John. John. John. John. We have some serious comments, or accusations, I guess you could say, inside of our little doc. Our doc, our calendar event. Yeah, it's a calendar. It's not really a doc at all. Let's start at the top and work our way down. Yeah, I like it. We're gonna do that. I like it. Playing a smart character in D& D. Yeah, I found that fascinating. I was like, ooh, this is a bit different. This is a little bit different. I watched the clip, and I, I, well, I watched the entire video because, I mean, it was only, what was it, a 20 minute video or was it a 10 minute video? Oh yeah, it was a short video, yeah. Yeah, so I sort of blitzed through that. And I immediately, from the outset, didn't like what they were saying about what it means to be intelligent or how you act as intelligent or how you act as I'm like, no, I want to fish slap you. Yeah, it was really, that's why I was just like, oh, oh, okay, oh, no! Bye! I understand where their interpretations came from, their interpretations being, for those obviously that haven't seen it, is that intelligent or smart people make other people in the room seem dumb, or that the intelligent person is proving that they know everything, and I don't see that at all with intelligent people or smart people. I think there is a complete disconnect between intelligent slash smart people and egotistical, ignorant, uh, self absorbed behaviors. Like, they are drastically different things. Do you get those people? Yes. But I don't think that's the majority of those people, because when I speak to academics who are intelligent and are smart, most of them don't want to be the smart person in the room, which is completely against what they were talking about in these characters being this, that. No, they want to speak with other people and the arguments academics have is not because, oh, I'm smarter than you. It's, oh no, this evidence disagrees with your evidence. Yeah. It's not a, I know more than you. It's a, we have differing opinions. And that's drastically different from the way that he was describing characters and smart characters, how you play them. I'm like, no! And I think, I watched that video around the beginning of the week. Um, he was talking about the different ways of seeming smart. Because that's, that's the stereotypical smart character is completely Natalie, aloof, separated, doesn't care about anyone else. And it's interesting because primarily the characters that I play are the High intelligence, high wisdom, like, stat classes, because I just find them more interesting. But I don't necessarily play them as the caricature. Do I play them as, like, actual smart? Probably not. Like, actual smart, whatever that actually even means. I was gonna say, what does that mean? Like, it's really, it was really interesting. I wasn't expecting to start thinking about stuff I would talk to you about on a video about D& D. But it was quite interesting, like, oh. That right there is exactly how I feel when I watch all content online. I see connections everywhere with the ecological approach. And what it means to be skilled. I can't, I can't, not anymore. It's literally, I mean, I know the matrix pill analogy has been used to death, but this is what my head of course used to say, it's like taking the red pill. Once you've taken it, you can't go back. And whenever I see educators, content creators, learning, it's skill development. What's skill development? Well, constraints and affordances. That you perceive throughout in the environment and how you develop that is therefore altered by your interaction, your relationship between you and the environment, you and others in the environment, etc, etc. So it's all connected. It's intertwined. It's related. And this is just coordination through experiences. So, When I first watched the video, it reminded me of another video that has recently gone viral. You may have seen it. It's by a channel called Easy Actually. And the video is about 7 minutes long. And they talk about how to become smart. How to be smart. Yes. And it's, it's a humour video. But it's also got a little bit of ideas in there. I think it's more meant for humour. But the points they make are very similar to the points made inside of the D& D character video. Because they're saying, oh, Smart people, uh, read books. Smart people read textbooks. That's how you become smart. You need to read textbooks. Alright. Okay. And then it goes on to say that smart people, and they relate smart people and intelligence with money. Smart people learn skills to get money. They get information to learn, to earn more money, or they get a job to earn more money. Like they, they learn the skills to get a job, which earns more money. That's, and you're like, okay, fine. So being smart equals money. Not, not really true. Um, and then the other one is clout. So it's money and clout. And the D& D characters, I'm like, well, that's, that's basically what it is. It's. It's intelligence, I'm smarter than you, clout, ego, um, or money, which is power. In, in our world, money is power. I would imagine inside of D& D there is a intelligence version of power. Well, yes, the magic itself, if you're a wizard. Exactly. Intelligent, smart people, they are powerful, and they are know it all, egotistical pe And I'm like, no. No. That is it was really it was really interesting, because I just was watching that, I was like, So, but like, how how can you seem smart? The question that got me was the How can, like, the question from a role playing perspective, how do you seem smart? Like, if you wish to role play as a smart character, how do you seem smart? I think there was a point of, like, you're not as smart as your character, and I'm like, uh, okay. This is where I like to ask the question in reverse. So I reverse, okay, how do you not seem smart? So how do you seem dumb? How can you make yourself seem dumb? Because If you're not seemed, if you're not looked at as dumb, then you must be looked at as being either neutral, average, or smart. Yeah. So, what is a dumb characteristic in a game of DMD? It is the stereotypical barbarian, I'm just gonna punch and hit everything. So you resort to punching, you resort to, like, just hitting everything you see and not caring about anything else, and that's your first result. That's the, that's the dumb character. So anything the opposite of that is smart, which means Any what's known as a face character, which is the high charisma, high intelligence, high wisdom, when they're trying to figure things out by asking questions or inciting in the world, is a whole twist to a smartness. And then you have obviously like street smarts, Uh, like, book smarts. And then you, and then you look at that and you're like, Yeah, but, but, but, but, but, what? Is it, is one smart better than the other? Why is the, why is, why is it just, What even is smart? Which I'm sure we could go even wider, because what does that mean? That is the point. That is the bit that I don't like. That's the fish flappy moment. Because smart. Noun. You are smart. Smart at what? It's you are an expert. That's what they're saying. You are an expert. You don't have expertise, you are an expert. Ah, but there's a difference there. Being an expert, having expertise. Is the magician an expert, or do they have expertise? Do they have more expertise in certain areas than other areas, than other characters? Yes. Yes, they sneeze and they die if you're a wizard. Okay. Sneezing and dying. Basically, they are very weak. They get hit in combat, they have the, one of the lowest health of all of the classes. Because they're thought of as