Quality Itself and Practice

I was talking to a parent about how much someone should practice guitar a day and I said “20 minutes every day” and they said “He doesn’t have 20 minutes every day”. I first thought, “Yeah he does, everyone does”. Then I paused and really understood what he meant, “He has many other things he needs to use his focused time on in the say, and 20 minutes cannot be consistently given to this thing.” I notice the complexity of our daily allotment of time balancing unfocused time with focused time. I want to have more focused time for productivity so I can then have more unfocused time for leisure activity. This part of this loop where I do things I don’t want to do in order so I can do the things I want to do. I believe in playing to one’s strength’s as it adds for more variety as well as foster’s interdependence; meaning I could do it but It would save me more time and give me more choice if I ask someone to do this for me with monetary or some other exchange (kindness, warm feelings, feeling of use-fullness) . This could be referred to as the Corporation quadrant in the Rich Day poor dad book or referenced in “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. Henry Ford may have said it best” Now would you be so good as to explain why, just to answer you questions, I should have a brain stuffed with general culture, when I am surrounded by employees who can supply any information I might want to know?”

This is the struggle of the modern age, because there’s an abundance of information available and there’s easy access to contact people for questions so they shouldn’t be any excuses. Even researching an article or study on how to improve focus seems like a lot of work. Sometimes hyper focus leads to ego depletion which makes me feel burned out, uninspired, lethargic, and makes poorer quality work. To combat this I try to make task lists, or reminders, or goal charts, yet this is too outdated for the modern world. Prioritization is a useful skill where I can practice doing things that are “important but not urgent”. Procastination is one way in which I manage my time because if I get to the point where its urgent and important I’m forced to do it compulsively, yet other important things fall off, such as exercising, friends, vacation, hygeine, sleep. Overall I understand what it’s like to battle with time, even though it’s really complicated value.

Phenomenology is the philosophical branch that encompasses first person experience of conscious directed at an object, imagination, senses, memory. In the modern day I experience time in many different ways and have different objective and subjective values on my time. There are times where I feel guilty about how I spend my time because I should be focusing on something else. There are saying that echo “Everyone has the same amount of hours in a day” or “Time is on your side” or “That was a good time, waste of time”.

Time is ultra multi-dimensional, even though I sometimes see it as linear. There is unfocused time, focused time, and the area in between. I know that I have dual processing thinking where my system one is involuntary, quick, and low energy and I have system two which requires force and will to activate using high energy , and is slow. The values of system one are boo or yay. Quick, involuntary, low energy. System two values are meta-modern, usually theres a lot of values that seem to conflict one way or the other, theres pros and cons to everything and its more complicated than we think.

Unfocused time, at first appearance my Western Protestant work ethic domestication screams “Lazy sloth, binging Southpark or reading about the occult” when you should be writing, making music, marketing for guitar lessons, volunteering, exercises, practicing, etc- overall value is shame and guilt because there is a pleasure to unfocused leisure. However there are many times when I’m unfocused playing the guitar, writing, practicing, which feels like a flow state, it happens involuntary, quickly, and it requires low energy and this is much sought after in books and teachings nowadays, many even could call it “Divine inspiration or channelling”; which sounds pretty good to me.

Then there is focused time which I force myself to do. There are painful times of focus such as researching something I don’t want to do, willing myself to do something against my will, and there are pleasure times of focus where I want to do something, but I know it will take effort, such as practicing classical guitar or meditating for 20 minutes. Both of these skills are important to practice. It’s a bad skill to be able to do things I don’t want to do, though many will say that it is a good skill because it will help you get a job, work better with people, etc. However there’s overpopulation and marketing robots specifically targeting people with similar values as me today, so this way of thinking is completely outdated. I want to use my time for people I want to spend it with. I want to use my imagination for people with imaginations to. I want to make the things I want and find the people that want it after. I cast aside this belief that I should do boring, monotonous, painful things because it builds character, I disagree because sometimes audio production or learning new guitar sequences is monotonous, boring, and painful, but the experience is entirely different, because I actually want it. Nothing is worse than working for things we don’t want, it is my insanity.

