Nollind Whachell

I’ve been reflecting upon a lot the last few days and I think part of the problem I’ve been having is that there is so much within my mind, that it can feel overwhelming in scope at times. Yet at the same time, I feel like I’m trying to create a thread that can weave through everything and bring it all together within a cohesive way.

This thought reminded me of something John Thackara said below within his book, In The Bubble: Designing in a Complex World.

Although information overload is frequently discussed in the media—which help cause it—our dilemma is not that we receive too much information. We don’t receive anywhere near the quantity of data it takes to overload our neurons; our minds are capable of processing and analyzing many gigabits of data per second—a lot more data than any of today’s supercomputers can process and act on in real time. We feel flooded because we’re getting information unfiltered, unsorted, and unframed. We lack ways to select what’s important. The design task is to make information digestible, not to keep it out.

John Thackara
In The Bubble: Designing in a Complex World

What I’m trying to say here is that if I can encapsulate or package this massive amount of seemingly overwhelming information within a story or narrative, then it becomes more accessible and understandable.

With this in mind, I asked ChatGPT to create a narrative of my life the last couple of decades but rather than describe the details of my life’s journey, I asked it to describe the essence of the journey as a simple narrative instead. This is what it wrote below. (Although I believe the intro to #5 does need to be tweaked in some way, as it is vertical development that can feel too abstract and the Hero’s Journey allegory expanded into an MMORPG allegory is what can make it more tangible).

1. Work Isn’t Working

For decades, we’ve operated within a conventional concept of work that no longer serves us. Instead of empowering individuals, it has become a system that limits creativity, fosters burnout, and works against our well-being and growth. Many of us feel stuck, searching for something more meaningful and sustainable.

2. The Future of Work

The answer lies in reimagining work itself. The Future of Work isn’t just about new tools or trends—it’s a shift in mindset. It’s about aligning work with purpose, collaboration, and adaptability, creating a space where individuals can thrive and contribute authentically. This future is about working with our humanity, not against it.

3. Creativity as the Catalyst

Transforming the way we work begins with transforming the way we think. Creativity is the key that unlocks this process, allowing us to break free from old identities and worldviews. It’s through creativity that we reimagine possibilities, rewrite our stories, and build the bridges that lead to the future we envision.

4. Vertical Development: The Journey Within

This transformation isn’t one-size-fits-all. Vertical development helps us understand that we’re all on this journey at different stages, moving from seeing the world as it is to seeing the world as it could be. Each stage represents a deeper understanding of ourselves and the systems around us, enabling us to grow beyond limitations and embrace complexity.

5. Life as an MMORPG: Understanding the Journey

The Hero’s Journey offers a powerful allegory for this growth, but it can feel abstract. Viewing life as an MMORPG makes it more tangible: we’re all players navigating the adventure of life, leveling up by facing challenges, expanding our perspectives, and unlocking new ways of being. It’s a metaphor that shows us how to transform our identity, worldview, and ultimately the way we live and work.

What I find interesting about this narrative is that at each stage, it goes deeper and broader, encompassing more and more of life. For example, a lot of people think that the future of work is just about implementing newer technologies. It’s not. It’s about transforming how we see ourselves (i.e. identity) and our world (i.e. worldview). So exploring creativity beyond the future of work, helps us to understand what the future of work is really about at its core.

What’s also interesting is that this narrative can be seen as this “bigger picture” I’ve been talking about for some time. The further along in the narrative, the bigger the picture becomes.

And finally, we can see how the narrative links back upon itself at each step.

For example, when we explore creativity, we discover how it can transform our identity, and it makes us realize that when we feel like work isn’t working and our identity feels like it’s shattering, this is the beginning of the creative process that we need to embrace rather than avoid.

And then later in the narrative, when we learn about vertical development, we discover that the creative process is embodied within and a part of the vertical development process itself.

So with each step in the narrative, what we previously learnt becomes embedded as a part of a larger process within life as a whole (which embodies the Russian nesting dolls metaphor used to help understand vertical development itself).