to stay back, they're casting from afar, their magic is to some people way OP, and overpowered, and nuts, so people attack them. So that's kind of the, the, the Right. But, but they're the action capabilities that D& D have assigned certain characters. Exactly. Which is not possible in the real world, FYI. No. So, I recognize there is a bit of a bridge between a game that has imposed constraints on how skill development works and the way that we're looking at it, but if we do look at it from an ecological approach, when it comes to acting out these characters, being smart is just not being dumb. What is not being dumb? Not doing things right. With limited thought, I would say. And thought, thought being the abilities you cognize. Yeah, basically if you don't go and hit stuff straight away, you're being a slug. Yeah, and your abilities, your capabilities, your skills moving into things, your level of expertise will impact How you perform. So, how do you act as a smart character? Just don't be dumb. That's the way I would look at it. Don't be dumb. Yeah, that's the way I would look at it. Because a noun is so black and white, it's so binary, that if you're not one thing, you must be the other. If you say, How, how do you act as someone that has expertise? Well, now you need to show expertise. Because expertise isn't something you just plonk, yep, you have that thing. No, you have to show it. So that comes down to, I would imagine, battle tactics in some way, or exploring solutions in certain ways, but that's you showing expertise as the character. Because I would imagine you can have a smart character that has limited expertise and navigates in certain situations, and they act dumb. Yeah, so you've got a wizard, for example, to put a tangible, you've got a wizard who's a hermit. Who basically has spent most of their time in a, in a tower, reading. They have very little, like, expertise in actually existing in the world around them. And they're in this very enclosed constrain Touching grass. Yeah, exactly. Just getting out there and touching grass. So they don't know about all the little things that the rest of the group knows. Yeah, I think, I think that is where levels of expertise can be shown or not shown as the character. So it's not a case of acting smart or dumb. Exactly. Or intelligent or inintelligent is where they have expertise. I suppose the stats in D& D are actually levels of expertise. They're imposed levels of expertise. That would be the loan of intelligence if we're talking about, uh, organisms. The loan of intelligence by, like, when you look at AI and robots is by a programmer. In D& D, it's by the game constraints. That's why I said it's heavily constrained because the loan of intelligence is by the, either the game master or whoever gives out all of the stats and stuff to start with. Um, that is imposed. It is actually possible for the cat, for the players to set their own stats. So they get given a bunch of numbers and then they choose where those numbers go. Okay. Yeah, so there you go, that's your imposed level of expertise to start with. Which doesn't happen that's, that's literally the cognitive approach. Yes. Saying you are hardwired with this thing, um, that, that is the cognitive approach right there. Hey, you're hardwired with a, a five in this and a four in that and you can't get any better. B. S. Except you can, because as you level up, you do get ability score increases. Yes, but it's the same in the cognitive approach. You can get better, but you're limited. You're limited. Because you only have a certain amount of time, a certain amount of experiences, so you, you're starting lower, so you won't be able to reach where they are. Which, it's not completely wrong. I don't think that idea is completely wrong, because, I mean, if you're, for example, height, take physical height in the real world. If you're short, your ability to play in the NBA is extremely limited. It doesn't mean you can't be an incredibly good basketball player. But it does mean that there are other people that are likely going to be better than you because they are taller than you. But that's physical capabilities rather than cognitive abilities that you can develop because you can develop abilities that are very, very good. And I would imagine you get short players that are better than taller players because of their ability to develop skills. But yeah, that's that that that's a whole that's a whole other direction, um, for conversation. But yeah, so overall, I don't think being the smart or trying to isolate a smart or intelligent character is useful in any way. I think it's about matching the character's level of expertise with their behaviours. Because I would, again, I haven't played D& D, so I'm postulating, I'm guessing here, but if you have someone that is acting smarter than their character, i. e. they're, they're exhibiting levels of expertise that goes beyond what that character should be able to do, that should be able to behave, well, now there's a mismatch between what the character is actually saying, as in what the character's numbers are, and what they're behaving like, how you're acting like the character. But that's a disconnect between you and the character you are playing. Yeah. Which I think is what he was talking about. Yes. Yeah. To a certain degree. Yeah. We just over intellectualized it, because I don't know. No, we, we, we, we To me, this is unpicking. You're unpicking the words, you're unpicking the communication and the language to try and grasp meaning from it, which is what we do. There is information in the world, specifying information, and we detect it, and we then use it. We're just being too smart. No, we're not. We're having a conversation, John. No, no, we just want to seem smart, that's what we want to do. I know you're being provocative and I know you're saying it to try and be sarcastic and just piss me off. So, I would fish slap you, but But because you're on a Zoom call and I can't, I'm just going to mooble. But the thing is, this is an interesting thing, because That is actually what people would, that is, that is a reaction that would probably happen. Oh yeah. And it, it, the fact that it goes there versus, no we're just talking about it, no you're just trying to, you're saying words to seem smart, but no I'm not! And it also goes back to kind of our past conversation with like, when we had that interview with, like, keep forgetting his name! Yes, I think so. Actually, both Scott and it was Aidan, wasn't it? I was going to say Aidan. Yeah, um, I remember that only because of my stuff. Uh, but when we were having a conversation with Scott, often I just stepped back and the assumption was I wasn't smart enough to engage in the conversation. Because the assumption that I had for such a long time, and I'm, you know, it, it, because you've been in this world longer than me, you have higher expertise and you know things that I just possibly can't know, because, you know, it's all indirectly perceived, not directly perceived. Um, And it's, and it was interesting to go, oh wait, hang on a minute. It's in, it's in my long term memory storage. Exactly! You've just stored so much of it, and I could never, I could never store as much as you. Oh yeah, yeah, of course, of course you can't. It's because I'm autistic, so I can't. