It's time to start the record button.

I preface this by saying I'm still in the first non calmed down after watching a certain video. So this will be raw ish. This will be annoyed ish. But we all know, at the end of the day, it's just a video.

Oh, yes, yes. Well, yes and no. It's information which we, obviously we are detecting and therefore learning from. So it's mixed misinformation. Interesting, interesting. I'm, I'm intrigued. So do you wanna, do you wanna set the scenes?

John, I woke up this morning, came downstairs to make my cup of tea opened. Oh, okay. I been a little less d and d like, uh, so as part of what we do, we, we share. Um, a bunch of content that we want to talk about and share ideas around and lots of things. And I got myself a little bit annoyed at one of the videos. Uh, one of the videos was by someone that I can't remember their name.

For context, that is, uh, me and John sharing an email event. It's literally all it is, it's an email event, and throughout the week, John puts in a Twitter thread or a blog post or a YouTube video and I do the same thing, inside of a description. And if you go into there and go, I didn't put that there, you have a look at what it was, because the other person obviously put it there. So, John found the video

that I put in there. And it was a video. It was, it annoyed me. Um, the video was about mini essays. And, I mean, there was another one. The ultimate learning tool. Now, I, I am all, I am all for title. Actually, no, I hate them. So that probably put my back up in it. I, I know that's the, the YouTube way. And of course, we even do it here. To a certain degree. And then I was like, Okay. It's it's uh, it's a ultimate like no, it's a marking marketing technique that was From, that I first saw from Ship 30 to 30. It was a way of growing on Twitter. It's not an ultimate le It just That It is not an ultimate learning tool. It is, it is at most, A way of creating a habit, but then if you're focusing on just creating, I mean, uh, habits, whatever, you could do the exact same thing with a massive article. The mini essay, and then, and then the Feynman technique was, was, uh, mentioned, and I just, I just He's done a whole video on it in the past as well. I just, I just was like, no, can we just stop with this? I think

to zoom out a little bit, I think this emphasizes where the learner journey and the looking for advice conflict heavily inside of this space because that person obviously has less experience with the Feynman technique research than I do, potentially you do as well, because they are suggesting a technique that isn't supported in academic literature and it's not discussed much. So, if you are unfamiliar with the academic literature, or lack thereof of the literature, then you may think it's a great technique, because lots of other people talk about it like that. So that's, it's popular culture being, like, bringing ideas around science, which isn't uncommon. So it's not saying they are wrong, it's saying they are at a different stage than we are when it comes to applying the technique. and talking about the technique in a way that I think is useful. And I, I think it's the same thing with mini essays. They, I don't know whether they are doing the thing. I reached out to them briefly on Twitter to see where they're publishing these mini essays, and they're not right now. So they've done a video. Yes, I know, I can see your face.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, what? You do not

So, They're writing the mini essays in their Obsidian, but they haven't got around to publishing them on Obsidian Publish, or a website, or Twitter, or anything. It's still their own personal writing. It's still following the Sort of the mini essay trademark trend thing, but the thing is there's no rules around this. There's no guidelines It's just hey write stuff. But the hey write stuff is obviously extremely ambiguous, which isn't that useful as a Ultimate learning tool. Because what you're essentially saying is right. But that's the same as saying practice. Great. How do you practice? If you are constraining yourself through word limit, or time, or idea limit, then that is a valid constraint. But what is the purpose for doing it? What's the rationale for doing it? And this is where the Lack of philosophical underpinning of the, I don't want to say advice, because it's not necessarily advice per se, but the guidelines, the rules, the sets, the

step by steps. It is advice, and I think that's where my Framed as advice, maybe, yeah. It's framed as advice, which is where I think my issue comes in, of like, you're creating content framed as advice, which is just about what you're doing, except there is no evidence of you doing it, either. Like, there's there outside of I do these things, and I'm showing screenshots, but anyone can, and this is not an accusation, of course, blah blah blah blah blah, because people get sensitive over these things, but, like, I do these things. This isn't an application, but anyone can just do a couple of lines and say it's a mini essay. Like, there's no public representation of that. Which is kind of what the point of mini essays are. They were It

depends, and this is I think the crux of the problem. It depends where you found out about them.

That's true. What I found out about them was from Ship 30 for 30. Which is where most of that started from. My guess But it's not. Is there, is there

further back? That's cool. Where? When, when you look at what mini essays are, and where they came from, look at Zettelkasten.

Oh for fuck's

sake. But that is, when you go all the way back, that is where it comes from. It's the Zettelkasten small notecards, the small ideas, the small whatever you want to call it, and then the atomic notes, the smart notes, all those other things sort of like branch off and go in all different directions. So, the mini essay is taking the Zettelkasten notecard idea, but applying it to marketing. And that's not a bad thing. Oh, no, no. And it worked. It did work, yeah. Way. Right. I, I think it still does work. It's just the, the way in which you put the mini essays on Twitter has changed certainly. And, um, like doing the, the image thing, I don't think that works as well. Threads still sort of work. And the larger posts for those that have the. Whatever account it is, it's called, like, they keep changing the freaking name of it, and it'll probably change by the time this goes live as well. The paid version of Twitter.

Yeah, and obviously ranty ranty aside, if you want to write many essays, go write many essays, like, that's completely fine.

But I would encourage it, because yes, it is useful.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, because you're writing. If it means it's either the difference between writing and not writing, then go write. If you need that constraint, go right. On a, on a complete side note, removing the heat from the conversation on someone else and putting it back on me, going back through my old notes was agonizing. Like, oh, that's, that's another, that's another mini note. That's another stupid note. That's another, why have I made this a small note? It could have been all in one. Oh, why have I made my life? No wonder I didn't write. And that I think is the crux of it, like, no wonder I didn't write. Because all of these little micro notes and mini notes and semi notes and, and PC notes and whatever you want to call the stupid things, made it so hard to just do the damn thing. And something I've been thinking about recently, um, kind of doing a bit of a sideswipe to D& D again, is how I've noticed I've stopped writing about the D& D sessions. And I'm like, I wonder why? Oh, I over engineered it. Because it's so easy

to do. What does over engineer sound like when you speak about it through ecological dynamics?

I'm not sure. Let me, let me, let me talk. I don't think

so. What is Over engineering. What

is the engineering of something? So the engineering of something is, is when I over engineer, it's just adding too many things into it, like adding too many different constraints that I'm just over doing too much with it. So it with the specifics of like. My obsidian system for D& D, I had lots of like, uh, data view queries and sidebar things, which made it look pretty, and it was nice, and I liked the prettiness. But when it came to actually writing it up, it became a bit of a It was, there was too much, there was too much effort involved. It felt like I was kind of wading through, um, syrup most of the time. I'm just, just, I just want to write something, please. Can I just go and write something now? Um, You're, you're, you're almost, you're almost Yeah, I know I am. I feel I'm almost there. And then I'm like, what is that? I know what that is. But I cannot put it into words.

You can't, you can put it into words. It's the difficulty of using ecological dynamic language.

Yeah. That, that the

language of perception. Well, you, you've mentioned constraints, you've mentioned difficulty, and you've mentioned complexity. Yeah's a word. It, it's nothing. Yeah. But it's nothing you haven't said before. It's using words.

I know, but I'm catching myself this morning. I'm like, what is that word? It is not

a word. It's a collection of words, isn't it? It's an explanation. It's a sentence. Yeah.

Um,

so my current understanding of what you've said. Is that there are lots of constraints, and it's making you do lots of things that you don't necessarily want to be doing.

Yeah, yep, so there are too many It's almost like there's too many affordances, and so I need to Too many affordances? There's too many constraints.

