the art and observations of Ranjit S. Mathoda

When I was about 6, I was bitten pretty badly on the back of one leg by a neighbor’s German shepherd that saw me running around in circles and mistook me for fleeing prey. It had the effect of making me look at dogs differently than most people. In even the smallest dog I could see the teeth, the potential for rage, and I felt an inability to know what they were really thinking or feeling. Unlike humans, you couldn’t communicate easily with a dog, and I wondered at people’s willingness to raise the sharp toothed creatures and treat them like their children.

When I was perhaps 10, I lost my fear of dogs. I had a friend who was a few years older, who every kid on the street admired for his bravery, his athleticism, and his collection of martial arts weaponry. A bunch of us were in a large field when 2 doberman pinchers appeared at the far end of the field and started approaching us, snarling. My friend ran away from us, and away from the dogs, and they took chase after him. But then he turned and ran straight at them being noisy and flapping his arms, and they became confused, and ended up running from him. I realized then that dogs were vulnerable creatures, and easily manipulated by human intelligence. I started to see better how dogs have many states of mind, which vary between individuals. As you can see from my paintings of the terribly sweet Lara and the very inquisitive Tank, I have attempted through painting to capture the essence of some of the dogs I know. My fiancee and I recently rescued a beautiful puppy that’s a German shepherd mix of some type, named her Bizou, and she’s now part of our family. She gives us play bites sometimes, but they don’t hurt.

Yet some part of me remains aware that models for predicting behavior can be seriously flawed.

Sometimes our models are flawed because in making our models for animal behavior we are getting confused about the true causes. The dog is barking because its territory is being infringed, not because it doesn’t like someone.

Sometimes they are flawed because the models are only predictors of what usually happens, and don’t account for extreme situations. Like a polar bear deciding it wants to play with a husky (http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/play/audiogallery/soundseen.shtml#slideshow).

And sometimes our models don’t accurately reflect what usually happens, because we are kept ignorant of behavior or choose to avoid observing true behavior. Like the vicious fighting engaged in by giraffes trying to establish dominance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7HCIGFdBt8).

With animals, when our models fail to make accurate predictions, we call it wildness. And yet perhaps unpredictability is more a fault of our ability to model, of our internal capabilities, than it is a characteristic of the animal. The animal is likely acting on a complex chain of cause and effect relationships, which we don’t understand, but that are still there. If that’s true, real wildness lies in ourselves.

Update, 9/28/07: Some animals, once trained, are more likely to hold to that conditioning than others, at least until a powerful environmental stimulus causes them to forget their conditioning. We consider such animals domesticable, and think of their character as reverting to one that is more wild. But in this use of the word “wild” we often mean behavior we would find predictable (e.g., the dog will chase a skunk), but tried to condition out of the animal. My conclusion is that wildness has two definitions: one is based on the unpredictability we feel about nature, and the other just means acting as they would in nature without human agency or conditioning even if we find such acts predictable. In this second sense, the dog isn’t really acting wild, it’s acting natural, as if “in the wild”.

“E pur si muove.”

[translation: "It still moves."]

Galileo Galilei (muttering under his breath at Inquisition, after he had publicly recanted his position on Earth’s movement)

You can find my other favorite quotes here: http://mathoda.com/quotes

I’ve been pondering the question of how to improve my ability to learn and produce more effectively, and become wiser.

