Category: Work

Ethics, Life, Work

Art

A super article in the New Scientist explains – as artists have intuited down the centuries – that the brain works to a different set of rules than the real world.

We have misread shadows and mirrors from Velazquez Rokeby Venus to Bond’s Scaramanga but most of the time we get it right. I’m going to look up Patrick Cavanagh of Paris Descartes University’s work, but in essence the visual tricks of Dali and Escher and the deeper emotional connection made by a Monet are no accidents.

As the New Scientist summarises ‘You can’t do a proper analysis of all the laws of physics in in the 10th of a second it takes your visual system to form an image so we evolved a simple set of rules that can be computed rapidly without requiring a large proportion of the brain.’ This also means it can be tricked.

I think our visual system may be like our ‘ethical system’. We have evolved a simple, but very powerful set of rules constantly improved by experience through our Bayesian brains. However like an untrained artistic eye if we don’t examine and assess our moral judgements we may not learn and improve and thus fall short of a virtuous and fulfilled life. We can all draw an object but very few can render it perfectly or change the way others see it. Our ‘Ethical eye’ although primarily instinctive is worth training I believe.

I also think the odd checklist helps. I read something a few months back about the astonishing improvements in surgical outcomes achieved by simply running through a checklist – not least checking “have I left any surgical instruments in the person”. Pilots have known it for years, rudders – check, instruments – check, honesty – check, courage – check.

An Aristotelian list is not a bad checklist:

Courage
Temperance
Liberality
Magnificence
Pride
Honour
Good Temper
Friendliness
Truthfulness
Wit
Friendship

11 is a lot to remember, but the good thing of course is I don’t have to. Simply follow my gut (it’s all simplified, instinctive and instantly available in there) and periodically assess and train the Bayesian brain.

Much easier than painting a Monet.

Work

Eureka

I read something today which put a bit of theory behind something I’ve been trying for a few months now. If you have a complex problem to work out try forgetting about it.

I originally read a letter in the New Scientist written by a man who said when he had a particularly tricky problem to work out he would set himself a timescale of between 10 days and two weeks and then forget about it. Routinely the solution would come to him unbidden at some stage in the time he allowed.

Since being aware of it I’ve become conscious of the same phenomenon. The answer to things I’ve been thinking about or working on a lot often floats into my mind as I pass a particularly forbidding high rise housing estate about 25 minutes into my morning cycle ride.

Turns out Poincaré wrote about this many years ago describing four distinct stages in developing new insights or having breakthrough ideas. First think about it and study it a lot. Then hopefully get distracted or less fun, but as effective, get frustrated and lose hope of working it out. Then from nowhere Eureka. Finally verification of the validity of the insight and the develping confidence you are really onto something. Conscious thought, unconscious thought (or incubation), illumination and verification are the key stages.

Discovering it written down is a great relief – routinely forgetting about major work and life problems feels a bit uncomfortable without a bit of intellectual cover. The polymath Poincaré is a pretty good brain to pray in aid.

So the answer I’m increasingly persuaded, whether you are Archimedes or not is study, stop, forget it and bingo – eureka.

Work

Curling

I was talking today to a nice person who cares a lot about the organisation I work for about how we are doing. We face some big challenges in the next few months, but I’m pretty confident we know what we need to do and we’ll be stronger for it.

She was anxious that we might not seize the opportunity, and that people and personalities might get in the way. I said after a good break in the summer I realised there are somethings you can’t fix or tackle until the moment comes and rather than worrying sometimes it’s best to save your energy and trust yourself to perform ‘in the moment’ and do what is needed when it’s needed. She looked at me with some empathy, but I suspect was also wondering ‘is he ducking some stuff here’.

I then said to her that since my excellent summer holidays with the family I’ve found myself caring a little less about my work. I still care, and I still work hard, but it’s a bit less all-consuming. I don’t think about things so much, worry about them or try to arrange and fix things – especially around people. I’ve started saying what my gut tells me, not worrying so much about being right, asking for help and admitting to uncertainty and irrationality. It’s working a treat.

She said she sometimes realises she’s guilty of curling – the game with the stones on ice where you polish and polish and polish the ice furiously with what looks like a garden brush to get your stone to the target. I said to her I’d felt she’d been really effective in a meeting with us recently when she ‘bowled’ and said exactly what she thought and cleaned out all the skittles or smacked clear the blocking bowls depending on your type of bowling.

The conclusion was sometimes by caring a bit less at work you can be a lot more effective, more spontaneous, less anxious, more authoritative, and more able to seize the moment. I find I also have a lot more mental energy left for me and my loved ones at the end of the day.

Here’s my quick list tapped out on the iPhone of problems I’m not currently suffering by caring a little less about my work:

Gripping too tightly
Being anxious
Focusing on what I might lose not what I could gain
Driving not attracting
Running down my batteries
Sweating the detail
Overdoing
Interfering
Been seen to meddle
Taking the responsibility away from where it lies
Confusing people
Strobing (rapid jerky interventions with no linking narrative)
Appearing tricksy or political
Guessing not asking
Overpreparing
Not seizing the moment

Best of all though I simply feel better and that’s reason enough.