Yeah.

There is just an excess of constraints of like, Oh, let me put this in this box and that box and this box and that box. I've stopped doing that, like, for some of the pages. So, I've been doing some worldbuilding stuff, um, because I've got to about to start my third campaign inside of my homebrew world, in the world that I've created from scratch. And I've just, I just have one page that is called Selendoris, and I've just started writing and following that approach. I've really enjoyed. the process of writing our joint article because it's just so much easier just to Write stuff instead of having atomic notes for each like, so it's the same with my client. It's currently I have one file for one client and I'm just, every time we're meeting on a weekly basis, just at another heading add the date. 'cause it's nice and easy on, on obsidian. And I don't have separate notes for each date. I just have one note because then I can look through all of the notes that I've got and it's just there. And it's really interesting because like having that. The focus is on writing versus on organizing, which I think is where I'm, I'm getting to. What I want to do with it is I just want to be focused on, because I have a new character that's just come into the, to one of my campaigns, I still haven't added their bloomin thing in, because it's just like

The, the word that I want to use that isn't necessarily embedded within ecological dynamics is dynamical, uh, desirable difficulty, because Yeah,

that was, that was kind of Sort of the phrase I was thinking of that I couldn't quite get. But yeah, desirable difficulty. It was beyond the desirable difficulty.

I wouldn't say beyond, I would say under, like, you, you've over, you've over constrained the situation for your own level of expertise now. And because you've developed expertise that doesn't require the constraint, the constraint is actually getting in the way. And that would suggest that the practice session is too simplified for you now. And that is where, uh, I think the, the want to be organized for those that do have expertise that goes beyond the simple organization of writing, obsidian, whatever it is. When, when something is too simple, it's harder to do because it requires lots of effort to deconstruct what's going on because there are lots of other things that you want to be doing.

Yes, and that's definitely been

my experience with And that's exactly where, when you were talking about, was it last week or the week before? People saying, oh you want to do less, you want to do less, and you were saying no, you actually want to do more. Complexity, variability. It's the exact same thing you said a couple of weeks ago, just applied to a writing setting because of the templates and constraints that you've added in there. That's why I said you've said it before.

Yeah. It's exactly the same principle. Another one of his videos, which I'm sure you've already seen, was the how to read hard books. Uh, yes.

And I was just like, do you read them? But the thing is, the titles do exactly what they're meant to do, and the content is exactly what it's meant to do. It makes you think, and it makes you question. Whether you agree or not is a, is a, another point entirely.

Yeah.

So, he's gonna get the views, he's gonna get the content, uh, the, the views, and he's gonna get the, the content that, engages people to think. Whether they critically think, and whether they agree or disagree with the video, is something else entirely. So, Now, the fact that we're talking about it, obviously, is, is, it shows that it was useful content for a conversation. Whether it's useful content for effective learning, that's another question. Um, which I would say, no, it's not for me. Uh, and I think it's quite narrow in its explanations. But, that's what does well online because of the simplicity of the information that's shared. It, it doesn't require that much effort from individuals to detect and use the information, but it can.

That was it. This is, there is no hack, there is no trick. Here is a hack.

Yeah.

Was the base of the video.

Yeah. That, that is actually the claim that I'm looking to, um, address. I guess you could call it a reaction video. Did you see my video about Justin's son?

Yeah, yes, that was funny. Yeah, that was a weird That whole video that he made was weird.

Well, he's made quite a few videos like that, where he's coaching his I don't know if they're clients or if they're just members of his community, but they're part of his I Can Study course thing. And They're, they're not bad, they're not the way that I would educate, and they are very, from what I can see in the videos, instructional, which is a way of teaching. But the comments that are used, I don't think, I think the comments used, which I expressed in the video, show the underlying principles and foundations of the way that he thinks, which doesn't necessarily match what he talks about sometimes, which I think is what I try to Show and call out. And that's where behavioural integrity in his own theory and practice, I think, conflict. But, the video itself, obviously grabbed attention because I'm saying Justin Sung was wrong. Which, I think, he was. But those sorts of conversations, I don't see happening much online. And that's what I want to see more of. That you're a contrarian. Exactly, exactly. I'm actually going, I'm actually, I'm actually writing about being a contrarian. Uh, It's a weird, it's a whole weird one that, of like, But I don't, I don't see it enough, and it's not, ha, you're wrong. I'm not pointing out to the fact, ha, you're wrong. I mean, I even say during the video, Maybe this, maybe that, maybe he's thinking this, maybe I understand, misunderstanding this. But, I disagree, is different from saying, you are wrong. And I don't see many people saying, I disagree. And, I go looking for those videos.

It's just everyone's talking about how amazing they are, but it's like, okay, cool, they're amazing. They have ideas, cool, but everyone has ideas. Like, I want to know what they're actually doing. That's actually hard. Show, don't tell. Yeah, show me what you're doing. Don't tell me what you're doing. It's really sad. Like, I went to look, I went to his Twitter to go, Oh cool, he's probably both of them. Who? Who,

Justin or the O D C C C C? O. D.

C. I mean, I don't know.

Yeah, but this, this is the thing that I see with a lot of online content creators, myself included in the past, which is why I mentioned at the start, like, it's, it's a learning journey. Everyone needs to move through their learning experiences. But if you jump on someone's, if you jump on someone's learning experience early, then you are likely to see things that they will then move away from later on. And to bring up another video that recently triggered me, uh, was Elizabeth Phillips recent video about memorizing memorizing everything or whatever it was, whatever the title was, click baity stuff. And when you look at the video, it completely does a 180 on the majority of what she said last year. and when she was growing her YouTube channel, but the comments don't reflect the differences. They are praising, which is totally fine. Praising, they're understanding, they're, oh this is great and this is useful and I'm going to try and do that now. Why don't you stop and think? Stop and think what she's doing and why she's doing it that way. She's now using a book instead of Notion. She's now taking small specific notes on one entire page rather than lots of notes in toggles for active recall. She's reading through one academic piece and trying to go deeper into the piece to understand the topic rather than doing lots of different research. And I'm like, hold up, that's exactly what I critiqued her on. Two years ago and people disagreed with me and said, oh, no, no, no, she learns differently to you. I'm like, hmm, if you say so. Two years later, she's now doing what I suggested would be more effective and she's fallen on it, I think, because of ecological dynamics in the way that the environment has constrained her to do things that are more effective and funnily enough, through direct perception, she has led to the same affordances I have. And I think that is a symptom of Me being further ahead in my learning journey than her in these sorts of skills writing researching Understanding through language

because the focus is doing the thing not Thinking about doing the thing As I one of the things I was doing as I was writing the art the joint article that we're doing Was going back through the productivity courses that I had and I bought and I watched and I'm like, oh This is painful and It's through the lens of how I see things now. I see aspects of what I do now that still are parts of that, but they're from such a different lens. And it's like, it, but I'm looking at, and as I look back over the course of like, and going, because the part, my part of the article is going from The traditional approach, trying to do things, to the ecological approach, which I've got like 250 words left to try and do that bit.

This is the thing about ecological dynamics and the co Well, I'm gonna say cognitive psychology and ecological psychology because I think it's easier to match those together than it is ecological dynamics and the breadth of cognitive approaches. So. When, when you do compare those two things together, you can explain the exact same behavior through both expl uh, explanations. But, one Yeah?

Not, not to spoil my art. Like, my personal art. But like, one of the things that was really interesting, because it was very hard not to look at it from as much of a lens as I was right now, like, so I had to focus on focus, and being focused, and I had to improve my focus, because my focus was bad, because I can't focus, because we're in the age of distraction, because we're in the age of this, and the age of that, and then it's like, learn to focus. But to learn to focus, I have to focus on things.

