Bull session: Honesty and the ugly truth

MANILA, Philippines - Apple employees called it the reality distortion field: the ability of Steve Jobs to delude himself and others into thinking that nothing was impossible. Jobs utilized his “magical thinking” to create and reinvent entire industries, twice bringing Apple back from the brink of irrelevancy and finally cementing it as the world’s most important tech brand.

Jobs’ disregard for conventional boundaries was so successful in business that he applied it to his health as well: when diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he turned down surgery in favor of a combination of fad diets, alternative medicines and just plain ignoring that it was there. However, the cancer kept growing and Jobs eventually went under the knife; by then, it was too late.

When does reality distortion outlive its usefulness? In terms of self-perception, a whole host of white lies are often needed just to make it through the day. It’s extremely useful to develop idealistic notions about ourselves because it forces our hand: live up to these expectations or else.  It’s that kind of stress that Jobs used to pluck miracles out of thin air.

But, in his case as in ours, faking it until you make it works perfectly well up until the point where you smash headfirst into reality. Asking the hard questions that can only lead to drastic changes in attitude and lifestyle is annoying, uncomfortable, and totally necessary.

I started this experiment by asking all of my close friends to share what they think my flaws are. “Hold nothing back,” I bravely declared in a mass Facebook message, to which they answered, “No thanks.”  I suppose it’s more awkward to pop someone else’s bubble than it is to pop your own.

The first clue came from my wife, who replied, “I can’t tell you we might break up lol.” Now we’re getting somewhere: who’s better equipped to tell me how I ought to fix myself than the woman I spend every waking moment with? I thought of what her points of contention with me are, and after throwing away the quibbles (“The bathroom floor is always wet after you shower” still doesn’t strike me as a major character flaw), I zeroed in on three constant threads and took steps to address them.

Video game junkie

This is the flaw I have the most trouble with because it barely even seems like a problem. Like Black Thought said: “Ain’t like I’m on a coke binge, hanging in dope dens.” Gaming is a great way to relax and let go of stress. Still, I have to stick to my criteria: is this something that is preventing me from realizing my full potential? The answer is yes, which I hate.

To paraphrase every doctor ever: “The only difference between a poison and a remedy is the dose.” A couple of games of NBA 2K13 a day doesn’t hurt, but if I’m putting off work to run around Skyrim and kill just. One. More. Dragon, then yes, it’s a problem. “Civilian doesn’t work, plays games instead” is not a policy I would adopt in Civilization 5, so why am I adopting it in real life?

In order to min/max reality, I’ve set up a reward system tied into my to-do list. For every substantial item that gets crossed off the list (“finish writing the article” is a Yes, “buy toothpaste” is a No), I earn two hours of gaming. I’ve enacted this rule for the past week with great success:  the controllable gaming bursts satisfy my need for escapism without the all-nighter marathon sessions. This arrangement complements the fix for my next big problem, which is:

Bad work ethic

It’s shaping up to be a quote-heavy article. Kevin Durant, the leading scorer in the NBA for the past three seasons, said: “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” I’ve been told by every teacher at every level of school that I have tons of potential but I don’t work hard enough. That’s not totally true: I just put in enough work to stay with the curve and allocated spare time towards recreation instead of training to excel.

I’m now on the wrong side of 20, and getting by is no longer enough. Life doesn’t reward sporadic bursts of brilliance: it’s the people who put in reliable work every day that reap the most benefits. Consistency and self-starting is what’s called for, and it’s what I find hardest: the prospect of grinding through a huge pile of work often seems so daunting that I don’t even start.

Thankfully, there are productivity hacks developed specifically for the ADD set. My personal favorite is the Pomodoro Technique because it’s built around the fact that attention span decreases as time increases. Pomodoro is simple: work for a block of 25 minutes, then take a five minute break; after four blocks, take a 15-30 minute break and start again. Repeat until finished.  This works wonders for me because, again, it’s a reward system: do a little work, get a little reward. It also eliminates monotony. 

Pomodoro is task-oriented; it’s a tactical maneuver for when you’re in the thick of battle. That’s fine for piecemeal engagements, but you need an overall strategy to win the war against work. My choice for that is even simpler and it’s called Don’t Break the Chain.

The story behind this method is that, as an up-and-coming comedian, Jerry Seinfeld had to constantly create new material to perform at clubs. To give himself a push, he’d take a calendar and mark a big X for every day that he wrote.

The motivation to keep going derives from aesthetics:  once you have a calendar with a bunch of neat, connected X’s, you really don’t want to break the chain because it’s gonna mess up how everything looks. Just like a to-do list with all of the items crossed out, it’s super satisfying to see a giant unbroken chain of X’s.

Of course, everyone has multiple projects running simultaneously. It’s tempting to just pick one task per day, cross it off and say, “See? I didn’t break the chain.” Look, you have to buy a packet of multi-colored sharpies along with your calendar and assign each project its own color and then keep a chain for each project. My weaker nature is always trying to sabotage my Ubermensch aspirations, so if you’re anything like me, this is totally essential to avoid cheating.

Gettin’ kinda chubs

There’s a Buddhist quote I can’t quite remember on a Wikipedia page I can no longer find. It basically says that a clean or dirty physical appearance can be good or bad depending on what your intentions are. Is being super groomed an assist or an obstacle on your path to enlightenment? Depends on you.

It’s the same with chubs. For a lot of people, chubs can be liberating: it means no longer having to stress over weight and no longer feeling bad about not adhering to the impossibly thin standards we see on TV and magazines.

I am not one of those people. I’ve put on 40 pounds in four years (!!!) and I feel slower, more tired, and I can’t fit into my old clothes. My thighs womp-womp like a dubstep bassline and that is not cool with me. This is supposed to be the portion of my life where I’m in peak physical condition and I’ve never felt worse.

All signs point to diet. By diet, starving myself and then putting back on all the weight I lost is Out and actually changing what I eat is In. This is unbelievably difficult, especially in the Philippines where multiple generations live under the same roof and food is prepared en masse. “What’s that, you’re vegetarian now? But look at all this frrrieedddd chickennnn!”  Basically the story of my life.

Since Buddhist monks beg for their food, they have to eat meat if that’s what they’re offered. By some accounts, the Buddha’s last meal was a pork dish. If Mr. Big Chubs can be flexible, so can I: my diet is now primarily fruits and vegetables, but I won’t say no to meat if that’s all there is. Beggars can’t be choosers. 

Additionally, I limit my portions to one plate and can empirically state that my body operates just fine on one serving instead of the usual four. Whether or not this will translate to a sustainable body weight will take years to find out, but just a couple of weeks with these eating habits has resulted in a lot more energy.

For me, the biggest problem that comes with ignoring hard choices is the tendency to blame external forces for my problems. Yes, we’re blitzed with millions of things that are designed to subvert our good judgment, but we can’t claim victimhood once we realize what’s going on because it’s within our power to do something about it. Now that I’ve taken control of a few aspects of my life, I’ve found that good choices have a positive momentum about them: it becomes easier and easier to make the right call once the ball’s rolling.