The Virtue of Not Looking For Meaning

The question of how to interpret our experiences is one of the most basic questions in life. But it depends on an even bigger question: should we interpret a particular experience at all? Should we bother to look for sense, for substance, for content in something we see, hear, or feel – should we treat that thing as meaningful, should we try to understand it, or should we ignore it and forget it?

It’s often said that when we endure a hardship, we can heal by searching for positive meaning in what we’ve been through. If we find insight, strength, or some kind of “lesson” in our pain, not only does that pain seem less arbitrary and pointless, but we feel empowered by our ability to grow in response to it, and we feel better prepared for what life brings next. But as much as it can be a virtue to look for meaning in an experience, painful or otherwise, there are times when it’s a greater virtue to not look for meaning, to know when to refrain from that search, to know when to move on, even to do so abruptly, without endeavoring to learn, grow, or gain any insight whatsoever. In some situations, perhaps there’s no meaning to be found? Perhaps the search for meaning would exhaust us unduly? Or perhaps there’s meaning we could find, but we don’t need that meaning – not right now, or maybe not ever – we’d have no use for it – we wouldn’t be helped by it.

An analogy between the world of experience and the world of physical objects is informative. When we choose not to look for “meaning” in an object, not to seek further use from it, the most decisive way we can codify this choice is to call the object “garbage.” It’s a critical life skill to be able to use the word “garbage,” to be able to call some things garbage and to treat them as such.

What if we weren’t able to call anything garbage? What if we weren’t able to relinquish a physical object that no longer served us? Some people hold onto every piece of mail, every plastic container, every cardboard box, amassing so much stuff in their living space that hallways become impassable, entire parts of the home become unreachable. Hoarding is a dangerous condition. 

Most of us who don’t suffer from hoarding take it for granted that we can manage our trash – we can choose what to put in the waste bin and we can empty that bin when it’s full. 

Physical garbage shows us that the decision to not search for meaning or further use in an object can be the right decision to make, the best decision to make, even when there is meaning or further use that could be found.

When we fill a bag of garbage, tie it up, and bring it outside to the trash receptacle, we’re intending to forget about the bag’s contents as soon as possible, but someone who opened the bag might find an aluminum can that we’d neglected to recycle, worth five cents at the bottle exchange. With sewing skills, the holes in an old unmatched sock – rescued from the bag – could be mended, and that one sock could be paired with another one of like size and material, from somewhere else. The pages of the magazine that we’ve tossed still contain sentences that could be understood – ideas that might be informative or even enlightening to the right reader. This doesn’t stop us from discarding the bag.

Indeed a sleuth, presented with our bag of garbage, or another bag from some arbitrary place and time, might find it stuffed with information in a way that’s positively thrilling. An expiration date on a discarded snack wrapper might reveal the timeframe when the bag was disposed; the lettering might reveal the bag’s country; and the choice of snack might reveal the dietary habits of the person who filled the bag. An empty medication bottle, even missing the patient’s name, might suggest the age, the gender, and the particular ailments of the household member to whom it was prescribed. If a crime happened, the DNA in an eyelash stuck to the adhesive on an old envelope might identify the perpetrator, or the victim. If this were occurring in an espionage thriller, the person who discarded the bag might have been a spy, and perhaps they intended to convey a state secret to the garbage man – also a spy – in their choice of whether to throw out a coffee-stained napkin or a tea-stained one. The plot might hinge on that one napkin.

None of this stops us from discarding our trash. It’s essential to our wellbeing that we’re not concerned about the meaning or significance or potential use of that trash. Society is wasteful, that’s true, and we throw too much away, that’s true. We should recycle more and reuse more, that’s true. Garbage pollutes our land and water, killing plants, wildlife, and even us. Still, it’s necessary that we’re able to call some things garbage, discard that garbage, and also to see other people’s garbage – perhaps many bags of it, left on the street each day – and pass that garbage without a second glance, not considering those bags as clue-packed or value-packed treasures. When our gaze lands on a couple of black plastic sacks, knotted shut, waiting on the street to be thrown into a truck that will carry them to the trash heap or the incinerator, it’s good for us that we don’t feel an overwhelming temptation to tear them open and mine them for evidence or utility. When we throw out our own garbage, we’re fortunate that we can bid it goodbye with haste, waiting for its substance to be gone from our lives for good – no matter that this substance is rich in data about us, rich in potentially useful material, even rich in that thing we call “meaning.”

Meaning is everywhere – especially in garbage – but we don’t look for it everywhere, and we shouldn’t. The same is true of sound. When we choose not to look for meaning in sound we call it “noise.” But if we stopped to listen to the random noise on a city street anywhere in the world, we’d find it full of clues, signifiers, patterns, and suggestions. The noise tells us how close the cars are to where we stand, and what direction they’re going, and where the other pedestrians are, and how fast they’re walking. A Walk or Don’t Walk sign makes noises that signify instructions to us. Are there animals to be heard? A portion of a seagull’s chirp might sound like a portion of a human cry, or it might resemble a siren; the seagull’s presence reveals the city is near the ocean. What time of day is it? Church bells or the “adhan” from a mosque might tell us that. How many airplanes are flying overhead? How many jackhammers are working? The answers to a million questions live in that noise.

But no matter that information is writhing in the noise, seething in the noise, dripping from the noise, the noise is still noise. If we approached this noise with the conviction that it had been “composed” by say, an avant-garde sound artist, we might coax ourselves into perceiving an artistic “intent” or message in say, a minute worth of it. Perhaps as we listened again and again to a short recorded sample, memorizing the details, we might begin to hear a narrative that bears the hallmark – we’re sure – of intentional design.

But if we listened to hours of this noise, trying to interpret it as art, we’d become increasingly frustrated in our efforts to find a coherent narrative there, or else we’d have to invent increasingly fantastical theories about what that narrative might be. We could drive ourselves mad trying to perform an exegesis of this noise, without changing the fact that the noise has no author. There’s no composer home.

If we were trying to carry out a conversation with a friend standing beside us on this city street, then the noise would pose a nuisance to overcome — our challenge would be to tune it out. Perhaps there are a dozen conversations going on around us – and each one, if we heard it in isolation, might reveal a fascinating story. In those conversations, there could be a spontaneous marriage proposal, a million dollar business agreement sealed with “Yeah, we’re on,” and the seed of a crime. But to the extent that we falter in our labeling of that sound as “noise” – to the extent that we start hearing language in the noise – allowing words and phrases to reach us and catch our attention – we won’t be able to follow the person we’re speaking with. Other people’s meaning is our noise – and it must be so if we are to communicate with one specific person in this busy crowd. Stray meaning, overheard bits of conversation, are obstacles to our intended conversation, and we must treat them as such.

As we go through life, some acts of discernment are easier than others. We might not struggle to discern what physical objects are “garbage” and what sounds are “noise” but it’s more challenging to make these decisions about things that happen to us – events and experiences that transpire in our lives – including the thoughts that course through our own mind. Which experiences are “noise” and which are “signals”?

When we choose not to look for meaning in an experience, we might call it “insignificant,” “trivial,” or even “meaningless.” When we choose not to look for meaning in an argument or a story or a thought, we might call it “nonsense” or “gibberish.” No matter their derogatory inflection, these are some of the most useful words in our vocabulary – but when should we use them?

As we’re walking on a city sidewalk, if someone steps in front of us and blocks our path, is this act of rudeness a reminder that we’re living in the wrong place? Is it a signal that we should move somewhere with a slower pace, where the people around us would be less rushed and more thoughtful? Or have we simply experienced a random, meaningless instance of one stranger’s obliviousness, which tells us nothing important because, for the most part, we’re happy with our home and we’re fully capable of ignoring minor annoyances?

If we had a frustrating day at work – an argument with our boss – is this a meaningful indicator that our life is on the wrong track, that we’ve traveled down the wrong career path, that our work relationships aren’t value-aligned? Or have we just experienced an insignificant, near-meaningless happenstance, based on two people’s bad moods coinciding? Would we be better off if we moved past it quickly so that the satisfaction we do find in our work can remain in the foreground?

When we have a dream about falling or being chased, if we take it to a psychoanalyst or a counselor who believes in dream interpretation, they might probe it for hours. Being chased in a dream could mean we’re avoiding something – if we believe in such symbolism. Falling could indicate there are major life choices we need to rethink. But maybe our nightmare was caused by nothing more than a “dumb” choice to have a cup of coffee before bed. Is the “meaning” of the dream simply that we should avoid caffeine at night? Does the dream have no meaning at all?

The fact is: our minds generate a lot of noise, all the time. And a lot of our agony comes from the habit of taking the noise in our minds ever so seriously – being unwilling to label it as noise but instead looking for significance in every blip and pop, every little thought that enters our conscious awareness, in much the same way newscasters feverishly hang on each little motion of the stock market: “It’s up today — here’s what that means. It’s down today — what can we blame that on? It’s up again today, no wait, it’s back down — what does this suggest about the future?” Nothing, perhaps — maybe what we’re witnessing is randomness at work?

