Hey, everybody. Welcome to non trivial. I'm your host, Sean McClure. As we go through life, we notice things about our ability to perform, like when things work and when they don't. But most people tend to leave it at that, hoping they'll gravitate towards the better parts over time. But what really transforms our ability to perform is when we convert the things that work into specific techniques we employ.
I'll give an example of just how powerful this is and discuss how we can all turn the truths we notice into techniques we live by. Let's get started. DAJ checks on the go. We usually have tasks that we need to complete. We have jobs that expect us to produce outputs. And for a lot of us, we want to get better at what we do, right? It's not just kind of a cogs in a machine nine to five job. We actually take pride in what we do. We think of it maybe as a bit of an art and or science.
A bit of a craft. We want to be efficient, we want to be effective, we want to produce good work. And so we take a bit of pride in that. And I think we're always trying to. Get better at what whatever that is. If you're writing articles, you want to be a better writer or you're writing books or if you're doing podcasts, you. Want to do that better, more effectively, more efficiently. Maybe it resonates better with people.
Maybe you're on the sales and marketing team of a company and you're trying. To reach the market and get better. At that craft, be better at what you do. Computer programming doesn't matter what it is. For most of us, it's not just kind of a cogs in a machine. Hopefully we might actually be cogs in. A machine, some of us, but hopefully. We are trying to rise above that. And really take a bit of pride. In what we do and try to get better at it and maybe become a bit known for it.
There's a passion for our craft, and to have that kind of intimate relationship with that craft is to learn more about it. So we're always kind of paying attention to these patterns, right, in what we do. We notice what does work and what. Doesn'T work, and maybe we go for. Walks and we kind of contemplate that. Or maybe we get together with a bunch of people in a team and we discuss why certain things are working. And other things are not.
But we're paying attention to these patterns all the time because we take pride in what we do and we want. To be better at it. And I think that's just par for the course in taking on any reasonably challenging task in life, is to, one, do it, but then two is to kind of step back and contemplate it and think about why certain things work. And why certain things don't. And it's kind of in pieces, like 70% of it. Maybe those things went well, but there was 30% that didn't really work well.
So what was it about that 30%? Or maybe it sometimes seems a bit random, like maybe for reasons we don't really know, sometimes I was just in the zone and I was able to just make whatever I was trying to do, I was just able to make it. It kind of just flowed out of me. And why was that? It seems almost a bit mysterious. It's almost like it was being channeled through me as opposed to I was. Kind of in control of the whole situation or whatever.
There's kind of different versions of this, but I think it's good for all of us to just kind of step back and think about our work and contemplate why certain things did work and. Why certain things didn't. But that can also be a bit frustrating, right? Because sometimes it seems like you can't crack that shell. You can't get past that barrier of mystery. It's like, I just don't know. Sometimes I got to be in the mood, sometimes I'm not in the mood.
Maybe it's when I'm working with a group of people. Maybe it's the environment I was in. Maybe it was the type of thing I'm working on. And then you might try to question your actual vocation. Maybe I'm not really doing the right thing. Maybe this isn't for me. And you can try to analyze it, but you can't seem to quite get there. So I think it's pretty common to go through life to notice things that do work and don't work.
But then I think for a lot of people, just kind of leave it at that, right? You kind of just say, well, yeah, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And I try to follow the path where things are working. I think that's natural, whether you're explicitly or implicitly doing that. We want to kind of put ourself. In the direction of things that seem. To work, but we don't necessarily have a whole lot of control over that. It just seems largely random.
And I think, of course, a lot of that is random. In some ways. We can actually take advantage of that randomness, right? Increased variability increases the diversity of opinion, let's say, in a group, and we want that randomness in there, but then we also have to lock that down into something a little more structured and things like that. And there's just kind of this mystery, it seems, to the creative process, right? Like, how do we really bring about what we want to do on a regular basis?
