Remember What You Want

I'm reading a good book. It's called Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, and it's written by two University of Chicago economists (Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein). Economists who can write, wittily. The mind reels. I know. It sounds like it's going to be a tragic, self-help book that people buy in desperation, just to learn again that nobody's figured out what you need to know. This isn't that. It's really a book about public policy and the architecture of choices.

Take their first example: the food in a school cafeteria. We know that people will make different food choices based on where and how the food is presented. Moreover, some "paternalism", if you will, is inevitable. The food has to be put somewhere; abstaining from choice architecture is not an option. So, cafeteria designers can, without denying anyone anything, arrange things in such a way that it's easier to make good choices. Absolutely, choice architects can over-reach -denying us the freedom to make bad choices. The authors explore how nudges can make it easier to "be good" while expanding our freedoms.

So lately, every conversation I'm in is about this book. And I think about Peter Maurin and his "Easy Essays" where he hoped for "a world where it is easier to be good." The decisions where we mess up (based on our own value systems) are when the time lag between the decision point and the outcome is significant, or when the bad outcome is uncertain. If we got fat the instant we ate a jelly doughnut, or cancer from the first cigarette, or were guaranteed to die a gruesome death if we didn't wear a seat belt, then those choices would be clearer. But this is real life, and important decisions are sometimes hard.

The thing is, they don't always have to be hard; there's no particular virtue in making something artificially difficult. There's no less of a good outcome if we structure things so that the good choice is more likely. Sometimes the bad habit has become so concretized in our lives that we don't even think about what we might be doing instead. Maybe we just have to look at things differently.

How could I make it easier to workout more regularly?
How could I make it easier to do the studying and writing I want to do?
How could I make it easier and more graceful to care for the people I love?
How could I make it easier to..I don't know.... do any of the multitude of things I say I want to do but I'm not yet doing? Do I even remember what I want?

On a lark, I'm going to make a 101 Goals in 1001 Days list. Then I'm going to see if I can create little nudges, to make the right choice the easy and grace-ful (grace-filled?) one. If I get the nerve, I'll post my list. We'll see....

I'm Easy

Victoria tells me that I'm not supposed to say that.  Quoting the immortal Inigo Montoya, she tells me "I do not think it means what you think it means."  OK.  What I mean is, I'm comfortable with however things turn out.  "Should we see this movie or that one? I'm easy. "  That's what I mean.

Another version of "easy" is one I've noticed in the last two years. When the time is right, the next step is easy.  All the thrashing around and fretting that's come before was either unnecessary or resolves itself, and I step into the next thing.  I'm easy.  It's easy.  Whatever....

Traveling in Italy in high summer has made me think about another kind of easy -one about which I know nothing.  I was in a tiny village in wine country, in a hotel that was a medieval castle.  By hotel standards, it was small.  But the grounds are extensive.  And seriously, can you imagine the logistics behind turning a medieval stronghold into a hotel that meets modern standards for comfort and connection?  Oddly enough, the knights in their shining armour did not plan ahead for, say, Wifi connections and hot tubs.  Or indoor plumbing, for that matter.  So, the owners and the staff work really, really hard.  They must.

But I never saw them do it.  Not once.

If I wandered through the public rooms with that "must have coffee or I might die" look, someone was available to sit with me and have a cup and be companionable.  If they were working in the kitchen garden (roughly the size of my entire yard at home), they would work for a while, stop and rest, have a glass of fizzy water, and then work again for a little while. 

Even preparing the meals had a different sort of flow.  When I cook, I, by God, COOK.  I'm in the kitchen working hard, making lots of mess, and getting dinner on the table in record time.  I like that process well enough, actually.  But there's another way.  They start the bread rising, then go do something else -possibly even sit down for a minute.  Then they wander back into the kitchen (although I'm certain that the timing is probably quite clear to them, it looks like wandering or floating to me), and start the broth cooking that they will need for supper.  Then it's off to something else.

It turns out that I'm kind of a linear person.  I seriously never thought that.  I tend to bang away at one problem until it gives way, or I do.  And then I move on to the next one.  But maybe there's another way -and maybe it's about being easy.  In a good way.

I'm not sure how to do that, of course.  It's not multi-tasking, which is where I will take this if left unattended.  It's one-pointed attention, in the Quaker sense of paying full attention to whatever is in front of you because you know that the full picture is well-tended.   You can relax into this project because that one (whatever it is) isn't pounding at the door, needing attention because it's overdue and neglected and....  Well, you get the picture.

Once again, I need to think in circles and swirls.  I need to think like a dancer thinks -not just shapes in space, but the connections between them.  I need to think about flow.  And when the time is for relaxing, take that time with the certainty that I'll get up in a minute and work again.

This is a major mind-shift, but I think I might be on to something.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Vacationing in Andrea-world:

1)Definitely, go to a week-long workshop that has three yoga sessions a day, when the longest yoga session you've done in 2 years is probably 45 minutes. Yeah, that's a good idea. Oh my lands, I hurt everywhere.

2)Since this is a "girl's weekend" for you, pack all your girly face products, which will then spill on the clothes in your suitcase, doing what face masque does -become rock hard. So now you have two outfits.

3)Get asked out by a very interesting Italian man, and then realize type-wise, he IS your ex-husband. And you don't have any clothes to wear that don't have green goo solidified on them, anyway.

4) And definitely, definitely, when you know full-well that you are the kind of person who can get lost in her own bathroom, leave your GPS in the car.

5)And forget the cord for the camera. I have pictures, but no way to upload them. I'll take care of that when I get home.

I'm having fun, and I'm very glad that I took this time for myself. But that thing I say "wherever you go, there you are" -it turns out to be true.

Second star to the right

...and straight on til morning. That's how you get to Neverland, if you'll remember.

I'm off to Italy. Me??!!! We're deeply into the melting down phase of our program. WHERE are my yoga clothes? What knitting do I take? Should I take my rock climbing gear? WHY didn't I remember to charge my phone last night?

But I always do this. I know that. I can't quite get past the "who do I think I am to be doing this" question. I wonder if I'll be sad not to be sharing it with another person. And I'm irritated that every darn thing still makes me afraid. But I'm doing it anyway, and that's not nothing.

I'll send you pictures.