zushi's place

One of my goals taking the gap year has been to understand what it feels like to be on the edges of society, what I didn't expect is that this took longer than a year to fully emerge.

On a gap year, people give you unquestioned judgement to pursue anything you want for a year, but beyond a year, sometimes doubts on whether you are “productive” creeps in.

One thing I've been thinking about after the first year is how that perception affects certain interactions with people, and how the perception seems all about social status, which is something that works differently from zero-sum resources (food, water, shelter, money) in that it can be conjured out of thin air.

One example of this is Y Combinator, from Paul Graham (one of the co-founders):

A nontrivial part of the value of YC is that we give people a high-status brand under which to do low-status things. Being able to tell your parents “I got funded by YC” gives you cover to do things that don't scale.

And so “working out of the garage for years on your company idea” becomes a high status thing, rather than a low-status one.

When you see this, you start seeing signs elsewhere too. For example, Tyler Cowen's emergent ventures can be seen as another instance of this. After financial independence, many tech people adopt the label of being a Venture Capitalist. This bypasses the filter of productivity with generally small time and financial commitments each year. Business and profits can be examples of this, though I'm not sure how often this is the case.

In his article about status, Rob Henderson argued that Status works very much like food and water in that it is a primary motivator. We get sad (to the extent that even our immune system can get compromised) when we run low on it, and many of our behaviors are hardwired to seek them.

However, status is different from food and water in that you can create it out of nowhere.

In this way, status work less like a tangible resource, but more like a transmutable object. Understanding the pulse of this status drive can be valuable, such as demonstrated by the Y Combinator post. It gives people fuel to work on things that are more important than status.

One thing I think often about today's society is how the metric for status is not always aligned with what's creative, significant, and meaningful. There are status traps everywhere anchoring people in place. I think Y Combinator did more good than not in terms of meaning, and it did so in part with the ability to transmute status. From it, we can learn a bit about how to find our place in the world.

— Categorized under: #community, #psychology, #sociology

by Jean Soyer

Short note on an earlier dynamic I noticed - Sometimes when I'm feeling tired or down, taking a walk with purposeful posture & empowering music seems to help a lot. (Reframing yourself into thinking you're a badass, and the obstacles are just wee tiny thingies).

Earlier it was sara-arai's Ghost in the Shelter set, but I think a lot of music would help with this.

Kinda interesting how quick & effective this is.

— Categorized under: #emotional-intelligence

Recently I've been watching a show called Heavenly Delusion, excellence of plot and animation aside, I've been wondering how much of my enjoyment of it comes from the post-apocalypse vibes.

Thinking about the shows that I like – NGE, The Last of Us, Girl's Last Tour, and Heavenly Delusion, apocalypse elements do seem quite common. There was a period in my teenage years where I felt like apocalypses would be nice, and occasionally I catch myself feeling that way still (despite actively building “away” from apocalypse). This felt stronger recently for some reason, and I wonder if it's also been behind my recent interest in nomadding.

Maybe it's just a need to shake up things? Or perhaps magnesium will lead to some interesting changes? We'll see.

— Categorized under: #journalling

One of the often-talked about supplements out there is Magnesium. I have a friend with some, so I tried it out of curiosity yesterday. This might be an anomaly, but I do feel a lot more energetic today (roughly a 25% energy boost, didn't feel a need to take naps and was quite productive), it's quite unusual.

One of the things this makes me think about is not underestimating the effectiveness of supplements. I used to think low energy to be somewhat an aspect of my personality, but now I'm not so sure? Anyways, I want to look into supplements a bit more now. Productivity is actually a bottleneck currently, not because I'm unproductive, but because the current environment does seem to demand a lot of it.

— Categorized under: #productivity

In Sleep is the Mate of Death Scott Alexander discusses the phenomenon that people often experience strange depressions in the morning, with symptoms getting much better throughout the day.

This is pretty close to my personal experience, upon waking I often feel sad for no reason, but before bed I'm usually quite happy.

Over time I've taken some measures to curb this, though I still occasionally feel it. Recently I've noticed that savoring recent fun experiences help with this. Thanksfulness previously helped too.

Afaik there isn't too much I could do the previous day unless I overload on wholesome social interactions, hmmm......

