In Bits & Pieces, I share some brief insights, sparks of creativity and interesting lessons that may or may not constitute further, more elaborate work. Below you can read the most recent ones!
Feeling profile: regret
A resistance to what has happened. A constant revisioning of how it should have been, to convince the mind it was not so. An unbreakable stone, a pillar of unfathomable authority: the past is the only thing that’s certain, even though it doesn’t exist.
Oh how we would like to change something that doesn’t matter, a passing of events on black and white.
Powerless, aimless, like a boat carried on by a river, just now realising it took a wrong turn. A pointless paddling against the current, failing to look ahead at the decisions yet to be made.
The realisation is paralysing, the physical realisation of the difinitiveness of time.
Why would we change it? To become someone else than we currently are? Who would we be if we could undo and redo indefinitely? Would we be ourselves, or someone else?
We so desparately reach for an unmovable object, again and again, even though we know, and deep inside we understand, there is no changing what has happened. Who is the one that reaches?
An inner conflict between two ‘usses’ inside. The one who knows and the one unwilling to surrender. The one that looks forward and the one desperately paddling toward the passing behind. The wise and the fool? Perhaps.
This is what it feels like, two entities steering the same boat. The one that knows and the one that still needs to accept it. A steerlessness that remains until the current carries the turn out of sight.
Behaviour and resources in the model of the drives
Yesterday I integrated the feedback mechanisms that tie the aggressive drive, generative drive and pleasure drives together. We saw that while pleasure and agency can reinforce generative behaviour, both have a ‘short-circuit’-loop that can promote domineering or pleasure-seeking behaviour.
One important element (probably amongst some others that I missed) is that of resources. Resources can include actual resources, like paper, a platform to distribute a message, a network, someone doing a task for you, etc. but also inner resources, such as focus, energy, mental bandwidth…
All our behaviours require some of these resources, which in the diagram below is illustrated as a stock, rather than a variable. A stock signifies the accumulated amount or level of a resource at a specific moment, whereas a variable refers to any quantity within a system that can vary or be altered, without necessarily accumulating over time.
Anything related to resources in the model I have marked blue to keep the model somehow organised.
The behaviour can then lead to an increase in resources, i.e. opening the ‘valve’ that grows the resource stock. Think of the energy you might gain from an evening nap, or focus from going for a run.
I already said that all our behaviour requires resources, but that does not always means that the resource is consumed. To take the example of a nap again, the bed (resource) is not consumed but necessary. Time, however, is a resource that is lost.
To summarise: aggressive, pleasure-seeking, and generative behaviour all require resources, consume resources, and add resources to our resource stock. However, the kind of resource is rarely the same.
In the next post, I sill show how this model can help you to be more generative, both from a personal and professional point-of-view.
Next: How to be more productive by enabling your generative drive
Feedback loops and interactions between the aggressive, pleasure, and generative drive
Yesterday, we developed the basic structure of our mental model relating the aggressive, pleasure, and generative drive to generative or (when our generative drive is too low) destructive behaviour. Today, we will start to implement the first important feedback mechanisms that enable us to turn the ‘concept of the drives’ into a practically-applicable theory.
Before getting into this aspect of the model in more detail, I will make a small adjustment to our current diagram. Specifically, I will remove the links from domineering and pleasure-seeking behaviour to generative behaviour. This aspect will come back when we finalise the model tomorrow, albeit in a different form. After doing so, this is the qualitative diagram we end up with:
Similar to yesterday, I want to start by exploring the ‘aggression-side of the model.’ The motivation to do something comes, at least in my case, from the expectation that the thing I do leads to some kind of result, something that makes the effort worthwhile.
To add this aspect to the model we can integrate a new variable titled ‘generative output.’ When my generative behaviour leads to generative output, this gives me a sense of agency1. The feeling associated with the ability to have an impact on the world by doing things, directly corresponds to the aggressive drive. As such, we find our first reinforcing feedback loop:
[R1] empowerment: the reinforcing cycle through which the impact of ones actions motivate further action.
However, this sense of agency doesn’t need to come from generative output. Again, agency simply entails the feeling that your actions have a causal impact on the world. These actions can just as well be destructive. Consequently, we can connect this directly to the variable entailing domineering behaviour, yielding yet another reinforcing feedback loop.
