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The Conundrum and Proposition:

How is it that we come to understand what brings us the most joy?

What is the best way to compose a life that we will find fulfilling?

Certainly no short-winded answers can be given to such questions – but in this relatively small article, I want to bring to the foreground the importance of understanding our own values and needs in constructing an ideally enjoyable life.

The Example:

Allow me to begin with an example:

Lets say you are looking for a trainer to help you with your fitness goal of improving cardiovascular endurance and vitality. You approach a trainer and ask them about how they can boost your progress and enhance your workouts. Here are two separate examples of a possible response from the trainer.

1. “We have people with similar goals in here all the time. We’ll have them work out on the machines and do some work on the bands, free weights, but mostly over here on our state-of-the-art cardio equipment. Working with motivated people like you is always a pleasure and I’d be happy to help.”
2. “With your specific goals, we’d be gearing a program more towards continuous, full-body dynamic exercise. The bikes and treadmills are great, but for the kind of function fitness you’re looking for, we’d experiment with a variety of exercises. Some might be calisthenic, some might be at the cable column, and some involving free weights – but this would be based off of your preferences and what your mind and body seem to align best with. Working with motivated people like you is always a pleasure and I’d be happy to help.”

Which response would you rather hear?

Anyone looking for results would probably choose the second response.

The first response is nice and short, but it conveys very little depth and understanding. Lets assume that after asking details about what kind of program you’d actually be getting into, you weren’t able to get much more out of the trainer. Lets assume that when you asked why you would be doing the exercises he was recommending, his answers were brief and shallow.

That probably wouldn’t bode well for your fitness objectives – and if you knew of one, you’d probably look for a trainer who knew his science and profession to a greater extent.

Reflection:

So lets bring some ideas home here.

Lets say one of yours friends is getting a coffee with you and he asks you what it is that you enjoy in your life and what it is that fulfills you.

If your answer to that question is “Uuuum… I don’t know. I like golf and hanging out with friends I guess…” then you might realize that you aren’t very proficient when it comes to the components of your personal fulfillment.

If you have no understanding of what it is that fulfills you, of what specific aspects of certain activities bring about the most enjoyment – how can you hope to align your life with what genuinely brings about happiness for you?

You would never trust a fitness professional to have control over your physical regimen unless you knew that he understood the dynamics of fitness, unless he knew what makes the body ‘tick’ and could clearly explain and apply these skills.

So why would you trust yourself to run your life without a clear understanding of what makes it the best life for YOU?

We aren’t talking about the path you take towards fitness at this point – we’re talking about living a life that is either aligned with your own ideas for happiness or not – we’re talking about your quality of life over a lifetime!

Is there anything more important experientially?

Applications:

Listing out every possible way to apply this broad idea would be ridiculous, but here in this short example we can go over some basic ideas.

First, aim to bring more depth into your understanding of what it is you enjoy. Whittle down your ideas about what it is you enjoy.

Do you enjoy sports? What sports, and why?

Maybe you enjoy table tennis and basketball because they have a fast and exciting pace, or maybe you like golf because of the coordination and focus involved, and honing those aspects of yourself is something you find enjoyable. Maybe you love wrestling because of the intricate applications of body mechanics and the grace of proper technique in action.

Maybe it isn’t that the sport itself that fulfills a unique need or desire for you, maybe you have associations to that sport that relate to things you values for themselves. For instance, you might associate golf with luxury and ease, or you might associate baseball with friendship because you grew up playing with all your best friends.

If you understand that you like to challenge your focus in golf, then you have found more depth than just “golf” in what you enjoy. You can now take this understanding and challenge your focus in other areas as well – such as scholastic endeavors or at work.

When you understand WHY it is that you value the activities / relationships / situations in your life, you can apply those “whys” to new aspects of your life.

For instance, you might realize that something you love about weight lifting is the fact that you can monitor your progress over time. You might then begin doing so in other areas as well! (You might monitor how many sales you close a month, or the quality of the experiences you have with a loved one, etc…).

In Conclusion:

Only you are responsible for your own fulfillment, and only you create it. Understand that there are needs, desires, values, and associations within you – some of which are unique to you – many of which are shared by arguably all of humanity.

