I’ve been thinking a lot about time management lately, but decidedly not in the way most people do. Most people (at least the ones I know) want to figure out how to become more efficient with their time, how to get more done, how to get more focused. That’s the very LAST thing I need. Since I was about 18 I’ve worked on that sort of time management and now have no trouble being time-wise, focused, and efficient. My problem is just the opposite. It’s about enjoying the present rather than using the present as a way to get to the future.
I’d say that’s also a huge problem in our culture and one that most people don’t realize they have. I too never realized I did either, really, until recently, and I’m not sure I fully realize it now.
I used to roll my eyes when people talked about “living in the moment.” For me it was all about accomplishment, getting things done, as well and quickly as possible. One reason I’ve written so many books is because whenever I’m writing a book I’m thinking about the next one and I’m eager to get on to it; but you can’t write the next one until you finish the present one and so that’s incentive to work hard to get on to it so you can get to the one you want to do next.
But, well, what about
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Hi Bart. My problem is the opposite, I could do with some of your tips for time management. I’m sure you know The catechism question: Q. What is the chief end of man? A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_Shorter_Catechism
For the atheist agnostic, you could modify it to: “the chief aim of a man is to experience wonder and awe about the universe, to enjoy it and to be grateful for it for the finite duration of your life”. However, of course, I would add to this version the question Q. How can one be grateful to an unconscious entity? Unless of course one regards the universe as conscious, which may be where the atheist and the theist can come together? More anon.
Yes, one of the marvelous discoveries of becoming an agnostic was realizing that “gratefulness” did not require a direct object!
I think we need to work through the logic of that one 😂
“We” did. 🙂 disabledupes{a609344a0f79c7c81e9657d3d5045421}disabledupes
You did what? (after your smilie, I’m getting a string of letters and digits). It made me think of the computer in Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, ‘Deep Thought’ and it’s answer to the ‘meaning of life, the universe and everything’ (ie the equivalent of the Shorter Westminster Catechism’s ‘chief aim of man’) ……although less elegant than 42 🙂
But seriously, being grateful to an unconscious universe is surely no different to being grateful to a computer or a rock? And being grateful to no object (or no subject) at all, is surely not being grateful at all – isn’t it just being happy? Doesn’t gratitude have to be transactional to have any meaning over and above happiness? In other words, doesn’t gratitude neccessarily involve the expression of appreciation to a conscious subject for something that the subject has done? How else can it qualify as gratitude? So here is the rub: if you really do feel and practice gratitude, then logically, are you not expressing theistic agnosticism, rather than atheistic agnosticism?
I’m grateful to both computers and rocks! Especially when they are kind to me. (Seriously)
My wife agrees with you (and she’s a theist!). I still maintain gratitude is logically distinguished from happiness and celebration by the channelling of those into an expression of thanks or appreciation directed toward a conscious entity. BUT my wife reminded me of a very recent example of me expressing the converse of gratitude toward an inanimate object! I was shouting and swearing at the software on my new computer! By my logic, I was inadvertently shouting and swearing at God. Oh dear!
I definitely think “graditude” is not the same as either happiness or celebration.
So if gratitude is different from happiness (+/- celebration), but doesn’t neccessarily inolve expression of thanks or appreciation to a conscious enity, then you are saying that graititude can involve expression of thanks or appreciation to a non-conscious enity such as a rock or a computer, which is consistent with what you say above about your being grateful to both computers and rocks, especially when they are “kind” to you. Apart from my related problem of understanding how a computer or a rock could, in any way, be said to be “kind”, I cannot see the purpose, or even the meaning of expressing appreciation or thanks to an inanimate object that is utterly unable to receive or even experience that appreciation. Of course, an omniscient God (and certainly a pantheistic or pan-entheistic God) would give purpose to such expressions of appreciation and would also give them meaning and logical sense. Anyway it has made realise that anger is the opposite to gratitude (I think?) and it has also reminded me of Jesus’s words in Matthew: “when you did it unto the least of my bretheren, you did it unto me”. I certainly need to reflect.
I’m not saying there is any purpose to it. I’m saying that it’s what I feel. Just as I might curse a rock I stub my toe on, I am grateful for the warm sunshine on my skin.