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, you've got a limited, you've got a limited working memory capacity and storage and duration and all the processing and storage stuff is limited to you because you're neurodiverse. Sarcasm? Yeah. Right. That is the, that is the, I think that was one of the things that I was taught, thinking about when we were writing this thing that we're writing. Of like that whole, you, if when you follow the traditional approach, it's like, well, you're just, you're limited, you're just limited, you have no control, you can't fix it, so all you have to do is, is come up with solutions for your little shortcomings and sit over there, and I'm, and, and that is because I was, I don't know, kind of, I was writing it in between both the article we're writing together and also my own, of like, the, the, the cognitive approach, traditional approach, is just like, you're fucked. That's it. Like, It's not. This is one of, this is one of the things that I'm writing about, uh, related to the Cognitive Load Theory article, is that there is, there is a difference between the science and the movement. Because the science doesn't say your fact. The science has explanations. Albeit they have unsolvable problems at the end of them, which is where I struggle, but there are explanations. There are ways to get around the struggles and the issues. But, that is heavily ingrained in literature, it's buried in jargon, it's very difficult to wrap your head around, especially when you're trying to apply it to practice. Because it's so theoretical, because it's unsolvable, a lot of the problems, But when you look at the movements that discuss these sorts of things, they are very much like the fitness fads, and they go, hey, look, there was this article that said you have this limited capacity, and you can't do this. I'm like, no, rubbish, that's not what the capacity means. That's not what it suggests, and we can't measure it, and the items you're talking about are so impractical to use in practice that it's just dumb. Bullshit. And then you move into, and that's the same with the productivity movement. Yeah, but it's a movement. It's, it's, it's the movement itself that just says, well, you're, you're limited, so sorry, you have to work around with all these really complicated things, or you just have to do less. And that's where the mis, misinterpretation, the Lazy, essentially. The lazy research comes into building up assumptions around how you should or shouldn't work, or should or shouldn't behave. And the laziness is where the danger comes in. And this is where I really don't like, for those that aren't familiar already, I don't like, um, people that aren't transparent in their research, and they're not rigorous in the explanations that they give. If they are vague and don't give context and can't explain why, not just with emotional words, I feel like this and I feel like that. Why? Give me a rationale. Give me some reason behind it. If you can't do that, shut up. I'm not saying, I'm not saying your feelings are irrelevant. What I'm saying is, if you have a feeling, that you're feeling in a certain way, That's not a cause. That's a correlation. Correlations are not causes. Yeah. What is the evidence? What's the rationale? And I'm not saying, oh, everything needs to be evidence based because then we'd have the whole problem with, oh, this is evidence based! Yeah, but the evidence is so thin, you might as well not have it. This is where I think it links quite well, actually. The words that we use, the jargons we use, and this idea about being smart and intelligent relating to reading is just silly. Yeah. It's silly. Are we skipping a point and going to three and then going back to two? Sounds like we are. No, so, where I was reading, like, where I was reading the reading for writing, you need to read to be able to write, yeah? Why, why separate those things? And if we're looking at the jargon, you need to be able to read to write. No, no, you need to be able to communicate to write. Because the feelings, which is what I was talking about a second ago, the feelings, you can feel something and you can then write about it. Okay. So you don't need to read to write about it at all, because you have an experience, and you've communicated with other people, I would imagine, in your experience, you've spoken about it to someone. I feel like this. Oh, why do you feel like that? I don't know. So you've communicated in some way with another person, another organism, or maybe you've communicated within yourself, that is possible, you can talk to yourself, you can think. And so thinking. Leads to writing, because writing is communicating. It's experiences. Why we separate those things, I don't know. They are skills, reading and writing, yes, but they are so discreet that I don't see the benefit in separating them. It's because we have to have an input first. I mean, that is it though, like, I'm being facetious, but that's the thing, it's so horrifically ingrained, it's indoctrinated into the way we think of like, oh, we have to have an input, it has to be processed, and then we output something, but, but, it's just so It's like a poison! Because that's what it is, when I see that, reading is the input, and then, We take this input in, and I suppose you could say writing is the processing to the output. Which is the article, the Twitter post, the thread, whatever. Which is the article that you create, so you write to process the information. It's like the, the, it's like journaling, it's the same thing. It's like your weekly, like, planning, and your thingying, and your doing, and your whatever. It's like, it's because something comes in, it is processed, and it comes out. And, and so that's, because that is the assumption, that's all there is. It's like, you have to read first, because that's how you get stuff in your head, and then you have to write it to process it. Because we are incapable of just directly taking in that information, or directly perceiving what's going on. No, we have to process it, we have to spend some time translating it, and, and making it work, and making it count, and making it matter, and putting pieces together. And then, then you have something to show for it afterwards, because obviously, all of this is being done in your head, so obviously it doesn't mean anything, until you put something out in the world. I think there's an interesting conversation to be had around not necessarily the direct and indirect comparison here when it comes to inputting information, but where the input Is, like, what it is. Because, yes, obviously, direct and indirect perception is involved here, but we're talking about stimulation when we're talking about visual perception, and when we're talking about the other perceptions, percepting, Percepting, More perceiving? Percepting? Perceiving organs, we'll go with that. Um, if we're directly perceiving, we are a perceptual system. If we're indirectly perceiving, then you would argue that there are perception organs, like, we have the ears, we have the eyes, rather than a perceiving system. So the information, the stimulation itself, would be the input. Which, yes, we need to have an input. But I think the conversation for me is about what we're doing, are we detecting it, which is directly what we're doing, we're detecting information, and then we're then using it, or are we interpreting it? That's where the conversation is to me, not necessarily the indirection, the direct, the detection of, or interpretation of. Because Interpretation means, well, we need processing. Detection means we don't need processing, which is where I think you're, you're getting at with the input. And it's, it's, it's also like, I'm just thinking about when, when not, because this is what I've been thinking so much about, because that is the space that I'm in with the productivity and the