If you don’t understand what composes the best life for you – if you don’t make a conscious effort to know what fulfills you and why – you cannot adequately live in the pursuit of your priorities, in the pursuit of your potential, or in the pursuit of happiness.

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For the finale of my visualization experiment, my plan was to look at the various activities throughout this Life Experiment and show how they correlated with different levels of intensity for the experience.

The results were not as expected, and before I go into WHY that might me, I’ll lay them out here:

 

Teaching Brazilian Jiu Jitsu:

Overall instances: 13

Total points for intensity of experience: 104

Average intensity of experience: 8

Beach:

Overall instances: 7

Total points for intensity of experience: 56.5

Average intensity of experience: 8.07

Internship:

Overall instances: 7

Total points for intensity of experience: 56

Average intensity of experience: 8

Night Life:

Overall instances: 9

Total points for intensity of experience: 74

Average intensity of experience: 8.22

 

What seemed “off” about these results? Well, they’re all so damn similar! What is up with the 8s being all over the place? Two activities had an average experience intensity of 8. Strange…

Why is this? These activities are so very different, and to me there is a clear experienced difference in enjoyment, growth, etc… In my mind I would expect teaching Jiu Jitsu to exceed internship activity by a long shot. Here are some potential reasons why we see this alignment with 8s (none of these might be a factor or all might be a factor):

• I might have rated the activities in terms of that activity itself, and not in reference to some rough ideal of objective enjoyment and intensity. In other words, I might have measured my experience up to my expectations of that context. So, a day that was an “8″ in my internship was not in fact the same intensity of “8″ that I experienced teaching Jiu Jitsu or out dancing and meeting people.
• I am terrible at gauging my own experience and put down random numbers that related to how I thought I felt but in fact was not accurate. I don’t think this is the case but its possible.
• My experiences in any given context tend to be as enjoyable as the rest of my general life experience. In other words, I may believe that I enjoy some activities and contexts more than others in general, but in fact all my activities may relate to one baseline of enjoyment. Again I doubt this but its possible.

To be honest, I think that it was hard to be precisely accurate with these subjective measures of enjoyment in my life, but I believe that given the number of posts, I would have seen some kind of trend to differentiate the activities a bit.

I believe that this equilibrium was due to my measuring of experience next to expectations, and so my ratings were relevant to the context.

What DOES the data tell me?

Well, if nothing else it shows me that there seems to be some kind of consistent overall baseline to the enjoyment I experience in different contexts, wether these levels of enjoyment are specific to the context or in reference to a general baseline of life enjoyment.

Again this evidence is by no means conclusive, as I have stated before, but its able to be taken into some considerations, and opens up a bunch of other fun doors in self-understanding.

 

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For about the last week of my experiment, I wrote down what my mental / emotional experience was like during the activity itself. Based on these results, I came up with some trends that I expected… but the evidence is important in that it SO INGRAINS my ideas about what separates a peak experience from a “poor” one.

Analysis of experience within activity (peak or poor?):

From what I can tell, the difference between a “good” (pleasurable, socially un-stifled, purpose-driven) experience and a “poor” (unpleasant, socially stifled, seemingly purposeless) experience boils down to one thing:

Focus.

On my experiences of glory, the times when I felt my best and performed my best, I noticed the following about my focus:

• My awareness was generally merged with my activity
• My thoughts were focused on how awesome my present experience was, and all the great opportunities for fun and learning were all around me, and what kinds of results can come from them
• (Occasionally) How well other things are going in my life, things I appreciate or am excited about

Literally thats it.

When I was in these peak emotional states, my mind was very very limited in its conscious focus. It was focused on the best things in life, and usually was completely occupied with thoughts of the present.

Every now and again I’ll have an awesome experience but it will mainly be because my mind is focused on pleasurable anticipation or on appreciation for certain things or circumstances in my life – this is like “carry-over” positive state. 

Even in these times when my focus was not so much on the present, I was able to enjoy the present and bring a kind of ease, fun and spontaneity to the present because my I just felt good and that was communicated in all that I did.

