Uncharted Worlds » Metaphors

Gears metaphor: examples and variations

Jennifer — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:35:06 +0000

Following on from the metaphor of “gearing up”, here are some “example gears”, and some more things I thought about it as I experimented.

After coming up with the gears metaphor, I thought I’d sketch out what the gears might be for me. I imagined them something like this:

0 Not moving. I could have called this “neutral”, but somehow that seems like the wrong word. Stuck isn’t neutral. Exhaustion isn’t neutral. Moping around being mopey and miserable isn’t neutral.

On the other hand it could be a kind of relaxed resting peacefulness - but in that case, I’m probably not stuck, and some other metaphor would apply.

1 Minimal engagement. Playing computer games or just slightly pottering about e.g. tidying up. If this is the aftermath of some intensity, then I might be “processing” in the background. (Simple computer games can be a form of meditation, I think - they occupy the surface of your mind while things happen under the surface.) If pottering about, still feeling like each new thing is a re-start - not really any momentum from one task to the next.

2 Beginning to build momentum. Tidying could still be in here as long as it’s just putting things away that have an obvious home, or straightening up. Sewing or making badges as long as the process doesn’t really take any thought. Tinkering with writing (though not the process of deciding that something’s finished - I need to be more awake for that and it would be more like 4th gear).

3 Ordinary sized tasks. Returning emails, going to the library, sorting possessions, putting a wash in. Maybe some DIY that only requires repeating what I’ve already done, with no original thought.

4 Thought and organisation. Things that require more thought and a certain amount of awakeness. E.g. interesting DIY, planning. If I’ve had a day in 4th gear, I’ll almost certainly finish the day with a nice sense of satisfaction about what I’ve accomplished - which often involves some kind of tangible result in the 3d world.

5 Tricky interface stuff. Anything involving making arrangements with people I don’t know, especially if it involves some kind of time pressure and especially if I have to actually talk to them. I often have a sense of needing to “gear up” & “get my head in order” to do that kind of thing, but sometimes if I “get on a roll” it seems easy.

6 Immersion time. Song recording, coding, or any other complex task like accounts. This is often stuff that takes a while to reload into the brain, so that fitting it into “too small” chunks of time is very inefficient, and to me tends to feel intuitively like “there’s not even any point starting”. (And “too small” varies with the task - anything from half an hour to a day might feel that way.) Often, though not always, it’s the kind of thing I can “get lost in” so that time disappears.

This 6th level isn’t necessarily any harder than 5th gear; it’s the “chunk size” which distinguishes it. It needs to be preceded by ensuring that if I do give it that much time, nothing’s going to go wrong while I wasn’t paying attention to all the other stuff. Perhaps it’s more of a turbo button than another gear.

Writing

One thing which surprised me in a good way when I thought this through is the fact that tinkering with writing comes out so low-gear for me. I lucked into a good “effort-to-satisfaction ratio” there. The point is that despite being quite easy to do, it’s also quite satisfying to me, which helps me to move up through gears. I thought “Must remember that”.

This insight was definitely part of the source of the new era of “more than one blog post a month” :-) I realised that as a rule of thumb, “if in doubt, do some writing” had a lot going for it. And around Christmas and New Year I did have a successful gearing-up on the writing front.

Different cars

What was interesting, though, was that after a week or two of that, I realised that (slightly contrary to my expectations) my writing momentum hadn’t transferred onto the DIY. I was just doing more and more writing!

I found that to get going on the DIY, I had to give that a separate gearing-up all its own: starting with a bit of tidying, then assembling the tools and resources I’d want, and only then actually embarking on the work itself.

Not definitive

Of course everyone’s list of gears would be different - and the above isn’t the definitive list of gears even for me, just an approximate sketch. And there are different ways to apply the metaphor - including, as I’ve said there, considering each field of endeavour as its own separate gear system.

