[Dec/2022-Archive-March/2022 | Personal] Tempo – Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative Decision Making Notes
Chap1 Intro
Micro-decision vs. Macro-decision
Micro-decision – momentum & tempo
Buy book on Amazon is example of modern decision making
Choose college is macro decision making – need story / narrative to support
Tempo – decision-making
Tactical decision Making – scan to task
Apply every open resource to every open problem
Casanova’s dating & tempo
No overt decision-making
Clockless clock state
Tempo doodle
two dimensions – positive vs. negative emotion, and big vs. small energy
Watch tempo change – emotion & energy
Tempo Awareness
Chap2 A Sense of Timing
Change of job/location – change of tempo
Some job defined by its tempo
Tempo = Rhythm + Emotion + Energy
Managing Tempo
Example: Driving Highway
Emotion & Timing
Use energy to change tempo
Situational awareness
Background – predictable rhythm, foreground – irregular elements
Situational awareness is about attuned to background
Workspace Rhythm
Go with the flow vs. Pace-setting vs. Dissonance
Pace-setting example: diff between early vs. late get-up/sleep
Workspace tempo
Dissonance – disrupting the flow
Recognize boredom
Boredom is opportunity for disruption
Workspace – talk over others
Interval Logic
Different combos for interval logic
Calendar art
Arrange your calendar for different emotional / energy
Four-hour block for builder, one-hour block for manager
Chap3 Mental Model and Momentum
Situational Awareness
Mental Model
Momentum
Possible future/past emotions affect present decision-making
Decision Dynamic
Procrastination – add momentum to current Mental model while delaying to displace to new one
Second-guessing – ask you to resurrect dead mental models after you have killed them (via decision), next time you won’t have much momentum to begin with
Passive-aggression – kills posivie mental model & momentum
Example: VA dropping balls on a urgent sales email, pretending haven’t seen it
Time-out – momentum & emotional subside
Default – 温水煮青蛙
Archetype -> Doctrine
Ready-Fire-Aim
Resistance is Futile
Move Mountains
Enjoy the Ride
Do you Duty
Next shiny new thing
Like a Rock
Prepare to be assimilated
Maybe this will work
Die another day
Persuade people with their own favorite assertion
Chap4 Narrative Rationality
Narratives
Deep stories (i.e. I’ve always had to struggle in life)
Why-digging / five-way to find deep story
Process of planning is more important than plans
Story-structure
Rise-fall (freytag triangle)
Double freytag triangle
Different prototype deep story (deep story phases)
Liminal Passage – stillness
Exploration – volatile & dissipative
Stressful unknown-unknown
The cheap trick – Crescendo
Find exploitable pattern
Aha moment
Cheap – because locally & temporarily trick nature
Napoleon – defeat big army with smaller army is because he only fights where he have cheap tricks
Cheap trick is about drawing relevant boundary (what is relevant / can be hacked)
Sense-making – decrescendo with emotional relief
with cheap trick, you can compress info
Organizing insight – elegant & compelling, though not perfect
Valley – Steady,Slowing momentum
Diminishing return from cheap trick
Decision action without reward/validation
Charging ahead in dark
Longest & Most difficult at deep story
Hard to say anything about it
In movie, this is when underdog becomes stronger w\ inspirational music
Heavy-lifting: high-effort, low-coherence, increase in momentum
To exit valley
Mental model, would disintegrate in the absense of feedback/valley
Final burst with high entropy decision-making
Separation Event: Crescendo
Release externally, i.e. product release
Moment of truth
Retrospective: Decrescendo & Joy+Sorrow
Learn the lesson
If successful, cheap-trick validated, and use this to explain new reality
If fail, existential crisis
Narrative-time
Oscillating vs. event-driven
Freytag Staircase
Learning after deep-story
More learning more doctrine, less open-minded
Fundamental tempo
Rise & Fall in staircase as clock for life
Personal Narrative time
Timezone was created to coordinate European / American train stations
Calculative Rational vs. Narrative Rational
Calendar time (Year) vs. Personal Deep-story
Closed vs. Open world model
Open world contains unknown-unknown / black-swan
Thermodynamic Theology
Tetris – a game where entropy is increasing
Chap5 Universal Tactics
Metaphor ~ Visual + Tactile
Natural vs Artificial Behaviors
Risk: watching vs. doing to learn
Bootstrap: start with random exploration – aka play