[R2] over-aggression: the reinforcing cycle where a growth of the aggressive drive beyond the generative drive leads to destructive behaviour.
Looking again at the other side of the model—the pleasure-side—another reinforcing mechanism comes into play. Our brains are wired to crave things that are pleasurable, corresponding directly to the pleasure drive. Pleasure is a direct outcome of pleasure-seeking behaviour, but also emerges from generative behaviour by means of fulfillment. This is reflected in feedback loop R3 and R4 respectively.
[R3] hedonic reinforcement: the reinforcing, dopamine-fueled craving for pleasurable experiences.
[R4] fulfillment: the reinforcing cycle where the pleasurable feeling of doing something fulfilling motivates further generative behaviour.
Of course, we are leaving out many-many things here. The goal however is not to develop a complete overview of the human psyche, but merely to develop a model that is comprehensive enough to explain our behaviour (and help us change it) but simple enough to make sense.
Tho this end, there is one important aspect that I will add tomorrow.
Something I haven’t quite figured out is this: the pleasure drive and aggressive drive are modulated by the pleasure we experience and our sense of agency respectively. Is there also something that modulates the generative drive?
I cannot immediately think of something, except perhaps how the anticipation of doing something generative will lead to generative output and fulfillment. In some way, this translates to knowing what we want to do (knowing what fulfills us) and achieve (knowing what output will be most generative), and aligning our actions accordingly. This is exactly what we do when we develop our inner philosophy (or inner compass), as we do meticulously in an exercise described in my earlier work. If you are interested, you can find that exercise here.
Footnotes
- Sense of agency can be cognitively defined as the experience of having a causal impact on the world accompanied by a feeling of having control over one's actions. (from: Clinical Psychology Review, 2023)
How the aggressive, pleasure and generative drive fit together
In my previous post, I briefly introduced the three drives that govern our behaviour: the aggressive, pleasure, and generative drive. In this article I will explore how the generative drive—essential for productive behaviour—connects to the others.
To do so, I will make use of qualitative system dynamics modeling. I think this process is greatly intuitive, but if you feel you’re having difficulties interpreting the diagrams you can check out my article on reading qualitative system dynamics models here.
There are multiple pathways we can take to connect our drives, but I want to start with the aggressive drive and its interactions first.
In the previous article, we saw that our aggressive drive helps us put thoughts into action and make us do things in the world. We can say that the aggressive drive helps us to display generative behaviour.
However, we also saw that too much generative drive leads us to enforce our will on others and the environment: we become domineering. By neglecting others, our behaviour becomes destructive, rather than generative.
By using a comparative variable (aggression-dominance), we can integrate the above in the following diagram. You can see how the aggressive drive and generative drive directly contribute to generative behaviour, but also to destructive behaviour when the drives are out of balance.
We can follow a similar line of reasoning for the pleasure drive: when it gets too high, it leads to pleasure-seeking behaviour, such as checking your phone, eating chocolate, etc. While it does not manifest in the same way as domineering behaviour, pleasure-seeking behaviour can become destructive to ourselves.
When our pleasure drive is low, we become apathetic. We do not feel like doing anything, let alone something generative.
We can now see how the three drives fit together. We need the pleasure drive and aggressive drive to start doing things, but we need the generative drive to make sure these things are productive rather than the spawns of domineering or pleasure-seeking behaviour.
This model constitutes the core structure of the diagrams we will draw and explore in the following posts. For now, there are no feedback interactions, where a change in one of the model variable leads to a change in itself. This feedback aspect has tremendous explanatory power, and we will start exploring those tomorrow.
Next: Feedback loops and interactions between the aggressive, pleasure, and generative drive
Introduction to the pleasure, aggressive and generative drive
This article is inspired by a podcast2 with Andrew Huberman and Paul Conti. In the podcast, Dr. Conti talks about the three drives that seem to guide our behaviour: the pleasure drive, aggressive drive, and generative drive.
The aggressive drive is our drive for forward active engagement, to take agency and to do something. When our aggressive drive is diminished, we lack motivation, self-determination and forward movement. On the other hand, when our aggressive drive is too high, we enforce ourselves on others and our environment, potentially harming them in the process of doing so.
