Category: Season 3

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S3 E52 — Say What???

Creative insight or the “aha” experience is then triggered in the temporal lobe. Creative adaptation begins in “… ‘forward’ cerebellar models which are anticipatory/exploratory controls for movement and thought.” Say what???

Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “It takes much more energy to start things than it does to continue them. Make momentum work for you by simply continuing. Once you get in the swing, stay in it.” Virgo

Hi and welcome to Thursday’s Episode 52 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 27th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E51 — What Do Cult Followers Lack?; S3 E50 — Swinging with Systematic-Professionals, Sorta; S3 E49 — Stealing Your Sign Without Doing the Time

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E52 — What’s So Wrong with Conventional Wisdom Unless …; S2 E51 — Let’s Agree to Make Things Worse, Shall We?; S2 E50 — 5 Fundamental Uncertainties; S2 E49 — Navigating Waves of Disruption When You’ve Lost Your Bearings

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E52 – Missing Chapters and Paths Not Taken; S1 E51 – Brief, Broad, Fast, Wow and Delight; S1 E50 – The Bias Brothers or Just Plain Losers?; S1 E49 — Magnetize the Version You Imagine

Context

I can’t lie.

It’s all about momentum and energy.  I know it’s weird for some of my fans to pick up where I left off at the end of yesterday’s Critical Thinking section —while trying to make sense of eight more Conclusions.

What, then is Working Memory’s role in Creative Visualization?  

See?

And, what’s that got to do with this natural experiment?  I feel working memory is what I trigger while trying to interpret TauBits of Wisdom.  It’s how I roll as an Information Packaging, INTP.

My physical therapist and I agreed the world needs more critical thinking.  Even so, I asked her if she felt lucky over the last few days, because Steve Aoki’s Holiday Tau is the same as hers.  

Why? 

I told her and she paused, looked up at the ceiling and smiled. 

Did she hold astrological forecasts and critical thinking together in her working memory?

For me, I just kept my head down and plowed ahead back in the office.  One thing just led to another.

I still can’t lie, without letting my physical therapist in on the plot, I just followed what the forecast for the week had been:

“It’s been suggested that there are those who observe how things are and ask, ‘Why?’ and then those who dream and ask, ‘Why not?’ But these needn’t be, and usually aren’t, two different groups. The best thinkers, both diligent and imaginative, bounce between both questions, taking what they can from past conclusions as they move forward to build the new world.”

That’s me I thought, a diligent and imaginative thinker traveling through time bouncing back and forth and milking past conclusions to move forward. Meaning writing up one section at a time in the 1-year’s natural experiment report.

Convergent thinking usually follows my favorite, divergent thinking, ending with better decisions. I advocate following new knowledge generated from manipulating the old, but in a newer frame. 

It’s why I track new trends and business models making links and connections to flesh out this post-pandemic world.

I still can’t lie. 

I wanted to drill down, or is it drill up and in to ask what is my brain doing in creative sessions flipping and flopping between divergent and convergent processes pulling on my working memory.

Working memory involves two processes with different neuroanatomical (neural tissues in the nervous system) locations in the frontal (lying behind your forehead) and parietal lobes (at the upper back area in your skull).

In a two part process your brain retrieves what it thinks is relevant to what you want and then updates your attention to focus on it.

And, then it gets too complex for me.  

Both processes activate different areas and connections and locations in your brain.  

Your attention activates the folded grooves in your gray matter (caudal superior frontal sulcus) and in another area of your cortex (posterior parietal cortex) which plays an important role in planned movements, spatial reasoning, and attention.

Selecting what you want activates other dense sounding names — rostral superior frontal sulcus and posterior cingulate/precuneus.

How does it work in theory?  

I still can’t lie.

You have to add another brain piece to the puzzle — the cerebellum.  You’ve heard of it right? What about working memory and the cerebellum?

From Wikipedia:

“The brain’s frontal lobes and the cognitive functions of the cerebellum collaborate to produce creativity and innovation.” 

How?  

All processes of working memory (responsible for processing all thought) are adaptively modeled for increased efficiency by the cerebellum.

No lie: 

“The cerebellum (consisting of 100 billion neurons, which is more than the entirety of the rest of the brain) is also widely known to adaptively model all bodily movement for efficiency.” 

How?

“The cerebellum’s adaptive models of working memory processing are then fed back to especially frontal lobe working memory control processes where creative and innovative thoughts arise.”

Creative insight or the “aha” experience is then triggered in the temporal lobe. Creative adaptation begins in “… ‘forward’ cerebellar models which are anticipatory/exploratory controls for movement and thought.”

Got it? 

Good, then explain it back to me.

Unless I’ve got this all wrong, I believe there’s a strong connection between memory and imagination linked in the brain — how we understand our world view is a result of arranging perceptions into existing imagery by imagination.

And, experiences stored as long-term memory are easier to recall, because they’re ingrained deeper in the mind.

It’s like a 4-phase process beginning with image generation from memory, continues with maintenance, inspection and then transformation and places all kinds of demands on working memory.

Now, I can lie.  And steal.

Evidence

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“5”  Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “Your work is not always so straightforward, so you appreciate days like today when the small picture so obviously matches up to the big one. The mountain is climbed one upward step at a time.” Leo

Or, my limited mental facilities synch with what I perceive with a creative “aha!” insight.

“5”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “It takes much more energy to start things than it does to continue them. Make momentum work for you by simply continuing. Once you get in the swing, stay in it.” Virgo

Until I exhaust my self and then it’s time to turn to my heart, right Emma the Baroness?

“4”  Steve Aoki, 41: “There’s much you could be doing, but don’t stress over your choices. Just pick the one that most attracts you, and then stick with that and only that for a while. One choice is a portal through which the world opens up.” Sagittarius

Would that portal begin with working or retiring memory?

“4”  Steve Harvey, 62: “Some call it ‘doing nothing.’ To you, it’s doing what comes naturally without having to think of the needs and reactions of another person. To be alone and agenda-less just may be a basic human need.”  Capricorn

It’s the solitude-seeking introverted way of allowing working memory replenish its “battery”.

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8203 to 8218 organically grown followers.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life 

Long-Form

    • “Why?: What Makes Us Curious,” by Mario Livio. “… socially shared myths, rituals, and symbolism were most likely the first sophisticated responses to nagging why and how questions and were therefore the fruits of curiosity. The chain reaction that resulted from the positive feedback between curiosity and language turned Homo sapiens into a powerful intellect, with self-awareness and an inner life.”

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

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S3 E51 — What Do Cult Followers Lack?

“Let’s face it” the host said, “They just lack critical thinking skills.  Not everyone who fell down the rabbit hole of social media stormed the capitol.”

“4”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “Freedom isn’t always a process that takes forever. Sometimes, it’s a state of mind that can be achieved in an instant. The way out may be just to get out — to rise above and find something different to care about.” Pisces

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s Episode 51 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 23rd day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E50 — Swinging with Systematic-Professionals, Sorta; S3 E49 — Stealing Your Sign Without Doing the Time; S3 E48 — Is That an Ace Up Your Sleeve or Are You Just Glad to See Me?

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E51 — Let’s Agree to Make Things Worse, Shall We?; S2 E50 — 5 Fundamental Uncertainties; S2 E49 — Navigating Waves of Disruption When You’ve Lost Your Bearings; S2 E48 — Tracking Millennials from One Resort to Another

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E51 – Brief, Broad, Fast, Wow and Delight; S1 E50 – The Bias Brothers or Just Plain Losers?; S1 E49 — Magnetize the Version You Imagine; S1 E48 — Holiday TauBit Trumps Funk

Context

CNN’s cohost commented on the defense of one of the arrested insurrectionists by dismissing the attorney’s claim he was a victim of “Fox-itus” a type of brainwashing.

