Mindfulness on the go: A working definition

Mindfulness is an abstract term and it means multiple things to multiple people. Hence, a working definition helps in bringing out key aspects and contrasting them with other connotations. The suggestion here is to "work with" this definition and adapt it to one's needs. Before we look at the definition, let's first take a look at the "overconfidence trap" to which mindfulness is a response. 

Overconfidence trap: The picture above illustrates a bistable optical illusion and a related cartooned cognitive illusion. To quote Daniel Kahneman, "Your cognitive biases act like optical illusions". One way to understand how such an illusion is sustained is through the loop of an overconfidence trap (see the figure below). Here, we have two biases reinforcing each other: the confirmation bias (What you believe is what you see) and WYSIATI bias (What you see is all there is). Please note that not all biases are subjected to this trap. Typically, beliefs related to religion, race, caste, politics, culture, some scientific ideas if you are a scientist are susceptible to the overconfidence trap. Also note that there is nothing wrong with a belief, it is the confidence attached to it that creates conflicts. It is just fine to worship duck-god, but when you say duck-god is all there is, trouble starts.

A working definition:

The definition has 4 parts (1) a process of learning (2) to see clearly (3) despite fast, automatic, and biased thinking, and (4) anytime, anywhere. It is sometimes understood better when it is contrasted with what it is not (see below).

1. Process of learning vs state of knowing: This is a process-oriented definition and not a state-oriented definition.  

2. To see clearly vs to do rightly: It puts emphasis on seeing (or perceiving) rather than doing. Willingness to learn to see clearly implies the presence of some doubt about what you see. It means the WYSIATI bias is not very strong.

3. Despite fast, automatic, and biased thinking: The biases could still be operating i.e. I may still see only duck-god. However, I may now be open to other possibilities despite seeing only duck-god, especially when someone else says she sees a rabbit-god. 

4. Anytime, anywhere: This implies that this process of learning is not restricted to a specific time of the day when I sit quietly with my eyes closed. It could happen anytime, anywhere.

5. Absence of any goal: This definition does not assume any goal. Learning to see clearly not in order to get anywhere, but for its own sake.

How do I know I am seeing clearly? I don't know. All it means is to carry some openness about a possibility that I may not see clearly. If someone expresses a view different from mine (duck-god vs rabbit-god) or if I see that there is an expectation mismatch (I try to diet, but end up overeating), it is a hint that I may not be seeing clearly.  

Happy to receive your inputs.

Book review: L R Natarajan’s “The 9 nuggets of innovation”

It was a pleasure to read “The 9 nuggets of innovation: outsmart competition” written by my friend L R Natarajan. Over the past decade, I have seen LRN in action as a guest speaker several times at IIM Bangalore executive education programs. His powerful narrative style combined with his personal experience of democratizing innovation at Tanishq, the jewellery division of Titan was a big hit among participants. I am glad he took the pains to pen down these inspiring stories and weaved 9 nuggets of innovation in this book.

One of my favorite stories in the book revolves around the “3-day miracle” challenge at Tanishq. The idea was to bring down jewellery manufacturing time from 30 days to 3 days. The challenge was especially daunting because jewellery manufacturing at that time was an unorganized sector and the manufacturing process was believed to an art form.

In the chapter titled “Democratize innovation,” LRN presents how he and his team went about designing and executing a number of interventions from 2003 to 2011. It involved several multi-pronged initiatives starting from launching challenge campaigns each year with a specific theme such as putting up “What’s new?” board in each department, enrolling the vendor fraternity and goldsmith in the process of innovation, and many more. Anyone involved in the innovation process would know how difficult it is to sustain an innovation initiative. LRN’s grounded perspective is a testimonial of one of the finest such examples in the Indian context.

LRN was fortunate to have a visionary champion in the form of Bhaskar Bhatt, the then MD of the company. And Bhaskar Bhatt has aptly written a foreword to the book. Bhatt correctly observes that “India’s R&D investments and innovation lag far behind the world” and suggests that “every company needs to raise innovation as a Board agenda”. I couldn’t agree more.