organization and the doing and the this and the that. And So much of it is about if you, uh, detect less, it's better. Like, you must have less. And then, and that's the problem. Because when you detect less, there's less. There's less there to work from, and then you have to try and guess. The assumption is you're always guessing, versus directly perceiving what is there. It's, it's there. These are the things that are happening in my life right now. My partner is going to a doctor's appointment. My kid is going to school. Kids are doing this, I have um, an article to write, I need to draw up the map for, like I am directly seeing everything that's around me, but if you follow the traditional approach it's like no no no no no no no no no no, it's too much, no no no no no no no no, none of it, you must detect less, you must perceive less, well detect less is not the right word, but Yeah, you can't have that much. It's not possible. Our brains are limited to capacity, so you must have less. And so now, you need to try and predict and guess what's it you have to guess. You you've helped me make connect some dots here. Oh, good. Well, make sure you read them. Yeah. Are you going to write about it? I already have, uh, I already have written about it, but this, and this is why reading and writing don't separate them because it's the same process. It's just thinking, um, what the, the dots that I've just connected is the inside of the, uh, Directing or detecting information theories. You look at information and detecting information. When we detect information, from the traditional approaches, we have a central executive, we have a puppet master. And there are degrees of freedom. There are so many things that they can control. And the idea is that the more things we add to it, the harder it is to control, which is why we need to reduce the number, whatever it is. But what we've seen and has been proven multiple times within the perception and action research is that when you add things, it doesn't always work. make it harder. In actual fact, variability can make it easier, which is why Jermaine Lode was brought into cognitive load theory, because variability was added, and oh no, that's a negative thing. Oh, actually, it turns out that it's useful. So Jermaine Lode was added to try and counteract the, oh no, there isn't, there's also a adding that isn't too much. So there's, there's got to be somewhere that adding isn't bad. But when you look at it. other areas of perception and perceptual research, when you sway and you move, your postural sway naturally, you don't want to stop it. when pointing a laser at a screen. If you point a laser at a screen and you want to keep it in the same place, you want to keep the postural variation. So you want to keep the movement. Why would you want to keep movement if you want to hold something still? Because nothing is really still. It's always moving. And it's the same, I don't know whether you've done shooting before, but when you're shooting something, you don't want to try and point and aim at one position because you're always moving. What you want to do is move from. slightly to the left, move over, and then pull the trigger when you get to that point. That, that's how you aim, like, for me, that's how I was taught to hit the bullseye, which I was pretty good at shooting before I lost my eyesight. But I could hit a 10, 9 out of 10, well, it was 10 times, 8 and a half ish out of 10 times with a, uh, an airsoft rifle, and I never held the point at the bullseye. I always aimed to the 8, and then moved slowly till I got to the 10, and then pulled the trigger. So, the movement, the added variability, the added sway helped, the added information helped with being able to refine my skill. So, actually, taking things away can make it harder. And that is the experience of, of, of, well, my clients, because that's the ones I can talk about, and me, it's like, I kept myself trying to take everything away and taking stuff out and moving stuff, and then basically, the other pieces were like, no, actually, I kind of need you right now. It's literally like, no, this is too important to ignore. So, you're gonna be dragged anywhere, and then, oh, I'm procrastinating, I'm distracted, I'm this, I'm that, I'm unfocused, I'm on this, and I'm on that, and it, one thing that I've done, it, this week, myself, was like, kind of, really focusing down on just putting stuff in my calendar, and then when they're in my calendar, I look at it, and I just do it, and it, the difference, of like, just going, cool, here's what I'm working on, awesome, oh, there's some stuff here, oh, I'll put that down here, And just, instead of trying to focus and have time blocks that are overly focused on this thing or that thing, it was so much more interesting because I had that space to be able to go, Ah. Here's this. Here's that. Do I want to do this? Do I want to do that? Whereabouts am I going? And it allowed me to kind of pull stuff forward as I was directly seeing it, versus just trying to guess, just trying to predict what I wanted to do. It was instead, I saw something It was there. I saw another thing, or perceived another thing, to be more accurate. I perceived this, and this, and this, and it wasn't about not doing it, because I can't not do it, because it's there. Because I am perceiving it, directly. It is not blowing my attention. It is there, because I can't not do it. You said something pulling my attention. This is where I feel the ecological approach and terminology can get very frustrating, because technically, technically speaking, when we think about attractors, It, it, it is pulling your attention, like you, you are attracted to things. And, uh, some people talk about affordances as invitations as well. Uh, yes, there are opportunities for behavior, but some affordances are invitations that you take, whether you take which one you take is therefore up to the individual. And, uh, one, one example I heard recently is when you go to a shop and you have the stairs or you have the escalator, which one do you take? Well, the affordance of both is there. The opportunity to go up the stairs or the escalator, they're both there. The older person, the heavier person, the less fit person, the person that struggles moving or has less energy for whatever reason will likely take the escalator. Or those that don't want to expend energy will likely take the escalator. Those that are quite happy to go up the stairs will go up the stairs. I like going upstairs. I mean, I run up the stairs, I find it fun. So I'll run like two or three steps at a time, just fly up the stairs, and beat everyone on the escalator, because that's just sitting there plodding along. But the affordances are somewhat in invitations, if they are perceived. Because yes, affordances exist without you perceiving them, but they don't exist to the observer unless they've been perceived. So the information is always there, and the affordance is always there, but the observer may not perceive the affordance if they haven't observed the information, obviously, uh, because if you're not in the room then you can't, you can't be perceiving an affordance unless your perceptual, unless your perceptual system is actually perceiving the thing, because if you're not in the room you can't perceive it, obviously, hopefully that was fairly obvious. Um, so when, when I think about affordances and them as Invitations, as well as opportunities for behaviour, um, and the invitations, some being more attractive than others. I'm now looking at all of the information that I am avai that's available to