Yep,

I'm like, right.

How do I do this?

So how do I actually focus? Well, you have focus periods of time where you focus on building habits. Okay, cool, but we've already established that focus is a struggle and you're telling me to focus. Yep. Oh, just lock your phone away, do these things, uninstall everything, set up your environment to be this and uninstall all of the distractions because the distractions are evil and don't play video games because if you play video games your brain will rot and you'll be unhappy and you'll be depressed because they're distracting and they create a whole fake life and dopamine and, and, and, and blah, but yeah, but one, I enjoy it. And I'm allowed to, so basically, for me to focus, I have to get rid of everything that I enjoy doing, and that motivates me, okay? And then what? Once I've got rid of all the things that I enjoy doing, and that inspire me to do things, then what? You just focus on focusing. I'm like, alright. This,

to me, this is where I was going. And obviously. You can explain it, but when you explain it through the cognitive or cognitive psychology approaches I'm not gonna say the cognitive because there are multiple of them you when you try and follow them to logical conclusions as Julia and Jeff explain in their book you end up with unsolvable problems or mysteries or whatever you want to call it And you sit there and go, well, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Which is which is where you're at like to get better at focusing you need to focus on this thing You're like, yeah, but I can't focus. How do I how do I do? What's the first step and the first step typically? is Do this in the environment. You're like, yeah, but you've just said I've got a problem with my brain. And now you're saying change the environment. These are two separate things. I'm confused how that is going to help me do this thing. And for people where it does work, they tend to attribute it to. I'm thinking about atomic habits here. Oh, if you put something by the door, you're more likely to do it. Yeah, because your brain doesn't get overloaded by thinking where the thing is. No, no. Well, that could be an explanation, but I don't think it is. No, it's there. I'm gonna, I've got it.

It's there. Let's go. Yeah, but I have ADHD. Yeah, but I have autism, which means I forget these things. And I do. I'm like, so does everyone. Yeah. And also, you have difficulty with attuning to the information in the environment. Okay, cool, that's fine. But it doesn't mean you can't. Whereas with the cognitive approaches, it's just immediate. Okay, cool. You just have to fix it. But you can't.

The limit to your capacity. How do you

move forward? If you can't. You are limited. You cannot do these things. Okay, so now what? Well, you just, I just, you just have to force yourself. Yeah, but how do I force myself when I'm already frustrated and I already feel like crap? Like, it's like

Yes. This is where the advice, and linking all the, linking this all the way back to the mini essays, the advice comes from theory. And the ideas around theory which haven't been followed through to either logical conclusions or haven't been applied in practice from their experience so they don't know the difficulties that may come up or the struggles that may come up. And when you're talking about those things as someone that is new in developing whatever expertise it is, the explanations lack that context. Lacking the context is helpful for beginners because they're at the similar point, but it's not useful for learning Because if you just do exactly what they say you to do you come up with the same problems they do That's not beneficial As a learning tool because you're just problem solving but you're problem solving with a solution that you didn't come up with So you then have to troubleshoot the solution and why the solution doesn't work which the creator has already typically done You And then you have to tackle the problem again. So why don't you just tackle the problem head on to start with? Because we have a crazy monkey lizard brain. Oh, shut

up with your Oh, we have this type of brain and that type of Yeah, but that, that is the thing, isn't it? It's like, your crazy monkey lizard brain is set up for distraction and making your life hard. Now you've got to try and go above your brain to fix your brain.

No, no, no, no, no, no. You don't have to go above your brain. You have to talk to the completely disconnected entity that is the central executive or the mind that controls you, even though it has no physical presence in the world. Yep. Yep. That's what you've got to do. You've got to speak to the mind. You've got to speak to your mind, to your central executive, that controls you, but doesn't actually exist. Like, physically exists. Yeah, you've got to speak to that, and then you've got to ask it to focus. Or, to not get distracted. Yeah. Whatever. And then,

when it doesn't happen, you're like, Well, it's just you, you don't have the right habits. You just gotta build habits. Habits, habits, habits, habits, habits, habits, Habits, habits, habits, habits, habits, habits, no no no no. No. I don't want to make habits. I don't want to spend my life focusing on my habits and doing habits. What I want to do is do the damn thing that I want to do. What?

It's, it's a case of designing ecologically, like EID and ecological interface design is something I've been looking into recently a little bit more for the, um, the article. Yeah, I know. It's great fun. And, and design like ecologically designing environments, obviously inside of learning and coaching in sport, that's the constraints led approach, but inside of design of buildings or inside of the design of interface or interface design. So software. You're looking at higher order variables. You're looking at affordances. You're looking at what does the person want to or not want to do. Take a door, for example. I'm sure everyone listening has experienced the, oh, there's a handle on that door, I must pull it. But it's actually a push door. And you're sitting there going, why, why? No open. Oh, it's a push door. Right. And then the opposite. You push the door because of the flat surface. And actually it's a pull. But you're like, well, how do I pull it if it's a push? And it turns out, like, there's a little knob thing down the bottom where the lock goes, and you've got to pull on that, and you're like, Wait, what? Stupid design. Yeah, that's, that's because you haven't read the push or pull wording or sign, wherever it's hidden, either in time to actually interact with the door, or you just haven't seen it. And you're like, design

it ecologically then. No, it's not. It's not that, Danny. We are overloaded. That's what it is. You We are overloaded, and we're just fucked.

And the thing that makes me laugh is some of the studies that compare individuals. I'm not going to say, um, disorders, because, I mean, yes, they typically categorise people in disorders, whatever disorder you want to put, but they are variations in achievement to affordances. Oh, this group of people are more likely to mess up in this situation. Okay, so, what if you train these people in this environment? Would they mess up more than the normal people now? No, because they're trained. Because they're skilled. So, it's correlation, not causation.

And it goes back to, um, what Jeff said in our conversation. Because I wanted to ask. Because I was dissatisfied with the conversation in Berlin. Which doesn't exist. There is an experience there, that is almost, well yeah, experience is there, that, I think that's the issue that people in that space are facing, is they're like, which doesn't exist, yeah but, as far as, We are concerned it does and if you say it just doesn't exist like what is it that it is? Which is an interesting and and when I spoke to when we spoke to Jeff Jeff was like, yeah, it's this I'm like, yes What's this,

for people listening? Um, it was,

oh yeah. It was, uh, differences in attuning to the information in the environment. Difficulty attuning to discrete information in the environment. Or something along those lines. And then, when you, when you hear that context, of that, that phrasing, was really good, was really amazing for me, because it's like, yeah, which makes sense, because then when you hear people go, well we all have difficulties doing that. Yeah, because we do.

This, this is something that I think I may need to explicitly say when I'm discussing this. The issue with ADHD, ASD, OCD, and so all the other disorders and letters and combinations of letters, the issue that, May arise when we say mental health, mental problems doesn't exist. It's not saying mental health doesn't exist. That's that's not what we're saying. What we're saying is we don't think the mental entities, the mental processing, the mental limit capacities that you are referring to. We don't think they exist. We think that it's a perceiving, acting, cognizing system. Seriously. When we're talking about the mental disorders, it's not, oh, your mental entity, your mental limit capacity, brain, whatever jargon you want to put there. That's not the problem. That's not a disorder. That's not your disability. Your disability is your inability, variability, or lack of, because of whatever medical reason, your ability to attune to affordances. And that has variability within people, because there are. Like, in person differences. Interpersonal and intrapersonal differences in the way that we can attune to affordances. So it's not that mental health doesn't exist. It's mental health, as it's currently designed through mental entities, doesn't exist. But that is reframing the entirety of a sector, because of the language of perception that we're now using.