Beautiful quote by Maria Popova that touches upon what Joseph Campbell said below.

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Joseph Campbell

This touches upon my quest to help others perceive life metaphorically as a roleplaying game or MMORPG. And just like in a game, when you become so immersed and connected to the flow of life, that’s when the experience feels the most epic.

Yet again, very few of us experience this because there’s so much in the way between us and the experience, both dissociating and distracting us from the experience and the wonder of it.

Put another way, we have a lot of baggage to drop before we can truly feel like travellers on this journey of life.

Such an understanding will also make it clear that finding a guide for your journey isn’t a question of finding a special person. It is a question of becoming a special person: a traveller, a pilgrim, a person on a journey. When you have done that, the whole world turns out to be full of guides.

William Bridges, JobShift

I completely forgot about this article I had found earlier this year and when I reread it, my mind was blown again. Why? Because this is the very thing I’m struggling to create as a system to help people with their own growth and development, just like I’m trying to create it for my own growth and development first, thus embodying it so that others can fully understand it by observing it in action.

So it’s almost like I’m intuiting this need for something but not fully understanding why but then the why reveals itself later. So it feels like a process whereby you have to completely trust yourself (which I still don’t fully) so as to step into a space of uncertainty to explore something you don’t fully understand why…until it reveals itself as to why.

Here’s a quote below that highlights this.

THE DEATH OF THE ESSAY

This shift in focus—from content to process, from product to journey—is reshaping how educators approach assessment. Traditionally, evaluation has centered on the end-product: the essay, the exam, the presentation. But AI is pushing educators to reconsider this approach. “The written paper has been the queen of proofs for demonstrating learning, especially in the humanities,” Conatser notes. “But AI is emphasizing a shift from assessing purely the deliverable to assessing writing as a process, a workflow and a behavior.”

Imagine, for a moment, an assignment where the “deliverable” isn’t a polished essay, but a student’s entire revision history, including AI tutor interactions. This record would provide a window into their process of discovery and iteration, revealing the messy, non-linear reality of learning. It’s an approach that aligns with what we know about how learning actually happens—not in smooth, predictable increments, but in fits and starts, with moments of confusion followed by bursts of insight. This personalized approach to learning is one of AI’s most promising features.

“We’re not just teaching students to use AI; we’re teaching them to understand their own learning processes,” says Ben Kornell, managing partner of the Common Sense Growth Fund and co-host of the EdTech Insiders podcast. “It’s about developing the ability to learn how to learn, which is arguably the most crucial skill in our rapidly changing world.”

BTW what’s funny about this is Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle video and starting with your why when describing yourself to others. The problem with this approach is understanding your “why” can take years or even decades to fully understand (although you may perhaps grasp it superficially at first). For example, I know my why but not in an extremely intimate, deeper way yet, as I’m still discovering and learning who I truly am, as I dive deeper and deeper into myself with each adventure of self-discovery within my lifelong journey.

In other words, this isn’t just about learning knowledge but wisdom as well. And the final frontier isn’t out there but within you.

THE CURRICULAR FRONTIER

The path forward comes with its challenges. Educators face the task of updating institutional policies and persuading skeptical colleagues. But for those on the frontlines of this educational revolution, the potential rewards are too significant to ignore. They understand that in a world of constant change, the ability to learn—and to understand one’s own learning—is invaluable.

The promise of AI in education isn’t about replacing human thought, but about enhancing it. It’s about creating tools that allow us to see our own minds more clearly, to understand our own learning processes more deeply. In the end, this AI-driven focus on metacognition may be preparing students not just for the jobs of the future, but for the lifelong journey of learning itself. By teaching students not just what to think, but how to think about their thinking, we may be unlocking the true potential of education in the AI age.

Your Brain Wants to Oversimplify—Here’s How to Move Beyond Black-and-White Thinking – Mindful

In today’s complex world it doesn’t help us to only see things in black and white. Here’s a skill experts recommend for moving beyond it.

www.mindful.org

Binary thinking is oversimplistic. As much as we wish it wasn’t, life is complicated, and viewing the world in black and white completely ignores the nuances—the gray areas—of the big issues, and of everyday life. By relying on this default reactive way of thinking, we make assumptions that are often inaccurate and sometimes dangerous, especially when they concern an entire group of people. Failing to appreciate situational nuances can lead to tunnel vision and prevent us from seeing alternatives.