 This flow state could be tethered to imagination or day-dreaming which, imagination is a key characteristic of humanity, though philosophers may say choice and reason are characteristics of humanity. Imagination offers more choice than logical reason and humans are far more initially intuitive than reasonable. Reason and logic require definitions which come post observation so they are constructed in the past tense because the answer is already known. Imagination is definitely reconstructs the past in a frankenstein way and it also operates to show alternative timelines of choices for the future, yet imagination overall occurs in a present state of mind. This principle is called the “Do Mostly Nothing” theory, yet paradoxically when all circuits are at rest 20% of the brains energy is actually at work, combining past, present, and future into something creative.

This circuit supports Bertand Russell’s treatise called “In Praise of Idelness” where he argues we should only work four hours a day for the bare necissities of life as has been the western tradidtion for a while, and the rest of the time we should use for as people see fit. Hopefully education gives people enough tastes to know how to use their time wisely. Often we regard movies as a waste of time, but if your making a movie then you worked hard an are rewarded. Too often we award value to productivity and production rather than the enjoyment that it gives other people, even though a movie is valuable if it gives enjoyment so where does the guilt and shame of this come from. Well, a long standing tradition where the poor should value working hard and the upper class get to enjoy leisure and frivolity. When there was little food to eat, the church still ate, when the peasants were dying, the kings were thriving, so on and so forth. Time is differentiated once again into people who use their time to move things on the earth, and those who use their time telling people what to move on the earth; they latter is ussually far better compensated for their “time”. The first class of movers tend to spend what they earn, the second type ussually save what they earn. The first class of movers are giving money to the butchers and teachers to put bread in their mouths, and the later class are putting bread into their own mouth, then saving it, or investing into hiring more movers to keep the game going. It’s difficult today in California because with a one bedroom apartment easier costing $2000 a month and minium wage about $11 dollars, the bare necessities are always increasing to 8 to 10 hours of work, not to mention the time invested into learning the skills and learning trade to become successful, or the amount of unhappiness it is generating for the sake of something else. Again the loop of do this work first so you can do what you want at a later time, promotes serve the “speakers” as a mover and one day you won’t have to listen to anyone anymore. Time invested into our education teaches us how to move numbers, words, and articles to compile, yet rarely asks, what do you want to say or what do you want to move- even though that is a much higher paid profession than being a mover or reporter.

Basically I’ve been so burnt out striving for the bare necessities that I didn’t have the imagination or energy to even dream anymore. I also compensate for my unhappiness by spending more time and money and things that aren’t leading me to happiness, imagination, peace of mind, and autonomy that I’d desire, so the bare-necessities kept increasing. Non-clinical depression, or the blues, is just a lack of perspective, lethargic, worrying about the past, not seeing a future, escaping the now, looking for vices to supplement the misery; relegating the longing for imagination into movies, social media, or just idolizing people that have saved their imagination.

I’d always had the motto from parents, school, and friends, “just get a job and get money and then do what you want”. That never works for me. I’m glad I spent my time studying philosophy and really working on these skills. Yes I suppose I am too verbose, however it seems that what used to be intutivie thought has to then be put into filtered form for convenience sake, because people don’t have the time to take a journey anymore. Personally I love the ramblings of Frederich Nietzche, podcasts, or even to be honest Anton Lavey. (I’m reading the Devil’s Handbook- actually not what you would think its about freedom and authenticity, existential stuff) I’m tired of being punished for wandering in thought, while others are rewarded and praised for wandering the earth, document what they see, and investing in God knows what, why was I punished- its not focused, it’s off topic, stay on topic, focus on your work, be a worker and listen to me. A final doom note is about death, the end of time, most people fear only regret. That they lived their life using their time repeating what everyone else said, believing everything everyone else said, doing what other’s told them to do. The past couple months of teaching guitar and making music have been the best months of my life because I finally did something I wanted to do. I felt the true pleasure of using my time for spreading the gifts that I had acquired and letting my values free of self judgement.

Without imagination I would would be forced to follow one path, a logical one preset, however with imagination I create choice which we should respect in people, thus I respect my imagination and other’s imagination too. Often the phenomenology of memories is alchemical, we turn intuitive observations, such as Archimedes discovery of “Hmm the water level increases when I put the crown into the bath tub, so I feel like I could use this observation to possible know the mass of lopsided object using water displacement.” This intuitive perplex-ion was discovered at once then explained thereafter. Even Bayes theorem of hypothesis, operates on this attentive assumption, where it doesn’t matter how certain you are when you start, just collect data and see where you land thereafter.

When I teach guitar or anything I try to teach imagination over anything else. Everyone should have time to imagine and I make things that are supposed to spark people’s imagination, not substitute it. Make time for imagination.