Yeah,

and it's very provocative to say mental health doesn't exist because obviously it certainly does and that's the context I think the people that were talking to you in Berlin were missing because I when I heard them say that I'm like, yeah Yeah, obviously duh And I didn't recognize that you didn't have the understanding that we had at the time because we discussed it previously I was thinking Oh, John must recognise this, but you haven't, because attunement to affordances were different because of past expertise inside of the field. So I'm like, oh, and when you said that, I'm like, oh, I think this, this bit here, the mental, doesn't mean the same thing. The affordance of mental, the meaning

of mental to me is different to you. And it's like, and that's now why when I'm having conversations with people, I, when I, oh, oh, my brain is, your brain, it's not, it's not your brain. It's you. It's you, and it's okay that it's you, and we don't have to, we don't have to put this thing on a box, it's, you are distracted, and that's fine, I don't care that you're distracted, I don't know, good, let's get distracted, like, like, let, let's get distracted, let's, let's do it.

I, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this, because, um, actually, I'm looking at the, the dock of things that we were meant to be talking about, and we had just gone on a completely different direction. We spoke about the mini essays and the atomic notes, but I haven't spoken about anything else. Um, I'm curious to get your thoughts on this, though. Distracted, right? Distracted suggests you were focused on something, and then you were focused on something else. And that something else is not ideal or effective, right? Yeah, yeah, how do I know? But distracted It's a snapshot in time. Yeah, I know. So when someone says, oh, I'm distracted, you're always distracted because you're always changing your attention to something that might be ineffective to what it is that you're doing. So you're always distracted and you're always focused because you're always distracted. Perceiving and acting in the environment through cognition.

Like,

you are always distracted and focused because you're always perceiving and attending to different information. And it was

so, like, go back to the article, because I was, I was writing it late last night. This week's been nuts. It's been, it's been a The article

I am writing on cognitive load theory was meant to be 3, 000 words. I'm currently sitting at 6,

I, I have had to constrain myself because I could just go into such I was trying to avoid getting too deep into my writing during the writing of it. And it was really, it was really hard. That's part of the writing

process that we need to do though.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. It was really funny because, um, as I was in, I, I, the first part was the cognitive approach, the traditional productivity, how do I do? And I was just reading that and going, oh, I hate this. Oh, ah, but that's me and I could just, I, through the lens of an ecological approach, it's like, oh, this is what I need to do. If I want to be productive, I had to improve my focus and not get distracted, focus on habits, focus on prioritizing and then doing deep work, focus on setting goals that are smart, oh, and focus on meeting deadlines. But to be able to focus on these things I needed to learn how to focus and to learn how to focus I needed to focus. Yep. And people wonder why they can't do the things they want to do. Because they, they spend so much time thinking about focusing.

You know what, this actually relates to our top point, so let's just, uh, also, like, check off the top point, because, uh, it's about, well, doing too many things at once, or multiple projects is procrastination. Fuck that. There was, there was a tweet by, uh, uh, a person that likes putting images online that doesn't add context to the images, which I personally really, it, it just irritates me. Because it's basically like asking ChatGPTV the answer to a question and then asking it to give it in an image format. It's just like, it's AI garbage. Sorry for person, for pe yeah, it's just AI garbage. It doesn't tell you anything, isn't it useful? It's too shallow. There we go, well done. Yes. I, I con constrained, I constrained my language there. It's bullshit.

Yeah. Yeah. It is. It's vacuous. I think, I think this is the difficulty that I find. I love that one. And I found even in the productivity space, being in that space for notion for, I dunno how many years and I don't want to even think about it. Four. Um, it's just the frustration of how oversimplified. Lacking nuance, lacking context, it all was. And this stupid darn post, just like, Oh, plan, task one, task two, task three, reality, task one. No, no, no, no. I mean, yes, but what's the point? Like, who cares? But the thing is, no,

no. Because we don't do that. Ah, this, this is why I love talking about this. I got a comment, On my calendar video, my, my response, right? Uh, I dunno whether you've seen the comment, but the, the comment said, you don't have children and you are not married, do you? Because this wouldn't work for you. And I responded, hi, hi. I responded and said, well, my podcast co-host has two kids and has a partner and does exactly the same thing.

Hello? Is it a sim like I I there is a. I can't remember your video. I do remember watching it, but like, like, I do the exact same thing on my calendar video. Yeah, I have actually watched it because I was intrigued because I watched it and I watched it previously before it was published. And then I asked a bunch of questions. Patreon access. Yeah, I use it. Yes, but that doesn't mean I'm my assumption based on my experience is that you have a block You're able to work throughout that block and there is very little to just look to take you away from that block I don't think that's actually true, but that's the assumption I start with. Yeah, and that's the assumption they have So yeah, I can focus all day because you're this this this this this and whereas I'm slowly learning from experiencing you in the form of that actually, yes, you do, but just as distracted, there are other things that attract your attention. I mean,

a perfect example of this is the video that I just recorded. Because of the settings, I didn't turn off my Discord notifications, so while I'm trying to record the video, like, you send me a message, my sister sends me a message, I get followed, For notifications from other servers I'm in. So I am actively having conversations, like normally five or six at once whilst I'm recording a video whilst writing an article

is all of that focus. And that's the thing. I think the assumption is the entire approach is based on. The assumption taken is that it's just time blocking, and it's the traditional view of time blocking. And even I got caught, because you called me out on it, I can't remember whether it was in our last episode, of like, you know, why have you shortened it? I'm like, oh because I stay focused less, and like, well, okay, so? Basically. Like, yeah, good point. Yeah, I'll just keep it as two hours. And it's, and it, and it Yes, because I had this exact experience this last, this past week. I had a writing, um, block for this article we're doing and it kept having to be moved because lots of other things occurred to the point where it was like yesterday evening. I'm like, okay, cool. I still want to write this. I want to get somewhere with it because I hadn't got anywhere with it. I had been thinking about it all week, but I hadn't been sat doing it, but I had been thinking about it. So I'm like, okay, cool. It's like, kids are upstairs, they're doing things. I have these little bit of time to be able to write and to, and to just get into that space of writing. Question for you. Yeah?

If that block wasn't on your calendar, You didn't have to move it around, would you have been thinking about the article all week? I'm not sure. I would've, because previously when we've discussed doing content, you hadn't blocked it in your calendar. You're like, oh, yeah, I'll get that done. And it would come to like the Saturday. You're like, oh yeah, it came to this morning. I realized I hadn't done it, and it was just busy and whatever happened had happened. So yeah,

I, I actually think that because that, that I experienced, like, even though I had all these blocks of stuff in ha, just having it in there. I was attuned to it all week. All of the little pieces were always there. Just having it there was almost a post It feels like a post it note. Yeah. But not a post it note. And that, I think, is what's changed. Like, I now understand what it is that it does. And it's not about, I'm going to sit down here and do this for this amount of time. Because sometimes during the week, I was just so busy. Freaking tired because of everything else that was happening at that point. I didn't have the energy to be able to just sit down and do those things. So I just didn't do it.

Insider information, uh, I won't name said creator, but they are fairly large and I think, um, John's gonna know exactly who I'm talking about. But they said, I wish I was that organized. And I said to said creator, well, I'm never organized. I'm always organizing, but I'm never organized. And that right there, I think, is the crux. It's people think that, oh, you're really organised. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm always organising. It's not a, oh, I'm organised now, I don't have to do anything. No. Here's an

assumption I've made. I'm intrigued to see whether my assumption is actually correct or not. When do you, when do you put things in your calendar? Is it, at the beginning of the week, you set out your entire week? Or is it, you wake up and go, Oh yeah, I need to do that, I think. Let's just put that in there.

