The Mental Pivot Newsletter: No.13
In this issue: Yearly themes vs. resolutions, preference falsification, piano practice habits as productivity advice, and a clutch of curated links for the curious.
I love the month of December. It’s an opportunity to reflect on the past year and start planning for the forthcoming one. For some, it’s a time to think about New Year’s resolutions—a tradition some love and others hate. If you’re in the latter camp, I have a suggestion for you: consider adopting a yearly theme as an alternative to a New Year’s resolution.
I first learned about yearly themes listening to CGP Grey and Myke Hurley’s Cortex Podcast (here’s last year’s episode on the topic). A yearly theme is a word or short phrase that prioritizes a principle, idea, or value that you want to emphasize in your life. When you choose a yearly theme, you commit yourself to cultivating that idea over the course of the year. It serves as a compass for many of the decisions and actions you’ll be taking. One big benefit of the theme is that it’s flexible and expansive. You can apply it to any number of activities. Should you fail at one activity, you can still pursue others that are guided by your chosen theme.
Grey and Hurley have practiced this habit for a few years. Here’s a sampling of themes they’ve used: the year of less, order, clarity, redirection, refinement, stabilization, diversification. You get the idea. You can glean more theme ideas from this thread in the Cortex subreddit or this thread in the CGP Grey subreddit (CGP Grey also created a YouTube video on the topic).
My annual theme for 2020 was “momentum” (I wrote a post about it at the start of the year). I chose this theme as a signpost and metaphor for many of the activities I engage in—blogging, exercise, reading, playing music. My hope was that I would keep these habits moving through consistent action and build momentum in the form of improved proficiency and confidence. This theme has influenced my decision-making all year. Last week, when I took a planned break from the blog, I asked myself if I should do the same for the newsletter. I reminded myself about my theme and that tipped the balance; I decided to avoid any breaks from the newsletter until I hit at least 25 issues (hopefully that’s sufficient to solidify the habit).
I haven’t finalized my theme for 2021, but I’ve got a handful of ideas on the shortlist: clarity, patience, resonance, and whatever the opposite of procrastination is. Deprocrastination? Proactivity? Anticipation? Message me if you have the answer. Meanwhile, I’ll work on picking an annual theme and write up a post about it at the start of 2021.
If there’s any interest in sharing your themes or forthcoming resolutions, don’t hesitate to comment on this post. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Now onto the updates...
This Week’s Pick
This is the one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about this week.
The Hidden Brain Podcast: A Conspiracy of Silence: Host Shankar Vedantam discusses the far-reaching phenomenon of “preference falsification” with economist Timur Kuran (author of “Public Truth, Hidden Lies”). Preference falsification is the act of misrepresenting individual wants to appease perceived social pressures. If someone serves you a meal and you don’t care for it, but you say that the meal was wonderful—perhaps the best you ever had—that is a form of preference falsification.
We engage in preference falsification because we are social creatures enmeshed in complex relationships, external pressures, and cultural conventions (after all, it would be rude to tell someone that their cooking sucks). We hide the truth because it’s beneficial to do so whether to gain reward or avoid punishment. But there is a dark side to preference falsification. Vedantam and Kuran explore this by looking at the ways authoritarian and democratic societies exploit this aspect of human behavior to drive their agendas and suppress dissent.
What’s New on the Blog:
1. What Good Piano Practice Habits Taught Me about Effective Learning
“If you want to be more productive, it’s worth taking a closer look at the areas where you already perform well. Ask yourself: ‘Are there ideas or tactics that can be adapted or repurposed for other areas in my life?’ I’ve long believed that my piano practice habit offers valuable lessons that are applicable to other endeavors. This essay is a first step in exploring those lessons and habits and their potential relevance to other domains.”
2. Articles and Podcasts of Note (Week of 11/30/2020)
This is my weekly roundup of interesting links and internet finds (reposted in its entirety in this newsletter).
Articles:
A Woman Called ‘Hey’: “Thirty-five years ago, a Bouyei ethnic minority member was trafficked across China to a faraway village where nobody spoke her language. This year, she miraculously found her way home.” Heartbreaking.