Mindfulness teacher and researcher Dr. Shalini Bahl recalls how she felt forced to choose between two outcomes during her stint as a city councillor in Amherst, Massachusetts. Some of her fellow councillors, backed by a resident majority, voted for a temporary moratorium for a large-scale solar project on private land with trees. “There was a lot of pressure to vote. It was very much an ‘either-or’ thing,” she says. “That’s when my understanding of binary thinking really came into play, during my role as a political leader.”

Instead of doing the easy thing—recusing herself from voting—Bahl tried another option. She approached the dilemma with curiosity. “There was a third way of looking at the situation that wasn’t either-or,” she says. “It’s both yes and no. We need more solar and also want to protect our forests. How can we do both?” She knew that despite not having the immediate answers, she needed to stay engaged and openminded by speaking with individuals outside of her immediate circle. Instead of a moratorium, a guide was created for implementing responsible solar development. As she writes in her book Return to Mindfulness, “Curiosity enabled me to navigate a complex decision with diligence.”

When faced with a difficult decision, it can help to shift our focus from a place of judgment to curiosity. “Generally, we’re listening with an agenda rather than truly trying to understand the lived experience of the other person,” says Bahl. “We’re often just listening to prove that they’re wrong. There’s no room for asking questions.” Mindfulness practice is also a useful tool for being comfortable with discomfort. Not everything needs an answer right away. And learning to sit with the questions we’ve asked can often help us find that nuance.

Tapping into our innate curiosity can help us better understand the complexities of each situation, increasing our resistance to making impulsive decisions. In a time where misinformation is prolific across the media, it is more critical now than ever to be able to recognize our own biases and increase our receptivity to different perspectives. Try it next time you find yourself stuck in a conflict. Pause, breathe, and in Bahl’s words, ask yourself, “What is my intention here? Who can I go to who might offer a different point of view?” You may be surprised by what you learn.

While reflecting upon my last couple of posts, I remembered this article I found the other day and I think it relates perfectly to why people often feel stuck at times when making decisions. Often we spend so much of our time choosing one approach OR another because the decision is often final and we can’t go back on it.

For example, if I’m making a decision about the structure of my website, it’s a serious decision because restructuring a website can break all of your links within it and to it.

Even having a chat with someone the other day, they kept asking me about something and said, “So what’s the right choice, the right thing to do?” It was as if there was only one path. But there’s often many. And you don’t have to choose just one but multiple ones at the same time which seems impossible.

But in terms of my website, for the longest time I thought, should I keep it as a traditional journal timeline format or should I shift it over to an evergreen notes approach? Obviously today, I’m realizing it doesn’t need to be one or the other but it can be both, with one working off the other very well.

Even in a conversation with ChatGPT the other day, it highlighted something similar to this. It indicated how people with Socialized Minds often focus on just success while avoiding failures. But ChatGPT revealed that as one grows and develops, they realize that success often occurs through failures, as those failures help us to grow in the process. So even in this instance, it’s not this OR that but instead this AND that.

Even more so though this article highlights the importance of not rushing the decision making process and giving room to see what curiously emerges from the process which also relates to how cognitive dissonance needs to be slowly resolved at more evolved stages of development. In effect, we often fear uncertainty and ambiguity, thus we want to naturally rush the process to get over this feeling of uneasiness. But we shouldn’t.

BTW just to close off and build upon what I said before, if I was now going to extract insights from this journal post and add them to my structured notes, my guess is that this relates to “vertical development” but more specifically relating to the characteristics of a Self-Transforming Mind.

Within hours of fooling around with the idea I mentioned in my previous post, I already think I’m going in the wrong direction. In effect, I’m trying to start from the bottom and build upwards. I think I need to start from the top and work my way down.