Yeah, it's just, when I'm thinking about it, I put it in and move it around. Like, I don't That's what I thought. I don't have a blocking section. That's

not what I thought, actually. It was, it was That's where I got to and I realized that I had made an assumption. Because I don't sit at the beginning of the week and start mapping out my week. I am just like, okay, today I need to do these things. Okay, cool, let's put that in there. Put that in there. And that's like I have to do a couple of days, and I remembered that Obsidian has like multiple day views, so I can just bring up Obsidian. At most, I think what I've been doing is doing like Wait, Obsidian has multiple

day views, or Morgan?

Uh, Morgan, sorry, yeah. In Morgan, because I can just do two days or three days. I do that. More than anything else. I have like the next couple of days and just put some pieces in But I don't sit down and plan my entire week and and what happens is it's like when i'm looking at something So i've got a couple like i've got um One of my campaigns to do some planning on i've got these Articles and posts and stuff and i'm like cool. I need to put a slot in here and a And it's very much just happening over the week. And then when I've got some space, I'm like, Oh, cool, what do I want to work on?

In the video, I discuss my planning time. Like, on Sunday, I have an hour for planning. But that hour for planning is often me going through next week to see what I put in, to see what I'm meant to be doing, and to see if Uh, the Ideal Calendar slots are filled, because I fill those out as things appear. Like, I didn't know what video I was going to do on the Danny Hatcher channel next week until yesterday morning. Uh, but I decided, you know what, I'm going to do that video. So I put the video, the project, um, on, on the all day week, and then I added it to the Monday sections. But I don't have anything for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Thursday, I don't think, uh, I would need to actually check, for the educational science channel, so the, the educational science content stuff. Uh, and I, uh, I don't think I had an article next week, I may do, again, I don't remember, but that's the sort of thing I'm gonna check tomorrow. It's, okay, I've planned things, I've organized, I've been organizing, and I've been putting things, I mean, I've been organizing things for three, four weeks in, like, in future, but next week, I don't know. I want to make sure that those ideal calendar blocks have something in, but even if they don't have something in, and I just appear on a day, because I've been, I don't know, I've been ill for three days and I haven't been able to check my calendar or look at anything. When I suddenly appear and I say, say I'm ill over the weekend and Thursday appears, I go to Thursday and I'm like, right, okay. Ideally, I would be working on whatever project I should be doing at that time, and ideally that one and that one. So, there is something there for me to be doing, but I don't know exactly what that is. So I can, I can work it out there and then that's the assistance of organize or of having a templated organization inside of my calendar. But I can move things around flexibly whenever, however I want, which is where I'm constantly organizing. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's what that's where I got to. But it was an assumption I had made that I needed to sit and organize it for the whole week. When really, especially when I actually when I look at what is. The reality of my life, and it's just not possible anymore. Because if I have a, if, if my hearing starts playing up and I am unable to focus, good luck! If, if, if my tinnitus is going off or I've barely slept because of that, or if, uh, my other half isn't feeling too good, or if I want to spend some time with my kids playing Final Fantasy VII, like, all of those pieces. Like, if I want to prioritize that, I'm gonna go do that, and I don't have to just stick to that structure. So, yeah, if you were to assume that what is put in there is gospel, yes, of course you wouldn't do that with kids. But I do it because I don't assume everything I put in there is gospel. It's, as you were saying, an ideal situation. It's like, if everything goes to plan and nothing changes, and I don't have any other needs or, or wants, or wants, because it doesn't have to be just because I have no choice, I can actually decide, huh, you know what, I want to go down to here, or I want to go do this, or, oh, I've had an idea for an NPC for my, for my D& D campaign.

I

can do that.

This is ecological design. It's designing for affordances in mind. And I mean, an example of this is this, uh, CLT, uh, article, the cognitive load theory article is, has expanded far larger than I was expecting it to, uh, I had in an ideal world, eight hours to write this thing. I think I've been. writing for 16 hours so far this week, and I've got another four hour slots, four hour in total today, I've got two hours after lunch, and then I've got two hours after dinner. But, well, actually it's one hour after dinner because England are playing rugby later, which I didn't know before this morning, so that went in my calendar this morning, organizing as I go. So, I, even though I had an ideal slot, world, the world doesn't, life isn't, isn't that simple. Life isn't this simple, and the world doesn't just say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll, we'll make it easier for you, we'll just stop time so you can catch, no, no, no, no,

don't work like that. And I think that's, that's, because of the, uh, tying it back to our conversations we've been having today, because it's so, When people are on their journey, they're so focused on kind of

I don't I don't like that. I don't like that. On their journey. That makes it sound like there's an end. I don't like that.

Yeah. Yeah, I rea yeah. Like, when you when you watch While they're learning. People explaining what they're learning and and their experiences, and then they oversimplify and just create something that's so sacred. I can't think of a better way of putting it. It portrays this, it just doesn't talk about what you're actually doing. And I think that's, that's a really, I mean, it links back to what I was writing. It's probably been one of my favourite articles I've ever written, I'm ever writing. Because I'm just really distilling down. My experience, and I'm like, ooh, I could turn that into content for my actual business as well, and, ooh, this could be expanded, like, I could make this a, this could be an entire f ing book, for God's sake, if, like, there were so many things I could touch on and expand on and, and, and add in, and, it's quite exciting, because it means that, Just, just talking about my journey, but giving all the context, or as much context as possible, was quite fun. So,

again, thinking ecological design and ecological principles, you're writing the article, I noticed you said, uh, you, you sort of like, you, you, almost like you auto corrected when you were talking, or it looked like you auto corrected, instead of saying I've written, I'm writing. Yes. Yeah?

Well, I've actually written it, because it, because I know what I'm going to put down. It's, it's not, it's just not there yet. It's a current

future. Yes. But you're always writing the article. It's never finished. It can be published, but that doesn't mean it's finished. And for me, writing and thinking are one in the same, because perceiving, acting, cognizing is all a continuous system. Therefore, the writing, the action, is the cognizing, the thinking, and therefore is continuous. So, as you're writing the article, you're also thinking about all of the information that's involved in said article. And so when you write another article in the future, whether that's on your website or a blog blog post or whatever, it's a book. It's the same article. Because it's the same ideas, it's the same continuous thinking. And when, when I'm looking at the, uh, a couple of the points you've put in there, which I think come from David Perel, uh, I would need to confirm that with you, is the don't read newer books because everyone is reading it. That's from that's the cultural tutor. uh, advice from David Perreault's podcast, and also reading hard books. Obviously, you've put that in there, but the reading hard books and the old books, I think, to me, is where there's just continuous thinking. The advice to only read old books and not new books comes from, I believe, a bias towards information not as common now. Not as commonly spoken now. Like, that's what the cultural tutor was talking about inside the original podcast episode. He was saying that loads of people talk about modern books and new books because it's new, it's fresh, it's brand new idea, it's the new jargon term stuff. But where he's interested is the older stories, the historical, historical stories of culture. And what lessons we can learn from that. And oftentimes, they're the same topics, they're the same ideas, they're the same concepts. But it's continuous. And he's going backwards to talk about the same ideas. Which, for me, again, it's not, Oh, that book was written that many years ago. No, no, no, no, no. It's continuous thinking. That thinking has evolved, and that's why I don't think the advice to only look at old books is good. No. Because you need evolved thinking. However, only looking at new books is also limiting because you then don't get the context of where it started from because we're talking about a current future which involves past and future possibilities. Yeah.

