Introducing: HumanKit
optimising the fun out of life™️
HumanKit is not a real software library, it’s merely an abstract metaphor so I can talk about non-coercive productivity.Wouldn’t it be nice if being human came with a user guide? Or a well documented interface? Setting aside just how insane the API docs for a human would be, it should be possible to build them right? If you collect enough tips of the form:
when I feel X, I should engage in Y behaviour to move myself into state Z
This, I think, is appealing to me because of how closely it resembles technical procedures.
if the LED is flashing orange, get a safety pin and press the factory reset button for 2 seconds until flashing stops and the LED turns green
Imagine if you could pull up the HumanKit docs and every health & productivity hack ever was at your fingertips? I suspect many people like me are seduced by this way of thinking. After all, there are some rather effective rules of this form for humans:
if you hate everyone, eat something
if you feel like everyone hates you, go to sleep
if you feel like you hate yourself, shower
Now, I’m sure the astute among you can bring up immediate edge-cases and exceptions to these. Yes, you’re right, and while I do find that particular saying useful, on some level it amounts to saying:
eat if hungry
sleep if tired
bathe if gross
Which is all at once obvious, clearly insufficient and a profoundly deep philosophy. We’re missing something, we all know humans can overeat and oversleep (I can verify that claim firsthand).
Naturally the temptation then becomes to construct more elaborate theories and routines, further specifying HumanKit to W3C levels of arcane sophistication:
eat if hungry and it’s within my intermittent fasting window and try to avoid low GI carbohydrates but if you’re going to exercise soon then actually don’t worry about that…
In my experience you can never write down a set of rules like this without encountering an edge case the next day and, let’s be honest, thinking like this can be exhausting if you really wed yourself to it.
So, all this has ultimately led me to acknowledge that the context you’re in probably matters much more than the specific actions you take, at least when it comes to motivation and productivity.
This first clicked when I heard Jim Collins describe the flywheel effect. In short, there are some emotional & physical states that follow naturally from others, if you can find a virtuous cycle of states to move through then (like a physical flywheel) you gain inertial stability and “good things happen”. After some headscratching back in 2019 I came up with:
Rest
Find Inspiration
Design
Execute
(repeat…)
This metaphor has served me quite well, it accurately captures that I can’t jump directly to a state without moving through the intervening states. However, in practice, I’ve found that the times where I need this model most I am unable to remember it even exists or, if I do, it often feels irrelevant to the current moment. Clearly, something is missing. I must have an inaccurate map of the territory, I need more specificity, more states, more rules!
Nope, I’m moving the goalposts again.
I was first motivated to write this article after adding a few new utilities to my HumanKit over the last year:
I noticed yet again that, even with my amazing bag of utilities, the wheels still fall off my process semi-regularly. I get stuck, not knowing where I am on the flywheel or how to move forward. So I’ll let you in on a secret: I’ve begun to think that the whole rule-based model I’m using has some issues.
Namely:
You just can’t always create a state change1
There can be consequences for trying to force it2
But, most importantly, if you cannot detect your current context or are mistaken about how you feel,
HumanKitis absolutely fucking useless3
I have found that present awareness of your current state comes before every tip, trick, life hack and altered state. Whenever I find myself lost, missing context, this is how I find my way back. It might sound trivial or trite, but consider that we see the world as the actions available to us.
This, I think, accounts for how insane productivity advice sounds when you feel demotivated.
“Eat the frog!”
“Batch tasks together to reduce the activation energy!”
“Use the Pomodoro technique to balance work and rest!”
Yeah, okay, if I was already feeling motivated those might be good tips. When I’m feeling depressed my set of available actions barely includes getting up to get a glass of water, let alone cold showers and Wim Hof breathing.
No, instead the way out always seems to come from acceptance.
“Yep, I’ve thought about it a bunch and I definitely feel like garbage, and that’s okay. Don’t put pressure on it, just pay attention, how exactly do you feel? What’s today really like? Can you hear the leaves in the wind? Take a deep breath and feel it move through you. What else is there you’ve been ignoring?”
As I continue this process more and more actions become available to me. I might notice my mouth is a little parched, I could probably use that glass of water, maybe that’s part of why I feel bad in the first place!
The more I operate this way, the more I believe that attention, awareness and perception sharpening skills are the ultimate metaskills. Noticing what actions you can take predicates whether any other skills are even useful to you in that moment. I sense there is a universal point here for any pursuit, eventually as you gain experience and skill your focus must shift from the technicalities to your intention and context.
So, let me give you something vaguely actionable. My process today looks something like:
become present and aware4
notice I’ve lost context and direction
consider, do I still want the same things out of life? believe the same principles? am I changing?
how am I feeling right now (Focusing)
how would I like to feel?
why do I want to feel that way?
checking for shame, peer pressure, imposter syndrome, guilt, anxiety, panic etc. as motivations, they are not good guides
finally, is there a tool in
HumanKitthat can help me?
The point here, if you haven’t guessed it yet, is that the tools are the last part you need to worry about. Seriously, here’s an example of how this is applied in my day-to-day:
I get back from the gym and I feel both unmotivated to work and simultaneously flustered.
OH NO, I don’t feel like working… I’m not going to get anything done! Now I’m anxious too!
Stop, notice how you feel.
Ok, I’m too warm, my thoughts are going too fast (too much coffee?) and I’m lacking the strong feeling of curiosity/passion that I need to accompany tough work
Why do you need to do work at all?
Well, I care about my projects and I had a bunch of cool ideas last night I’d like to explore
Hm, okay, you say that but you’re not feeling the some curiosity arise that precipitated those ideas last night
Seems like there’s nothing too forceful or shame driven here though, so I accept that trying to change state could be good
Okay, so, you would like to feel calm and motivated, how can you get there?
Hm, I could:
Regulate my nervous system
meditation
breathwork
Listen to binaural beats
Take L-Theanine to mediate caffeine
Look over my last thinking in Muse
Read an article on an adjacent topic
Watch a video on an adjacent topic
Often after I do this I want to get to work even without doing any specific techniques, the mere act of stepping back is enough.
I will likely never write up a formal description of all the tools and techniques I would actually include in HumanKit. This is because I am lazy, because the contents of the kit change so often and mostly because it doesn’t really matter. If you won’t take no for an answer just listen to the Huberman Lab podcast.
That’s all for this one, I’ll leave you with the one sentence version:
You can only act upon that which you can notice
✌️ ben
WRT to my flywheel, it’s not physically possible to force inspiration. Similarly, if you’re sleep deprived you’re not going to feel alert without taking drastic measures.
burnout, existential angst
for programmers: this metaphor is apt in both directions, many libraries are useless or even harmful without a clear mental model for how to use them in your problem domain
after ~6 years of meditation this happens semi-automatically