Self-Knowledge
Perfect self-knowledge is a dot on the horizon that’s always in view but seldom seems to get any closer, no matter how rapid or ardent our pace.
Unusual moments in time tend to amplify our propensity for navel-gazing, but for many of us the desire to know more about ourselves, why we do what we do, how we measure up—or fail to—and how we might improve according to various metrics is a constant background impulse.
It’s part of why we buy fitness trackers and thermometer-rings.
It’s part of why we journal and go to therapy.
It’s part of why the self-help book industry tends to flourish even when the rest of the industry is hobbled, and why concepts like mindfulness are so appealing.
I’m a big fan of self-analysis, as it gestures at the possibility of superior output for the same input: better results from the same expenditure of time, energy, and resources.
That’s the theory, at least. Results will vary from individual to individual, and they fluctuate greatly between practice, person, and product.
As with most things, I suspect there’s no one-size-fits-all method of gleaning more or more valuable wisdom about oneself.
The process of refining one’s information-gathering arsenal is as boundless and interminable as the time it takes to sieve the resulting data for meaning. The resulting data, too, is often disconcertingly fuzzy and of questionable inherent value.
That said, I’ve personally found a combination of elements, woven together, to be most useful for my purposes.
Fitness-tracking data melded with freeform notes, jotted down when I clock something unusual; journal entries serving as daily summaries, paired with calendar items that help me recall appointments, predefined habits, and holidays. A muddle of information I can reference for broad insights as to what might connect to what, which results may line up with which consequences, and how the jumbled mess of not-quite-knowledge might be alchemized into useable wisdom.
More often than not, such data points remain free-floating and “useless,” in the sense that they are recorded but tell me very little beyond my heart rate at a particular moment, or how I subjectively felt within the context of a truly unrepresentative collection of externally measurable micro-events.
Every once in a while, though, a few things line up, a few dots are imperfectly connected, and I emerge from my inventory of the pins on my self-map a little wiser—or bare-minimum, a little better informed—and can adjust my thinking or behaviors accordingly.
I don’t think I’ll ever achieve anything close to perfect self-knowledge, but I do think the exercise—the pursuit of this type of understanding—can itself be valuable, as long as we moderate our expectations and maintain a humble sense of the scope, scale, and shape of the undertaking.
—
If you found some value in this essay, consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee.
Projects
Yesterday’s Newsletter is up and running!
If you’re keen to receive a daily, curated, overwhelm-reducing (but awareness-retaining) handful of news items that roughly summarize what happened the previous day, subscribe to YN here.
This week on Brain Lenses I published an essay about Foveal Vision and a podcast episode about the News-Finds-Me Perception.
This week’s episode of Let’s Know Things is about the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and patrons of the show received a bonus episode about Central Bank Digital Currencies.
Interesting & Useful
Some neat things:
Timelapse of the Future(pretty wild, strangely calming and artsy astronomical-scale video)
2020 International Landscape Photography of the Years Winners(wow)
Flash Software Library(old Flash stuff is now being archived on the Internet Archive!)
Cover Your Tracks(info about how you’re tracked online, from the EFF)
Sega VR Revived(someone successfully emulated an unreleased, Sega Genesis-based virtual reality headset)
Zoomquilt 2(trippy online art project)
Rug-Tufting Gun Lets This Artist Paint With Yarn(I kind of want one of these)
For more interesting things of this kind, subscribe to Curiosity Weekly.
Outro
There’s some good vaccine news out there right now, but please do remember that it’ll be several months, minimum, before we begin to see the impact of their distribution.
So be careful out there, treat yourselves and each other as well as you can manage, and consider how we might do things better, post-pandemic, so that future outbreaks don’t have such a terrible cost and so that we might ameliorate previous and persisting social ills and inequities, building something better than we had before, rather than a carbon copy of our nostalgia-inducing, but wildly flawed and unequal recent past and present.
I’ve been enjoying the Fall-to-Winter transitionary chill here in mid-Missouri.
What’s the weather like in your neck of the woods?
How’re you feeling about that transition, both weather-related and social?
How’ve you been spending your time, and how are you and yours doing, at this point in the year, and this point in the year-long pandemic?
One of my favorite things about publishing this newsletter is hearing from folks on the other end of it, so if you have a moment and are keen to share, send me an email and tell me something about yourself.
You can reach me by responding directly to this message, or at colin@exilelifestyle.com.
—
I’m also available via the usual channels: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or viral misinformation.
If you’re finding some value in what I’m doing here, consider supporting my work by becoming a patron of my writing or Let’s Know Things, buying one of my books, or subscribing to Brain Lenses. You can also buy me a coffee.