Last updated Unknown

Status: Finished-Implementing List -
Author: Bob Sullivan - Herbert Thompson Tags: Optimization Medium: #literature/books/implemented Links: The Plateau Effect by Bob Sullivan Application

The Plateau Effect by Bob Sullivan

Beginning

• Accilimation is when we adapt to the environment around us by ignoring certain stimuli
• The plateau effect keeps us from stagnating and doing things that provide us little value
• Isolation of certain practices (exercising and treadmills) increases the plateau effect
• Humans strive for equilibrium
  • Some things we prefer to be set and done
  • It’s important to know which parts of our lives are “once and dones” or constantly evolving
  • Plateaus hinder our equilibrium as we fail to satisfy our ever-growing needs
• Plateauing is when we become accustomed to something
  • Like how doing a habit everyday becomes routine
  • Progress is like an exponential graph turned into a logarithmic graph
• The author suggests that being distracted will ruin our reading retention by 20%
• Learned helplessness leads to plateaus, and overcoming them can help us reach new heights

P1 - Science - Three Forces

1 - Math

• Plateau effect is related with diminishing returns

  • Tolerance

• Plateau effect can be calculated using optimization and differential equations

  • Usually the solution lies in the middle of the two extremes
    • A fence covers the most area with a balanced width and length

• 5 seconds, 25 seconds, two minutes, ten minutes, one hour, five hours, one day, five days, 25 days, four months, two years

  • Spaced repetition intervals

• !Pasted image 20210531163619.png

• Unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, unconscious competence

2 - Going Flat - First Force

• Constant acclimation desensitizes us to consistency
• Acclimation leads us to miss important signals
• The pesticide paradox is when fixing a bug creates more bugs
• Read software testing techniques
• Fuzzing is when a person applies inputs with randomness to search for unexpected outcomes
  • ex) putting foreign coins in a vending machine that only accepts us currency in hopes of finding similarities
  • Fuzzers help find arbritrary problems that are neglected by conventional debugging specifications
• Method of loci is most effective through outlandish imagery
  • Combines something we are so accustomed to and pairs it with unforgettable and distinctive recollections
• Randomness (crossfit schedules) help keep us guessing
  • Having nachoish-presented dessert engages us more than the ordinary expectation

3 - Greedy Algorithm - Second Force

• The greedy algorithm influences us to make instantly gratifying decisions
• Short-term greed is bad, but long-term greed is good
  • Locally optimal solution vs globally optimal solution
    • ex) Walking to a destination vs waiting for a train
  • Greedy people look smarter in the beginning
• Our ability to accept delayed gratification comes with age
• The way we represent our desires and temptations affects our tolerance for delayed gratification
  • Thinking of something as a picture/objectively makes it less appealing
    • Vividly imagining something fuels our interest
• Marshmallow test
  • Children who were able to resist the marshmallow were:
    1. Better at stress management
    2. Led to higher SAT scores
• Making retrograde progress is a skill of objectively seeing things
  • Surpressing our immediate greed to achieve long-term goals
    • Deep work
  • Associated with grit
• To make improvements in our already unconscious and trained skills, we need to isolate and improve small sections
• Skill is velocity of achievement, and talent is our acceleration
• Since rewards diminish when trying to improve already refined skills, faith is important for maintaining the drive and purpose
  • Positive future-mindedness

4 - Bad Timing - Third Force

• Spacing effect helps with memorization
  • Memorization is effective if timed correctly
    • Repeat less often
    • The time not spent memorizing is just as important
• Is it possible to properly time other aspects of our life?
• The quantified self movement aims to find connections between time and everyday things
  • ex) The most effective time to run
  • Data-driven optimization
  • Gadgets for things like sleep have gotten mainstream
  • ex) Breathing practices to calm oneself and reduce anxiety
    • six 5-second inhales and exhales
• Saturation is a result of excessive repetition
  • Kills our desires through overfamiliarity and creates repulsion of previously-enjoyed things/activities
  • Diversification helps mitigate saturation, and it is applicable in virtually everything
  • Temporary depletion is the antidote to saturation

P2 - Engine

5 - Flow Mechanisms

Step Functions

• Functions have an input and output
• Plateaus can be found in the space between the input and output
  • Just have to add more oomph to get it working
• Step functions are when you need a little more of something, but that something comes in bulk
  • ex) Needing an extra tablespoon of baking powder but needing to buy a whole new box
  • Covers are step functions that tank any future mishaps
    • ex) Insurance
  • Cooperation can help better utilize excessive step functions
    • ex) Sharing a place with someone to reduce rent price

Choke Points

• Choke points are areas that slow or terminate systems
• To combat the choke point of CAPTCHAs, a hacking company created porn websites with captchas for users to solve LMAO

Erosion

• When the rewards of a certain effort diminish over time
  • Smooth decline
• To prevent erosion plateaus, finding a counterbalance that replenishes resources

Mystery Ingredients

• An unknown variable that is hindering progress
  • Cannot be simply found through data
    • Requires outside-of-the-box thinking
  • Placebo effect

6 - Distortion Mechanisms

• It’s important to measure important and various data to truly determine our progress
  • Can lead to improper adjustments from irrelevant information
    • ex) Weight maintains so you give up, but in reality, you are gaining muscle
• We suck at assessing psychological and potential risk
• To better assess risk, we need to approach it with a different method of thinking
  • One that uses data and thinks in-between the lines
• Opportunity cost is the ability to explore other options
  • Not well-developed, leads to sticking to the same routines
  • Anchoring leads us to do commit to bad choices because of our investment in them
• Don’t base things off of unrealistic occurrences
  • ex) Just because a friend grew his portfolio 1000% randomly choosing stocks doesn’t mean you should too, as the actual probability of that happening is slim
• Be careful of the recency bias, and make sure it doesn’t outweigh days worth of information-gathering
• Accidental reinforcement is the opposite of learning

P3 - The Achievement (Actions)

7 - Attention

The Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London published a study on infomania that found checking your e-mail while performing another creative task decreases your IQ in the moment ten points. That’s the equivalent of not sleeping for thirty-six hours—or double the impact of smoking marijuana.