One of the core messages, “anyone can innovate” is loud and clear in the book. However, another core message, “Innovation is simple” is not so clear. For example, the book presents how Titan Machine Building division went about developing robotic kit-marshaling equipment to automate the process. It is possible that the technology development involved Intellectual Property (IP) creation in the form of patents. And it is not clear that some of these technology development aspects can be characterized as simple. Perhaps “innovation can be simple” is more apt.

The book has plenty of pictures of real-life examples of innovations and their enablers especially in Titan. In the Indian corporate context where innovation stories are kept mostly within the four walls, this book shows a way for other innovative companies to publicize their innovation journeys. Recognition of smart failures plays an important role in cultivating experimentation. “9 nuggets” does talk about removing the fear of failure. It would have been nice to see some examples of smart failures too.

Overall, LRN has done an excellent job of synthesizing and presenting his learning from the Titan experience. I wish him and the book best wishes.

image source: amazon.in

2 schools of mindfulness: journey-led vs destination-led

 

“What’s in it for me?” is not an uncommon question in a mindfulness-related discussion. The answer depends upon what mindfulness means. In this article, I would like to consider 2 schools of mindfulness – journey-led and destination-led and see how their response might differ to the “Why mindfulness?” question. Let’s begin with destination-led school:

Destination-led mindfulness: A response from this school could be, “You practice mindfulness in order to reach a better state”. A better state could mean a less stressful life (e.g. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction – MBSR¹), or a state of nirvana or eternal bliss (e.g. in Vipassana²) or some other state. What is important for our purpose is not the particular destination but the “in order to” attitude. Mindfulness, in this school, is a means to reach a destination. Hence the term destination-led mindfulness. This doesn’t mean this school doesn’t give importance to the journey i.e. awareness at the present moment. It just means that there is an implicit or explicit emphasis on reaching a destination. The destination emphasis also brings with it a notion of progress indicating whether you are getting closer to the destination.

An assumption, sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit, in destination-led mindfulness is that it is possible to know when you have reached the destination. That is, it is possible to know when you have reached a state free of stress or attachments or desires etc. If the mind is anything like weather³ then this assumption is akin to saying it is possible to know if the weather has become still and in the future, it will not transform into and sustain its windy and stormy forms. The journey-led school does not make this assumption.

Journey-led mindfulness: A response from this school could be “Mindfulness involves learning to see clearly for its own sake”. The phrase “for its own sake” may appear puzzling. What do I mean by “learning for its own sake”? It means learning is not a means to get somewhere but an end in itself. Let’s use a metaphor and see if that helps. Why should a car have wipers? So that you see clearly while driving. Why should I see clearly? If I don’t see clearly, how will I learn about the situation on the road? And if I don’t see the situation clearly, how will I respond to it appropriately? Thus, seeing clearly is not important in order to reach a destination, but for learning about the moment-to-moment situation i.e. for its own sake.

How do I know I am seeing clearly? I can’t know for sure. But when there is an expectation mismatch that is repetitive, it could be a signal that I am not seeing clearly. A good proxy for repetitive expectation mismatch is sustained negative emotion. If I remain upset, anxious, angry, etc. then that means there is an opportunity to learn something new.

Note that journey-led school does acknowledge the relevance of a destination. However, it doesn’t place emphasis on it and it doesn’t attach any significance to the final destinations like a stress-free state or a blissful state. Such moments may come and go. According to this school, learning is a lifelong journey. A side effect of this attitude is that sense of progress doesn’t carry much significance. Once I declare, “I have arrived”, it may hinder the learning process.

Journey-led school tends to avoid using the phrase – the practice of mindfulness. How do you practice learning to see self-deception? It doesn’t always happen at 6 am in the morning. However, similar to the destination-led school, it does acknowledge shifting attention away from the current train of thoughts towards the present moment sensations. This can be practiced at 6 am every day but it can also happen at any other moment of the day as well.

Teachers like David Bohm⁴ and Eckhart Tolle⁵ have emphasized journey-led approaches. Some teachers like Jiddu Krishnamurti⁶ have emphasized journey at one time and destination at another.

