How we engage with LLMsthree days beforeIt seems popular to write about generative AI and large language models…Learning from the nadir

How to get trapped2022So you want to add more suffering to your life and build…The cycle of not-learning2022Now that I’ve mentioned mental traps, here’s one particular pattern that I’ve…Practices to break out of the cycle of not-learning2022At each step in the vicious cycle of not-learning, there is a…I’ve talked before about traps: how to get into them, what they might look like, and even how to get out of them. This little story is about the developmental potential of traps.

Embrace the suck2022Picture a simple framework. There are three attributes that can have positive…To frame the story, I will draw another two-by-two. The axes signify our awareness of our limitations and our capacity to overcome them. To make things a bit more interesting, I will also turn this two-by-two 45 degrees clockwise, because I want to map it to another framing: the hero’s journey.

The Four Needs Framework2020At the core of the framework, there is a four-quadrant coordinate space,…The axes form four quadrants that loosely correspond to the key segments of the hero’s journey.

Change2022

In the top quadrant, we are the happiest and perhaps even bored. We aren’t aware of any of the limitations that hinder us and we feel generally content with our abilities.

Convergent innovation2022As a sort of thought appetizer, here’s a vignette attempting to intersect…It is that boredom that gets us in trouble. At first reluctantly, but eventually with more gusto, we engage with a challenge and traverse into the right quadrant. This quadrant is characterized by weirdness. Campbell points out all kinds of odd stuff happening to us, from being visited by a quirky wizard to being tested in ways that make us unsure of ourselves.

A problem2022To get a more solid grounding of the newly born decision-making framework,…In the right quadrant, we aren’t yet aware that the challenge exceeds our capacity to overcome it, so things feel bizarre, random, and generally not right. We might start a new job with enthusiasm, and after a few meetings, have our heads spinning, encountering unexpected politics and/or gargantuan technical debt: “What did I just get myself into?”

Sometimes you gotta hit the wall2023I’ve probably written about this a few years back, but I still…Eventually, as we puzzle things out, we arrive at the nadir of our journey, the bottom quadrant. We become aware of the fact that we’re in way over our heads. We are aware of our limitations and do not yet have the capacity to overcome them.

Nudges, boosts, bumpers, and tilts2023At least the way I see it, for each of the quadrants,…The bottom quadrant often feels like a trap. My colleagues and I sometimes apply the word “infohazard” to the insightful bits of knowledge that finally clear our vision and thrust us into this quadrant. It almost feels like it might have been better if we didn’t acquire that knowledge. Yeah, the previous quadrant was super-weird, but at least I didn’t feel so deficient in the face of the challenge.

The third option2024The deeper insight here is that we are surrounded by polarities. Behind…This quadrant is also the most fertile ground for our inner development. When we have the right mindset, the awareness of our limitations creates a useful observation perch. Only when we are able to see our own limitations can we contemplate changing ourselves to overcome them.

The Perspective Ladder2022I hope this illustration has been helpful. I have been using a…This is not a given. Way too commonly and tragically, we never get to occupy this perch. Falling into the vicious cycle of not-learning, we form an inner false loop inside of our hero’s journey, spinning round and round inside of the bottom quadrant, and truly becoming trapped.

The System of Self2019Existential Fears form the same pairwise polarities, the Existential Struggles, laid over…Whether we grasp onto the perch or not, one thing is guaranteed. The bottom quadrant is full of suffering. Even when we believe we’ve learned all there is to learn about self-development, and have all kinds of tools and tricks (and perhaps even write about it regularly) – the moment of discordance between what we’re seeing and what we believe will be inevitably painful.

Archaeology of Self2019Every experience I have is a new lesson in life, a new…It is on us to recognize that this pain can be processed in two ways: one is through the habitual entrapment of the not-learning cycle and the other one is by choosing to learn like crazy. Hanging on to a dear life to the perch of observation and examining our beliefs and recognizing flexibility in bits that we previously thought immovable.

Innovation frontiertwo days afterSo we decided to innovate. Great! Where do we begin? How do…Only then can we emerge into the left quadrant, where we are both aware of our limitations, but now have the capacity to overcome the challenge – and bring the boon back to the land of living, as Campbell would probably say.