 “Let’s face it” the host said, “They just lack critical thinking skills.  Not everyone who fell down the rabbit hole of social media stormed the capitol.” 

Critical Thinking 

I fell down the rabbit hole called “stack-itus” like when I searched through background experiments in graduate school.  I grew curiouser and curiouser tracking one to another.  

“Critical Thinking” led to “Reasoning” to “Executive Decision Making” and led to the “Cerebellum and the Central Nervous System” with a brief philosophical stop at “Socrates” and then onto a severe right hand turn shockingly back into my history to Donald Broadbent, “the influential experimental psychologist.”

What in the world triggered all this?  

The missing topic for the “Conclusions” section in my 1-Year Natural Experiment Report — Critical Thinking, 

“The process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion.” — Wikipedia

Here’s the so-what definition that matters to critics of Q-anon, the MAGA crowd and the traitors who stormed our capitol, from Wikipedia:

The analysis of facts to form a judgment. 

Socrates established the fact that you cannot depend upon those in “authority” to have sound knowledge and insight.

He demonstrated that persons may have power and high position and yet be deeply confused and irrational. 

Socrates maintained that for an individual to have a good life or to have one that is worth living, he must be a critical questioner and possess an interrogative soul.

He established the importance of asking deep questions that probe profoundly into thinking before we accept ideas as worthy of belief. 

Socrates established the importance of “seeking evidence, closely examining reasoning and assumptions, analyzing basic concepts, and tracing out implications not only of what is said but of what is done as well.” — Wikipedia

Reasoning, which seems to be in short supply:

Is the capacity of consciously applying logic based on new or existing information … associated with acts of thinking and cognition, and involves using one’s intellect. Reasoning, as a part of executive decision making, is also closely identified with the ability to self-consciously change, in terms of goals, beliefs, attitudes, traditions, and institutions, and therefore with the capacity for freedom and self-determination. — Wikipedia

Evidence

And, then there’s this from Holiday Mathis’ Forecast for the week ahead: 

It’s been suggested that there are those who observe how things are and ask, ‘Why?’ and then those who dream and ask, ‘Why not?’ But these needn’t be, and usually aren’t, two different groups. The best thinkers, both diligent and imaginative, bounce between both questions, taking what they can from past conclusions as they move forward to build the new world.

And, so the circle is closed with “Holiday-itis.”

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“4”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “Freedom isn’t always a process that takes forever. Sometimes, it’s a state of mind that can be achieved in an instant. The way out may be just to get out — to rise above and find something different to care about.” Pisces

So, the unless your Holiday Tau applies to domestic terrorists spouting liberty and freedom as their excuse for January 6th’s insurrection, what are you getting at today?

“2”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “Since what you seek is also seeking you, all this shifting you’re doing only makes it harder for the thing to catch up with you. Be still. Stop searching for it and let it find you.” Virgo

Try as I might today, Greene and Guttenberg, your Holiday Tau feels confusing.

“2”  Steve Kerr, 54: “Confucius said, ‘To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.’ Arguably, some offenses are more memorable than others. You’ll be judicious about which grievances to carry.” Libra

Is your Confucius Holiday Tau just as confusing as G&G’s or what? 

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8203 to 8218 organically grown followers.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life 

Long-Form

    • “Why?: What Makes Us Curious,” by Mario Livio. “… socially shared myths, rituals, and symbolism were most likely the first sophisticated responses to nagging why and how questions and were therefore the fruits of curiosity. The chain reaction that resulted from the positive feedback between curiosity and language turned Homo sapiens into a powerful intellect, with self-awareness and an inner life.”

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

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S3 E50 — Swinging with Systematic-Professionals, Sorta

Sig went missing.  As did Mary.  The rumor that floated in gossip streams at the state hospital was he suffered a heart attack and Mary caught a flight back to upstate New York.

“5”  Steve Aoki, 41: “You’ll reach a turning point in your work. Pause here a while to really consider the options. Once you pick a direction, its reversal, though not impossible, will be awkward and time-consuming.” Sagittarius

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s Episode 50 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 22nd day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E49 — Stealing Your Sign Without Doing the Time; S3 E48 — Is That an Ace Up Your Sleeve or Are You Just Glad to See Me?; S3 E47 — Why’s and How’s of the Genius Art of Procrastination

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E50 — 5 Fundamental Uncertainties; S2 E49 — Navigating Waves of Disruption When You’ve Lost Your Bearings; S2 E48 — Tracking Millennials from One Resort to Another; S2 E47 — 27 Adventure Regions for Your Remote-Working Bucket List

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E50 – The Bias Brothers or Just Plain Losers?; S1 E49 — Magnetize the Version You Imagine; S1 E48 — Holiday TauBit Trumps Funk; S1 E47 — Day 47 of My 1-Year Experiment

I initially introduced this story as: 

17. Graduate Assistant Internship — 

Working for the State of California half time and professional services startup in the afternoons, as my first job in the field of psychology, and first mentioned in the beginning of “Volume Two Manuscript — WorkFit,” a work-in-progress.

Sig went missing.  As did Mary.  The rumor that floated in gossip streams at the state hospital was he suffered a heart attack and Mary caught a flight back to upstate New York.   

I wasn’t buying it.  

My sweet deal blew up.  

I’d been living the dream nestled in a small bungalow on Fernleaf in Corona del Mar on the western side of Pacific Coast Highway.  I hiked on a walkway over Bayside Drive, what for what may be 3 or 4 blocks to the bluffs overlooking the mouth to Newport Harbor and the small beach at Pirates Cove.  

If I walked the same distance, but east of my rental, I spooked ground squirrels and those owls who burrow in the ground through and open field to the office in Newport Center.  

Two things saved me.  

    • I could still hang on to my internship at the state hospital at the beginning of my psychology career and I met the love of my life, Emma the Baroness. At the hospital he supervised be in one program full of developmentally delayed clients and Les in another.   
    • As a business model was a doctor-knows-all in a pecking order of nurses and administrative staff. I was shocked with his out of the blue comment and his prescience when he told me I wouldn’t stay married long. I chalked up to his wisdom as a clinician, until looking back I wondered if he had recruited me for something else entirely.

In their private life, Sig and Mary swung if that is how you say swingers in the past tense.  

That fact only slowly emerged as celebrity-like friends of theirs visited our Institute office near the athletic club and the shopping destination overlooking Corona del Mar hidden in swaying palm trees and Balboa Island and Peninsula off in the distance, but still at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.  

Sig needed money to keep the Institute’s doors open.  

He put the touch on several of their swinging friends from Beverly Hills and others who streamed through our suite of offices to sample our bio-feedback services.  

The background story I eventually heard was Sig fled New York, left his wife, son and a psychology practice with Mary, his girlfriend,  and settled a mile or two just outside the border of Huntington Beach. 

Sig envisioned a business model similar to a franchise of bio-feedback centers in Southern California.  

We couldn’t find clients, let alone celebrity investors or potential franchisers.  But, the challenge opened my eyes to corporate medical and wellness centers in large organizations and eventually to several career changes.

So what happened to Sig?  

Did he fake his death to throw off his creditors?  I never found out and it wasn’t until later that I understood organizations and organization types that I see we were Systematic-Professionals.