The pleasure drive is the push for all things pleasurable: friendship, comfort, safety, sex, relief from things that are unpleasant, etc. Too little of it makes us less likely to attain these things whereas too much can lead to overindulgence.
In the podcast show-notes, the generative drive is defined as “the desire to create, build, and contribute to the world in meaningful ways, and to appreciate the process of doing so. […] Generative drive thus represents not just potential, but actionable tendencies toward growth, learning, and creating goodness, both individually and socially.”3
In a way, the generative drive is what motivates us to be productive. But why is it that sometimes we can be productive for hours on end, whereas at other times we seem utterly unable to get started?
Dr. Conti explains that the balance among our drives is crucial: we require a sufficient amount of each, yet the aggressive and pleasure drives should not surpass the generative drive.
In the upcoming days, I will walk you through the process of modelling the (interactions between the) aggressive, pleasure and generative drive. Through the model, we will uncover powerful mechanisms to help us access our productive potential.
Next: How the aggressive, pleasure and generative drive fit together.
Footnotes
- Huberman Lab: How to Understand and Assess Your Mental Health
- what is generative drive? | Ask Huberman Lab
The best morning habit to slow down your mind
When I have a lot of things on my plate and no clear idea of when or how they are happening, I often wake up in a state of sheer panic. Still not fully awake to grasp it, my mind leaps from one thought to another, becoming more agitated with each unsettled thing that emerges.
Since it takes me some time to awake completely, my capacity to put a halt to this ‘panic ramble’ is limited. Needless to say, this isn’t necessarily the nicest way to wake up.
Over the past week, I’ve started to read about a chapter per day (10–20 minutes) of a book4 I had lingering near my bedside for months. Among all the habits I’ve sustained for a comparable time-span, this particular one has undoubtedly provided the greatest value for the effort required. Reflecting a little on the ‘why,’ here’s 5 things that make morning-reading so powerful.
Morning reading slows you down
This was the effect of morning reading that really impressed me the most. I am currently going through a rather turbulent phase, with the anxiety from my dreams frequently carrying over into my first waking hour. My mind is on overdrive, which does not sit well with my morning coffee.
Thoughts are not necessarily complete, comprehensive and sensible. This isn’t the case for what we read in a book: words follow each other in logical order, and each sentence is a rounded package with a clear beginning and end. Together, sentences make up paragraphs, chapters and ultimately a story-line.
By reading, we force our brain to slow down, to fall back into this story-rhythm. Vocalisation, where you ‘say’ the words in your head, ensures that we cannot rush forward and that we stay grounded with the pace of the text.
Morning reading shifts your focus away from anxious thoughts
Not only do we slow down our thoughts, we also change them. By occupying ourselves with a different story than the ramble of our mind, our mood changes. We activate different neurons in our brain: not the ones associated with the presentation we’ll have to give next week, but the ones located near the concepts, people, and things you are reading about. Sparking activity in these regions will set the stage for a more enjoyable day.
Morning reading breaks the 'rut of the working life'
Many of us plan our day such that we get up, prepare for work, go to work, get back from work, and only then go about with ‘our’ day. This creates a somewhat distressing impression that we only do what we want to do in the few hours that are left after work: we live to work, rather than the other way around. By reading in the morning, you break this pattern.
Here I’m assuming that you are reading a book for yourself; something you find interesting or enjoyable—something you read because you want to. Now, you start your day with something you want to do, rather than something you have to do.
It seems like a small change, reading for 10–20 minutes, but it can transform how you perceive everything else you do.
Morning reading brings your fresh ideas
The nice thing about reading in the morning is that whatever you read can be on your mind’s stand-by for the rest of the day. Particularly for non-fiction books, you don’t just get new ideas and insights, you will also have ample opportunity to connect it to anything and everything that the day might bring you.
Morning reading makes you... read?
This is a bit of a bonus, but a nice one nonetheless. As I mentioned, I started reading a book that was near my bedside for months (4, to be exact), triggering an ‘ah I should really find the time to read that’-though whenever I looked at it.
Going from 0 to reading 10–20 minutes a day, you will see your reading pile shrink. Or, if it doesn’t match your book-collecting pace, at least it will rid you of the guilt you might feel from not reading at all.