But the basic metaphor seems to be working well for me so far. Regardless of specifics, I can still tell myself: “Don’t bother trying to talk yourself into tackling big things. And don’t sit around waiting for the desire to tackle them to return. Instead, get stuck into the little things within easy reach. And trust that in a while, when you’re more rested and have some little accomplishments to be satisfied with, the desire to tackle big things will return of its own accord.”

This post belongs to Jennifer's Uncharted Worlds blog. This message should only be visible in news aggregators. If you’re reading it on any other web site, it’s probably from a stolen RSS feed; in that case, please help by reporting it, giving the web address where you found it.

Other feedback welcome via that form too.

“Gearing up” metaphor

Jennifer — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:15:23 +0000

Sometimes it’s not a bad idea to “do the easy things first” - because sometimes once you’re “on a roll”, the hard things don’t seem so hard.

Sometimes I get into a sort of negative feedback loop like: “not accomplishing much, hence feel frustrated and incapable, hence no momentum / energy, hence not accomplishing much”. And I mope about.

Typical thoughts I might have in this state include “I ought to be more productive”, and “Look at these important things that aren’t even moving at all - aargh!”

Then by way of reaction, I might get a slightly exasperated urge to “go for the main things right now and stop faffing about”. Which, if I were to heed it, would launch me straight into the hardest tasks.

But in fact, it seems from experience that this is usually unrealistic for me, and trying to do it only leads to more stuckness. If I’m feeling stuck and low-energy and maybe a bit hopeless, what I’ve found usually works in fact is to start with minor pottering about and build momentum.

So e.g. rather than telling myself “Must… do… accounts…”, it might work best to tidy a small area of a room, and then think “Yay! what next?”

Gears in a car

A while back, I was talking about this on a thinking session, and I came up with a new metaphor: it’s like gears in a car.

Suppose you’re driving a car, and you try to set off in 5th gear. What’s going to happen? Probably the car will jolt, and make a noise it’s not supposed to make, and stall. And probably what won’t happen is the car goes off zooming really fast.

It’s not designed to work like that; you’re supposed to start in first gear (or maybe second, depending on vehicle and circumstances), and work up.

Remembering

And I thought: I must remember this. It’s pointless trying to make myself get all majorly active straight from a mope, when it’s so much more workable and natural to build momentum gradually. I know this, but it seems to be one of those things which is easy to forget :-)

I have more to say about this topic! But that will do as a start.

Other feedback welcome via that form too.

Beautiful animation about life

Jennifer — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:47:10 +0000

… featuring the words of Alan Watts.

(tip of the hat to Mike Fortune-Wood for the link.)

Other feedback welcome via that form too.

The art of remembering

Jennifer — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 22:36:50 +0000

Some thoughts on saving, retrieving, handing on or losing information. Ratchets, branches, channels, dead ends etc.

I was thinking about the ways that information gets lost. Sometimes it gets handed on and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it gets written down and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes people forget, and sometimes they remember till they die, but then they die.

Histories and skills

There’s a story that because so many builders died in the second world war, some of the previously-common knowledge about how traditional UK brick houses are “supposed to work” was lost with them. So some of the houses built in the 50s and 60s had problems, and lots of the houses built pre-war aren’t being maintained optimally.

[E.g. my house has some damp at the back, which is probably because (a) someone's put down a concrete back yard and it doesn't slope away from the house sufficiently, and (b) it's now got rendering over some of the brick, so the brick can't "breathe" as well as it would have originally. 100 years ago when it was new, it would have had blue brick paving sloping away from the walls, taking the water quickly away from the house, and it wouldn't have had the rendering. Whoever made those changes probably had no idea that they were interfering with the house's functional integrity. Some practical info on this subject, for anyone who's interested.]

I’ve heard it said that queer activists are particularly prone to not knowing their own history, sometimes attributed to the fact that each new generation of queer people is mostly born to non-queer parents.