It was really funny going back over my notes. on Gestalt, like, theory, psychology, therapy. I never know the right word there. I can't find, well, the most accurate word, because they're all kind of similar.

It depends what you're writing about, or what you're thinking about, the actual information involved, because most of the time it's Gestalt psychology. However, if you're applying it to practice, typically it's therapy, But, if you're not applying it solely to an individual and you're applying it broadly, then it's a philosophy. The whole is greater than some of its parts. Blah, blah, blah.

Yeah. Yeah. That, that was the thing that I'm like, uh, just trying to get the, yeah. It's a, it, it famous

ecological psychology, ecological psychology or ecological logical dynamics or the ecological approach or elements of the approach, constraints led, uh, approach or ecological design, however you want to phrase it. There are different ways of using language to specify what it is you are trying to talk about.

But looking back over, like, the Gestalt approach, the Gestalt theory, the Gestalt therapy, because that's what I did, that's what, that was part of, as I was growing up, I had a Gestalt therapist. I didn't realize it, but it was the Gestalt approach, which I loved because It was individualized versus the CBT where you're just, I've got to fix your brain, just change your mind. I'm like, Oh, thank you so much. I've got to change my mind. Have I? Always wish it was that easy. But anyway, I could rant about that for ages as well.

That's why I didn't go, that's why I never ended up with a consistent therapist and I did my own therapy.

Yeah. And, and it. One of the questions that I was, I'm always asked by others was how do you get so much done? And I'm like, I don't, I just do it. And I, and I have annoyed uh, my friends and family about this. Of like, just, just do it. Well, it's very easy for you to say just do it, but how do I actually do it? And I'm like, oh.

But them asking that question exposes the issue. There's a trick. What do I need to do first? What's the first thing I need to do? What's step one? There isn't a step one. You just start.

And it's easy for you to say. I'm like, no. And it was interesting because I had that conversation with my other half and I had it with my friend, with Carl. About like, well, how do you start? Well, how am I supposed to start? I just pick it up and go, yeah, but how do you know which is right? I don't because I'm not looking to be right. I'm looking to find out. Yeah.

That, that relates directly with what you were saying with me. You know you were saying about me and knowing. Yeah. I don't. Yeah. Acting and perceiving and figuring out as I go. And my perception

of you was that you knew. And it wasn't until I started, like, because of course, because I'm doing the, uh, the clips. It was like, I first started and most of the clips were you. Most of the, the, the value, quote unquote, was on your things. But then the last, the last one I did was like, Oh! Oh, it's coming up with me a bit more. It's like, oh, I actually And all I was doing was not, not talking. It was just, I was talking and I was thinking out loud. And then I sounded like an ecological psychologist out of nowhere. I'm like, oh, okay. When did that happen? How did that happen? Well, I just started. Just spoke about it.

I think it's important to note here, when we say just start, We're not talking about a moment in time, or I'm not at least. No, I'm not. Because the fact that you're talking about it means that you've started thinking about it. Therefore, you are perceiving and acting already through it, so you have already started. So, when we say, just start, it's embracing the already ongoing actions. That's, that's the way that I, that's the way I see it.

Yeah, I didn't make that connection until now, but yeah, that is very much the case. Because it was, I just, just, just pick something up, but it isn't as easy, and the reaction is, it's not that easy to pick something up. And then I'm like, Uh, but, but you are ready.

It's the affordances that they are perce the way I would describe it is they are perceiving affordances Yeah. and they are constraining themselves from enacting those affordances either because of social constraints, personal constraints, whatever it is and what you're trying to do is remove those I don't want to say ingrained, um, because it's not, but those constraints that individuals are putting on themselves, that's what you're trying to remove, and that's what we're trying to say. What we're saying is, just start. In other words, remove the social or whatever constraint you put on it. I'm calling it social because I think most of them are, uh, heavily influenced by social impact factors, such as other people's opinions, fears about what might happen, or failure, or mistakes, and et cetera, et cetera. Um, and previous experiences of errors and struggling and learning, learning basically. And when we're saying just start, what we're saying is remove the social independent constraints that you've put on yourself to enact affordances that you're perceiving and Work. Yeah. Continuously move forwards with whatever it is that you are currently perceiving and acting and cognising about, the system that you're engaged in, because you have already started. The fact that you've asked, how do I start, tells me that you've already started, because you're already thinking about it. What are you thinking about?

Oh, that, uh, cool.

There you go. What, what I would say is how, how, how would, when, when they are thinking about it, whatever question it is that they ask, well, how do I get started? I would say, well, what are you thinking about? Like, you've mentioned, but then I would also say, how would, how would you advise someone else to start thinking about this? Because as soon as you ask someone to give advice to someone else, for whatever reason, what I found is people. Start giving loads of suggestions, like, oh, they could do this and they could do that. I'm like, yeah, so they're perceiving affordances for others Because the constraints they're perceiving for others are different from themselves Because the relationship they have with the environment is different from the relationship others have with the environment. So by Changing the way that they're explaining things to in the eye of the perceiver of someone else, they are opportunities of behavior. There you go, they could do this and this and this. Okay, why can't you do that? Oh, because of this constraint, this constraint, this constraint. Okay, so that is what I mean by just start. Remove those constraints. Oh, well, it's not that easy. I'm like, why? But it's trying to like unpick the constraints that I don't think they're aware of.

Yeah.

Which is an interesting idea. I love it when I start talking out loud. Well, thinking, thinking out loud,

yeah, it's, it's great. It's so, it's so interesting. I know something that, um, so I was thinking about it with my kids. Pause.

Cognitive load theory, Sweller, says audio visual presentations are transient information and are bad. And I'm like, sorry, what? Podcasts and talking and conversations are bad?

No.

Carry on. I just had to say that. Just, just for reference, so when I come back to it later, I'm like, Oh yeah, that's what I was thinking about.

Bad.

Because it's transient information, you can't go back and like, look over the words, look over the text, look over the diagrams, and go, that was right, that was wrong, that was good, that was bad. Because you can't do that. Unless it's recorded, in which case, you can do that. But, it assumes it's a snapshot, and you've forgotten it. Because it's transient information. Yeah. Anyway, your kids?

Yeah. I was like, well, I was thinking with the kids, because, It's quite funny, as I'm now moving forward, and I keep, like, as I'm gaining expertise in the ecological, in, in enacting the ecological approach, but I'm already doing it anyway, so it's not really enacting, is it? It's just, like, as I'm attuning to the affordances of using the ecological approach and coaching in what I'm doing with my kids, things are just I don't know. They're not easy, because that's not quite right. It's just becoming smoother, because it's literally We had an experience the other day where, um, they were on Because technology is, is always a fight with us. Like, we've been going back and forth. Because myself, obviously, I'm on a computer a lot. Because it's my job, and it's also my social, and it's A lot of what I do is that. And I realized I have a lot of affordances with regards to energy because when I'm, like, I have the affordances to be able to manage my energy so that if I have too much energy, I can step away. And I realized for my kids, they don't have those affordances yet. They're not attuned to those, no, because they have the affordance, they're not attuned to those affordances yet. So they, so it was interesting because, and I just spoke to them, because, um, we had an experience, two nights in a row, where they were on their tech for a very, for an extended period of time, I think it was three hours, which is terrible and bad, and we were horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible people. Aidan was watching, uh, Game Theory, Aaron was watching A Minecraft thing, which I still don't understand and, and, and is loud and screechy, but she loves it and it helps her, she likes it, so it's fine. Do I see it? No. And they were on there for multiple hours, and then they had a humongous burst of energy the moment they came off. And they were complaining and whining, because they, Oh, I don't want anyone, I'm bored, I'm bored, I'm bored, I'm bored, I'm bored, I'm bored, I'm bored, I'm like. Huh. Is technology the cause of that? No, not on its own, because linear causality does meh. But it's a piece of it. Because linear causality meh. Yeah, exactly. Great explanation. Okay, cool. So what is that? What's the alternatives? What are the constraints? Okay, and I just went, I said, look, I actually just spoke to 'em. I said, look, mommy and I are noticing that when you spend an awful lot of time on your tech, your, your energy levels are, are a bit crazy and, and you kind of go through loopy, loopy time. What do you think about that and just having that discussion, like, do you, how, how do you, and, and I suppose it's almost giving them opportunity to a, to attune, I suppose, like just, just. It's constraining the environment to give the affordance of seeing and attuning to that piece. I don't like that. I wouldn't say give the