me, I guess I would say? Mm. I'm trying to work it out myself, what is the words? Like, it's available, because it it's not unavailable, it is there. The opportunities for behaviour are there. And I think this is where Because we're talking about a current future, we're not talking about a snapshot in time, we're talking about a current future. The ideas of time need to be shifted. The way we speak with relation to time needs to be shifted, rather than this, I have this affordance. No, no, you don't have an affordance, you perceive one. Well, having an affordance, because it's continuous. Exactly. You can perceive opportunities for behaviour, you can perceive an affordance, but you can't have an affordance. So when I think about the reading and the writing, oh, reading helps you write. No, you could always write beforehand. You don't, you don't need to read to write. You could always write, which is what we were talking about earlier about the feelings. You can feel something and communicate with something and still write. So, the affordance of writing is always there. As long as you have the skills to do the thing, of course, action capabilities to perform writing, i. e. you're not like a toddler that hasn't learned how to Create symbols with a pen or a pencil, or a crayon or a chalk or whatever. As long as you can write, to some extent, with action capabilities, or, if it is just pushing buttons on a keyboard, like, representing symbols that can then be consumed as information, specifying information, in the form of letters, great. But you can do that. And if you can do that, you don't need to read to write. Does reading help you write? Maybe. Okay. Because you can read some absolute rubbish. So, moving on to what, uh, David's talking about, about your third point, not, not reading enough. Enough what? Yeah. We mentioned last week about the Bible. If I'm, if I'm writing about football, or trampoline, or handball, or basketball, or AI, how is reading the Bible going to help me write about those things? There may be some abstract link you could create there. But I think reading sports science articles is going to be more applicable. Reading what? And if we're reading sports science articles, who are they from? How, how, how high is their integrity? Are they transparent about the work that they're doing? Because academic articles obviously have their own limitations and flaws. Is it better to actually talk to one of them rather than read their work? Because when you read someone's work that they published in 2012, maybe their opinion is different now in 2024. That is 12 years, that's over a decade. And a lot of academic papers are at least a year, two years old, if you've got them like recent. And most of the time the thinking that happened to create those papers happens six months before that. So when you read an article, you're likely reading two year old information. So is it better to actually speak to the person rather than read it? I would argue yes, but that's communication. That's levels of communication throughout varying timespans. They're, they're, they're manifold. To bring in a lovely term from mathematics that is just Yuck. But, but, it's a manifold. It's, it's, it's a tensor. It's a tensor vector, you know? You know? Where you have multiple John's like, what the Basically, lots of things interacting simultaneously. Right, cool, you can just say that. When you have lots of things interacting simultaneously, it's extremely complicated to be able to isolate one of those things and say that thing is the cause, because there's multi causality in the way the world works, I believe. And when we're looking at not enough reading, not enough communicating, how do you communicate? Well, loads of ways. Yeah, when you're communicating, are you communicating now or in the future or in the past? Yes. Yes What what I do now is Related to the past related to the future or current future and is the present because it's currently what is happening But where you put those little those little lines those Markov blankets to use a Carl Friston term Where you put those little barriers is entirely up to you Yes When is the past? Is that one second, five seconds, ten seconds, a year? When's the future? And then when we go back through and look at these, are we in the past now? Are we In the future. Hello. Well, I'm sure we would say we are talking about past words. Yeah. Have we stored all of those past words in our long term memory? Hell no. Not a chance. I'll come back and go, Oh, I said that. I didn't realise I said that. Even just going through the clips that I've started, that we've started pulling together, I'm like, Oh, that's not a bad thing. And this is where communicating, I think is a better term to use than reading or writing. And I know it sounds generalized. Communicating more helps with developing expertise because communicating is part of experience, which again, comes back to the fundamental, well, the fundamentals of learning, experience. practice stuff. Like, when we, when we start narrowing down what we do, how we do it, bringing in techniques, I think that's where we start to lose. Applicability, but it's what people want to do. People want to narrow things down to make things simpler, but making things simpler is, yeah. That goes back to the entire assumption that many people are working from, is the only solution is less. The only opportunity is less, because if we have less, we can focus more. I have never been. I've never felt but felt so focused and I'm doing way more. I was gonna say, you're writing two articles. You're doing how many d campaigns? I'm writing two articles at once. I'm running four d and d campaigns. I'm like podcast, I doing, doing clips, doing some editing. Like I am doing more now than I have in the last. I don't know how many years writing a sales page, doing my sales page, coaching my client. Like all of the pieces that I'm doing right now is more than I've ever done. And that's because I've got more now, not less. So how, how does that make any, instead of spending all of my time trying to do less, I, instead of trying to limit myself on what I can do, I went, okay, how much can I do? And that's literally what I've done. I've gone, how much can I do? That's, that's embracing the variability. And just seeing how much, and I'm enjoying it so much more. I am feeling fulfilled because I'm writing articles, I'm designing D& D campaigns, I'm playing with these things, I'm doing all of the things that I want to do, and I can do every single one of those things. Is it fast? Uh, I suppose not. If I focused on one thing at a time, I might have completed it quicker. No, I heck wouldn't. I would have distracted myself and have gone and done something else, or looked at something else, or did this, or did that, and went all over the place. Am I doing more than one thing at a time? Yes and no. This, this, again, variability. Embrace variability. We are divergent by design. We, we, we should embrace that. Yeah, and it's not, and, and that's, that's the thing, and it's interesting, because if we, if we use some labels that they attribute to themselves, like people with Social labels. Yeah, social labels of neurodiversity, autism, ADHD, like, the, the default thing is that, well, I just do loads of things, and I shouldn't do loads of things. I'm like, no, no, no, go do it. Go on, try it. I dare you. Yeah. I dare you, do more. Go on, see what happens. I think the I think the fight back there would be, oh no, that's hustle culture, and that will lead to burnout. How would you respond? Okay, cool. Um, okay. One. I'm doing