In effect, I think I need to create my backstory as a narrative identity arc and then link that back to content maps in the note system that break down into smaller notes / concepts.

For example, a part of my narrative identity might say, “I began seriously exploring vertical development in 2010.” That would link to a content map in my notes on “vertical development” that breaks down into smaller notes that describe vertical development in detail.

In other words, I intuitively think bigger picture first and then I can work backwards into small pieces. Once that’s done, then I can start working forwards, bottom up, as the bigger picture will already be seen by me and I can see where things will connect to easier then.

This is why I think I have a hard time with the evergreen notes method in the first place. It’s because it’s starting small and building to something bigger. Whereas I want to start big, seeing the bigger picture and structure, and then mapping out the connections and relationships by breaking it down into smaller, detailed pieces.

A conversation (PDF) with ChatGPT on creating a life map comprised of a flow journal and structured notes that work off each other. It would also possibly include an overarching backstory for the person, used as a their narrative identity, which would be linked to both events and experiences within their journal timeline, as well as to their structured notes as knowledge and wisdom.

It also includes a discussion around understanding the difference between wisdom and knowledge, including the sharing of one’s wisdom as knowledge which can only be translated into wisdom by the other person practicing and experiencing the knowledge themselves.

I’ve spoken in the past about trying to create a hybrid system of some kind that is more than just a personal knowledge management system focused on knowledge but something that goes beyond it that can capture and structure growth, development, and wisdom of the person as well. This is essential to creating a life map of the person’s growth and development.

My biggest obstacle in achieving this all (and even trying to create something organized that relays my structured thoughts in a cohesive integrated way) is my addiction to exploration. I’m a junkie and I know it!

I’ve been trying repeatedly to use ChatGPT to help me break out of this addictive behaviour but without much success. However this week, conversations with it have helped me to understand more clearly the reality of what I am experiencing right now, so as to help me craft a new sort of experience that will in turn help me to move forward.

Adventuring Within Myself

The easiest way to describe how I work now is imagining my conversations with ChatGPT as though I am adventuring within myself. I have a question which becomes a quest which I initiate with ChatGPT. As we converse with a dialogue, I continue my questions like a quest chain in a MMORPG. In effect, my quest provides answers which prompt new questions in turn.

And the questions may poke or prod fears within me, tied to my beliefs, which may hamper my journey. However, lately I haven’t hit any which is strange. Anyways, after the conversation with ChatGPT ends, it feels amazing because it feels like I’ve uncovered all of these amazing “treasured” gems of insight.

However, here’s the thing. I haven’t. Let me explain why

Dungeon Speed Runs

What I’ve effectively done is what’s called a dungeon speed run in MMORPGs. People often do them to try to “level up” their character as quickly as possible. Something that probably relates perfectly to the rushed feeling I have in trying to level up myself in turn. But in my case, it’s a rushed feeling of rushing but going no where fast.

The reason for this is that I’m rushing through the different questions as a question chain, reading the amazing insights, and then finishing the conversation like it’s been completely incredible which it has. But then that’s it. I’m not extracting those insights from the conversation and then doing something with them!

Like duh! How fricken obvious. So it would be like doing a speed run in an MMORPG but you leave all of the treasure and quest rewards behind because you’re just focused on finishing it as fast as possible. Or in my case, you’re so focused on finishing it fast so that you can get on to the next question as a quest because I’m addicted to the exploration itself.

So the obvious question here is, “How can I create a system that lets me extract these insights and make use of them?”

Extracting Treasured Insights

So the obvious conventional way of doing this is keeping a journal. But I’ve done that in the past on my website and it doesn’t yield results that I feel like I can build upon. That’s because while journalling is great for extracting a flow of thoughts (almost like my conversations with ChatGPT), they’re not structured thoughts. So by the following week, those previous flowing thoughts can be lost behind newer flowing thoughts.

Of course, the next thing I immediately thought of was creating an evergreen notes system, which I’ve thought about before. Yet I’ve had difficultly in implementing this because the transition from a flowing journal to structured interlinked notes is difficult for me to grasp and practice.

