Welcome to Wonderland

 The Lost Art of Observation, Experimentation & Debate

It’s 7:17pm on a Saturday night. You have had a brutal week. You’re behind on your project, your boss asked you to create a new report, an employee is out sick and you got nothing done because you attended 23 meetings in the last 5 days.

You’re gassed.

Sitting with a friend, having a beer, you start talking about how stressed you are wouldn’t be surprised if you were teetering on the brink of collapse.

Instinctively, your friend reaches into their pocket pulls out their phone and jumps on Google.

“What are the physical signs of burn out”

Let’s go through the list and see how if you check the boxes.

Rinse and repeat. For everything. All the time.

The Value of Wonder

Have you ever thought about what we have lost having the world’s knowledge at our fingertips?

That question is the inspiration for this article, and quite possibly an ongoing series.

I was out earlier today rucking, and that question dominated my thinking. 

(To ease your curiosity and save you at least 1 Google search today, rucking is putting weight into a backpack and walking around. Why? Because it makes it hard — seriously, that’s the reason)

My musing took me to a place of exploration. 

Are we limiting ourselves and our thinking by looking up an answer versus developing our own conclusion based on observation?

Are we losing something fundamental to our creativity and problem solving by abandoning the journey and taking the shortcut to the answer.

Hello Alice, Welcome to Wonderland

The Discovery and Not the Destination

My thinking around this idea is that the journey you take is as important as an answer.

This stems from personal experiences I have, exploring what I like to call “consequenceless thought”. The process of exploring an issue from different perspectives without having the goal to prove a point. 

The goal of consequenceless thought is understanding. To dissect and observe something from all kinds of different angles and points of view. 

Wonderland: Why Does Physical Activity Make You Feel Better than Other Quick Fixes

As I was rucking back towards my house, finishing this 5 mile extravaganza, I started to notice the toll it was taking on me. 

It’s snowing here, subzero and not the best conditions for my first ruck of 2022. I was a little cold, my legs were sore, I could feel where the blisters will be on my feet.

I know though from experience this is good. Every time I have done this type of activity and I have to push myself and feel like I went a little too far, or a little too hard, I know I am going to feel great after.

The blisters will be there, I’ll wake up feeling like I’m 80 years old in the morning, but I know that my mood is going to dramatically improve.

That got me wondering. Why?

If our mood is a manifestation of some dopamine spike, how come I feel better spiking at 5 (arbitrary number) from rucking than eating a double fudge chocolate cake — let’s assume also a 5.

Same output, different results.

From what I have experienced, from what I have observed in my life, what could make those two summits different even though they hit the apex?

My (un-googled) thinking is this.

The rucking spike feels better than the chocolate cake because the range of change in the experience.

When doing hard physical activity, you don’t cruise at a flat baseline then peak. First, you sink. You’re doing work, hard work. It sucks. You are pushing yourself, beating up your body, experiencing pain. You are dipping below that baseline.

Contrast this to the cake. 

Most of the time when we look to indulge in junk we are feeling “meh”. Long day, tired, feeling like we want to go easy our-self. Since we aren’t feeling great, we look for something easy to boost our mood. Enter that chiselled slice of chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and a cherry on top. 

While you weren’t feeling great, I would suggest that you weren’t exactly dipping way below that baseline. The most pain your body will be in is dealing with the restrictive waistband of your pants once your done.

So the cake would take you from 0 to 5, while rucking (in my case) takes me from -3 to 5.

Greater degree of change. Greater impact.

Can You Actually Make it Seem Logical?

The next step in your Wonderland adventure is to then test that idea out. Does it actually make sense? Would there be some reason that could be true or would be a benefit?

Now, I appreciate this has just as much possibility of being utter bullsh*$t … but this is the point of the experience.

I link a lot back to our evolution. Appreciating that we are social animals that aren’t that far removed (in the grand scheme of things) from some much more primitive states of being, I look to make connections here.

Here was my question: What benefit would experiencing a greater sense of satisfaction and pleasure from a degree of change versus the peak result?

My answer: It promotes and sustains hard work.

Imagine you have two groups.

Group A has a biological response that provides more satisfaction from larger degrees of change.

Group B has a biological response that is dependent on the apex — irrespective of the amount of change, all 5’s are equal.

What would the impact be?

Group B would not be overly motivated for hard work. They would most likely avoid it as they would experience pain or discomfort and never benefit from a greater sense of satisfaction.

Group A would be able to push themselves more, do hard things and would enjoy a greater sense of accomplishment, motivating them to get up and do it again tomorrow.

If that were true, group B is dead (unless they find themselves trapped on the Galapagos Islands at the top of the food chain with their dinner always within arm’s reach).

Observe, Experiment & Debate

That was a really long explanation and example to get here. I’m sorry.

If you got this far, I suspect this made you think.

That’s the point. That’s the value of wonder versus looking for the answer.

Now you have some idea. You may agree, you may not. I may have irritated you so bad that you are dying to send me a picture of you cousin Daryl who is the president and founding member of group B.

Good.

Now we experiment.

Now we debate.

Using our brain the way we’re supposed to.

Happy Wondering.