Podcast with Jonny Miller Transcript

Jonny Miller 0:08

Good morning, curious humans. In this episode, I speak with my good friend, Malcolm ocean. Malcolm is many, many things. But first and foremost, I consider him to not only be relentlessly curious, but genuinely prolific in sharing his practical philosophy, questions, ideas, mostly through the medium of his Twitter threads.

So I predicted that the experience of listening to this conversation might be a little bit like feeling like you're trapped in a pinball machine bouncing between unrelated topics. But in fact, what unfolded in a kind of beautiful way was a really satisfying dance around parallel and related threads that centered around our mutual interest of human attention and perception, and how these theories have deep practical value in our daily life. Some of the topics we danced around included the value and the art of holding questions and sitting in that sense of uncertainty - his case for what he calls a liveness-based productivity system. And we discussed why even consider setting goals in the first place. We talked about the pretty unknown ideas around Perceptual Control Theory and how they've shifted his outlook on life, and how these theories connect to the work of Ian McGilchrist, which we're both big fans of, on the differences between our left and right brain hemispheres. And then we also talked about our respective domino memes as a way of attempting to articulate the different levels of impact that we're hoping to make in the world.

And I really appreciated his framing of what he calls negative effort, which is a way of saying the creative work that we can't not do, and some ideas for how to potentially incentivize this on a wider scale. So I feel like I learned a huge amount just listening, myself, for a lot of this, ad I really hope that you enjoy this pretty nerdy, but fascinating, deep dive with the ever thoughtful, the kind, and the deeply enthusiastic human, Mr. Malcolm ocean. Welcome, Malcolm.

Malcolm Ocean 2:45

Yeah, great to be here. We've been kinda aware of each other for a while, and I've seen you at my workshops and stuff like that, around, on Twitter. It's cool to be talking face to face.

Jonny Miller 2:59

Yeah, I think it's been a couple of years of back and forth. So this, this conversation is a long time coming. How are you? How are you feeling right now in three words?

Malcolm Ocean 3:11

Satisfied. Excited. Playful.

Jonny Miller 3:16

Hmm Nice. As I mentioned, before we hit 'record', I've spent the last couple of days combing through your blog posts and Twitter threads, and I feel like there are just a ton of different directions we could go in over the next 90 minutes or so.

Malcolm Ocean 3:33

Let's do all of them.

Jonny Miller 3:35

[Laughter] Yeah. And I was gonna say that as a warning to you, and maybe listeners, that they might feel like they're being trapped in a pinball machine. But I also think this is going to be a ton of fun.

Malcolm Ocean 3:45

Yes.

Jonny Miller 3:45

So, yeah, as a starting point, let's begin with a question that I really can't not ask at this point. And that is, were you exceptionally curious as a child? And if so, could you tell me a story about something you were curious about?

Malcolm Ocean 4:04

Yeah. So, I mean, I think, probably, the most evocative story is, when I was about five, I was playing around on the breakwater at one of the beaches near where I grew up in Nova Scotia. And I jumped in some way that I hit my head on a rock, and it started bleeding quite profusely. And so, my parents rushed me to the hospital, and they were anesthetizing me in order to put stitches in my forehead, which had cracked open. And I was asking the doctors all these questions about, 'what was the anesthetic they were using?' and 'how did that work?' and 'how many stitches were they going to use?' and all these sorts of questions. And the doctors were kinda turning to each other, and were like, "He seems to be you know, weirdly [inaudible 4:53]," and my mom was just like, "No, he's always like this."

Jonny Miller 4:58

[Laughter]

Malcolm Ocean 4:58

And that was definitely a pattern. I remember, it's like, whenever I was a kid, I would be interacting with any sort of professional [and] I would always want to know what the world was like for them, you know? It's like, so I'm at the dentist, right? And I'm trying to understand how their whole system works, right? So, yeah, that feels like the best story of me being exceptionally curious. [Chuckles]. They literally thought something had gone wrong. I mean, I had hit my head, but it was pretty ordinary for me.

Jonny Miller 5:31

That's great. And I can definitely relate to aspects of that in my childhood, too. And I guess part two to that question, did you have any, any favorite books or favorite stories, growing up, that comes to mind? And there's context for that. I really love this question, because I have this theory that the narratives of the stories that really resonate when we're younger are sometimes, in some way, connected to our life's purpose, or what we do later in life. So, curious if anything arises for you there.

Malcolm Ocean 5:59

Yeah, um... you know, it's funny, because I read a lot as a kid, but I was always somebody who wanted to read different stuff, you know? Like, some people have favorites, and they go back to those favorites over and over and over again, you know? They watched some movies ten times, or fifty times or things like that, or, similarly, with books. And I, literally, the number of books that I have read even twice, all the way through, is... I mean, the number of books I could name that I have, FOR SURE, read twice... like... there's one I just reread recently called "Making Sense of Behavior, The Meaning of Control" - it's a very cool book about neuroscience and so on, you're definitely gonna want to check it out. I think I probably - one of my favorite novels as a kid was this book called "A Tale of Time City", which is this really trippy sci-fi fantasy book where these little kids, well I don't know [about] little, but you know, the kids live in this city that's somehow outside of time, and they have to do time travel into various eras in order to fix some weird thing, where the engine of time has sort of stopped. It's like slowing down and stopping - it's not turning anymore. But it's this really weird take on time travel, right? Because everything is sort of predestined. It's like, you know, they're going back into the 1910s, or whatever, at one point, and it's like, there's no way to prevent World War One. Like World War One just happens, and yet they still show up and they need to, like play some key roles.

So, I don't know. I think that was probably an early experience of me being really into, like, mind bending-type media, you know? And then, I've since - I really have loved some of Christopher Nolan's films like Inception and Tenet and stuff. Like, just really trippy time travel stuff. Or just like other - just media that really makes you go "Wait, what?" I guess it's one thing I would say that has appealed to me. But it's funny, because I was reading incessantly as a kid. I mean, not as much as my sister, but, like, I was reading a lot, but I wouldn't say that I really had that many favorites.

Jonny Miller 8:30

Hm, interesting. Yeah, the book on time reminds me of one of the few books that I've reread as well - it's a book called "Einstein's Dreams" by Alan Lightman. And it's basically this beautifully constructed book, where he kinda crafts, I think it's like 20 to 25, different micro-stories that are just a few pages long, where time functions differently in each of these worlds-

Malcolm Ocean 8:59

Whoa.

Jonny Miller 8:59

And he kinda paints a picture of where - like this one image that really stands out is in this village where time closer to the central statue goes incredibly slowly. So there's this couple just about to lean into a kiss and they're kind of frozen in time. And then the further out you go, away from the center, the faster time gets. And it's just beautifully written and almost poetic.

Malcolm Ocean 9:26

That's so cool. So cool.

Jonny Miller 9:27

I feel like you'd really appreciate that book.

Malcolm Ocean 9:29

Yeah, you might like "Some" by David Eagleman.

Ayooluwa Uthman 9:34

It's really similar. Kinda... yeah, really similar, like Stein. He's fun.

Malcolm Ocean 9:37

Yeah, you read "Some"?

Jonny Miller 9:39

Yeah, yeah. It's great.

Malcolm Ocean 9:40

Totally.

Jonny Miller 9:40

Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, I remember the first time that I came into contact with your writing. And it was I think just over two-and-a-half years ago, and I found a guest post of yours on the Ribbon Farm blog, which I'm definitely going to link to in the show notes, and it was titled "Questions are not just for asking." And speaking things that I've read more than once. I think this is genuinely one of my all-time favorite blog posts on the internet. And I've returned to it several times. And I love the distinctions that you made around the the art of holding questions, and using questions to organize attention. And especially, and this is an idea I've heard in multiple different ways, but the idea of letting the questions ask us. So, given that you wrote this, probably, four or more years ago, I'm wondering, has anything shifted in what you wrote since that post? And how the art of working with questions influences the work that you do now?

Malcolm Ocean 10:48

Oh, yeah. That's a great constellation of a question... or a constellation of several questions, or whatever. Let's see. So I actually just linked somebody to that post last night. I was having a conversation with a group of people, trying to kind of strategize about how to make a product to help people level up developmentally and so on. And the strategy session, as far as I could tell, had a failure mode where nobody knew how to hold questions, nobody knew how to sit with questions.

Like, somebody would put out a question that they were kind of chewing on - some really complex, sorta, "Here's, as far as I know, kind of an unsolved problem. Like, an open question globally," right? You know, they would say something, they would put out something of that nature, and then somebody else would just kind of jump in and try to answer it as if they just already knew the answer. And one of the people even expressed this when I brought this up later and shared the post. They said something like, "Yeah, it's almost like I wasn't even asking the question, I was actually expressing that I lacked the discernment to even assess a possible answer to that question." Which is really quite a statement. It's, you know, I'm not even asking a question, I'm actually saying, "I don't even know how I would go about beginning to know if this question had been answered." And so, I mean, that's just one little aspect of it.

Another is, in the weeks after I wrote and published that post, I was at some conferences, and so on. And I would run into people - sometimes new people I was meeting, sometimes old friends. And they would just ask me all sorts of random stuff, you know? They would be like, "So what are you working on these days?" And there was this way in which if I didn't pause, it was just so easy to kinda "blah blah blah blah blah blah blah." Like, whatever kind of sounded like the right thing to say in response to their question would just kind of tumble out of me, which was not necessarily, first of all, what I particularly felt like talking about, nor particularly what they were actually really interested in. Because sometimes the questions were coming from something like, "What would be a good question to ask here in the context of not wanting to kind of be in some silence?"

Jonny Miller 13:27

Yeah.

Malcolm Ocean 13:28

Yeah. So, I mean, that was another thing I noticed. And I've probably, substantially, refined my capacity to sit with questions and to hold questions. And I do really feel like part of what I was doing last night -when I was on the strategy call- is I was sort of taking some notes on like, "Okay, what, what makes for a really good conversation? Especially among not just two people, but like, a group of four to 10 people? Like, what makes for a really good conversation?" Which is a question worth sitting with and worth doing some deep thinking about. Like, you know, just, "What is even my sense of an answer to that question?" I think that would be beneficial for everybody to do - [to] just even, take some time and think about, "What do I think makes for a good conversation?" And one of the things that I noticed that is just vital if you're talking about anything remotely complex, or remotely on the edge of what people know and understand, is you need to have that ability to sit with questions and let them kinda simmer - let them get played with and explored and refined and connected to other things without simply trying to answer them.

Jonny Miller 14:49

Mm hmm.

Malcolm Ocean 14:51

So yeah, so insofar as one of the main things that I'm working on is creating really high quality conversations, it's very central to that. And a really high quality conversation is, in some sense, really high quality thinking on a collective level. And likewise, really high quality thinking internally is like a really good internal conversation.

Jonny Miller 15:22

Yeah.

Malcolm Ocean 15:23

Oh one one other little piece, one other take on this. My friend, Michael Smith, has this great thing he says where, "Suppose that you ask yourself like, 'what did I have for breakfast today?' who answers the question? Where does the answer come from? And how do you know the answer is right?" And there's some part of you that you pose this question [to] and then you wait for something to bubble up, and then some part of you knows that the answer is right. You know, I when I posed that question to myself just now, I initially thought of yogurt and granola. And then I was like, "No, actually, yogurt and granola was yesterday, today I just had a bunch of chocolate milk for breakfast." And somehow I know this, right? But how do I know that that's the answer? And there's this... you know, similarly, if you're trying to... my friend is a mathematician, and he would sometimes say, "When you when you try to make a proof of some sort of math statement, you write it out and then you're kind of - you're sort of waiting, you're almost praying for an answer." And I feel like that's a little bit like sitting with a question. You know, it's not very interesting when it comes to the question of like, "What did I eat for breakfast?"

