experiments

I Don’t Want Stuff Any More, Only Things

I have been a bad parent. I only did what I knew, but I can no longer deny it: I never gave them a good home. I never made them feel useful or showed them any respect.

Today I dropped off hundreds of former possessions at the Goodwill shop. Maybe they’ll find adoptive parents who will be better than I have. I don’t even remember ever deciding to take them on as my dependants. They just happened. But somewhere along the line, all those things became stuff, and lost my respect.

Most of us live amidst stuff. We do have a few things too — well-used, well-enjoyed, and well-respected items that have an established place in our lives. But most of it is stuff.

Stuff makes us feel bad. It fills the mind with fading hopes about what we might one day do with it, taunts us with our obvious inability to manage it, and gives us the ominous sense that we’re losing track of something crucial, either in the physical mess of stuff itself, or in the mental mess it creates in our heads.

I don’t want stuff anymore, only things.

My black, square coffee table in the center of my living room is a thing.

My set of puke-green plates, which sit on the shelf above the nice white plates I actually use, are stuff.

My stainless steel water bottle, only four weeks old but already a close companion, is a thing.

My Beatles Jigsaw puzzle, which I got as a gift and immediately loved the idea of — but never assembled — is stuff.

I donated about a hundred pounds of stuff today. Sometimes it’s sad to get rid of some items, particularly if you had high hopes for them, if they were a gift, or if you associate them with someone you miss.

But how much sadder is it to hoard something in your home for years for some inane psychological reason, without actually putting it to use or giving it a proper place?

If I’m going to own an item, the least I could do is be a good parent to it. And the most fundamental responsibility of a parent is to give your children a decent home.

Stuff doesn’t usually have a home. Items of stuff are transients, surviving day-by-day in a temporary stack somewhere, leaning sadly against a garage wall, or sleeping in the darkness of a junk drawer, never sure of their fate or purpose. A particularly fortunate piece might get a chance to hibernate in a half-full cardboard box in the storage room, with some other hard-luck outcasts.

Nor do they have jobs. Just ask my broken acoustic guitar. Sorry, pal, but as a chronically disabled possession I just can’t keep you busy here. But feel free to mill about the closet behind the well-employed shirts and pants. I’m too insecure and sentimental to boot you out, but maybe one day, by some unlikely turn of events, you’ll become relevant again. Read More

by David on January 19, 2011

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The Art of Showing Up

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Raptitude Experiment No. 8

I’m finally settled from my return to Canada, with a permanent apartment and a permanent job, so I feel ready to dig in and make some strides in the self-improvement department.

Self-improvement is about habit change, I know that now. But I have a poor track record for habit change. I have been ping-ponging between two different strategies, and neither has worked too well.

My old strategy was to summon all my enthusiasm, pick a day and try to change everything at once: begin exercising, meditating, staying organized, and practicing guitar every day. Usually I start this on a Monday and it lasts till about Tuesday.

It’s too much. There is too much of a sudden schedule adjustment, and the habits have a tendency to get in each other’s way. Any new habit makes ripples in your life that you can’t really predict until you’re doing it.

For example, if you’re in the new habit of working out with kettlebells after work, when you sit down to play guitar you may notice your hands are sore and tense, your mind is a bit dull, and it’s just not conducive to playing guitar. Your practice is an uninspiring one, and it’s getting late anyway, so you don’t do the next thing right either, if you get to it at all. Getting even the first day right is hard when you take on multiple new habits.

Many people suggest never trying to change more than one habit at a time. My problem with this is always the same: I have some initial success and then I can’t help but think about other habits I could be forming. I want to ride the momentum. If there are five or six habits I want to form, and I’m not allowing myself to begin on the second until I’m 30 days into the first, that means I can’t even touch some of those habits until I’m five or six months down the road, and that assumes that I’m successful in my first attempts.

I don’t know about you, but when I want to make a change, I don’t want to put my inspiration on hold for six months. In my life it seems I am either comfortable and complacent, or I want to make a dramatic change (a revolution!) in how I spend my time. Right now I want to make several changes at once, and I’m determined to find a way.

The Plan

I have a suspicion, and I’m going to test it out. Read More

by David on September 13, 2010

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Five Useful Headless Resources

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Well it turns out there’s been much more interest in Douglas Harding’s Headless Way than I initially thought. I’ve had quite a few lengthy comments and a lot more emails than normal. Evidently Headlessness has struck a chord with a lot of you, and people have a lot of questions.

I can’t explain everything about it here though, for three reasons. First of all, I don’t want to write about the same topic for too long because I know not everyone is interested. Secondly, I can’t do nearly as good a job describing headlessness as Douglas Harding can and already has. And finally, this is a method of self-enquiry, which means you’ll have to do most of the exploring and experimenting yourself to get the most out of it.

