On Monks and Email
calnewport.com
calnewport.com
I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime.
Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study.
If they are incentivized by it then they gain by selling it to you regardless of utility - thus anyone in that situation is judged as inherently untrustworthy.
there is a reason "trying to sell you something" is a synonym for "trying to scam you".
That's just not true. "I'm trying to sell you a book" isn't a synonym of I'm trying to scam you into buying a book. It just means I wrote a book and I would like you to buy it.
If one is pushing an idea on its own merit in a standalone way they are more trustworthy than one doing it and shilling a book.
That said if there are other reasons to trust you certainly should keep them in mind.
They agree with the monks that the body is weak, and often desires what is bad for you. Likewise, the mind is weak, unfocused, and filled with pride, jealousy, etc. Both agree that a focused, pure (holy) life is the goal. Where they differ is what to do about it.
The monks advise rigor, abstinence, and communal separation. The idea is if you're good enough, God will accept you. The Puritans say "just try harder" is a counsel of despair because perfection is impossible, and rule-following is always incomplete (there are always more rules to follow). So, the Puritans say ask God for strength to live uprightly, knowing that forgiveness is given by Christ, not a reward for good deeds.
> The law says, "do this," and it is never done. Grace says, "believe in this," and everything is already done.
At most we could say they didn't live according to their preached views, but that's still too broad a brush stroke. For example, the Salem trials (1692) were viewed with near universal horror outside the immediate area, and Salem itself publicly apologized (1696) to the victims, reversed the convictions (1703), and paid restitution to their families (1711).
Shunning was an Anabaptist practice (Menno Simons in Germany -> Mennonites, most famously Amish) not a Puritan practice. Most Christians, including Edwards, have regarded shunning as a cultish aberration since it appeared on the scene in the 1530s.
My point in saying all this: fair criticism is good, and evaluation of their doctrine is fine. But pop culture "knowledge" on this issue is pretty wide of the mark.
Also: I'm not a Puritan. I just like history. :-)
I don't think that's quite right, for most kinds of knowledge work. Thinking is an important component, but I think observing and communicating are also part of it (with the particular mix varying greatly), and email ties into those.
Which isn't to say the thesis is completely off-base, by any means.
But that is more of an indictment of purity as a notion being inherently good. Mathematics for instance is "pure thinking" in that any system may be described mathematically doesn't mean your model neccessarily matches or is remotely reasonable beyond mathematical consistency. Combine it with the real world and it certainly isn't debased but enhanced as weird new phenomena can give rise to new theory that encompasses them.
"Distraction is an old problem, and so is the fantasy that it can be dodged once and for all."
Except that that's precisely what meditation practice does.
Instead of just wringing one's hands in frustration and grumbling about why it's so hard.
> “Their job, more than anything else, was to focus on divine communication. For these monks, the meditating mind wasn’t supposed to be at ease. It was supposed to be energised. Their favourite words for describing concentration stemmed from the Latin tenere, to hold tight to something. The ideal was a mens intentus, a mind that was always and actively reaching out to its target.”
> Even the monastic renunciation of worldly goods and relationships supported concentration: the fewer things going on your life, they reasoned, the fewer things to distract you while trying to think about God.
What seems to be popular mainstream advice:
> "If you notice yourself thinking, let it pass by and bring attention back to the breath."
A fairly typical article in my experience:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-stop-thinking-during-m...
> How to Stop Thinking During Meditation: 10 Tips to Calm in 10 Minutes
> Have you tried meditation only to get frustrated because you can't stop thinking or worrying? Maybe you worry so much that you feel more stressed after meditation than when you began! If you struggle with constant thoughts during meditation, don't give up yet! These tips are simple but powerful to get your mind calm and clear.
In the first example, it sounds to me like thinking is a goal, something to be pursued.
In the second example(s), it sounds to me like thinking is an undesirable state, something to be avoided.
I'm not an expert, but it feels to me like in both traditions the goal is to be completely present, ie all mental faculties up and running and brought to bear. Perhaps for the Christian monks there would be an added element of communication with God (but, perhaps, it was simply being in His presence?), whereas for Buddhists there isn't... I don't know.
The point of Buddhist meditation isn't to somehow beat your thoughts into submission. It's first to acknowledge them, as you say allowing them to come and go. During the course of that you realize that they are something separate and distinct from your self (further realizations about the self come later, of course). Later on, as you progress, they eventually don't intrude anymore. It's not that you've defeated them, they simply don't pop up.
Alert to what's going on around you, or being present and not distracted by unwanted thoughts....this is my understanding anyways.
> ie all mental faculties up and running and brought to bear.
"Brought to bear" on what though I think is what I'm getting at.
> Later on, as you progress, they eventually don't intrude anymore. It's not that you've defeated them, they simply don't pop up.
And then what is also what I'm getting that.
From the linked article:
> "A more advanced method for concentrating was to build elaborate mental structures in the course of reading and thinking. Nuns, monks, preachers and the people they educated were always encouraged to visualise the material they were processing. A branchy tree or a finely feathered angel – or in the case of Hugh of St Victor (who wrote a vivid little guide to this strategy in the 12th century), a multilevel ark in the heart of the cosmos – could become the template for dividing complex material into an ordered system. The images might closely correspond to the substance of an idea. Hugh, for example, imagined a column rising out of his ark that stood for the tree of life in paradise, which as it ascended linked the earth on the ark to the generations past, and on to the vault of the heavens. Or instead, the images might only be organisational placeholders, where a tree representing a text or topic (say, ‘Natural Law’) could have eight branches and eight fruits on each branch, representing 64 different ideas clustered into eight larger concepts."
