The Education of Axel Heyst

[Dave]

The idea that I'm just actually in certain measurable ways quite different than the majority of the population, and not just in a "every snowflake is different isn't that beautiful" kind of way, was immensely relieving. It was, in a way, permission to stop the relentless, lifelong effort of attempting to hammer my round-peg self into the square-hole of expectation, and feeling like a loser or a weakling or a moron for not pulling it off so effortlessly like everyone else.

This resonates hard. While most people just have to sharpen up certain skills or put a bit more effort into this or that for much of "normal" life to work seamlessly, some of us are just really, really different. And realizing this opens the door for a more compassionate view of ourselves, and a release of a lifetime of pressure that has corresponded with our difficulty of being able to make it happen despite so much effort.

I really appreciate you sharing this recent line of self-exploration!

[AxelHeyst]

@Dave - 'release of a lifetime of pressure' ahh yes that feels like a very apt way to put it. I've been feeling that release of pent-up pressure over the past several weeks, and I'm starting to notice how many of my projects, obligations, relationships, and 'shoulds' and 'ought to's' were being propped up by the maintenance of that pressure. It feels like as I'm letting the pressure out of that system a whole bunch of things that I thought were very rigid permanent structures in my life are just sort of deflating and blowing away. It's a lovely feeling.

--//--

Freedom-To Build a Serendipity Machine
If all goes well I'll FIRE sometime next year. Since my money-making hustle isn't a W-2/FTE employment thing, but rather is a totally self-directed thing that I'll ramp down to some desirable minimal amount of maintenance activity, there isn't an obvious "I put in my 2 weeks notice" or "I got laid off but am already technically FI so I guess I'm done now" line in the sand I'll cross in terms of how my hours are apportioned.

I was chatting with @sodatrain about how I thought that "I can do my no screens six days a week thing anytime I want" was something I consider to be a metric of if I've achieved what I'm setting out to achieve. It's not so much that 6/7 analog is the definition of my freedom-to, but rather that it's a behavior that I think will be a foundation for the Next Phase. Even if I wind up using screens more later in whatever my freedom-to system becomes, I think that at minimum the transition from this phase (make money) to that phase (???) will be aided by 6/7 analog.

Then he asked what I thought that next phase would be like, and I said I think the next phase is a qualitatively deeper step towards stoke integration... meaning having 'solved' money, I'll be free to make decisions decentered totally from 'earning a living' and can center intrinsic motivation in a really profound way that my brain is currently unable to (some people are capable of decoupling earning money from 'what to do on tuesday' -- I am not, per exhaustive field research).

I expect serendipity to serve an even stronger force in my life, and for prediction about what I'm going to be doing in a year to be even less possible. As such goal setting will look pretty different in the next phase. Ensuring my obligations remain low and large chunks of time and space exist in my future might be more important, so I retain optionality to accept the most interesting opportunities that popup, might become the main function.

Becoming more competent at being engaged in day to day activities without locking myself into narrow obligations while increasing my life-system surface area to serendipitous encounter in the domains of my stoke and ensuring that my Overton window of possibility grows over time... that's what feels like the important meta-skill of the post-FI phase.

[guitarplayer]

On feeing different, I can see coming to a similar conclusion and emotional state as described above under the assumption that everyone feels a bit like a square peg in a round hole (hence there is no point feeling so). And the matter of fact would be that there is both - square and round pegs and even multidimensional objects. If there weren’t, you would end up in the snowflake situation.

I think at the end of the day on the subjective level of personal well being it boils down to accepting oneself like so many thinkers suggest. In some sense it is quite unique and a privilege to live at a time when this is even an option and also fairly easily attainable in the cherry on top of the cake west.

[AxelHeyst]

More grist for the self-actualization and neurodivergence intersecting rabbit holes, pulling from this article on lifestyle design from sloww*

“Most creative individuals find out early what their best rhythms are for sleeping, eating, and working, and abide by them even when it is tempting to do otherwise. They wear clothes that are comfortable, they interact only with people they find congenial, they do only things they think are important. Of course, such idiosyncrasies are not endearing to those they have to deal with … But personalizing patterns of action helps to free the mind from the expectations that make demands on attention and allows intense concentration on matters that count.”