How do we make it almost a little bit more deterministic? There's so much nondeterminism in the creative process, right? There's so much trial and error, and you have to bounce around and do this. But we want some sense of permanence. We want some sense of reliability because people are relying on us. And I think we take more pride in our work if we know that every time we go to touch the. Tools and use the tool tools, that we do actually produce good stuff, right?
So we're always searching for that kind. Of increased reliability, increased predictiveness, even though. We can't be totally predictive, and I don't think you would want it totally. Predictive, but we want a little bit. More determinism in there just to feel good that whenever we do the thing, we're doing it well. But that's hard. And it seems like a big mystery a lot of times. And especially the more complex the task. The more complex the task, or the. More difficult the task, the more hard.
The problem is that we're trying to. Solve with our skill, with whatever kind of vocation we attach ourselves to or identity that we have for ourselves. The harder that is, the more difficult. It is to kind of reproduce what we do, right? And so I guess the question is, what can we do about that? Do we just have to kind of. Step back and accept the uncertainty? I mean, I think a lot of that is true.
I talk a lot about accepting uncertainty, accepting complexity, the causal opacity, and not just accepting it, but actually leveraging it. Like the randomness example, right? Taking advantage of the happenstance and the randomness of situations to bring you more information than you would have otherwise if you were trying to take a purely deterministic approach. So there's a big aspect of creativity. That demands that you accept uncertainty, accept randomness, but not only accept it, but.
Actually leverage it to your benefit. But then there is the other side, right? There's always structure and chaos. There's always structure and chaos. The beautiful chaos brings us so much information that we wouldn't have access to otherwise. But the structure is how we landed. On things that get out the door. And I talked about this in my. Episode on creativity demanding less options, right? It's good to have a bunch of options, but too many can be problematic. It kind of is a self dampening.
Process, and it'll actually kill the creative process if you don't have some kind. Of explicit structure to land on, right? So we know we've got that balance between structure and chaos, right? Just a quick recap. I said, look, we go through life. We have skills that we want to take on. We want to be better at what we do. We want to be proud of what we do. And because of that, we're always kind of looking at what does and doesn't work, right?
If we're a sculptor or this particular piece of pottery worked and then the next day it didn't, why is that? What happened? What was the difference if you're a painter and like, oh, I love this piece, and it came out so beautiful, and then you thought you did kind of the same thing the next day, and then it end up not really. Turning out that well. Obviously, in science and experimentation, we can. Run into the reproducibility issues, although that's.
A bit of a bigger issue for other reasons as well. But whatever it is that you want. To do on a regular basis, you want some regularity to it. And it can be a bit frustrating, right? It can be frustrating because sometimes it seems to work and sometimes it doesn't. And it can be hard to peel back the layers and pick apart why. That is and how do we land. On something so that we're always kind of producing pretty good work? How do we land on something that brings at least a bit of determinism.
To the otherwise mostly nondeterministic creative process? And so what I think this comes down to is techniques, right? Techniques. Techniques are so critical to the creative process. And what is a technique? A technique is some thing that you. Kind of do every time you run into a given situation, right? If this situation presents itself, you have. This kind of toolbox of steps that you follow. And you know that if you follow those steps, you're kind of guaranteed a pretty good output.
I say kind of guaranteed, which sounds. A bit oxymoronic, but it is kind. Of a little more general than that. It's not an exact guarantee, but there is a level of guaranteedness to it because there's something about the steps that you follow in the technique that has. Kind of a direct line to truth. Okay? It's kind of a funny way to say it, but I think that's what it is.
I think as we go through life and we notice patterns, what we're noticing are reproducible, timeless truths that are commensurate with nature, right, are commensurate with complexity, however you want to put that. They're just the way that nature works. We might not have a label for it, but it is the way that nature works. So as I'm going through life and noticing that every time I seem to do this, this seems to work well, there's something about that.