Ideas, images, assumptions, guesses, free associations are being manufactured in our consciousness all the time we’re awake, and when we’re dreaming too, and some of these products of our imaginative capacity are pure junk. Yes, our own precious, beautiful, powerful minds can churn out garbage. And we’re generating this garbage all the time. A steady stream of it. Ignoring it, relinquishing it, labeling it as garbage is an essential skill.

But we don’t want to do that. An anxious thought enters our mind and we begin unpacking it or ruminating over it – what does it mean? If it’s a fear, is it true? Why would I be thinking that? What does it say about me? What does it suggest about the future?

Especially when we embark on a path of personal growth, we try to “tune in” to ourselves, to listen to the dreams and hopes and fears that we’ve been ignoring, to give more attention to the subtler, quieter thoughts that pass through our mind often unseen.

To label the contents of our mind as “junk” or “noise” seems unkind to the self. And the challenge is that as with physical garbage or real, audible noise, there is meaning to be found inside it: the more we look, the more we discover. So the argument that any particular bit of noise in our mind is meaningful always comes with evidence in its favor.

But it may be precisely the labeling of our mental junk as junk, it may be precisely a decision to not over-interpret what enters our mind, that could free us from the labor of fruitless divination and offer some relief from self-imposed stress, as though we had committed ourselves to a career as a professional tasseographer and then we realized one day that we could quit. “What a relief – I don’t have to find meaning in tea leaves or coffee grounds anymore!

To give an example, I was sitting this morning on a quiet balcony with a view of some trees, the same balcony where I had been each of the past five rainy days when the trees were dark and wet. But this morning the sun shone on the branches, making them stand out as bright golden veins stretching out among the saturated green. It was a glorious sight. I thought to myself “There are artists out there who would love to paint this.”

But that remark led me to think about an attempt to paint those sun-drenched branches. I saw a canvas in my mind, I imagined an artist executing some brushwork, and guess what? The result looked unimpressive in comparison to the actual trees in front of me. In this fantasy, I soon assumed the role of the artist myself, and now I was stuck with a lackluster canvas that I had made. What was I supposed to do with it now? The green wasn’t lush enough, the branches weren’t luminous enough — and I didn’t know how to make it better, and I couldn’t decide whether start over, give up, or try to fix it.

Out of that beautiful sun shining on the branches, somehow I had created a little “bad dream” in which I had given myself a problem, a burden. By now I had invested a lot of energy in this mental tangent and I could see that it had all been a waste. I had started with some refreshing sunlight and worked it into a source of stress. Still I was left with a feeling of wanting to get something — anything — from my “investment” in this line of thought.

I could have looked at this whole episode of mind-wandering and attempted an interpretation. What did this daydream reveal about me? Is there some inner source of negativity that I haven’t confronted? Some deep-seated fear about artistic failure? Perhaps a revelation or discovery about myself would be the payoff for all this.

But I realized I had another option too. I could think of the whole thought process about trying to paint the branches as junk. My mind had manufactured some garbage through free association, that’s all. Now I was suffering because I was taking that garbage too seriously and trying to find some kind of deeper significance in it. Like any garbage, it might offer clues, secrets, suggestions if I examined it closely. Like any trash it could be interpreted and studied, and there would be things to say about it. But the best thing I could do would be to ignore it, discard it, and return to enjoying the marvelous sight that was still in front of me. The glory of that sunlight could still be mine if I could abandon my daydream with its disappointing canvas altogether.

It so happened that the larger context for this episode was that I had been trying to meditate. That’s why I was out there on the balcony in the first place. Of course, the daydream had taken my attention away from the sensation of breathing which was the intended focal point of my meditation. The basic process of meditation would ask me to observe the daydream impartially, allow it to dissipate from my awareness, and return my focus to breathing. 

Meditation typically aims for gentleness. We don’t try to “force” our thoughts to leave, we simply observe them and allow them to pass. By showing less attachment to our thoughts, it’s as though we’re slowly reducing their fuel. But there’s some subtlety in the idea of “observing” a thought. When we “observe” a thought we’re still perceiving the sense or meaning it contains, which is to say that we’re still interpreting it, we’re not dismissing it altogether as gibberish, nonsense, or noise. To observe a thought with detachment means that we still apprehend its content, but we choose not to engage further with that content, as opposed to ignoring that content altogether, never even looking at it, as if there were no “there there,” as if there were nothing to be seen or understood.

This suggests a possibility though. Why not attempt a more active, even a more “aggressive” form of meditation in which we repeatedly choose to label the contents of the mind as “noise” – noise that we don’t try to interpret, noise that we don’t stop to witness or observe. How would we go about this practically?

Trying to carry on a conversation in a noisy, crowded room – that’s the model we can use. We can imagine that we’re trying to tune out a certain kind of background noise so that we can hear a certain conversation partner. But in this setting, our “conversation partner” is our breathing – that’s what we’re trying to hear, to sense, to connect with. And the noise that we’re trying to tune out is all of our thinking. Our task is to listen as closely as possible to our “partner” while resisting the temptation to parse the noise of our thoughts for sense or meaning that would distract us.

You can try it: to sit down for thirty minutes and when anything that passes through your mind, label it as noise that’s drowning out your breathing, which is the signal, the one thing you’re trying to hear.

As you do this, the “noise” of your thinking will try to convince you that it’s not noise. You’ll call a certain thought “noise” and it will say “No, I’m your task list, I’m an errand you have to run, I’m a meeting you have to attend. I’m important. I’m real. I have substance. You have to pay attention to me!”

When this happens, you should focus on the sensations of breathing, and notice the contrast between those sensations and your thoughts. The contrast between how it feels to breathe, on the one hand, and how it feels to think about about an upcoming errand or the email you forgot to reply to, on the other hand. That contrast is your key. That contrast allows you to see that while your thoughts are not absolute noise, while they are not absolutely devoid of meaning, they are still noise in relation to what you are trying to listen to now, they still are empty distractions in relation to what you’re trying to connect with now.

So while it might sound upsetting to label one’s thoughts as noise, the result can be quite calming. When we can see our mental content as noise and “tune it out” then we are free. Free to direct our focus as we choose. Otherwise we are stuck in a loop of hearing noise in our mind, and trying to interpret it, which creates more noise, which we try to interpret – and we drive ourselves ever onward in an exhausting loop.

Perhaps we should reserve more of our interpretive efforts for finding meaning at the large scale. We should look for meaning where doing so would help us connect, help us build, help us love, help us grow.

While there is endless meaning to be found in the things we call garbage and noise, and while there is value in questioning how we apply those labels, we shouldn’t exhaust ourselves in trying to find meaning all the time, everywhere. Instead let’s allow ourselves to call garbage garbage, and be done with it. Let’s allow ourselves to call noise noise. Let’s allow ourselves, when faced with the question “To interpret or not?” to sometimes choose “Not.”

The Fourth Lesson From Investing

Of course, the worst time to sell a thing is when other people are selling that same thing. When you unload stock during a market crash, you’re participating in a kind of mass hysteria, where everyone is devaluing everyone else’s investment. You’re joining a crowd that’s driving down the worth of what it owns, a crowd that’s making its own nightmare come true. That’s when you want to buy, not sell. And I knew this. I swore by it. Never dump stock in a panic! I had kept money in the market through the 2008 financial crisis without really blinking an eye.

Ever since the year 2000, when I started my adult working life, I’ve been a “participant” in the market, not as a big-league investor, but as a little-league saver. In that time, I’ve found that investing can be a source of life lessons, regardless of the specific dollar amounts involved. From investing, you can learn that risk creates the possibility of reward; that by repeating a short-term risk over time you can secure a high chance of long-term gain; and that your safest-seeming option might be the riskiest of all. I knew these three lessons well before the COVID crisis, but there was a fourth lesson I hadn’t learned.

When COVID hit, I had already been in the market for 20 years. I had weathered enough fluctuations that I felt confident in my identity as a buy-and-hold, stay-the-course kind of guy. I had practiced this long-term investing philosophy and even gently preached it to the few friends who wanted to talk with me about financial matters.

But COVID was so unlike anything I’d experienced that I found myself saying, “This time it’s all different. The old lessons won’t apply anymore.”

Remember when death counts were rising and hospitals had no beds left and ventilators were in short supply and everything across the world was shutting down? There was no vaccine in sight and no one knew what was going to happen next. You couldn’t buy toilet paper. You couldn’t buy a bag of rice. The pulse oximeters, which no one had heard of before, were now entirely sold-out at drug stores. The US president was advertising a bleach cure.

“Stay the course? That’s not going to work anymore. I could lose everything.”

If people kept getting sick and dying in larger and larger numbers, how would the world keep functioning? How would cities keep the sewers clear? Who would run the subways? Put out fires? Keep the lights on?