> "The point wasn’t to paint these pictures on parchment. It was to give the mind something to draw, to indulge its appetite for aesthetically interesting forms while sorting its ideas into some logical structure. I teach medieval cognitive techniques to college freshmen, and this last one is by far their favourite. Constructing complex mental apparatuses gives them a way to organise – and, in the process, analyse – material they need to learn for other classes. The process also keeps their minds occupied with something that feels palpable and riveting. Concentration and critical thinking, in this mode, feel less like a slog and more like a game."
"while sorting its ideas into some logical structure" and "constructing complex mental apparatuses....process, analyse – material they need to learn" - might these be tasks a highly capable meditator would be perform during meditation, deeply contemplating a particular topic, as opposed to simply being present with a clear mind? The article doesn't really say definitively.
A modern day example of this might be a pastor working on next Sunday's sermon, say to deliver the ideas from scripture in a way that is relatable to his congregation - might a deeply meditative state be highly conducive to such complex tasks?
Adding breakpoints or log messages or refreshing constantly.
Entering search queries that are various permutations of my error message or question, and following whatever rabbit hole it sends me down.
Reading the documentation of some API, or refreshing my knowledge of a framework and/or what changed in the latest version.
Figuring out what part of my stack decided to misbehave and why, which I suppose is often a variation on the previous problem.
Writing and rewriting an email or ticket not primarily to communicate what the problem is, or how I solved it (because nobody cares), but rather to get the resources to work on the problem or offer some vague explanation of the solution all the while considering the 'political' context of the issue.
All of those do involve various degrees of thinking and creativity. I'd even go as far as saying that a big part of my effectiveness as a developer over the years is a result of getting better at those things. And it's made me respect the role of non-devs (such as managers) quite a bit more.
But to me they're mostly draining, and feel qualitatively different from, and worse than, the 'thinking' that I do when I'm trying to think of the best solution to a problem, the best way to structure my project, or even the best constructs to use in a bit of code. Or the joy of synthesizing some ideas from one book with those of another book, sometimes complicated by having to do it live, in conversation, while considering all the conversational rules too. Or even the 'thinking' involved in writing and rewriting this comment, however meaningless or pointless it is compared to, you know, all that other stuff I do that people actually ask for and/or pay me for.
I still haven't quite figured out how to categorize these two types of thinking (and optimize for the one I prefer).
But the closest I can get to the core difference is that the former is mostly about rote knowledge (repeat x until I know y, read x in the API so I understand the incantation, rewrite search query x so I get result y and remember which y is usually valuable, remember which stakeholders care about what things, etc.), while the latter actually feels like combining different pieces of knowledge in (personally) novel ways. Maybe it's a bit like the difference between high-school chemistry and mathematics?
EDIT: I'm not saying either of these types of thinking is better than the other, btw, just that I often find myself engaging in the one that doesn't 'energize' me.
Monastic orders would generally be founded with the intention of following something like the ascetic lifestyle described, because it was felt that the more ascetic a monk was the closer he was to God. But it was this perceived closeness to God that would undo them, because it meant that prayers from a monk close to God were seen as more powerful than prayers from your average everyday priest.
See, it was common for rich nobles and wealthy merchants, when they contemplated their mortality, to want to better their odds of getting into heaven by using some of their wealth to set up endowments to pay clerics to pray for their souls. And of course, the richest and most powerful people in society didn't want those prayers being offered by just anybody. They wanted to buy the best prayers, the ones that packed the most spiritual wallop. And that meant they wanted prayers from those ascetic monks.
The more strict a monastic order tried to be in its self-denial, the more quickly the wealthy and powerful would beat a path to their door to dump sacks of money onto it to buy its prayers. And once an institution starts piling up money, it finds itself saddled with the need to figure out something to do with it. So your spartan monastic order would slowly begin acquiring things, buildings and employees and land and so forth -- and of course all those things require management, and the more you pile up, the more management is required. Over time, the priorities of the order slowly start to shift. Fast-forward a hundred years, and your order of self-denying monks looks more like a holding company, with its monks spending their time worrying over problems of agricultural management and looking for new tax loopholes to exploit instead of contemplating Scripture.
And eventually somebody would look at that order, and, disgusted by its worldliness, flee into the woods to start a new order -- one that would be ascetic and self-denying and pure. And the cycle would start all over again.
Our society is very different from that of medieval Europe, but I believe we can see these same cycles in operation in our lives as well. Just look at Google, for instance: a company started by two academics that loudly professed disdain for the way its main competitor, Yahoo, operated, telling everybody that their company was going to focus on Real CS Problems™ rather than grubby things like banner ads. And then the investors showed up, and investors demand a return, so they held their nose and dipped their toes into enterprises like AdWords, which were ads, yes, but, they insisted, good ads, ethical ads. Fast forward two decades later, and the inexorable logic of the structures Google operates within has led them to become the world's biggest surveillance merchant, an all-seeing eye whose unblinking gaze stares out not just from its own products but uncountable numbers of third-party apps and sites and nine-tenths of the world's phones -- all in the service of what has become its one and only real business, selling ads. Google is embedded in an economic system that can not allow things like Google-as-originally-envisioned to exist; they must either give up their aspirations toward asceticism, or be crushed by someone who will.
I wonder how much of the demand for this kind of lifestyle-hacking/"personal optimization" literature derives from an unwillingness to grapple with this. We look at the vast edifice of capitalism and, shocked by its scope, recoil instinctively from the seemingly impossible idea of changing it. So we turn instead to changing ourselves, which at least feels like something it is within our power to actually do.