So here are five excellent resources on headlessness, all available from your computer chair. Read More

by David on August 26, 2010

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Headlessness FAQ

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This is the fourth article in a series about Douglas Harding’s method of self-inquiry, called headlessness. The others are here: [Post one] [Post two] [Post three]

In the previous article, I described Harding’s discovery that he, in his first-person, singular, present-tense experience, did not have a head. He insists that anyone who gives it an honest, unbiased look, will find the same thing.

Obviously it’s a preposterous claim, and it raises some questions. Here are the most common sticking points.

What is the point of this?

The point is to experience your true nature instead of just experiencing your thoughts about your true nature.

We tend to see ourselves as what our thoughts tell us we are: separate, finite bodies, tiny compared to the world we inhabit.

Nearly all of your ideas about who you are have been derived from views of you at a distance, either from other people’s accounts, or from mirrors and cameras.

From a distance of a few meters, you do appear to be a finite thing in the midst of other finite things. From zero distance, your appearance is very different, but we tend to disregard what we see ourselves to be, in favor of what we’ve learned ourselves to be from non-first-hand sources. This collection of learnings is called the ego, and most people will never suspect that it isn’t who they are. All of it is second-hand, past-tense, misleading information about who you are, observed from angles that cannot possibly see what you see.

All the major spiritual teachings inevitably point to nonduality — that there is no real separation between you and the universe around you. Many people suspect this is true, believe it is true, or want it to be true, yet it remains only an interesting concept for most.

What the Headless Way (or “headlessness”) allows you to do is to see nonduality plainly. You can physically see the seamlessness between you and the universe that contains you. This has huge implications for our relationships with others, the ego’s negative effects on our lives, human evolution and a lot more. Read More

by David on August 23, 2010

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First Things First

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Ever since I declared my Big Goal — complete self-employment by my 31st birthday — I’ve been flip-flopping about where specifically to start. Because I’m working with such a long timeline, it doesn’t make sense to chart out every action along the way, because I just don’t know how it’s all going to play out. It’s almost all new territory for me so I’ll need to be making constant adjustments the whole way.

So the “middle game” and “end game” of this goal are going to stay undefined until I get closer to them, but the opening sequence is to be decided now.

I am still abroad at the moment, so my workspace is constantly changing and never predictable. I have no desk and no filing cabinet, not much privacy, and often internet access is expensive or unavailable. There is also an uncomfortable internal conflict between my desire to make the most of my time abroad by sightseeing and socializing, and my desire to get this project underway.

Most of the sub-projects involved in my goal will have to wait until I return home, where I’ll have the stability and privacy to work, with fewer distractions. But I can still make one or two big strides between now and then.

I’ll be living out of my backpack for another six weeks yet. I’ve left New Zealand to explore Australia until I go home. Not that six weeks is a long time — I can’t believe I’m so close to the end of my trip — but I do want to get closer to my goal during this time, rather than defer it all until I get home. Enjoying my trip is the number one priority, but I don’t need sixteen waking hours a day to enjoy myself.

My goal’s general plan is clear to me, and I know that the first stage is going to surround establishing certain fundamental habits: writing habits, workflow habits, networking habits, and blog marketing habits. These habits will put me in a better position to complete everything between now and D-Day (October 8, 2011.) Any good habit established now will pay great dividends over the next eighteen months, and will facilitate the development of other habits.

In my research on habit change, one point keeps coming up again and again: the likelihood of your habit sticking decreases dramatically for every additional habit you’re attempting to change at the same time. If you only focus on one habit, a successful take is almost guaranteed, but trying to change five habits concurrently almost guarantees failure for all of them. Read More

by David on May 18, 2010

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How I Spent My Life Last Week — Experiment No. 6 Results

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Two weeks ago David decided to log every single thing he spent time on, from sleeping to waking up, in an effort to identify unproductive, time-wasting habits. The experiment lasted one week, and this is what he discovered.

Well it’s over, and I have been properly schooled. I’ll never look at my time the same way again.

The logs themselves are not that interesting or surprising. I didn’t uncover any insidious habits that have been stealing hours from me every day (though email-checking is definitely taking more than its fair share.)

What I did with my time didn’t really shock me, but I gained some sobering insight into why I do the things I do, and how to make much better use of time. These experiments never deliver exactly what I’m expecting, but that’s good — I get lessons I didn’t even know I needed.

So where does the time go?

Recording everything you do has an interesting effect on the psyche. You realize that by merely doing things with your day, you are spending your life. So it stands to reason that you’d become more concerned with what you’re getting in exchange.

Some interesting discoveries:

It doesn’t really take a long time to make a decision, unless you are avoiding it. Time logging spurs prompt decision-making, because each time you stop doing something you have to decide what to do next. I quickly realized that normally I gravitate towards some gratifying or distracting activity like reading a magazine or checking email rather than just make a decision about what to do. There were a few entries where I spent 8 or 9 minutes “Sitting on bed, thinking about what to do” but for the most part I was able to decide how to spend my time within one minute.