• Not only does distraction keep us from doing what we need to do, it also diminishes our capabilties
• True multitasking can only be achieved through automaticity
  • Unconscious drinking
• Listening skills decilne with age and is usually overestimated
• Expectation and experience with distractions reduces their effect
• Five levels of listening
  1. Not listening
  2. Pretending to listen
  3. Selective listening
  4. Active listening
  5. Empathetic listening
• The inability to engage in level empathetic listening constantly leads to misunderstandings, yet we fail to do it
  • 93% of communication is nonverbal
• Empathetic listening can help find hidden problems in the world
• Conversations are commonly just one-sided monologues that fail to take in the opinion of the other person
  • Listening to agree is peak listening, listening with intent
  • Be the first person to admit wrong and reconcile
• “It can wait”
  • Tells us to relax, declares priority management, shows integrity, patience
  • Helps us make better choices rather than impulsive ones
  • ex) emails can wait
    • Helps focus on tasks at hand
• What if we were able to program computers to semi-consciously remind us without blatant notifications like pop-ups and sounds? (calm computing)

8 - Agillity (Second Action)

• Extreme programming entails giving up our traditions and defenses to work towards our ultimate productivity
  • Extreme adaptation with various options
  • Similar to Lean Startup
  • It’s important to have a good idea before investing in it
  • Pretotypes are the illustration of ideas before the implementation happens
• Incremental failure is when we fail to recognize something’s danger until it is too late
  • ex) Water getting hotter until it starts boiling
  • We fail to realize incremental failure because of the “just noticeable difference”, the percentage at which we recognize changes in stimuli
    • Explains why we may continue to stick with something despite diminishing returns

innovators beat ideas pretotypes beat productypes data beats opinions now beats later doing beats talking simple beats complex commitment beats committees

9 - Application (Third Action)

You are supposed to put out the best paper you can in the time you have. There’s a big difference.

• The more time we spend making decisions, the unhappier we will be
  • Set time limits
  • Decision science
  • Abundance of information leads to information overload
  • Think of decision making like an elastic band
    • One side is data, and the other side is our intuition
  • To break through plateaus, we need to try the other side
  • Think of only a few points to focus on
    • What would be the most influential part of a decision?
• Planning can promote perfectionism and procrastination
  • Application and taking the first step is much more effective

If it’s worth doing, you should get started right away. And even if it’s less than perfect, it’s certainly worthwhile

• When writing, it’s better to just write what first comes to mind
  • Focus on communication rather than perfection
• Perfectionism leads to plateaus
  • Causes us to only do things that we know we will excel at
  • Only seek positive feedback
  • A fixed mindset
  • Don’t enjoy the process and solely focus on the destination
  • Makes us do the same things over and over again to reduce mistakes
    • Leads us to not improve
• Procrastination can actually be better compared to perfectionism
• Comes in the form of:
  • Self-perfectionism
    • Bragging and desires compliments
  • Other-perfectionism
  • Socially-prescribed perfectionism
    • Hides flaws, doesn’t admit failure
• Sometimes, you just have to do what is enough to best optimize your efforts (satisfactory and suffice efforts)
  • If given a hundred options, the most satisfactory and sufficient method of choosing someone would be less than half of all the applicants
• To truly break through plateaus, we must accept our flaws and continue climbing

Procrastination

• Mental calculations can be more demanding than physical labor, and require more recovery time
• Resting gives us dopamine, renewing synapses and prepares them for more effort
• Procrastination never goes away, and everything requires effort

End

• Plateaus are commonplace and are in everything we do

Trying new things literally rewires your brain, forcing it to open up long-closed neural pathways. Embracing diversity is such a profound concept that it actually can be, along with laughter and love, the best medicine.

• Most people are lonely, and then desperately happy when someone asks them a question and truly listens for the answer
  • There’s always something that stops people from pursuing their dreams, and a great way to form connections and trust is to enable people

Eight Elements of Plateaus

1. Immunity
   • Accilimation
   • Solved through diversity
2. Greedy Algorithm

• Favoring short-term over long-term
• Solved through delayed gratification and long-term thinking

1. Bad timing
   • Putting too much effort and work
   • Solved through breaks to renew yourself
2. Flow issues
   • Refer to notes
   • Erosion is solved through finding a counter-balance
   • Step functions are solved through smoothening out step functions (cooperation)
   • Choke points are solved through acknowledging and overcoming them
   • Mystery ingredients are solved through their acknowledgement
3. Distorted data
   • Poorly assessing risk, measuring wrong things
   • Solved through recalibration and being skeptical
4. Distraction
   • Multitasking, notifcations
   • Solved through peak listening, “yes and”, engaging yourself with one thing
5. Failing slowly
   • Attritubed to JND
   • Solved by speeding up the outcome process and failing faster
6. Perfectionism
   • Plateau and diminishing returns
   • Solved by acceptance and the first step

References:

Created:: 2021-05-31 16:13 PM