There was some fundamental pattern that you're. Kind of gaining access to. And we go through life and we try to peel back the layers, and it can become confusing about sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But those parts that are working, there's like a direct line to nature in those. And the idea of the technique is. To try to capture the parts that are working and put it into a bit of a formula. Now, you got to be careful here. Because I talk a lot against recipe.
Approaches and formulaic approaches because it's very easy for those to go too far. And really what I mean by too far is kind of being too specific. So you might think that you picked up on what was working and then you turn that into a very specific. Or explicit set of steps that you. Follow every time, and then those steps inevitably or invariably fail, right? They inevitably fail because you didn't capture all the right stuff or you didn't know how to make all those steps work together.
Or maybe the steps that you captured. Were just plain wrong. It's usually some mix in between, right? But that doesn't mean technique is all bad and all wrong. And that Snowball episode I was talking about, how structure is most powerful right before it no longer exists, right? Structure is most powerful right before it no longer exists. So it seems like if you back. Off structure back off structure, meaning you. Have less and less of it. You keep tapping into the beautiful chaos of life.
You get access to information that you wouldn't have otherwise. You get this beautiful diversity of opinion. And possibility, the kind of space that. You need to tap into to really produce creative outputs. But if you were to remove that structure altogether and only have chaos, it would be just that. It would just be chaos, and you'd never be able to rein it in and get it out the door again. Just like my other episode on, creativity demands less options.
So structure is critical, critical, critical, critical. But one, it's very difficult to know what that structure is. It's going to take years and years to find out what that structure is. And two, we have to be careful. Not to employ too much of it. Because the moment you pass that line. It'S like a threshold where you become. A little too explicit, a little too. Deterministic in what you're doing. You no longer tap into what you need to produce good creative outputs.
Okay, so we go through life, we. Notice patterns, and I think those patterns have truths to them, but it can. Be very frustrating to know which of. Those are working and why and how to piece those together. But I think that the notion of putting together even kind of a lightweight. Technique to approach your project in some sense the same way every time, can. Be a really, really powerful thing.
And I think those techniques are critical to the creative process and not just in building things, but even just the. Truth of your life, right? It could be the mental state that you go through in life. There can be techniques that you can. Use to put yourself into a certain state of mind, right? Whether that's just remaining calm or peaceful or when you go for a walk, you kind of want to clear your thoughts. We understand that clearing our mind of thoughts is a good thing.
But do you have a technique to do that? Right? And that's kind of the next question. I think the people that are really good at whatever it is they do. Are able to kind of have in. Their toolbox a set of techniques that are not too deterministic, they're not too. Intervening, or they don't reach too deep into the creative process, but they're still there. And they act as very powerful starting. Points or anchors with which to produce. Or achieve what you want to achieve.
We see this in art a lot. If you talk to really any accomplished artist, I don't think any of them. Unless they're maybe of the most abstract kind, I don't think any of them are really going to say, well, I really just spot paint onto the canvas. And hope for the best. There is a lot of technique there. There is a way to achieve the look of a tree or the look. Of a, I don't know, bicycle, or. A lake, or the reflection off the water.
Whatever it is you're painting, or even if it is more abstract, there's a. Way to try to communicate the message. It's not just tapping into emotion and splashing paint on the canvas. There are techniques that you at least. Start with to kind of operate at. That most abstract level. And I use that pencil sketching example some episodes back where it's really important to start at the most abstract just to get the very general idea of the thing you're looking at and then to add details as you go.
Details as you go. Because the most abstract pieces are the most invariant. Those are the most true, those are the most in touch with nature or. In touch with the timeless truths of. How nature actually operates, right? So it's all kind of the same thing. It's just that. But what I'm saying here is that. There are techniques to kind of help you do that. And I think a set of techniques can help you govern your life better. Whether you're talking about something just kind.
Of mental or spiritual or something more. Tangible, like the creative outputs that you. Produce, artwork, computer programming. Managing a large team of people, sales and marketing doesn't really matter what it is, any kind of vocation, any kind of endeavor that you're taking on in life. If you have a certain set of techniques and you know how to operate them effectively, they can be really powerful. Now, I want to use a cool. Example I think is pretty cool, of.
