Bits and Paradoxes #27
Flexible Consistency; Breaks
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It has been a long week. Since last week I have been trying to replicate a research paper by Google on representation Learning for semi-structured documents. I have "almost" replicated the Neural Network architecture but the training seems to go nowhere; it is noisy and predictions are random. :/
This is weird because the data isn't noisy; I have tried cleaning the data rigorously. It should have learned something, even in the over-fitted scenario. I will have to debug more. [[Closure Effect]] is strong this time. That’s that.
Anyway, one thing I have realized about myself is that I am not very consistent with anything. I get bored too quickly, too often. Probably that's my [[Shiny Object Syndrome]] into play. I need a sense of "kick" to learn new things more and more. But then for what?
How do you feel about your routine? Are you consistent in doing it?
[[Flexible Consistency]]
I)
While you can hear most of the people (me included) talk about narratives like "Consistency is the key", "Keep doing it", they don't really talk about how stressful it is to do something for a very long period of time.
Nobody talks about [[Burnout]].
Nobody talks about failures.
Nobody talks about emotions like envy/jealousy when you see others succeed and feel dreaded…
Nobody talks about de-motivation, loneliness, and anxieties.
Obviously, it's taxing when you have to follow a routine, frequently and intentionally. Normally, when we think about habits, we tend to think that they should be rigid, done in a more monotonous way. That is, we think we have to be consistent about it, always.
I think there's a trade-off of being 100% consistent on certain things. You will get bored of doing the same thing over and over again. Or simply give in to burnouts.
Example
Workout is normally considered to be done every day (except weekend, cheat day). If you miss a few days, you are thought to be lazy and inconsistent.
However, if you exercise every day, there's a strong chance of burnout. You become more fatigue that creates a domino effect where you eventually end up losing any urge to do it.
What if you make that routine flexible? Instead of working out every day, you set a number of days to exercise? (say 3 times a week or 10 days a month)
II)
With [[Flexible consistency]], you are allowing yourself a room to breathe. Breaks between your routine/ritual/habit, allows you to get away from the usual rut.
There are a few areas where I have tried to add some flexibility.
a. Workout
I have been doing calisthenics for the past 2 years or so. [0]
During the initial days, I used to exercise every day, continuously for many months. Eventually, I burned out. Stopped doing it. Lost weights. Became physically weak, got back to my usual “skinny guy” regressed state.
I'd end up more fatigued because I continuously pushed myself to exhaustion. This decreased my strength, and thus motivation to do even smaller reps.
Now, this [[COVID-19]] pandemic has enabled me to reiterate that routine.
I don't exercise every day. I simply do it whenever I feel like doing.
There's no strict schedule. Sometimes I do it around 7 am. Sometimes late 8:30. Sometimes 10-15 minutes before the morning meeting for work. Sometimes in the afternoon while going for some stretches on the roof.
The length also varies which depends on my mood and other tasks I have allocated. I allow myself to do the exercises at a max of 40 minutes because beyond that I have realized I don’t perform well the whole day. In that case, when I get high-intensity burns, I skip the workouts for a few days.
Just last month (october), I did workouts for only 18 days. That’s fine.
Plus, I have become flexible on diet too. Previously, I had a very strict diet: beans, oats, bananas, and likes (rarely rice). I used to consume these daily. My mid-day lunch used to be beans (chana, chiura). But they didn't help me gain anything.
Now, I am less strict. I eat anything (obviously, I have dumped junk foods and the likes). I don't even eat high-protein meals like I used to.
The effect of this flexibility is two-folds:
First, I have gained ~10KG weights during the lock-down, over the ~6 months period. This is an achievement for me as I had been “the skinny guy” my whole life. [1]
Secondly, I have built my core strength (and muscles). (Of course, I have some belly fat as I do cardio irregularly, plus I rarely go out these days).
I had somehow managed to set a goal for myself to gain some weights during the initial lockdown period. And here I am talking about it.
b. Work
Docsumo’s flexibility has allowed me to perform better.
I have learned a ton of things in the Applied ML space, mostly because of my project-based learning paradigm.