Now, the human mind is conditioned to be reward-seeking. Hence, is it possible that one who claims to be part of the journey-led school actually belongs to the destination-led school deep down? Yes, it is possible. The desire for reaching a state could be deeply buried in the mind and not known. Is it possible that one starts with a destination in mind (say, stress-free life) and through the journey of exploration begins to see meaninglessness in reaching a state? Yes, it is possible.

I carry a bias for the journey-led approach and it is highlighted in my book “Mindfulness: connecting with the real you”. However, I feel it doesn’t matter which school you feel closer to. Perhaps you don’t have a choice anyway. And if you feel there isn’t much there in mindfulness that is understandable too.

Notes:

1.      Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an eight week program developed by Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1970s. This is what the book “Full catastrophe living” by Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2^nd edition mentions in the Introduction chapter – “Many of the people who come to the Stress Reduction Clinic have not seen much improvement in their physical condition despite years of medical treatment. <snap> By the end of eight weeks, when the program comes to an end, their smiles and more relaxed bodies are evident to even the most casual observer. <snap> They are less anxious, less depressed, and less angry. They feel more in control, even in very stressful situations that previously would have sent them spinning out of control.”

2.      Vipassana, a 10-day course designed by S. N. Goenka mentions the following in the “Day five discourse” in “The discourse summaries” by S. N. Goenka page 27 – “If you practice, certainly a day will come when you will be able to say that you have eradicated all the old sankhara, have stopped generating any new ones, and so have freed yourself from all suffering.”

3.      Mind is like weather: This analogy is explored by Prof. Karl Friston in the interview “Karl Friston: Neuroscience and the Free Energy Principle | Lex Fridman podcast #99” (39:15). Friston compares the attributes common between brain and weather – deeply structured, very non-linear, rests upon non-equilibrium steady-state dynamics.

4.      David Bohm: In “Thought as a system” (page 84) (Saturday seminar on YouTube, 57:30), Bohm is asked following question, “If you attack me negatively, I could hold my reaction in abeyance. Is that a way to deal with this process?” Bohm replies, “You could try that. But I’m suggesting that we’re engaged in learning about this. We don’t know yet what to do with it. We have to be interested in learning for its own sake, because if we have any other sake it’s going to enter the conditioning.”

5.      Eckhart Tolle: In an interview with Dr. James Doty of Stanford “Conversations on compassion with Eckhart Tolle” (57:15) Ekhart explores “Life is a journey” theme. He says, “Life is a journey. You want to go from here to there. Whether you will get there, we don’t know. Maybe on the way, you will branch out somewhere else. But at least you have a certain direction. It is good to have some direction in your life. But while you are traveling, if the destination takes up most of your attention, you miss all the journey. You can’t enjoy the journey anymore. And most of your life is the journey. The arrival is relatively rare. The wedding, the graduation, those moments are far and few between. The step you are taking this moment is the most important step.”

6.      Jiddu Krishnamurti: In the following paragraph from chapter 24, “Think on these things” (2007 Indian edition, page 232), JK says, “If you want to examine every thought, if you really want to see the content of it, then you will find that your thoughts slow down and you can watch them. This slowing down of thinking and the examining of every thought is the process of meditation; and if you go into it, you will find that by being aware of every thought, your mind – which is now a vast storehouse of restless thoughts all battling against each other – becomes very quiet, completely still. There is then no urge, no compulsion, no fear in any form, and in this stillness, that which is true comes into being. There is no ‘you’ who experiences truth, but the mind being still, the truth comes into it.” As you can see JK starts with the journey (examination of thoughts) and moves into a destination (state of no ‘you’, stillness etc.)

My 4 takeways from Dr. Pavan Soni’s “Design your thinking”

Dr. Pavan Soni is a friend and I have seen his journey from innovation evangelist at Wipro to IIMB Ph.D. program to an accomplished consulting career. I am happy to see Pavan adding yet another feather to his colorful cap with the book “Design your thinking: The mindsets, toolsets and skillsets for creative problem solving”.  The book is packed with inspirational stories – several of them from India and suffused with the optimism that Pavan embodies. The book also helped me question some of my deeply held assumptions. And sometimes the questions are more valuable than the examples. Here are my 4 takeaways.