We Systematic-Professionals come in four flavors — talent brands of experts who love their profession and their local location. In general we are known for methods and metrics. 

    • We prefer to distance themselves to remain objective and follow a well-articulated and tested methodology.
    • We find occupational homes in university research centers, professional practices, academic institutions and in standards-setting associations. 
    • Our identity is tied to their profession.

Systematic-Professionals by the very nature of their work make the best candidates for developing a Mobile KnowCo that allows them to live and work anywhere in the world. 

Which made it easy for Sig to leave his practice in New York, affiliate with a state hospital in Orange County, and launch BMI.

But, many stay in one place –- in or around university towns or urban and suburban centers where they find clients for their services.

Which led to “Knowledge Banking” many years later, when I looked around and asked, “Should I stay or should I go?”

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Ha!  Too bad this wasn’t Sig’s birthday, right.  Maybe we could travel back in time and find his investors to fund BMI.  And, this ain’t my birthday, but the lessons I learned and took note of paid dividends for me over my career trajectories.

Today’s Holiday Birthday:

A rebellious spirit pervades. The rules you break will liberate you. You’ll attract investors. The money helps you get a project off the ground, but there’s even more value in the time and lessons you gain. To repeat this success will bring you exponentially more, so take careful notes, pay attention and be methodical.

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Success in one area of life won’t automatically bring success in other areas, but certain basic principles will apply universally. The work is best chunked down into small steps and mastered in order.” Aries

Yup, Steve chunking is good.  I used to call it knowledge chunking, breaking down lessons learned into knowledge nuggets so you could apply them in a variety of settings.

“4”  Steve Smith, 30, Stevie Nicks, 72: “There’s a time to keep score, and a time to indulge and share without worrying the least bit about who gave what. Scorekeeping turns giving and receiving into a job or a game instead of a spiritual act or a pure pleasure.” Gemini

Thanks Smithy and Stevie.  This reminds me of research I stumbled upon in my behavior modification days.  If you rewarded kids who truly enjoyed math with stars and tokens they grew to hate math.  I’m not sure about the spiritual corollary, but I’ll take it.

“5”  Steve Aoki, 41: “You’ll reach a turning point in your work. Pause here a while to really consider the options. Once you pick a direction, its reversal, though not impossible, will be awkward and time-consuming.” Sagittarius

Wow, Steve.  Not only did my physical therapist know who you were and shared your sign, but your Holiday Tau proves meaningful to me today.  I’m writing up my report about Phase 1, including the expansion of the 1-year natural experimental format into our pandemic year somewhat reluctantly, while I figure out Phase 2 in which I solicit TauBits from real Steves.  I’m thinking through my strategy attempting to gauge how much time and effort it will require, versus my return-on-investment.

“4”  Steve Harvey, 62: “While you’d rather go into a game with a strategy, those require time you won’t have today. So, the best strategy will be to stay on high alert for clues and trust your instincts.”  Capricorn

Since when Steve are you in collusion with Aoki?  Here’s my takeaway when I combine both of your Holiday Taus — keep an evolving scenario in the background, but start with small steps so I can iterate without reinventing the wheel and essentially starting over.

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8203 to 8218 organically grown followers.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

    • “Why?: What Makes Us Curious,” by Mario Livio. “… socially shared myths, rituals, and symbolism were most likely the first sophisticated responses to nagging why and how questions and were therefore the fruits of curiosity. The chain reaction that resulted from the positive feedback between curiosity and language turned Homo sapiens into a powerful intellect, with self-awareness and an inner life.”

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

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S3 E49 — Stealing Your Sign Without Doing the Time

Consider this 30-day summary a pawn ticket to sketchy things I’ve learned from stealing your sign without doing the time. I feel so guilty about it that I’m willing to sell it back to you.

“5”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “As for mental arguments that only you can hear, they do serve a purpose. You’ll work out the pros and cons of a decision before you ever take the risk. Contain your deliberations inside a time frame though, or they’ll steal your day.” Pisces

Hi and welcome to Friday’s Episode 49 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 21st day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E46 — Twisting Meaning to Fit Is Still a Misdemeanor in My Book; S3 E45 — Tacit Heuristics Blinding Fast-Track Teams; S3 E44 — Make It Rhyme To Work Each Time

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E47 — 27 Adventure Regions for Your Remote-Working Bucket List; S2 E46 — Whimsy Passion Project or Epic Novel of Adventure?; S2 E45 — Wildcard What Ifs and Doobie Bros Bias; S2 E44 — Celebrating Emma the Baroness Tribal Quarantine Style

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E47 — Day 47 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E46 — Day 46 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E45 — Day 45 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E44 — Google Me Some Chopped Liver

Context

And, true to my word I checked on behalf of my physical therapist the Holiday Tau for Zahnny, the Fonz, Emma the Baroness and me, but they under shined all the rest of the Steves.  Especially, Steve Aoki’s again.

So what did I uncover in Why I Stole Your Sign and the Mysteries of Your Life?

A major coincidence at a time when I’d been noodling story ideas for my next manuscript.  I have the Holiday Tau for Steve Howey to thank for it.

“5”  Steve Howey, 42: “If you could go back in time and warn your younger self, what warning would you issue? What diversion would you suggest?” Cancer

Have you thought about how you’d advise your younger self? 

I did.

My leap of faith into this 1-year project forced me to figure out some things on the fly.  

On some days I felt foolish.  I never stated my “hypothesis” that I was testing in this year long natural experiment.  Don’t you have to collect data and measure something?

“Yesterday I wrote about how ‘disappointed’ I felt when we missed out again on the Holiday Tau.”  

“But, I’m thinking about stealing 6 or 7 or more TauBits that could apply to me and ranking them in a range of value from ‘1’ (hardly worth the mention) to ‘5’ illustrating off-the-charts relevance.” 

“Is that diluting the value of this experiment?“ 

“Is it too early to draw conclusions about the ideal number I track?  If it isn’t, maybe I could pay attention to just four or five Holiday Tau.”

On day 22 I felt I couldn’t catch a break and felt depressed.  But, on the following day my passion, inspiration and motivation returned.  Am I bi-polar?

“Yes, I don’t really need to steal anyone else’s Holiday Tau when I’ve received one of the highest TauBits already today.  And yes, I was complaining that too many TauBits might be too much to absorb.  But check these out.  This might be the single best day in the “Tau of Steves” history as we know it — well, so far during this one-year experiment.” 

Evidence

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Can I stipulate for the 100th time that it’s not my birthday?  Sure I’ve seen life from both sides now and prefer the above ground side, but I can’t steal this one in good faith.  Wait it will help me move up financially? 

Today’s Holiday Birthday:

All you’ve overcome has made you strong — and also funny! Humor comes from the flexibility of perspective you earned seeing different sides and extremes of life. A project will put your talents to good use, and you’ll be enthusiastically endorsed, too, helping you to move up professionally and financially.

“5”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “As for mental arguments that only you can hear, they do serve a purpose. You’ll work out the pros and cons of a decision before you ever take the risk. Contain your deliberations inside a time frame though, or they’ll steal your day.” Pisces

Hey Jobs, where was your Holiday Tau when I needed it? Whose side are you on anyway? Above or below?  I don’t know why, but my dad used to tell a construction story.  During the early stage walk through of the custom house the contractor would pause at where the new windows would allow sunlight in from the early mornings and yell, “Green side up.”  Then while pointing to blue prints in what would be the living room, he’d look outside and yell, “Green side up.”  This went on room by room until my dad and mom wanted to know what that was all about.  “Oh that?  Sorry, but I have to stay on top of everything and I just hired some sub-contractors who are laying sod for the first time.”

