Category: Mind

  • Indistractable

    Nir Eyal

    Towards the end of the book, the author cites a survey which found that “almost a third of Americans would rather give up sex for a year than part with their mobile phone for that long”. Sex has been hardwired in us by evolution, and it’s a testament to technology that it has managed to hack even that! But then again, there was a time when even the printing press was called the biggest source of distraction. So this isn’t a new story. But we do live in a world in which the attention economy has optimised its notifications and nudges to ensure that it is heard/seen/felt. All the time. Whether we need it or not. It has us hooked and sometimes we don’t even know how much!

    This is the challenge that Nir Eyal writes about in Indistractable. He approaches it with a simple framework of internal and external triggers and distraction and traction (some nifty wordplay, that). The first thing to focus on, he says, is our own motivations – internal triggers. Not just the proximal reasons that are making us distracted, but the root cause. Our distractions are more often than not a way of escaping something we do not want to confront. He also believes we never run out of willpower and warns us against labelling ourselves as “easily distracted” or “addictive personality”. An opinion that I am not sure I agree with.

    The rest of the book is a step by step guide on how to get to an “indistractable” state – from making time for traction (things we value) to taking control of external triggers by various means in personal and professional lives, and in social settings as well as when you’re by yourself. The suggestions are practical and quite doable once you decide that they need to be done. Ironically, the section that I found most interesting was how to inculcate this quality in children. Ironic, because I don’t have any. What made it interesting was the logical approach, one that seemed quite feasible.

    The book keeps it simple, and is a good guide if you find yourself distracted more often than you’d like to be. I have been doing my own wrestling with “staying in the moment” for a while now and found most of the things mentioned a validation of what I try to practice.

  • The Algebra of Happiness: Finding the equation for a life well lived

    Scott Galloway

    I’m familiar with Scott Galloway thanks to his various talks on YouTube. Funnily enough, I haven’t read his other book – The Four – which is related to the YouTube videos. But given the logical nature of his talks, and the reasoning behind the conclusions and predictions he makes, I was curious to find out how he approached happiness as a concept. Apparently, this is also the subject of the last session of his Brand Strategy Course at the Stern School of Business, NYU.

    If you’re not familiar with his work, it might be a good idea to watch one of his videos. For nothing else but to prepare you for his tone. It’s blunt towards abrasive, but laced with humour, and since it’s usually about brands worth billions, a roast is probably fine. I mention this because the book, despite being about happiness, follows the same style and tonality. I enjoyed it, but if you’re expecting a serious book that delves deep into the theoretical construct of happiness, this might not be the one.

    The author begins by admitting that his life is not exactly the perfect framework of happiness. Perhaps that’s what places him in a perfect spot to deconstruct happiness. Multiple entrepreneurship experiences, failed marriage, complicated relationships with parents and friends, all tend to give you perspectives of what happiness actually means.

    The book is divided into four section – basics, a deeper look at success, career, ambition, money and the professional life in general, love and relationships, and finally introspection. The age arc of happiness, the importance of having a right partner, alignment on money, not keeping score, being accountable to those who you care for and being present in their last days, understanding your own values, not being an a****ole – the lessons are delivered pretty much staccato outside of the broad sections. Profoundness and profanity coexist, and adds a lot of texture to the narrative.

    At the risk of repeating myself, this is quite unlike the standard “happiness” book you will read, but it delivers a bunch of insights that I found valuable. There is bluntness, but there is also humour and empathy, and together it ensures the book gives you some happiness.

  • How Emotions Are Made

    Lisa Feldman Barrett

    Just when I thought I was getting some stability (in my thinking) on the free will vs determinism debate, here comes fresh food for thought. As per ‘How Emotions Are Made’, while the combination of genetic and environmental factors do determine our behaviour, free will has a definite play.

    The core theme of the book is a constructionist theory of how emotions are made, as opposed to a classic theory. The classical view assumes that each emotion has a unique ‘fingerprint’, as against the opposing view that variation is the norm. This has implications not just on how we physically manifest our emotions but on our understanding of how the nervous system operates as well. And finally, the classical view believes that emotions are inborn and universal. But the alternate view is that emotions are formed based on shared concepts, influenced by social reality and culture.