Here are my thoughts:

There are some basic questions that it’s good to think about before taking on a goal, task or action:

• If it was on the front page of a newspaper, would I be ashamed? I should avoid acts that are shameful, because I’d like to avoid knowing I’m the kind of person I don’t respect. People often do shameful things because they are suggested by someone they like or who has authority (see the Stanford prisoner experiment).
• Am I passionate about it? I sometimes find myself doing things even though it doesn’t serve any purpose I care about, or is theoretically fun but not actually fun. If I’m solving problems that aren’t interesting to myself, I learn less, produce less and feel drained.
• How does it match my skill set? Does it leverage or build my skills, or create a defect I don’t want? Asking this question can help avoid self delusion or self harm.
• Will it serve or resonate with other people? There are many reasons to serve other people. It’s beneficial to them and it feels good. Also, one problem many people face is they don’t feel they can generate money doing what they want to do. Usually if you want to do something but don’t think it would be a good financial decision it may be because you’re not really solving a problem for other people too. Look for things that annoy me, and the world, and solve them in a big way, and material abundance should follow. Some actions, are like an avalanche, changing the world or affecting people profoundly. Others, if they never occurred, wouldn’t be missed. Even taking some time to craft and deliver a single speech, or writing about your thoughts and acts can have a profound beneficial effect on others.
• What opportunities is it killing? Whether I’m committing to a goal or undertaking an action, I’m foregoing other things. It’s worth considering all future opportunities. However, if an opportunity is in the past, or was seized by others, it’s not worth regretting or envying, because both feelings would make me miserable. It’s great to understand how past decisions led to missed opportunities but do so with an appreciation for better decision making in the future, not a feeling of misery.
• Is this a task I should have someone else do? Someone else may have more skill and passion, or letting them do it may free up my time for an alternative opportunity.

Tina Seelig’s Table
passion, without skill = you’re a fan
passion & skill, without a market = it’s a hobby
no passion, but skill & market = it’s your job
passion & skill & a market = something to definitely pursue

~

The best process I’ve figured out for tackling tasks is empty my inbox completely once each morning. Once a week, add every loose file or paper in my office to my inbox, and compare my goals to how I spent my time that week. To empty my inbox ask:

• Is it a goal, task or action I wish to undertake? Basically evaluate it under the questions I set forth above. If it’s not something I should undertake, possibly send a polite reply, but definitely trash it.
• Can I do it within 10 minutes? If yes, do it immediately. If no, convert it into the chain of small actions I need to do to get it done. Write those actionable steps down in a place I know I will look at often. That clears my mind to focus. I use a few different kinds of lists, because these are the different contexts in which I do my actions:

• home list. An online document that’s split into “actions to do”, “things to read/watch”, and “someday/maybe”. i’ve broken down the “actions to do” into the time frames in which i want to get them done. I review it when i get home from work and whenever I finish a task.
• work list. A spreadsheet at work organized into “what i owe others” and “what others owe me”. “what i owe others” is broken down into the time frames in which I want to get them done. I try to get things out of all work inboxes and into the work list as soon as possible. I review it when I get into the office and whenever I finish a task.
• errands list. A note in my smart phone. This is all the stuff I need to remember while traveling about the physical world. I add to it whenever an errand occurs to me. I never forget an errand.
• calendar. I use my calendar only to track appointments I’ve committed to, events I may want to attend, and events that are repetitive in time. I never put the actions I want to do on my calendar.

~

Neutralize negative tendencies:

• Procrastinate wisely. Procrastinate on a big task, by doing smaller tasks that I still want to get done.
• If you hate doing something, don’t do it. Understanding what you hate doing is important. if it still needs to get done, delegate it to someone who doesn’t hate it. if others try to force you to do it, explain you hate it. or, one could always screw up doing it so badly they won’t ask you again.
• Be excited by what I don’t understand. Every moment there is a deluge of information. Transforming the raw experience of my senses into deeper learning depends on developing mental models for how things usually work, and carefully noticing phenomena that doesn’t fit those models. When something doesn’t fit what I understand, record the event, then figure out what caused it.
• Avoid vague goals. They are too easy to hide from. “I’ll jog 1 mile in the next 10 minutes” is better than “I’ll jog”. If you can bare it, make your performance of these goals evident to yourself and others.
• Don’t reward my bad behavior. It’s much easier to advise others to cure their bad behavior, then root it out of myself.
• Review my decisions. Write down the decisions I take and why I made them. Revisit them later and evaluate the decision not just on whether the consequence was good, but also the degree of luck in the consequence, and if there is a way to maximize good luck and minimize bad luck (see The Fundamental Theorem of Poker).

