Writing, Edits, The Internet, and Open Loops

On another post here, Dr. E. Miller wrote:

Putting off editing to another session works for many people. I would end up re-writing or, worse, never getting back to it. Right now, I have something like 15 drafts sitting in my blogging space, most of which are from the past six months. Some go back years.
The only time I put off editing immediately is when my replacement words, phrases, and sentences become too unwieldy to make Then I know I have to stop and come back. Usually, immediate editing works best for me. Different strokes, and all that. I am just one big enigma!
Thanks for your insights!

and I replied:

Sounds like the edit process is an “open loop” for you. ANOTHER idea for a blog post. Thank you! (But, sometimes “open loops” can be cured with timers, doing them at a restaurant an hour before closing time where you are forced to quit, etc.)
Edit: I would like to clarify what I am saying here. (Was interrupted by a phone call.) “Open loop” processes lack feedback to regulate them. In some cases, this means that they can go on endlessly, or when something does eventually shut them down they have caused damage in some way (usually by consuming too many resources). Informally, we see this “in real life” in addiction where, say, a “normal” person has two drinks and quits but the alcoholic simply “cannot stop” until something external (“running out,” police officer, death) shuts down the process. This happens when people (including me) “get lost in the internet.” David Allen uses it informally to refer to what might also be called “unfinished business” that occupies our attention when we should be working on something else. See, also:https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/19391/what-is-an-open-loop

This is another excuse, er, “opportunity” for a blog post!  (Please read the entire article start to finish before you start clicking links.  Otherwise, you might get trapped, or lost, by an “open loop.”  More about that in a moment.)

The field of cybernetics is considered “complex” by many, and for good reason!  The words of Von Neuman, Claude Shannon, Alan Turing, and Gregory Bateson can be challenging to read and understand.  But they affected our lives in major ways, and I would like to give each of them a little credit before I move to the main point of this article:

  • John von Neuman: among other things, developed the “von Neuman” architechture of “modern” (post-1950) computers.  If you use a desktop, laptop, tablet, smart phone, or any other “smart” device, then you are using one or more devices built with von Neuman architecture.  (You have him to thank.)
  • Claude Shannon: arguably developed “information theory” that permitted the development, as we know it, of communications channels such as cellular communications (cell phones of any kind), the Internet, satellite (and cable) television, and more.  He also developed the concept of “channel capacity,” an important concept later embodied in Dunbar’s Number, an estimate of our upper limits for relations with other humans.
  • Alan Turing: developed such critically important ideas as the “algorithm,” the “Turing machine,” and important concepts in cryptography.  In addition to being a von Neuman architecture, the tablets, computers, and smart phones you use are also “Turing machines.”  You can learn more about his life by watching “The Imitation Game.”
  • Finally, Gregory Bateson was a contemporary of the previous three, and he applied these same kinds of ideas of “cybernetics” to Anthropology and the emerging field of Family Therapy.  (Arguably, Bateson was one of the founders of Family Therapy.)  What Bateson REALLY told us is that all of these “nerd” ideas can be applied to people and real life situations. (You might prefer this video or this one.) Of the four, it is Bateson that interests me the most, and he is the least well known to the general public.

So, what’s the main point?  What does any of this have to do with writing, editing, and productivity?

Among other things, the Family Therapists sometimes think that “problems” can be a failure of feedback loops.  (These feedback loops are a concept from cybernetics.)  Working feedback loops are (most of the time) “negative feedback loops” like a thermostat that keeps the temperature constant in your home during the cold of winter or heat of summer.  (In physiology, and in family therapy, these negative feedback loops are called homeostasis.)

But, sometimes, these feedback loops fail (or are absent).  This can be explained by any of a number of reasons, but the result is the same: something or someone spirals out of control.  Your home becomes freezing cold.  Or it becomes so hot that a heat stroke becomes a danger.  A person does not stop at “two drinks” but continues drinking, alcoholically, until the “run out,” “pass out,” a police officer stops them, or they die.