“4”  Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “You’ll strengthen your mind/body/spirit connection, and it all happens with physical exertion. Every time you work on your body, it will become increasingly receptive to the command of your mind and the intuition of your spirit.” Leo

When I received the results from my MRI my orthopedic physician told me my injury hadn’t torn any ligaments, but I suffered a sprained left knee and a bone bruise.  I told him I felt my physical therapy progress had regressed, and just had to get out and walk.  Down at the Little League field I hobbled down memory lane taking in the “Under 3 feet” T-Ball game — if you can call it that — and my neighbor’s first inning.  

“4” Steve Kerr, 54: “Why would anyone willingly offer up their work for scrutiny? To improve, of course. Only the courageous and the serious will proactively take this option, and you are definitely in that group. You want to be the best.” Libra

I can feel your pain Coach Kerr, having lost your Play-In game to the Lakers.  And just as quickly you were In-N-Out.  Which suggested I follow your Holiday Tau and drive through to pick up two hamburgers with grilled onions and two fries for Emma the Baroness and me.

“4”  Steve Aoki, 41: “The line between sharing and oversharing is liable to be ignored, blurred or completely crossed. Most people won’t mind knowing a little more than they need to.” Sagittarius

Obviously your Holiday Tau shared with my physical therapist is on a need to know basis.  Haha just kidding.  

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8203 to 8218 organically grown followers.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life  

Long-Form

    • “Why?: What Makes Us Curious,” by Mario Livio. “… socially shared myths, rituals, and symbolism were most likely the first sophisticated responses to nagging why and how questions and were therefore the fruits of curiosity. The chain reaction that resulted from the positive feedback between curiosity and language turned Homo sapiens into a powerful intellect, with self-awareness and an inner life.”

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

Posted on

S3 E48 — Is That an Ace Up Your Sleeve or Are You Just Glad to See Me?

We’d been meeting like this twice a week.  She told me to flip over while she began massaging the back of my knee.    

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Here comes the reshuffling of your deck of priorities, a process outside of your control, followed by the giddy anticipation as the cards are being dealt. What will you get? It matters but not as much as how you play what you get.” Aries

Hi and welcome to Thursday’s Episode 48 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 20th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E47 — Why’s and How’s of the Genius Art of Procrastination; S3 E46 — Twisting Meaning to Fit Is Still a Misdemeanor in My Book; S3 E45 — Tacit Heuristics Blinding Fast-Track Teams

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E48 — Tracking Millennials from One Resort to Another; S2 E47 — 27 Adventure Regions for Your Remote-Working Bucket List; S2 E46 — Whimsy Passion Project or Epic Novel of Adventure?; S2 E45 — Wildcard What Ifs and Doobie Bros Bias

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E48 — Holiday TauBit Trumps Funk; S1 E47 — Day 47 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E46 — Day 46 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E45 — Day 45 of My 1-Year Experiment

Context

In the end my physical therapist agreed. I’m guessing one of the missing cards, in addition to curiosity I wrote about last time for the “Conclusions” section, is the critical thinking card.

But first she asked, “So what are you going to do the rest of the day?”  

I told her work on my blog.  “Oh, what is it about?” 

I told her I steal people’s horoscopes mostly and am writing up a report covering one year.  “Why?” she wanted to know.  

She knew her sign, Sagittarius. I told her Steve Aoki (using celebrity Steves) always was better than mine, Scorpio.  She helped me pronounce his name, so obviously she knew who he was.

What I’m working on now, I told her,  is critical thinking, how in the ‘70s when I was in my first career there was a whole movement starting with the uncertainty principle that upended psychology at the time of Esalen in Big Sur by psychedelic pioneers.

It was a scene I left for another career, but I told her this passion project allows me to revisit it.

“Right there,” I said.  

It would be one more day before I’d get the results from the MRI and we guessed there might be some damage to my ligaments.  I felt not being able to keep up the strengthening and balance exercises set me back.

I asked her how she ended up working in this sports rehab office.  She told me it was the second of her rotations.  When she completed it they asked her to join them.

“How did you start your first career?” she asked, probably only half listening.  

“Let’s see when I moved here after my masters in clinical and experimental psychology I did the typical.  I sent out 100 resumes to places between Ocean Beach in San Diego to the northern part of Orange County.”

“Oh?”

The only real offer I told her came from Dr. Lichter who was starting up a clinic in Newport Center called the Behavior Modification Institute. “We offered biofeedback sessions as a way of reducing stress and making it easier for clients to find a meditative state.”

“BMI?” she said.

“Yeah, but in the mornings I’d work at a State Hospital and in the afternoons in Newport Beach trying to sell time in a white, egg-shaped biofeedback chair for producing those alpha waves.”

“Uh-Huh.” 

“Do you know who Sam Harris is?”  I asked after she focused more on my knee therapy.

She heard of the name.  I said he’d been interviewing neuroscientists on his podcast which allowed me to update my understanding of the brain … even psychedelics were now being used to treat addictions and help cancer patients.  

“Critical thinking,” she nodded. 

We agreed as I flipped over to my back on the black cushioned table was in short supply these days.  She never checked her horoscope except sometimes in magazines when she came across it. 

Though what I was doing was interesting and she said should check it out.

Evidence

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Here comes the reshuffling of your deck of priorities, a process outside of your control, followed by the giddy anticipation as the cards are being dealt. What will you get? It matters but not as much as how you play what you get.” Aries

She never checked her horoscope except sometimes in magazines when she came across it.  Though what I was doing was interesting and she said should check it out.

“4”  Steve Winwood, 71; Stevie Wonder, 69; Stephen Colbert, 56: “Allowing yourself to get distracted will drain your precious energy unless those distractions are so quality they inspire you. You’ll know immediately. Unless you get hit by a “wow” factor, keep moving along.”  Taurus

I’m not sure if our brief conversation with my physical therapist worked on my knee after my accident, but I didn’t feel drained at all.  And, after my hour-long exercises topped off with icing my knee down I felt no pain — not even the dull ache or sharp jab under my knee cap.

“4”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “You’re carrying more than you know. It’s like your mind has pockets you haven’t checked in a while. Go through, gather up the useless and dated ideas, and then release them to the trash.” Virgo

Seriously, G&G I struggled with your Holiday Tau until I realized I’ve been finding out what no longer holds up against the latest brain research about consciousness and what I used to believe about functions housed in the right- and left-brain 

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8203 to 8218 organically grown followers.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life  

Long-Form

    • “Why?: What Makes Us Curious,” by Mario Livio. “… socially shared myths, rituals, and symbolism were most likely the first sophisticated responses to nagging why and how questions and were therefore the fruits of curiosity. The chain reaction that resulted from the positive feedback between curiosity and language turned Homo sapiens into a powerful intellect, with self-awareness and an inner life.”

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

Posted on

S3 E47 — Why’s and How’s of the Genius Art of Procrastination

Something is missing.  I can’t put my finger on it.  I just don’t know what it is, but I can feel it.  I thought it was something Marshall McLuhan said and was fully prepared to follow the search for it.  But, that impulse dried up.