But yesterday, I was sitting with this question that was something like - there's no way to put it into words properly, but I was sitting with my guitar and I had this sense of wanting to write a song that was something about "the edge". And I was like, "What is even this edge thing that I mean?" And I was just feeling into it, and I was doing this little, kinda like, ascending chromatic thing on the on the guitar, that was like, [singing] "the edge, the edge". And it was really uncomfortable, I was just going up the guitar like that and just sitting with it. And then suddenly, this phrase kind of popped into my mind, that was like, [singing] "Who gets you closer to the edge?" Actually, no, that wasn't it, it was [singing] "Who gets you right up to the edge?" And it expressed like five thoughts in one phrase, and I was like, "That's it, that's it," I found the thing I was looking for. But it required sitting with the discomfort of, "there's something here." And that's, in a sort of nonverbal way or, you know, in a non-conversational or non-declarative way, the same kind of motion of sitting with that question.

Jonny Miller 18:04

Yeah.

Malcolm Ocean 18:04

So it's kind of like... one way to put it is, [it's] either you have clarity about what it makes sense to do, or you have clarity of how to go about getting clarity of what it makes sense to do. Or you don't know, and if you don't know, then kinda just got to sit with it. And this is an insight that I had, in some ways, years ago, but just recently got underscored to me by another friend of mine who basically considers that the core of the Dharma.

Jonny Miller 18:40

Wow, there are a lot of thoughts swimming around in my head right now. [Laughter]. Where do I begin? So, firstly, I think the piece that you mentioned around the guy in the group yesterday, who was kind of unable to just sit with the question, reminds me of this concept, I believe was coined by John Keats a fair while ago. And he has this term called 'negative capability'. And in his mind, it's this capacity to sit with uncertainty that he equated was almost essential for for greatness, and certainly for good thinking. And I think it's interesting how there is this real discomfort that we feel with any type of uncertainty, and I suppose that putting a question out there, it's almost like the capacity that you have to sit with that question is, I think, in some ways correlated to the degree to which you can sit with uncertainty, probably, in other areas of your life too. And I think this is something that... one of the reasons I've really enjoyed having a podcast has been, both, that it's helped me, I think, to both sit with questions and to be okay with not having an easy answer.

And also to another point you made - the art of inquiring what makes for great conversations is also really interesting. It's something that I've been learning and I constantly have to kind of check myself on the difference between asking a question that I think will make me sound intelligent versus asking questions that I'm genuinely curious about, and there's a sense of like aliveness and spark behind. And that's something that I'm like constantly just learning and reflecting on in my own journey as a podcast host. So I think that's something, as well, that I've been trying to keep in mind.

Malcolm Ocean 20:37

Yeah. Yeah. And I felt like part of what inspired me to kind of go deep and pull out all these different things in response to the question that you asked about the Ribbon Farm guest post, was that you were like, "this has been such a powerful piece for me." And so it's like, I really felt plugged into why you wanted to know more about it, you know? It wasn't just a throwaway question, if you see what I mean?

Jonny Miller 21:08

Yeah, totally, totally. Yeah. And the other piece that maybe we'll come back to later in the conversation, but I like this idea of like, "who's asking the question?" and I suppose that gets to this idea of like, if we take an Internal Family Systems lens, there are multiple people or characters that we have inside of us. And so sitting with a question, in some ways, I guess is like a wave to allow those different aspects which might not be front and center in our consciousness to kinda weigh-in in some way. And so that the answer that we give is more of an amalgamation or a reflection on these multiple perspectives, as opposed to the first perspective which surfaces, which might not be as true as if we had taken multiple perspectives and almost taken an inventory of the different internal characters that we have.

Malcolm Ocean 22:03

Totally, totally. The negative capability thing reminded me of another connection I could make with that questions post and the value of sitting with questions.

Jonny Miller 22:17

Please.

Malcolm Ocean 22:18

Which also relates to what you just said about parts and so on, which is... so I've been studying, in a very pragmatic way, the process of people trying to give each other feedback about blind spots. And this is a very challenging thing to do, because the very nature of blind spots -when it comes to behaviors, and social dynamics, and so forth- the very nature of blind spots is that you can't see them. And blind spots kind of exist within somebody's frame, like somebody's viewpoint, their paradigm, their way of seeing and relating to the world. And there's this paradox, which is that if I try to give you feedback about your blind spot, then I've got to, somehow, in order to communicate with you at all - like in general, in order to communicate with somebody you need to match their frame, you need to put in words, you need to put what you're trying to say into language that they can understand, that'll make sense to them. But if I were to match your frame, inherently, your blind spot is gone. At the point when I've matched your frame, your frame doesn't include your blind spot, by definition. And so there's this paradox where either I'm going to say something nonsensical because I'm not going to be able to like match your frame enough. Or I'm going to say something nonsensical because I'm going to have matched your frame, at which point it's impossible to talk about the very problem that I'm trying to talk about.

And if you notice yourself in a conversation with somebody, and you're trying to point something out to them, and you suddenly feel like sort of weirdly stupid, or even, I think this is a great context to use the word 'dumb', because of the double meaning of dumb as unable to talk, right? That's a good sign that what's going on is that you're trying to point at something that is sort of in their blind spot. And then what's happening is that you can't speak because you're encountering this paradox, where there's no direct way to point at the very thing you want to point at in a way that will make sense to this other person, where you might not be dumbstruck if you were talking to your friend and you're like, "Oh man, Jackie has this thing, you know 'friend'?" And the friend is like "yeah, yeah, totally." It's like, you can totally talk with your friend about it, but the moment you go to try to talk to Jackie, you're dumbstruck. So this is all kinda a preface to the connection I wanted to make, which is that the most useful response, I think, to receiving blind spot feedback of any kind -the sanest response- is to say something like, "I don't really know what you're talking about, but I'm sure you're talking about something. And it sounds like it's creating some sort of problem for you. I would like to not be creating that problem for you, and I don't understand what it is that I'm doing that's creating that problem. And until I do understand what it is that I'm doing and why I'm doing it, I'm probably going to keep doing it.

And, hopefully, we can find some way to ease the pressure off in the meantime, because as I said, I don't want to be creating this problem for you, so maybe we need a bit more space in our relationship, or maybe there's some stopgap solution that we can do that will sort of minimize the problemness of what's going on." But like what you're doing there is sort of stepping into a place that's sort of outside of any frame of what anybody's doing, or the meaning of what anybody's doing. And just kind of acknowledging, "Okay, there's something here you're trying to point at, there's some sort of thing, but I can't change it until I know what it is. And so I'm not going to pretend, 'Oh, I'm so sorry, yeah, I'll do it differently.' I don't know what you're talking about." And so there's something really powerful to that, but also, it's really hard to say that in a lot of context, because people sort of have this idea that, like, if you cared, you would change.

Hmm, sure.

Malcolm Ocean 26:45

And it's like, maybe, but that requires a bunch of other things to be in place. Like, you can't change what you don't understand, and oftentimes, in some sense, nearly always, the bottleneck is actually understanding fully the whole situation of why you're doing what you're doing. And any kind of promise to change is kind of meaningless, because if it if you actually knew what it would take in order to change, and why that was important, you would just already do it, there would be no need to promise it.

Jonny Miller 27:18

Mm hmm. Yeah, this is really, really interesting, and what comes to mind for me is also maybe what the nature of a blind spot is, and if it's more of a kind of cognitive bias versus something on the emotional spectrum that someone might not be familiar with feeling. So, to give an example, there's a guy called Robert Augustus Masters who I've been really diving into his work. And he talked about how, for a long period of time, in his 30s and 40s, compassion was really in his shadow. And it really took him like going through a kind of dark night of the soul and having like a real breakdown, to kind of feel his own pain and from there realizing how he'd lacked compassion for most of his life, and that this was like a new feeling that came online on the other side of this really intense experience. And I guess that would be similar to kind of what you're talking about. If someone says, you know, "you're lacking compassion, you're not being compassionate." Well, someone might intellectually think "I would like to be compassionate, but it might just not be available to them, until they've been through some kind of experience that really brings it online in a in a deeper way."

Malcolm Ocean 28:30

Totally, totally. And it's like, and how are you going to even know what they mean, when they say compassion if you're lacking it?

Jonny Miller 28:37

Right. Right.

Malcolm Ocean 28:40

So, yeah. I mean, I think that's a great example of a blind spot. Because it's not like you just aren't being compassionate, even though you sort of could be. But it's like you lack the affordance or the access to that relationship.

Jonny Miller 29:02

Amazing. Okay, I'm going to hit the the pinball machine button right now.

Malcolm Ocean 29:07

Okay, beautiful. I'm sure it'll all end up interrelating.

Jonny Miller 29:11

Yeah, I think it's gonna dovetail beautifully into some of the latest stuff. But um, yeah, I'd love to briefly - well, I guess, first of all, I should credit you with, I think, helping me to restore a bit more of a healthy relationship to the notion of productivity and systems. Yeah, I kind of went through this phase where I rejected a lot of what, to me, felt like this very kind of superficial productivity porn that was out there. And I think that through a combination of your goal-crafting workshops and some of your writing, I think a healthier balance is beginning to kind of be restored. So, I suppose as a jumping-off point, could you give listeners some context as to what Complice is? And maybe this is a silly question, but why do you think it's important to focus and think about productivity?

Malcolm Ocean 30:07

Yeah. Well, I mean, I'd be curious to hear a little bit more from you about, what was the transformation that you begun in relating to some of some of my ideas around this? I think that might bring it even more alive.

Jonny Miller 30:23

Yeah, sure, sure. So, let's see. I think one of the big pieces was your distinction between the aliveness based system versus the exhaustiveness based system. And I think, also, having a very clear connection to this spark and the underlying intention, and the desire behind these things that we say we want to do, and kind of really getting clear on what the deeper motivation is, and connecting to that before just going into like, a stream of tasks that might feel good, and we might get dopamine hits from kinda ticking off. But really restoring that healthy connection to desire. And I think it's probably been a larger part of my journey in a way, to kind of restore a healthier connection with desire, and like actually having strong intentions and putting them out into the world, and being okay with that. Yeah, so that's a bit of context.

Malcolm Ocean 31:39

Would you say before that it felt not safe to have strong intentions because they would get stale or something like that?

Jonny Miller 31:50

No, I think what it was, was partly coming from the startup world where there were a lot of people who kinda set very ambitious goals, and were very driven to have a big impact on the world and things like that, and just seeing how so much of the time, this was coming from a place of ego. And this was actually leading to more suffering in their own lives, than actually kind of either fulfilling them and quite often the good intentions that they had, had kind of negative second and third order consequences, because it was often coming from a place of wounding. And the desires they thought they they wanted weren't actually, their desires, but they were more just projections from things they maybe inherited from their parents or culture. And so I think I just became very suspicious of a lot of the ambition out there, and therefore of my own ambition as well.