Just how powerful techniques can be and how it shows us that it is tapping into something, that it basically changes what you can see is true into something that you can use every time. And there's a big difference between those two. Just noticing that something is true, that's important, but being able to make it usable and to be able to tap. Into it on a regular basis absolutely. Transforms your ability to produce the outputs you need. And it's very, very powerful.
So they are these kind of powerful techniques. And not only that, just before I get to the example is not only. Is it making you better, at what you do, I think you learn more. About the truth that you're noticing, right? So in other words, it's not just that you notice patterns in life and maybe you don't apply techniques. If you do apply the technique, the technique is teaching you or telling you something about that truth about that core pattern.
In other words, there's a reason why this technique is able to make that pattern happen again and again. And that's important for you to understand, important for you to know. So it gives you an even more direct line technique gives you an even more direct line to nature, I would argue, because there's a reason that techniques work, right? Okay, so I'm going to use the example of the memory palace. And so this is a technique that's. Used people who go into these memory.
Competitions use this or anybody who's even casually interested in improving their memory. And this will be things like if you wanted to, instead of writing all the groceries down on the list, you. Could easily create a list of grocery. Items in your mind if you wanted to remember. If you went into a room of 200 people, it's actually quite easy to. Remember all 200 names. If you wanted to memorize an entire deck of cards, right, you could just lay them out.
And of course, it takes some training to get fast at this, but you. Can memorize an entire deck of cards, cards pretty easily. And I say easily because if you do master the technique, it is actually kind of easy and it also teaches you something about memory. So the idea, if you don't know. Already of a memory palace is you. Visualize, let's say, a room in your house, right? And that room in the house obviously has objects that you're aware of and you can do it right now.
And unless you're one of those people suffering from aphantasia or aphantasia, which is a condition where you actually can't voluntarily produce images in your mind, I feel sorry for those people because I just think of thinking as being so visual. But I know those people come up with other techniques or other ways of doing it. It might be more emotional. For example, you could probably do an emotional version of a memory palace, like if you kind of anchor things onto.
Emotional anchors or cues or things like that. But most of us are capable of voluntarily producing images in our mind, right? If I say elephant, you see an elephant, right? And most of us can kind of rotate that elephant around and look under. It and look above it anyways. So imagine you are just pick a room in your house, just visualize it. Now, one that maybe you're not currently. In currently, because you want to visualize this and think about the objects on there.
You might have a desk with a computer, then you might have a potted plant. And then there might be something, or maybe it's a kitchen. And you can see the fridge, and. Then you can see the sink, and. Then you can see a table, and you can see whatever it is and kind of walk around that room. Well, the idea of the memory palace is let's say it was a grocery list, and I needed apples as the first item. And as I walk around my kitchen, the first appliance there is the fridge.
Attach the apples to the fridge, right? I would just put them there with. My mind, and I try to make. It kind of memorable and dramatic, even. So I might kind of squish the apples into the door of the fridge. Or something like that. And then the next one I see is beside the fridge is the sink. And I need to pick up gloves for doing dishes. And so I'm going to put the gloves in the sink, and maybe I'll. Kind of use the gloves and wrap.
Them around the faucet of the sink and pull it really tight so it. Makes it more memorable, right? So now we've got apples as the first item because we were squishing them in the door of the fridge. And now we've got these kitchen gloves as the second item because we were. Wrapping them around the faucet of the kitchen sink. And you can keep doing this, and you can do this with tens, 20, hundreds, maybe even potentially thousands when you get into the memory competitions, right?
You can do this with many, many, many items. And you might think, yeah, okay, that's kind of cool. But unless you've done this before, you might not realize just how powerful this is. It's insanely powerful. It actually taps directly into how memory obviously functions in the human mind, in the human brain, because of just how effective the technique actually is.