In those scary days of March and April 2020, I experienced a failure of imagination. I couldn’t imagine any outcome aside from a systemic collapse. “This is it,” I thought. “This is what the preppers have been prepping for. This is when the teetering house-of-cards of the world economy finally comes tumbling down. Forget the old rules and assumptions, this is going to be a new reality.”

I often felt queasy, sweaty, faint, as the news of death continued blaring over the radio, so I’d take my temperature: did I have a fever? Would that mean COVID? If I had a toothache and needed to go to the dentist, could I get sick from the trip? There was a constant fear of catching the virus, or seeing my loved ones catch it, finding ourselves unable to breathe, unable to get a hospital bed, unable to visit each other. It would have been so blissful to be one of those people who was sure it was all a hoax, but that wasn’t me. “Maybe I’m overreacting?” I’d think. Then I’d turn on the news and hear about temporary morgues being set up to accommodate the devastation in New York City. And all of my health anxiety was compounded by financial anxiety. 

Would I still have work in a few weeks? Would I need to flee my urban home? Find some new arrangement where I could live with family in another state? Maybe this was the time when I’d need to put my savings to use. But that savings was stuck in the cratering market. Yes, I had stashed some emergency money in a safe place but this was looking like a giant monster of an emergency – what if I needed more than my emergency fund contained?

There were days when trading on the New York Stock Exchange was halted not once but two times, three times, because major indices were tanking so quickly. Was it possible that all the conscientious saving I had done over 20 years to prepare for “the future” could now evaporate and it would all have been for naught? Could it be that this grim “future” had just arrived, but after 20 years of preparing, I’d be left unprepared?

Pandemic anxiety created a physical experience unlike anything I’d ever felt – a racing heart that just wouldn’t settle down. Days on end when I couldn’t get any rest. I tried everything to find some calm – breathing, exercise, attempted positivity, talking, netflix – nothing worked. 

I listened to some financial bigwigs on TV, the heads of major brokerage firms talking about weathering the storm. They were spouting all of the ideas about long-term investing that I already thought I believed. “Stay the course,” they said, the same motto I’d been parroting for 20 years. “Stick to your long-term plan.” Exactly what I had done so far and what I’d sworn I’d forever do. But now I thought, “They’re all lying to me. When they tell me to stay the course, they’re just saying this because it’s in their interest to have us gullible small-time investors remain in this tumbling house-of-cards market and lose.”

For days and days, I held out. “I’ll never sell in a panic,” I told myself. “Never.” But the news kept getting worse and my anxiety kept getting worse, now bordering on paranoia.

It seemed like the only thing I could do to avoid a heart attack was to sell. 

So I sold. 

I had been sufficiently battle-hardened over 20 years that only a global pandemic could get me to abandon my buy-and-hold investing policy, and lo and behold, that global pandemic arrived and did the trick.

There was still a fighting shadow of the stay-the-course guy inside me, so I didn’t sell everything. But I sold enough to matter: 50%.

Immediately after my market exit, I was sure I had made the right decision because the pangs of anxiety settled down. There was a sense of calm. No matter what happened now, I could no longer lose everything. That risk was off the table. I felt I had done what was responsible: I had protected the resources that could help me protect my loved ones and myself in our approaching time of need.

But shortly thereafter, the market started recovering. From my standpoint, this was a mystery. How could stocks start rising again along with rising death counts, hospitals filling up, ventilators in short supply, and no good news on the horizon? It just made no sense.

And then I didn’t get sick. And neither did my family.

So what had I achieved with my panic selling? I’d locked in some losses and missed out on some gains. And that’s exactly what they warn you is going to happen when you try to time the market.

I had saved myself from a heart attack, but at what cost, and was it worth it? At the time, yes, health and some measure of calm seemed way more important than money. 

Looking back though, that was a lot of money I lost. A lot of money that my 20 years of market experience and strong investing philosophy would have prevented me from losing, if I’d trusted that experience.

What’s the lesson in this?

They say that past performance is no guarantee of future results. That’s in reference to stocks and bonds. But it’s also true that our own past behavior is no guarantee of our own future behavior. Just because you’ve done the right thing in one market downturn doesn’t guarantee you’ll do likewise in the next. In my case, calmly enduring the 2008 crisis was no guarantee that I’d have the mettle to withstand the 2020 COVID turmoil. The qualitative experiences of those two downturns, and my life situations at those two times, were not the same.

No matter how well you feel you’ve learned a principle, there are scenarios that are so stressful and confusing that you’ll fail to apply the principle. Everyone’s threshold and triggers are different but you have yours. There are situations where you’ll conclude that all bets are off, that everything is different this time. Situations where you’ll doubt what you know and throw out the hard-earned knowledge that could help you. Situations so difficult that you’ll experience a failure of imagination – an inability to conceive of recovery – a blindness to any light, even hypothetical light at the end of the tunnel – and only later will you understand the cost of that failure of imagination.

But there’s a cure for this. It’s to have an advisor. It’s to have someone you trust who can talk you back from the ledge. 

I didn’t have an advisor during COVID. I had friends and family who could console me about the state of the world, but no one who could guide me on financial decisions.

I had looked into getting an advisor over the years but the cost-benefit analysis never convinced me I should give someone a recurring cut of my assets – for what? My financial life isn’t that complex. I know how to invest in index funds and I know how to buy and hold – what’s so hard about that? And why would I pay someone to coach me against panic selling if I already knew that panic selling was a bad idea?

And yet if I’d had an advisor during COVID I probably wouldn’t have sold. Just one conversation with someone I trusted could have done the trick. Simply knowing that another person was looking in on my situation with my best interest in mind could have changed everything for me. One conversation with an advisor at the right time might have saved me a lot more money than I’d have paid the advisor in fees over many years prior.

But there’s a silver lining in this. By pushing me into abandoning my principles and losing money because of it, COVID made me finally get an advisor, which could save me a lot in the future.

Nothing I could have done by myself – nothing I could have learned or studied or decided or promised myself before COVID could have prevented me from selling in a panic because I had already gone through a good financial education, had already made those promises to myself, and had already demonstrated a commitment to my buy-and-hold philosophy over many years. What I lacked was an advisor I already knew and trusted, who I could call in that frenzied moment.

So the fourth life lesson, stated simply, is get an advisor. But really, it’s that when you learn something important in life, find another person who can help you stick to what you’ve learned. 

The importance of doing this is equivalent to the importance of the thing you’ve learned. If you really believe in a concept or best-practice, don’t assume you’ll be able to apply it all on your own at the time when you need it most. Do the groundwork now so you’ll have someone to help you remember what you’ve learned when you need that help.

In extreme situations, we are tempted to conclude, “This time it’s different. The old strategies don’t apply anymore,” and indeed there are scenarios where that statement can be true. We need to recognize change and adapt to new situations with new behaviors that are newly appropriate. 

But the conclusion, “This time it’s different,” is a potentially dangerous conclusion to draw all by ourselves because it gives us license to abandon what we’ve learned, including the most valuable and helpful things we’ve learned. We need others to remind us: maybe it’s not different this time. Maybe now is precisely the time when you need to apply the old wisdom. Maybe now, while you’re the most afraid, is when you need that old wisdom the most.

On Being Overtired

Speaking as someone who doesn’t have kids, I’m always impressed when an unflappable parent “just knows” what’s wrong when their child is throwing a tantrum.  

When dear little Johnny is jumping off sofas, running in circles on the floor, yelling and screaming and acting uncontrollably giddy and restless, I’m inclined to say “Oh no. There’s nothing we can do. We’re all screwed.” But Johnny’s mom usually goes, “He’s just tired. It’s past his bedtime. That’s why he’s acting this way.”

But why would being “overtired” cause restlessness? This idea has the sound of hard-earned parental wisdom, but on the surface, it makes no sense. If a child is truly exhausted, why would they be running around and shouting and demanding attention? Why would tiredness make them do lots of things that require lots of energy?

One explanation is that fatigue leads to weakened impulse control. When a kid is really tired, they can’t stop themselves from being rowdy. They also can’t focus on the step-by-step process of winding down and getting ready for bed.

This weakened-impulse-control explanation for “tired tantrums” makes a lot of sense, but speaking as an adult, there’s another consequence of tiredness that comes to mind. When we’re really tired, we don’t get the same pleasure, the same joy, the same satisfaction from our regular activities as we would get if we had more energy to put into them. And when we don’t experience the satisfaction that we’re accustomed to, we sense that something’s missing and we want it back.

I can try reading a book when I’m tired but it’s not going to do much for me. Still, I’ll struggle to read for a while and maybe get frustrated and then start browsing the internet in search of something – what? There’s music that would make me ecstatic if I had the energy to concentrate on it, but when I’m exhausted, the experience of listening to that music is going to be a letdown, so I’ll put the radio on and let the news wash over me. I’m not “acting up,” in a visible or obvious way, but still, I’m restlessly seeking stimulation beyond the point where I can be satisfied by it.

