May 2021, I was attending an online writing course and the first assignment was a simple exercise:
Define 12 ideas that intrigue you the most. They don’t have to be anything complicated, but things that spark your curiosity, could be about, life, work, or both.
The exercise was called “12 Open Thoughts”, and its goal was to overcome the blank page, and give myself a rough guide about what I might want to write about; things that I want to get out into the world.
Later that week, I came up with the list. My list had 16 open thoughts, and I even ordered them in accordance to my interest. Though a very simple win, it was one of those afternoons that changed lots of things.
The list could be considered a mix of the following:
- Areas of genuine intellectual curiosity
- Open-ended guides for learning and research
- Hard problems with no simple answers
- Topics that will likely still interest me many years from now
- Problems I assign my PKMS to help me solve
- Recipes simmering over a slow-burner
Here it is:
- How to keep a calm mind
- How to pack more meaning into less writing
- You are your worldview
- A rough understanding of time
- How can "Quantified Self" help?
- Wealth is the right amount of balance between life & work
- An opportunity maximization framework
- A subtle theory of love
- Documentation is all that matters
- Health is about habits
- How to enhance & optimize for creativity
- How to capitalize on "Flow" state
- Effective rules of communication
- The pursuit of being free & wise
- Less is more
- Only way out is within
Oct 2024
Fast-forward 3.x years, as part of Write of Passage, the very first exercise is:
5 open thoughts, 100 words each.
This time it was much less digging, my open thoughts at any given time are now pretty much at the surface. So in light of this, I thought it’d be great to:
- Measure progress on each of the 16 topics in the original list from May 2021
- See if there’s any correlation between my 5-item Oct 2024 list and my May 2021 list
To do that, let’s first briefly go through the five open thoughts Oct 2024 list:
1. The present is complete
Last August, I did a terrible car accident. Thankfully, I was unharmed.
The aftermath got me thinking about all the times we have been waiting for, and all the things we have been waiting for. Being so close to dying, leaving life behind, brings into perspective that the daily chase is probably a facade.
Problem is we want to be everywhere, experience everything, spare nothing, get all of it; then as time goes, this feeling becomes the sole barrier between us and experiencing any of it.
Also, seems ironic that as I started thinking about this, experiencing everyday as if it’s all what I have got, suddenly I see it everywhere. Suddenly there seem to be clues wherever I look at, online and offline. Now I’m sure these signals have been there all along, but it’s just me who wasn’t receiving. I only fully got it when I was ready, through my new lens, and my own experience.
2. The world is as you see it
This is a feeling that I, and probably also you, know quite well. We just forget it.
If all the signals of all types exist, then it’s always just a matter of what we choose to focus our attention on; that is our “frequency adjustment”.
The word “Vibes” is originated from “Vibrations” – Time and again, my experience of life would remind me in the strangest of ways that my vibration and the vibrations of those around me affect everything from my work to my life to my relationships.
We are the creators and the curators of our very own reality.
3. Breaking the silos for thinking
All our digital footprints connect to each other in one way or another.
Things you do inside one app are largely related to things you do inside other apps. When we retrieve digital inputs of things we did (posts, notes, messages, photos), we tend to think temporally, not spatially.
Our brains don’t save contexts with respect to what app or environment or space they were created in. We save -and remember- things with respect to their timeline, as in “when were they created”, “what was the context”, and “what state we were in”.
More than ever, this creates the need for software that embraces this interoperability aspect of thoughts and objects.
4. On Iterating
Every 1-year worth of added experiences to my life is also adding a little bit testimony on how things only shape up by iterating, and nothing else.
Skill, or talent, or whatever you might call it, is still important. It’s just that iterating is always the #1 angle through which you can absorb the size and depth of anything beautiful ever created.
As easy as it seems, but we almost always don’t properly estimate the number of iterations put into something. We underestimate the iterations put into other people’s successes and we underestimate the iterations that could be put into our own.