“5”  Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “In a moment of complete relaxation, an answer will come to you accompanied by all the relief and satisfaction of finding a set of lost keys. Indeed, this will unlock future doors.” Leo

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s Episode 47 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 16th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E45 — Tacit Heuristics Blinding Fast-Track Teams; S3 E44 — Make It Rhyme To Work Each Time; S3 E43 — Add a Little Foresight to My Misdemeanor Tab

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E46 — Whimsy Passion Project or Epic Novel of Adventure?; S2 E45 — Wildcard What Ifs and Doobie Bros Bias; S2 E44 — Celebrating Emma the Baroness Tribal Quarantine Style; S2 E43 — See What You’ve Been Missing …

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E46 — Day 46 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E45 — Day 45 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E44 — Google Me Some Chopped Liver; S1 E43 — Desperation on Such a Summer’s Day

Context

Sitting quietly for a moment after I asked “What would Leo da V do?” the answer arrived.  

Curiosity.  

That’s what’s been missing from the 1-Year Natural Experiment Report.  Living life as an art form in a natural experiment.

Why?  

I’d been skipping over “Why: What Makes Us Curious?” by Mario Livio.  

Guess who figures prominently in Mario’s tale, besides Richard Feynman, my Leo!

“Leonardo’s boundless interests spanned such broad swaths of art, science, and technology that he remains to this day the quintessential Renaissance man. Art historian Kenneth Clark appropriately called him ‘the most relentlessly curious man in history.’” 

“Feynman’s genius and achievements in numerous branches of physics are legendary, but he also pursued fascinations with biology, painting, safecracking, bongo playing, attractive women, and studying Mayan hieroglyphs.”

Leonardo’s apparent inability to complete assignments, or his lack of interest in finalizing some of his projects pose further questions laid out by Livio, but really relevant to my behavior too: 

    • What was it that made Leonardo curious, and why? 
    • What did he do to satisfy his curiosity? 
    • At what point, if any, did he actually lose interest in a particular topic? 

Leonardo was curious about almost everything in the complex world surrounding him, and compulsive about note taking.  He sketched drawings and notes as part of his “artistic”output, estimated by some researchers to be 15,000 pages.

Why include curiosity now?  

Livio says the emergence of the unique human curiosity and emergence of the distinct human language were strongly correlated.  Which is a polite way of elevating gossip! 

Livio believes curiosity is at the core of human symbolic culture.

“… socially shared myths, rituals, and symbolism were most likely the first sophisticated responses to nagging why and how questions and were therefore the fruits of curiosity.”

How?

“The chain reaction that resulted from the positive feedback between curiosity and language turned Homo sapiens into a powerful intellect, with self-awareness and an inner life.”

The basic characteristic of curiosity is the desire to pose a question, thereby risking generating even more uncertainty, which in the context of an information-gap model is perceived as distressing.  Einstein once said: 

“The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.”

Why?

Curiosity is really an engine of discovery. The seed of creativity is curiosity, and that potential for imagination comes from wondering, filled with self-awareness and a rich inner life.

Evidence

So, let’s turn to wondering which of the Steves offers relevant TauBits of Wisdom for the day.  If complaining identifies a problem and that problem is really an information-gap itching to be closed, then I like what you can offer Zahnny.

“3”  Steve Zahn, 51: “Complaining comes easily to most. Just about anyone can describe a problem. The next steps — brainstorming solutions, settling on a few to try, gaining the cooperation of others, etc. — are for the advanced corps. That’s you.” Scorpio

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

However comma, as Emma the Baroness is fond of saying, I believe it takes an inventor and two comedians to describe my early in the morning “What would Leo da V do?” moment when I switched from McLuhan to curiosity, more precisely.

“5”  Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “In a moment of complete relaxation, an answer will come to you accompanied by all the relief and satisfaction of finding a set of lost keys. Indeed, this will unlock future doors.” Leo

So, Steve your Holiday Tau is saying book learning is one thing, but application is what matters, right?  Couldn’t agree more.  I’m on the back end of teasing out lessons learned from experience and building the theory it supports.

“4”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “The theories that work out on the page but don’t work out in real life can be considered exercises or games, not serious contenders. Actual results trump theory every time.”Pisces

I was surprised late yesterday afternoon when just like your Holiday Tau describes, wave after wave washed through me while I watched Vanessa’s tribute to Kobe Bryant at his induction into the NBA’s hall of fame.  

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Feelings are waves. They rise into an identifiable shape and then hit the shore and go back to being part of the big ocean of emotion. Don’t fear the feeling. It’s just another form for energy to be for a while.”  Aries

I saw Michael Jordan, duh, since he introduced Kobe for his induction, but not you.  Okay I have to admit I taped the whole show so I could fast forward through Tim Duncan’s and Kevin Garnett’s to get to Kobe , so you may have been there. Now I’m wondering if the socially distanced audience were already inducted members and family?

“4”  Steve Kerr, 54: “When dealing with distracted people (and it’s safe to say that most people you’ll deal with today will have an attention deficit), assume that you must capture their attention several times throughout the interaction.” Libra

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8138 to 8193 organically grown followers

Foresight

Quality-of-Life  

Long-Form

    • “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, a classic I feel which still holds up. As the pace of change quickens we experience self-doubt, anxiety and fear.  We become tense and tire easily, until we are overwhelmed, face-to-face with a crisis situation. Without a clear grasp of relevant reality or beginning with clearly defined values and priorities, we feel a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Our intellectual bewilderment leads to disorientation at the level of personal values. Decision stress results from acceleration, novelty and diversity conflicts. Acceleration pressures us to make quick decisions. Novelty increases the difficulty and length of time while diversity intensifies the anxiety with an increase in the number of options and the amount of information needed to process.  The result is a slower reaction time.
    • Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking Fast and Slow”describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts: “System 1” which is meant as a fictional shorthand — not as a brain system or structure: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. “System 2”: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. I’m learning a lot about my energy levels first described from within an introversion frame now, from within differences between System 1 and the harder working, energy depletion System 2.  Self-control, for instance is hard and takes a lot of energy to accomplish.  When I write the concentration requires effort until I can find the “flow.” Implications for True Belief — it’s easy to stay in System 1 vs. critical thinking — System 2.  Set some marketing and working on the business goals — System 2 and then ignore them by following the lateral thinking and associative thinking  which Leo da V invites me to do — System 1. 
    • “Why?: What Makes Us Curious,” by Mario Livio. “… socially shared myths, rituals, and symbolism were most likely the first sophisticated responses to nagging why and how questions and were therefore the fruits of curiosity. The chain reaction that resulted from the positive feedback between curiosity and language turned Homo sapiens into a powerful intellect, with self-awareness and an inner life.”

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

Posted on

S3 E46 — Twisting Meaning to Fit Is Still a Misdemeanor in My Book

I started down this path a week ago on Friday when I felt lost. What I did next didn’t fill me with pride. 

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Take a step back and remember why you wanted to do a thing in the first place. Much has happened since; your purpose has evolved to fit the circumstances. But that initial kernel of intention is still the heart of this venture.

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s Episode 46 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 15th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E44 — Make It Rhyme To Work Each Time; S3 E43 — Add a Little Foresight to My Misdemeanor Tab; S3 E42 — Greta, Juliette and the Partridge Family at Trestles

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E45 — Wildcard What Ifs and Doobie Bros Bias; S2 E44 — Celebrating Emma the Baroness Tribal Quarantine Style; S2 E43 — See What You’ve Been Missing …; S2 E42 — It Was Short and Sweet, but Heart-Felt

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E45 — Day 45 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E44 — Google Me Some Chopped Liver; S1 E43 — Desperation on Such a Summer’s Day; S1 E42 — Love on the Run

Context

I stole Steve Kerr’s TauBit of Wisdom:

“Projects have a beginning, middle and an end, though that is not the best order of approach. Begin with the end in mind. If you don’t have an end in mind yet, assist someone who does and you’ll learn a lot.” 