affordance, but it's certainly constraining the environment's Uh, to help with learning experiences, yeah. Yeah,

to help with the learning experience. And they're like, yeah, no, I agree. Okay, cool. Um, so what I want to do is I want to try something with you. Like, let's say you have, and I just chose an hour. Like, when this is happening, you can go on it, and then afterwards, you can go do something else. And I'm like, let's just, um, and it was not a, you will do this. It was a, let's try this, because I don't know. Question. What, what can they do that isn't on their tech? Uh, play the piano. There are, there is a host of things. There is, they're toys that they can play with. They often just play with each other. They just, their imagination goes wild based on what they've been think Drawing! Like, there are so many opportunities for other things to do. You see them. Do they see them? Um, they're starting to. Okay, I was going to say because what I realize is from me constraining the environment by adding a time limit on the hour of tech, like, and sometimes I don't keep it to the exact hour, but there is a constraint like let's try this. And over the last couple of days, I've just seen a sudden change of like They go on their tech, they have a wonderful time watching all the things. I don't really care, as long as it's not unsafe for them. But they watch stuff that's interesting, which is cool. And then, I'm like, okay guys, let's go. They're like, alright. No screaming, no arguing. Oh, I'm gonna just do one more. They're just like, okay. They stop and they're like, what do we do now? I said, what do you want to do now? Oh, I want to draw a character. I said, okay, cool. And they are starting to do the thing I've been trying to get them to do for the last, I don't know how many months, because I just spoke to them about it. Funny that. I know, right? It's crazy. Communication works. Who would have thought? I know,

right? If only businesses knew how to do that. I know,

right? Management. It was interesting, just, just, and I just said to them, I said to them last night, I said, I wanted to say, like, it's so nice, like, when I've asked you to come off tech, how well things go, and you seem to be, like, you seem to be enjoying yourselves more, and having fun with your drawing, and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm glad, I'm glad, and they were happy, because they got their tech, and I also, it, it felt right, and it felt right, The way I,

the way I interpret that is the, I mean, obviously you're giving autonomy to the individual's children, uh, which is normally useful, self determination theory and all that, but with the synchronized coordination between individuals, a lot of the time there needs to be some sort of communication when you do want to add constraints and, uh, limit, limit the perception of affordances. In environments, which in ecological design, obviously in communication, talk, um, and the unintentional synchronicity of certain individuals is impaired. With A, uh, ASD. So, it, it requires more effort from individuals to synchronise and coordinate behaviour, and that is what I think you're, you were looking for. You were looking for coordination with action between yourself and them inside of the house, a house being a, a dynamic system of various organisms. Because when the kids are together on, I would imagine, on their devices, they are both on their devices. when they are both off their devices, they are I would imagine either together or they separate, like there's one or the other. So it's, if one of them is on their device then the other one will probably unintentionally synchronize and go on their device. It's probably, it's one of the phenomena that I think, I would love to find some studies to prove this, but I think it's why people outside do the same thing, because there is social coordination between individual organisms and when one is on their phone that is a behavior and others then synchronize that behavior to be on their phone. Which is why, when you look at a table, suddenly everyone's on their phone or no one's on their phone. However, individuals that don't synchronize well with social environments may stick out. So those people with ADHD, ASD, whatever disorder you want to call it, that aren't on their phone, look different because they don't synchronize to social, um, situations. unintentionally. And that, I think, when we're learning to design situations for other people to either work in, live in, et cetera, et cetera, when we consider synchronicity, we consider coordination, and we consider, um, constraints of information to, uh, adjust perceived affordances, we can then design environments that are beneficial, but also design environments that are not not special, um, but that are frustrating. We can deliberately design environments that are frustrating, which can increase learning experiences in certain situations, which is obviously what the constraints led approach is. You're deliberately creating an environment that requires energy that an individual doesn't want to expend in order to self organize to complete a movement. And in your situation you have deliberately created an environment with the coordination of your kids to help them learn Whatever it is that you want them to learn whether it is get off the computer or learn a skill that isn't being on tech which Ecological design managing?

Because a lot of it was around whenever they weren't on tech, it was like, well, can you it was like, my perception was, they relied on tech to tell them what to do, to give them activity versus, which it's not.

I would say they were attracted to tech because they were attracted to tech I was going to say, they are the affordances they are most likely attracted to.

Yeah, and so they didn't, it reduced that want to think about what to do, it was, it was simple because tech just, whoosh,

was

there.

But, for me, this is where the conversation's about parenting, and, maybe without a buzzword, ecological parenting. When, when kids are on their iPads, and that's all they do, and parents try and take them off their iPads, if you take a child off their iPad and they don't know what else to do, All they're going to do is want to go back on the iPad. Because the opportunities for behavior, they don't perceive the affordances the same way we do because they haven't experienced it and learnt that yet. Because they're not us. Yes, we can perceive affordances for others, i. e. the adult can go Oh, you could do this, and you could do that, and you could Yes, but they aren't perceiving the same affordances as you are because they are a different individual. Affordances are actioned and person scaled.

Which

means that the individual child needs to recognize, i. e. perceive the affordances, and attune to those affordances well enough that they can perform those behaviors in some way. But if they don't perceive those affordances as whether, how, or when to do them, then they won't, and they will attract to other opportunities for behavior, i. e. iPad or tech. So how do you then ecologically parent? Well, I could just say do what we did like 20, 30 years ago, um, but obviously that isn't ideal because there are things that weren't ecologically valid, i. e. hitting people, punishment. That's, it's ecologically valid but ineffective in lots of different ways and is obviously unethical. So how do you then ecologically design environments for children to learn in? Constraints led approach. That's the way I would approach it. Constrain the environment, which is what you're doing. So, maybe you could call yourself an ecological parent. Cool. Maybe that's what you're doing. You're parenting through the ecological approach, aren't you? Yeah! You're designing environments through the ecological approach, using the constraints led approach to parenting. We need researchers and studies. We need a lab. Oh yeah! But yeah, I, I think, I think this idea of ecological design and applying that into the world through the constraints led approach.

Yeah.

That, that to me is where the value comes from ecological psychology, direct perception, and all of this, this ecological dynamics that we're talking about. It's ecological design through the constraints led approach or the ecological approach to X thing. This is what we've been talking about for ages, but I think ecological design is a nice, term.

Yeah.