“People selected as self-actualizing subjects, people who fit the criteria, go about it in these little ways: They listen to their own voices; they take responsibility; they are honest; and they work hard. They find out who they are and what they are, not only in terms of their mission in life, but also in terms of the way their feet hurt when they wear such and such a pair of shoes and whether they do or do not like eggplant or stay up all night if they drink too much beer. All this is what the real self means. They find their own biological natures, their congenital natures, which are irreversible or difficult to change.”

Emphasis added.

For most of my life I've had an aversion to being comfortable, or rather to making decisions that prioritize my own comfort. My own comfort was never a good enough reason to do anything - it always had to be an incidental side effect of some action. Some of this came from a desire to challenge myself and 'do hard things', but I also think there's something to be said for not keeping oneself in a perpetual state of sensory annoyance. It's one thing to be soft and indulgent -- it's another to put up with friction and hassle that distracts from getting after whatever you want to get after. I'm slowly coming around on this one.

I also, upon reflection, internalized the notion that my preferences weren't right (wtf?) and needed to be modified to suit, so I typically discounted them out of hand as a sort of heuristic. I found most things about engaging in the world effortful, and I experienced positive feedback for putting in loads of effort to figure out how to play ball with the world, so I just latched on to the feeling of 'effort' as 'part of the process of getting less bad at being a human.'

In some ways this is true, in others not. In particular that last line - "They find their own biological natures, their congenital natures, which are irreversible or difficult to change." -- stuck out to me. For most of my life I'm realizing I had a sort of "challenge accepted/hold my beer" perspective on changing my biological nature. 0/10 do not recommend.

Anyway, I like the idea implied in these quotes that part of the process of self-actualizing involves self-actualizing in these little personal idiosyncratic ways. I had a perception that self-actualization had more to do with figuring out the Big Things, like life purpose/aim, vision, that sort of thing. These quotes remind me that it's an all-scales kind of process.

Perhaps it's a mistake to think that the project of moving towards Freedom-To is a purely additive process. "Figure out what you want to do and add that to your life." Maybe.

Maybe I'm already doing what I want to do, but I'm also doing a bunch of other bullshit because I've accreted behaviors and projects and obligations and these are crowding out the already-existing or perhaps there-but-dormant Freedom-Tos. Maybe all I have to do is drop the extra junk that are distracting and burying the stuff I actually want to do, create more space for it.

Like if my WoG is a garden, maybe all I have to do is pull up all the plants I don't want that've been growing for years and edging out the other plants. Having done that, the plants I actually want will have access to sunlight and nutrients and space and will flourish.

*I like Sloww/Kyle Kowalski's writing quite a lot. It looks slick enough to be shallow fluff, but it's actually solid content. Could be good gateway content for friends and family you're trying to introduce to ERE-adjacent concepts as well.

[Scott 2]

I appreciate the garden metaphor. It makes clear removing the weeds is creating space to grow, welcoming new change. You're not hiding from the hard parts. Walking away from something rewarding is often tougher than persisting.

Given life moves in phases, that space for change is fundamental. It can even lead to shrinking the garden, as needs or capacity reduce.

One thing the gifted book nailed, is following your stoke often feels effortless, frictionless even. That's when we out perform. Fighting against the world is likely a hindrance.

[AxelHeyst]

One thing the gifted book nailed, is following your stoke often feels effortless, frictionless even. That's when we out perform. Fighting against the world is likely a hindrance.

Yes, I've been thinking about this a lot recently. This idea crops up everywhere (David Senra's Founders podcast, for example).

There's a whole long list of behaviors that I've put a ton of effort into and moved my performance from either "embarrassing" or "below average" to "average" or even "pretty good". But in none of those particular behaviors do I show any sign of becoming stellar at. I don't regret working on them because achieving baseline competence was a requirement to remove certain bottlenecks, gain access to opportunities, etc. But now I feel generally well-rounded enough that it's reasonable to mostly dump attention into chasing stoke, looking very diligently for that effortless sensation.