Yet in reflecting upon this this week, I realize that I was trying to choose one approach OR another, when perhaps I needed to integrate a flowing journal AND structured notes together.

Flow & Structure > Explore & Exploit

This arose because I was thinking about Obsidian and how it is optimized for an evergreen notes system but it also contains a journal component to it. Basically the idea is that you start by journalling out experiences in your day and then you extract notes from that flow that you can then structure and interlink in turn.

So I’m already doing the flowing journalling part amazing well but I need to focus on the extraction and creation of structured notes from it in turn. That’s the real work I need to focus on. Why? Because it means stopping my exploring mindset and switching to an exploiting mindset.

In effect, I need to exploit and reap the rewards of what I’ve explored because I’m currently not.

And until I do so, until I can pull these insights outside of me, I will never be able to use them to build something that I can stand upon.

Practicing Creating Structure to Stand Upon Outside My Flow

So that’s the next big playful experiment I want to make. I want to take a conversations with ChatGPT, create a journal “post” from it on my website, extract the insights from it, and then create structured note “pages” that I interlink together.

Again the emphasis here is to let my flow in turn create my structure, kind of like how a river or stream drops sediment that creates a sandbar over time that in turn lets you step out of the water and stand upon solid ground. Ground that you’ve created.

But doing so in such a way that the river forms a delta that spreads out your thoughts into a structured way, letting you organize all of your thoughts in different ways.

Letting Intuitions Flow But Not Be Lost

Oh, this is the key point I wanted to make, as to why you need both the flowing journal and structured notes, especially for someone with my personality type. It’s because if you’re someone like me who is highly intuitive, you will often feel the importance of something rather than see it initially.

So having a journal to record your flow of thoughts helps you capture the thought. But then say if a week or two later, upon reflecting upon those thoughts, you suddenly realize what it relates and connects to, you can now extract those insights and add them to your structured notes, showing how they relate to and build upon existing knowledge.

This is why the flow journal is essential because it keeps your thoughts in a linear timeline at the very least. But the real power is when you extract those thoughts and begin to structure them together into a non-linear, bigger picture of interlinked thoughts, as though it was a map of your consciousness, broadening as you explore beyond its borders.

In effect, the idea here is to create something that is both structured but also exploratory in nature for others to explore themselves. And that’s what made me realize why I needed to overcome this addiction to exploration because these treasured gems of insight that I was effectively leaving on the ground and missing, are actually valuable clues to understanding what there is to explore ahead. So if I’m leaving them behind, I’m effectively going against my own exploratory nature.

Thus in becoming aware of their importance, I can possibly overcome my addiction to exploring by paradoxically focusing on their importance to the exploration ahead. So in slowing down to grab this treasure, I may be able to actually speed up my exploration overall.

I occasionally get these liminal moments of clarity where everything comes into focus and alignment and a larger vista of my life is revealed.

Today I had one such moment, after being unable to sleep and waking up in the early hours of this morning and then later crashing and sleep a few hours in the afternoon. With a mind and body fully rested and reset, thoughts deep within me bubbled up and surfaced, relating to something I wrote a while back on Twitter.

For many of us, our daily struggle is often about being seen, noticed, and accepted by others.

Yet a calm serenity can be found when we begin to start seeing, noticing, and accepting the otherness of our own being.

It is that which lies within the deep wilderness of our heart.

Why this is poignant is that today I also shared some thoughts online on Reddit and I did so without even thinking about it or questioning if I should do so. I just did it.

As I said, afterwords upon reflecting upon my words and how I just shared them without thinking about it, it made me realize something about my life and my Self.

I don’t need plans of where I want to go.

I just need intentions of who I want to be.

My doing will emerge naturally from my being.

To put this into perspective, I will never be able to truly accept myself until I can let go of needing others to accept me first. Or put another way, I will never be able to truly do what I want to do unless I can be what I’m dying to be first. So since the doing emerges from the being, I’m effectively standing in my own way and blocking my own doing by not accepting my own being first.