From a kid’s perspective, maybe they’d find it enjoyable to take a crayon and slowly draw a few lines on a blank piece of paper to make the outline of a house – if they had enough energy to stay focused on what they were drawing. But when they’re out of energy, it’s probably more frustrating than it is fun to try to draw those same lines. So what do they do instead? They start scribbling wildly in a desperate search for the kind of pleasure that they’re used to getting from drawing when they’re well-rested. Then they crumple up the page and throw it at someone.

Could it be that a child’s tantrum when they’re overtired is about looking for the satisfaction that they’re not experiencing anymore – looking for it by doing rowdier and rowdier things – and feeling angrier and more confused when they can’t get that satisfaction back?

As an adult I know this cycle plays out in my own life. When something isn’t as enjoyable as it once was – maybe because I’m too tired to enjoy it at the moment – I often see this as a problem, sometimes bordering on an emergency, and in my own way I start misbehaving – very subtly and inconspicuously misbehaving – in an attempt to reclaim what I’ve lost.

It could be that I’m taking a walk with my partner but we’re both too worn out at the moment to have a good conversation – it takes energy and alertness to “tune in” and be present for each other. But I want to have a good conversation – I’m expecting it – I’m used to it. And when it doesn’t happen, I’m frustrated. When the words that are spoken between us are not as satisfying as I want them to be, I might say something negative, I might raise a complaint, and now we’re starting to argue about something. 

That argument came from overtiredness. We didn’t realize or we couldn’t accept that we were too tired to have a good conversation. So we tried to have one, and it was disappointing, and the disappointment led to conflict.

I’ve started noticing those moments in my life where I feel a sense of letdown because an experience that’s usually great isn’t living up to that greatness. When this happens, I’ve started asking myself: how tired am I right now?

Like a kid, I might be very tired, and my tiredness might be creating the conditions for me to “act up.” If kids throw tantrums when they’re overtired, why should adults be immune to this dynamic? Perhaps I’m agitated because I’m not having the satisfying experiences I’m expecting to have, nor do I have the focus to handle my disappointment. I won’t be having those satisfying experiences again until I get some rest. Luckily, as an adult, once I’ve observed this, I can then orchestrate the getting of rest.

The lesson for adults:

When you’re pissed off that an experience isn’t as good as usual, maybe it’s past your bedtime.

On Purchasing A Nasal Decongestant

One of the advantages of living in the modern world, specifically in an urban area where there are practically two pharmacies on every block, is that when you have a cold, there’s a product you can buy to ease the symptoms, and that product is widely available, right?

So the other day, I go to a CVS to buy a nasal decongestant. As expected, there are shelves of decongestants, a sea of options. But I’m finding that most of the visible products are for chest congestion and they feature an active ingredient called guaifenesin. I’m looking for a nasal decongestant and I can’t find it. 

But finally, I find it! The decongestant aisle is even vaster than I thought and I just needed to walk a few meters to another part of this township. Turns out, there are several shelves full of “cocktails” that include a painkiller like acetaminophen, an “expectorant” like guaifenesin, and bingo! A nasal decongestant for good measure.

But I don’t want a cocktail. I don’t have pain that needs to be killed. I just have nasal congestion that needs to be decongested. I just want a nasal decongestant by itself. So I look on all the packaging of all these cocktails to find what chemical is being included as the nasal decongestant in the mix and it’s always a thing called phenylephrine. Can I get phenylephrine by itself? No, it seems, if I want it, I have to buy one of these cocktails.

But wait! I keep searching and finally I come across a package of tablets that are pure phenylephrine. Victory! That’s what I’m looking for. That’s what I now understand I want.

I bring my phenylephrine home and I’m so proud that I figured out what I really needed and found my way to purchasing only that thing. I’m a successful minimalist. Now I get to consume my one active ingredient and attain some relief from my nasal congestion, right?

Somewhat randomly, I decide to google “phenylephrine” before I actually take my first pill. And guess what? The web is full of articles from the past 10 days saying that the FDA just declared that phenylephrine is useless. It doesn’t help with nasal decongestion at all when taken in pill form. This was announced during a Non-prescription Drug Advisory Committee meeting Sept. 11-12, 2023. 

In other words, if I had developed my cold and bought my precious phenylephrine two weeks ago, like on September 10th or pretty much any time in the past 20 years, I would have eagerly consumed the phenylephrine because I would not have had access to the breaking news that it’s useless. Actually, it’s worse than useless: it has side effects including nervousness, dizziness, and sleeplessness.

Nevertheless, our beloved pharmaceutical companies have been selling us phenylephrine and labeling it as a “nasal decongestant” for years. They’ve been selling a placebo with side effects for years. It’s in all of our pharmacies. All those pharmacies that litter our city streets – each one of those ubiquitous pharmacies in every city and suburb in our large country has multiple shelves of phenylephrine products. And the prices are not $0. And they don’t give you money back because you’re incurring side effects for no benefit. No, they charge you ten dollars, maybe fifteen dollars, maybe twenty-five dollars for a box of pills containing phenylephrine and they happily lead you to believe that when you take those pills, you’re going to be nasally decongested. But guess what? You ain’t gonna be.

Turns out if you want a real nasal decongestant, you have to go to the pharmacist and ask for a product containing pseudoephedrine, which they keep behind the counter. Then you have to show them your ID to assure them you’re not going to use pseudoephedrine as a precursor in the production of methamphetamine. Because of course you’re running a meth lab. And somehow you have to just know this protocol. There are no signs on the shelves and shelves of phenylephrine products saying “Psst. This doesn’t work. Walk over to the pharmacist and ask for pseudoephedrine instead.” You just have to know.

I really had confidence in “the system” of modern society before this adventure. I truly believed that everything was hunky dory and running smoothly and that we had figured stuff out and put good processes and protocols in place to have a functioning world. But now that I know that the nasal decongestant that’s been marketed and sold to us for decades doesn’t actually work, I’m starting to question more than just this one thing.

Three Life Lessons From Investing

Investing in the stock market can teach us three valuable lessons about life. The first lesson is that we need to take some risk if we want the possibility of reward. To make money in the market, we have to be willing to lose money. And so it is in life, if we want to excel at something, we have to be willing to fail. If we want to grow, we have to be willing to stumble. As for me as the author of this essay, if I want to my words to have a chance of being helpful and memorable to someone out there, I’ve got to take the risk that I could be misunderstood.

But this first lesson from investing may not be compelling enough to persuade every skeptical earner to participate in the market. That’s because everyone wants to make money, but not everyone has a strong enough desire to make money that this desire would outweigh their interest in keeping what they already have. A person who hopes to build a nest-egg for the future might hate the idea that thousands of hours of their own personal labor could go to waste because of random fluctuations in the stocks they bought. If investing were only about making money, if it were only about seeking a reward, then the danger might not seem worth the stress.

But investing teaches us a second lesson about life which is that risk is not monolithic. There are kinds of risk. There’s short-term risk and long-term risk. These are different beasts, and we’ve got to consider them differently. 

When you put money in the market, you’re taking a short-term risk. The value of your investment could be cut in half tomorrow. But that only matters if you need your money tomorrow. What’s the chance that your investment would still be down after 20 years? If you kept investing in the market over that time, what’s the chance you’d regret it in the end? 

Assuming you can wait 20 years and assuming your investment is properly diversified, then the chance of losing money in the long term is negligible. Of course, the global economy could experience a systemic crash and fail to recover, but then all bets are off. In practice, your risk is all short-term risk. As for long-term risk – the chance of coming out worse after 20 years of being in the market – you can put it out of your mind.

And so it is in life: there are behaviors that bring significant short-term risk, but if we continue the behavior over time, the long-term risk is negligible – we only stand to gain in the end. Speaking as an introvert, I can say that it’s a risk to go to a party. An introvert like me could have a miserable time at any particular party and come home exhausted and dejected. But what’s the long-term risk of repeating this social behavior over 20 years? Almost certainly, an introvert who regularly pushes themselves to socialize is going to be better off because of it. That doesn’t mean they have to go to every party, but if they keep going to some parties throughout a span of 20 years, they’ll have more good conversations, make more satisfying connections, and be exposed to more valuable opportunities than if they behave as a hermit. All said and done, they would have taken many short-term risks and regretted some of them, but in a way where their long-term risk was always essentially zero. 

But maybe a potential market investor isn’t convinced by lessons one and two. Even understanding that risk is necessary for gain, and that short-term risk and long-term risk are different beasts, a person might wish to put their money in a savings account and not have to worry about risk at all. This leads to the third lesson from investing, which is that security is often an illusion. 

You can “save” your money by putting it in the bank. But you can’t save your buying potential by putting it in the bank. That’s because banks don’t pay enough interest to help you maintain your purchasing power as the price of stuff rises in time. 