Malcolm Ocean 32:49

Right. Yeah, I mean, and there definitely can be a dark side or a shadow side to having ambitious goals. One of the things that people sometimes encounter when they get into Complice is they set a work goal, and they set a side hustle goal, and they set a fitness goal, and they set a saving money goal or whatever, and then they find that a couple months have gone by and haven't seen any of their friends, and they're like, "Wait, shit, I think there's something else I care about here." And I've been actually kind of on the fence over the last year or two -maybe on the fence is not quite the right word, maybe I would say I've been holding the question of whether 'goal' is even quite the right framing for these. Because, there's a sense in which it's the right word for the thing, but there's another sense in which it has a lot of connotations, and people think of SMART goals, or you need to have a specific target or whatever. And it can definitely kind of get people overfocused on some of the more tangible things or the more accomplishment oriented things, you know? Things that feel kind of like winning a prize or getting rich or something like that. And so, you know, there is a thing where I... and so I've thought about like, what if I call them just like 'why's? Anyway, I guess for... you know, to take a step back and just kind of talk about Complice more generally, and kind of relate it to your question... I forget exactly what your question was. You were just like, "Can you tell people about Complice?" I think that was what you said.

Jonny Miller 34:31

Mhm

Malcolm Ocean 34:31

So yeah, it's like, this distinction between the aliveness orientation and the exhaustiveness orientation, is kind of related to like, a lot of productivity systems sort of take for granted that there's a bunch of stuff that you need to do and you need to somehow find a way to get yourself to do the stuff. And with Compice it's like, I started from a very different place from the beginning, which was this goal-setting workbook that I was using. And the difference is, it's kind of old wisdom - it goes back to Stephen Covey's Seven Habits or whatever of "begin with the end in mind" and whatever else, but it's basically like, "What are you actually aiming for?" Like, "What does the world look like that you want to see, that you want to bring into being?" And then, "Keeping that world in mind, where are you right now?" And "What does it make sense to do in the context of that desire that you have to bring that world into mine?" And then in the context of that, it's like, sure, suppose that you're planning some event, there might be a hundred little fiddly tasks that somebody got to take care of, and you sure want them listed somewhere so you don't lose track of them.

But it's like, if you're beginning with the end in mind though, it's like, you're not just checking those tasks off the list, you're, you're staying in touch with, "I want this result, I want this experience of this event that's going to bring so many people together and blow their minds," or whatever the event is supposed to do. And so you know, you're not just getting the kind of local satisfaction of like I checked a box off, you know? This is one fewer thing weighing me down on my list of shit that I got to do. Instead, you're like, "Oh, this is one step closer to this world that I really want to live in." And so that was kind of the premise with Complice from the beginning, and when I first built it, I thought I would add a bunch of planning steps into it, you know, eight years ago when I was first getting started. But as the years have gone on, I found there's actually something really beautiful about the part where you kind of can't make plans, because what that means is the plans can't go stale. There's no way to bog yourself down too much with what your past self thought you had to do. Instead, it's just like, "No, that that indeed was what you thought you had to do, but now it's a new day, you still care about what you care about, it's probably pretty similar to what you cared about yesterday, but maybe it's shifted slightly or your best idea for how to approach it has shifted slightly." And so this I mean, this also, in some ways relates to the sitting with a question thing.

Jonny Miller 37:30

Totally, totally.

Malcolm Ocean 37:32

And it also connects with the book that I mentioned, "Making Sense of Behavior: The Meaning of Control", by William T. Powers. The book is about perceptual control theory, which is a systems thinking based or cybernetics based control systems way of modeling the brain and the the body, like an organism that is able to organize its world in ways to suit it. Essentially, it points at how there's a pretty basic neurological basis for seeing all behavior as being goal driven. And specifically, like goal driven in the sense of closing a gap between what you want and what is. And, this applies to really low level behavior, like, you know, when you're driving down the highway in your car, and you notice, like, "Oh, I'm a little bit too close to the, you know, the center line, I'm just gonna turn a little bit and get back in my lane," or, you know, you're a little too close to the curb, you know, the side, and so go back a bit closer to the middle. Like, that's, you know, correcting this little error of like, "Oh, I'm off to the side, I should be more in the middle." But the whole act of driving somewhere in the first place is correcting the error of, "I'm at home, and I want to be at the gym," or wherever it is that you're going. And so it's like, there's a sense in which goals, as understood as on this sort of raw level of like, "Here's where I am, here's where I want to be," are like a fundamental neurological phenomenon that we are exhibiting millions of, every second. Like, right now, as I'm talking to you, I have this impression of what I would need to say in order to generate a sense in you of understanding what I'm talking about, and then that trickles down through other layers into what are the words going to be that are going to formulate the best example.

And often, if I'm talking with somebody face to face or on a video chat, I might pick up a physical object and use the way I'm holding it and moving it around as an example. And we're on audio right now, so I can't do that and so I'm using my own speech as an example which is a little subtler, but it works okay, you know? And the freeform improvisation of that, you know, it's like I can reach for the old pathway but oh, it's not there because we don't have a line of sight right now. So "I have to find some other strategies" is like when you're driving with your car and you encounter a detour and you've got to go out of the way, or when you're working on some business goal and you encounter "Oh, no, the thing I got to do today is I got to deal with the site being down. Like that's not what I plan to do today, but, you know, this goal matters to me, and so that's what today is because I can't just leave the site down." You know, all of these detours are still, you know, they're obstacles on the way to what we want. And sometimes you encounter an obstacle that's big enough that you're like, "You know what? I'm actually going to give up on this goal", right? For whatever reason. But if you encounter an obstacle, and you don't decide to give up, but you also don't know how to overcome the obstacle, then you've got yourself in a bit of a pickle, right? Like you've got yourself in some sort of conflict where you can neither proceed nor retreat, and you've got to somehow deal with that. And kind of by definition, you don't know how to solve it, or you just already would have. Which is kind of that that creative space of being with the uncertainty, being with the unknown.

Jonny Miller 41:21

Hmm, yeah, this is really interesting, and, yeah, I love the connection between goal setting and PCT. And what's kind of arising in me right now is maybe the connection between, let me see if I can articulate this. When I think about [it], and I think part of my aversion to setting goals that I didn't mention, it also stems from almost the arrogance that I think I know what it is that I want, and that usually, when I, or anyone is setting a goal, I'm really just like, "I want to feel a certain way and I'm making a guess, that if I go in this direction, it will lead to allowing me to feel this way." Like that's, I think, often what's happening. And I think what is so... what has been really valuable for me has been consistently reorienting to the intention and the spark of aliveness that is like animating the goal and the direction I want to go in. And then, often, the specific goal or the guess that I've had shifts, depending on - every time I take a step or three steps forward, it's like the view of the horizon changes and I kind of reorient slightly. And so I think it's that process of checking in with myself and being like, "Is this still the right direction? Or can I kind of update the guess of the goals that a previous version of myself, maybe six months ago, thought that's what I wanted, but because of new information, I now want to go in a slightly different direction?"

Malcolm Ocean 43:05

Totally, totally. And sometimes people have a kind of attitude of like, well, you don't want to go in the wrong direction. You know, so you should be really clear what your goal is before you set out. But as you say, in my experience, most of the time -this isn't all[sic] the time, it isn't always the case- but most of the time, in order to find out where you're trying to go, you got to hit the trail. Like, you got to get out on the path and start walking it and realize, "Wait, wait, this is a dead end." Or-

Jonny Miller 43:36

Absolutely.

Malcolm Ocean 43:37

Yeah, you know, or, "Wait, no, actually, I want to go over there, that looks really cool." Or, you know, "Oh, man, my princess is actually in another castle." Right? Like, you know, but you've got to go to the first castle in order to find that out.

Jonny Miller 43:50

Nice. Yeah. And so, I've read some of the books that you shared on perceptual control theory. And my sense of what I've read so far is that it's kind of... as you shared, it's built on this idea that we as humans are reacting not to the real world, but rather to our perceptions of it. And that these perceptions are, in fact, also based on our prior experiences, which might include trauma, etc. And the theory makes intuitive sense to me, and I think I've also been exploring this through the lens of the nervous system as well. I guess there are kind of two questions here, the first one is, how might you describe PCT for a curious listener? And second, this was a question from Michael, a mutual friend, and he was wondering why PCT has been so transformational for you and what belief shift it's created in your life?

Malcolm Ocean 44:54

Yeah. So yeah, to describe PCT in brief, what I would say is, the first thing to understand is the concept of a control system. And the simplest example of a control system that most people are familiar with is a thermostat. You know, that could be either the thermostat in your oven or the thermostat on your wall that heats your house. And what the thermostat does is it compares two things, a perception, which is some sensor measurement of the temperature of the room, or the oven. And the other thing that it compares- and then it compares that with a reference level, which is what the temperature is supposed to be, you know? So if you've got your thermostat hooked up to a furnace, then you know, if the temperature is below what it's supposed to be, then it activates a circuit that runs the furnace and heats the house. Of course, it can't heat the house instantly, but it'll run the furnace until the house warms up, and then it'll shut the furnace off. And this is really cool, right? Like you don't have to manually, you know, stoke the furnace with exactly as much fire as you want to get your house to be the temperature that you want it, you just set it to a particular temperature and this incredibly simple circuit takes care of the rest.

So that's a control system, and the premise of PCT is that the entirety of, or the vast majority of, behavior exhibited by people and also animals is essentially also control systems. But it's a network of control systems that set each other's reference levels from very high level concepts down to the very basics of the actuation of the individual motor neurons that move your hand or your mouth to form a gesture or a sound. And you don't have to focus on all of the lower level details, because your system is already well organized, such that once you set the reference level, you know, I want to say the word blue, I just think the word blue and my system knows exactly how to make that sound come out. But I don't have perfect pitch, for instance, so I can't simply think I want to sing a middle C and just sing it. I might be able to get middle C just because I really know that one, but like, [sings]. I think somebody with perfect pitch can can tell me later if that was right. But somebody with perfect pitch would have a reference level for that exact value, and they could just make it come out of their mouth. But you can also do a relative reference level. So you know, whatever the pitch was that I previously sang, like I could sing an octave higher than it. [sings] Right? Like, whatever that pitch was, I've just now set a new reference level that's like the same pitch, but an octave higher, and I can perform that transformation. So, I don't know what's going on under the hood with that, but somehow I learned how to do that. So, the reference level can be thought of as a goal

Jonny Miller 48:18

Hmm, okay.

Malcolm Ocean 48:19

And then the perceptual level or the... I think the term is - the perceived value of this thing is your current situation. And so, all you have to do in some sense to achieve some goal, is to have the goal and perceive the current situation. And then if you, in fact, have the goal and you perceive the current situation, you will do whatever you need to, to achieve that goal. Unless you have a conflict. You can imagine a house that has a separate furnace and air conditioning unit, right? They they each have their own thermostats rather than some central, smart house, whatever. And so, suppose that you set the air conditioning to 19 degrees Celsius, and you set the furnace to 23 degrees Celsius. What happens? What happens if you do that?

Jonny Miller 49:28

Obviously, there would be they'd both be trying to cool or heat the house respectively, and never getting to the ideal temperature.

Malcolm Ocean 49:37

Right. So, you have a few, you have a few effects from this. Both of them are running full tilt, which is expending a tremendous amount of energy. Both of them are not satisfied. They're in a perpetual state of error, because, say it stabilizes somewhere around 21 degrees, halfway between, they're in a perpetual state of error. Which is why they're running full tilt, right, because when they're in this state of error they run. And so you know, neither of them are satisfied, both of them are running full tilt and wasting a lot of energy. And it is literally waste, because it's cancelling each other out. And moreover, suppose that it stabilizes at 21 degrees, and then say that you open the door and you let in a draft and it cools down to 20 degrees, or 19 degrees or something, kind, or you say, it cools down to 20, then what happens?