On the other hand, during my experiences of “bleh,” my focus gravitated towards the following:

 

• My awareness and action were separated in my mind
• The ramifications of my current actions in terms of other people’s opinions
• Other areas of my life that I was concerned about or felt dissatisfied with

 

All of these focuses serve no purpose in my experience. Its not like I had any terrible soul-crushing experiences, but some of them just weren’t of the same great quality as others, and this “focus” factor played the greatest role in that – in my opinion.

When these thoughts swirled in my mind, I was not focused on how to have a better time, but on how to avoid a bad one. Thinking of a “bad” time is silliness, as it takes my mind away from what a “good” time is about – the glory to be had in the present, given the opportunities around me.

 

The Origins of Focus:

So where does focus come from? The obvious answer is “your mind, stupid!” 

I believe that conscious channeling of thought is a major determinant of our focus, but I think there are other deterministic (bit not unable to be overridden) factors at work. Here I’ll briefly run through some of the major aspects determining focus:

 

• Conscious direction of thought. In my opinion, this is the single most important factor, as it is more or less the only controllable factor. This involves where we will our minds to focus in any given experience.
• Previous associations. This has to do with the kind of focus that has been ingrained in our psyche in similar circumstances. For instance, if every time you speak publicly you associate it with pain and rejection, you mind will guide you strongly toward such areas of focus the next time you get on stage.
• External circumstance. As an optimist I’d like to say that this factor exhibits the least amount of control over our emotional state. I might even say that “external circumstance” is merely a fraction of our conscious direction of thought, since we are able o determine what about our circumstances we focus upon (and so are able to direct our experience). However, I will concede that there do seem to be times when our automatic evaluation of externals is so favorable that we are nudged strongly toward peak emotional state, while other times our automatic evaluation seems to be so “negative” that we are nudged strongly toward a less favorable state. It is certain that complete control over our state regardless of circumstance is not achievable.

 

 

The fact of the matter is that conscious free will is king, as it is what we are able to affect. If it is not king, then I will live as though it is anyway. We must live as though our will is free. (Thank you William James)

However, it might be useful to keep some of these other factors in mind. For instance, we might be careful of what kind of associations we habitually make because we understand that our minds will take us in that direction automatically once it is programmed.

 

Conlude:

Being extra conscious of my mental focus during experiences has further cemented the importance of focusing on positive outcomes. 

In fact, being more aware of my focus has seemed to generally have had a positive effect on my focus day to day because I’m used to monitoring it and gauging it.

This experiment will definitely bubble over into other posts and studies of focus and peak experience. 

 

 

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(Go back to “Combining Tasks“)

Purposeful Action:

What is Productivity all about, anyway? 

To me, it has no reference outside the realm of accomplishing meaningful activity.

What is meaningful activity, you ask?

It could be writing a book, composing music, playing with your children, or advancing in your corporate ranks. It could also be none of those things.

The fact of the matter is, that your productivity is always drawn from your VALUES and BELIEFS about what is important to you, and ultimately about what you see as best for your long term quality of life.

In this part in our series on maximizing productivity, we can go about understanding our purpose and using it to compel us, and we can go about determining which actions are actually of highest priority.

- Understanding and Using Your Purpose:

Many people claim to be “too lazy” to accomplish tasks. This always translates into low productivity, of course, but I pose that the “laziness” is not innate.

Show me a single “lazy” person who has numerous exciting, meaningful goals and a clean idea of their self-defined purpose. I know of none.

We act because of our “reasons,” and with compelling reasons to act, we see action. Otherwise what is the purpose of any growth or any action? Unless we associate joy and fulfillment to the result of our actions, “relaxing” is a more valuable way to spend time.

Understanding what you most value in your life and how to gear your life towards making the most of it on those terms is essential to any fulfilling pursuit of productivity. 

If your actions aren’t gearing you towards these things, if they aren’t drawing you out of your current comfort zone and into something more expansive, more creative, more fun, more fulfilling – then you will not act.

What do you value most in your life? What are you doing right now to develop that area of your life, to appreciate it more, to get more involved? Find your meaning here and allow yourself to be drawn by your dreams. That is the only way that visionaries have created on a grand scale – that is the only way to massive change.