What if you passed up a $4 smoothie in the year 2000 so you could put that $4 in the bank and treat yourself to a deferred smoothie in 25 years? If you fast-forward 25 years, the $4 in your savings account would not have kept up with rising smoothie prices. Even if you earned a dollar or two in interest from the bank, you wouldn’t be able to afford a smoothie that now costs $12. The bank seemed like a good place to park your $4 but it wasn’t a good place to park your ability to buy a smoothie.

In general, a savings account might appear as a secure place for your money, but it’s not a secure place for your buying potential. What does this mean for investing? It means that you might want to invest because you like the idea of making money, but you have to invest if you want to avoid losing your buying potential to inflation over time. 

This third lesson presents an alternate way of thinking about investing. Most people who invest would say they’re hoping for gain. They’d say that investing is about accepting the possibility of short-term loss to attain the likelihood of long-term gain. But we can take gain out of the picture and focus exclusively on loss. We can say that investing is about accepting the possibility of short-term loss to avoid what would otherwise be the certainty of long-term loss. The motto could be: “Lose small now so you don’t lose big later.” Maybe that’s a negative perspective, but it provides a strong motivation to invest: no one wants to lose big.

And so it is in life, there are times when we think we can stay secure by staying home, by staying out of the action, but that security is an illusion. In fact, we’re locking ourselves into loss when we favor the option that seems the safest. 

In 2022 I gave one of the best musical performances of my life. It was a special and unrepeatable moment because I had just lost my brother. My emotions were raw and I was able to channel those emotions through my singing and playing. The audience was electrified.

A year later, I signed up to perform again at the same venue, but I started to second-guess my decision. How could I ever live up to my previous performance? Anything I did now in 2023 would be a letdown, it could only subtract from the impression I had made at this venue in 2022. Since there was no chance of exceeding my past performance, I felt that I only stood to lose by getting up on stage again.

What would I be losing specifically? I’d be losing the unblemished memory of my past success. Now it would be tarnished by the knowledge that I’d tried again and hadn’t done as well. Wouldn’t it be safer to take a break this year?

My experience with investing helped convince me to take the risk and get up on stage again. I realized I was trying to “save” a positive memory in the “bank” of my mind, but it wouldn’t be truly secure there. A force much like inflation would erode its value. If I kept remembering 2022 without continuing to perform, I’d find less satisfaction in the memory over time; meanwhile I’d be locking myself into a state of fear about performing again and failing. And I’d be giving up a chance to connect with an audience who was ready to hear something new from me.

The best way to claim the value of the memory of my 2022 performance was to use it as inspiration to keep performing. So I did. I got up on stage and played new music.

No one in the 2023 audience knew that I was using an investing analogy to help me go through with my song. But I told myself: security is an illusion. Your memories are not safe in the “bank.” The way to honor them and claim the value they hold is to keep taking risks, to stay in motion, to keep drawing inspiration from those memories and putting their lessons into practice.

Three lessons from investing:

1. Risk creates the possibility of reward
2. Repeatedly taking a short-term risk can result in a negligible long-term risk but a virtual certainty of gain
3. A safe-seeming option might be the riskiest of all, and a risky-seeming option might be the safest in the long run

Who am I to write about investing? I’m a boring, small-time, buy-and-hold index-fund investor looking to save what I can on the path to financial independence. But I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years and I believe the lessons we can learn from being in the market don’t depend on how much money we have or how much sophisticated financial knowledge we possess. We can learn these lessons simply by exposing ourselves to risk, observing our own reactions to that risk, and watching how it all plays out in time, which I’ve had the chance to do.

See also: The Fourth Lesson From Investing

Overcoming The Three Obstacles To Fulfillment

When we take focused action, over a span of time, in pursuit of a goal, and we achieve results, that’s where fulfillment comes from – not just from the outcome, but from the whole process.

We want to get better at playing guitar. If we practice hard and learn to play a song that we couldn’t play before, that’s fulfilling, right?

We want to get in shape. If we lift weights a few times a week until we’re lifting double what we could lift before, that’s fulfilling, right? 

But in any quest, even if we do achieve success, fulfillment isn’t guaranteed. Let’s look at three obstacles that get in the way of fulfillment.

The first obstacle is narrowmindedness or tunnel vision. That’s when we’re so focused on the details of our immediate goal that we don’t notice the timeless, universal underpinnings of that goal – the larger reason why we’re pursuing the goal in the first place.

If we learned the song that we wanted to play on guitar, and we learned to play it pretty well, why wouldn’t we feel fulfilled? Perhaps that’s because in all of our effort over many months, we’ve only learned to play one simple song and we realize that other people can play it much better. We’ve put in all that hard work and we’re still not remarkable, we’re still not a star. Our sense of fulfillment turns into self-doubt because we’re thinking of our achievement as a narrow, specific thing – acquiring the ability to play one particular song – and we’re not seeing how this achievement connects to a timeless intention.

Why did we want to play that song in the first place? Why do we want to play any song? That’s because we want to share our heart and soul with other people through music. We want to connect. 

Indeed, we have learned the song well enough to use it as a vehicle for connecting. We can gather a group of friends in our living room and play the song with enough feeling and skill that they can enjoy it and be moved. Even if we’re not ready for Carnegie Hall, we can communicate through that song. So we’ve furthered our timeless goal of connecting with others through music. And by taking time to notice this – by taking a broader perspective of why we’re doing what we do – we can regain the fulfillment that came into question when we were thinking so narrowly about what we had accomplished.

The second obstacle to fulfillment is scattering. Dispersion of effort. Lack of focus. That’s when we spend our time switching from one task to another in such a way that we’re not sure what long-term goal we’re actually pursuing.

For example, we might have a long to-do list containing many small tasks like: pay a bill, call a friend, take the garbage out, go food shopping, return a product that didn’t work, go to the gym, get to bed early. We might set a goal of crossing each task off the list, and we might feel a sense of fulfillment in making progress toward being done with everything. 

But the list is nothing on its own – it’s just a piece of paper – it’s just a holder of assorted goals. Behind those goals, there might be a dozen different motivations and intentions. 

As we work on one task after another, we find ourselves switching rapidly between different long-term goals. One task, like paying a bill, is related to the long-term goal of financial health. Another task, like calling a friend, is related to the long-term goal of maintaining our relationships. A few tasks are for having a comfortable home, and a few are for physical health. Switching so quickly between tasks that are related to such different long-term goals can create a kind of dizziness, where we forget what those long-term goals even are. We’re only seeing and thinking about the immediate tasks in front of us, not about their larger significance.

It’s the same when we check email. Our inbox is basically a to-do list where each message represents a task we have to complete: reply to this message, delete it, archive it? We might find some fulfillment in clearing out our inbox, but what long-term goal are we actually working towards? Each email connects to a different long-term goal. One email is from a friend. Why are we responding to that email? Because we want to maintain the friendship. Our broader, long-term goal is to have friends and be a good friend. Another email is from the doctor’s office. Why are we responding to that? We’re overdue for a physical. But why do we care that we’re overdue for a physical? Because we have the long-term goal of being healthy. A third email is from a travel company and we’re responding to that one because we want to have adventure and novelty in our life – we want to see the world.

As we cross items off our to-do list or process emails in our inbox, more tasks and emails keep coming and it can feel like we’re treading water, constantly switching focus, and not making a sustained effort toward any particular long-term goal. We’re doing lots of different little things that each connect with different long-term goals, but the long-term goal of the moment is changing so fast that it all becomes a blur.

One way to respond to this obstacle of “scattering” is to schedule larger chunks of time around one long-term or timeless goal. For example, instead of reserving a one-our time slot in our calendar to clear out our inbox, we could reserve an hour to take action around the timeless goal of: “I want to be a good friend.” Write that down. Spend that hour responding only to emails from friends. Call a friend. Schedule a lunch date. Send a postcard. Research trips we can take with friends. Anything that connects to friendship, that’s our hour for it. Our inbox won’t be clear after that, but we’ll feel like we made progress on one specific long-term goal which is maybe more important than having a clean inbox.

As we go about our day, we’ll need to switch between tasks that connect with different long-term goals – that’s unavoidable. But we can try to carve out larger chunks of time to dedicate to one long-term goal. Take the goal, “I want to be healthy.” Let’s say we’ve just acted on that goal by making a salad. Are we done with that goal for the time being? Or could we do something else toward it right now, like going out for a walk? The idea is to take things that we already want to do in our day and group them so that we can keep one long-term goal in sight for a longer stretch of time. This can help us see the items in our schedule less as unrelated tasks and more as connected actions that work together to further our larger, timeless goals.

