No phone spaces

In my never ending quest for de-addiction from phone  I thought of implementing a simple thing during the day. Three times during the workday, once before and once after, I will spend some time away from my phone, just thinking. Maybe I am thinking about work, maybe I am not, but I will get those pockets of spaces just to get a sense of the day passing by. Am not fixing a time to it, but yeah it mostly happens when I have a call in say 15 minutes, and I am unable to focus on my current task. Or I have just finished a long call and I am trying to process it. 

I feel like I have a lot of ideas, I just never let them come to the surface because of the algae/lotus leaves of Social media. Who knows what riches lie underneath? These spaces are a chance for me to glimpse through the thick layer on top - maybe I will see flashes of brilliance or maybe it will be dark and terrifying. 

I also wanted to have spaces as in physical spaces that are no phone, but thats proving a lot harder. 

post mid life

 I was thinking the other day that I may have lived half my life. I dont know where the days went, my life slowly changed and was suddenly nothing like what it was 5 years back. 

I have heard that this is how you feel when you are 65, so what is teh way to stop it? Do new things? Have new experiences? Be mindful of whatever experiences you are having anyway? Stopping to note the passage of time? Accumulating great memories? Reliving those memories to ensure they dont disappear? 

Ken Liu makes me think

 All his short stories have something that make me want to stop reading the short story and just think about it. 

The most recent one was where society reaches a level where we buy armors from trolls. So AI helps you not see trolls and their vicious judgements you buy software that prevents you from seeing them. Because you cannot stop trolls, platforms cannot manage this censorship business, the smartest way seems to be to shield yourself from it. 

Ofcourse trolls then figure out a way to break the armor and then its just a full fledged evolutionary arms race. But the idea that instead of trying to figure out a way to make the trolls stop, we need to figure out a way to not see them, made me think. Maybe its really basic, but tahts pretty muhc how humankind has dealt with everything? 

Bad weather? Build homes and protect yourself. Thorny paths? Wear a shoe. Going by that logic this does seem to be the future.

Copy-paste orr

 A lot of Indian innovations end up like this- take something thats uber succesful in the US. Find a cultural context tweak that makes it relevant for India, launch. 

I was listening to the first episode of something that aims to be the indian version of the tim ferriss show, we have seen enough and more products that bring an indianised us product and we call the founders, the creators innovative, succesful etc. 

If you are one of those who are scornful about it, about the fact that its  not real innovation, just some maintenance, the question then remains- why didnt you do it? or anyone else before this person? 

Maybe it needs a certain knowledge in a particular field or a network with enough well connected people to spread the idea forward or maybe it just seems far fetched for India until someone proves otherwise. 

So even if its copy and paste is all thats being done, its worth appreciating. 

Strange fears

 I write a lot on my notebooks - call it whatever you want journaling, venting, taking notes, morning pages.. I dont typically go back and read them but I have stumbled upon various entries randomly and found myself reading them. 

A lot of times I feel some amount of fondness and admiration for the past me who has written something interesting. But a lot of other times I am embarassed-what was past me thinking? One of my weird fears is that someone will read it after I am dead and think " wow she certainly had the same problems over so many years". My problems have a theme- Too much time spent on phone, didnt do what I was planning to do the previous day, not sure where I want to be in life etc. They can look insightful if you read just one of the entries, but man I have wasted a lot of ink on the same problems. With almost zero resolutions. 

I suppose I could burn my journals and resolve these problems, rather than trying to solve the problems 

A series of easy steps

 Motivational speakers and similar trainers online try to tell you to start things easy. Want to become a copywriter? Just copy some great works - your brain will start thinking in the same direction. Want to start an exercise habit? Just walk for 10 minutes once. They make it seem like once you do an easy thing, you can pile up another easy thing on it, and  this combined  thing remains easy for you. 

It may not be entirely true. 

If it was just piling up one easy thing on another, everyone would be doing it. The fact is that in any path that is rewarding, you may start easy but at some point you ahve to do the difficult bits. Starting easy is only for you to get the initial motivation, maybe see some early results so you stay excited even for the difficult bits. 

Motivational speakers may know it, but they never tell us. 

The medium is the message

I think the medium modifies the message- this is true even for people. Take for example politicians- when a leader makes a racist or a discriminatory statement even in a personal capacity, it is taken by followers as a command that they should act upon. In the case of India, the message is modified. haha. 

But its true across all levels. If a CEO believes in coming in early and keeping his office uncluttered and he speaks about it occasionally, even if he didnt mean it as a direct order, it is taken as one. A breakthrough idea in an obscure blog will be viewed with more skepticism than a breakthrough idea in a peer reviewed magazine. 

The message is actually the message + a bit of the medium