Check out my article on determining purpose right here.

- Identifying Priorities: 

Finding what tasks and goals are highest in relevance to our life’s purpose is essentially the process of identifying priorities. Here are some concise principals for discerning what actions will take us where we ultimately want to be.

 

 

 

• 80 – 20:

 

 

The infamous 80 – 20 rule states that 80% of your results stem from 20% of your activity. Look clearly at your absolutely highest goals, the goals that mean the most to you in your life. You will likely find that most of your day to day activity is not geared towards your highest goals, and that many of your extraneous projects are not in fact productive in light of what you’re most interested in achieving. 

Understanding this idea was huge for me. I was growth-oriented, and goal oriented, but my resources were being scattered – not inching me consistently towards my few major life goals. If you want to see massive change, you must determine your highest objectives which you are undeniably committed to reaching. Then you must develop your plan (yet keep it flexible enough to edit), and act in the direction of that objective.

If your major goal is to design new parts for combustion engines, then your most productive time is likely spent experimenting with newly designed parts and talking with other specialists about improving the functions and mechanisms of engines. 

Understand for you: what is the highest pay-off task? What activity ultimately makes you successful or not? Whatever this activity is, it sure seems like something worth focusing on.

 

 

 

• Bottleneck:

 

 

There is always a portion of your grand life plan that will take more time that the other parts, a segment of your plan that will set the pace for all other growth and development.

For instance, if you are in a marketing division of a company, your biggest bottleneck to developing new sales material and designing new websites and pamphlets might be the confirmation of your superiors. Your team might slow down action, or hold off on its important tasks because they need to ensure that its alright for them to build in that direction i the first place.

This seems blatantly inefficient. Hence, in such a position it would be wise to set up a faster system of support and more open communication with the higher level executives. This might involve limiting their involvement in your department so that you work more independently, or it might a quick daily email informing him or her of your current on-goings and getting the go-ahead. 

Do you know what is keeping your strongest horses behind the gate? 

Take time to write down what factors limit your productivity, performance, enjoyment or accomplishment at work. Determine which is the largest and allocate resources to solving this problem. You’ll find that determining a plan to deal with the issue is not difficult once you have identified the issue itself.

• Stop the Small Stuff:

This is an active approach to taking priorities seriously. Are you ever aware of yourself when you procrastinate on important life goals? 

Given our limited resources we are constantly neglecting certain possible activity when we decide our courses of action. The question is, what options are you eliminating?

In economics there is a term called Opportunity Cost:

The value of the next best alternative given up as the result of making a decision.

We must consistently consider the value of that which we are passing up as a result of taking the action we are taking. As was mentioned previously a prerequisite here is a firm understanding of our values, since we cannot determine which decisions are best for us unless we have a reference to what our values and objectives (specifically what out highest values and highest objectives are).

Am I instructing you to… procrastinate!?

Hmmm, not quite. Here’s why: You can only get so much done in a day, or a week, or a month. So, there will always be tasks that you hold off from. Make sure they are the ones that you WANT to hold off – so that you can engage NOW in those activities that will yield the greatest return on your own terms.

The difference between this function of Prioritizing, and the act of Procrastinating, is that when we Procrastinate we still carry the task as active, and we often carry psychological baggage in terms on stress and a decreased sense of self-efficacy. When we Prioritize we often eliminate a task altogether, or we actually feel good about not getting to it at that time, because we know that we have more productive tasks at hand.

This key difference between procrastination and prioritizing is simultaneously a key difference between failure and success.

 

 

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A-HA! :

www.LifeExperiment.net

 

At last I’ve transferred Life Experiment to its own official website.

I had been working on this for quite some time, and now I genuinely want to thank those who helped it happen their technological brilliance.

The new site is going mean a lot more potential for creativity on the blog, and I’m excited to present a lot of the new ideas I’m churning up, including a few ebooks in the mix.

Keep in mind that there will be a LOT of web design and tweeking going on, and I’d always appreciate some input on the site’s aesthetics. Its going to be fun.

Pumped!

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