Not Losing Your Way in the Circus
Boosting Your Cognitive Abilities can help in a big way...
“Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” - Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise
If you have been following the Investment News recently, then you would be overwhelmed with the different streams of information coming at you non-stop. IN case you have been out of touch, let me share with you a few snippets #
Dogecoin has shot up 1000% + since the start of April and has resulted in Crypto Exchanges and Wallets targeting you on Social Media with a dog as their cover page model.
COVID has resulted in chaos across borders, disrupting supply chains, denting travel-related businesses, shutdowns seen across businesses, and a drastic fall in offline retail traffic. But you still see Carnival Corporation (Cruiseline Business) stock appreciating 24% in 2021 alone
India has reached 21 million + cases of COVID 19 and 238,000 + deaths, resulting in lockdowns across the country and retail businesses coming to a standstill. In spite of the chaos seen on television, the stock market is at an all-time high level of 49231.
Twitter’s revenue grew 28% to $1.04 billion and it grew its monetizable user base 20% in the quarter to 199 million compared with a year ago. And you still saw the stock tank 25% in last month alone.
The markets always had a lot going on and it was always hard to make complete sense of what’s happening and why. But it was relatively easier than today since you were exposed to the news via select distribution outlets i.e. newspaper or television or industry magazines. These same channels have been disrupted with the multitude of experts going mainstream with their content.
Today, you have experts hosting their own channel on Youtube. I really liked the one that Nasim Taleb started recently on Statistics. Your favorite analysts or writers have started their own newsletters, paid or free, and they are on their toes to add tons of value to you. Industry experts are coaching keen students in cohort-based courses and these have top-notch quality content, seamless execution, and very high levels of engagement.
Add to this, the free journals or reports, tweets from the ones you look up to from across industries, chatter on WhatsApp groups or telegram, slack channels, books that are highly recommended, online webinars, and zoom sessions. The content keeps flowing towards you, making you feel being left behind and hence the scraping for more and more, faster and faster from all sources possible.
Everything mentioned above was referring to knowledge accumulation alone. Add to this the responsibilities at work, duties at home, the intent of keeping fit, the urge to socialize and connect with friends, and the desire to work on your hobbies or passions.
This leads to “running around with fire extinguishers in times of flood.” - C.S. Lewis
This is exactly how it looks in your mind, with neurons firing on all cylinders, trying to keep you on track with your commitments, attention, energy, and focus while you carry the weight of delivering results and looking calm and composed at all times.
This is a lot to deliver upon. And you have only 24 hours to do so, day after day. No wonder that many of my friends spend their weekends recovering from the workload of the week and treating themselves to partying hard or binge-watching Netflix on weekends to make up for the burnout experienced.
But what if this wasn’t the case? What if you could boost your cognitive abilities to manage multiple responsibilities day after day, delivering results across different endeavors, while not losing your energy and focus, and holding onto your calm and composed demeanor.
In no way am I hinting at flawless work or optimal creative outburst. But how about going 2X in your cognitive ability to manage everything at hand, connecting the dots, recognizing the patterns, taking quick decisions, getting better at filtering things, saying NO to umpteen opportunities, not getting sucked into FOMO, and steepening your learning curve.
The figure on the right denotes all tasks at hand. The figure on the left denotes getting it all together and holding it in sync, where each could feed into the other and also, feed off the other. E.g. your workouts provide you enough energy to pack your day with productive interactions and seamless execution. But your success at work also provides you the peace of mind and financial stability to take time out for maintaining a healthy routine.
But what you see normally is that stress at work affects the quality of health and relationships. Bad health affects performance at work, closing the doors for better opportunities due to the perceptions created about your abilities and likeability. Fewer opportunities lead to you getting work that doesn’t challenge you or grow you. And that’s a cycle many find it hard to get rid of and sometimes it’s just too late to make the changes.
This is where the concept of FLOW comes in.
In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time.
Steven Kotler, author of many best-sellers like ‘The Rise of Superman’, ‘Stealing Fire’ and ‘Art of Impossible’ had presented at MindValley in the US and he shares “In Flow state, we feel at our best and we perform at our best, our actions and awareness merge which creates rapt attention, sense of self vanishes, leading to high-speed creative decision making and all acts of performance (mental and physical) go through the roof.”
It is this heightened state of awareness that results in one becoming capable of extraordinary feats. Else, how would you explain the achievements, which used to be considered impossible just a few years back? There are many people that attain this level of performance and one such example is Valentin Delluc.
In the Flow state, 5 of the most potent neurochemicals are produced in the brain i.e. Norepinephrine, Dopamine, Endorphins, Anandamide, and Serotonin. Dopamine elevates your levels of happiness. Serotonin helps regulate mood and anxiety. Norepinephrine helps mobilize the brain for action and can improve energy and attentiveness. Endorphins reduce stress and anxiety. Anandamide is called the bliss molecule and is linked with mental health and well-being.