more. I'm not burnt out. Oh, make sure you're not doing too I'm not. I'm not doing too much. I'm good. How do you know you're good? Because I have more energy, and when I want to stop, I stop. It's really hard to fight a corner that you don't agree with. I I I I I just I do lots of things until I don't want to do that thing. When I'm done, I'm done. And now I have a couple of things this week I've not done. Because I was tired. Because my ear was playing up so I was not at f Peak health, so I just stopped. Just periodization. It is periodization! I can't say that because people are like, oh, what's that? No, but this is what I mean. Like, when, when I hear lots of the con When I said I don't like fighting the corner that I don't agree with, like, when people say you're going to get burnt out, I'm like, no, you're going to get burnt out if you're not responsible with your time. If you don't periodize your time and your energy, then yeah, you're going to get burnt out. But people will naturally periodize their time and energy unless told not to. Which is what everyone is told to do. Which in the neurodiverse space, that is exactly what the things are. It's do less, do I literally watch this in every day. In a Facebook group with someone who's now picked up my client and is now achieving more than they ever have. And is actually, although not, although not at their peak health, is still doing way more than they've done in a long time because they've stopped trying to do less. And all everyone was like, oh, you just need to, you're, you're over committed. You're over, commit to less. No, do not commit to less. I think this conflates burnout and bore out. Yeah. People try and avoid burnout, but end up pushing bore out, and I don't even know if they're acknowledg I don't even know if they acknowledge that. You can be, you can be too bored, and for most people, if you're doing one thing, you get bored. Yeah. I'm not saying bored as in, I don't know what to do, I mean, bored as in, I can't do this anymore because it's frustrating me. Mm, we em embrace variability. We do not stand there and point our laser without moving. We move. So move. You have to spend energy not to move. So spending energy not to do other things is where you get bore out and burnout. It's where you want to be doing something else, but you're spending energy to try and do the same thing because your focus and flow and fuck off. And it's like, it was really fun, I, I, as I'm just thinking back to my last week, where I've had a rough week, I've, my health has not been as good as it, my energy levels are not the same as they usually are, so all I had to do was just move every single one of my two hour slots to an hour and a half. I want to make a t shirt that says embrace variability. Ah, let's do that. Embrace variability, just across the I like it. I like that. I'd like that. Or a little logo there, you know? I'm gonna make that a meme. Let's make that a meme and then post it everywhere. But I think, I think that is one of the, one of the underpinning principles. that comes from the ecological approach when you apply things to practice. Yes, you've got the constraints led approach and direct perception and bifurcations in practice and all the other jargon, but at the end of the day, I think it's embracing variability because we are divergent by design. Right, let's talk about productivity, not feeling productive, and flow states and stuff. Oh, what else did you want to say? It's just, it's quite exciting to, like I know it's exciting, that's why I've spent the last, like, six years researching this stuff. I'm just like, when you just, to get, I'm gonna pull back to what I just said, because for us, it's so simple now, but the act of just going, okay, cool, a two hour slot of time where I'm focused, that's what I normally do, when I, when I'm, when I'm doing well and everything is aligned and the stars are perfect, as they say. I could do two hours of work, and then I need to step away for a bit. But I couldn't this week. This week was a rough week. So I moved it down to an hour and a half. Because I kept trying to do two hours, and I could see I was just losing my focus. I just was not able to engage in what I was doing. So I could either sit there, force myself, because I've got to focus, I've got to get this done. Or, alternatively Interesting. So what do you do in that other half an hour? Move on to something else, go get a cup of tea. So why make the slots smaller? Uh, because the assumption that I had Which I'm noticing, immediately, is that I can't have a cup of tea during that slot. And I have to focus practice, which was an assumption that I made. Which I realised and recognised immediately, and I'm like, yeah, fuck that, let's keep it to ours. Because, just because the slot's there doesn't mean you have to fill the slot. That's true. It's a two hour slot, it doesn't mean you've got to do the thing. And this is where I think, again, about the sports coaching sessions. Your session may start, like, when you turn up, your session may be meant to start on the hour, say, 1 o'clock. But maybe you get there early because your parents, like, whizzed through traffic, or they've got to be off somewhere and you turn up 15 minutes early. Well, just start session early, get a ball and kick it in the goal, or get on the trampoline and do some back bounces or whatever. So start early. Or, oh no, I'm stuck in traffic, I'll turn up late, start the session five minutes late. Okay, jump in then. You get halfway through the session, everyone's completely shattered. Okay, drinks break, we're gonna, we're gonna sit down and have a drinks break. So you sit down for five minutes and then everyone starts talking about the match at the weekend. Okay, we sat here for 10 minutes, great. It's still a football session. You just start a little bit beforehand or a little bit after, and you take breaks in the middle that you feel are relevant, but it's still the time for the football. What you do in the football or the trampoline or the handball or whatever it is that you're writing or reading, it's still that, that's the session block. That is how the Those people that are doing the practice work, it's just a block, a block of time to do this thing, if you want to do the thing, do the thing, if you don't, don't, but that's when you're meant to be doing the thing. Mm, yeah. So I personally wouldn't have Shrunk it to an hour thirty, because now you have thirty minutes you can potentially dump something else in. Yeah. Because you look at it and go, Oh! I got half an hour there, I could do that thing over there, but then that half an hour thing might turn into an hour thing, and now your two hour slot's turned into an hour slot, where you're fuffing around trying to go, Oh, what am I doing again? Yeah, it's not useful. For me, anyway. Yeah. I like having the container. Container? I like the I like having that I I've enjoyed having the two hour containers. They just, they've been nice. Because they take all of the, they take all of the planning out of it. Which sounds weird. You can't faff and sit there going, I'm going to do this one here and that one there. It's just, boom, done. And it was nice because I remade my calendars. I kind of tweaked everything by having those projects that you do with the projects on the top. Um, and I brought back in the separate calendars for my D& D campaigns. Because originally I combined them all into a Dungeons Dragons, like, task list. But that was not working. So I was like, I separated them out and, and that, just that little bit of separation is like, oh cool, so this