There’s no way a painting could be done without the sketches, a software without the wireframes, an essay without the drafts, or furniture without the prototypes.
5. On Ineffability
When I first started feeling a theme of connectedness between things, that’s to say, started feeling a little bit spiritual, I lacked the right words to express it on paper.
As time passes, I became a little bit aware of spirituality and the feeling of things and energies and how they can effect your being. And also I got a little bit better with writing. Yet I still lacked the right words to express it.
Then I grew to learn about things like consciousness and ascension, and I have successfully broke the blank page towards lots of other topics I always wanted to write about. And I still lacked the right words to express this topic.
I was unable to express it in totality, as in write a piece that I could be satisfied with. A piece that could potentially capture the entirety of the topic exactly as it is structured in my head.
So no matter how enlightened I become in my spiritual journey or how good I get with writing, I almost always lack the needed expression for it.
Later on, I discovered there was a term for this inability, and especially with this topic; it’s called “Ineffability”.
It represents the most meaning-packed-into-one-word I’ve ever seen.
Connections & Progress
Let’s get back to the 16-item list, and talk about some progress within each.
How to keep a calm mind
One of the main themes of this blog, and most of my ongoing work, is “Clear Thinking”. It is #1 on this list because it’s the main driver for most things I consume or create.
Progress within this area is probably scattered temporally across these posts:
- 24Feb03 | Tools for thought
- 23Sep28 | Only way out is within
- 23Sep26 | 2023 gave me my biggest achievement so far
- 23Sep01 | The Focus Pyramid
- 23May10 | Way to win at any game is be free of it
- 21Apr25 | A calm mind is a superpower
How to pack more meaning into less writing
I haven’t written about the practice of writing per se, but I found I naturally get better at condensing more meaning into less words by:
- Writing about “new” topics – Topics that don’t usually overlap with my existing knowledge, because these would often demand a little more digging and a little more cognitive work to articulate what I want to say.
- Iterating on my existing writing regarding familiar topics – Every year I’d rewrite one piece or more about some of my familiar topics under new names, normally because I find myself getting a little more capable expressing the same idea with a little more conviction.
You are your worldview
If we’re labeling each of the lenses by which we see and understand things around us as a “mental model”, then “You are your world view” is the most important mental model that exists.
It is also the theme of the very first article I published on medium in 2020, the theme of the second item in the above 5-item list, and the main topic of my next essay in Write of Passage.
Some related posts over the years:
- 24Sep18 | Books, House, Weights
- 23May21 | On Good Living: How to put things into context?
- 21Nov24 | You just gotta chill - Tame your mind 101
- 20Oct27 | How to see more
A rough understanding of time
One of my main areas of curiosity and the second top theme on this blog.
I tried to represent most of my understanding during the past few years in this post:
How can "Quantified Self" help?
Quantified-Self is another word for self-tracking through technology.
It ties very nicely with the “Documentation is all that matters” concept, because self-tracking is about tracking numbers about your daily life and keeping a record of them forever. This tracking could be done using apps & services you already mostly use everyday, like numbers from your Apple Watch or Screen Time.
Many posts on blog.hyperspaces.live are building on this concept, but probably the most straight forward of which are:
Wealth is the right amount of balance between life & work
Very related to the above, but more practical than philosophical. So lies at the intersection between “The pursuit of being free & wise” and “An opportunity maximization framework”. So all learnings & links under those two categories combined would still fall under this category.
An opportunity maximization framework
Synonymous with the concept of "luck surface area" and practices to maximize it.
Related posts:
- 24May19 | Are you watching from the sidelines
- 24Mar17 | You only have to be right once
- 22Oct15 | How to optimize for luck, and why success is more luck than hard work
There are also lots of web highlights and external links in this category, which I hope I can include more of in future posts of the same theme.
A subtle theory of love
Few years ago I started a blank page named “a subtle theory of love” and I intended to write about the contrast between how some people view love from a purely emotional point of view and some others view it from a mix of emotional + rational point of view.
