RC #006: Expectations, Great Thoughts and Art-Bots
Hello friends,
Greetings from Louisiana!
This week has been hectic. Since I started doing the 75 hard program last week, I’ve been cranking out 2 workouts every day with no day off. Good news is I’ve figured out some hacks to stick to the program while still being productive. A great deal of this email, for instance, was written during a weighted walk yesterday morning.
In this week’s edition I’m going to cover:
The Problem With Expectations
Scheduling “Great Thoughts Time”
Using Bots to Make The Internet Beautiful
Let’s dive right into it!
The Problem With Expectations
The first thing that I asked myself when I decided to write about Salman’s illustration was “What’s an expectation?”
I couldn’t come up with a solid answer myself. So, of course, I Googled it. The first result that popped up was very satisfying: “a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future.” That makes a lot of sense.
Expectations are bets that our brains make about the future. But these kind of bets don’t involve any money - what we are risking here is our happiness. When our expectations don’t match reality -that is, when our bets are inaccurate-, we feel disappointed.
Conventional wisdom seems to have a recipe to avoid this shitty experience: Lower your expectations. And although this hack seems to work well quite often (been trying it myself), having low expectations all the time can be a two-edged sword. It can very easily lead to complacency, pessimism and mediocrity.
When you’re a creator, expectations are a burden. They hold you back. They won’t let you fly high.
If you’re constantly worried about how your work will be perceived by others, you become a pleaser. And pleasers don’t create remarkable work. Their fear of being disliked keeps them from challenging assumptions, breaking the “rules” and proving impossible wrong.
As a creator, you should have no external expectations whatsoever. You should only expect something from yourself: Having an unbroken commitment to your craft. That’s the only way you can make real progress. And that’s how you can be truly successful.
Schedule "Great Thoughts Time"
The only way to do great work, in any field, is to find time to consider the larger questions.
In 1986, mathematician Richard Hamming gave a talk called "You and Your Research", where he tried to explain why so few scientists make significant contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run. During his career, Hamming made important contributions to the development of computer science. He worked in the Manhattan Project and later at Bell Labs, one of the most innovative organizations of the 20th century.
During the talk, he explains what he believed had given him an edge and how he had been able to make such contributions:
Along those lines at some urging from John Tukey and others, I finally adopted what I called Great Thoughts Time. When I went to lunch Friday noon, I would only discuss great thoughts after that. By great thoughts I mean ones like: "What will be the role of computers in all of AT&T?'', "How will computers change science?'' For example, I came up with the observation at that time that nine out of ten experiments were done in the lab and one in ten on the computer. I made a remark to the vice presidents one time, that it would be reversed, i.e. nine out of ten experiments would be done on the computer and one in ten in the lab. They knew I was a crazy mathematician and had no sense of reality. I knew they were wrong and they've been proved wrong while I have been proved right. They built laboratories when they didn't need them. I saw that computers were transforming science because I spent a lot of time asking "What will be the impact of computers on science and how can I change it?'' I asked myself, “How is it going to change Bell Labs?'' I remarked one time, in the same address, that more than one-half of the people at Bell Labs will be interacting closely with computing machines before I leave. Well, you all have terminals now. I thought hard about where was my field going, where were the opportunities, and what were the important things to do. Let me go there so there is a chance I can do important things.
Hamming was purposely scheduling time to ponder big, important questions about the future of his field. That's how he was able to spot opportunities no one else could see, and choose the right projects to work on. That's how he was able to produce great work.
And that’s how you can produce great work, too. This “approach” isn’t just for scientists. Anyone who has a business or has a job in the knowledge economy can schedule “Great Thoughts Time” and benefit from it. Bill Gates has been taking “think weeks” since the 80’s and I think it’s safe to say that it has worked pretty well for him.
You don’t need to go away and hide in the forest for a whole week, though. Take Hamming as an example. He would do “Great Thoughts Time” only on Friday afternoons. At least in a scheduled, structured way. If you allocate at least an hour per week to ponder the big-picture questions, you will already have a huge edge over those who are running the rat race 24/7.
The real challenge here is finding the right questions to ponder. You can’t get these from a Google search. Or copy-paste them from other people. So the first step is to go meta and ask yourself: “What are the big-picture questions I should be pondering?”.
I'm at this stage right now. I'm brainstorming. Digging deep. Trying to keep a long-term perspective and don't rush it.
Keeping in mind this quote by Rainer Rilke has been really helpful:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer”
Even though most of the heavy lifting of reflection is done in solitude, I believe you might benefit from having someone with whom you can share and discuss your big questions. So if you want to do that, shoot me a DM. I'd love to hop on a call to talk about it.
Using Bots to Enrich Social Media
Bots have a very bad reputation online, and for good reason. They're often used to perform "malicious activities" like stealing data or spamming people. In social networks like Twitter or Instagram, it is commonplace to find them spreading hate and trolling people. But not all bots are bad. In fact, many of them are very useful.
But it was Andrei Taraschuk who went beyond useful and started to use them to make our lives richer.
Since 2013, Andrei has been creating and training bots that curate and share art pieces from the greatest artists of all time on social media. So far, he has built an art-bot network of more than 800 accounts.
Instead of spreading misinformation and fear, this bot-net is inspiring, and educating. Instead of dividing people, these bots are bringing people together, uniting them around the shared love of art.
After watching this 5-minute talk where Andrei tells his story, I fell in love with the project and couldn’t help but start asking myself questions:
How can we use bots to spread more love and kindness?
What other technologies can we leverage to do more good?
The internet is a magical place. If each and every one of us commit to make it more friendly, more beautiful and more humane, big things can happen.
As always, I hope you had found value in this edition of Rational Creatives. If you did and know someone who could also find this interesting or useful, please share this email with them.
If you have any feedback, suggestion or just feel like getting in touch, shoot me a DM on Twitter. I’d love to hear from you.
I wish you a productive week full of insights and learnings.
Until next time,
Daniel ♟🎨
Loved the idea of scheduling time for Big Thoughts!