Or take the example of NHS midwives and breech birth (where the baby comes out bottom-first or feet-first rather than headfirst). As more and more breech babies are born by Caesarian surgery, so midwives get less and less opportunity to learn from the older midwives who know how to manage a natural breech birth safely.

Come to that, NHS midwives nowadays have less and less opportunity to see any birth without some kind of intervention, even if the intervention is as seemingly minor as “internally examining” the labouring woman. (An experienced old-style midwife will usually be able to tell from observing the woman roughly “how far on” she is.) The art of “not interfering unless necessary”, and the observational skills which support it, are still kept alive by some radical woman-centred midwives, but I don’t get the impression that their knowledge is highly valued within the NHS.

From me now to me later

On the other hand, the handing-on of information doesn’t have to be from one generation to another or even from one person to another. It could be from the me of now to the me of later. Sometimes I have an insight but then after a while I forget it again, and then later I have the same insight again and think “Hang on! I knew that! how did I forget?”

Either way, the question is: how do you capture that information - ideas, insights, experience, skills - and make it available for later?

Dynamic and static Quality

In Lila, the sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M Pirsig describes what he calls Dynamic and static Quality.

To give a tiny bit of context to the following quote, what he means by “static quality” is something like: traditions, rituals, rules, documentation and so on.

Static quality patterns are dead when they are exclusive, when they demand blind obedience and suppress Dynamic change. But static patterns, nevertheless, provide a necessary stabilizing force to protect Dynamic progress from degeneration. Although Dynamic Quality, the Quality of freedom, creates this world in which we live, these patterns of static quality, the quality of order, preserve our world. Neither static nor Dynamic Quality can survive without the other.

Somewhere, I’m pretty sure he uses the metaphor of a ratchet to describe the working-together of static and dynamic - dynamic new development as the turning, static the holding steady so it doesn’t turn back. But can’t find that quote now. (Every now and again, I wish I could use a search engine on a paper book, and this is one of those times - I could do a search on “ratchet” and I bet that bit would come up. Unless of course he used a different word.)

(As an aside: I highly recommend both books. They are stories, but full of ideas that go beyond the stories.)

Branching

Another metaphor I’m thinking of - this one more relevant to communities or organisations evolving over time - is the one of “branching” software. Some existing software is developed in two or more initially-incompatible directions, and the code bases may or may not ever be merged again.

I was thinking at first that the “branching” analogy was meant to be with tree branches. But then the metaphorical parallel would have to include sometimes merging two tree branches back together.

I’m not sure that’d be impossible - I think it would be a bit similar to the grafting of fruit tree branches onto root stock - but at any rate it’s hardly a common sight.

Closer might be a canal splitting into two different channels, or a railway with different branch lines, which may or may not rejoin further along.

Or, in the case of merging software, perhaps a yet better metaphor would be a piece of weaving - since an important part of rejoining the weave would be to decide which pieces of yarn to weave where, which is a bit like the art of deciding which code to keep.

Anyway, the point is that sometimes different people continue a chain of ideas in two or more different directions, and they don’t reconnect further down. Then, sometimes you get one side continuing to develop and be handed on, whereas the other channel peters out into a dead end (like some kind of silted-up backwater). So for example with software, a version which is no longer maintained might contain a cool feature, which the main trunk had never developed.

There are parallels to this in activism, I think. A project ends, a group stops meeting, people move away, and sometimes the experience and knowledge along that branch is lost.

Retrieval of insights

For myself, I do write things down. I’ve usually got things stuck on my wall, and a few key files on my Psion which I re-read every now and again. But writing has limitations.

One is that retrieving an insight from something I’ve written down relies on re-reading it at the appropriate time. And I’ve written a lot of stuff down :-)

Another is that it seems to be easier to document practical stuff than emotional findings.

The ideas I lose tend to be not so much the kind like “Oooh! Wouldn’t it be cool to do this!” but more the kind similar to “If you are feeling mopey, here are some probable reasons why, and here are some ways which may work for getting unmopified”.