For outsiders, Docsumo appears as one platform for [[Document AI]]. In reality, there are many moving gears inside. We experiment on a variety of algorithms that allow us to dig deeper into the rabbit hole “productively”. [3]
When I think about it, there are tasks that need a “move fast, break things” mindset with tight deadlines. That’s almost inevitable.
I mostly work for a month on one thing, get saturated because of edge cases, and then take a break from that. Continuously working on a single project, for weeks, especially when progress is slow, makes me feel bored and lose interest in the problem I am working on. That's the sub-optimal state of working with the flexibility I guess…at least for me… Not sure how long this mindset is going to work for me.
c. Newsletter
Sometimes writing feels more like a compulsion than fun and exploration because of stress.
Why is it stressful? I should be enjoying it, right? Oh well, I don’t have a definite answer, but know that trying to be 100% “consistent” burns me out. As a result, I reschedule my publishing time. I spend the whole day (and sometimes another day) to write, edit, cut off parts, cringe on myself, and feel dreaded. The loop continues somehow. Someone should probably say, “Get a ‘life’, Nish!”.
If you are a recurring observer who "enjoys" reading these letters, you can guess that my publishing schedule is not much consistent. Sometimes it's early morning. Sometimes it's late morning. Sometimes it's another day, another time. Mostly I find it therapeutic to jot down my thoughts here. But sometimes, it’s taxing.
As I am editing right now, it’s around 8 pm Saturday. I’ve been writing for the whole day. Yet I can’t publish today. Probably, when you get this you are somewhere around 8ish pm, Sunday on a pale blue dot. Which means I spent another day editing and streamlining my thoughts. Cool time travel, right? Haha. :)
I don't stick to a single topic and I don't intend to either.
Most of the writings revolve around nuanced aspects of life that stems from my absurdist mindset. I like to be open to ideas and explore more. I try to connect the dots between the absurdities of life.
This flexibility has allowed me to introspect more, write things down, and explore (and reinforce) my [[Mental Model]].
Of course, flexibility might be an excuse for [[Procrastination]]. But that's that. *coughs*. * Put “Nothing matters” thought here *
d. Music
I've been playing guitar for more than 7 years now.
I don't intend to dive into how I used to practice continuously for many hours every day. But know that, I still suck. I am not any near to what I want myself to be in terms of playing guitar. (I simply play for my own sake. :) )
Now, I don't practice regularly. It comes out of habit I guess. I see my guitar Rusty lying on the bed. If I am bored I pick it up and just noodle around without any goal.
However, once every week I sit down for hours to study music theory, improve my fingerstyle and soloing. For this, I have a very "vague" goal. Sometimes I practice some scales for hours, playing to some backing track. And if something good comes up (emotionally), I record it and then upload it to YouTube. :D
During recording phase I learn many things, especially when using Audacity.
I am not “implying” I am a “good” player. It's just that playing guitar consistently and with flexibility over a long time has allowed my muscle memory to solidify. And yes, ear training too. [2]
III)
Obviously, this flexibility comes with a price — if your breaks grow larger and larger, there's a chance that the routine will be arduous. You’ll drift into laziness (and boredom?). You start to become inconsistent.
Too much flexibility might breed passivity. You might find it hard to get the motivation to complete the tasks that you used to do in the past. That passivity breeds mediocrity, stagnation, and ultimately mental illness. You will not be able to explore much.
For instance, if you start to decrease your workout routine to a lesser number of days, it's possible that you won't see any improvements. Your stamina/strength will decrease eventually.
This goes for any learning system. If you are learning some topics, you don’t want to have stress. You want to take a break. Breathe. Contemplate the topics. A very long break is also not that good in this scenario. Your knowledge may expire somehow if you don’t contextualize it. That’s why we have Spaced Repetition System (SRS) that can help re-contextualize your knowledge.
A good example is learning GRE vocabs. If you do it daily, you’re able to remember complex vocabularies. If you take a very large gap (say a week), you might forget them. If you are only learning vocab every day, it’s stressful. In this case, although there’s consistency, there’s too much monotonicity. That’s why most people study vocab and quant (mathematics) in pre-allocated time frames.
You see where I am going, right? Neither all consistency is fruitful, nor more flexibility. There should a good balance.