Thanks to Coach Kerr and the Los Angeles Lakers living legend, Kareem Abdul-Jabaar I’ve been reworking the 1-Year Natural Experiment Report.

Intelligent imagination is vital to this sort of deduction! However improbable a hypothesis, it cannot be discarded. 

“Mycroft and Sherlock” by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Introduction

  • Definitions
  • What Does Tau Mean?
  • Life as an Art Form
  • Life as a Natural Experiment

Chain of Events Leading to the 1-year Experiment

  • Two Fortune Cookies and Dove Dark Chocolates
  • Here’s the Pitch for Bringing More Steves into the World
  • Steve is on an Endangered List
  • Top 10 Steves Organized by Horoscope = 120!

Three Phases

  • Finding Aphorisms Worth Handing Down
  • Priming the Pump for Input from Real Steves
  • Soliciting Wisdom from Steves with Identical Names

Methodology for Phase One

  • Changes along the Way
  • Extension to total 1-Year
  • Day 196 of 1-Year (Pre-Pandemic) overlaps with Day 20 of Pandemic Year

Findings for Phase One

  • Total Possible Horoscopes, Originally 4536 vs. Extension 4548
  • From Representative Sample of Famous Steves
  • Break Down: Practical Projects, Work, Legacy, Dreams and Relationships

Results Relevant to Me

  • Specific to Scorpios
  • From Any of the Remaining 11 Signs

Conclusion

  • Horoscopes
  • Biases
  • Intuition
  • Synchronicity
  • Pattern Recognition
  • Serendipity
  • Do I Feel Lucky?
  • Superstitions
  • Rituals
  • Super Simplification
  • True Believers
  • Filters
  • Selves
  • Heuristics
  • Associative and Lateral Thinking

Appendix:

Holiday TauBits of Wisdom From Representative Sample

  • Steve McQueen
  • Steve Carell, Steve Martin and Steve Wozniak
  • Steve Jobs

Evidence

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

I guess if I had known I would have added our Patron Saint, Steve McQueen to Kerr and Kareem’s inspirations. 

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Take a step back and remember why you wanted to do a thing in the first place. Much has happened since; your purpose has evolved to fit the circumstances. But that initial kernel of intention is still the heart of this venture.” Aries

If I twist the meaning of your Holiday Tau slightly Howey, I interpreting your message as confirmation of this whimsey passion project which led to more tangible and practical insights I’m working through in the “Conclusions” section of the report, right?

“4”  Steve Howey, 42: “Whether consciously or unconsciously, you keep placing yourself on the path of self-discovery. The respect and love you gather up is a natural byproduct you’ve earned along the way.” Cancer

Don’t get me wrong Coach Nash, but I’m not feeling the relevance for today.  But thanks anyway.

“2” Steve Nash, 45: “When loved ones want your assistance, your response is automatic. Today’s situation warrants a contemplative pause. Consider that, sometimes, the very best way to help is by not helping.”  Aquarius

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8138 to 8193 organically grown followers

Foresight

Quality-of-Life 

Long-Form

    • “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, a classic I feel which still holds up. As the pace of change quickens we experience self-doubt, anxiety and fear.  We become tense and tire easily, until we are overwhelmed, face-to-face with a crisis situation. Without a clear grasp of relevant reality or beginning with clearly defined values and priorities, we feel a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Our intellectual bewilderment leads to disorientation at the level of personal values. Decision stress results from acceleration, novelty and diversity conflicts. Acceleration pressures us to make quick decisions. Novelty increases the difficulty and length of time while diversity intensifies the anxiety with an increase in the number of options and the amount of information needed to process.  The result is a slower reaction time.
    • Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking Fast and Slow”describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts: “System 1” which is meant as a fictional shorthand — not as a brain system or structure: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. “System 2”: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. I’m learning a lot about my energy levels first described from within an introversion frame now, from within differences between System 1 and the harder working, energy depletion System 2.  Self-control, for instance is hard and takes a lot of energy to accomplish.  When I write the concentration requires effort until I can find the “flow.” Implications for True Belief — it’s easy to stay in System 1 vs. critical thinking — System 2.  Set some marketing and working on the business goals — System 2 and then ignore them by following the lateral thinking and associative thinking  which Leo da V invites me to do — System 1.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

Posted on

S3 E45 — Tacit Heuristics Blinding Fast-Track Teams

I’ve learned that I am really susceptible to the downsides.  But, I’m a sucker for that aha! experience, so naturally I’d latch on to a word (heuristic) that comes from the same root as eureka.

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “You’ll discover that a belief you held was wrong or incomplete — oh, sweet liberation! This levels the mental ground where you’ll be building something sturdier and more beautiful to dwell inside.”  Aries

Hi and welcome to Friday’s Episode 45 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 14th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E44 — Make It Rhyme To Work Each Time; S3 E43 — Add a Little Foresight to My Misdemeanor Tab; S3 E42 — Greta, Juliette and the Partridge Family at Trestles

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E45 — Wildcard What Ifs and Doobie Bros Bias; S2 E44 — Celebrating Emma the Baroness Tribal Quarantine Style; S2 E43 — See What You’ve Been Missing …; S2 E42 — It Was Short and Sweet, but Heart-Felt

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E45 — Day 45 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E44 — Google Me Some Chopped Liver; S1 E43 — Desperation on Such a Summer’s Day; S1 E42 — Love on the Run

Context

When knowledge management gained purchase as an emerging profession I attended a week-long online conference with early practitioners and discussed “distinctions” of what it was all about.  

It was too soon to define it with hard boundaries.  

One of the pioneers advocated heuristics as a practice for sharing and refining knowledge that wasn’t already explicitly in use. 

 I’d never heard of heuristics before, but I caught a flavor of his meaning for what he called tacit knowledge — what people on a team knew and shared intuitively with each other.

Team members learn something by bringing products to market like the one they’re up against the looming release date.  

The team is stumped.  

Someone pitches a solution based on a similar product she engineered in the recent past and it works. Crisis averted.  That solution is passed on again and again. 

More formally a heuristic is like a rule of thumb — a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind.

I’ve learned that I am really susceptible to the downsides.  I’m a sucker for that aha! experience, so naturally I’d latch on to a word (heuristic) that comes from the same root as eureka.

If you knew me you’d know I always look for a simple procedure that helps me find answers to difficult questions —  adequate, but often imperfect as they may be to move forward. 

But,  now I’ve come to learn what I’m most likely guilty of is some kind of mental trick, a kind of a bait and switch without noticing.  

I  sometimes automatically substitute an easier question for a difficult one, answer it and congratulate myself on my brilliance.

As Daniel Kahneman says, “(A) lazy System 2 often follows the path of least effort and endorses a heuristic answer without much scrutiny of whether it is truly appropriate.”

How does it work? 

While l’m engaged in searching for an answer to one question, my “System 1” simultaneously generates the answers to related questions. 

Often it may substitute a response that more easily comes to my mind for the one that was requested and more complicated.  

“The heuristic answer is not necessarily simpler or more frugal than the original question, but it is accessible, computed more quickly and easily.” 

The answers are not random.  They are often approximately correct and frequently that’s all you need. 

As in technology heuristic of inserting a good enough product into the customers hands and get them to tell you about all the flaws so you can iterate and release new versions.