I also sense traps there. Even chasing stoke involves bullshit sometimes, and if I quit at the first sign of friction I suspect I'd never get anywhere. Figuring out the balance is the art of the thing I guess. But I'm not very good or practiced at it, because I've spent most of my adult life grinding. I find myself thinking back to when I was a kid, trying to remember what it felt like when I was just running around doing whatever I felt like and totally unconcerned with exterior motivations, 'shoulds', etc. ETA- I'm thinking of these memories as sensory guideposts, reminders of what "me-ness" feels like, even though the specifics of what 6 or 9yo Axel was doing might not be terribly insight-producing (LEGOS!!!).

[7Wannabe5]

All this is what the real self means. They find their own biological natures, their congenital natures, which are irreversible or difficult to change.”

I've been down a bit of a Ken Wilber rabbit-hole lately, so bear with me as I note that "the real self" might also be the "you" who is capable of finding your "congenital nature" as an object, and, therefore, is apart or meta to your "congenital nature." IOW, the "real you" described by Maslow is only the representation of the "real you" as found in the Upper Right "IT" quadrant of AQAL. And, therefore, what feels not like the "real you" is the set of choices "also real you" have made in order to best integrate the Upper Right "real you" with Lower Right Infrastructure or Lower Left Culture. IOW, there is "growing up" towards "showing up", but there is also "waking up", "cleaning up", and "opening up." For example, pulling in the MBTI model, "you" might "open up" to doing more "growing up" of your tertiary Fi and that might result in a more towards artistic or moral expression of "the real you" in alignment with a feeling of stoke experienced by the Upper Left "I" subjective you.

Any neurodiversity is going to be "realized" differently from each perspective of AQAL. And the way in which "you" perceive your own neurodiversity will vary in alignment with your "growing up" level of cognitive development, etc.

[AxelHeyst]

Nice. What you just said was very vaguely poking at the back of my brain but you just laid it out and pointed to further exploration in a way that would've taken me a long-ass time to articulate half as usefully. Much appreciated.

[7Wannabe5]

Happy to be helpful. As usual, I am half-parroting whatever books I am currently reading. In this case, Wilber's "Finding Radical Wholeness: The Integral Path to Unity, Growth, and Delight." It's a good deal more accessible than many of his other books; he keeps it around median NYT reading level. It has given me quite a few "Ah-ha" moments (For example, I now finally "grok" the appeal of Jordan Peterson to some of the youth of today due to even-older-than-me-Wilber's integral level deconstruction/explication of the culture wars.) He also covers some of the same material in the series of interviews he did on the "Future Thinkers" videocast. (The fact that Wilber is now wearing a wig is somewhat distracting or disconcerting, but I decided to chalk it off as a hat-tip to the Post-Modern sense/aesthetic of the ridiculous.) If you are not yet familiar with it, you would probably also like to check out the Future Thinkers "solar-punk"esque experiment in High-Tech Homesteading.

[AxelHeyst]

The Future Thinkers look cool, thanks for the lead!

Speaking of solarpunk, I wrapped up a solar project for a neighbor today. They wanted to upgrade to an electric fridge (from a propane one) but their franksteined 25+ yo solar system was barely keeping up with their existing loads. Then the propane function on their fridge conked out and they switched it over to electric mode, which on these old Dometic fridges means 240watts *continuous*, meaning its annual energy consumption is 2,100kWh. They were running their generator 2hrs/day every day even during full sun.

Phase 1 was to replace their nominal 660W but actual 450W (because old) array with two 400W bifacials on a solar tracker. We're getting 760w out of the new array for an increase in power of 310w: an improvement but not getting them out of the woods with that 24/7 240w load. (New efficient electric fridge is on the way.) I also replaced the switch (!) he had mounted on the tracker pole with a modern combiner box with breakers and lightning surge protection. Previously there was no fault protection between the panels and the charge controller.