After Minimalism: If design style is a manifestation of the cultural zeitgeist, what does minimalism (à la the Apple Store aesthetic) portend for contemporary life?
Cancel: Can anybody really define what “cancel” means or is it yet another tool for promoting individual agendas. “Cancel’s murkiness has made it a very useful word for pushing already contentious or delicate matters into the realm of total confusion.”
Digital Tools I Wish Existed: Jonathan Borichevskiy wrote this last year, but the digital media consumption problems he catalogs are as relevant as ever.
How to Become More Curious: “Ultralearning” author Scott Young explores a favorite topic of mine.
How to Think for Yourself: Entrepreneur and venture capitalist Paul Graham on cultivating independent-mindedness: “Unfashionable ideas are disproportionately likely to lead somewhere interesting. The best place to find undiscovered ideas is where no one else is looking.”
The Modern World Has Become Too Complex for Any of Us to Understand: Tim Maughan kicks off a new series called “No One’s Driving” in an attempt to understand how we’ve lost control of the many complex systems governing our lives (supply chain, financial markets, governance, information, and more).
My Hunt for the Original McDonald’s French Fry Recipe: On July 23, 1990, McDonald’s changed their french fry recipe much to the dismay of fast food fans—they switched from beef tallow to vegetable oil. Luke Fater attempts to recreate the recipe of yesteryear.
No Game Days. No Bars. The Pandemic Is Forcing Some Men to Realize they Need Deeper Friendships: Relatable.
Productivity Advice: The only useful productivity advice you’ll ever get? Do the work (if you’re looking for something deeper, look elsewhere).
The Real Class War Is Within the Rich: Short piece on Peter Turchin’s theory that “elite overproduction” is the cause of current political strife.
Podcasts:
California City: The Dark Side of the American Dream: 8-part investigative series that looks at a decades-old speculative investment scheme in a desolate area 100 miles north of Los Angeles and the impact on the everyday people who were duped.
The Dave Chang Show: He’s brash and opinionated, but he’s also incredibly funny and insightful, especially when it comes to food. Chang’s new spin-off series, Recipe Club, is also worth checking out.
Making Sense: The Price of Distraction: Sam Harris conversation with neurologist Adam Gazzalay (author of “The Distracted Mind”).
The Portal: Cashing Out My Trump and IDW Positions: Whether or not he’s been cancelled, I always find Eric Weinstein insightful. Amidst a shrinking Overton window, I appreciate the so-called “Intellectual Dark Web” for being willing to discuss uncomfortable topics in a constructive and level-headed way.
Odds & Ends:
Singaporean authorities approved the sale of lab-grown meat. The chicken cells are grown in bioreactors and combined with plant-based ingredients. The process is detailed in this article from the Guardian. While it doesn’t sound appetizing, I tip my hat to human ingenuity.
I’m late to the AI party for plant-identification, but the PictureThis app is AMAZING. It’s available for iOS and Android. The app requires a paid subscription, but you can get a free 7-day trial subscription to evaluate. To use it, just take a photo and PictureThis immediately identifies the plant and offers you a host of information about it. I walked over to Golden Gate Park and spent a couple of hours at the arboretum photographing and learning about plants I’d previously admired but lacked any helpful information about. Super cool.
The Hive Index features a helpful curated collection of online communities grouped by topic or theme. Want to find online communities for entrepreneurship or architecture? The Hive Index will point you in the right direction.
Anticipating the holidays, blogger Will Patrick writes about How to Buy Gifts that People Actually Want. There are some good ideas in there.
Cartoonist Rakhim Davletkaliyev’s clever diagram, “Blogging vs. Blog Setups,” pokes fun at the wide spectrum of bloggers (I’m guilty of getting stuck in the static-gen basin in the past).
Thank you for subscribing to the Mental Pivot Newsletter. If you enjoy the newsletter, be sure to share it with your friends and spread the word.
I want to be able to deliver a top-notch newsletter to all of you. To that end, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what’s working, what doesn’t, and things you’d like to see more of. You can reach me by replying directly to this email or by adding a comment below.
If this newsletter was forwarded to you, visit this link to subscribe.
Alternatively, you can also read the full archive of posts, book notes and link roundups on my blog: https://mentalpivot.com.