One of the things which works best for me is having thinking sessions, as invented by Nancy Kline and described in her extremely marvellous book Time to Think.

Thinking sessions seem to provide an environment where I’m better than usual at retrieving useful stuff from memory. It’s not quite just remembering it, though, either. Accessing a thought during a thinking session is more like recreating it. Re-finding it on a bit of paper doesn’t necessarily have the same emotional resonance.

Writing for remembering

A lot of my ideas for future blog posts (and a few of the existing ones) are in the category of “I want to remember this - maybe if I write it down here I’ll make it a bit bigger in my landscape!”

Some of the more recent posts haven’t been that kind. There’s always some thinking involved in writing them, but at heart they’ve been more motivated by “I have some thoughts that I want to tell to other people”.

But I like the idea that over time this blog could become a sort of documentation of “what works for me”, that I could consult for my own benefit in future.

Here, have an index…
The art of remembering
Histories and skills
From me now to me later
Dynamic and static Quality
Branching
Retrieval of insights
Writing for remembering

Other feedback welcome via that form too.

Ideas traffic jam

Jennifer — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 12:47:31 +0000

You know those comedy scenes where ten people all try to get through a door at once? Starting to write for this blog feels rather like that at the moment. I’m full of ideas, but if I wrote 20 posts on, say, time and logistics and creativity, not one of them wouldn’t link to another somehow. So whichever one I start with, I seem to want to be linking to posts I haven’t written yet. They all want to come through the door at once :-)

Or perhaps it’s more like when you’ve got lots of pieces of string tangled together in a big ball. Quite a lot of loose ends are sticking out, but the challenge is to find one that doesn’t lead right into the middle of the tangle, and can be separated off and wound up by itself.

Or like when you get a load of washing out of the washing machine and go to hang it up, and you find that the long sleeved shirts have tangled their sleeves together. I just want to get one shirt out by itself so I can hang it on the line!

Of course, I can go back to a post later and put in more links. But there’s still the interim challenge of writing the first few posts so they make sense without those links.

I don’t think the problem originates from the nature of blogging (e.g. how long to make the posts). There is an element of that, but actually I think writing a book would be similar. I think part of its underlying source is the problem of communicating a 3-dimensional landscape in a linear medium - the landscape being the metaphorical one of how I map things when I think. In my mind, it’s all integrated, but I can’t transmit the entire map in one go. I’ve got to start somewhere :-)

Other feedback welcome via that form too.

New blog: what for and why now?

Jennifer — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 21:19:10 +0000

What will be in this blog (as far as I know so far)? And what’s my purpose in doing it?

In a way, this is a sidetrack from my current critical paths. And I’m wary of sidetracks (having been down many interesting but time-consuming ones in the past).

But on the other hand… I’m a writer. And if I weren’t writing here, I’d almost certainly give in to the temptation to write something else somewhere else on the web.

Flood plain or deeper channel

It dawned on me a while ago that much of my writing was happening in rather here-today-gone-tomorrow contexts - private email lists where people probably don’t read the archives that much, or in comments on a friends-locked post in someone else’s blog.

I was thinking: If I put the same amount of energy and thought into writing for my own site, I’d be building up a much more substantial and accessible collection of ideas - more satisfying to me, and more use to other people.

Metaphorically, if my writing were water, then the water’s going to flow anyway, and this is me cutting a deep channel for it to flow in, versus allowing it to disperse over the flood plain of the entire web.

The nature of blogging

Going by that argument alone, I could equally well have carried on writing articles for my ordinary web site, but there’s something about blogging that just seemed to fit better at this point.