Think of it as playing dart. If you are consistently hitting only the outer edge of the board, you aren’t doing good. If your darts are all over the boards, that isn’t helpful either. You aim for bull’s eye, but it’s okay to hit some of the outer edges. I like to think this analogy often while learning anything as it relates to the bias-variance trade-off jargon in machine learning algorithms.
Having said all these things, I am in no way the “productive” guy. I don't intend to be.
I had been meaning to write about this since last month when I encountered the term in a few reads. Now it makes sense. It just clicked today that I have to write about it, no matter how “incoherent” the writing is. Again, that’s the flexibility I am allowing myself to have without being too self-deprecating.
Related: Playing the long, lonely game.
#Reading
Flexible Consistency: Combining Contrasting Values
Preetam Nath | 4 min
This is the write-up where I learned about the term "Flexible Consistency". It resonated so strongly that I almost felt it was directed at me
Preetam maintains a weekly newsletter. So, every week he has something in mind to talk/write about. However, at certain times he doesn't have anything to talk about. As a result, writing becomes more stressful than therapeutic. So he talks about his routine/habit to improvise with that stress.
“The weekly content writing is supposed to be therapeutic and fun. It’s not supposed to be something you are forced to do.”
I’m being too hard on myself, and that my system has a single point of failure which drags me down every time I hit it. I cannot let missing a day or two of routine breakdown the whole routine.
Consistency and flexibility are contrasting values. Yet combining them increases your chances of success, and helps you foster better mental health.
The power of flexible consistency
Anne-Laure Le Cunff | 4 min
Life is chaotic. Things will go wrong. Flexible consistency is about combining proactive planning with reactive adaptation so you can make significant progress over the long-term.
Something that stuck out in this short write-up is the concept of being mindful about [[Time Management]] and changing the scope of a task.
Say, you have a daily schedule of doing X for 1 hour. Sometimes, it might not be possible to do it for 1 hour because of other priorities. Or perhaps, you don't feel like doing it. With mindful time-blocking, you can contract that task for a shorter time period (say 20 minutes).
This flexibility allows you to work on the task without completely halting it. It frees your time for other higher-priority tasks.
Blocks can be moved or made shorter. Ideally, try to never delete a block. This only works because you need to be highly selective with time blocks in the first place.
“Reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule.” For instance, when I don’t have time to write a long article, I’ll just post a short one. If you don’t have the energy to run your planned 3 miles, just run 1 mile instead. Being flexible and reducing the scope will make it easier to stick to your routine than completely skipping a session.
Few key points:
Plan for disruption. Life is messy and non-linear. Expect life to be chaotic. Be prepared for any type of disruption.
Fail like a scientist. Use failure as a learning experience.
Schedule over scope. Sometimes it's okay to change the time-span of work than intended.
Structured Procrastination
John Perry | 5 min
Procrastination might be a bit vague topic to talk about but know that there's “Good and Bad Procrastination”. Structured Procrastination lies anywhere in that spectrum (mostly inclined towards the "good" side).
This essay talks about Structured Procrastination as good procrastination where we choose to do tasks that have lower priorities. In doing so, we neglect the tasks that are relatively important.
We structure our tasks based on “rigid deadlines” that define the priority level. It's a hierarchy.
If a certain task has no deadline, then we are bound to procrastinate on that. We choose to work on other things.
The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.
I do think that this structured procrastination relates to Flexible consistency in the sense when you are taking a break (or decreasing the time span of a task), you are choosing to work on some other things.
#Watching
Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos
PBS| Documentary | 2 hr
This was an insightful documentary that, like any corporate, swings back and forth between Amazon's good and bad sides.
"Good" in a sense how it has revolutionized the tech industry From books to e-commerce to cloud infrastructures to edge devices.
“Bad" in a sense of how there are tons of controversies surrounding it.
Safety/health hazards for employees
Political games
Monopoly over book publishers
Privacy issues with Alexa, Amazon Ring, and such.
Tax evasion
"Everything that's big has to come under scrutiny."
Why Finland And Denmark Are Happier Than The U.S.