It no longer really makes sen$e to use solar trackers since panels are so cheap. Just buy a few more panels to cover the morning/evening low production shoulders. These panels are $0.75/watt, free shipping through Amazon or the reseller's website. Trackers made sense when panels were expensive and so you needed to wring every watt you could out of them. But if you've already got a tracker stuck in the ground, it's dumb not to use it.

Phase 2 was getting another pair of panels, a cheapo rack from amazon, and lag bolting them onto some salvaged wood he had lying around, and patching them in parallel to the same charge controller the tracker array is on. That is close to maxing out that controller's capacity at 24v with nominal 1,600w.



Don't mind the dust. It hasn't rained here since July.

All told this was about 12 hrs of work, including the 'design' which was mostly me checking conduit sizing, googling around for panels that would fit the tracker rack dimensions and also work electrically with the existing SCC, etc.

My dad and I had a conversation about design approach that might interest some. He would be constitutionally unable to take on this project without doing a full loads and production analysis. It's the "right" way to do it and so that's what he'd do.

I didn't feel like doing a full loads and production analysis (I do know how to do it) because I thought it was overkill and unnecessary. Enough information was available to take the next step: just add more panels. The problem was not "insufficient battery storage", the problem was "not enough energy production" as evidenced by failure to bring batteries to full charge on a normal sunny day. The place to add more panels first was the tracker rack. If that wasn't enough, we could patch in another pair. (what we wound up doing). If that pair wasn't enough, we can patch in another pair (and potentially get a new SCC and run it in follow mode to the first one).

OR I could have spent hours doing a full loads analysis, in which case.... I would have said "add panels to the tracker rack plus two on the ground". Incremental/modular addition of production was a little slower because we did Ph1, observed results, then did Ph2, but less overall time spent. Also, a lower ratio of spreadsheet modeling, which is always a win.

[mountainFrugal]

With all this neurodivergence discussion along all these dimensions we could take the "Everyone is someone else's weirdo" Scott Adams quote and get comfortable with "I am most people's weirdo". By embodying that idea and being comfortable with it can bring a lot of relief. Maybe expanded to "I am most people's wierdo based on statistical distributions of cognitive traits." A bit clunky.

[Frita]

With all this neurodivergence discussion along all these dimensions we could take the "Everyone is someone else's weirdo" Scott Adams quote and get comfortable with "I am most people's weirdo". By embodying that idea and being comfortable with it can bring a lot of relief. Maybe expanded to "I am most people's wierdo based on statistical distributions of cognitive traits." A bit clunky.

Purely anecdotal: There used to be a time (like the 80s/90s, probably before but I wasn’t working) when students (and their parents) with what today would be labeled as Autism Spectrum Disorder were considered “quirky” or a FLK (funny looking kid). They’d sometimes get some services in other qualifying areas and via other avenues. For the most part, they were accepted for being weird. Not sure pathologizing has been helpful…As you point out, @mF, self-acceptance—not the label—could be the key.

It’s kind of like the rule of thirds:
1/3 of people will like you.
1/3 will be indifferent.
1/3 will dislike you.
I figure this in the bottom group may think I am weird. Or maybe they all could think I am weird. It’s really about them.

[7Wannabe5]

Since I am very nearly balanced in extroversion/introversion, and found myself testing as iNTP rather than eNTP during my recent experiment with living all by myself in a residence for first time in my life, my take is that "weird" or "eccentric" would be associated with my flavor of neurodivergence when in my introverted self, whereas "kooky" or "flaky" would be better associated with my flavor of neurodivergence when more in my extroverted self. Difference maybe being whether my brain is going off on a tangent from my body or my body is going off on a tangent from my brain.

[AxelHeyst]

May the neurodivergent party continue: check out The Monotropism Questionnaire. Introduction/links, and browser-based questionnaire.

My score 209/235, ~"More monotropic than 88% of autistics and 99% of allistics."

The first thing to say is that we think monotropism is one aspect of the natural variability of human thinking and experience (neurodiversity). It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you! It’s probably good that monotropic people exist, and it’s good that polytropic people exist too.