Jonny Miller 50:38

Then the heater will probably go back into overdrive, and there'll be a huge kind of, like larger oscillations,

Malcolm Ocean 50:46

So you can get to oscillations, but before you get there, there's something else interesting that happens, which is nothing. If you actually had the thermostat and the... if you actually have both thermostats, you know, the furnace and the AC set to 21, then if you open the door and let in a draft, the furnace would kick in and would bring it back up to 21. But if you've got the furnace set to 23, and the AC set to 19, then if a draft takes the temperature down to 20, they can't do anything, they're already both running full tilt. So they're actually powerless to even maintain it at this uneasy compromise.

Jonny Miller 51:21

Sure, sure.

Malcolm Ocean 51:22

Now, of course, not all systems work like this - some of them will start exerting more when it gets further away, rather than just like all or nothing. But, you know, some systems are all or nothing like this. So, then you have the question of "What happens if you leave the door open a long time and the temperature drops all the way down to 9, or 18, say? And then, as you said, the first thing that happens is not that the furnace goes into overdrive, the first thing that happens is the AC turns off. Because the AC is now satisfied, "it's alright, we got the temperature down below 90, great." I mean, it didn't really do that, the draft did, but we got the temperature down below 90, great. So the AC turns off, the furnace is still running full tilt, which means that sooner or later the temperature is going to go back up. And if it takes long enough for the AC sensor to notice that the temperatures don't back up, then the furnace might actually succeed in getting the temperature up above 23, at which point the furnace shuts off. And then the AC turns back on and that's when you get those big oscillations and fluctuations.

So, essentially, this same phenomenon occurs in people's motivation systems. Somebody sets a goal to... I'll use a case study from Robert Keegan's "Immunity to Change" work. He was working with a bunch of people who were getting diagnosed with some - they'd had heart attacks or something like that, and they were given some sort of pill that they had to take to... whatever you do when you get a heart attack, some sort of pill that would sort out their blood pressure or whatever. And the doctors were basically saying, "If you don't take this pill every day, you're probably not going to live very long." It was kind of the thing. And so you might think that people were pretty motivated to take these pills, and they were. And if you asked them, "What are the odds that you think you'll still be taking this pill everyday in six months?" They would say, "Are you kidding me, of course I'm going to take this pill. The doctor just said, I'm going to die if I don't take the pill." But something like one-seventh of them, actually, were still taking the pills in six months. And so when they started trying to find out what was going on there, they sought out some 'competing commitment', [which] is Robert Keegan's word for it. They had a commitment to taking the pills, but they also had some other commitment that[sic] was fighting -like the air conditioning unit- against taking the pills. And in order to find it, they used a technique that is pretty similar to the techniques used by the coherence therapy folks and other modalities, which is basically trying to inquire about what would be bad about taking the pills.

And often when you try to ask somebody, they'll first respond - they won't even hear you and they'll respond with what's actually good about taking the pills. Like, "I hear that, yeah. It'd be good to take the pills and have better health, but I really want to know, what would be bad if you took these pills? What kind of problem would that create for you?" And Keegan cites this one particular example of this guy who suddenly explodes and says, "if I have to take that pill every day, I'll be an old man like my dad."

Jonny Miller 54:59

Hmm

Malcolm Ocean 55:01

And it's like, "All right. Now we're getting somewhere. Now we're understanding what the conflict is". And really importantly, there's no such thing as 'don't want.' It's not that the person doesn't want, they do want. They just also want not.

Jonny Miller 55:19

Hmm. Yep. Yep, I'm with you.

Malcolm Ocean 55:23

And sometimes, it's enough to just bring this thing to light. You know, the person realizes, "Well shit, I am getting old, I guess, actually. I don't like that, but shit, alright." And I don't know how it went in this particular case. I don't know if they had to sort of work with that emotional schema more, or whatnot. But, the point there is that internal conflict shows up between two things that you want. But often, what happens is that people are identified with one aspect of what they want, and they call that "what they want," and then they call the other thing, my resistance or my alcoholism, or, you know, my inner demons, or my shadow or my - it's you! it's you! it's also you! it's just as much you as the parts that you're identified with. And it's really uncomfortable to acknowledge that because people like the idea that they're in control of their own behavior. Which brings us back to the whole Complice tasks thing, where it's like, trying to get yourself to perform tasks is trying to control your own behavior. And the brilliant insight of perceptual control theory is that one does not control one's own behavior, pretty much. What is controlled is the perceptions. It's the experience of some reference level that gets changed, and your actual behavior does whatever it needs to do to bring that reference level into being, as long as that doesn't conflict with some other reference level that you have, like the example with the pills. I'm going to kind of pause there. That feels like one of the better intros to PCT that I've given, so that's kind of satisfying. I have that on record.

Jonny Miller 57:21

Yeah, that was really good that there's also a Balinese festival just started outside, so apologies if there's some some background-

Malcolm Ocean 57:28

There's no background noise at all.

Jonny Miller 57:29

Okay, perfect. So, yeah, this is really interesting. And what came up for me when you mentioned the metaphor of the thermostat is actually [that] that's very much how our pituitary gland regulates our endocrine system in our bodies. And often there is a conflict between what we're perceiving in the current external world, versus some kind of implicit memory that may also be surfacing. And I think a lot of the challenges that we face as humans are that our endocrine system is simultaneously responding to what might be right in front of us, but more so responding to the implicit memories that have been stored, either as kind of incomplete reflexes or as traumatic experiences. And it seems to me that PCT is almost taking a very interesting perspective on this phenomenon.

Malcolm Ocean 58:28

Yeah, yeah. And I think that PCT is not a complete or adequate model for what to do about these internal conflicts, because it doesn't actually - I mean, they have some therapy techniques, like method of levels and so on. But, they don't have the same deep insights about how things can get kind of locked into the emotional brain via, like, memory consolidation and so on, that Coherence therapy folks really have thoroughly understood. But, yeah, it's almost just a more abstract layer that points at like, how [in] fighting yourself, you can't win. Any kind of fight with yourself is like the furnace and the AC. It's intrinsically wasteful. Like, there is no... well it's not to say it can't produce something beautiful to be clear, right? Like, you know, sitting with that tension can produce something beautiful, but simply enacting this oscillation pattern, right? You know, "for three days, I go to the gym every day, then for four days, I sit on the couch, because fuck that guy who said I had to go to the gym every day, he doesn't get to tell me what to do.

And then I feel awful about myself, so I go to the gym," you know? It's like that's... I mean, when it comes to something like productivity, or whatever, you can actually sometimes find that if you have a rebelliousness towards working, but you don't actually have a fear of success, then you can actually create a great business or something on three days of working really hard and four days of rebelling or whatever. Right? Because whatever customers you get on those three days you're working really hard, you still have those customers or whatever, right? Like, it's possible to achieve something even while in this oscillation, as long as you're not actually conflicted about whether or not you succeed. And I do think sometimes people are actually conflicted about succeeding, like they have some sense of like, "Oh, I want to keep a small profile so that people don't attack" or "I want to not be more successful than my friends, because if I do that, I won't have any friends." And some of these things can even be accurate. Like, people might deny them because they're more identified with the part that really wants to whatever. But yeah.

Jonny Miller 1:00:57

Yeah, it's interesting. I'm not sure if this is a - this might be dead end. But it feels like, to me, there are almost two potential outcomes where there's this -whether we're looking at the two conflicting internal narratives, and one might be... David White talks about how his interpretation of the Buddhist middle path is not just like taking the average of two paths, but more sitting with the uncomfortable tension in a conflict until a third way is revealed. But it requires that kinda deep presence with the nature of the conflict for that kind of third path to appear. But then I think there's also maybe another equally true route, which is, if you -and I've done this myself a few times- if you kind of inquire as to what each part is maybe seeking in that moment, then ultimately, even though they're pointing in different directions, they often kind of want the same thing. And so maybe kinda-

Malcolm Ocean 1:02:07

Yeah, you can kinda find a win-win.

Jonny Miller 1:02:09

Exactly, yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Ocean 1:02:11

Yeah, exactly. I hope you have a link to the David White piece on this, whatever it is? Because I would love to read it, and maybe you can put it in the notes as well.

Jonny Miller 1:02:20

Yeah, I do. It was actually part of his recent Sunday sermon series, but I can link to the recordings.

Malcolm Ocean 1:02:26

Oh, cool.

Jonny Miller 1:02:27

Yeah, it was really good. Okay, this is super interesting, and I think that something we've both been obsessed with for a while, is really the subject of attention and perception. And one of your threads that I really love on Twitter, basically, made a pitch for why Ian McGilchrist work on the divided brain is so important. And, I love the metaphor that you used of, I think it was like, imagining two hikers together with the left hemisphere as the one staring at the map, and the right hemisphere is the one looking at the world. Which I think is fantastic. And so, maybe for listeners, could you add a little bit more color to the summary? And also a similar question of how, or why, have you found this model so useful and valuable in your life?

Malcolm Ocean 1:03:20

Yeah, well maybe I'll start a little bit with the value part, and I'll tie in why PCT has been so valuable for me too, kinda in an answer to Michael's question. Which is that I've spent the better part of.... well, the better part of a decade. You know, I've spent a lot of my time over the last eight or nine years, exploring questions around how can people relate to each other in ways that are really, really effective. And when I say really effective, you know, I don't just mean like, getting the basic stuff out of the way, but it's like [where]... as far as I can tell, the possibility space of human collaboration is on the level of, groups of people could be thinking together where the quality of the thinking itself would be so deep and wise and powerful, that you could say that the maturity, intellectually and spiritually and everything else, of this group thinking together, would similarly outclass any individual person in the same way that an adult attempting to solve the problem outclasses any toddler. And so with that as a kind of an aim... as a possibility, you know, and that's what my reference level looks like when I'm talking about what is a really good conversation, you know?

[So], with that as an aim, these two works -first, the perceptual control theory stuff in 2017 and then in 2019, reading in McGilchrist- they highlighted some really important fundamentals about how that necessarily needs to work, given what the brain is shaped like. And there's a way in which the facts, you know, these models are partially about the brain but are also partially about the nature of the universe, and the nature of self-organizing systems much more generally. I've recently been reading this really cool book by Geoffrey West called "Scale", which is modeling some of the underlying patterns that connect, you know? Like, why do our lungs look like trees? Why do city maps, or whatever, look like... I don't have a specific sort of example there. But the way that things have the sort of fractal patterns and you can predict them from each other. Anyway, it seems that self-organizing systems have certain characteristics they necessarily need, to work, and there's a way in which a company with some top-level goal trickling down to a bunch of employees is a little bit like the perceptual control hierarchy in a person.

And I think it's pretty clear if you understand the perceptual control model, that the closer you make it to being like a perceptual hierarchy, that is control system based, the more effective it'll be, as opposed to something like a command hierarchy, where you're saying, "Do this!", as opposed to "Achieve that result." If you say "do this," then you run into all sorts of conflict with why the person isn't already doing this. Whereas if you say, "achieve that result," then it generates a kind of natural creativity towards how to achieve that result, in response to whatever conflict might emerge when you attempt that.

Jonny Miller 1:07:40

Sure.

