Using Polarization to Enhance Our Quality of Life

Monotony and standardization are the enemies of progress. Embracing contrast moves us forward.

Good morning,

Every so often, I come across an idea that requires more thought and explanation than I can fit into a typical Sunday Edition of Prompted, so I created a new section of the newsletter called Diving Deeper for longer posts about big ideas.

As a premium subscriber, you get exclusive access to Diving Deeper. You can expect an essay like this from me on the first Wednesday of each month. Even though the post is a bit longer, my goal remains the same: to share a new idea or perspective and prompts that you can use to apply the idea to your own life to help you become a bit better each day.

Every idea is filled with nuance, so I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. I think we can all learn from each other, and my hope is we can collaborate and expand on ideas together.

With that all said, let’s dive deeper ;)

Kevin

Using Polarization to Enhance Our Quality of Life

Photo by Mollie Sivaram on Unsplash

It’s the juxtaposition of being so low and so high. We don’t feel speed… we feel acceleration. We’re only wired to feel a rate of change.

Dr. Peter Attia

Planes travel at 500 mph. Yet once we’re cruising along, we can get up and walk around the cabin without a problem. The Earth spins more than 1,000 mph, but we walk around all day without any trouble.

Humans only notice acceleration. When speed is constant, acceleration is 0. Planes and The Earth move at a constant speed, so we adapt without even noticing. When a plane takes off, however, our senses are on high alert and we’re aware of how fast we’re moving because we’re accelerating.

To recognize and appreciate what is happening to us, it needs to be changing. The longer something remains constant the more we become blind to it. We need struggle to feel accomplishment, triumph to feel disappointment, pain to feel pleasure, pride to feel embarrassment, sadness to feel happiness, and frustration to feel gratitude.

We have a tendency to revert to homeostasis. We avoid the extremes because they’re uncomfortable, and without careful observation, we settle into a constant speed that we hardly notice.

Without polarization of experience, it’s hard to perceive our performance and our feelings because we have nothing to compare them to. Everything blends together.

Every once and a while, there is a milestone like the beginning of a new month or year and we marvel at how the time has flown by. It feels like it’s moving quickly because each day and week is more or less the same. There is no juxtaposition to shock us out of the status quo and bring attention, focus, and intention to what we’re doing.

Intentional Juxtaposition Creates a Better Life

Creating juxtaposition and introducing acceleration or deceleration into our lives improves how we feel and how we perform.

If we fall into a constant rhythm of relaxing and enjoying ourselves, eventually, the pleasure falls away. Not to mention, worthwhile pursuits require hard work and we can’t accomplish much choosing the path of least resistance as our normal course of action.

Falling into a constant state of hard work and sacrifice is just as troubling. We may make progress on certain pursuits but at a high cost. Slowly the work becomes meaningless because we’re not able to enjoy the fruits of our labor, and we quickly move on to the next project after each accomplishment.

Relaxing is more enjoyable when we know the work is done, and working hard is easier when we know there is light at the end of the tunnel.

A vacation is relaxing and refreshing because it’s contrary to our normal commitment to our work and the responsibilities of daily life. Hard workouts are rewarding because the difficulty of each session is contrary to the relative ease of the rest of our day.

A polarized combination of hard work and enjoyment improves the quality of our lives and increases our level of output, but only if it’s done intentionally.

Everything in Moderation is Not Good Enough

A vacation is great, but a vacation interspersed with a few hours of work every day almost isn’t worth it.

Training for a marathon is gratifying, but training for a marathon and eating a cheeseburger and a milkshake every day is futile.

There’s a balanced level of polarization in each of the examples above, and yet, they feel supremely disappointing. Approaching everything with moderation is not enough for us to reap the benefits of true polarization. Haphazard contrast confuses us because we’re constantly switching back and forth between extremes.