The third obstacle to fulfillment is reactiveness. That’s when we’re forced to respond to circumstances that threaten our goals, rather than choosing what we’d like to do to further our goals and then carrying out those decisions. For example, we might have a long-term goal of having a comfortable home where guests feel welcome. Being proactive as opposed to reactive about this goal might mean choosing a piece of art and hanging it in the guest bedroom. 

But what if we notice a leak in the kitchen ceiling? Now we’ve got to spend our time arranging pots and pans on the floor to avoid a flood while we desperately try to get a plumber to come fix the leak. An unfortunate and pressing circumstance is forcing us to respond. We’re doing what the situation pushes us to do rather than spending our time on home upkeep in the way we would choose. That’s life, and problems are unavoidable. But when we find that we’re spending the bulk of our time reacting to circumstances and not as much time initiating and following through on our chosen projects, our sense of fulfillment is compromised.

One way to respond to this challenge of reactivity is with a perspective adjustment. We should understand that whenever we’re pursuing a timeless goal, we must always combine reactive and proactive modes of behavior. That’s necessary, natural, and entirely to be expected. If our timeless goal is “I want to be financially secure” we’ve got to work and earn money (proactive) but we’ve also got to pay any parking tickets we get slapped with (reactive).  If our timeless goal is “I want to see the world” we’ve got to plan trips (proactive) but we’ve also got to get on the phone with the airline when they abruptly cancel our flight to Costa Rica (reactive). If our timeless goal is “I want to be healthy,” we’ve got to exercise (proactive) but we’ve also got to rest and take medicine when we’re sick (reactive). 

Oftentimes, we fail to see our “forced” reactions in the context of the larger goals they serve. Paying a parking ticket or waiting on hold with customer service seems like something we’re being made to do. It seems like a nuisance that doesn’t serve any long-term goal. Its outcome is only corrective. It undoes something bad. The time we spend fixing problems and handling inconveniences can seem like time that’s stolen from us, subtracted from the bank of time we would like to spend pursuing our goals proactively. But we can instead acknowledge that these necessary reactions do contribute to our deepest goals. If we pay an annoying parking ticket, we’re actually doing something for our financial security. If we stay on hold, listening to Muzak as we wait to be connected to a customer service representative at the airline company, we’re actually furthering our goal of seeing the world. Yes we are.

It’s also worth remembering that when we feel forced to react, we actually don’t have to react. There’s a leak in the ceiling? Well, we don’t have to call a plumber. We could simply not pick up the phone and dial. The leak might cause water damage in our house, mold would grow, the floor boards would get soggy and weak, and the whole situation could get very dangerous. But we could let that happen if we wanted to. 

By choosing to respond we are actually being proactive, even when it seems that circumstances are stealing our choice and forcing us to handle things that are tedious, costly, and upsetting. There’s still volition involved.

Finally, we might try to couple a reactive step with a proactive step towards the same timeless goal, to keep things in better balance. Once we’ve handled the leak, we could say that we’re exhausted and we’re not going to do anything else relating to home upkeep for a while. But we might feel better if we immediately hang that picture in the guest room that we were planning to hang. That way, our actions toward the timeless goal of “I want to have a comfortable home where guests feel welcome” are not all reactive – not all about responding to problems. Now we’ve done something proactive too. That’s not to say that dealing with the leak won’t have been annoying and frustrating, but perhaps this approach will make the annoyance steal less of our fulfillment. 

In conclusion, we can experience a greater sense of fulfillment in life if we know how to respond to three kinds of obstacles: tunnel vision, scattering, and reactivity. We can try to keep sight of the timeless intentions behind our specific, tangible goals. We can try to organize our schedule in a way that gives us the chance to sustain our focus on one timeless goal for a longer stretch. And we can understand that reactive and proactive behaviors must be part of any timeless pursuit. When we’re forced to react, we can restore balance by choosing to take a proactive step that furthers the same timeless goal.

The Value Of Uncovering The Timeless Intentions Behind Our Everyday Actions

Behind any action we take, there’s an underlying goal that we can discover if we look for it. 

Let’s say I happened to go outside at 5:25 PM on Saturday, September 9, 2023, and I happened to take a five-minute walk down a street named Amethyst Way in the town of Pleasantville in Western Utopia, Somewhere, USA. What was my underlying goal in doing that?

Maybe I had been sitting on the couch for too long and I wanted to breathe some fresh air and move around a bit.

But what was my underlying goal in moving around?

I wanted to exercise my body.

And what was my underlying goal in exercising my body?

I wanted to be healthy.

I still want to be healthy.

Look at what happened here. Just by asking “What was my underlying goal?” a few times in a row, I’ve discovered a timeless goal that motivated a specific action that I took at a specific time, in a specific place.

Being healthy is a timeless goal. It’s timeless in the context of my own life, because I’ll always possess this goal as long as I live. Whether or not I act in accordance with this goal on each opportunity, I’ll always want to be healthy. I’ll always prefer health to illness.

Being healthy is also timeless in the context of human civilization, because this goal would have made sense to any person living on the planet one-thousand years ago, and we can assume it will still make sense to any person living one-thousand years from now. Of course, the concept of “health” and the words that refer to health might differ across eras and societies, but the distinction between health and illness is fundamental enough that it would mean something to anyone, living anywhere, at any time.

Now what is the value of identifying the timeless goal behind any specific action we’ve taken or plan to take? If I go for a short walk outdoors one evening because I want to move around a bit, why should I bother reminding myself that my action serves the timeless goal of being healthy? How does it help me to spell that out?

Well, I did take a walk with my mom one evening the other month. She was in very low spirits because of recent and deep losses that our family has experienced. She was feeling too tired to walk far so we turned back after a few minutes. When we got home, she apologized to me: the walk had been too short, she said. It had been worthless, basically – a waste of time – and we might as well not have gone out at all. I said: “Wait! We took that walk for health. It was a little thing we did for health. Doing something for health, even if it’s just a little thing, can only be good for us. It’s certainly better than doing nothing.”

What was the purpose of the walk? If the purpose was only to get vigorous exercise and raise our heart rates, then we failed. If the purpose was only to achieve health once and for all, then we certainly failed.

But if the purpose of the walk was to take a small action in pursuit of the timeless goal of health, then we succeeded. We acted for health as opposed to not acting for health. And any time we act for health – if indeed our action furthers that timeless goal in some small way – then we should feel good about it. 

How do you manifest any timeless goal? By taking lots and lots of little actions in service of it. Some actions will be more consequential than others, but you keep going, you keep taking these actions. And how do you stay motivated to keep taking these actions? By giving yourself credit each time you take another one, and not regretting it. By noticing how each little action connects to the timeless goal.

So the walk I took with my mom is an example of how identifying one’s timeless goal can help reframe an action from seeming worthless to seeming valuable. A walk that’s so short as to feel like “a waste of time” is still worthwhile if we see it as part of a larger sequence of actions that are aimed at something bigger.

Here’s another example of a benefit – and also a pitfall – we can experience in trying to identify the timeless goal behind an everyday action:

Just a moment ago, I reached across my kitchen table to pick up a glass with water in it. I held the glass in my hand and took a sip. What was my underlying goal in doing that?

The glass was almost empty and I wanted to finish the water so I could clean the glass and put it away.

What was my underlying goal in putting the glass away?

I wanted the table to be clean and free from clutter.

What was my underlying goal in clearing the table?

I wanted to bring order to my living space.

What was my underlying goal in bringing order to my living space?

I want to feel comfortable in my surroundings. I want to feel at home. I want to love my home.

Surely, wanting to feel at home is a timeless goal, and yes, this goal did play a role in motivating me to finish the water and put the glass away. But this example shows how there can be more than one timeless goal behind any action, and it’s easy to get sidetracked on the less salient ones. It takes some thought and some finesse to arrive at most important, the most salient among all the timeless goals that we could identify in any particular scenario.

Here, I’ve gotten sidetracked because I’ve focused on why I took that last sip of water from the glass. Instead, I could have looked at why I poured the glass in the first place. What was my underlying goal in beginning to drink the water?

I was thirsty. I wanted to quench my thirst.

And why did I care about quenching my thirst?

Being thirsty is uncomfortable. I wanted to feel better by giving my body what it needs to function.

Why did I want to give my body what it needs?

I want to be healthy.

Although my last sip was motivated by a desire to put the cup away, so I could clear the table, so I could restore order to my living space, so I could feel at home, the more significant reason why I was drinking water was that I want to be healthy. Same reason why my mom and I took that walk. Same reason why I brush my teeth every day.

Now what benefit do I get for identifying the timeless goal behind drinking a glass of water? Isn’t it obvious that we need to consume fluids to stay alive? 

Yes, it’s obvious, but if I see the water as a nuisance that I’m trying to be done with so I can clean the table, then I’ll be less motivated to pour myself another glass. If instead I take the time to remember that I’m drinking water in furtherance of the timeless goal of being healthy, then I have the chance to think about health from a broader perspective. What else am I doing for health? Yes, I just drank one glass of water, but maybe I’m not drinking as much water as I should be, and I can easily fix that if I just keep a full glass beside me as I work. By stopping to notice my primary intention behind drinking the one glass of water, I’m more likely to pour myself a second glass rather than to put the glass away.