I think I pushed you as hard as I can in the analysis of gratitude (!) 😂, but you’ve now reminded me of Jesus cursing the fig tree! Was he genuinely angry with the fig tree?, or was he doing the same as you, cursing a rock that you stubbed your toe on or me swearing at my computer?, or was there some deliberate symbolism being enacted? Did Jesus think the fig tree was a conscious agent in some way or would he have agreed with you on the matter?
Yeah, it’s a weird story. But coming home from the dentist the other day I was thinking how I sure am grateful for Xylocaine….
For fun, to continue the gratitude vs anger discussion. In the UK, we have a colloquialism for the well-recognised irritability and anger that can be caused by hunger: we use the term ‘hangry’. Do you think this may have been the reason for Jesus cursing the fig tree in Mark 11:14 and, one verse later in Mark 11:15, turning over the money changers’ tables? Was he in a bad mood because he was ‘hangry’’? Mark’s comment “his disciples heard it’ suggests to me that the curse may have been muttered under his breath……
My sense is that a psychological reading doesn’t work too well for the passage. Mark is not interested so much in Jesus’ mental state as in the meaning of his actions. In the Bible the “fig tree” is an image for the nation of Israel. This passage is trying to show that since Israel does not bear fruit, it will be withered. It’s a passage that makes best sense as a warning to the nation to turn itself around, which is, as well, the burden of most of Jesus’ actual message.
We all share this issue! Will read these books, thanks!
Love the parable, here is a link to a extended version of it,
true reflection on our world. I guess we need both mindsets at different times in our life. We would have missed out on your books if you had gone fishing!
https://paulocoelhoblog.com/2015/09/04/the-fisherman-and-the-businessman/
Reading Tim Kreider’s New York Times opinion piece “The ‘Busy’ Trap” 10 years ago is what helped me abandon the drive to “busy-ness”: https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/
It’s interesting how we can find ways to justify ourselves. Not as productive as I want to be, this quote by Thich Nhat Hanh was latched onto: “If we are too busy, if we are carried away every day by our projects, our uncertainty, our craving, how can we have the time to stop and look deeply into our own situation, the situation of our beloved one, the situation of our family and of our community, and the situation of our nation and of the other nations?
Spot on – I’ve found that if I can pay complete attention to the present moment – what I am looking at, my body movements, tastes, smells, etc. (all philosophical ruminations about the concept of time aside), time suddenly expands for me, and everything seems to fall into place and gets accomplished when it is supposed to, almost effortlessly.
That story was actually originally written by Heinrich Böll, one of the great German authors of the 20th century! It’s called “Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral”.
Whoa! Thanks!
I’ve been retired now for over a decade and I remember being shocked at how little I would get done each day, week, month especially compared to how productive I had been before I retired. I’ve found much pleasure in dancing, singing, or play. I think one finds one’s attention is drawn away from the moment of performance and this can be an issue.
The question about when is “now” is central to performance. One needs feedback immediately but one must prepare for that special act coming up, whether a step or a phrase of music.
When I heard that Benny Goodman would practice his clarinet for hours each day after he had retired from performing, I wondered why would he do that? A friend suggested that Goodman might simply enjoy playing his clarinet.
Thanks for the book recommendation and have a pleasant time dealing with our eudaemonic problems.
Loved the parable! And the subject overall. I too have been thinking about time a lot lately, but I have a different issue that’s been bugging me – for years, I think. And I think it is related to time management.
My problem is this: I’ve become almost certain that there’s no free will. And, in my view, this means that whatever it is I’m going to do, it is going to be done anyway. So there’s no point worrying about time management. Actually, I don’t see the point in worrying all in all: since we don’t have free will, there’s no personal meaning in our actions; in reality, I would argue there’s nothing personal left at all: there can be no “self” per se, since we’re like wound up toys in action just after the Bing Bang.
I might have digressed just a strand here, but it was really not my fault – because there was no such thing as “my choice” to begin with since there’s no such thing as “I”.
I”m not sure I believe in free will either, at the end of the day. But during the day I find that it’s useful to *pretend* that I do!