~

Give myself time for what’s important:

• Connecting with people.
• Reserve blocks of time. Don’t answer any kind of communications, just work through your tasks, for some time. If you can’t find a clear block of time, sleep & wake earlier. Wear headphones to avoid distractions.
  
• Audit my use of time. Track what i want to learn about, produce, or enjoy, and compare that to the time I actually spend doing such things. Kill or diminish what doesn’t work. Remember that there is no perfectly balanced moments of time, just right balances over a particular span of time.
• Accumulate tasks. Wait until I have a critical mass of tasks that need to be done at a particular place before going to that place.
• Eat. Play.

~

Learning

• Believe passionately that there is nothing I can’t figure out.
• The true test of learning is making. The best way to learn to solve a problem is to try making a solution and then testing alternatives. Sometimes, but not always, it’s useful to surround yourself with great people and great information resources. However, experts and book learning can be really wrong (see autobiography of the inventor of the Dyson vacuum cleaner).
• Develop many sources for information and many models to make predictions. Don’t rely on a few of either. The test of a model is whether it’s good at prediction without being lucky. Like Charles Darwin, write down when the data does not match a prediction and think hard about how to adjust current models or find new models to fit such unusual events. If any evidence doesn’t fit, it’s the world screaming at you to pay attention.
• Think rigorously. Can you reduce issues to the how, what, when, where and why? Can you argue the opposing side of one of your beliefs better than anyone else? Focusing on a problem for some time (eg, 10 years) can lead to many insights so starting early on problems is important.

~

Producing is the act of translating learning into meaning, meaning into creative works, and obtaining the attention of a wider audience for the creative work.

• Bottle creative energy. Don’t reveal the productive work in detail until it is complete.
• Make commitments. Train myself to hate breaking my commitments, and to work harder and smarter to keep commitments I’m in danger of missing.
• Combine simplicity with usefulness. Usefulness is best when its along dimensions where competing items aren’t nearly as useful. Perfection isn’t required.
• Pause to create. It is hard to create output unless you can take a break from absorbing information. Create something quick. Refine it. Repeat. Don’t stop learning when you start creating, it’s just a different, often superior, form of learning.
  
• Distribution is key. Foster the relationships to get your creative work noticed and distributed. Existing relationships with distributors and an audience is the greatest advantage that those with past success have.
• Break rules that you can recover from. Don’t automatically abide by rules that don’t make sense just because they are a tradition or stated by an authority. However, don’t break a rule that you can’t recover from or would later be ashamed about breaking.

My friend Sundeep Ahuja is always in motion. He’s worked as a product manager at both eBay and Myspace. He’s acted (imdb, his website) on tv shows, including How I Met Your Mother, and on Entourage as the assistant to one of the agents in Ari Gold’s agency.

He’s also been very involved in getting the word out about Kiva (wikipedia, Kiva.org), a great company that borrows money from donors, lends it to third world entrepreneurs, and then gives the same amount of money back to the original donors. So you can park your money with them, and they use it to do good, but you get it back.

Sundeep is mentioned in an LA Times article about a fundraising party for Kiva held at Entourage star Adrian Grenier’s house: http://www.calendarlive.com/books/cl-ca-grenier20may20,0,2708645.story

So what’s Sundeep up to now? He has founded a company called Friendput (friendput.com) which makes it easy to get good quality input from a bunch of your friends at once. Check it out!

Update, 5/22/07: Speaking of being on the move, Sundeep is now also working for a content monetization startup in stealth mode, and is moving (sadness) to San Francisco. I’m going to hold him to his promise to visit Los Angeles frequently.

Update, 5/31/07: Sundeep’s Entourage scenes can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Okiwo-fcuWU