Let’s close with a third example. A few days ago I was drinking from the same glass that held the water that I just talked about. But on this occasion, the fluid inside that glass was not water, it was beer. Now what was my underlying goal in reaching across the table to pick up that glass of beer and take a sip?

I was feeling physically tense because I had been sitting in a chair in front of a computer screen all day. And my mind was full of frustrating, anxious, stressful thoughts. I knew that the beer would make me feel more physically relaxed, and it would “take the edge off” my thoughts, putting me in a calmer, freer, slightly sillier, less grim and less severe frame of mind.

But what was my underlying goal in wanting a “buzz” — in wanting to feel more physically relaxed and mentally calm? What does it mean to experience a combination of physical ease and mental levity?

One way to describe this experience is a state of wellbeing, the same the feeling that comes from being fit and grounded, the same feeling that comes from being healthy.

In a sense, “I want to be healthy” or at least “I want to feel healthy” was my hidden timeless motivation for drinking beer. Of course I wouldn’t say to myself “I’d like to feel healthy, and in order to achieve that feeling of health, I’m going to drink beer right now.” When I found myself drinking beer on this occasion, there were many superficial motivations I could have identified: I liked the taste, I liked the carbonation, I was feeling bored and I wanted a “reward” after a long day. Only by digging deeper and questioning my underlying motivation did I realize that a feeling of health is what I was really seeking. This example shows how timeless goals that motivate our actions may be quite surprising to us when we manage to identify them.

This example also shows that just because we are acting in pursuit of a timeless goal, we might not be taking an effective action, a productive action, a good action, a right action in service of that goal. I don’t want to discuss the pros and cons of drinking beer in this space, but of course there are many reasons to question whether drinking beer is a helpful thing to do in the pursuit of health.

Someone might say, “I want to be financially secure.” That’s a timeless goal. It could motivate them to work nine-to-five and save $100 a month over fifty years. But it could also motivate them to commit money laundering or rob a bank. The goal and the means of fulfilling it are totally different things, and the timelessness of a goal has no bearing on whether we’ll try to fulfill it in an effective way or a counterproductive way, a wholesome or an unfortunate or even criminal way – that’s up to us.

So we’ve seen three examples that illustrate three different benefits we can get from identifying the timeless goals behind the specific actions we take every day.

First: Identifying our timeless goal can help us feel more appreciative and more proud of a little action we took, like a short walk around the block in service of health, when we see that it still furthers the goal.

Second: Identifying our timeless goal can give us the motivation to do more of something that’s furthering the goal, like drinking more water in service of health, instead of putting our water glass away.

Third: Identifying our timeless goal can help us understand when our actions are might be counterproductive in achieving that goal, like if we’re drinking beer because ultimately, we want to feel healthy.

Once we’ve identified the timeless goals behind our everyday actions, and once we’ve confirmed that those goals are truly timeless for us – that we’ll always have those goals and always act on them in some way, as long as we live – then we can start referring to them as timeless intentions.

Rather than saying “I want to be healthy,” we can say “I intend to be healthy. I’m going for a walk because I intend to be healthy.” The meaning is largely the same, but by saying “I intend” instead of “I want,” we’re codifying the fact that our desire is backed by action. As living beings, we’re in flight, we’re in motion. We’re not just sitting around wanting things, but we’re engaged in an ongoing series of ventures and adventures as we forever work to fulfill our timeless intentions. 

—

Postscript:

My ideas about timeless intention are based on the work of technologist and angel investor Bill Warner. In 2010, Bill Warner developed a methodology for helping startup founders build their startups “from the heart.” 

Entrepreneurs often prepare elevator pitches that are full of buzzwords and flashy promises. Bill’s idea was to encourage entrepreneurs to identify the “timeless intention” behind their business or technological invention and describe it in simple language. Bill would ask an entrepreneur to explain how they wanted to help their audience, their customers, their “people” through the invention they created. He asked them to describe their helping intention in universal language that a grade-schooler could understand. And he asked them to connect this intention behind their business idea with an intention that they were manifesting in other parts of their life, outside business. “I want to help people find love.” “I want to help people stay organized.” “I want to help people see the world.” If the entrepreneur was actually doing those things for their friends or acquaintances in some way outside of the startup venture, then their plan to manifest it through the startup would be more credible. Bill’s timeless intention for his methodology was “I want to help people follow their hearts.” 

It’s been 13 years since I first met Bill and participated in his “Anything Goes” lab, a startup incubator space that he was running at the time. Back then, I recorded some of my thoughts in an essay called Intention In Entrepreneurship.

Life happened, and some threads lay dormant for a while before we pick them back up. The idea of “timeless intention” has been in my mind over these 13 years and I believe that it applies far outside of the startup world. Indeed, you don’t need to be undertaking a big venture of any sort in order to find use for the concept. We can uncover timeless intentions behind the little, mundane actions we take everyday, and there’s great value in doing so. That’s what I have tried to illustrate in this essay.

Here’s another essay where I talk about the benefits of identifying our intentions. I talk about how knowing our timeless intention before we start a project can help us experience fulfillment after we’re done with the project, even if the details of the project don’t work out the way we hope.

Saved by intention

On caring what other people think of us

One reason why we don’t all live our “best lives” is that we care too much about what other people think of us. We wait for social validation before pursuing our dreams. We doubt ourselves when we don’t get the external validation we hope for. We fret about social situations where we might be judged negatively. We compromise our true identities in trying to project an image that would make other people tell us what we want to hear: you’re good, we approve of you, you’re one of us.

But when we try to stop caring about what other people think of us, we find that we can’t. We’re addicted to our own inner gossip, where we speculate about how other people perceive us, where we imagine what they might be saying about us, where we guess how they might respond to what we do. Breaking the addiction to this inner gossip is nearly impossible.

In a sense, that’s good. It means we can have a civilization, right? If it were effortless to ignore the way others perceived us – if it were effortless to not care whether other people liked us or disliked us – and if it were effortless to completely disregard social feedback whenever we wanted to, then we wouldn’t be social animals anymore. It’s hard to see how society would cohere. Being totally indifferent to others people’s opinions of us, having zero concern for our image and reputation, would make us more than free spirits or rugged individualists – it would make us very unpleasant to be around, very hard to get along with. Indeed, “caring what other people think of us” is a prosocial trait, it’s a trait that helps us cooperate, even if this trait comes with the cost of sometimes making us abandon our dreams, worry endlessly, and fail to honor our inner selves.

But what is the mechanism by which we are made to care what other people think? When we try to stop caring and we find it so difficult, what causes that difficulty?

An answer is available through simple introspection. We can find an answer in noticing what happens in our own minds when we simply imagine another person. What goes on inside us when we think about any fellow human being we happen to know?

Let’s say we’re going to make a phone call to a person named Ron. To prepare us for interacting with Ron, our mind will do a lot of groundwork that we won’t notice unless we look out for it. How does Ron look? We might see an image of Ron’s face in our mind’s eye. How does Ron sound? We might hear Ron’s voice in our mind’s ear. This inner “conjuring” of Ron happens effortlessly, almost automatically. Along with sensory impressions of Ron, certain facts about Ron will bubble up in our awareness: Ron’s gender. Ron’s age. Ron’s status.

Mixed in with all this material concerning Ron as an individual, there will be other ideas, assumptions, and memories about our relationship with him. We might remember the last time we saw Ron – when was it? Where was it? How do we know Ron? Is he a friend or a foe? Does he make us feel comfortable or does he pose a threat? Are we happy to be talking with him or would we rather not? What does he think of us? Is there unfinished business to resolve? Does he understand us? Does he respect us? Does he see us as we want to be seen? Or does he hold ideas about us that we would like to correct?

Without voicing these questions out loud, or even being aware that we’re asking them, we will intuitively recall the answers as we believe them to be. These facts and assumptions will be part of the constellation of mental activity that defines our idea of Ron, that comprises our understanding of who this person is that we’re going to be talking with in the next minute.

If we try to think about Ron without also modeling the way he thinks of us, we might find it difficult. All of these relational ideas are supplied, more or less automatically, by our mind when we simply think of Ron, simply remember who he is, simply say his name. So if we want to ignore all these ideas about our relationship with Ron, including ideas about how Ron perceives us – this means turning away from compelling content that our mind is offering to us. This means ignoring vivid material that our mind is putting right in front of us.

So an answer to why we “care” so much about what other people think of us can be found in the way our minds work, in the details of how we conceive of other people. We can’t think about other people without also thinking about our relationship with them. And part of our understanding of that relationship is our theory about how they perceive us. Our minds are constantly presenting us with these theories and we have to make a conscious effort to ignore them.