First two are stories in the book that stood out for me.

Power of metaphors: In the “Inspire” chapter Pavan invokes Aristotle’s quote “To be a master of metaphor is a sign of genius” and cites several examples to illustrate it. One of them is Mahindra XUV500. A market survey of a couple of thousand customers across the world got translated into a design brief – to build a car that offers aggressive styling, muscular looks and a macho stance. And then the team adopted the metaphor of cheetah indicating speed, agility, aggression, and muscle. The design team visited Masai Mara, Kenya to watch the beast in the wild terrain. So much to internalize the metaphor!  The design cycle also involved testing 250 prototypes across half a dozen terrains in the world.

Perils of “just do it”: Pavan is also careful to bring out stories from innovative organizations that highlight leadership admitting to mistakes. For example, he illustrates the principle that “just do it” without an appropriate pilot or prototype can hurt badly with two big decisions from Flipkart that backfired. In the first case, Flipkart went for a Big Billion Day sale in October 2014 without doing any prototyping. The site couldn’t withstand the heavy traffic and became dysfunctional for some time. In the second case, leadership decided to take Flipkart towards app-only mode by forgoing desktop customers without any pilot. They had to revert the decision after backlash from employees and customers.

Now we turn to questions that got raised in my mind that rubbed some of my long-held beliefs. It means I need to explore them further. 

Can empathy be engineered? Pavan suggests in the chapter “Empathy and define” that empathy can be engineered. This section builds on the work of several reputed thinkers like Daniel Goleman (self-awareness), Thich Nhat Hanh, and Dalai Lama (mindfulness). And then suggests that with the tools like mind mapping, stakeholder map, and customer journey mapping, empathy can be engineered. If listening with openness and deferring judgment are important for empathy then it is not clear how using tools will cultivate empathy. “Engineering” carries a sense of control and precision in the design process and I don’t know how empathy can be controlled. But maybe I am seeing engineering and empathy in a narrow sense.

Can biases be overcome? Citing research from Francesca Gino, Pavan mentions that confirmation bias can be overcome through curiosity. The solution is hiring and cultivating curiosity. My limited understanding of biases is that they are deep-rooted and extremely hard to overcome. Daniel Kahneman who has researched biases for fifty years keeps saying in the interviews that it is difficult to overcome biases at an individual level. After writing the bestseller “Thinking, fast and slow” Kahneman feels he hasn’t changed much and he is still overconfident. It is possible that the study of Kahneman’s work has biased me. So I need to study this further.

The book contains a comprehensive collection of toolsets associated with creative problem-solving. Personally, it has helped me learn new examples and raise/revive basic questions related to design thinking. I wish Pavan and the book a great success.

Sources:

Book image: amazon.in

Daniel Kahneman’s quote “I don’t think my intuitions have significantly improved and I am very overconfident,” see his interview with Sam Harris, March 2019 https://samharris.org/podcasts/150-map-misunderstanding/ (18:57-20:25)

Innovation maturity, level 4 challenge and sandbox hesitancy hypothesis

My co-author Prof Rishikesha Krishnan and I have been presenting the innovation maturity mirror (see the picture above) to executives for close to 8 years. We feel many organizations that begin their innovation journey reach level 3 and then struggle during the next leg – to reach level 4. In this article, I would like to first spell out what the level 4 challenge looks like through the innovation maturity mirror. And then propose a hypothesis that hesitation to build a sandbox in a strategic opportunity area could be at the heart of the challenge.

What’s the main difference between level 3 and level 4? Level 3 indicates that the organization is engaged in experiments and reviews. 1 in 10 ideas get prototyped, incubation pipeline gets reviewed quarterly and 1 in 3 employees participate in innovation activities. That is, if you walk around the corridors or shop floor, innovation is palpable. Level 4 indicates that, in addition to the above things, the organization now has a balanced portfolio of small, medium, and large impact ideas. On average, the organization generates 1 idea per employee per year, and projected impact of the big idea pipeline is greater than 10% of the revenue and there is at least one operational innovation sandbox.