This is why I’ve continually pushed myself away from others and have taken myself offline numerous times in the past, both literally and metaphorically in the sense of disconnecting from my soul and true sense of Self and being.

Until I can embody who I truly am, without the recognition or validation from others for it, I will never be who I want to be and do what I want to do.

For this to happen, I just need to understand that my writing online doesn’t need to be seen, heard, and accepted by others for me to be validated.

I’m already validating myself by sharing seeing, hearing, and accepting the otherness of my being by sharing my Self online.

In other words, when you can validate yourself by just being yourself, there is no longer a need for an outcome from your actions of doing to justify your being because your being intentionally always comes first.

An extremely deep dive conversation with ChatGPT on how constructing better AI prompts relates to asking better questions for our own growth and development. (Update: ChatGPT’s Shared Links feature seems to be broken. The link shared above may or may not work.)

AI isn’t a replacement for human intuition and creativity—it’s an amplifier. The key lies in combining your perspective with the system’s pattern recognition to produce something greater than either could alone.

This conversation was inspired by this article below on how are our brains are like vector databases.

Our brains are vector databases — here’s why that’s helpful when using AI | VentureBeat

Parallels between our brains and vector databases go deeper than retrieval. Both excel at compression, organizing and identifying patterns.

venturebeat.com

It’s about understanding how information connects and relates— thinking in vectors, just like our brains naturally do. When you describe a concept to AI, you’re not just sharing words; you’re helping it navigate a vast map of meaning. The better you understand how these connections work, the more effectively you can guide AI systems to the insights you need.

I’ve spoken in the past about trying to determine what fears are preventing me from sharing my life’s work and a question dawned on me today relating to it (that was sparked by reading my personality profile in more depth the other day). And this question is almost a different perspective of the fears I’ve mentioned before (i.e. fear of not being an expert, fear of not being able to articulate myself, etc).

What if I’m fearful of the larger role I will be playing?

What I mean by this is that in transitioning to a more evolved stage of development and level of consciousness in turn, it’s really about embodying the values with which I wish to live by.

And right now, these values can be encapsulated in two sentences.

I want to be able to fully trust myself, so that I can honestly and authentically share my larger perception and meaning of life, thus enabling me to creatively align and integrate with my deeper sense of Self that is trying to emerge.

I want to embrace my empathy and intuition, so as to collaborate and partner with others in forming alliances that help mentor others in their own growth and development.

This is the bridge I effectively need to build between these two statements of values. And like any bridge, both sides have to have solid foundations or it will be impossible to build.

Thus until I can achieve the first statement and courageous share my life’s work first, the second statement will not be able to be undertaken afterwards.

Thus until I can gain the courage to embrace this first role in heroically sharing my “life as a role-playing game” framework on my own as a sort of “social entrepreneur,” the second role in being a sort of “guild leader” in helping others with how to “level up in life” won’t be possible.

Actually in thinking about this, I immediately reflect back and remember earlier experiences in my life, where I was put within the same situation, but within video game environments.

I remember being fascinated with one multiplayer game back in the mid 1990s so much that I decided to create a website for it to share my tips and tricks on the game. There was of course trepidation, as I didn’t want to look like I didn’t know what I was talking about. But I felt I was highly skilled in the game, so I decided to build it. And interestingly enough, people liked it and it gathered more and more attention over time.

In fact, it gathered so much attention that two leaders from a gaming community wanted me to join them as a third leader of it, as they felt I was quite knowledge about it. But again, while I was somewhat uncertain of my capacity as a leader, I felt like I was as least valued for my knowledgeable, so I jumped at the chance.

This is pretty much what I want to replicate right now. But obviously some fears are preventing me from sharing my work…and, more importantly, sharing my deeper sense of Self.

More and more I think about this, I think it ties into one key value that I haven’t fully achieved yet.

Trust.

I don’t fully trust myself, what I’ve experienced, and what I’ve learnt…even after all two decades of incredible synchronicities leading me here.

It is weird how your ego continually gets in your way.

But I get it. It’s just trying to protect you because it feels like you’re making your “self” vulnerable, thus letting you potentially get harmed.