Malcolm Ocean 1:07:41

So that was a bit more about PCT. So yeah, so both of these books for me have just really connected with some really fundamental... they have sort of laid some really fundamental groundwork for understanding what's going on with people, with motivation, with conversation and all of that stuff. And on a meta-level, what I'll say is that I firmly see deeper - or I've come to appreciate how change always comes from deeper understanding. If you try to commit to something because it seems the most true, the only reason you would feel a need to commit to it is because some part of you actually thinks something else.

Jonny Miller 1:08:30

Hmm.

Malcolm Ocean 1:08:31

And so that's reifying, the very conflict that you're attempting - like, that's strengthening and deepening the very conflict you're attempting to get yourself out of by committing. That's not to say that there aren't times when it makes sense to commit to something. You know, committing to a marriage relationship as part of the basis for having kids together is a very fundamental example. Or, going all in with a business partner on some project, and the two of you being seriously into it together and needing to know that the other is into it, in order to want to invest so much of yourself into it.

Jonny Miller 1:09:05

Mhm.

Malcolm Ocean 1:09:05

But committing to a way of seeing or a way of operating, as far as I can tell, is fundamentally confused. Because it represents attempting to win an internal conflict. It's like doubling down on, "the thermostat should be hot", when you haven't dealt with the thermostat being cold. So this understanding comes, in part, out of my understanding of perceptual control theory, but it also applies to how people will sometimes say, "Oh, well, we shouldn't control people." Or, you know, "We shouldn't try to run a society like this" or whatever. But they're enacting it as a sort of 'moral should', and so it becomes a kind of injunction, a kind of behavioral command. Whereas if you really grok perceptual control theory, it becomes silly to think that you would organize a society in a way that was based around controlling people. Which is a totally different place to be operating from than the idea that 'you shouldn't?'

Jonny Miller 1:10:23

Mm hmm.

Malcolm Ocean 1:10:25

It's like, well, if we shouldn't, then why are we? If we shouldn't, then why do I feel like doing so? The should doesn't answer those questions.

Jonny Miller 1:10:31

Sure.

Malcolm Ocean 1:10:32

And so that's where I see these basic models of the brain, of the mind, of the the nature of reality as we are able to perceive it with our with our minds, that's why I see these as so transformational. And so having said that, now about both perceptual control theory, and McGilchrist's brain hemisphere model, I'll now speak a little bit about what was impactful about the the brain hemisphere thing. Unless you want to comment on the sort of more meta thing I just said.

Jonny Miller 1:11:05

Yeah. So, just briefly, it sounds to me almost like having those rules of society of like, 'we should do this, we shouldn't do that,' it almost feels like they are crutches that kinda enable good behavior when people receiving those aren't sufficiently self aware to be to be aware of their own internal parts, and thus notice the conflict that might be present. Does that kind of make sense?

Malcolm Ocean 1:11:35

I would say that's mostly true, but I would also like to gently call into question the extent to which they actually achieve the things that they sort of claim to do. Like, you know, a lot of deeply religious folks find themselves thinking that if they turned atheist, they would become immoral, or amoral, or whatever. It turns out, you just don't. It's kind of boring actually. Like, it's kind of boring, the extent to which atheists just also care about people and want to live well. But the religious propaganda department can kinda make a really important case that without this fear of God, people would do all sorts of horrible things. And sure, without fear of God, people will do all sorts of things, like eat pork, and work on the Sabbath, and, like, things that are horrible within the frame of the church, but they don't go start murdering people. And so the question of where exactly ethics come from is not as simple as, "oh, well, the shoulds work." It's like, "well, maybe." And maybe if you just took away the shoulds, there'd be a backlash, but that's because there's that conflict there in the first place. And the conflict exists, because the should is fighting the instincts, you know? The church is saying -and to be really clear, it's not just the church, right? Like, we can actually... I'm going to make a jump here - the teacher is saying, "you can't move, you got to sit still in your desk."

Jonny Miller 1:13:20

Hmm.

Malcolm Ocean 1:13:22

But your body wants to move, so what do you do with that? Right? Like, it generates this rebellion. And then, you know, if the teacher leaves the room, suddenly the kids are all rambunctious or whatever. But that's not because they lack discipline, it's because the whole imposition of discipline in the first place was fighting their their intrinsic needs. And the perceptual control theory folks have a way of approaching classrooms that seems to work way better, that's about helping people care for the underlying needs, while avoiding disrupting each other, rather than focused on trying to control the behavior of the students.

Jonny Miller 1:14:00

Right, right. Just briefly, what comes to mind there, is an analogy to when people - and I'm speaking like myself included in this category of who've been very much in their head for most of their lives, and then they start to come back into their body, and those sensations and awareness comes more in line. There's often an overreaction or an overcorrection that's present because all of these things suddenly come online at once. And it feels potentially overwhelming because there's been such a deep sense of disconnection for so long. And so it could take some time, like with a thermostat to just kind of reregulate into a kind of more of homeostasis.

Malcolm Ocean 1:14:40

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, sometimes there's almost a need for like an arms reduction, where it's like, you can't just have one side unilaterally drop all of its pulling because then the other side would just yank it way over there. So there needs to be a kind of syncing into "Oh, you're pulling because if you don't pull, then like I'll pull it way over here. But I don't even want to go way over there, I just want another little notch, you know? And I'm pulling because if I don't pull, you'll drag us way over there. But you don't actually want to go way over there, you just want another tick that way." And then it's like, can we find a space where we can both be comfortable [and] ease off the tug of war?

Jonny Miller 1:15:22

Cool. Nice. So was there anything more you want to add to that?

Malcolm Ocean 1:15:26

I guess I'll just say one last piece about that, which is when I was maybe 20 or so, maybe maybe slightly younger than that, I read The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. And it's a book about neuroplasticity, the idea that the brain can change in ways that stick. And it's remarkable, part of the thing that the book says is that people for a long time, for whatever reasons, had models that said, after childhood, the brain doesn't really change that much. It's kind of bizarre to think that people had models like this, because, demonstrably, people learn new skills, they learn new languages, they, they transform in so many ways, after adulthood, right? But people had these models, and the models reinforce the very limitations that they have. And so I guess I would just name that as a kind of an early example, for me of, you know, learning about the brain in a way that felt like it liberated me and brought more clarity to me. And, yeah, it just felt worth kind of mentioning to and that's a very different approach to trying to increase someone's sort of orientation towards learning and growing than trying to sort of convince them of, "Well, you should try harder, or you should whatever," or, you know, like any sort of argument. It's like "No, look at these fundamentals, see how it works, see how that's possible for you." It's a totally different kind of way of communicating about it.

Jonny Miller 1:17:11

Yeah, I really love that perspective, it feels much more empowering.

Malcolm Ocean 1:17:15

Yeah, exactly.

Jonny Miller 1:17:17

This is a bit of a tangent, but from what I've been learning about breathwork and breathwork journeys, recently, part of what I think is so compelling about it is that when we are in this state of deep alkalosis, and the blood chemistry changes when we're kinda midway through these journeys, the degree of neuroplasticity is a lot higher than in everyday life. So, any changes in say repacking of breath, or things that are released tend to stick in the longer term, and it's something that I've been just really interested in. So I'd actually love to read that book at some point. So this feels like an interesting segue to... you have a concept of dream mashups, which I think might highlight some of what we've just been talking about in terms of the perception theory.

And I think one of the questions that you wrote, which I think is a really powerful question is, "what do you do if you notice someone else is dreaming? i.e., kind of lost in some kind of trigger? And I think this is really challenging, especially in intimate relationships. And as you wrote in this post, there's also a high risk of conscious or even unconscious manipulation that could be present. And if you say this to someone, it has a tendency to backfire. So, I think, yeah, it's just such a really important question to explore, since a lot of us are walking around with entirely different lenses on the world that are just reflecting our respective life histories and emotionally charged prior experiences. So the question, I guess, is kind of two parts. Firstly, how would you think about waking yourself up from these dream mashups? And then with that in mind, what might be an approach that we could take if we sense or guessed that someone else might be projecting onto us according to some kind of trigger?

Malcolm Ocean 1:19:17

Oh, yeah. Um, you know, this is such a tough question. But I guess, you know, I can connect it a little bit with some of the McGilchrist stuff as well, which is, there can be a kind of narrowing, a kind of grasping that occurs. And if you can even make space for just a little pause - like you don't have to change anything, you don't have to see anything differently, you don't have to do anything differently, certainly, you don't have to like what's happening - really giving yourself freedom to not - you know, you don't need to do any of those, but can you just pause for a moment? Become aware of what is feeling so urgently important to you in a given moment, and find a way to honor that urgency, which might be just doing the thing that feels so urgent, but doing it from a more conscious place of, "there's something that feels really important to me that I have to do, and I'm going to do it," as opposed to just kind of a flinch response? Or you might discover, "Oh, actually, having paused for a second, I know what this is about. I'm afraid that my current partner is going to do this bullshit that my previous partner did. And I'm not actually really worried about that with this partner when I really think about it. You might, you might discover that there's some more space like that, right? But importantly, if you try to tell yourself that, then you're fighting yourself.

Whatever part of you is carrying that concern, that concern that maybe my partner is going to whatever, like my past partner, or that, that concern that this person I'm talking to online is just trying to take advantage of me or that concern that, you know... whatever is going on. If you try to tell yourself that to sort of reassure yourself or convince yourself, then you're in an argument. And what's actually needed, as far as I can tell, from all the learning that I've done about emotional coherence and everything else, what's actually needed is to fully invite out and embrace the perception that you are having -the one that you're trying to argue against- to fully invite that out. And then when it can be invited out, and it can actually dialogue with the world, as opposed to just kind of being kind of trapped in its locked up flinch response state, then there can be a bit more space.

And so the way that I would talk about going about doing that is, kinda, seeing how much of you can welcome, whatever is arising and saying, "I don't totally understand this, but apparently, part of me, genuinely is worried that whatever thing my partner's doing right now is a sign of something really bad, or genuinely worried that whatever it is." Just really honoring, like, part of me actually thinks this. There's a tendency when arguing with other people or ourselves to kind of speak with almost like, "Oh, you can't actually think this because clearly, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Which doesn't work, because you're not engaging with the reality of what's there. And sometimes even just really thoroughly engaging with the reality of what's there is enough to shift it in some way, and sometimes it's not. And that's - I mean, you really need to give it that space to shift or not based on its own sensemaking. Because, otherwise, the welcoming is just a form of manipulation. Right?

Jonny Miller 1:23:12

Yeah. So, and -just to add a neuroscience perspective on that, as well- I think what I've noticed is really important is, is increasing what's known as neuroception, which is like, overall sense of safety, because it sounds like that part just simply feels unsafe to be fully expressed. So doing whatever kind of practices or protocols that you have to increase a felt sense of safety is probably going to be most the thing that's most likely to allow it to come forward and be fully expressed.

Malcolm Ocean 1:23:43

Yeah. And it is important to distinguish the kind of overall sense of safety from whatever concern that part actually has. Like, when I'm doing this and it works really well, I'm taking a kind of profoundly agnostic stance where it's sort of like, "Oh, like, I have this fear. Could that just be true? What if that were true?" And just what's going on here is a shift from a kind of... it's funny because it's the most insecure people who feel the most need to justify and it's actually a sign of self-trust. So let's take this thing I was saying earlier about committing to a way of being as being fundamentally confused. If you really trust that this way of being is better, and you really trust the parts of you that understand that, then you don't need to argue against parts of you that are generating strategies that contradict that way of being, because you know that it's better [and] you're not afraid of it, somehow, convincing you that "No, like this way of think relating to the world that is specifically associated with this traumatic memory from when you were four is definitely the way that you should be relating the world." You're not worried about that.