The second thing is that we don’t have enough data to say for sure whether a high degree of monotropism necessarily means someone is autistic. While the diagnostic criteria for autism all follow naturally from monotropism, it is not clear if they follow inevitably: there may be some very monotropic people who do not fit with the way autism is currently defined. There are also some autistic people who do not feel monotropism fits their experiences, which demands further research.

I'd run across the idea of monotropism before but haven't done a dive yet. Off the top of my head just based on running through the questions, I can see a better understanding of monotropism could lead to better heuristics for management of projects and internal dialogue. Thinking out loud:

• Acceptance that when the stoke is gone, it's best to simply let go and process the project out of your life (abandon in place, sell it off, delegate, give away..)
• Possibly some heuristics for Put on Ice in case the stoke comes back later vs. Remove from Life.
• Reduce the negative self-talk with respect to abandoning projects before they finish. It's going to happen, and that's going to cost (time, money, space, logistics...), and maybe that's just how it is and the overall life-time benefit from higher-than-typical ability to focus makes up for it. Regardless, if I'm truly wired for monotropism then trying to force polytropic focus is clearly going to result in mediocre-at-best results.
• Build life and work systems that dovetail with monotropic work patters? Build a network of people who are good finishers and can take delegated projects across the finish line?
• (^^This is closely related to another thread of self-inquiry I've been working on, which is that my strengths might lie in visioning/leadership/management/strategy rather than the nitty-gritty grinding and cranking and/or technical/craft/artisinal competence. I can bang together functional proof of concept prototypes all day long but I don't know that I've ever finely finished a single thing in my life (Serenity, the studio, my podcast, most of my 3d models, videos, organizing pushes... all are 80-90% done). And maybe that's totally fine. In other words I think I'm starting to see the limitations of my own WoG for producing the kinds of results I want to see in the world but I'm starting to see how well my WoG could merge with other yin-to-my-yang WoGs to get some of these things moving. I think the next area of competence for moving in this direction might be understanding and managing incentive alignment... /tangent).
• I do find having sets of automatic routines that I just do without thinking about to be a foundational behavior for my life not sucking. Without routines for food, exercise, sleep, etc the cognitive/decision-making overhead is way too high. The routines let me focus on the things I want to focus on without my life going to shit (eating terribly, forgetting to work out for three months, sleep discipline out the window...). This monotropism concept has at least slightly changed my perspective on routines - I'm conceptualizing them as support systems for the intense focus sessions - aka, automatic behaviors that deliver me to the Space of Stoke with a healthy body, mind, energy levels, hygiene...

ETA: regarding routines, it feels like there's some cognitive threshold below which a behavior can become a 'routine', and above which it requires stoke/interest to engage in. Of course it takes some effort to get a behavior routinized, so that process typically looks like focusing intensely on the behavior I want to routinize, learn all about it, create the heuristics/system, push it long enough that it becomes habit/routine, and then I stop thinking about it entirely. Often I also forget (become unable to recall) the reasons Why I set the system to run a certain way (for example I'll forget the details of the theory behind my chosen diet or exercise program), but I'll trust the previous version of myself that set the system up. It's like I dump memory in order to make room for the next cognitive function.

[jacob]

I once attended a seminar of an astrophysicist looking for graduate students willing to do supernova research. At that time, it was still not verified what exactly made a supernova go boom. There was a reasonably well understood theory. The problem was that once all the simplifying assumptions had been incorporated to make a model computational tractable on 2000s technology, the models wouldn't explode. The research group listed some desired personality traits/skills: coding experience, reasonably intelligent (in physics that's 130+), high frustration tolerance.

All that to say is that I think monotropism is par for the course in any functional/successful STEM researcher.

One distinct difference between what that professor was looking for and what the monotropism test was asking for was the test's rather strong focus on "anxiety" and "distractions".

For reference, I present myself as the model weirdo. My test scores were
Monotropism Score: 126 / 235, Average: 2.74, more Monotropic than about 1% of autistic people and about 22% of allistic people.