I kept this page open for a few weeks and I wrote nothing. Two years later I thought it’d be easier if I can chunk down this understanding into some ideas that might or might not end up related to each other.
So far I only wrote one piece into this series:
23Apr03 | A Subtle Theory of Love | Pt.I: Chemistry & Timelines
Documentation is all that matters
I always think: “Anything not worth documenting is not worth doing” – That brings foremost the importance of having a documentation practice in place for most things we do, like things we learn and experiences we go through.
That is one of the main principles behind hyperspaces.live.
And also behind most posts on blog.hyperspaces.live.
Also related:
Health is about habits
Over the years I found out that health is merely about habits and habits are merely about iterations. So the main takeaway is that health is about daily iterations, not motivation.
If I’m living a completely unhealthy lifestyle today, here’s what I’d do to switch to a completely healthy lifestyle in 3 months: On day 1, aim to do just one right thing, which is a thing you know you’d want to sustain over the long term for the health benefits. Write it down as a checkbox, and keep doing it and checking the box for a few days. Then add another checkbox and aim for checking both for another few days, then build the checklist for as much ‘healthy’ habits as you can do during a day, or as you see fit to your environment and lifestyle. With time, and by the end of the 3 months, which is the 90th iteration, you would’ve at least built a sense of what needs to changed within your day in order to fit things you consider ‘healthy’.
Every time I swing away from being healthy, this is the only way that helps me get back. Everything else fails.
How to capitalize on "Flow" state
I initially thought of this as a set of daily practices that double down on the most productive parts of the day; i.e times when we are naturally into “Flow”. I haven’t yet formulated any tangible practices rather than maybe optimizing caffeine time and sleep quality.
Related:
How to enhance & optimize for creativity
The difference I find between this and “Flow” is that optimizing for creativity is less about habits and more about practices that fire the most brain activity in a short timespan. Studying this for me is more of a theoretical endeavor than a practical one. That’s why it includes understanding research and literature about psilocybin and similar drugs.
I have taken lots of notes in this category over the past few years, but still no where near what I’d want to be in regard to having a solid understanding of each of these researched drugs.
Effective rules of communication
This area was primarily about navigating takeaways due to interactions with people in various contexts. It was supposed to be a driver for a practice called “Writing from Conversations”, which is to turn some conclusions from my real life conversations with people from different walks of life into articulated ideas. I still haven’t put out anything in this category though.
The pursuit of being free & wise
The first motto I put on my very first blog was “Notes on a lifelong pursuit of wisdom & freedom” – When I trace back the motivation behind anything I write, it brings me to one of these two.
While there are lots of nuances to the word “Freedom”, I like to discuss it from a “Freedom from the financial system” point of view.
This is the lens through which I reached the understanding behind these 2 posts specifically, which are very connected:
- 23Nov23 | The Merit of Independence (part I)
- 24Jun21 | Life’s work > Work-life balance (part II)
And, more generally, this longer post, which is more about freedom from modern mind traps:
Less is more
The extensibility of this simple motto easily makes it one to live by, not just a concept for work or for writing or for doing things.
A few bullets on how this is true:
- They say eliminate 20% of your writing to make it 100% better
- All modern design is now influenced by ‘minimalism’, from architecture, to car interiors, to apparel, to software interfaces
- Digital design is becoming more about removing components than adding them
- By excluding your least important desires in life, you clear the fog towards the prominent ones
Only way out is within
This is the only theme in this list which directly touches upon “inner work”.
Which is synonymous to “spiritual growth”. And I believe this is going to be one of the main points that influence my writing and output throughout the next few months because it’s already one of the things I’ve been reading and learning about daily and consistently for the past 6-8 weeks.
Furthermore I’d say this is one area that’s helping me navigate lots of other areas in a much clearer sense. Which is a new feeling, but also makes lots of sense. It fits with the 5th point on the 5-item list and it’s slowly rising to become one of the strongest intellectual pulls for me.
Thanks for reading!
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