Art of Doing Nothing: Day 4 and Day 5 of Lockdown:
Art of Doing nothing starts with Reflections. Eastern Cultures have always known its secret powers.
Surviving the Pandemic: What is your business, career or personal survival strategy?
Yesterday and today, it’s a weekend. Its Day 4 and Day 5 of Lockdown, being a weekend, most of us, don’t have to Work from home either. So, what do we do? We do nothing. Yes, art of doing nothing, is the most needed skill right now for each of us. Lockdowns, clearly slow us down. There is a pause, in all movements, and hence we get our moment of reflection. Doing nothing starts with
- Reflection and
- Observation.
Both Reflection and Observation are grossly misunderstood. Well, let me explain. In today’s post however, we will only look at Reflection.
Time for Reflection and Knowing what makes us Fragile.
Reflection as a process, is not thinking about our past, or reminiscing or getting nostalgic, as it is commonly misunderstood. Reflection actually is the process of seeing oneself without memory. Yes, not going back, but reflecting back, exactly like a mirror. When you stand in front of it, the mirror reflects you as you are now, without memory. It does not project an image that was 10 days old, or 10 years old, isn’t it? So reflection, by its very nature is a process without any memory. Reflection, hence is the ability to see things precisely the way they are, without our filters, biases, prejudices or our colored experiences. Our biases or preferences further create asymmetries between UP/DOWN, RUN/PAUSE, GOOD/BAD etc, etc. Nassim Taleb has elaborately explained why asymmetries make us fragile, and why it’s not good, to live in our memory bubbles, especially with such prejudiced asymmetries.
Reflections, Discovering our Hidden/Open Asymmetries.
What is the best way to do Individual Reflections, then? Well for starters, let us look at the current Corona Virus Pandemic and Lockdowns. We have a bias against slowdowns, for that matter anything DOWN is deemed bad/wrong or negative, and absolutely negative. Hence Slowdown, Lockdown, Clampdown, Shutdown are all deemed negative. On the other hand, UP is deemed positive, so is Uptime. Such biases and coloring does not help us to see things, as they are. Since anything DOWN is valued negative, lockdowns are also automatically negative in our minds. But are they really? We always wanted free time, do-nothing time. So, at the moment lockdowns have great positives, saving human lives, to say the least. Reflection, the first aspect of Doing nothing is simply about discovering all our hidden/open asymmetries.
Becoming Anti-fragile: Breaking our Asymmetries, and regaining Symmetry.
Asymmetries hidden or open, make us fragile, as articulated very well by Taleb in all his books. So how then, do we break our asymmetries? It is by deliberately and consciously taking a non-aligned position, a sort of a neutral position. Like how a ZERO takes its position in our Number system. Hold on, I will explain. Zero: According to my definition, is a location or digit, lacking either a positive value or a negative value, at all times. It is not predisposed to positive/negative ideologies or fixated with values, it remains valueless. Being valueless, Zero however gives itself the gift of possibilities, i.e., it can move in either directions and can take any value. Additionally, if you take a cross-section or slice-and-dice zero diametrically, in any angle, it will remain in perfect symmetry. Just like Zero, if you take a non-aligned position, you can unlearn and stay neutral all the time. So if you are a Zero, you too can experience perfect symmetry, and become Anti-fragile.
Power of Being Non-aligned: Ability to take back your choice.
It’s not a fluke, that Indians discovered Zero. Zero is symbolic of symmetry and anti-fragility and represents the philosophy of Advaita in its entirety. Today, the world is extremely partisan and bi-polar, and its hard to remain neutral. It was bi-polar during the Cold-war era too, divided between America and Russia. But INDIA chose to be Non-aligned. As a Nation we were able to Reflect, see things as they are, and we decided to be Non-aligned. Either-OR world always forces, you to Choose; You need not. You can take back your choice. There is great power in being non-aligned and embracing the philosophy of Advaita and Zero. Especially in testing times, when downward forces are pulling you to do something different, and showing you new possibilities and new directions, you cannot be stuck to your old choices isn’t it? So downward forces can be positive forces for good, if we so choose it.
Further Exploration: Lockdowns and Shutdowns demand new choices. Unlearn your success practices.
Nature of slowdowns, lockdowns and shutdowns are very different, compared to the nature of a rapidly advancing world. Lockdowns pull you back, while the advancing world, pushes you forward. When something pulls you back, you need to let go of your reins-of-pursuit, otherwise you will break into two, you are clearly fragile. The reins-of-pursuit are usually your learnings, your learnings from previous-successes, which is what propelled you forward isn’t it? Letting go of those learnings from past successes is not easy. Yet, the situation demands that you need to unlearn rapidly. Let me give you one last analogy. Your success practices are based on learnings like, switching-gears for acceleration. When things are slow, you think you can operate on 1st or 2nd gear, not on 4th/5th gear. But switching to lower-gears is still being vested and biased towards moving forward. What we need really is, to completely unlearn gears itself, both forward/reverse gears. When lockdowns are continuously pulling you back down the slope, while you are striving to move forward with your success practices, what you really need is a clutch, a half-clutch, isn’t it?
Your Half-clutch, the non-aligned position. A zero position, co-holding the downward pull, and upward thrust.
Caught in the downstream of lockdowns, what is your half-clutch? Do you know the half-clutch for your business? Do you know the art of Doing nothing? Do you have an unlearning practice? An unlearning-practice both for life and business? Have you heard of such practices? If you have not, you should know about Maker’s Practice. Maker’s practice is an intentional unlearning framework, composed of eclectic sets of unlearning and relearning practices. Maker’s Practice is also a community where fellows help each other. In our next post, we will explore the 2nd aspect of Doing Nothing, which is Observation.
But don’t wait till our next post, be a fellow at Maker’s Practice and learn the power of Doing Nothing. Leave a comment, write an email (manjunath at catalystor dot com) or call us.