— Categorized under: #emotions

Curious to go on a storytelling/improv/comedy arc. I think it's quite similar to fashion, and also quite interesting!

One of the more interesting people I've met during the sabbatical was Michelle Huang, who is currently starting an artist's creative residence in Japan. One of her tweets that caught my attention recently was the one in my post on existential angst, I think there are some parallels on how we think, but she's done a much, much better job of documenting her journey through Twitter. I'm interested in using her experiences as a bouncing board for my own personal sabbatical:

i bartered a month of rent in exchange for setting up an art installation in the house i stayed in

Designing as a way to sublet is really cool, and not something I've thought a ton about before. Neat!

given that i had spent chunks of my career “optimizing for choice”, moving from one reputable job to the other (investment banking → product, both requiring skillsets so broad, that you can basically “do anything” after), i realized i had little idea of what my ikigai was

I find myself falling into this too, which is why a sabbatical felt necessary.

the hardest part about this by far was managing my own psychology: i felt constant anxiety to produce, and kept weighing opportunity costs, which took away from my presence in my day-to-day work

I feel this at times.

additionally, i felt irrational financial pressure, even though i had enough personal runway

I feel this as well – the pressure is actually more social imo, and needs to be managed by being with a good community.

my second mistake was having too many broad and ambitious interests

I think it is worth pursuing just 2-3 interests at a time.

to this, i added flexibility to the hyperstructure (biweekly focus topics)

when there was a new, unplanned idea, instead of subscribing to previously-defined rigid rules, i would ask myself:

“is this project something i would be proud of finishing at the end of my sabbatical?”

I like this a lot – bi-weekly sounds like a great cadence. I was actually surprised to hear that it didn't work for her, the following section's interesting.

a better way of framing this was to allow myself to “chase flow”

the more i listened to it, the more i was able to sense it, follow it, and become 10x as productive (vs gritting my teeth and grinding through complications). and also have it feel effortless the entire time

Imo I'm pretty bad at listening to this and want to do it more.

i actually became a morning person during this time period (!!)

there were a few months that i'd wake up everyday at 4am – which was absurd to me, given that i never previously identified as a morning person

This was interesting. I think moving to a new country helped her, and it's something I could consider. And I also never considered myself a morning person, I wonder if that's just bad framing.

another thing i found super helpful was having accountability partners

i had weekly 2.5-hour coworking sessions with a few friends who were also on their own respective entrepreneurial + sabbatical journeys

we'd catch up, detail out our session tasks, and check in at the end

This sounds really good! Something that I should implement for Fractal.

after some experimentation, i realized i learn best by 1) actively being engaged on projects and 2) time-boxing these projects

by adding in number 2, i found myself completing many more projects because it would limit scope, and maintain my enthusiasm / reduce burnout

This sounds really good, like a sustained hackathon! Want to work on something like this, maybe not 30 days but 2 weeks.

the last thing i did correctly -and that i intend to do again- was to remember to treat myself kindly and with compassion

there will be bad days (and sometimes bad weeks), and there will be good days. but to acknowledge and create space for the humanness in between is important

+1 on this.

one of my largest takeaways was that more than anything, i loved art and interactive design, something i never got a chance to do in any formal roles

i realized also i get energized by collaboration, and dream of having a mad scientist research lab with friends

This is interesting, I always want to work on my personal vision, not sure why? Is this an ego thing?

But I think I might also be bad at converting people to new visions.

every sabbatical looks different, but TLDR during my 1.5 years, i got to: move to a new country, redefine myself as an artist, create art with my brainwaves, launch an DAO, learn motion graphic design, explore web3, give talks at conferences, meet many incredible people, and more

IMO this is a great way to frame sabbatical, and something I should write for my own as well. E.g.

• Moved to a new city
• Travelled
• Found love of design and travelling
• Experimented with different forms of living
• Made a lot of new friends.
• Built a community space for ~50 people

second, i experimented with a lot of different organizational frameworks to project manage myself and develop my exobrain

main takeaways: high-level quarterly planning, GTD + weekly kanban in @NotionHQ , and knowledge management + daily task tracking in @RoamResearch

there are endless possibilities to an empty canvas – equal parts intimidating and empowering

I have all of these in Obsidian, hmm... but I think Obsidian itself may be powerful enough for this. Though I don't necessarily do a lot for GTD. I think going back to looking at GTD each day would be a good idea, since it keeps the GTD system powerful.