Jonny Miller 1:25:04

Yeah, sure.

Malcolm Ocean 1:25:05

It might have something important to say though, so you do need to listen to it and incorporated into the overall sense making of your system. But you're not worried that the core truths that are so self evident, when you see them in their self evidentness - you don't have to worry about losing touch with those because they're so self evident, how could you possibly lose touch with? And even if you do lose touch with them, how could you possibly stay out of touch with them? Because eventually you'll find your way back because it's true. And that's sort of what it means to trust your own sense making.

Jonny Miller 1:25:34

Beautiful. Yeah, yeah, it makes me think of also - there's a real parallel here, I think, to say Somatic Experiencing work, where even if there's not necessarily a story, but just if there's some kind of tension or sensation or stuckness, that's, say, like a tightness in the belly or around the diaphragm, by not only investigating it, but actively trying to amplify the sensation-

Malcolm Ocean 1:25:57

Support it! Yeah.

Jonny Miller 1:25:59

Yeah, it almost like brings it out into its fullness and from that place, it can then shift or be reintegrated or be released.

Malcolm Ocean 1:26:08

Exactly. Yeah. Which is that shift from fighting yourself to embracing yourself?

Jonny Miller 1:26:13

Completely. Yeah. Man, this is, is really interesting. I'd love to... yeah, I'm going to hit the pinball machine again. And-

Malcolm Ocean 1:26:25

I want to make a quick comment, just because I feel like I still haven't really, you know... we don't have to get to everything, obviously, right? But there's this question of what did McGilchrist do for me? And without trying to summarize the model too much, the left hemisphere is very either or in how it sees the world. And so the left hemisphere has a lot of trouble dealing with "I know x, and I also seem to know 'not x'. I know, I'm safe. I also don't feel safe." It's like, you can't resolve that in its own terms, you've got to kind of somehow hold it like these questions, you know, these paradoxes and say, "Okay, well, somehow, something is true, that could be described as 'x'. And something else is true, that could be described as 'not x'. Somehow, both of those are the case. I don't know how, but that's the world that I'm living in." And, again, in terms of, you know, deepening understanding, leading to more empowerment, it's like, I realized I was trying to do a bunch of "both-and" stuff in a kind of mechanical way with my left hemisphere. And it was a lot easier, once I understood more of how the brain hemispheres work for my left hemisphere to kind of let go and say, "Oh, you know what? The right hemisphere's got this. This is actually not my job."

Jonny Miller 1:27:43

Hmm.

Malcolm Ocean 1:27:43

That was really beautiful for me and relates to that whole, like, deepening self trust thing.

Jonny Miller 1:27:48

Hmm. Is there a specific example where you've almost given the reins over to your right hemisphere? Like something in everyday life? Or a moment that comes to mind?

Malcolm Ocean 1:27:57

Yeah, let's see. I would say, probably, I don't have a specific memory in mind. But just on a kind of general level, there have been times when I've been in a conversation that's got some sort of tension to it, and - or some, you know, complexity intensity. And I get this urge to, you know, blurt something out, to just say something. And I can tell that that urge is coming from this left hemispheric quality of like, "No, but you don't see the thing, I'm right about the thing you gotta-" you know? And like I said earlier, just taking a moment to pause and kind of go, "What actually happens if I don't say this thing right now that feel so important to say? Can I find out? Do I have the space to find out?" And there's something about that, which has a kind of quality of surrender to it a little bit, right? Because I'm letting go of this sense that I can steer the thing, which may be more or less accurate depending on the situation, whether I can actually steer it if I've learned a thing or not. But letting go of that and saying, "Okay, I'm just gonna let this unfold, but I'm not just like throwing my hands off like, "Whoa, it's just gonna do its thing." You know? There's a kind of like, I can trust some deeper part of me to improvise with this.

Jonny Miller 1:29:26

Right.

Malcolm Ocean 1:29:26

And that's, that was what really became more apparent as I understood the brain hemispheres. Because it's hard for the left hemisphere to even thoroughly fathom that the right hemisphere exists, because there's a way in which it's like the right hemisphere is like God. It works in mysterious ways as far as the left hemisphere is concerned and so it feels a little bit like surrendering to God, to just say, "Well, right hemisphere, do your thing, I guess." It's unsettling, right? The right hemisphere, by its nature cannot simply explain and justify everything it's doing to the left. And, you know, you need to balance too, right? Because if you're simply just saying, "Well, I'm going to go with the flow, and I'm not going to voice any of these concerns," then, sooner or later one of those concerns will get very concerned and will, you know, make itself known in a pretty intense way, which is, you know, another example of this kind of oscillation dynamic.

Jonny Miller 1:30:19

Yeah, that's, that's interesting. I love that example. And my - both Katie and I, separately, we ended up reading some of Michael Singer's work. And he talks a lot about kind of the the beauty in surrendering to life, and kinda accepting the invitations that will come your way. And, for me, I think this ties back to what you were just talking about in terms of self trust and a deep sense of secureness in your own nature, and your own belonging and your own place in the world. And that once that is in place, then it almost feels like there is a greater permission to trust the right hemisphere to a greater degree, as opposed to the more graspy kind of controlling-planning tendencies of the left hemisphere. Which is, I think, how a lot of us have been rewarded and conditioned in school and in work and things. But I think it's certainly part of the journey that I'm on, which is learning to trust the right hemisphere more and to trust my capacity to empathize and to respond well in the moment, as opposed to having a plan or an 'if this-then that' scenario for everything that could possibly arise, which is exhausting.

Malcolm Ocean 1:31:32

Yeah, totally. And, you know, there's, maybe, a connection here in that, the left hemisphere is made for interfacing with objects, not people - including not even really one's self, like one's own being in the world. And so, you know, when school or our parents or whatever, force us to find some way to control ourselves, it's like, they are implicitly treating us as an object, and demanding that we find a way to treat ourselves as an object that we can control. And that naturally invites the right, or sorry, the left hemisphere, to clamp down its grasp on the body and on the behavior and so forth. And, yeah, that was a connection I hadn't quite made before.

Whereas it's like, if you know that you're relating with another control system, whether that's an internal relationship between these two control systems where[sic] one of them wants to go play and the other wants to finish the work that you're doing, and both of these are meaningful things to do, but you can't do both of them at once. And, if you know that you're relating with another control system, and you really get that, you really get what that means, then the idea that you should escalate the fight doesn't make sense. You know that'll just come back to bite you. And I think that that viewpoint can be consciously understood by the left hemisphere, which is really mind-blowing. And that's part of what's novel about this point in history is we actually have enough models to rigorously understand what's going on with ourselves and each other. And I think systems thinking in its various forms, including perceptual control theory is one of the most powerful upgrades you can give your left hemisphere. Because it improves the capacity of the left hemisphere to dialogue with the stuff that the right hemisphere kind of gets intuitively.

Like, the right hemisphere kind of gets that you can't just control other people. But, by default, the right hemisphere doesn't necessarily know how to explain that to the left, I'm anthropomorphizing terribly here, but you get the idea.

Jonny Miller 1:33:53

Yeah, it's a really good point. And it reminds me of insight and say, different forms of meditation, that if you follow a certain technique, kind of long enough, or deep enough, or sit with a koan, or ask the question, "Who am I?" kind of rigorously enough, then eventually, you're almost using the mind to overcome the mind, until the mind kind of drops away. It's like you need to get to a certain point where you can kind of kick away the ladder and you're fine. And it's almost like if you follow this theory, and you understand it deeply enough, the mind realizes the limitations of the mind. Which I think is really [inaudible 1:34:28]

Malcolm Ocean 1:34:28

That's such a great pitch from McGilchrist. It's like helping the mind understand the limits of mind. It's like, where by 'mind' what we're referring to is the left hemisphere. It's not actually the - you know there's an entire other half of the brain that's not being meant when we talk about mind, but is actually part of the whole sensemaking system as well, which is kind of mind-blowing when you realize it, that what we even think of as our thinking process is so far from all of our thinking process.

Jonny Miller 1:34:57

Totally. Totally. Yeah. And particularly, I mean, what I've been just obsessed with recently, [are] all of the different implicit memories that are stored in our kind of extended mind within our greater nervous system, and how much these are kind of controlling us without really knowing it. Yeah, wow. Okay, so alright, switching gears-

Malcolm Ocean 1:35:24

[Inaudible 1:35:24-25] right?

Jonny Miller 1:35:25

Yeah, I probably - I don't know. There were several more, but I think we'll run out of time at some point. So, I wanted to talk about, briefly, around domino memes. And maybe, as context for listeners, we've both created our own versions of this meme, that's essentially a guy knocking down one small domino that then knocks into several bigger ones, as a way of like attempting to articulate the different levels of impact that we're hoping to make in the world. And yours begins with reading out tweets about self energizing motivation, with the first domino and then that knocks into barn raisings that I want to ask you about. And barn raising knocks into "network of collaborative feral free agents", which then hits the big domino of "growing self energizing meta team having fun solving big problems". So there's obviously a lot to unpack there.

Malcolm Ocean 1:36:21

Yeah, these are all kind of obscure terms, you know?

Jonny Miller 1:36:24

Yeah, but maybe we could start with what do you mean by barn raisings? And what do you mean by feral free agents?

Malcolm Ocean 1:36:33

Well, I think we should first talk about what self energizing means, because I don't think that's totally obvious, either. Although I think it makes a lot more sense in light of the whole conversation we've just had, than it might otherwise.

Jonny Miller 1:36:44

Okay, so let's go there.

Malcolm Ocean 1:36:45

So, if you're working at a company and you don't really like the job that you're doing, but you just you want to get paid - and maybe the job is kind of interesting, you know, it's not like you ended up somewhere completely random, you were sort of following what appealed to you. But you don't really intuitively love the work that you do, you wouldn't do it for free, there's this way in which like, you are then trying to somehow pipe your desire for money into your motivation system to get you to do arbitrary stuff. This doesn't work very well. It works. I mean, people do it, obviously, because they have to. But it contains within it, the kinds of issues that show up with this internal conflict of the AC and the furnace, and so on, because you would rather be doing something else. There is something else that would feel really good to do, and instead, you're doing this thing so that you can get this money, and you want the money enough because you need to eat, that you do the thing anyway. But it's sort of pushing against your own natural inclination.

And, you know, your inclination can transform, it's not like you have a static, "this is the sort of thing I like doing, and I don't like doing these other things." And so when Cal Newport talks about how, like, if you get really good at anything, it can become really satisfying, but having said that, some people are going to really want to get good at some things and not others. And so when I talk about self-energizing motivation, what I'm talking about is, sometimes when you realize something's possible, you're not just like, down to do it, you actually would have to restrain yourself not to.

Jonny Miller 1:38:39

Hmm, I love this.

Malcolm Ocean 1:38:40

Yeah. It would take more effort, more try, more energy.

Jonny Miller 1:38:46

Negative effort, as you said on Twitter.

Malcolm Ocean 1:38:48

Exactly. It would take more effort not to do the thing than to do it. You don't have to drum up the motivation, and use a commitment device when your lover texts you and says, "Hey, you free tonight?"

Jonny Miller 1:39:03

[Laughter] Yeah, totally.

