Eric Barker’s way

Debating & Arguing

• “Once we think we know someone we stop paying attention” To update we need conflicts..
• If you’re arguing too little - may be you’re avoiding problems. You can’t put emotions aside - they’re always there no matter what. Some are just too sure they’re right and incapable of listening and just masters of assumptions.

Boredom

• It’s a signal, a motivator to get your ass up to do something meaningful with your life.
• To get curious - Stop going into your head again and again and dive deeper into what you’re good at and whatever you’re currently doing.
• Find Meaning:- Ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing.
• Make it yours:- Follow a script, a disciplined scheduled but make sure you own it.
• The goldilocks zone:- Make it a challenge, bet with your friends, announce it on social media. Test your abilities and lose yourself in the moment.
• Boredom tries to guide you towards a better life and gives your brain signals that there is something that you can spend your time on.
• Weak attention skills, more sensation seeking & lack of self control people are more prone to boredom. Guess I have all those.
• It’s an alarm. To wake up.
• It has something to tell us. Make better life choices by responding to it. Be the authors of the lives we want to live.
• Boredom is weird. An awkward mix of low mood with a shaking urgency to do something. A nervous itch in your bones as your soul makes a noise like a deflating tire. Researchers found it’s the fourth most common negative feeling, just behind exhaustion, frustration and indifference.
• And these days it’s gotten so bad we actually fear boredom. And we’re not crazy. The negatives of boredom are worse than you think and I have the receipts to prove it. As you may have guessed, the more bored you are in a given day, the more calories you consume. Studies also show boredom increases risky decision making. It makes you more likely to drink and smoke. It also has a connection to more socially carcinogenic habits like vandalism, delinquency and outright criminal behavior. (Yes, “killing time” may lead to “doing time.”)
• But there’s a twist: boredom can actually be a good thing. Yes, really. Diving into the research I found that boredom is, well, kinda fascinating.
• We often blame the world for creating our boredom but, as we’ll find, it’s much more about the choices we make and how we respond to life. The upside is there are things we can do to address this problem — and we can learn a lot about the human condition in the process. Monotonous tasks are boring because they demand our attention but at the same time fail to fully occupy our mental resources. To overcome it you have to basically be mindful. Stepping back from your emotions and becoming immersed in what you’re doing.
• The point is to redirect your attention from the thoughts and feelings about the activity and get closer to the activity itself.
• How do we do that? Curiosity. Go deeper into the activity versus getting lost in your thoughts. We get passive and expect the world to make us curious. Sorry, that’s your job. Because when you’re curious, you pretty much can’t be bored.
• I Love this “ We need to feel like we’re on a mission. Famed psychologist Viktor Frankl felt meaning was central to human lives. When we don’t have it “the existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.” So when we’re bored we usually turn to deep purposeful action, right?
• Wrong, we turn to our phones – and that rarely works. Why? We trick ourselves into thinking that mere engagement equals meaning. We want to use our skills and accomplish something we can take pride in, but the internet is often empty calories. Taking yet another ride on the unspirational hamster wheel of novelty doesn’t provide the bedrock of purpose. The internet is a combover for your life problems, death by 1,000 notifications.”
• And this has longer term consequences. It atrophies our meaning-making muscles. We become passive containers waiting to be filled, rather than bold creators of meaning. We forget what we’re passionate about because we expect the world to hand purpose to us. As Frankl wrote, “When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”
• Some things we have to do aren’t inherently boring but they’re made boring by circumstance. You know what that circumstance is?
• Well, you have to keep reading to find out. Yes, you have to. I’m not asking you to keep reading; I’m ordering you to keep reading. You have no choice.
• I’m kidding, of course. But that’s the answer right there. Un-boring stuff can be made boring when we’re forced to do it…

Mismatch Between Skills And Challenge

• When we have something to do but it’s not challenging enough, we get bored. And when it’s too challenging, we feel overwhelmed and get bored. What we want is that balance where an activity is testing us. Where success feels possible but not guaranteed. That’s when we experience “flow.” That’s optimal engagement – and it feels great.

Psychology

• Life is wonderful, then something bad happens and it sullies everything that came before it.
• We all have contamination sequences but for some people it’s a setback they never recover from.
• A fall from grace. They let it set the tone for the rest of their tale
• And this contamination sequence leads to a Contamination Story.
• Their personal narrative is about as uplifting as the Necronomicon.
• These people seem stuck in a loop.
• Instead of learning from the past and moving on, they relive this sequence, almost as if they are trying to get it right the next time – but never do.
• You know people like this. They date the same kinds of awful people, get fired from jobs for the same reasons.
• Their contamination sequence is a mental biohazard that leads you to shake your head and say, “They never learn.”
• Their life is the symptom but the story is the disease.
• They’re running cognitive malware in their heads and eventually their lives come to resemble the dark poem of downfall that is their story.
• Carpe the hell out of the diem.

Friendships

• Friends are imp. There is nothing surprising about them but it is critical for happiness. Friends shouldn’t make sense.
• We thank others/strangers for the stuff they do for us but how often do you thank your close friends and family for the stuff they do?
• You know those friends where even if you don’t see them for a long time the feelings are There those awesome friendships.
• It’s about sharing emotional exp and events.
• What you went in trying times & happy times. Who opened up, asked for advice.
• That’s how quality relations are built.