And it is applied already in the world and we have examples of it. I mean, there's a, there's a road in Canada that uses optic flow, which is really cool. Uh, they discuss about it. They discuss it in the book, Jeff and Julia. But for those that are unfamiliar, you can tell I'm excited by ecological design because obviously it's everything that we talk about. But basically, uh, I was thinking about this. It relates to a bee study. Stay focused, Danny. So this road, this road has a turn. Why should you stay focused? Stay, stay focused on this. content for this point in time. I'm not talking focuses in snapshot right now. I'm talking focuses in continuous conversation of this topic rather than doing another topic and then coming back. Um, so, but a good pick out so that it's not a disconnected conversation that is difficult to consume. If words not sync, Conversation Difficult 379. Like, the information isn't organized in a way that can be consumed, so you'd need to focus the communication to be continuous enough for the consumption of the information, because that's what language is.

Okay.

That's, that's the way that I'm interpreting that, but yeah, I like the poke. So with this road, there's a curve in the road, and people needed to slow down, because there were too many crashes, and it was, it was, it was unsafe, essentially, people were speeding around this turn, and what the, um, local authority in Canada wanted to do was put up signs. So they put up signs, uh, and there were still accidents, because people weren't reading the signs, they were going past the signs, or whatever it was, um, so it just wasn't working. So what they did is they put lines on the road, and they decrease the distance of the lines on the road as you got closer to the curve. That's optic flow. Optic flow being changes in the optic array. For those unfamiliar, go read about optic flow and optic arrays and the way that we perceive visual information because I don't want to do a whole spiel right now. Uh,

I want a whole spiel.

But now I'm at a point where I can introduce the bee study that makes more sense because of the continuous conversation through language. What the bee study was, is that they had a tunnel. The bee goes from point A to point B, and they wiggle their bum to communicate to all the other bees, Hey, there's pollen over here, and then they fly back again. Right? So the bee, going through the tunnel, when there was a straight line, the bee communicated. a distance and the distance that was communicated in the tunnel that had lots of black rings through it, the beat communicated a longer distance. I'm not going to explain how all of that works. Again, go look at the study. Um, but long story short, optic flow, increased optic flow. So more, more of those black lines, more of those changes in visual view, but the further the distance. was perceived because of the more changes in optic flow. So when they put black lines on the road, the more changes, i. e. the increased frequency of those black lines, people perceive the distance to change to the turn. And they recognized, oh, because I'm going x speed, it looks like they're going faster because the frequency has increased. So what they do is they slow down. And that's what you want them to do. You want them to slow down to the curve. And they've done that by manipulating the environment with an ecological design to increase optic flow, rather than giving them a sign that they need to read and process, however they process, in time to hit the curve. So they are directly perceiving the ecological design, which is, like, educating their affordances and perceptions to slow down. I think that is incredibly cool. That is

really cool. And then people can Google ecological design and get Ecological design or eco design is an approach to designing products and services that give special considerations to the environmental impact of a product over its entire life cycle.

Oh, is that what it says?

Yeah. But then you've got principles and practice of ecological design research, Kate. I'm like, that is the other thing. I think

ecological interface design has a Wikipedia page. Because I found that. Uh, Vicente and I can't remember the other person's name did some research on ecological interface design, mainly with pilot design, you know, like the interfaces that they see in planes, because traditionally there were loads of buttons and gizmos and gadgets and you had to memorize and calculate and do all of this sort of stuff from a traditional approach when it came to managing a plane and what they did is they They changed the design of the interface to be more ecologically valid so that you're now looking at an image which gives you specifying information about affordances to help you land and fly the plane. Which, again, really cool. It's done in surgery. Again, really cool. Um, and applying this inside of mental disabilities or disorders or abilities or restrictions or whatever you want to call it. It's just applying an ecological approach to practical problems in the world. It's, it's useful.

Yeah.

I'm like, Ooh. Is there anything else you want to discuss? Obviously we've got a couple other points on on our list, but You've got We've got, we've got the marshmallow and we've got the step by step guide. The step by step guide I think we've covered fairly well except we've, we've covered it through I can see your face I

really,

hey The assumption that But we, I think we've covered the step by step being an issue with the essays and the Um, instructions It's, it's not that it's wrong It's that it lacks nuance

Yeah, it, it, it lacks so much nuance, and it's that, especially with a business, because it, it's obviously my domain that I care about a lot, it's like, oh, just follow this to get that, yeah, but you've made so many assumptions when you first get started, of like, it's like, it's the only way, it's the only way, it's like, What

do you mean by first get started?

When you decide to have a business. And you begin the how do you decide to have a business?

How how do I decide? How when do you decide? Wha wha what happens?

Because it's continuous. There isn't a happening, because it's very much, you just kind of fall into I think yeah, that is there. It's continuous. It's continuous, and I think this here almost completely dismisses that. Because it's like, here is how you create a business.

The way I rephrase his steps. In the video of the steps to the step by step guide to get 10k a month The way I rephrase that is they're not steps They're checkpoints and those checkpoints might not happen in the same order. They didn't happen in the same order No, I don't think they would um, so I I see them as checkpoints or landmarks or potentially even larger affordances Uh for the journey, it's it's a continuous journey the struggle. I think You I have with using that as a guidance or a template is that it adds in assumptions from traditional approaches and views of the way that we learn, which I don't think is deliberate. I don't think it's deliberately put in, Hey, we're going to follow the traditional assumptions. No, it's not. Because of the language that used and the previous assumptions that most people have about learning, it's somewhat implied or it's sort of like brought along for the ride, which is where I think our, um. Disagreements come. It's not the content and the information in the content

that's No, it's the information itself, because I saw that, I was like, right, I'm ready to, I'm ready to punch some people. But like, when you actually watch it, it's like, I mean, you're not incorrect. Like, if you want to earn 10k, it's easier to do that through selling things at a higher price. Yeah, I guess, but, like, that assumes this, this, this, this, I have the time, I want to Like, the interface is not wrong, it's just, and the order, but the order is just pre assumed and pre determined, which I think is where my distaste for it is, it's, it's, it's, it's burnt, it's not burnt down, it's brought down to this. Follow this and then you'll get a business, but a business much like life is, is it, is its own dynamic environment that you kind of just fall into as I'm doing my work.

Continuous perceiving and acting, cognizing within dynamical systems.

Doing things and it's happening. I just, yeah, it's just. It was frustrating because it just boils it down to a step by step process which is never, it's not, that's not, that's not ecologically valid.

It's not as ecologically valid as something else for you in your relationship with the environment.

Yes, exactly. And

this, I think, is where we need to step back from content, because the information in the content is accurate, but it's also inaccurate. Yes. When we take a step back and we look at all of the information within our context, Because that's what it is. It's the relationship we have with our environment, and the information in the environment being the piece of content, is the relationship to everything past, present, and future, because it's a current future, that we have.

Yeah.

So, how people then do that is their own learning of the or their own ability to learn and use the information, because detecting, And I want another word because you've detected the information and then I guess it's using, using the information. Um, acting on the information. Yeah, yeah, no, there's another word that I want to put there, but I'm not sure. I think it begins with an E. I'll, I'll, I'm sure I'll figure it out later. Engaging? Sort of, yeah, yeah. Um, anyway, the, yeah. Enacting. Yeah, sort of. Maybe it's not an E. I don't know. I don't know. Uh, P S U D E. The information in the video isn't wrong, it isn't right. It can be used, but how we choose to use it, I think, is where the, the depth is shallow. The explanation is shallow, and that is where I think we struggle. It's the, how, the, the show, rather than the tell. Because, because

Daniel Priestly has built multiple massive businesses and is doing it.

Yeah. Yeah. Anything else you want to add? I mean, you got the marshmallow experiment in there, but

We

could move that on

for next

week. Okay. Right. Thanks everyone for listening and if you've got any questions, as always, put them in the comments and we'll reply.