But, sometimes they are quite wrong. Which can come back and bite you in your own life if you’ve got a lot on the line.  

Evidence

But, Zahnny, am I wrong in assuming focus and concentration won’t short circuit my intuitive self no matter how flawed?

“3”  Steve Zahn, 51: “The work worth doing centers around your energy, perception and ability. Focus there, and so much else will naturally come together. Focusing elsewhere will be ineffective.” Scorpio

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

You know, Steve sometimes your Holiday Tau hits the nail on the head.  It wasn’t until these last weeks while working on the Conclusions section of my Report that I discovered heuristics, good as they may be in general, weren’t the end all and be all of knowledge management.  In fact they may have accounted for blinding fast-track teams under pressure to deliver tech products at a faster and faster pace.  Mea culpa.

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “You’ll discover that a belief you held was wrong or incomplete — oh, sweet liberation! This levels the mental ground where you’ll be building something sturdier and more beautiful to dwell inside.”  Aries

Eureka G&G.  Here’s my take on this passion project at 5:45 am this morning. Looking back through the report I grow tired and weary because of the disconnects and disjointed sections.  My plan was to write the end and then go back to the beginning and clean up portions as I made progress towards the conclusion.

“5”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “The interaction of opposing forces in your mind creates friction, hot moods and frustrating mental traffic jams. Alignment changes everything. Thoughts flowing in the same direction create momentous forward movement.”  Virgo

Did someone say, aha! or eureka?  Count me in. Anything to distract me, like a squirrel does for a dog, from this ongoing national political disgrace.

“4”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “Heavy topics and serious matters just don’t have appeal to you now, though you’re quite excited by novelty and the lighter side of life. This mood is perfect for building rapport with others.” Pisces

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8138 to 8193 organically grown followers

Foresight

Quality-of-Life 

Long-Form

    • “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, a classic I feel which still holds up. As the pace of change quickens we experience self-doubt, anxiety and fear.  We become tense and tire easily, until we are overwhelmed, face-to-face with a crisis situation. Without a clear grasp of relevant reality or beginning with clearly defined values and priorities, we feel a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Our intellectual bewilderment leads to disorientation at the level of personal values. Decision stress results from acceleration, novelty and diversity conflicts. Acceleration pressures us to make quick decisions. Novelty increases the difficulty and length of time while diversity intensifies the anxiety with an increase in the number of options and the amount of information needed to process.  The result is a slower reaction time.
    • Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking Fast and Slow”describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts: “System 1” which is meant as a fictional shorthand — not as a brain system or structure: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. “System 2”: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. I’m learning a lot about my energy levels first described from within an introversion frame now, from within differences between System 1 and the harder working, energy depletion System 2.  Self-control, for instance is hard and takes a lot of energy to accomplish.  When I write the concentration requires effort until I can find the “flow.” Implications for True Belief — it’s easy to stay in System 1 vs. critical thinking — System 2.  Set some marketing and working on the business goals — System 2 and then ignore them by following the lateral thinking and associative thinking  which Leo da V invites me to do — System 1.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

Posted on

S3 E43 — Add a Little Foresight to My Misdemeanor Tab

Each of us is born from a mother whose being remains etched on our very essence. For those who have a special language with their mother, that identifying banter will be in full force, as will shared aesthetics, recipes and other matters of style and much more.

“5”  Steve Zahn, 51: “While some cannot seem to recognize the magnificence of a thing until it’s gone, you add foresight to the matter, imagining the thing gone in order to better appreciate the impact of its presence while you have it.” Scorpio

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s Episode 43 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 9th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E42 — Greta, Juliette and the Partridge Family at Trestles; S3 E41 — What’s Up with Telluride or Humboldt County or Bodega Bay?; S3 E40 — How Stealing Your Sign Led Me to a Nobel Prize

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E43 — See What You’ve Been Missing …; S2 E42 — It Was Short and Sweet, but Heart-Felt; S2 E41 — A Pandemic End to Real Estate and Consulting?; S2 E40 — The Profound Impact of the Pandemic on Nouns

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E43 — Desperation on Such a Summer’s Day; S1 E42 — Love on the Run; S1 E41 — The Dream Was Over, Long Live the Dream; S1 E40 — Nothing to See Here, Keep Moving On

Context

Today’s intro and forecast for next week by Holiday Mathis will probably be seen as a copyright violation and lead to the denial of my parole because my petty larceny history of stealing your horoscopes.

I’m not proud of it, but I’m guessing after three years of this crime spree, they’ll just add on more time to my tab. Thank you again Holiday:

Each of us is born from a mother whose being remains etched on our very essence. For those who have a special language with their mother, that identifying banter will be in full force, as will shared aesthetics, recipes and other matters of style and much more.

Holiday Forecast for the Week Ahead: 

Some years, the mighty oak drops 10,000 acorns — a feast for the animals, the animals that eat the animals and all down the line. 

Of these thousands of seeds, only one needs to remain to further the oak family… urges you to align with the oak’s style on themes of contribution and abundance. 

Keep giving without stressing as to where the returns will come from — such things are as difficult to predict as which of the 10,000 acorns will bear a new tree. Just trust that returns will come from somewhere. … is an excellent time to start a business, make a deal, invest, begin a job and the like … put a perspective shift in motion. 

A theme here is how things aren’t the same out of context. A sentence means something different when you yank it from the paragraph. 

Outside of the factory, the uniform makes no sense, the tools even less so. And the people you know in one place seem strange to you in the light of a different setting.

Contextually confusing scenarios can actually be so startling they cause us to see our relationships, environments and roles afresh. Once seen, there is no unseeing; once progressed, there’s no going back.

Evidence

Well, your Holiday Tau hits home for those of us who no longer have mothers to share this day. Treasure them while you can whether with foresight or imagination or by staying in the moment in their presence. 

“5”  Steve Zahn, 51: “While some cannot seem to recognize the magnificence of a thing until it’s gone, you add foresight to the matter, imagining the thing gone in order to better appreciate the impact of its presence while you have it.” Scorpio

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Just put these three on my misdemeanor tab, will y’a?

Haha, Howey your Holiday Tau explains the core value pitch knowledge workers advance for getting paid for their smarts not just for the hours the log. 

“4”  Steve Howey, 42: “So much that the world asks you to do will be neither productive nor necessary. What if you just did the bare minimum? There’s nothing to gain from filling all of your time.” Cancer

Wow, Steve your TauBit of Wisdom explains feelings and grief I want to remember for another day. 

“3”  Steve Kerr, 54: “Feelings, like weather, move over the scene, some lasting longer than others. Though eventually, everything passes through, over, on… This is bittersweet in the case of passionate intensity but a deep relief in the case of grief.” Libra

Your Holiday Tau reminds me of advice I took to heart over the years to find the sweet spot between analysis paralysis and buyers remorse. Kinda like no tears or regrets. 