To me, this is a sizable list of benefits that costs you only a fraction of your day. Will you give it a chance?
Footnotes
Committing to Saying Nice Things
Can you remember the last time you thought something really nice of a person, but never even considered sharing this thought with him or her? Perhaps a colleague came up with a surprisingly creative solution, or a friend did an amazing job handling a conflict.
While we can really appreciate these things about others, we rarely let them know. Perhaps we are afraid that the other person will perceive it as a romantic advancement and we want to avoid the awkwardness this would entail, or maybe we think the praise is obvious and sharing it will only make the other person feel diminished rather than elevated. Maybe we are so caught up being impressed that we simply forget to voice our admiration. There are many reasons much praise remains unheard, but just as many reasons to start changing this.
They deserve to know (while they still can)
Ok, this first one is a little dark but nonetheless worth sharing. I was talking to a friend about how suddenly someone can be ripped away from life, and how terrible it can make you feel not having said the things you wish you would have told them. How important they were to you, how much you appreciated their trying… Shouldn’t we all make sure that the other knows we see what is good in them?
Create an atmosphere of appreciation
That same friend also mentioned how unfortunate it is that, while most people are kind at heart but keep it quiet, the few who spread negativity seem to be the most vocal. This, combined with an already present negativity bias5 draws a map of the world as a not-so-kind-place. By vocalising positivism more often, we can literally contribute to a better, brighter world.
Being kind makes you feel good
Being kind makes you feel good—literally. Part of my research on finance draws on something that in the psychological domain is known as a ‘warm glow feeling,’ in which the reward area of the brain is activated and dopamine is released. This warm-glow feelings is exactly what you experience when you share appreciation or kindness with someone else. What’s interesting is that some of the reward areas in the brain become even more active when the kindness is altruistic, i.e. when it is not done with the intent of getting something in return.
I find the latter particularly fascinating, because it does not really make sense from an evolutionary perspective. Somehow, we are simply ‘wired for goodness.’
A shift in perspective
This one may appeal more to me than to others, but by thinking about and sharing what we appreciate in others, we shift the focus away from ourselves.
I’m currently working on a few pieces on (over)identification, where we basically try very hard to perceive ourselves from the other person’s perspective. We all develop this habit from the moment we are born, but some of us may overshoot and become (unconsciously) obsessed with the other person’s point-of-view.
As I will argue in those articles as well, we can break from this somewhat ‘self-centered’ behaviour by consciously shifting the direction in which we perceive. Looking for the goodness in others and sharing it vocally shifts the focus away from ourselves.
The responsibility for receiving nice things
I mentioned before how we may worry about how our ‘acts of kindness’ may be received, particularly in the context of romantic advances. Here, I briefly want to note that while sharing kindness is completely within your circle of influence, how the other perceives it is not.
Surely, we can think about the best moment and words to share it with, but don’t let the thought about the ‘implications’ paralyze you and prevent you from becoming a beacon of kindness. It is simply not within your control.
Hopefully this convinced you to vocalise your thoughts of kindness and admiration more often. I, for one, will make a commitment to sharing the light in others I see:
Will you join me in trying to make the world a kinder place? You can share your commitment in a comment below!
Footnotes
- a bias where people pay more attention to negative information than positive, leading to a skewed perception where negative interactions stand out more. In social settings, this bias can cause people to remember negative behaviours more vividly, leading to an assumption that negativity is more common than it truly is.
Feeling Profiles: a Creative Exercise to Increase your Emotional Intelligence
Many of us have (often involuntarily) learned to suppress our feelings and emotions to deal with the people and situations life throws at us. I, for example, can become particularly ‘cold’ in situations where my emotions or others’ run high.
While it can occasionally serve as a useful ‘survival mechanism,’ suppressing our feelings and emotions will inhibit our ability to find out who we are, and what we need to live a fulfilling life. Therefor, we need to develop a healthier way of ‘dealing with’ whatever feelings arise in us, which is often simply referred to as enhancing our ’emotional intelligence.’
In this post, I will set the stage for a recurring segment in my ‘bits & pieces’ blog. It is basically an exercise that combines the creative with the emotional, which I think constitute an immensely powerful marriage for connecting with the things we feel inside.
