Progression Dilemma Part 2: Pros and Cons

What’s the best option? Let’s list out the virtues of each path:

OPTION 1 - Establishing All Habits
Pros: Steadily working on things. Better regimentation. Circle of support. vortex forces are not in play (because you’re doing everything!). Accrual of long-term benefits, like writing “two shitty pages”, allows for great benefits simply because you’re doing it every day even though it’s in incredibly small amounts. This latter benefit only occurs in some skills…like writing or fixed skills like flossing.
Cons: Glacially slow progress. Incredibly difficult to regiment - overwhelming. problems with house of cards, problems with time, problems in willpower - you have to do ALL of it in one day. Vortex forces might actually be in play on another level because you aren’t progressing in everything - there will be times when the impatience in some skills will affect you. Depletion forces in play.

OPTION 2 - 1 Skill Progression
Pros: fast progress. lots of willpower
Cons: no support. no regimentation practice. Vortex forces definitely in play.

OPTION 3 - Family of Skills
Pros: Fast progress - arguably the FASTEST progress due to skills backing each other up (ex, diet AND exercise) Seeing fast progress helps with motivation, saves on vortex forces. Saving some on willpower, therefore fewer depletion forces. Targeted relevant support. A little regimentation practice.
Cons: Vortex forces in play (a little). downside of regularity to prevent things like writer’s block. Accrual of long term benefits a la two shitty pages not in play.

CONCLUSION:

Option 1 is definitely out - there’s just too much going wrong for it. I think the best option is the third - it seems to have the best of both worlds - the only real thing wrong with it is a lack of small accrual in certain tasks. 

What does all this mean for the future of the project? It’s something I’ll discuss in my next post. I think the important thing to remember is that these are three phases. Regimentation, habituation, and mastery. I think clarifying what success means and separating out these three vectors is critical for any further progress and discussion.

What is good for habituation isn’t necessarily good for mastery. And making decisions like that are what’s crucial for continuing this project - it also definitively signifies a turning point in this blog. What started out as a project on habituation has definitely outgrown its starting parameters. 

And that’s a good thing.

Depletion and Vortex Forces

I started getting more into this Progression Dilemma…but while I started writing about it a few concepts emerged that I’d like to define first.

Vortex: I described periods emotional flux through the habit/mastery process in THIS RECENT POST. Feelings include needing to do more, feeling you should’ve done everything years ago, anxiety, depression, panic. The urge to hop ahead and start trying to improve in multiple arenas. These feelings can be compared to its opposite but equally detracting phase Depletion, Ego or Endurance, where you feel drained of energy. In a vortex progress slows because you feel ripped a part by the need to do it all. In a depletion phase progress slows because you feel emptied of energy. I’m not sure if these are the best names, but we’ll keep it as such for now.

Vortex/Depletion Forces: Why add “forces”? I think of it as making it into a sliding scale. When you’ve entered a Vortex or a Depletion pocket it’s almost already too late. The forces may be in action far before - for example, when focusing all energies in one skill like writing, Vortex forces will increase if you’re surrounded by people who are working on physical exercise. You see people progressing physically, they may make some comments like “you should really at least get out, or eat better” and you’ll have this urge to start improving - you feel like you’re not improving on all vectors, which can eventually lead into a full on Vortex where all progress slows. The same dynamic can occur when pushing TOO much, manifesting in increased depletion forces.

**On a total side note, I’m horrible at naming, and fully intend on going back and really thinking about apt descriptors for these concepts. The more I think about it the more all of this terminology seems to mimic aerodynamics, and I might need to pillage jargon from that discipline.

One Skill or All - The Progression Dilemma of Mastery

This is going to take me a while to unpackage, so get settled in.

Lately I’ve been feeling….Idunno….conflicted as to the continuation of this project.  This project started out about habits - I have no problem with habits now. Yay!

The problem has to do with skill mastery. Mastering the thing itself. What’s that mean? It means losing weight. Being able to smoothly execute writing projects at a high level. Maintaining equanimity and progressing in meditation. And though progress is coming slowly, I have to wonder when looking to my peers…is this progress fast enough?

My buddy James has focused all his energies on eating - he tracks calories and he’s lost a LOT of weight in the last year. Now, I  don’t want to do it exactly like he does, but in terms of HIS goals - he’s succeeded. I can’t say the same for myself. 

Although I’ve lost some weight and I’ve made fantastic long-term behavioral changes I haven’t gotten the THING ITSELF - the end goal, when I feel like I should have. I can expand this out to another guy I know who got into bodybuilding - immense payout from focusing on one thing. Writing a book, huge breakthroughs in meditation - they are not there. 

Should I be focusing on one habit at a time? To clarify - the problem doesn’t come into play with habits - only with habits that require that added mastery step. Mechanically repeatable tasks accrue merit just by doing them at one level - flossing comes to mind. But most tasks aren’t like that - they require upping the ante a lot.

Certainly all the literature suggests I should focus on one thing. The oft-repeated advice is that it takes 10,000 hours or 10 years to gain true mastery of a craft. I’m certainly not talking about that level of skill. I’m talking about a year. But something bothers me about this approach and I think it’s because I want the self sustaining relationship of related skills.

Eating well and exercising tends to go together. Meditation can help deal with all frustrating situations. There’s a urge within me to do all things because they’re like a circle that supports everything. 

The problem is that it often feels like I’m stuck doing 2 pushups. Yes the habit is there, but the benefits aren’t. And it’s really hard to be constantly pushing all skills.

There are a couple of ways to approach this.

1) Get basic habits in all my basic tasks. Focus on just habituation, then start pushing mastery in each of them.

2) Engage one skill from habituation to a decent level of mastery. Then move on to the next skill. This seems to be what most people attempt doing.

One of the other things I’m scared of is that engaging completely in one skill will take too long, and I will have in fact then abandoned my project of mastery in all skills. But this only comes into play if going after super mastery with 10 years of practice - I’m not after that (yet).

But perhaps it’s not either or. Perhaps an ideal is to focus on the benefits of both. I want to focus on few tasks but I want the benefits of a circle of skills. So why not deal in families? Why not focus on groupings? Meditation and writing would go well together because they both deal with deep seated fears. Exercise and food complement each other.

3) Engage in sets of skills. Groupings that support each other.

I think the additional key to either way out is to understand that pushing skill mastery depletes more “energy” - endurance, willpower, what have you. And though you want to push all skills, you have to avoid being ripped a part by depletion forces. This means exercising restraint and focusing on fewer things - you have to let some things go to push mastery.