I’ve been reading Lee Smolin’s “Time Reborn”, and in it he writes that this version of timeless naturalism (which pretty much precludes free will) that has dominated physics, especially since Einstein’s relativity, is maybe not correct, because it is based on the presupposition that the laws of nature are fundamental – he argues that they’re not; he maintains that the laws evolve. I haven’t finished his book yet (because I have like 10 books around me and I have no self-discipline at all with regard to this issue), but I’m pretty sure he undermines the rigid deterministic worldview, and through it the rejection of free will that determinism entails. Lee Smolin in theoretical physics is like what Walter Bauer or Albert Schweizer is in your domain, so if he is right, maybe there is a glimmer of hope that we’re not really just like wound up toys set in motion just after the Bing Bang!
I would say this is the problem sometimes with philosophising with no input from science. Determinism was refuted in the 1920s in atomic experiments and even more strongly in the various Bell/CHSH experiments since the 1980s. The universe is not like a giant wound up toy, we’ve known that for nearly 100 years as our major physical theory, quantum mechanics, states it’s not and has been experimentally confirmed millions of times over.
The experiments you refer to are not about determinism per se; they deal with (non)locality and what Einstein thought to be the Achilles’ heel of quantum mechanics: quantum entanglement. Bell’s theorem, in particular, actually permits the possibility of what he called “superdeterminism”, a scenario in which we are indeed just like wound up toys set in motion just after the Bing Bang.
Apart from that, quantum mechanics in general has not refuted determinism as you mentioned. What you maybe forgot is that physicists and philosophers alike are still trying to figure out what exactly happens in that transition from the fuzzy state of probabilities to the single definite reality we observe (and measure – hence, the “measurement problem”). The Copenhagen interpretation does refute determinism but there are other interpretations that do not – a prime example being the many worlds interpretation that suggests that we live in a deterministic universe – or, more precisely, a deterministic multiverse.
The No-Go theorems (Tsirelson and Landau’s being the most general) do concern determinism. It’s explicit in their mathematical proofs. They show certain bounds that cannot be violated in a theory that is “realist” and “local”. Since these bounds are broken in experiments, we know one of these assumptions is false. Since quantum theory drops “realism” and Relativity demands “locality”, with overwhelming evidence in favour of these theories, we scientifically conclude that “realism” (a generalisation of determinism) is false.
As a physicist it is difficult to deal with the rest of your post as this is the issue with pop-science where it conveys minor undeveloped ideas with the same conviction as standard demonstrated science.
Things like superdeterminism, Many-Worlds, etc are not working theories that anybody actually uses. If you open a proper textbook on the foundations of quantum theory like those of Asher Peres or Roland Omnès, proper texts that are highly cited in the field (thousands of citations each), ideas like Many Worlds etc are literally dismissed in a paragraph. There is no “superdeterministic” theory from which you can compute the dielectric coefficient of hydrogen gas, or millions of other quantities that quantum theory computes.
Well, the idea of extra dimensions was thought to be ludicrous for half a century, but most physicists working on quantum gravity today are convinced there are extra dimensions. Also, Einstein himself dismissed the idea of black holes or the idea of a dynamic universe, but there we are inhabiting an expanding one full of numerous black holes!
Popularity (or lack of it) doesn’t make an idea right or wrong.
Sorry for my pop science background that can’t match your world class expertise on the subject. I thought Sean Carroll, who is a proponent of the many worlds interpretation, is maybe equal to your genius, but I guess he’s just a scrub!
Determinism has been proven to be flat out wrong – no way around it, sir!
I’ll leave the discussion with this comment, since comments on a NT blog aren’t really a place to have a long debate on physics.
Certainly popularity doesn’t make an idea right or wrong, but in science being able to match the evidence or even possibly doing so is a requirement.
Currently ideas like Superdeterminism don’t. It’s nothing really to do with “ridiculousness”. It’s just that as a physicist I have nothing concrete to discuss. There’s no Superdeterministic theory that can actually compute measurable quantities I can speak about. Same with Carroll’s Many Worlds ideas. He published a few papers with only a few citations back on it 2014-2016, but they get no actual numbers out. I simply can’t discuss vague ideas that haven’t worked out as if they were equal to a theory used everyday all over the world.