To discover this for yourself, try an experiment. Think of an important person in your life and imagine you were a stranger to them. Imagine that you know something about them but they don’t know anything about you. Imagine that you can see into their life but they have no idea who you are. Imagine your mother, your father, your siblings, your employer, your best friend, your lover – imagine that all these people have no knowledge or opinion of you whatsoever. They’ve never heard of you. They don’t know your name. They don’t know your face. They can’t have a stance or an attitude toward you, because you don’t exist for them. Now how does it feel to hold them in your mind and think about who they are? How does it feel to vividly imagine a good friend, hearing their voice, seeing their face, their eyes, their nose, their hair, their smile, while also imagining that they don’t know you at all?

It’s weird, right? It’s difficult. It’s almost impossible to find a way of thinking of a significant person in your life in vivid detail while also imagining that they don’t know you and don’t hold any opinion of you. The fact that they know you, the fact that they perceive you in a certain way – these are essential parts of your idea of who they are. These are essential parts of how you imagine them.

This thought experiment can be more than a once-and-done kind of thing. It can serve as a visualization exercise or meditation that we might practice from time to time. We might find that it makes us intensely sad to imagine that we were strangers to the people we love. But in other situations it might create a feeling of relief, to imagine that someone who’s angry at us or disappointed in us doesn’t actually know us at all. It might reveal to us that the anxiety and discomfort we feel around someone else is coming from the way we imagine that they perceive us, and if we take this element out of the picture, the possibility for a smoother relationship comes into view. All of this is something we can learn from.

Our minds make us care what other people think of us by bombarding us with ideas and assumptions about what other people think of us, any time we try to simply imagine those people. But we don’t have to take these ideas and assumptions at face value. Through meditation, we can practice releasing these ideas and assumptions in the same way we would release any other thought that passes through our awareness. And we can do this quite safely in meditation – without any risk that we’ll become antisocial or permanently indifferent to how others perceive us – because when we “let go” of an idea or assumption in meditation, that doesn’t mean we’ll never have the thought again. Quite the contrary, it might come back to us later, in a more helpful form.

Stage Fright: Tip #1

My slot in the program was #10. Four performers had gone up already and there were five more to come before it would be my turn. I was waiting to get up on stage and perform one of my original songs in a concert at a songwriting retreat. 

I was nervous. The middle fingernail on my right hand had started giving me trouble in my last-minute practice. A dent had formed in the smooth edge that I need for clean guitar fingerpicking. I had filed the nail, but hadn’t managed to fix the problem. 

As the performers got up – one after the other – pouring their hearts out on stage, I sat in the audience wondering if I’d be able to play at all. Now it was too late to make any further adjustments to my nail without totally reshaping it. Would I be the first one to get up there and be unable to finish my song?

My anxiety was like a wall, separating me from the performers on stage and preventing me from experiencing the magic they were making.

As concerts go, this was one of the most impassioned, unique, and wonderful concerts I had attended all year. But I was missing out on the goodness. I wasn’t tuning into the music because I was so worried about the possibility of my upcoming failure.

So I asked myself, “What is the single best thing that I could do to prepare for my performance as I sit in my chair right now?”

There were only two options:

ONE: I could keep thinking over my song, fretting about possible errors, planning what I’d do if my nail proved to be unworkable – all while ignoring the performers on stage.

TWO: I could put all my attention on the other performers, letting them reach my heart, letting myself be moved by their passion, and keeping my own piece out of my mind for the time being.

The next five musicians would take around thirty minutes to finish their songs. I could spend that half-hour thinking about myself and my own problems or I could spend it listening to the other musicians and appreciating their music.

What does it take to perform a song well?

It takes sensitivity, connectedness, and presence. 

As I sat in the audience, the better option was clear as day. I realized that I could cultivate the qualities that would help me perform well – sensitivity, connectedness and presence – by manifesting them right now as a listener, by tuning into the other performers and letting them carry me on journeys with their songs. 

The more I gave of myself as a listener, the more I concentrated on the performers on stage, the better I’d do when it was my time to perform. By listening with my full self, I’d put myself in the right mood to make music of my own. By cheering for the other musicians – rather than being intimidated by their success – I’d cultivate the same supportive attitude that would help me support myself when I was on stage.

So I made it my goal as the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth performer got up on stage to give them as much of my attention as I possibly could. And when it was my time to get up, I did really well.

Now, this wasn’t easy for me. I was still nervous as I waited to get up on stage and I had to keep reminding myself to stop thinking about my nail. But I did have some success at turning away from my anxiety and turning towards the performers, listening as closely as I could – and I’m sure it helped me later on. Not to mention, it gave me a much better experience as an audience member.

So here’s the tip: once you’ve done all your practice and you’re waiting to go up on stage, the best thing you can do to help yourself perform is to open your ear now – and your heart – to other performers, let them move you, let them inspire you, let them carry you away, right until it’s your turn. To cure stage fright, be the best listener you can be.

Even if you’re the first person to perform, or it’s a solo concert, or maybe you’re making a recording in the privacy of your own home or a studio, there’s still a way to apply this. Prepare for your own performance by listening to someone else’s music that you admire, and let it move you. Connect with someone else’s creativity – or someone else’s courage – that inspires you, then show yours.

Crappy Breaks

We struggle because we take crappy breaks.

I don’t mean that we take breaks to crap.

I mean that we take breaks that are crap.

We take breaks that don’t fulfill their purpose: breaks that don’t refresh us, breaks that don’t calm us, breaks that don’t prepare us to keep working.

There’s value in noticing the crappiness of our breaks.

I’ve experienced that value.

When I’m working on something strenuous and I see that I’m about to take a crappy break, I say to myself, “Rudi, you are about to take a crappy break. Are you sure you want to do this?” Sometimes the answer is yes, but often the answer is no.

I write essays like the one you’re reading now. Writing is highly stimulating. Sometimes it’s highly frustrating. Often it leaves me needing a break. So what do I do when I’ve been writing for an hour and I need to change things up?

If I check email, that’s a crappy break.

If I read the news, that’s a crappy break.

If I browse social media, that’s a crappy break.

If these breaks have any value as sources of rest and refreshment, it’s that they take my mind away from my task for a moment. But they do that by cramming different things into my overwhelmed mind. And all of that new junk doesn’t help me at all when I return to writing.

Does knowing that there’s been a horrific bombing in a war overseas help me write?

Does knowing that scientists have once again confirmed that humanity faces a climate catastrophe help me write?

Does knowing that some celebrity wore a revealing dress to a gala help me write?

None of these things help me write. They actually hurt me, because now I’ve got to get them out of my mind before I can concentrate on writing again.

Usually, I assume I can handle it. I’m an adult, right? Consuming some news, reading some emails, sending a text, clicking a few links is not going to totally derail me, is it?

Maybe, maybe not. The real problem is that I need something important from these breaks – I need refreshment from them – and I’m not getting that.

These breaks actually do the opposite of what they’re “supposed” to do. They drain my energy rather than replenishing it. They make it harder for me to continue working rather than making it easier.

So why do I take these crappy breaks?

First of all, crappy breaks are convenient. I’m already sitting in front of the computer and the “break” is available right on my screen. 

Second, crappy breaks are tempting. They promise immediate gratification.

Third, crappy breaks seem like the only option available. That’s because I haven’t identified what a non-crappy break would even be. I haven’t figured out how to take a genuinely good break. I haven’t understood how to achieve real refreshment in the limited amount of time I’ve got. 

Getting up and stretching might be a good break. But if my mind is racing as I try to stretch – if I’m still “writing” in my mind – I won’t come away from the stretching feeling very relaxed at all.

Going out for an hour of vigorous exercise, or getting a massage might be an amazing break, but I might only have a minute to spare, so those options aren’t practical.

What about taking a minute to meditate? What about breathing calmly and clearing my mind? What about not thinking at all for a moment – not thinking about my project, and not thinking about anything else in its place? 

Sure, a moment of mental emptiness would be refreshing, but emptiness is hard to achieve, isn’t it? 

Hard to achieve for sure, but I’ve seen that by practicing meditation I can get better at it.

With practice, the idea of a meditation “quickie” seems more doable – you can meditate in as little as 1 minute.

Meditation is not the only effective sort of break, but it’s an important one.

My point is that we shouldn’t assume we already know how to take good breaks. We shouldn’t assume that break-taking is a natural and spontaneous thing where we’ll just intuitively figure out how to do it well and we’ll inevitably get the benefit of refreshment that we need.

We should think of good break-taking as a skill that we can develop with practice. A skill that will help us be more effective at the thing that we’re taking the break from.

If you’re exhausted at the end of a day of work, is that because work was hard?

Or is it because you took lots of crappy breaks?

It might be that those crappy breaks were more exhausting than the work itself.

The reason you’re finding work so tiring might be that the work is making you take so many crappy breaks.

But those breaks don’t have to be crappy.