campaign is coming up in, in two weeks time, so here's a block that I'm going to do a little bit of this or a little bit of that. And one of the assumptions that I had made is that I could only do D& D on a weekend because that's not work. But then I'm like, yeah, but I've got all of this time here. But actually I've done all of my work, I've done all of these pieces, like I've, the sales page, I can't do any more on that sales page. I could force myself to sit for another two hours, but will I actually get it any further? No, not really, because I'm done now, because writing a sales page is frustrating. I'm frustrated now. I don't want to write a sales page. I've been speaking. And then I won't finish the sales page, because I've tried to force myself to sit there and do my sales page. Then I will hate the sales page and not want to use that sales page. Then I will not sell the And the thing is, at the day, I want to make money. Which is part of what I need to do. So, I need to do the sales page, yes, but do I need to have it done in, will an extra hour on the sales page help? No, because I'm not there right now. It's such a, it's stupidly simple, and it works. It's simple, yes, but it's built from assumptions that are different from a lot of other people's assumptions, which is why I think It works, because it embraces, obviously it embraces variability, but it embraces the natural ways in which we develop and we learn because that's how nature is. It's variable, it's dynamic, it's changing, it's evolving, it's a manifold structure. Yeah, it's not as boxed, as constrained, as limited as people try and make it when they introduce techniques. My technique, if there is one, is is to not have one. Like, no, just do the thing. It's simple as. And when it comes to the focus, I think it's the same thing. Referring to our last point, the tweet was about focus and them just going, I'm going to do this thing. I'm not going to try and tick stuff off. I'm not going to plan granularly out. I'm not going to, no, I'm not going to do the, do the productive thing. I'm just going to do the thing and I'm more productive. And I think that's because it's. You're doing the practice. You're embracing variability and doing the practice and working in whatever it is you've told yourself to do, rather than trying to tick boxes of things you need to get done because the part is different from the whole. Doing different parts doesn't necessarily mean you're going to finish with the whole. Whereas if you work on the whole, You will get the parts that need to be done, done. And you're just sitting there nodding. Yeah, I just agree. It's that experience of just doing the thing. And I've had clients come back and go, Oh, I haven't had time to look at XYZ because I've been doing this. And I'm like, Okay, cool. That's good then. I want you to do this thing. Like, sure, would it make things go faster? Not really, because you wouldn't be able to do it anyway. I reckon there's an element of permission that people potentially lack when they don't follow an ecological approach. Because the social constraints that have been added to the way people behave bring this feeling of, this isn't what I should be doing according to what I'm reading online, what I'm seeing communicated to me, I don't think I should be doing this. So when they do it, they almost feel like they're going to get told off by those that are trying to constrain, uh, how they should behave. That is something my clients have said was the permission element. That's the, yeah, so it's, it's like, I did this thing, sorry. So it's sort of like they admit either to you or to whoever. I'm sorry I did this thing sort of thing, but you don't need permission to be sorry that you're doing worth doing work great And I've seen it as well and some of the people that I've worked with they say oh, I I didn't use tags Because it just felt really cluttered. I'm like, yeah, I'm the same. Oh good. I'm glad it's not just and I'm like You know, you don't have to hide away that you don't want to use something just don't use it Everyone works differently, everyone has preferences, and it will change as you work with something. And I don't think, I don't think you need permission to work. But it feels like some people are saying that you need permission to work, which is, which is really odd. It's an experience that I think I'm going to have to explore a little bit more, uh, with some other people, like communication between other people. Because I have not had that experience since. adopting the ecological approach. I don't need permission to do anything. I just do it. And I feel like whether they know it or not, a lot of entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs anyway, embrace that. If I want to do something, I'll do it. I'm going to embrace that. I'm just going to try this thing. I'm going to learn this thing. I want to learn this thing. I'm going to go do this thing. Yeah. And that's also the experience of the quote unquote neurodiverse community of people. They just, they're like, Oh, I get distracted because I was doing this. I'm like, okay, fine, cool, good. What'd you get? What'd you learn? Oh, yeah, I found out about this thing, and then this thing, and this thing. I said, do you know about this thing? And how this thing links to this thing, and this thing and they're like, yeah, that's really interesting. I'm like, yeah, cool. Do you want to do your work now? Yeah! Yeah. Yes. To do a John thing. Yes, I agree. Because it's true! Because that's, that's the sad fact, is when you The whole thing with neurodiversity is you don't ascribe to the traditional, whatever, what society says. You see it differently. Mm. Mm. Whatever that means. Whatever that may mean, but that, that's Okay, cool. Then go see it differently. Stop trying to turn yourself into the people that you say are bad and hurt you and harm you and, and I don't even know how, like, how do you turn yourself into someone else? I don't know. I don't know how that's possible. Well that's the, that's what people try to do. They try to turn themselves into that. But I don't know how you would go about doing that. You can't. That's the problem. That is the issue here. They try to turn themselves into someone they're not. But what are they trying to do? That's the bit I'm getting at. They're trying to behave like someone else. It's a behaviour. It's like, I want to behave it's just like a copycat. Yeah, they copy someone else because they feel that they are better, because they are better and they are not broken, and because of the assumptions that are had around what we should and shouldn't be doing, instead of going, well, and that's why people are like, wait, what? Whenever I say, well, what if what you're doing is okay? Yeah, but I'm not getting stuff done. Okay, well, that's a different thing. That's not necessarily saying that what you're doing is wrong. How can you use what you have? To do the things you want to. Okay, so what do you want to do? Oh, well, I don't know. I said, okay. Are you sure you don't know or are you scared? Because that's the first, whenever someone says I don't know these days, I'm like, Okay. No, I really don't know. I was like, no, I really don't know. Okay, let me just sit in silence. So you, because you will immediately, because that's the thing, we will immediately start thinking about the question and getting the answers. I don't know is often a failsafe that we learn to give in school when we don't want to fail because we're scared of failure. I don't know, yes you do, you just don't want to admit, or you don't want to guess, you