If you are interested in how quantum theory works, I’d recommend Jeffrey Bub’s “Totally Random” graphic novel, since it discusses quantum theory as actually practiced. Or if you’d like something meatier his “Bananaworld” is a great read. Even better are the books by Omnès and Peres I mentioned, but they’re a serious academic read.
Good luck with any learning!
Thanks for the suggestions! These last few months I’ve been reading Leonard Susskind’s “The Black Hole War”, which has a pretty solid chapter on quantum mechanics, and Lee Smolin’s “Time Reborn” (his idea is that time is indeed a real thing and the laws of nature actually evolve). I have read maybe ten or a dozen of books that talk about QM, but, of course, I am not a physicist and I have no connection with the math (frankly, I would be afraid to face them). I never expressed my views with the slightest inkling of authority!
This whole “debate”, if you will, started with me actually half joking – beginning with my frustration due to my lack of belief in free will, I took it a step further with this whole wound up toys joke. Of course I know that the standard “version” of QM is about probabilities (in contrast to the deterministic Newtonian mechanics) with regard to experiments’ outcomes, and I am also aware of the uncertainty principle which implies an inherent randomness. I’ve seen people like Sean Carroll and Sabine Hossenfielder talk about these fringe(?) ideas, and they seem pretty smart – that’s all! 😂
Some people work to live, some people live to work. If you like what you do its not work?
It’s a balancing act, especially if you love to do things other than work. If you have nothing else you love to do, well, you ain’t me!
Great post! I’ve enjoyed the approach of Healthy Minds Innovations. They focus on:
Awareness – being present
Connection – deep relationships
Insight – self-curiosity
Purpose – refining your values
The story about the businessman in Mexico is a version of an old joke. I first read it in the Reader’s Digest about 50 years ago. In that version, an Indian is sitting outside a cigar store, doing nothing. A businessman walks by and suggests he get a job. The Indian says, What For? The businessman says, So you can save money. The Indian says, What For? The businessman says, So you can retire and not have to work. The Indian says, I’m not working now.
To modern ears, there’s an obvious stereotypical element to the joke, and there is too in Burkeman’s retelling. I don’t think he gets it right, in Mexico’s machismo culture, working class men work hard to support their children. I read that in a research paper before experiencing it at first hand, in Mexico. I spent a day with a cab driver who explained to me that he would be working till the day that he died to provide for his bambinos.
Ha! That’s a good one too. And yes, I worried about the cultural objectification in the story as well; I think I’d prefer it was told about a 40 year old California surfer….
Have you come across “The Art of Thinking” by Ernest Dimnet, published in 1928? It’s related to this topic, and I think you might like it. It begins “…you are deep, or seem to be deep, in a book. But your face does not look as it usually does when you are happy in your reading: your contracted brow reveals intense concentration, too intense for mere reading. In fact, you are miles away, and to the questions: “What are you thinking? What book is that?” you answer … “Oh! Thinking of nothing”; or, “Thinking of all sorts of things.” Indeed, you were thinking of so many things that it was as if you had been thinking of nothing. Once more you were conscious of something experienced many times before: our mind is not like a brilliantly lit and perfectly ordered room; it is much more like an encumbered garret inhabited by moths born and grown up in half lights: our thoughts; the moment we open the door to see them better the drab little butterflies vanish.”
https://www.fadedpage.com/books/20150211/html.php
Interesting! Thanks.
Prof. great story. What really matters most? I ask myself often. There is a great story to that affect you describe in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers”. It’s in the intro of the book, called “The Roseto Mystery”. In short, a group (Ten) of Italians from a town just south of Rome,called Roseto Valfortore, immigrated to a town near Bangor,Pennsylvania in 1882. They started to live like back home.Raising pigs, vines for grapes, gardens for vegetables, all encouraged by a dynamic young priest who took over a church they had built. The “town came to life”. They called the town,Roseto. The gist, these people were dying of old age,well into their nineties, with no sign of disease. Various doctors and studies were conducted with no conclusion as to why this phenomena. There was no disease like cancer, heart attacks,strokes diabetes and so on. Ate foods that were grown naturally. Healthy, no pesticides and, most importantly, were a close knit group. They did it all together for the benefit of the community. Their tradition and culture they had brought to America,thrived. Accomplished no significant milestones, but the celebration and existence of life and their beliefs endured in health.