What's perhaps interesting here is that the Big5/OCEAN test also tests for anxiety/neuroticism and that I score very low on that dimension. I forget what it is exactly, but probably in the 1-3% percentile of the least anxious. However, I do experience frustration and annoyance a lot more with both social situations and technical problems than I suspect the average person does. It's just that it doesn't result in anxiety. (It's possible that this is explained by an above average level of competence + agency = ability to deal with problems that would otherwise cause anxiety in anyone whose locus of control was beyond them.)

Anxiety can certainly be a latent variable of autism when forced into undesirable situations, so it would be interesting to see/know if this test has any correlation with neuroticism.

The other latent variable would be the desire for routine. As a researcher, I found routine boring and uninspiring. I still can't for the life of me empathize with most people's ability to remain interested in the same thing for their entire fucking life. How do they do that?!?!? What's the secret? Whereas autism is neurologically associated with an inability to deal with overwhelming amounts of information thus resulting in coping mechanisms like stimming and routine being a feature rather than a bug.

PS: "80% done and over"/"proof of prototype" is typical INTJ behavior. The key is to hand the baby over to an ENTJ to take it to 100% ... and then onto ESTJs for the daily management.

[zbigi]

I still can't for the life of me empathize with most people's ability to remain interested in the same thing for their entire fucking life. How do they do that?!?!? What's the secret?

IMO the secret is that they're simply not interested in anything really. "Being interested in something" is not their primary (or even secondary) core function. And, if you're not into being interested (curious, ...), then you're not gonna get bored.

[AxelHeyst]

As a researcher, I found routine boring and uninspiring. I still can't for the life of me empathize with most people's ability to remain interested in the same thing for their entire fucking life. How do they do that?!?!? What's the secret?

Hm I'm now wondering about ambiguity or differing models for what is meant by routine. In my post above I was thinking of routines as "autopilot #adulting behavior" that serve as infrastructure that maximizes the amount of time I get to spend chasing stoke, which necessarily has to be not routinized. It might *look* kind of routine from the outside (staring at computer, reading books, staring into space, scribbling in notebooks), but the internal experience and things being thought about is novel.

--

I resonate with your unpacking of 'anxiety'/frustration. I think I'm very low on neuroticism, but getting shoulder-tapped during a focus session is infuriating. I've also discovered a low tolerance/extreme dislike of being asked "so what'd you do today?" too soon after coming out of the zone. It takes a lot of effort to break down and articulate all the stuff I did, they don't actually care and rarely even understand wtf I'm talking about. My strategy has been to over-send my response, initiating a several-minute long zero-affect verbal affidavit of my activities and internal framing that day until they get the hint and ask me to stop talking.

[delay]

My score 209/235, ~"More monotropic than 88% of autistics and 99% of allistics."

My score 176 / 235, -"More monotropic than 12% of autistic people and about 83% of allistics"

I don't understand how anyone could get good at something they're not interested in. Why would you spend time on something you're not interested in?

I still can't for the life of me empathize with most people's ability to remain interested in the same thing for their entire fucking life. How do they do that?!?!?

I'm interested in breathing and so are you.

How do you define "same" in "same thing" ?

[AxelHeyst]

I'm interested in breathing and so are you.

Unlikely. You more likely would be very interested in any activity that might have as consequence "breathing will cease". Unless you're a breathwork nerd.

Interest as it's being used here means something like "difficult to make self stop thinking consciously and intensely about." How much time/day do you spend thinking consciously and intensely about breathing?

[guitarplayer]

How much time/day do you spend thinking consciously and intensely about breathing?

I think quite a few psychologists would say ‘too little’ and that it’s good to be a breathwork nerd sometimes!

I am gonna defend routine and repetitive stuff. The key to remain interested in the same ‘thing’ is to see it through various prisms or in different dimensions. Like you sometimes talk that some books are good to be read several times at different points in life, this for example naturally induces that shift. The shift is within (upper left). If you accept that, then you can’t tell if the same thing is indeed the same or not for the said person because it escapes the mainstream (right) contemporary view.

Take poetry and how literally simple phenomena can leave a lasting impression and in many ways. People have a favourite poem for years, sometimes life.