“5”  Steve Aoki, 41: “It took awhile for you to make a decision, and now that you’ve made it, you have no intention of changing your mind. Your commitment is admirable. Note that it is possible to stay at once committed and open.” Sagittarius

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8138 to 8193 organically grown followers

Foresight

Quality-of-Life  

Long-Form

    • “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, a classic I feel which still holds up. As the pace of change quickens we experience self-doubt, anxiety and fear.  We become tense and tire easily, until we are overwhelmed, face-to-face with a crisis situation. Without a clear grasp of relevant reality or beginning with clearly defined values and priorities, we feel a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Our intellectual bewilderment leads to disorientation at the level of personal values. Decision stress results from acceleration, novelty and diversity conflicts. Acceleration pressures us to make quick decisions. Novelty increases the difficulty and length of time while diversity intensifies the anxiety with an increase in the number of options and the amount of information needed to process.  The result is a slower reaction time.
    • Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking Fast and Slow”describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts: “System 1” which is meant as a fictional shorthand — not as a brain system or structure: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. “System 2”: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. I’m learning a lot about my energy levels first described from within an introversion frame now, from within differences between System 1 and the harder working, energy depletion System 2.  Self-control, for instance is hard and takes a lot of energy to accomplish.  When I write the concentration requires effort until I can find the “flow.” Implications for True Belief — it’s easy to stay in System 1 vs. critical thinking — System 2.  Set some marketing and working on the business goals — System 2 and then ignore them by following the lateral thinking and associative thinking  which Leo da V invites me to do — System 1.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

Posted on

S3 E42 — Greta, Juliette and the Partridge Family at Trestles

Virginia Heffernan evokes the “Gen-X Generation” in her column about how the current baby bust — couples not doing their duty to their ancestors — and probably exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic isolation, will produce another overlooked generation in the grand scheme of things.

“5”  Steve Nash, 45: “Knowing that someone will only remember two or three things you talk about, you pick the most important topics and find an artful and memorable way to put those ideas across.”  Aquarius

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s Episode 42 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 8th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E41 — What’s Up with Telluride or Humboldt County or Bodega Bay?; S3 E40 — How Stealing Your Sign Led Me to a Nobel Prize; S3 E39 — Ready for Your Big Leap Forward?

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E42 — It Was Short and Sweet, but Heart-Felt; S2 E41 — A Pandemic End to Real Estate and Consulting?; S2 E40 — The Profound Impact of the Pandemic on Nouns; S2 E39 — The Best Tau for the Pandemic Year, Don’t You Agree?

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E42 — Love on the Run; S1 E41 — The Dream Was Over, Long Live the Dream; S1 E40 — Nothing to See Here, Keep Moving On; S1 E39 — What’s Up with Facebook?

Context

First, the public service announcement — while it may be too late for flowers, don’t forget to call your mother tomorrow.  

Is there a theme for today?  

Virginia Heffernan evokes the “Gen-X Generation” in her column about how the current baby bust — couples not doing their duty to their ancestors — and probably exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic isolation, will produce another overlooked generation in the grand scheme of things.  

But, who can blame them?  

Unless you believe card carrying Baby Boomer Bill Gates has planted chips in COVID-19 arms and single-handedly smeared the fossil fuels industry you might empathize with the teenagers — older than the unborn (in the even grander, Karma kind of scheme) — and agree with their Gen-Z spokesperson, Greta from Finland in her streaming series, ”Greta Thunberg – A Year To Change The World.” 

In a rare moment after visiting with coal miners who actually applaud her message — yes, that’s right — you see a candid Greta when she shares how deflated she feels, like a powerless little girl, compared to Trump’s grade-school bullying before and after they co-headlined a conference of international leaders.

Yet she’s the one acting like the only adult in the room.

Her generation, she reminds us, will still be here when the Baby Boomers are extinct, having done nothing in this critical moment,  leaving them on the wrong side of planetary history, and judged harshly in the future for their inaction.

And finally, Juliette Paskowitz the “beatnik matriarch” of San Onofre surf camp clan dies in a care facility at age 89 in nearby San Clemente, California. From her obituary by Steve Marble in the LA Times:

Juliette Paskowitz and her husband embraced a Jack Kerouac lifestyle: boundless, free-spirited, going where the road took them — most often in the direction of the beach. It was the life any kid could only dream of, bounding across the country in an overstuffed camper — from San Clemente to Pensacola to the shoreline of Venezuela, always searching for the perfect wave. 

With Dorian Paskowitz at the wheel, nine kids jammed in the back and Juliette riding shotgun, the family finally parked the rig on the sand in San Onofre, opened a surf camp and spent their days riding the glassy curls, playing in the whitewash and chasing one another from lifeguard tower to lifeguard tower. 

“If ‘Nomadland’ was a 2, we were at a 10 as far as sheer adventure, uncertainty, homelessness and never knowing what the next day might bring,” said Israel “Izzy” Paskowitz, the fourth-oldest child in the clan. 

“It was wonderful.” Juliette Paskowitz, the matriarch who held “the first family of surfing” all together, often singing arias while listening to opera on a small transistor radio in the camper…. 

Dorian preached the rewards of surfing so relentlessly that it caught the attention of sportswear designer Tommy Hilfiger, who applied the family name to his line. 

A record label, perhaps thinking they’d found the sun-bleached version of “The Partridge Family,” invited the family to cut a record. A filmmaker made a 2008 documentary on the family titled “Surfwise.”

A theme?

Evidence

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Huh? Liberation.  Getting your habits to march along like ducklings following their mother, all in a row? Interesting.  But, it ain’t my birthday.

Today’s Holiday Birthday: 

There’s a liberation taking place. A year from now, you’ll look back and celebrate this moment when you cease to needlessly judge yourself. You’ll opt for new ways of pulling your habits into line. You’ll enjoy what you create because you dared to go in a new direction. Work leads to new interests; new interests pay you.

Knowing when to examine and when to let it go, is that right, Stevie?

“3”  Steve Smith, 30, Stevie Nicks, 72: “A few people will make an initial decision and many others will uncritically accept it. You, however, will push pause and do your own evaluation. You can’t personally examine everything, but this is within your realm.” Gemini

Haha, you two comedians break me up.  And you, Woz seriously your Holiday Tau feels like how you persisted along with that other Steve to build it before knowing they would come, eh?

“4”  Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “Your wisdom shines through your choice of what to get involved with and when. Trust those initial prescient instincts, even when (especially when!) you can’t reason them out.” Leo

How is it that your Holiday Tau feels a cut above the TauBits offered by the other Steves today?  I’m thanking you for you more practical take.

“5”  Steve Nash, 45: “Knowing that someone will only remember two or three things you talk about, you pick the most important topics and find an artful and memorable way to put those ideas across.”  Aquarius

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8003 to 8088 organically grown followers

Foresight

 Quality-of-Life   

Long-Form

    • “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, a classic I feel which still holds up. As the pace of change quickens we experience self-doubt, anxiety and fear.  We become tense and tire easily, until we are overwhelmed, face-to-face with a crisis situation. Without a clear grasp of relevant reality or beginning with clearly defined values and priorities, we feel a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Our intellectual bewilderment leads to disorientation at the level of personal values. Decision stress results from acceleration, novelty and diversity conflicts. Acceleration pressures us to make quick decisions. Novelty increases the difficulty and length of time while diversity intensifies the anxiety with an increase in the number of options and the amount of information needed to process.  The result is a slower reaction time.
    • Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking Fast and Slow”describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts: “System 1” which is meant as a fictional shorthand — not as a brain system or structure: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. “System 2”: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. I’m learning a lot about my energy levels first described from within an introversion frame now, from within differences between System 1 and the harder working, energy depletion System 2.  Self-control, for instance is hard and takes a lot of energy to accomplish.  When I write the concentration requires effort until I can find the “flow.” Implications for True Belief — it’s easy to stay in System 1 vs. critical thinking — System 2.  Set some marketing and working on the business goals — System 2 and then ignore them by following the lateral thinking and associative thinking  which Leo da V invites me to do — System 1.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

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