Malcolm Ocean 1:39:05

Like, "Oh I gotta put that on the to do list. I gotta, like tell my friend, I'm definitely gonna go over", and like-

Jonny Miller 1:39:14

That would make a great sketch, like a great comedy sketch of like-

Malcolm Ocean 1:39:16

That would be pretty funny, actually. And so it's like, you know, similarly, there are creative projects that for various people take, in some important sense, less energy to do than not to do. And so then the puzzle becomes, well, how do you find out what those are? Like how do you discover what those things are? And then there's another whole question, which is, how do you support all the auxiliary things that need to be in place? You know, I love the design work that I do with Complice, and I love the impact that it has on people and how much they love encountering this new way of relating to goals and so on. But sometimes I don't really feel like fixing some bugs, you know? Those bugs have to get fixed in order for the system to be working that I do so much love working on. And so, you know, you can sometimes encounter kind of subproblems of a given project that you don't have as much intrinsic appetite for. Hopefully, you at least have enough intrinsic appetite for the whole thing that it sort of carries you through solving this problem. But even better is if you can find a way for the subproblem to also become exciting, or you can find someone who you might hire who would love to help you with that subproblem.

Jonny Miller 1:40:37

Totally.

Malcolm Ocean 1:40:38

And then you know, then the reason you're paying them is not so that they'll take this awful burden on themselves instead of on you. You're paying them so that they don't have to work doing some other bullshit. Like you're paying them so that they are free to do this thing that they'd love to do. Which frees up you to do the things that you love to do.

Jonny Miller 1:40:58

Yeah, sure.

Malcolm Ocean 1:41:00

And it's a totally different concept of an economy. So barn raising-

Jonny Miller 1:41:06

Just before we get into that, a couple of things. It reminds me of [how] Liz Gilbert talks about the idea of eating the shit sandwich, but it sounds like you're kind of suggesting that the shit sandwich should be then turned into something potentially palatable for someone else.

Malcolm Ocean 1:41:20

Well, I mean, flies are stoked to eat shit.

Jonny Miller 1:41:23

Right. [Laughter]

Malcolm Ocean 1:41:25

They would love to digest that

Jonny Miller 1:41:29

Yeah.

Malcolm Ocean 1:41:29

And then, you know, there's some, I don't know...

Jonny Miller 1:41:32

Use it as compost for the for the garden, etc.

Malcolm Ocean 1:41:34

Yeah, exactly. I don't know what the whole life cycle is of what happens when the flies eat the shit, but you get the idea, right? That shit is actually food to someone, but it's not food to you.

Jonny Miller 1:41:46

Completely, completely. So this kind of reminds me of another one of our mutual friends, Paul. He was curious to ask what you think are some possible onramps for this 'feral free agent' world? And it sounds like, to me, what you're describing is almost like, "How can we help people who are currently entrenched in a kinda 9-5 world? How can we help them reconnect with the the work or the creativity that they can't not do and kind of tap into that innate energy source of negative effort?"

Malcolm Ocean 1:42:20

Totally, yeah. And, I've, somewhat, given up trying to -not that this was ever really my thing- but I've somewhat given up trying to convince people to leave their jobs or whatever, right? Because it's like, people are ready when they're ready. And some people really like having the structure of a job, you know? And they like that, even if the work is sometimes not really what excites them. It's just [that] there's something that feels really safe and stable and solid about a job or whatever. But there are a lot of people, also, who are kind of chafing at the experience of the lack of autonomy that they have in the companies that they work for, or the 'whatever else'. And so for people who are getting curious about it, I mean, one thing that I'm doing is just role modeling, right? Like just being a person who's living in a different way. And that makes a difference, you know? I would have had trouble pursuing - starting complex as a passive income sort of business. I would have had trouble pursuing that if I hadn't spent a bunch of my teens reading lifestyle bloggers, like [inaudible 1:43:45] and-

Jonny Miller 1:43:37

Yeah, it's huge.

Malcolm Ocean 1:43:38

I forget the other ones, but you know? Like a bunch of people who were making a living just on the internet, somehow, whatever that looked like. And, you know, in the four hour workweek, and so on, just the idea that that was possible was huge, just a proof of concept. So that's one piece, and then there's a piece about like, communicating to people what it's like, or, you know, how they might get a little taste of it. And I had a tweet recently, that was like, "There's a moment in the feral free agent journey, when you close the loop, when you have made something you love, and someone bought it. And you go, 'oh, I want to live like that.'"

Jonny Miller 1:44:23

Mm hmm.

Malcolm Ocean 1:44:25

And I wrote, "A friend buying what you made is a good step, but it hits different when it's a stranger."

Jonny Miller 1:44:30

Hmm, totally.

Malcolm Ocean 1:44:31

So that's kinda, you know, that's another piece, right? Just conveying that, and I think I could probably deepen that tweet tremendously, right? By like, helping people find an onramp to doing a tiny version of that, you know? Do you make drawings? Well, who might want to buy one? Are your drawings even for sale? Can you find a way to do that? And not everybody wants to sell their drawings, you know? Like, my relationship with music is like - I'm fine getting paid to make music, but there's actually something that's really beautiful about how nobody is expecting me to make it, like I'm not expected to do any particular shows, I don't have to release an album every couple years to keep some label or my fans happy or whatever. Like, my music gets to totally bubble out from within me. Having said that, you know, I'm down to get paid for it, right? Yeah, anyway, that's another whole piece.

But the barn raising thing is, actually, "we want to get through these dominoes", [and] is actually another piece that I'm working on, which is around helping more people make that leap into being feral free agents. And the basic idea is, if you think of a literal barn raising, it's a community getting together to help get somebody's core business infrastructure off the ground, literally off the ground in the case of a barn, right?

Jonny Miller 1:45:55

Mmm.

Malcolm Ocean 1:45:55

My idea was, what if we did something like that, but for Internet businesses - or, not necessarily internet businesses, but you know, like, not farming, right? And businesses that at least can be supported via the internet, so that we don't actually all have to be in the same place to set up the physical infrastructure. And so the basic idea goes something like this - somebody has a business that they want to work on, that they've already been working on, at least for a while. They have some sorta proof of concept, some prototype, some minimum viable product, or something like that. And they need just a bit of a nudge to kind of get off the ground. And that nudge could be logistical. You know, maybe they need help actually setting up a website because they're not technically whatever, or they need help setting up a payment system, because they've never whatever before, or they need help coding some integration or something.

So, it could be more technical help, it could be more marketing help, you know? They don't have a big following, right, but they've built this really cool thing that everybody who looks at goes, "this is so cool." And, you know, maybe some people help them, like find some good leads or some good channels to do some marketing in. Or maybe they even, just on some level, need some psychological support, right? Like, they need to feel the reality of their own project, they need to feel the sense of like, "Oh, this thing could be real." And in any of those cases, or maybe some amount of all of those elements, the basic idea is we get a group of people together for a day or half a day or something like that. And the person with the business puts forth, "Here's all the things I could use help with", and then the people who've shown up help with whatever they feel like helping with. And so the this, you can see here, where the self-energizing thing ties in, because the participants are, in some sense, volunteers. But volunteer is even sort of slightly the wrong word, they're helping because they want to help, it's not self-sacrificial.

Jonny Miller 1:48:09

There's not some moralizing aspect to it.

Malcolm Ocean 1:48:11

No, it's not moralizing, it's not charity. They're helping because it's fun. They want to work on a project, they want to contribute to somebody else, it feels good.

Jonny Miller 1:48:25

And that feels much better to receive as well, I think, rather than on the receiving end of someone's charity.

Malcolm Ocean 1:48:31

Right, right, exactly. So a ton of stuff gets done, and we've run one of these so far. And it went really well. The folks were shipping an API for bookings, like booking out a room or some rentable object or something. And they got somebody [who] wrote a wrapper for the API, somebody to fix some bugs, somebody -like a bunch of people- just went through the onboarding process and took really detailed notes, which is sometimes just hard to get people to do. It's sort of hard to get people to do in the context of, you know, reaching out for a favor, but at the point, when you've shown up to help somebody with a project for a few hours, it feels like a pretty small thing to just spend half an hour looking at the thing and familiarizing yourself with it and commenting on the things you found confusing, you know? It feels like a pretty small thing in that context. And, you know, some people ideated different name ideas for the company. We wrote a couple of, like, documents that were sorta... they weren't finished, but they were the kind of articles you put on your website that's like, "should you use our product or build your own?" And of course, almost always, the answer is you should use our product, right? But you got to kind of make the case. Or comparison with different competitors, like "why is our system better?" and so on.

And so people just worked on all of these different projects. But then part of what's cool about this is that unlike a hackathon, where you get a bunch of energy, but then nothing really happens afterward, right? Because you already have people who are oriented towards, you know, "this is my business, this is my work, this is what I'm passionate about or what I'm trying to achieve." Like, they're gonna take it forward one way or another,

Jonny Miller 1:50:22

They then become stewards of that project. Yeah.

Malcolm Ocean 1:50:25

Yeah, exactly. And so it's like, all of that effort goes somewhere. It launches something. And so what I'm realizing is, I actually hadn't quite noticed this so clearly, but the barn raising has actually helped with the feral free agents and the whole self energizing thing in two ways. One is that they help get more people off the ground with their businesses. But the second thing is that, as I was saying, the participants who are coming to help, maybe I should just call them helpers. I don't know, the folks who are coming to help, they... they are getting to work in this self energizing way.

Jonny Miller 1:51:04

Right, right. Right. Right.

Malcolm Ocean 1:51:05

Nobody's telling them what to do. There's just, "here's a project, you wanna work on that? Here's another project-" you know,

Jonny Miller 1:51:09

Everyone is kind of benefiting from the process of contributing, as well as-

Malcolm Ocean 1:51:14

Exactly, and so they get the experience of working in that more self-energizing way, but having that fuel some real project, as opposed to just well, "I had fun for a couple hours screwing around on this whatever thing, but like, nothing really came of it". It's like, "No, my self energizing effort fueled this project." And I expect it, you know, as we do more of these - and I'm aiming to run about one a month, maybe even slightly more than that over the next year or so. So if you're listening to this, and you have a business that can use a little help getting off the ground, let me know. We'll also put a link in the show notes to where you can go and sign up to be notified about when we're doing more barn raisings.

Jonny Miller 1:51:53

Yep.

Malcolm Ocean 1:51:55

So, as we do more of these, I expect there will also be situations where, somebody shows up on a Saturday and uses some skill that they've been kind of refining on their on in their free time to help out this company who say they make some graphics for the website or something. And then, a few months later, that company needs more graphics, right? And so they reach out to the person say, "Hey, actually, can we pay you to make more graphics for the site?" And if the person loves doing this graphic art, they might be like, "Holy shit, yeah!" And so, it's a way into freelancing, then, that isn't even... you don't have to even start by trying to get customers, marketing, right? Like, there's this huge shame of like freelancers have to also be marketers in order to get any business.

Jonny Miller 1:52:50

Yeah. Yeah,

Malcolm Ocean 1:52:53

Even if that's not their forte, that's not what they're about.

Jonny Miller 1:52:56

Sure.

Malcolm Ocean 1:52:58

But instead, if you can build a network of relationships - and I mean, this is not my primary aim, it's something I think will happen as a byproduct somewhat like, at least a little bit. Like, I'd be surprised if a year from now, there hadn't been any further collaborations between people who have done barn raising's together.

Jonny Miller 1:53:18

Totally awesome.