Identify the feeling
To do the exercise, you can think back to a moment or situation where you strongly felt a particular emotion, or try to assess however you are feeling right now.
Experience the feeling through words
Then, on a blank sheet of paper, describe the feeling using only words. Be as elaborate as you can, using analogies, metaphors, names… whatever helps you get a clearer view of what it is that you feel from inside. Make it a story, carrying you through the landscape of whatever it is that you experience.
Here are a few lines on what I felt this morning:
…A feeling that my body is standing up and my mind preparing for a new situation. In the future I am already doing the things of which I am still waiting to discover their necessity. No music can calm me, no words that can soothe—as soon as it’s played, before they are uttered. They are chasing me, trying to strangle my feet. But I cannot be caught, not in this dimension. There’s no passing, no ‘going’ allowed. Trying is futile, only slowing me down, from doing the things I’m telling myself I should do…
The feeling I was having was a kind of restlessness because I got up late but had many things I wanted to do (and people that were counting on me).
The goal is not to explain the feeling to someone else but to yourself. So as long as it makes sense to you, you are on the right track.
As you may have observed, I like to let things ‘flow.’ I guess you could say it is a bit like poetry; the words carry you around an idea, rather than describing it objectively. Doing this will open you up, allow you to feel. This is because when we want to be ‘correct,’ our brain goes into ‘reviewer mode,’ shutting down the connection we are trying to explore. When we allow ourselves to be creative, we give our brain permission to sit back so that it does not intervene.
By putting our feelings into words, we learn to observe them. Rather than being overwhelmed we become accustomed to some kind of light and warm curiosity. In the words of Robin Hobb:
“Naming things gives us power over them, like possession. We can know things better, we can understand them better, by putting them into words.”
Robin Hobb
Experience the feeling through vision
Tapping into this same power combining the unconstrained flow of creativity as a mechanism to access our emotions, and advancing our capacity to observe our emotions, the final step in this exercise is to visualize what we experience.
Here too, whatever form of expression suits you is allowed. You can try to visualize your experienced feeling through a collage of digital images, pencil-drawing, or painting. You can use shapes, colours, intensity, edges, whatever flows, to express what you are feeling.
Again, there is no good or bad. When your brain steps in with “this is ugly” or “this makes no sense,” take a moment to recognise what you are doing. It is not about the end-result, it is about the journey you experience to arrive there.
I feel that the visual aspect of the exercise is sometimes a bit harder than the ‘written word.’ However, you should now have a rich base of words from which to draw inspiration in order to start!
Below, I’ve included an AI-generate image, based purely on my own text I shared before.
Doing the exercise once a week, for example at the very start of your weekend, will help you not only to understand the emotions you’ve assessed, but also to develop the skill of assessing emotions more generally. Indeed, creativity (or art) is a powerful way to grow our emotional intelligence:
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
Thomas Merton
My personal feeling profiles:
The importance of self-administered experiments for personal growth
A lot of people are just barely short of obsessed with continued self-improvement, both in the mental and the physical domain. We eagerly look for the best habits to maintain and incorporate as many of them as possible.
If you are a bit selective, you will limit yourself to methods that are either scientifically proven (e.g. the positive influence of caffeine on focus) or, if you like living on the edge, methods that have at least shown some promising preliminary results (e.g. the health benefits associated with intermitted fasting).
However, our enthusiasm for self-improvement can make us blind to critically reflect on the things we are planning to implement (myself included, impulsively spending hundreds of euro’s on supplements). Here, I want to illustrate with a short example why it is therefor important to conduct self-administered experiments.
Let’s take the classic example of the effect of caffeine on cognitive clarity and mental focus. Many of us know that caffeine improves alertness by blocking adenosine, a neurotransmitter in the brain that promotes relaxation and sleepiness. However, for some people, caffeine can also lead to restlessness, nervousness, and jitteriness, which may reduce our ability to focus.
How can both be true at the same time?
Well, when something is ‘scientifically proven,’ this does not mean something is true 100% of the time. Taking again the example of caffeine, it only means that, on average, there is significant difference between those consuming caffeine and a control group (usually, this group has taken a placebo instead).