You can do this with people's names, and you could literally walk into a room and you could meet 500 people, and if you wanted to, especially with. A bit of practice, you could anchor. Their names onto whether that's 500 items. That's a pretty big memory palace, but you could actually repeat items onto a. Single anchor in the palace. Doesn't matter if you visualize a room. In your mind and you attach the. Names of the person or the items. On the grocery list, whatever it is.
That you want to memorize onto those. We call that pegging. Sometimes you peg them onto the individual. Items in the room. Then you just simply walk through your room at a later date and you look at the apples and the kitchen gloves or the name Steven and Samantha and Susan and all the different names that you did. You have to create an image. In the case of the names, you'd have to create an image for the names, right? Like, what? Is Steve in? I don't know. Steve rhymes with sleeve.
And so maybe that becomes your kind of device and you put a sleeve. Around the fridge or something like that, right. But that's the idea of a memory palace. And if you go look up these memory competitions online, people can memorize 510, almost 15 decks of cards at once. They can memorize hundreds of names. They have all these different categories of what you do. And if you just looked at that at face value and you say, wow, that person must be gifted with an astounding memory.
But the reality is we all have. That memory, we all have that ability. It just takes the perfection of a technique, or not even the perfection, but. The practice of this particular technique. So I think the memory palace is a really cool example because all of us kind of get a sense that memory is related to the ability to visualize in the mind, right. Again, unless, of course, you suffer from aphantasia. Aphantasia, right. Where you can't do that.
But again, I think you would have kind of an emotional version of this. But for the majority of us, all. Of us kind of get that sense. Like when you try to recall something, if you recall someone's name, or you're trying to recall someone's name, you're probably. Kind of picturing that person in their face, right. So there's this pattern, this truth that. We all kind of pick up on when it comes to memory. We kind of get a sense of how it works.
But then if you take that and you think about how the memory palace technique would have come up in the first place, and you can kind of. Go read the history on that, right. But obviously it was somebody noticing that. Yeah, this seems to be how memory works. We tend to visualize things. And what's one of the most easy things to visualize? It seems to be three dimensional things, like rooms. It's really easy to picture something in.
A detailed fashion about the room that maybe I frequent a lot and I can actually walk around it visually. And then you start to think, well, what if I just put things on the items in those rooms? Because now you've got the most memorable thing, which is the ability to walk around a room, and then you've got. Objects that are just attached to those things. What you're doing is you're taking what everybody kind of knows this visual aspect. Of memory, and you're turning it into a technique.
And the technique absolutely transforms your ability. To produce the outcome, the feat that. You'Re trying to be really good at. Right. You want to be good at memory. You kind of get what's involved when memory works well. And now you convert it into a more explicit technique so that every time you actually want to memorize something, like a grocery list, like a bunch of. People'S names, whatever it is, you can. Do that far, far more effectively than you would be able to otherwise.
And so that's the power of technique. And not only is it making you that much more effective at doing the. Thing, as I said before, it also. Puts you more in a direct line with nature, I would say, because why is that working so well? What is it about this technique? And then you start to think. So if you take a look at the memory palace and you get really. Good at it, you say, well, how. Do I attach the apples to the refrigerator? And I said, you have to kind of make it dramatic.
So what you could do is you can start to come up with a little bit more detail to your technique. And say, okay, let's say I take the object like the apple or apples, right, and then I add an action. To it, like squishing it into the fridge. And then I notice and again, here comes the noticing of the patterns, right? And then I notice that if I. Give it a reason, like, why are you squishing the apples into the fridge? Then I really seem to remember this, right? So the more you kind of work.
With this technique, again and again, you. Start to pick up on, just like you would through casual observation when it does work and when it doesn't, right? So if I have the object and I make an action, I'm squishing it. But why are you squishing apples in the door of the fridge? And then you say, maybe I'm going to do a prank on somebody. I want a bunch of mushy apples on the ground so that when they walk into my kitchen, they slip and they fall or something, and they bang their head, right?