On Surviving or Living a Healthy Life:

• Eat less often - a surefire way to stay healthy longer.
• Aging is caused by DNA damage. Calorie restriction extends life in almost every organism studied.
• Most centenarians eat more veggies and whole grains, less meat, dairy & sugar.
• Smoking takes 10 years off but the combined effect of not exercising at all and feeling that you’re healthy when you’re not at all can take as much as 23 years.
• Improve diet & exercise & you’ll live a long way. Everyone knows.
• Laughing and being happy can also lead to a good life if not longer.
• Read about Metformin Drug.
• Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest is what dies inside us. What never came out.
• Remove toxic people, relationships, thoughts and see how meaningful or empty life will become. That’s when you restart. Reenergize.
• This is all data, studies, years of research speaking and not only that but a lot of ancient texts & religions follow this. It’s better than our current life if we followed all isn’t it?
• Why not learn what the old have already learned? Why not practice what the researchers have already learned?
• When we focus on making life better for others, we make our lives better too. We create better stories, we help build a better life.
• So if you’re not happy with your story, there’s time to restructure & rewrite it. Benefit in the negative.
• They taught me that people have reasons to do what they do & you can’t help it & you have to move past it.
• Remembering your days are numbered helps you live a better and more meaningful life.

On Awe:

• “Awe arouses altruism.”
• And we need this feeling as we age.
• Children’s brains are alive with connections but post-adolescence a lot of those pathways – and that vibrance – get pruned.
• We go from wonder to wither. Our beliefs congeal and harden. Our consciousness gets narrow.
• The day-to-day becomes teeth-achingly banal and we fail to dream.
• Without a bit of breathtaking wonder, you lose things. Like your soul.
• Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University, has done studies showing awe reduces activity in the default mode network of your brain.
• You know what else does that? Religious experiences and LSD. Awe is a spiritual reset button.
• Wait a second… Did I just say we need awe to feel like kids again and then compare awe to LSD? Yeah.
• Leading developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik says there is a lot of overlap between the wonder and joy of children’s minds and psychedelic experiences.
• In fact, as she told Michael Pollan: “The short summary is, babies and children are basically tripping all the time.”
• The word “awesome” gets thrown around a lot these days but we’re talking about real awe.
• The moments that make your heart race, your hair stand on end and literally take your breath away.
• When we’re at the precipice of unbounded delight, speechless and dumbstruck in appreciative wonder.
• Those uncanny things that make you gasp, like the Grand Canyon, the Taj Mahal or your spouse actually apologizing.
• You try and describe the feeling in words but it comes out like Charlie Brown’s teacher talking.
• Studies show that second only to feeling cold, awe is the most common cause of goosebumps. It’s the seventh emotion.
• Previously, psychologists said there were only six emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust.
• But awe is so powerful and so unique it qualifies as number seven.
• All emotions have an evolutionary purpose. Fear is very useful because of its wonderful “not-getting-eaten-by-bears” effect.
• But what the heck is awe good for? What’s its function? Bringing us together. Awe is the “ultimate collective emotion.” It smacks us back to our factory settings of togetherness.

Extras:

• I did a fun experiment on my phone.
• For about more than a year, I kept changing logos of all the apps Instagram, WhatsApp. But I only slightly changed the logo of YouTube and Twitter which was an older version of the logo.
• Also, I kept installing new apps or deleting some apps to change their position in my phone every 2-3 weeks. You know why memes save the world? Because we all feel the same way or relate to it. And the same is possible in this experiment.
• It’s about how your brain is addicted to that logo and position. It’s a hot spot and if you change it. It feels weird. But then again it understands this is the new position to get addicted to.
• And I kept on changing the positions until I was no more addicted. That’s a lie. I gave up. I uninstalled Instagram. I use it on the web just to post on 2minuteai and multiple channels.
• The main scene I would like to say is our brain wants to go back to that same place where it last felt good. It associates it with not just the app or the reels inside but also the logo and position where it’s appearing on your phone. Also, if you uninstalled the addicted app, notice how you unlock your phone searching for it again. Super Craving like a drug.
• One more thing.. it really doesn’t matter what rubbish logo the Insta ppl design. You will get used to it. Same as you get used to seeing your friend clean shaved after a decade. It looks alien at first but then you adapt. Don’t even know if all these experiments make sense or not but they’re fun.
• One time I told someone to find WhatsApp on my phone they couldn’t find. I guess they’re name blind. Only can see logos.
• I want to extend this further by changing the app names also and see how fucked up the brain gets.
• My App Recommendations: Skysafari, skyacademy, skymap; downdog yoga, lojong, quantum, universe; radio garden, deepstash, neo travel your mind, Kickstarter; kahoot, khan academy, insight timer, forest; feedly; ankidroid, edx, pushbullet, let’s meditate, medito, mind tools; presently, todoist, Microsoft to-do, castbox (some podcasts rarely), clubhouse (bookish club); for fun learning(telegram, twitter, reddit, insta, discord, slack); smart voice recorder - pure ranting (emotional as well as angry), loud singing, recording stuff for future me; strava - cycling track; moon+ reader - books when I need it offline; and literally more than a thousand apps installed and uninstalled but these stayed. The internet is making smart people smarter and dumb people dumber. My apps are mostly focused on yoga, meditation, science, and space.