This was a major revelation. I have avoided decisions in the past because I don’t want to take responsibility for the consequences of that decision. Of course, to avoid a making a decision is a decision too, but it isn’t necessarily a conscious one — it’s an unconscious habit.

I didn’t realize I had this habit. From the first day of my experiment log:

I’m already getting an idea of how this going to be. The first thing I notice is that I have to stop to think all the time. Each time I finish doing something, I have to stop and actually decide what to do! I didn’t realize that this is not the normal way I function.

I suspect this is somewhat normal. Does everything you do start with a conscious decision?

I had some completely incorrect conceptions about how much time some things take, and you might too. For example, doing laundry always felt like something that took a good hour and a half: 10 minutes gathering the laundry, 30 minutes in the washer, 40 minutes in the dryer, and 15 minutes folding. In reality, laundry only took 12 minutes: 4 to gather the clothes, take them downstairs, and put them in the washer; 2 minutes to go downstairs and move them over to the dryer; 6 minutes to go get the clothes, fold them and put them away. The rest of it is completely free time. That’s just a simple psychological misperception, but it has a big effect on whether I decide to tackle a certain task on a certain day. Suddenly laundry is a cinch. Read More

by David on May 4, 2010

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Where Does The Time Go? — Experiment No. 6

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You are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

~Pink Floyd, “Time”

Something big is brewing. Life has been telegraphing this particular development for a while now, but last week I was smacked with a stroke of clarity about it, and now it is happening.

I am undertaking a massive goal. It’s the biggest goal I’ve ever had. I have no doubts I will complete it, on time, and that it will change my life dramatically. I’ll save the details of it for an upcoming post, because the whole thing hinges on my ability to overcome one of my lifelong weaknesses. This experiment is the first step towards my huge goal.

You may have noticed a conspicuous absence of posts about personal productivity here on Raptitude. I do write about how to improve your quality of life in all sorts of ways, but I am no authority on getting things done in a timely manner. There are 14 posts in the archives tagged with the topic “Productivity” but they are only peripherally related.

When it comes to personal productivity, I blow. I have had so much spare time this last three weeks that I could have written twenty articles and a book of limericks, but I was able to squander nearly all that time, and just get my bare-bones tasks done. This latest mismanaged stretch of free time is typical.

I am not lazy. That isn’t the problem. I never sleep in, I don’t watch TV, I don’t play video games, I don’t get horizontal on couches. I love doing. I have loads of exciting projects ready to go, and I want to work on them. But I am highly conditioned to get very little purposeful work done. The fact that this website even exists is a small miracle. My inefficiency is so consistent it’s almost comical. Read More

by David on April 19, 2010

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Complaining is Only a Symptom — Experiment No. 5 Results

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Done. My campaign to go 21 consecutive days without complaining or gossiping is finally over, and what I discovered surprised me.

To recap, the experiment was to cease complaining or gossiping for twenty-one straight days, as long as that took. If I complained, I started the count again from zero. The idea was inspired by the book A Complaint Free World, by Will Bowen. The original post is here.

I cruised through the first week complaint-free, then cracked on my eighth day. I had to restart four times in total. My last screwup was on the eighteenth consecutive day, within 72 hours of finishing.

It took a total of 55 days. Read More

by David on April 5, 2010

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The End of Negativity – Raptitude Experiment No. 5

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Time for another experiment. This one I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. The idea behind it has made the rounds for a few years now and I’m not the first to do it, but I think the concept is fascinating and brimming with potential.

One day Will Bowen, a mild-mannered Missouri Reverend, challenged his congregation to develop their habit of gratitude by going 21 consecutive days without complaining or criticizing.

His method was quite simple and ingenious: Read More

by David on February 4, 2010

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A New Relationship With Food – Experiment No. 4 Results

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Another experiment has come to an end, but as usual, I’m not going right back to what I was doing beforehand. Just like my last experiment, 30 Days Without Drugs, one of the habits in my life has been permanently renegotiated.

To recap, a month ago I decided I’d go thirty days eating defensively. That means no indiscriminate eating. I defined four rules to govern my eating during that month:

1) Eat whatever you like. There are no foods to be avoided outright, except foods that make you feel sick. Listen to your body.

2) Never eat until you are full. Always stop at a moment when you still want to eat a bit more. This is the most important part of the diet. Again, listen to what the body says, not the mind.

3) Eat only when you are hungry. Never out of comfort or boredom. Do not eat within sixty minutes of the last time you stopped eating.

4) Water is the only drink. You may still consume any liquids you want, but they are to be treated like food.

These rules served me well, and prevented a lot of needless and excessive eating, but each had its loopholes and grey areas. Read More

by David on October 5, 2009

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I Don’t Want Stuff Any More, Only Things