don't want to try and work out, you don't want to do any work. Yeah. It's When I was, uh, story time, when I was coaching little kids football, I used to ask those sorts of questions. And I, when, when I first started working with the, I call them the trouble group because it was essentially a group of kids that, you know, None of the other coaches wanted. So, I, I, I think I've told this, uh, told you about this group before. I had, they were like six to seven years old. I had twins in there, I had, I had two pairs of twins. I had dyslexic, dyspraxic, autistic kids, all in one group. And they all frustrated one another, and it was, it was a troublesome group. Like, if you didn't manage them well, I'm not saying told them what to do, I'm saying managed them well, managed their affordances and what they wanted to do and their needs, then Yes, it would just be absolute chaos, because the twins would kill each other, or try to kill each other, the autistic kids would get frustrated by the, uh, by the ADHD kid, because the autistic kid, like, wanted everything in lines. The ADHD kid's just, like, kicking everything everywhere because it's fun. And the dyspraxic kid keeps messing up. And one of the autistic kids didn't like people making mistakes, but obviously he's dyspraxic, so he makes mistakes. So literally everyone was just frustrating everyone else. And when I asked this group a question, it was always an open question. Even though Most of them said, I don't know, immediately. I didn't not give an answer, but there was always someone that was doing something, or trying to figure something out. Whether it was the autistic kid sitting there, and, I would, I would recognize that they would be looking at me when I'm talking. I ask the question, and then they look, somewhere else. Often to the distance, or the floor, or at something. So I knew they were thinking about the question. If they carried on looking at me, They hadn't engaged in the question. The ADHD kid, if I asked a question, they would immediately start moving. Whether it's they're moving their hands, they're moving their feet, because they're trying to figure out the problem. If they just sat there staring at me, I knew they didn't care. Or if they were just staring at the sun, or the sky, or something, not moving and fidgeting, I knew they didn't care. So when I heard the, I don't know, from any of those people, because I could recognize that they were thinking about it, I would say, okay, I would ask them the same question, but say, How would you approach this? And then they would talk about, I assume, what they were thinking about. So they did know and that's me as the educator recognizing how people interact when they start thinking about something because everyone's going to interact differently. But when I saw other, one of the other coaches do the same thing and the kids came back with, I don't know, he then went off and started ranting about, yes, you do know we've done this before. I taught you this last week, blah. And I'm like, No, you're an idiot. Yes, they are aware, but you're shouting at them for saying, I don't know. And then you give them the answer afterwards. All that's doing is frustrating all of them and winding them all up, which when you then do the session afterwards, they start messing around because they're frustrated. And it was so frustrating because it's, it's the communication between the educator and the learner. And if you don't recognize different ways of people answering questions, it doesn't have to be with words. It can be with actions or inactions. Yeah. Very small, little, small story time rant there. But yeah, I, I wish coaches, teachers, educators, even educators online, recognize that people respond in different ways and saying, I don't know, isn't the only way people communicate, I don't know, is a a is a common thing in our house. I'm curious why. Dunno. I enjoyed that. The idea is that I enjoyed that way too much. There is a fear of failure. Like, it's deep rooted in every single one of us. One of the things that I've been I think it's in everyone, but yeah. Right, in everyone, yeah. But I can only talk about my experience and the experience of people who I'm talking to. But it's like, that fear, I don't know. It's like, okay. And one of the things that I've been I've been trying to do is, instead of just saying I don't know, is to Talk it out loud. And that was the words I used with Aidan. I was like, he goes, I don't know. Okay, talk it out loud. What do you think? What could it be? I was like, what could it be? That's what I told you. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I realized that was all I needed was just to, it's that permission thing. I'm like, I started using it with my clients. So I was like, okay, what could it be? What, what, what do you think? Talk to, share, because I can see. I love how I'm pointing at my brain as if that's how it happens. Like, I am thinking! Well, the brain is involved, so it does make sense to point to your brain. It's just not entirely involved. I am thinking. I am thinking about these things. Okay, cool. Because that is probably the most intrigued I ever am, is when someone is thinking and, and, and talking out loud. And I honestly, I can't, how long I assumed that you just had all this information ready for me. And, and it was, I think it was when you Are you talking about me? Yeah, okay, like in one of the sessions where you were like, oh, I'm just, I'm just thinking out loud. I'm just guessing as I go and I'm like, interesting, you don't sound like it. And I remember we were watching one of the clips and you were like, oh, I've got a spot here. And then I watched one of the other clips where I was just thinking out loud, and I'm like, oh, I sound like, and you yourself went, you sound like an ecological psychologist there, and I'm like, yeah, I do, don't I? But I was just making this shit up as I was talking. I need to stop trying! But that's, that's what we do. When we're talking we don't have, like, a loan of intelligence. No one, there isn't a robot that has said, okay, right, now you're going to say these words and no, you're generating trach, blah blah body stuff. Like you create, yeah, you create vibrations. And those vibrations are communicating with other organisms through energy, blah, blah, blah, specifying information, all the direct stuff, but communication. It's just the current future. You generate the information if you say something that is wrong or that you think might be wrong when you hear it because you're communicating with yourself because that's what talking is. You're communicating with yourself. You're using different energy systems to create an experience and you recognize, you know what, I don't agree with that actually. I think I'm going to say this thing instead. That, that is what experience is. That's what learning is. That's what communicating is. So when people think, oh, you have the answers already. No, I didn't go to my long term memory store and go, right, that's the answer for this question. No, because the question has never happened before. I don't have an answer stored in my brain because this question has never happened before. And I don't have this experience before. So I can't have the answer. I'm creating the answer. Embrace the variation. I love that. Embrace the variability. Yeah, I mean that's what we should do. Embrace the variability of the natural world. Yeah, everything is happening. Oh really? I know, right? Crazy. Right, is there anything else you'd like to add before we close it out? No, all good. Right, see you next week then.