Meta-learning in 2022

Genie Question and Bandwidth: 

Last year, I started chewing on a feisty problem: if you somehow capture a genie, what should you wish for? In a way, the ability to set out and complete task-level goals is something like capturing a genie. If you can set any task-level goal, and know what habits will be necessary to achieve the goal, then you have a genie. But time is limited, so which goals should you set? 

This year and last year, I tried to avoid this question by exploring bandwidth for goals. If I set dozens of goals, can I expect to hit 50% of them? Over the past two years, I’ve discovered the answer was yes, but it did nothing to answer the genie question. This is still a novel discovery! 

It means that you may not need to hyper-prioritize the wishes to the very most productive or important wishes. If you are efficient at completing task-level goals, then you may have room for 3 to 5 high-level goals that are served by lower-level task-level goals. This lowers the stakes of the genie question from “make one and only one good wish” to “make several wishes,” which leaves room for less efficient wishes. 

Emotional communication trumps analytic communication: 

This is a wild claim and I surprised myself just now writing it. The big discovery this year is that if set your goal to listen only for the emotions behind a bid, you will communicate better and more deeply. To be clear, I  really do mean that if you decided to ignore the syntactical communication, you would likely still succeed at making connection. The Gottmans explain this with the ideas of turning away, turning against, and turning toward. My position now is that if you can detect the bid to turn toward, it is far less important to respond to the contents of your partner’s communication and far more about noticing the emotions and desire behind the bid. 

I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule, but I encourage you to try it. Go on a date with your partner or a friend, and instead of trying to talk with them about the contents of their speech (sports, philosophy, etc), tell them how much you love them, enjoy time with them, how nice being present with them is, how interesting the topic they are sharing is. Respond with as much delight as you can muster (really feel it! They are actually wonderful if you notice them!), just like you would to an excited child. Have a conversation about the qualia of the time with them instead of trying to speak to the contents of the conversation. 

Planning is for chumps: 

Inside me, there is a very nefarious belief that doesn’t pay rent: “I need a good plan before I get started on this.” For some things, this is absolutely true—I recommend a plan before you start remodeling your kitchen. But for many other things, you will learn more and be able to develop a far better plan by just diving in and getting real information first. I spent years thinking about coaching, and doing free and cheap sessions with friends, but hanging my shingle and actually deciding to charge for my services was a game changer. I’ve learned more about coaching in the past year than all the years I spent thinking about doing it combined. 

I’m now shifting my views to a belief that most of the time, it's better to run with an idea and get some early repetitions on a skill than to try to make the perfect plan ahead of time. Develop your hobby, professional, spiritual, and skill-building problem-solving skills while on the job, not thinking abstractly about what you might need in the future.