The run rate of 1 idea per employee per person is not easy to sustain. However, with the momentum of the experimentation and challenge campaigns, it is achievable. It is also not difficult to generate big impact ideas. Ask this question in a leadership meeting and you could get a few ideas. Your favorite search engine could also help you get a few. Things get tricky when the rubber meets the road for the big ideas – a champion, typically a CXO, taking a strategic bet, allocating resources, building experimentation infrastructure, put a dedicated team around a focus area. Sandbox hesitancy hypothesis says that organizations either hesitate to set up a sandbox or don’t give enough attention to it.

Organizations tend to be secretive about their sandbox setup and that is understandable. Amazon was secretive about the Kindle effort and Apple was secretive about iPhone. But many times organizations end up acquiring new resources – people/technology to build the sandbox. For example, in 2007 Google acqui-hired a team for starting its self-driving car sandbox which eventually became Waymo. The VueTool team was working on a digital mapping project and some of its members had won 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge related to robotic self-driving cars. Mahindra acquired Reva to strengthen the electric automobiles sandbox and Flipkart acquired an AR/VR company Scapic last November. In all these cases, in all likelihood, there was a champion at the top level (Bezos for Kindle, Sergey Brin for self-driving car, etc.)  

Is innovation sandbox applicable only for large companies? I don’t think so. I feel that even an SME would need to build a sandbox with all its characteristics – a champion, focussed challenge area, experimentation infrastructure, dedicated team, and failure protection.

If the sandbox hesitancy hypothesis has any merit, then a number of questions can be asked. Why do organizations hesitate to build an innovation sandbox? Is it a lack of ideas? Or lack of confidence? Or lack of clarity on the strategic bet? Or lack of resources? Or lack of urgency? Or lack of sandbox management experience?

I and Rishi hope to explore these questions in the coming months. If you feel you have some useful input, please let us know.

No man can walk out on his own story

I watched this scene from one of my favorite animation films “Rango” perhaps for the 15^th time (see the video clip below). The scene ends with Rango getting a piece of advice from the Spirit of the West – No man can walk out on his own story. What does it mean? Here is an attempt.

Rango, the protagonist, is a lonely lizard. He knows how to cook stories about his past adventures to impress people around him. Rango accidentally kills a hawk, becomes a hero, and eventually the sheriff. But deep down he knows that he was really scared during those heroic stunts and luck played a huge role in his survival. But the act of self-deception keeps the game going. Until one day, Rattlesnake Jake exposes Rango’s phony nature in front of everybody in the village. And Rango is asked to leave.

“I am nobody”, Rango admits to himself for the first time in his life. And finally arrives at a place where he meets the Spirit of the West. Here is the dialogue between the two in the scene:

Rango: I am a fraud, I am a phony. My friends believed in me. But they need some kind of a hero.

Spirit: Then be a hero.

Rango: Oh, no, no. You don’t understand. I am not even supposed to be here.

Spirit: That’s right. You came a long way to find something that isn’t out here. Don’t you see? It’s not about you, it’s about them.

Rango: But I can’t go back.

Spirit: Don’t know that you got a choice, son. No man can walk out on his own story.

Walking out on one’s own story is so tempting. Walking out of relationship, out of a job, leaving everything and going to Himalayas. Isn’t that a good recipe for a bestseller? But, what about the story? I am a hero, a phony, a consultant, an author, a mindfulness guru? How do you walk out of your story?

I like what Nisargadatta Maharaj told a visitor – “The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of the dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs to be done.”

An attempt to walk out of the story just changes the characters and scenery. So long as the story is seen as real, so long as the story is taken seriously, not much changes. There is no need to go anywhere, just investigate whether the story is real.

Image source: youtube.com

Nisargadatta Maharaj quote is from Advaita classic “I am that” chapter 29 titled “Living is life’s only purpose”, page 117 of third printing.