Malcolm Ocean 1:53:19

So then you can see how that creates the network of collaborative feral free agents. Because it's not just people working on random businesses together, it's people who helped each other get off the ground, people who are supporting each other in whatever various ways. And then, as those people start saying, "Well, what do we want to do now? What what problems in the world do we feel like we want to tackle with our skills?" and so on, they can start organizing themselves into teams for whatever various sizes of purposes, to work on these problems. And in the background there, there's kind of another domino which is, like, people need to actually practice being good at teamwork. There's a whole bunch of skills there, and there's a whole bunch of models, again, about the brain or about communication, or conversation, that are part of what it means to become good at teamwork.

And so that's also part of what people would be doing, I think. More or less, some people are just going to show up, they're going to help with stuff that they don't care about, like becoming a 99th percentile, general-purpose collaborative teammate, right? Like that's not what some people's jam is, right? But for other people, it's like, "Oh, holy shit, yeah! I want to become really, really good at giving feedback in ways that don't make people defensive. Or really, really good at receiving feedback without getting defensive. Or I want to become really, really good at listening and deeply understanding what somebody wants," or like these kinds of core meta-skills.

Jonny Miller 1:54:52

Yeah, it almost makes work a kinda vehicle for really essential human skills and personal development, whilst also creating useful things? I think it's-

Malcolm Ocean 1:55:03

Exactly, exactly. And it's harder to do that kind of development in a sort of boring, ordinary company, because people are too afraid of messing up.

Jonny Miller 1:55:11

Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Ocean 1:55:12

And too afraid of not already being good enough at something

Jonny Miller 1:55:15

Safety in the culture. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree.

Malcolm Ocean 1:55:18

Yeah. Whereas if you're all sort of free agents, to begin with, and you have your own flow of income and flow of resources and so on, you don't have the same kind of fear of, "Oh, if I piss this person off like that, there goes my livelihood."

Jonny Miller 1:55:35

Yeah, completely, completely. Yeah, this reminds me as well of something else I wanted to talk to you about [which] is the Google Doc that you sent a few weeks ago around your 100x vision. And in that, you talked about the collective brain and how that kind of evolves into the collective body and the collective crowd. But I'm wondering, actually... [laughter] so I made it about halfway through the notes of all the different things I wanted to touch on. And I wonder about, maybe planting a flag for a round two, and maybe kind of-

Malcolm Ocean 1:56:11

That sounds great! Yeah

Jonny Miller 1:56:12

There were also some thoughts around, I want to hear more about the intents of the community that you sent a very kind of cryptic tweet about in British Columbia. And yeah, there are definitely a number of other topics I'd love to dive into. But I think, let's -if it's alright with you- let's transition into a few kinda final rapid-fire questions, and then we can wrap up the episode and tease for round two at some point.

Malcolm Ocean 1:56:38

Sounds good. Sounds good.

Jonny Miller 1:56:40

Okay, perfect. So, the four rapid fire questions that came to mind this morning, in terms of the call were, the first is, what practice ritual or psychotechnology has made a distinct impact on the quality of your lived experience?

Malcolm Ocean 1:57:00

This is going to sound... I mean, psychotechnology is such a general category. Like, everything from... you know, you can talk about psychedelics, or you could talk about a workflow for your conversation or your writing, you know? Like, there's just such a wide range of stuff. But one of the things I actually am inclined to... oh, actually, yeah, here's a good answer, and this is something that's kind of on my edge too, something I've just recently been been exploring, which is, I take days off now. I didn't do that for a long time. I didn't even know what that would mean. I mean, I like the work that I do, why would I take a day off from it, right? But my days off, are the days off of somebody who likes their work, which means that, it's not that I say I'm not allowed to work on my days off, in a certain sense of what work means. But, my friend Ethar* [1:57:56] had this great quote, which is "What made work, work, was that there was something else I wanted to be doing."

Jonny Miller 1:58:01

Hmm

Malcolm Ocean 1:58:03

You know, work in the shitty sense, right? What made it effortful, right? Which is this negative energy thing, because, of course, something might be pretty negative energy for you, in general, but if somebody texts you when you're in the middle of watching a movie, and they say, "Hey, do you want to do this thing that you'd usually love doing?" but you're in the middle of a movie, you're like, "No, I'm gonna finish my movie," right? Or whatever else, right? You're not in the mood, you're not in the groove for it. So the way that I do my days off is, and I'll try to keep this short, because it's supposed to be rapid fire and I have a thread or two about this too, which you could link to. But basically, day off means two things. One, I don't schedule anything in advance for that day. I might have something on my calendar, if it's like an event that I could optionally choose to go to, but I make it very clear that, just because you invite me to such an event on my day off, does not mean I'm going to be there. And, you know, if somebody is trying to schedule something with me, where they expect me to be there, I, you know - it's scary, but also kind of empowering to say, "Nope, I'm not available that day, because I have nothing on my calendar, and I intend to keep it that way."

Jonny Miller 1:59:14

Mm hmm.

Malcolm Ocean 1:59:15

And that's a crazy thing to say, right? You know, Facebook, even literally, you know, if you get invited to event, it's like, 'yes', 'maybe', 'can't go', right? Not 'won't go', not 'don't feel like it', not 'want to do other things instead', but 'can't', right?

Jonny Miller 1:59:33

Totally, totally. That's interesting.

Malcolm Ocean 1:59:36

But it's been it's been really empowering, and because I talk about it as my day off, as just like a fact of the world that I don't schedule things on that day. I found people actually respect it a lot. You know, like, more than I sort of thought. I thought it would be a lot harder to tell people "No, I'm not free that day, it's my day off" but like it just actually is totally fine. People are pretty chill about it. Sometimes they don't get it exactly, but, you know, it works. And then the other key piece of having a true day off is that I start the day with no open browser tabs.

Jonny Miller 2:00:15

Right.

Malcolm Ocean 2:00:16

And that's because what I want is to be acting in a way that comes from what I feel like, what's sort of simmering on the kind of deeper, slower levels. And if I start my day with nothing on my calendar and a ton of random tabs open, I'm just going to be doing random stuff. Like just randomly responding to all these tabs that are open. And that can even be fun, and I do a lot of that the rest of the week. But on my days off, I want to just do whatever I feel like and I want to have that bubble up from what I feel like inside. So that's my answer to, you know, impactful psychotechnology. I wouldn't necessarily say most impactful, but it's pretty rare, and it's a new thing that I've just been trying, and I think it's really cool.

Jonny Miller 2:01:01

Yeah, that's an awesome one, too. And I'm deviating slightly from the rapid-fire questions myself as well. Something Kelly and I have been doing recently, we call it 'Sacred Sundays', and it's basically just almost zero or minimal technology, and similar kind of completely empty calendars, and just time to connect with each other and kind of see what feels good in the moment. And I think this kind of touches on, maybe, the flip side, or a use case for commitment devices that are more like creative constraints. Where we're kind of allowing for the emergence of something deeper to come through that we might not be aware of if we were just kind of in our default mode of being. And I think that's really powerful.

Malcolm Ocean 2:01:47

And if we can really thoroughly honor that when we create commitment devices, we are blocking something that we want, truly, not something that we are addicted to - not framing it in any kind of negative way, but just simply like, "No, I actually I want to be on Twitter a lot, that's true, but sometimes I like taking a day off Twitter," and, you know, the feeling of, "I'm creating space for something else, by temporarily"- and the temporariness of it really helps too, as opposed to kind of trying to commit to no longer whatever.

Jonny Miller 2:02:28

Yeah, it also makes me think of the context in which the negative effort comes from, because, I mean, to kind of tie it back to the nervous system. We might feel amazing in a kind of creative, sympathetic state flow for three or four hours. But then, ultimately, we also need to honor our body's need to rest and recover and to kind of drop into the parasympathetic and to exhale, metaphorically.

Malcolm Ocean 2:02:53

And you can't just always be breathing in.

Jonny Miller 2:02:56

Right. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that it kind of speaks to that, even if that deep excitement and enthusiasm is there, it's also you know, we go through these daily and weekly and annual cycles in our bodies that also need to be honored as part of this process. Yeah, interesting. Okay, cool. So rapid fire question number two, what is one less intuitive productivity tip that you might share with listeners?

Malcolm Ocean 2:03:25

I mean, I could just literally say the day off thing.

Jonny Miller 2:03:27

Great. Yeah, like that's a good one. Um, third question, how do you define home? What does home mean to you?

Malcolm Ocean 2:03:38

Oh, I mean, maybe the maybe the quickest way I can answer that is just reading out from a piece I wrote about that. I am home, to the extent that, and in the ways that, I can relax knowing that the systems around me aren't going to subvert my needs and wants whether malevolently or carelessly and will in general support them. And to the extent that, and in the ways that, I feel, and am empowered, to make the changes I need, or want, to the situation in order to care for my needs.

Jonny Miller 2:04:22

Mm hmm. Beautiful. I love it.

Malcolm Ocean 2:04:27

So if you want an elaboration on that, I'll send you a link to a piece of writing I've done about this concept of home.

Jonny Miller 2:04:39

Yeah, we'll include that in the show notes as well. Awesome. And then final question, what are you most excited about or looking forward to in 2022?

Malcolm Ocean 2:04:53

Traveling.?

Jonny Miller 2:04:54

[Laughter]

Malcolm Ocean 2:04:56

I mean, like I've been moving around a fair bit last year, just because I've been in sort of a limbo state of where I'm living, prior to arriving here for at least the medium term on Vancouver Island, if not what might be home for the rest of my life. But yeah, I want to visit my friends in the States, I want to check out some of the cool stuff that's happening in Portugal. I don't know if either of both of those will happen in 2022, but they seem more likely. I mean, that's, that's, that's the most immediate answer. It's kind of boring, like everybody's so raring to get back out. I mean, I guess, separate from traveling, I mean, I'm also just looking forward to dancing with people, right? Like after COVID, and singing with people making music.

Jonny Miller 2:05:49

Beautiful. Yeah. Amazing. Well, this has been, this has been freaking awesome. And I'm excited for round two at some point as well. In the meantime, where is the best place for listeners to learn more about Complice and read some of your writing? Obviously, Twitter, but where else might you direct people?

Malcolm Ocean 2:06:08

Well, I mean, I think my Twitter profile is the best, the best kind of landing page, because it's got a link to Complice, it's got a link to my blog. And I mean, my Twitter URL is @malcolm_ocean, and Malcolm has two L's in it, which many people don't realize.

Jonny Miller 2:06:39

Perfect. Okay. Well to wrap up, the question that I usually end with is borrowed from Real K, and it's "what are the questions that you feel like you're living?" But I'd like to deviate slightly and ask the question that I pose to David White. And that is, what do you think is the question that we as as humans in the western world are asking and trying to live our way into? Or perhaps which questions should we be asking more of that we're currently not?

Malcolm Ocean 2:07:10

The first thing that comes to mind is something I've said before, but it seems like an okay answer to your question. Which is, how can we organize the world so that I can eat a banana every day in Canada, and everybody's okay with how everything's organized?

Jonny Miller 2:07:41

Beautiful, we will wrap the show with that. I thank you. Thank you so much. This has been amazing. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. It would mean a lot to me if you could take a few seconds to open up your podcast app and give Curious Humans a shiny five-star rating. This not only helps more people to find it, but it will help me to get more awesome guests in the future. And if you're not already subscribed, then the Curious Humans newsletter is where I share monthly morsels of interestingness and podcast updates. You can sign up for that at jonny.life