I've been thinking a lot about the concept of balance. (Oooh, formatting! Yes, I'm writing partially on my laptop and partially on my phone).

Last night, I went on a writing spree (handwritten, so not shared here yet, if at all) about the concept of happiness vs. effectiveness. It ended up becoming an exploration about Tim Ferriss' excellent concept of efficiency vs. effectiveness, and from there into a further exploration of balance as a whole. I don't feel like I explored it enough, so I wanted to do that here. (Note: the matrix on the right hand side of the header image is some thing that I drew and was exploring. If Ferriss came up with this idea, all credit to him, but for some reason I remember being the first one to list it out this way in my head).

Balance is one of those tricky concepts that can mean a lot of different things in a single context, but what I mean more so is balance in the sense of tension between two opposing ideas. The weird thing is that any two ideas can have tension in between them (see the image above for two such examples). Even more confusing is if you throw in a third variable, but that's a different story.

It is said that people who want to do great things should take extreme actions. However, when you take a look at the relationship between two extremes, it seems to be that you want to be in between to get the best results. Even here there is tension.

I have a theory. I think that you want to be extreme in the micro but balanced in the macro.

It makes sense, if you think about it: the aggregate of opposing extreme actions in the long run should equal out to get you the best outcome, similar to how shades of grey are just mixes of black and white. Extreme actions tend to create extreme results, but it's the sum of those extremes that creates a sense of balance on the whole. This might seem like a silly example in the context but I'm saying this in a visual perspective: take for a moment a boxing match. There are two opposing actions in boxing (putting footwork aside for a second because that's manueverability rather than action): throwing punches and defending. It's the correct sum of these extreme acts that wins matches. I hope that visual is clear. If not, message me privately if you can find me and we can discuss further.

On a separate note, I have noticed that I've been drawing out some of these writings because I want to tackle a specific subject rather than free flow my thoughts. I've done the former with this piece, but now I feel like freestyling a little.

I've been thinking a bit about addiction, and how many different kinds of addiction there are. Many things that people don't think about can be addictive as well: food, lethargy, victimization, work, whatever. This is obviously a stark contrast from an outward perspective of the more common types, such as drugs, alcohol, exercise, you name them, but from the inside I think they are similar in terms of mental models.

Funny enough, I think I can now tie the freestyle to the topic of conversation at hand.

Addiction is just another extreme. It's going all-in on one thing, whatever the motivations might be. The reason I believe sobriety programs and the like work really well is because, as per my understanding, they pull addicts away from the extreme and show them that balance in life is really the thing that gives you value, that you want to strive for. The thing is: if you want to be balanced, you need to go all in the other way.

Something to think about.

Let's get after it today and revisit our thoughts tomorrow.

Vivek.