Partly it’s the way that on a blog, there’s an expectation of grooving around different subjects depending on what’s hot. And that’s what I naturally do too :-)
On an ordinary web site, I think an idea for one article would raise all kinds of questions for me about what else belonged in that section that I hadn’t written yet. On the other hand, a blog is meant to build up organically/granularly.
I think it will feel natural to channel into a post here what might otherwise have been a lengthy comment on someone else’s post.
Blog structure has an elegant combination of “readers can easily see when there’s something new” and “archives accessible”.
The software will handle some of the category admin for me.
And nowadays there’s enough people with a blog-reading habit, I know there are people out there who’d enjoy it.

So that seems like enough reasons to start a blog of this nature. But then what was going to be in it, and what wasn’t?

Themes to write about

One thing that’s not going to be in it is much about my music projects. At some point I plan to start a separate blog for Single Bass, because I’m pretty sure there are people who’d like to be kept up to date on that while having relatively little interest in my wider musings on “life, the universe and everything…”.

So then in a way, this is the “everything else” blog. Which is the only parameter I’m committing to at this point :-)

However, I can already predict some of the things that will be in, and they’re listed in the current “strapline” at the top: “Life, thinking, communication, creativity/logistics, reality, integrity, unconscious wisdom, queer politics, activism, bisexuality, polyamory, love, relationships, parenting… and books.” That line may change and the topics may change, but those are some of the ones I can foresee.

Integration and strands

I did consider whether I should be doing several different blogs with the material that might go in this one. There’s certainly an argument for that.

But I can see already there would be posts which link across almost any two subjects I can think of. E.g. parenting and queerness and books definitely intersect, for starters - in the challenge of finding non-sexist and non-heterosexist reading material for children.

OK, some people will be more interested in one aspect than another - but luckily, WordPress (the software I’m using to manage this blog) makes it easy for readers to select only the strands they’re interested in.

(For more on this, see Category system at Uncharted Worlds.)

And I like the principle of integrating all these strands together. I don’t separate the “getting things done me” from the “queer me”, and I think there are always connections and influences among the different aspects.

Even separating out the music is a pragmatic chop-off rather than a natural division - e.g. some of the things I write songs about are things I might blog about too. But then I can always link across.

Money money money

A lot of people use Google Adsense and suchlike to make money off their blogs, but I don’t plan to go that way. I’ve turned down a fair number of requests to advertise on Uncharted Worlds already, and I don’t much fancy the sex-oriented ads which I’d probably be offered for keywords such as “bisexual” or “polyamory”.

(I’m not saying I’ll never write about sex, but when I write about bisexuality or polyamory, it’s much more likely to be in a social, political or emotional context than a sexual one. And a sexual ambience isn’t really what I’m aiming for here, or what I imagine most of my readers would be looking for.)

I plan to do some book clickthroughs, though. That seems entirely natural and appropriate, as “good book evangelising” is a habit of mine anyway :-)

I’ll also be very happy if an article here leads indirectly to people discovering Single Bass. And I probably shall make some money that way. So that seems like a lovely synergy, given that I’d probably find it hard to resist doing some of the writing for its own sake.

Who’s my audience?

To look at the purpose of the thing from another angle, I’m writing “for the people like me”.

“Like me” in what sense? Perhaps “in any sense”. But I think particularly in the context of questioning and exploring and being outside the mainstream in some way. We pioneers of uncharted worlds need to be hearing from each other.

“… to speak the truths of our lives insofar as we can, with each other’s presence and help, and cultivate carefully together those truths we cannot yet speak, truths that may be still very unformed and young.” - Carter Heyward

I know how much difference it’s made to me when I come upon a fragment in a book somewhere that articulates something I’d been thinking or trying to figure out, which I’d never come across anywhere else. And I know how often, in conversation with friends who are grappling with something, what I’m basically saying to them is “Yes, I think you’re on the right track here - your intuitions are right - it’s just there are lots of people who don’t get it, who will tell you otherwise”.

So, yeah, the power of writing, and its ability to connect ideas together and connect people with each other. That’s what I’m about here.

Other feedback welcome via that form too.