More benevolently, you surf the internet too long and do not get your shopping done or check deposited and that causes problems.  A teenager plays video games for hours on end, neglecting chores, physical activity, and “normal” friends.  The list can go on indefinitely.  All of these can be described as “open loops.”  (Open loops cause a failure in “closure.”  A “closed loop” is a properly functioning negative feedback system, which terminates some process when a criterion is met.  And if you became “lost” in the process of making a list of open loops?  THAT would be an example of being caught by an open loop also!)

So, how to handle these?  The answer is not always simple, but it can be.  An old friend of mine, from years ago, taught me the trick.  (He was familiar with the same concepts of negative feedback and homeostasis as I am.  He, quite explicitly, was applying them.)  We tended to have conversations that would last many hours into the night.  They were, to be certain, “open loops.”  His solution was simple: we moved the conversation to a bookstore similar to a Barnes and Noble (actually, it was a Books-A-Million).  When closing time arrived at 11 PM on Friday or Saturday, the conversation was over.

You can stop an open loop, whether it is regarding too many edits or being on the internet “too long.”  Put in a hard barrier, a time fence (these are popular with supply chain managers), to help regulate your behavior.  That, in turn, can make your life MUCH better, and you can move on to other problems to solve, like how to implement a “Daily Edit Exercise.” [Edit: Some people use the Pomodoro Technique to help with this when working on a project or in their daily work setting.]

But, then, that is a topic for another blog entry.

Please do note that any attempt to “explain” “why” the open loop has happened can lead to an open loop itself!  You will become trapped by that!  (This is informally called “paralysis by analysis.”)  “Why?” is typically dangerous and irrelevant.  BUT “HOW” (to stop it) is useful.

As an aside, in his GTD (“Getting Things Done“) method, David Allen has the concept of the “open loop.”  It is similar, if not the same, to the “open loop” we describe here except that it tends to be something that occupies your attention when your attention would be better used if it were focused elsewhere in what Mr. Allen calls a “mind like water.”


Daily Writing Exercise

Over on Libby Sommer’s blog about writing, she and I engaged in a dialog following her article “Turning Towards the Inner Critic.”  I had mentioned starting to develop some word counts greater than 2,000 in my “Daily Writing Exercise” that I had derived based on “No Plot, No Problemas well as the ideas of others.  (At this point I should explicitly mention Julie Cameron’s “The Artists Way” also since encountering her “morning pages” circa 2003 was my earliest exposure to this family of ideas.)

Libby, in the course of the dialog, asked this:

“the word counts might be large, but does the writing itself make interesting reading?”

I replied:

“Not necessarily. BUT it DOES create a “farm” of material that can be drawn upon to produce material that *IS* interesting, and it is a innoculation against writers block. And, as an aside, it seems to help organize me. I look back at old exercises and draw the conclusion: “Oh. That was important. I dropped it. Better get on it.” Extra helpful in that way, a bit like the oddball photos I take of people, signs, things around the house, and so forth. (“Hmm. What was that a picture of? Oh, it was the parking garage next to that excellent restaurant that we went to a year ago but never made it back to. Maybe time to go there again.”) Can’t count the number of times a picture like that returned me to somewhere I wanted to go (or warned me about somewhere I didn’t).”

However, some writers (more than a few, notably Hemingway) focused on low word counts (500 words per day for Hemingway) but absolutely the highest quality writing that they could muster.  By the end of their session, the likelihood of future edits was greatly reduced or maybe even eliminated.

So, I offer the idea to my readers: which do you prefer?  Now I know that some will say “both!”  (That is the direction I am heading, and I think that is obvious.  Do the “maximum output” exercise first, to “warm up,” and then “squeeze out” the few hundred words of “high quality” once the “writer’s block” (and excuses) are gone.)  BUT, noting that, consider what you would do if only ONE of them were an option.  Which would you pick?  Why?

Update: Libby has notified me that she has a piece on this topic located here: https://libbysommer.wordpress.com/2016/03/12/exercising-the-writing-muscle/