Related blog: Rango's "Who am I?" journey from "I could be anyone" to "I am nobody", March 11, 2018

Perception as prediction error minimization

Perception is not just a kind of prediction but “prediction error minimization is all the brain ever does” says Jakob Hohwy in the book “The predictive mind”. The predictive processing paradigm inverts the traditional sandwich perspective of perception-cognition-action by bringing prediction to the center stage. And Hohwy’s book gives an excellent introduction to various dimensions of the predictive processing paradigm. In this article, we first look at perception as Bayesian inference. And then explore the question – what is prediction error minimization? We will use Hohwy’s favorite example – binocular rivalry to illustrate the concept.

Perception as Bayesian inference: How do we perceive the world? According to this framework, we keep a model of the world that predicts the generation of observable data. Based on this model, we have prior hypotheses about the causes of our sensory input. As we receive new sensory input, the brain computes the posterior using the Bayes rule – posterior is proportional to likelihood times prior. The winner, the hypothesis with the maximum posterior, is declared as the cause of the sensory input. Thus perceptual inference involves updating the internal model of the world consisting of a set of prior beliefs based on incoming sensory information. See 3Blue1Brown and Veritasium videos for more details on Bayes theorem. Now, let’s see what happens when we try to trick the brain.

Perceptual inference in binocular rivalry: Binocular rivalry is a phenomenon that has been documented for over four hundred years. If you show two different images to the left and the right eye – say a face and a house – then you don’t see a mixture of the two images say a face-house. Instead, you either see a face or a house. Moreover, what you see keeps alternating even when the images are held constant. The following picture from the book gives a possible explanation of this phenomenon using perception as predictive error minimization.

The likelihood of face+house (F+H) sending such sensory input is higher than just face or just house hypothesis. However, the prior probability of F+H i.e. we ever seeing such a thing as a mixture of a face and a house is very low. Hence, when you multiply the two – i.e. prior and likelihood – the face-only or house-only hypothesis wins over the face-house hypothesis. And that’s what you see.

Now, how do you explain the alternating images in the binocular rivalry? As you see one of the two images, say the face, the prediction error resulting from the sensory input from the house is explained-away. Over time, the prediction error builds up and the brain is not able to explain it away. And the brain chooses the competing hypothesis which is the house-only image. This is a hand-wavy explanation. It is heavy-duty mathematics at play. If you are curious, check out Hohwy’s paper “Predictive coding explains binocular rivalry”.

What if you are able to bias the prior in favor of one of the images? Hohwy talks about a variant of the binocular rivalry experiment in his book where one eye is shown text markers and the other eye is shown roses. Then olfactory evidence was added and participants smell roses. As predicted by the Bayesian rule, the participants consequently spent more time perceiving the role image. 

Isn't perception just one of the processes at play in the brain? What about action, attention, learning? And what about various biases? Well, the book shows that the predictive error minimization framework is quite ambitious in its goal and does a good job of attempting to explain various phenomena using the framework. 

To understand the free-energy principle, the core principle behind prediction error minimization, in its full depth, one would need to go into statistical mechanics, self-organization, dynamical systems theory, information theory. However, the book lays a good ground for the curious. And the theory is in its infancy and an active area of research right now.    

Image source: 

book image is from amazon.com, the binocular rivalry image is from Hohwy’s paper “Predictive coding explains binocular rivalry” and it is very similar to the image in the book.

Resources:

• Jakob Hohwy, “The predictive mind”, Oxford University Press, 2013. 
• Manuell Brenner, “The Bayesian brain hypothesis”, Aug 15, 2019 (blog) 
• Jared Tumiel, “Spinning up in active inference and the free energy principle: A syllabus for the curious”, Oct 14, 2020. Extensive list of references to dive deep into this area.
• Kai Uletzhoffer, "The free-energy principle and active inference", June 23, 2017 (blog)
• Sergio Graziosi, “The predictive brain (part one): what is this about?” January 17, 2015, blog  
• Sergio Graziosi, “The predictive brain (part two): is the idea too generic?” January 24, 2015, blog
• Predictive coding, wikipedia page