CNBC Make It | 25 min
What does it take to be happy? The Nordic countries seem to have it all figured out. Finland and Denmark have consistently topped the United Nations’ most prestigious index, The World Happiness Report, in all six areas of life satisfaction: income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust, and generosity.
The reason these Nordic countries are happier might be:
Strong support from the government
Free education and health care can lessen some economic burden.
Safer and open-minded Society
Less Poverty
Less corruption
Although people are much happier in these Nordic societies (from an outsider POV), there is always some kind of stress that arises from high expectations towards work-life balance.
Understanding Syd Barrett
Lie Likes Music | 11 min
Syd Barrett was a guitarist, singer/songwriter and painter from Cambridgeshire, UK. He was well known for being the founding member of the rock band giant Pink Floyd, but he has later been known as a cult-icon because of his strange life story and eerie solo-records. In this video we take a deeper look at his life.
Syd got so much into psychedelic drugs that it degraded his health drastically (both physical and mental). As a result, he wasn't able to perform properly in the band. David Gilmour replaced him eventually.
In the later years, after leaving Pink Floyd, he went on to put out his own independent songs.
On that note, Pink Floyd’s “Shine on you crazy diamond” is regarded as a tribute to Syd by the band. The intro music gives me goosebumps, especially with the chilling 4 notes…
Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun
Shine on you crazy diamond
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky
Shine on you crazy diamond
You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom
Blown on the steel breeze
#Fascinating
Netflix Educational Documentaries
This is a playlist of free educational documentaries from Netflix.
Among these, Our Planet and Abstract: The art of design are awesome. Highly recommended.
Just last week I watched Abstract: The Art of Design | Christoph Niemann: Illustration
From New Yorker covers to Instagram sketches, illustrator Christoph Niemann plays with abstraction and interactivity -- and questions authenticity.
I am mind-blown by the quality of the series. It's insightful, inspiring, and beautiful.
"Abstraction is the idea of getting rid of everything that's not essential to making a point"
The big problem with routine is everything starts to look the same. The audience change all the time. I change all the time.
#Music
I’ve been listening to psychedelic music for the whole week. One band I discovered is [[Maha Sohona]]. Their spatial music gives me a heavy trip, especially when I am on the roof alone and drifting.
Loved their Asteroids music. Trippy. Calm. Helps in a stress detox.
Also, they have a music video on this where a guy floats on the sea having the trip of his life. Haha.
Ending Thoughts
Right now I am listening to Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower. Dylan’s original song is timeless and profoundly moving. But Hendrix gave it a beautiful life.
Also, I read this article on James Clear: How writing consistently helped James Clear gain millions of fans, which is mildly inspiring.
For nearly three years, James Clear has pushed out a new article on his blog every Monday and Thursday. No matter how long, short, compelling an article was, it got published on the site on time. He said that he wanted to write consistently to find his voice, build an audience, churn through average ideas to discover great ones. He didn’t know whether an article was popular or not, but he believed that if he did not miss a day, he would eventually become a better writer and hopefully make it big someday.
That's all.
Thanks for consistently reading the letters, although I can see that not every week's views are consistent. I will take that as “flexible consistency” for now. Haha.
It’s a bit lonely out here in my mind cave. But that’s fine. Solitude is a bliss. :)
Take Care,
Nish
PS: Do forward the newsletter to people around you who might find it interesting.
#Footnotes
[0] - TBH, I’ve been mocked for this by some of the friends when I say I exercise regularly at home. Probably, that’s their cognitive bias at play where they think you have to go to the gym to exercise seriously. But I beg to differ!
[1] - Of course, I am privileged enough to do these things and eat healthy foods. But isn’t life about trying to reach some kind of stable state (both physically and mentally)?
[2] - Sure! I don't know to play songs you'd like me to play. Sure! I can't shred fast. But if you leave me alone in a room with a guitar, I am sure I will be playing it for hours without any goal. I am just a guy who is trying to make sense of absurdities. (Here we go again. Nish talking about the same old shit!)
[3] - Yup! Docsumo has high expectations from me and the team (like any other startups which provide good learning grounds for researchers). This invokes vague anxieties when I think about my lack of knowledge on almost anything.