I read Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel
Gilbert about a decade ago. Have you read it?
The key things I took from it was (1) that “happiness” can refer to enjoyment of the moment, as well as a reflection on the past (as in a sense of satisfaction for an accomplishment, even if achieving the goal was an unpleasant experience); and (2) that most people maintain the same level of happiness over the course of their life (so if you’re happiness is 6/10 today, that’s probably what you’d say 5 years from now).
Nope! Thanks.
I often say that the secret to almost everything is balance.
“I was way off when I guessed. The answer is about four thousand. I probably would have said forty.”
Come on! 40 weeks is less than a year! 🙂
Uh, forty *THOUSAND*.
My view is that on my deathbed I want to answer the most important question “Was there life before death?” If you constantly worry about what comes next, how will you ever fully appreciate what you have now? or had before?
Oh, OK, that’s more reasonable 🙂 Well, I am a mathematician, and I probably couldn’t refrain from doing the math. 🙂
Nice, thoughtful post! Like you I often find myself looking ahead instead of enjoying what’s in front of me. I found a cure. About a month ago Karin and I decided to install a raised bed garden in our back yard. Digging out the sod and setting up the garden and pathway was a lot of work. But now we’re planting. There’s just no rushing that. Every day I jump out of bed to see if the plants have broken through. Not yet. Computer programmers when working on a big project like to say, “you can’t just hire nine women and have a baby in one month.” Likewise you can plant all the seeds you want but it’s still 90 days before you get to enjoy a sweet ear of corn or 120 days for a larger sweet SEEDED watermelon (best kind!) so those won’t be ready until November. Hmmmm…wonder if I have any friends who are going to be in Denver in November…. 😉 if I do this right sweet watermelon at my home in the evening!
Replying to Lochlannach and Bart above. Realism is a slippery Fish. It can mean a generalisation of determinism or generalisation of the principle of locality and space (as in size shape and distance and their implications for determinism). As I understand it, Bells inequality implies a deeper level of “reality“ in which everything is connected i.e. locality at the everyday level is complemented by non-locality at a deeper level. Ie “realism” at a deeper level . However I don’t think QM does away completely with determinism, it just postulates stochastic determinism at a fundamental level where probabilities extremely close to one, result in a more definite determinism at the classical everyday level. In relation to Bart’s comment above: Bart, who or what is the ‘I’ who is not sure whether or not “you” believe in the “self”, and who or what the ”I” who is not sure whether or not “you” believe in free will, and who or what is the ‘I’ who finds it useful to pretend that “you” do?
In my meditation practice I often try to figure that out. Short answer: I don’t know.
Yes, this issue of whether the self / the soul / the “I” exists is fascinating! It’s something I’ve given a fair bit of thought to. David Hume famously said “when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception”. David Bowie echoed him in the lyrics of Changes: “So I turned myself to face me, but I’ve never caught a glimpse”. The Upanishads extensively debate this very issue about whether the self exists snd what it is and the Chandogya concludes the self (or atman) is simply Brahman within us – an idea which isn’t too different to the Judaeo Christian idea of Gods spirit in us. Continued below……
continued……
The Advaita Vedantists take the ‘non-dual’ panentheistic view that we, along with everything else, are all Brahman. The Buddha famously refused to answer when questioned whether the self existed, although most Buddhists subsequently adopted the doctrine of anatman or anatta – no self. William James helpfully clarified the distinction between the ineffable “l” and the construct “me”. Modern neuroscientists eg Anil Seth deny the self because it cannot have an unchangeable physical basis and the philosopher Thomas Metzinger calls the self “a transparent avatar”. They emphasise rightly I think that the self is a process. But they all seem forget the binding problem: namely, that to for consciousness exist, it requires unification to a single unchanging subject of experience, yet nothing that we can identify remains immutable. The question as to whether the present exists is very analogous. I’m in Venice at the moment and it struck me that the utterly breathtaking view from the Rialto bridge is a wonderful metaphor for the problem of self: a complex vista of ever changing activity, buildings, tourists, residents, restaurants, boats and the central canal – all in ‘constant’ Heraclitean flux.
I love the idea of David Bowe reading Hume….