    The view of the brain as a tiered system (survival, emotion, cognition) is one of the first myths that the author breaks. Further, as opposed to being the result of a stimulus-response mechanism, emotions are a result of the brain simulating and predicting, based on a bunch of factors. What we call emotions – anger, fear, happiness etc- are concepts that get created and honed in the brain. Concepts, goals, words all help the brain frame any new stimulus it receives and then predict. By reframing concepts and looking at them more objectively, we can reshape what emotions are surfaced, and thus exercise free will.

    Towards the middle of the book, the author sets up the answer for “are emotions real” with the classic philosophical question of “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”. The answer is that both fall under the “perceiver-dependent” category. Emotions are thus, a social reality and become real because of collective intentionality and our ability to communicate using words.

    This understanding of emotions, and how much we control/are in control has implications on a lot of things ranging from our daily behaviour to the way the judiciary system works and how we deliver justice.

    ‘How Emotions Are Made’ is refreshing because of the alternate perspectives, all of which are backed by science. The author makes it a point to call out hypotheses where it’s not. The language is technical only when needed and explanations are lucid. In all, it is a fascinating book that has made me rethink a lot of what I thought I knew about myself and the world. Not an easy read, but absolutely worth the time. And that’s why it made it to my 2019 favourites.

  • The Happiness Hypothesis

    Jonathan Haidt

    I don’t remember how I discovered this book, but when it arrived, I really liked the title. Mostly because of the word “hypothesis”, because it signals a scientific approach to a challenge. And that’s exactly what the book sets out to do – take ten of the best ideas/concepts from history, religious texts and philosophers, and scrutinise it through a science filter. Positive psychology is the genre.

    The author begins with the idea of the divided self, and then goes deeper. Into the inbuilt “affective style” that plays a huge part in one’s personality and how that can be changed, the role of reciprocity, and our tendency towards hypocrisy – seeing the small faults in others while ignoring our own bigger ones. At a third of the book, we even come across a formula for happiness, which makes a lot of sense when viewed rationally.

    My only concern with the book started around this point. The author seemed to have reframed the original thought (happiness) and moved it to meaning, and he didn’t let me in on the reasoning. He tries to bridge this in the last chapter, but to me it seemed forced.

    If that is set aside, the rest of the book does an excellent job of parsing the “meaning of life” into two parts and answering the more important one. The author actually spells out the parsing only towards the end – “why are we here” and “how can I find meaning”? But the chapters before that do give a bunch of perspectives on the second – love and attachments, virtue, adversity, and divinity (agnostic of God).

    There are several ideas that I could take away from the book. Though the metaphor of the elephant and the driver is not original, the idea of approaching them in tandem and making them work towards a harmony has been elaborated well. It also serves as a good reminder that evolution is only interested in our “success” (survival) and happiness is only a nice-to-have. The framing of questions as metaphors is also something I found useful. e.g. What is life? Life is like a journey.

    Another very interesting concept was the the three layers of personality – basic traits, “characteristic adaptations” and “life story”. To me, it provides a clear actionable on how to approach meaning and happiness. The related concept of “arête”, as well as the nuanced difference between character and personality were also good finds.

    It takes a lot of intellect, experience and effort to get the Bhagavad Gita, St.Paul, Confucius, Marcus Aurelius, Buddha, Nietzsche, Benjamin Franklin, Epicurus etc to align in a book that’s only 240 pages. The good news is that the book does this quite well.

  • Other Minds

    Peter Godfrey-Smith

    A subject that has not ceased to fascinate me is Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. I read the book less due to the octopus and more for the evolution of intelligent life.

    I found the first few pages of the book very encouraging. The author notes how the cephalopods (which include the octopus) were an independent experiment by nature in the evolution of large brains, nervous systems and complex behaviour, and thus it is possible that this is the closest we will come to meeting an alien. Also, as we move further in the study of the mind’s evolution, it begins to touch upon philosophy, and I enjoy reading a “science book” which understands this mix. Later in the book, the discussion around subjective experience, sentience and consciousness was exactly this, and I relished the few pages that were devoted to this.

    In the book’s second half, a section I enjoyed was around the entropy of living beings – a tree vs a cephalopod vs a human. How do they have fundamentally different lifespans? The explanation around mutations and how nature’s machinations result in different ways of living, reproducing, and dying were excellent perspectives that aided my understanding of evolution.

    What didn’t work for me though was (what I thought) a lack of coherent structure. That resulted in multiple detours from the subjects at hand, some of which, especially if you’re not fascinated by octopus and cuttlefish, would make you wonder when we’d get back on track.