And that sounds a little bit almost violent. But again, the more dramatic you make the image or funny or something like that, the more memorable it's going to be. But the point is, now I took. Not just walking around the room and attaching objects. Now I a little more explicitly said, take the object, add the action and give it a reason, right? Take the apples, do the action, which. Is to make it squish into the. Door and then give a reason, because.
I want the juices and the stuff, the pulp to go on the floor so that when someone walks into my kitchen, they slip. They slip and they fall. And then, and then you might notice when I give a read now, why is that? And that might tap into something about the way humans think of causality, right? Like we're so big on coming up with causality. We have to have reasons for everything. We can't just look at it at face value.
And that's why all through human history, we've invented a lot of reasons for things. And some of them might be true and some of them might be not. A lot of them are kind of. Invented, but we're always. Chasing the reason. We're always chasing the causality. So you're learning about the human mind. You're learning about the human brain. There's a reason that this technique works so well. Now, I'm using the memory palace as an example, but you can do this with anything, right?
If you want to get better at art and you want to put that paint or the pencil sketches down on. The canvas, there's a reason why certain. Techniques are able that give you the ability to produce more realistic drawings. Or maybe it is abstract, but whatever. It is, there are techniques that bring you there. They kind of bring you to the halfway point immediately. And then it's up to you to bring in the uncertainty and the nondeterminism. And the chaos to fill in the rest of the half, right?
Or whatever the split is. Maybe it's like an 80 20 thing. But you need that structure. You need that technique at the beginning. Not just to make you more effective, but to put you in communication with nature. And so you can ask yourself, why is it that that techniques work so well? And just like the memory palace, you. Can take it better and better each time. First, I knew that walking around my room and attaching objects was effective. And then as I thought about that.
I thought about the technique. I realized that having an object with an action and a reason was even more effective. And you can keep going, and you. Can come up with other techniques that just make you better and better at what you do. So bringing technique to truth, right, is what this episode is about, and I. Think it's really important. So I'll just do a really quick recap. I said at the beginning, look, we go through life. We want to be better at what we do.
We want to take some pride in what we do, and that means we. Got to be good at it. And through the course of doing that, we notice certain things seem to work and certain things don't. But I think a lot of us will kind of leave it at that, right? And we'll just kind of keep thinking. About it, hoping that we'll kind of move in the direction of the things that do work. And I think that it can be really frustrating because it's hard to know how all those work together.
And what it really comes down to is coming up with a technique based. On what you notice, right? If you notice that this is when. Memory works good, turn it into a technique. If you notice this is when you made the good painting, turn that into a technique. And of course, these techniques don't all have to come from you. You can learn techniques from other people. As starting points, right? And I use the memory palace as. An example and treat it.
I sometimes talk about the true meaning of Occam's Razor right? The reason why you put something simple forward is not because the simple is correct. It's because the simple can be easily destroyed. And so you can know if it's wrong. So come up with any technique at the beginning, a simple technique. Do it. And if it fails, you know it's wrong.
And if parts of it fail, but parts of it survive, then you hang on to the surviving parts, and you keep doing that, and you improve your technique over time. So, in other words, don't worry about. Coming up with the right technique or. Listening to someone else who said, this is the technique, and maybe it doesn't work for you. You just have to start somewhere, right? We notice patterns. We notice true things. But when you turn those true things. Into a technique, you become far more.
Effective at delivering it, and you have a more direct line to nature and how it works. And I think that's really what we're here for, is to try to understand what it is about nature and why it works the way it does. So take what you notice to be. True, turn that into a technique, and I think you'll see, over time, as you keep working on that technique, you'll be far more effective at what you do.
And that'll bring you more joy, that'll bring you more pride, and you'll just be happier in what you're doing, because you'll be d*** good at it. Okay, that's it for this episode. Thanks again for listening. Until next time. Take care. It's back.