“Motivationally, these five chemicals are the biggest rewards the brain can produce, and flow is one of the only times the brain produces all five simultaneously. This makes the state one of the most pleasurable, meaningful and — literally — addictive experiences available.” - Steven Kotler in Harvard Business Review:
If you were to reach a flow state, the most likely outcome would be -
Increased cognitive ability
Heightened motivation levels
Burst of creativity
Steep learning curve
These are foundational in accomplishing feats that make people’s jaw drop and admire your zest and zeal for life. It’s not solely about how much money you will make but it’s rather about how much you extract out of your 24 hours daily.
How is it that some people can only manage to hold onto one job and keep at it day after day? And others, have a job till 6, then a hustle in the evening, time for workouts and healthy relationships, journaling, meditation, managing their investment portfolio, being tuned into what’s happening globally, and learning new skills. Maybe the latter is more often in the zone (in flow state) than many others.
“Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.” - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
There are many ways to create this mental state for yourself. You could work out, cook, go for regular walks, meditate, journal, fast, do weekly goal setting, do affirmations or play an instrument. Even Thomas Edison had a pipe organ in his lab, Albert Einstein did not like being bothered on his daily walks, Benjamin Graham would journal constantly, Naval Ravikant chooses silent meditation for an hour daily and Tony Robbins has his morning dip in a pool of cold water.
Everyone is unique and would need to find his own path to create this elevated state of being. But in today’s world, all of us are lost in a sea of content, to-dos, distractions, responsibilities, news, and making sense of all these needs one to operate at a higher level of being.
You will be surprised to know that giant corporations like Amazon have instituted flow in the firm. You have to say yes to ideas and if you say no, you have to put it up publicly for rejecting the same. So no idea gets shot down without being dissected to bare bones. Just imagine the culture if everybody is encouraged to come up with innovative ideas to take the firm forward and there will be no mocking or backlash or judgments for the same. Meritocratic ideas will emerge out of a system where everyone is encouraged to contribute.
Berkshire Hathaway has become a behemoth due to the culture of trust and decentralization in the company. As Warren Buffet states in his 2016 Annual Letter - “Cultures self-propagate. Winston Churchill once said, “You shape your houses and then they shape you.” That wisdom applies to businesses as well. Bureaucratic procedures beget more bureaucracy, and imperial corporate palaces induce imperious behavior. (As one wag put it, “You know you’re no longer CEO when you get in the back seat of your car and it doesn’t move.”) At Berkshire’s “World Headquarters” our annual rent is $270,212. Moreover, the home-office investment in furniture, art, Coke dispenser, lunch room, high-tech equipment — you name it — totals $301,363. As long as Charlie and I treat your money as if it were our own, Berkshire’s managers are likely to be careful with it as well.”
At your personal front, you may do any of the following to access this state -
Cutting out distractions e.g. Switching off all Notifications
Eliminating negative people from your circle
Taking short breaks before going all in spurts of 45- 60 mins on focussed work
Surrounding yourself with smarter people
Setting goals
Learning Skills that challenge you
Learning by doing where all your senses are involved i.e. deep embodiment.
Do something new every week/day
Try something risky or out of your comfort zone
As Csikszentmihalyi says, doing these allows you to have a shot at being an autotelic personality, which describes a person who “is never bored, seldom anxious, involved with what goes on and in flow most of the time.”
Earning money alone and saving for the future can’t be the only goal one dedicates his whole life to. Being in a state of flow allows life to expand and reach into many more corners of what’s possible in 24 hours for an ordinary person.
As I read about this finding, I couldn’t help but also think about the epidemic of chronic overload that currently afflicts so many knowledge workers. The volume of obligations on our proverbial plates — vague projects, off-hand promises, quick calls, and small tasks — continues to increase at an alarming rate. There was a time, not that long ago, when the standard response to the query, “How are you?”, was an innocuous “fine”; today, it’s rare to encounter someone who doesn’t instead respond with a weary “busy.” - Cal Newport
And once you get busy, you get sucked into other people’s agenda easily. You get lost in the maze of information out there. You say YES when you would have liked to say NO. You BUY securities you don’t understand. You load up on debt when there was no need to. You get unhealthy to the point of no return. You surround yourself with people you have to but don’t like to.
You try to fit into the world instead of standing out and creating an identity of your own. If the latter matters for you, then understanding what gets you in the zone is a very important treasure to hunt.
To sum it all up - Creating Magic is possible for each one of us. One just needs to make an effort to elevate to a higher sense of being. A. R. Rehman is one such person who reminds me of the possibilities if one is in the zone. He always is. Hope you enjoy my favorite song of his.
Wishing you loads of love and luck.
Manish