Imo what is missing is: > Quarterly Planning > Kanban for Projects > GTD daily checkins > Weekly overviews.

Overall takeaway from reading: – Use sabbatical to explore radically different living structures – Keep in mind that you have a good financial runway – Think about a project in terms of “whether I'd be proud to have finished it by the end of by sabbatical” – Sleep schedule for a person might not be as fixed as how you thought it might be – Be compassionate with yourself – Think about how to be a better collaborator

Todo: – Habit planning on wake should be #1 habit, not necessarily any other routine. Everything follows from habit planning. – Reinstate GTD – Reinstate Weekly reviews – Use Kanban/sheets to track timeboxed projects to track optional features – Think about how to chase flow – Remind myself of my runway – Use “proud to finish it” as a metric for understanding my sabbatical projects – Keep an open mind about moving to different places to study

— Categorized under: #creativity, #sabbatical, #productivity

At some point when I was little, the thought occurred to me that I should never be proud of anything that I didn't actively contribute to. This counted pride in my family, my school, and my nationality. I'm not sure why the thought occurred to me, but as an adult I feel like this advice has largely served me well.

Recently, I've been wondering if I could take this advice further. I was watching a show called Vinland Saga, where one of the ostensibly nice characters commits pretty awful acts in part due to his wounded pride, and it reminded me of times when I felt like my pride was wounded. It very much felt like an alien emotion – really intense, and something I think isn't that productive overall.

In the book Impro, the improv comedy teacher Keith Johnstone remarked that in ancient times, artists were seen as conduits to muses rather than auteurs of their creations. The art piece only reflected the completeness of that conduit, rather than the personality of the artist themselves. I really like that definition – it lets people create without thinking about being judged according to their creations.

Recently, I've been thinking about whether this perspective applies to not just art, but being a person – can I be a conduit of good vibe and good outcomes, just like that of good art, and not have those vibes and outcomes be seen as a core part of my personality? Because I think identifying with those outcomes are what creates that sense of pride that can get wounded sometimes. I'd like to just be a good conduit, rather than sometime who's (self-perceived) to be great.

All of this feels very hand-wavy, as I am still trying to figure it out, but I think if I focus just on the craft and nothing else, imagine myself as a tiny nucleus of an atom in the middle of a balloon as opposed to the surface of the balloon itself, I'd be a bit closer to reaching a place without ego/pride, and would be able to let go of things much more quickly.

— Categorized under: #emotions, #interactions

Thinking about the last post on Existential Angst, one thing I'm noticing often now is that my day tends to be pretty unproductive when I sleep late and wake up early, this is even if I get some naps in.

There are a lot of other social inconveniences too that comes with a shifted sleep schedule.

A while ago I wrote a Twitter thread on how I have to viscerally experience consequences to learn. Overall, I think I may finally be learning this lesson for sleep.

Also note: it takes like 2 hours for me to get from the “time to get ready for bed” phase to actually sleeping. This means I should start getting ready for bed around 10.

— Categorized under: #sleep, #productivity

Came across the following segment on Twitter, and felt myself identify with it a lot

75% of the time that i felt “jaded” or “existential” was actually due to me not taking care of my body / health

drinking water, meditating daily, exercising, talking to loved ones, and ✨touching grass✨ were really beneficial to keeping myself sane

I don't think others commonly experience this, but when I don't exercise/meditate/see friends/go outside/sleep well for a while, my mind goes into a sort of OCD analysis mode that wants everything to make perfect sense. This often takes the form of existential analysis, which will seem very important and significant at the time, but feel much more trivial when I do proper self-care.

Perhaps this relates to the thought process that “we must find life meaning to be happy”, or perhaps something about my brain automatically turns into hyper-problem-solving mode (with the most comment version of this turning onto itself) when I live a life that doesn't feel correct?

As I was saying to a friend the other day, my life would be quite a bit less complicated if instead of thinking, I just ran for ~15 minutes every time I feel bad about something. I think doing a proper checkup of whether I did self-care every morning could probably help with this a lot too. I think I'll do both.

— Categorized under: #psychology, #selfcare