is fading fast, and the community weakening.  This is a failure on my part, and a failure on the part of Lafayettech leadership, we should have done better.  The opportunity really exists for a great tech community, a great coworking community, but someone has to do the work, someone has to create the community we wanted.

I hear there is a vision, I hear things are moving forward, I don’t really know.  Hell if it is in a coherent format, I don’t know what it is, send me a paper copy if there is one.  I don’t know that I much care at this point.  This community is not visionary stuff, anyone that says it is, is probably a charlatan or a dumbass.  We really need to stop waiting for something to happen and create the community we want.  I have been apathetic, so I am to blame as much as anyone.  We really just have a great opportunity here to build a really cool community.  I see this MatchBox and coworking thing going one of two ways, we can build something cool, or let this community be a droll amalgamation of freelancing drones, sales training, “synergy”, “teamwork”, and all those other buzzwords that don’t mean a thing and exude lameness.  So I guess we all need to up our efforts a little bit, and make this place into what we want to see.  So here is what Nehemiah is going to make happen in here, or he will get ran out, one or the other.

  • Startup Weekends are coming back, bigger and better than ever. We are just waiting for the right time to ramp these back up.
  • There will be more technology specific meetings on the way. We want to go deep into iOS, PHP,  C#, more announcements are on the way.
  • Reigniting the hacker culture around here. Coders are wizards, masters of the universe, and Jedi masters, it is time for us to act accordingly and build for the love of building.
  • More tech talks and workshops, on everything from social media to legal issues.

 

 

Hey if you’re into tech, come hunt me down, and help out, there is tons of work to do, and it’s going to be a lot of fun.  If you are not into coding, entrepreneurship, tech, or anything that I am, that’s fantastic too.  To make this community really awesome, we need artists, filmmakers, singers, writers, dog enthusiasts, food truck drivers, gluten-free vegans, the NRA….   There are all sorts of nerds, not just tech nerds, and really fun things happen when you get them together.  So all sorts of people need to make MatchBox their playground, because that is what this place is.   Or we can all just not do anything and within a year MatchBox will be a meeting room for GLC and a cheap office for a bunch of service professionals exchanging business cards.  So do whatever the fuck you want around here, that’s what I am going to do.

Magic In The Rain

I like rain.  The sound, the smell, the feel of it on skin.  There is just something about rain.  I love being outside when it is just starting to rain, when the first drops are falling.  The crack of thunder, the lightning, the clouds, this is one of my favorite times.

Rain transforms the day in many ways.  In a world of distractions, rain slows everything down.  Rain can stop time, causing the pause we are craving.  Storms are a great time for reflection and meditation.  Watching the rain and just being present can be very calming and enlightening to me.  There is quite simply a peace in riding out the storm.

There is just a magic to the rain.  It can ruin days, it can bring life, it can bring peace.  The rain triggers a relaxed state in me that leads to creativity, ideas, and the deepness of thought I crave.  I just like to sit, watch, think, and maybe carve into a good bottle of drink.

The Trivialization of Epiphany

The acts of creating and innovating will often be arduous and exceedingly time consuming. To launch a seemingly simple website or app it may take hundreds of hours of programming.  Books, poems, songs can take just as long.  Months of effort can be consumed in mere moments by consumers.  As consumers we tend not to think about this fact.  We experience things, say “That’s nice” and move on.  It’s not a big deal when we are hearing a song on the radio or just downloading a random app on our phone.  We are surrounded by art and product nonstop, so it is impossible to really think about and celebrate all of it.  We must however do more to celebrate these accomplishments when they come from our friends, families, and neighbors.

For the creators of both art and product, the moment of unveiling or launch is a mix of fear, excitement, anticipation, and relief.  If this effort is the reflection of months of even years of work, this effort is not only a thing, but it is a reflection of large part of identity.  As a community, as friends, there is not always a lot we can do to help our friends through their work.  Creation is by design, going to have a lot of loneliness involved.  After the process is complete there is much we can for our friends.

As a community and individuals we must do more to encourage these creators and innovators.  As launch day approaches and arrives we need to share their enthusiasm and interest.  Grown adults are spending whole weekends celebrating their birthdays with parties, trips and all other manner of jubilation.  Yet when a friend launches their app, their book, their album, often there is little fanfare or excitement, and at times little interest at all.  When viewed from this paradigm, society will put more excitement and celebration into simply living another year, than it puts on working and laboring to create.  The acts of creating and innovating are hard enough, we should make sure not to pile on a side of apathy to these efforts.

Most acts of innovation and creation fail.  Research discovers nothing, the song is bad, the app just doesn’t deliver on its purposes.  Even when this happens, and it will to everyone, we need to celebrate the efforts.  These people are pouring themselves into things trying to create, trying to make the world better.  We need these people to keep going.  Without them, nothing will change, nothing will get better, life will be bland.  So next time a friend shares their life’s work with you, act like you give a damn, because if you don’t, maybe you’re not really a friend at all.

Beyond the Obvious

Spending a lot of time hanging out at MatchBOX, VERGE, Lafayettech, and other entrepreneurial haunts I see a lot of people selling themselves short with the ideas they are working on.  A lot of people work on solving their problems.  This is typically a good thing, and the source of many good ideas.   The problem with these ideas are that if one is not careful then you can end up just going down the same road everyone else has.   There are many ideas that are just a broken record around here.

Things I am tired of hearing about:

  • Anything involving college textbooks.
  • Grocery delivery.
  • Laundry services.
  • Social networking apps.
  • Anything built entirely on the Facebook platform.

We all, myself included need to start going a bit beyond the obvious. Looking for problems to solve that do not include “I am too lazy to grocery shop”  or  “I want an app to make friends more easier.”   Yes there will be many big companies built in the future around these kinds of ideas.  Just ask yourself do you REALLY want to build this?  And ask yourself am I better than this idea?