Furthermore, the distribution of how ‘focused’ people are needs to be normally distributed, meaning that the deviation from the average effect can be explained mostly by inherent statistical uncertainty. All of this is shown in the graph I’ve drawn below.
This picture nicely illustrates that while it is likely that consuming caffeine will improve your focus, there is a (increasingly declining) chance that this effect is actually (increasingly) stronger or less strong than for the average human being.
This observation is particularly pertinent in cases where the normal distribution extends beyond the border between a net-positive or net-negative effect. In such cases, there might be a chance that consuming caffeine will negatively influence your ability to focus. Consuming coffee may, in your case, be detrimental to your self-improvement objective!
The importance of self-administered experiments
We can try to find out the effect for ourselves by conducting a self-administered experiment.
A self-administered experiment is a systematic investigation to understand whether a hypothesis that is generally accepted (and indeed perhaps scientifically established) applies to you specifically as well.
By measuring the effect of an independent variable (e.g. ‘consuming coffee “yes” or “no,”’ or ‘number of coffees consumed’) on a representable dependent variable (e.g. ‘reaction time’ or Heart Rate Variability), we can develop a model that tells us whether we can accept or reject the hypothesis in our individual case. In other words, we can see whether coffee improves our focus or diminishes it.
For sure, all these great behaviours and supplements can have tremendous positive effects on our well-being and health. However, I would argue for a more cautious approach, where we critically evaluate these effects to prevent (1) jeopardising our goals and to (2) save ourselves money (e.g. in the case of supplements) or time (in the case of behaviour). I.e., a personal development culture of self-administered experiments.
A free-rider proof peer-to-peer grading system for student groups
Free-riding, the passing of a course without contributing sufficiently to the end-result of a project, is a common occurrence amongst student groups. To prevent free-riding, some teachers incorporate a peer-to-peer grading system at the end of the course.
However, simply grading fellow students often leads to ambiguous practices, such as students grading all their peers equally (when this does not reflect the actual students’ contribution), everyone giving everyone a high grade, or strong divergence between the grades provided by the free-rider and the rest of the student group.
Below, I present a simple model for an (anonymous) peer-to-peer grading system. The crux of the model is that it is in the best interest of all the students to answer honestly, even when they know they have made an insufficient contribution to the project.
So, here’s how it works!
Each student indicates their peer’s perceived contribution on a 5-point scale, starting from [–] to [++]. On the background, this is converted into numbers, -2 to +2.
The number of plusses and minuses needs to equal zero. So just giving everyone the maximum number of points is not allowed.
If the student thinks everyone contributed equally, then he or she should indicate this with an empty rating. I included a schematic of what such a grading scheme looks like below.
Now, let’s take an example where we have a free-rider student: student c. All other students from the group rate this student as having contributed less to the team, but the student in question has rated everyone equally (0).
Based on this input alone, we can compute an average which could be used (in the appropriate proportion) to correct the total grade of the group. However, this does nothing to prevent the unfair grading of others.
To correct for this, we can calculate the difference (squared) between the grade assigned and the average per student. From that, we can calculate the total deviation per student which indicates how ‘untrue’ the corresponding student’s grading has been.
When we now subtract the average deviation from the total deviation per student, and divide the result by the average deviation, we have a scaled correction factor for the ‘truthfulness’ of the assessment. Students that are below the average standard deviation get a bonus, whereas students that are above it get a penalty.
If we incorporate both in a 1:1 fashion, and assume an overall grade of 7.5 for the free-riding student, the latter would be penalized by two points, just barely passing the project (in the Netherlands, that is).
If student a really pulled the cart for this project (and that is how it seems from the initial assessment table), basically compensating for student c, it—to me—does not seem unfair that the student be awarded a 9 instead of a 7.5.
To illustrate the power of the deviation component added to the peer-to-peer assessment model, we can run the whole simulation again, but now the free-riding student gave himself a score of 2 instead of 0. Were this to happen, the student would penalize himself with .7 points, a rather significant penalty for trying to cheat the system!
Would a model like this solve the issue of free-riders? And should you be transparent about the model, or simply say that they should fill in the peer-to-peer assessment truthfully? What issues do you foresee?
