2024 - 009 kaswal | An Uninspiring Origin Story
Reader’s Note:
kaswal is a chill, self-directed growth life course I’ve made this year. As of writing, it’s a free program I’m offering to my mutuals and friends. The essay below details the origin story and the context that led to this project.
The Fun Is in Growing Your Wings… Mid-air
It all begins not with me, but with a friend. Let’s call him Koala QC.
One time, Koala QC decided to offer paid massage services on Grindr for a fee. He bought bottles of massage oil, installed fairy lights in his room, and advertised the service in the app. The entire enterprise lasted for two months because he got bored. But he earned money enough to pay his rent and buy him weekly groceries.
I always think of this story not only because of it's hilarious details, but this kind of story is a classic Koala QC. He doesn't need the money. He just want to do it for the kicks. Meanwhile, I can’t fathom being like him—cool, adventurous, and oh damned, that go-getter attitude. If I were to do what he did, my first step would be is to get a TESDA certification and watch tons of YouTube videos. Not to mention there would be hundreds of mental back-and-forth weighing the decision.
That’s the thing, even for a zero-risk goal my first thought would be is to satisfy condition A first. For event B to occur, event A must happen first. This one dimensionality has been helpful and has kept me safe. It gets what I want, albeit inconsistently. I always wonder how to live a life like Koala QC.
The Call
April 2, 2024. Tuesday. I felt the "nudge" to do this coaching thingy, one of the many activities I wish to pursue if I’m not working in an office job. The life coaching, however, was not really the thing I’ve been pondering about that early evening. It just occurred that it might offer a way to help solve a challenge that has left me shaken to the core last November 2023.
I was hundred meters away from my work place and heading towards the bus stop. The golden cones of light radiating from the west were still warm when it touched my face. I’ve walked this way thousands of times. There were mango trees on left of the paved path, providing a canopy that overshoot above the road on the right. Then the nudge. I heard the “divine” snapping its impatient fingers. Like I must initiate it once and for all. It told me if I wait for a degree in psychology, education, or business to solve the problem then it was 100% sure I won’t lift a finger.
“What could be the worst that could happen? “
“Look you’re not going to perform lobotomy. And who the fuck does lobotomy these days?”
“If I coach people, I might be responsible for their “failure,” to which my brain also argued to itself, “I’m too risk averse to create a program that might harm people in any way.”
Those were few of the inner dialogues I had before I reached the bus stop.
Me and Self-Growth: A TL;DR Affair - Act I
I have no personal success story I can share. My life is far from inspirational. But I got something relatable for everyone:
Desire.
I want a lot of things. I want to learn how to swim. I wish to be trained in first aid. I want a small farm with a sloping fields of cosmos flowers. I want to experience what a good day in a good life looks like. I want to want the things I already have. I want to make art. There are old skins I yearn to shed. I want to be a bookseller and also own a coffee shop that caters to market hawkers and tricycle drivers. I want a cozy apartment in the city.
There are many tiny things too that I want. I want a tattoo. I want a nipple piercing. I want a steaming ramen right now.
It just so happen one of the little things I wanted was to type accurately and fast. In his book, Chris Fox said, typing fast made a difference in his writing journey. I heard from Ali Abdaal, a famous productivity YouTuber, that typing speed was a superpower that awed his former colleagues. Nice. Now I fancy that too. Typing would be so perfect for me. So I listed it down. I always wanted to be a writer and wanted to learn how to code. Typing would be so perfect for me.
Then the pandemic happened. Like many people who suddenly found plenty of time in their hands, I decided to pursue my little typing dream. I signed up for a typing tutorial website with an aim to do 25 mins daily practice after eating lunch until I average 40 words-per-minute (wpm) in six months. Well, it took me more than two years. Lol. (However, the fact that I lasted that long was also a win because I’m a garden-variety Gemini who usually drops a project after a week or two, and then moves on to the next shiny thing.)
I stayed on it because something clicked in my head when my speed picked up a tiny bit, and left the single digit wpm. I suddenly appreciated this thing called neuroplasticity. It’s the brain ability to build new or to strengthen existing neural connections when a behavior or action is being repeated over and over again. (It's also the brain ability to weaken existing ones.) I imagined my brain learning, and the neurons figuratively making handshake and never letting go. I was so happy when right pinky stopped complaining after I told it to bend over and reach for the letter Q.
Around that time, I've already read a considerable amount of books and watched too many videos about personal growth. I conceptually know many things like willpower, flow, deliberate practice, dopamine, Bloom’s taxonomy, and so on. I’ve discovered we have hardware inside us that are ready to learn. I’ve understood we can develop thoughts, beliefs, emotions, behaviors, and habits favorable to us, and that in the long run we might be able to create identity of a person we wish to become. Change indeed is always a possibility. But all these knowledge—all these how-to manuals are jumbled inside my head. I enjoy knowing all of them but it was the realization that I was seeing neuroplasticity for the first time in the wild that cracked me open.
The Agenda
The idea of creating a coaching program opens the perfect opportunity to neatly fold all the concepts and theories that I lovingly pile-up like fresh laundry on top of my bed where I sleep. However organizing knowledge is not the problem I was referring to in the beginning…
After I read the news about the OECD Pisa report (2022) ranking Filipinos students at the bottom level of math, science, and reading assessment I was bothered for days. The news was not new but it was the consistency of the announcement after announcement that distraught me. I was so upset that I have a strong urge to help uplift the numbers. I ended up fancying building a social enterprise that will train Filipino public-school teachers and students in the science of learning how to learn. But I didn’t know how and I immediately doubted myself.
If there’s one thing economists all over the world agreed upon, is the fact that a nation with significant share of young population is a low hanging fruit in terms of economic potential. It’s infuriating how Philippines is squandering that fact.
And the irony is, every stage of capitalism has been always in the forefront of exploiting the latest developments in psychology and brain science. Look how social media companies are getting savvier designing their applications to keep us glued to the screen. Supermarkets know more about habits than most shoppers. YouTube is ripe with productivity gurus and influencers hyping different ways to hack the mind because there’s a demand and belief that more productivity is the answer to the meaninglessness. The information and knowledge is out there. It’s free. Yet, the Algorithm Gods are only reaching people who are already interested in personal development and learning deliberately avoiding those who needed it the most.
On top of all of these, Philippine’s local Free TV is nearly gone; but even before its inevitable demise, shows like Sineskwela, Hiraya Manawari, or Batibot were shelved decades ago into oblivion. Let’s not even start how the public library system works in the country.
After hearing the OECD Pisa last year report I message a friend who works as a public school teacher and asked if he is familiar with growth mindset or Carol S. Dweck; he replied no.
Young people have great potential before age of 25. Neural plasticity is very active in this period. I’m banking on the idea that maybe even a brief encounter with this knowledge and a short exposure with the tools of learning how to learn while still young, we might be able to plant a seed of truth that learning is always possible. I grew up in time where neuroplasticity was a backwater theory and the public viewed intelligence as a fixed trait. I for one, would really love to be introduced to these kind of ideas early on.
I’m not placing neuroplasticity in the pedestal here, and surely it has its own limitations. There are many factors playing out during learning—and learning, is also a question of privilege. If a pupil lives in a slum, dinner is always watery noodles, and always wake-up in the middle of the night with the neighbor’s karaoke always blasting until 3 am, don’t you agree her ability to learn is compromised? It indeed takes a village to raise a child and the right policies that will support and enhance kid’s right to neuroplasticity.
Today we have now a real opportunity to let the kids know how and why the platitudes like Kapag May Tyaga, May Nilaga or Practice Makes Perfect pasted on classroom walls are real thing. Can you imagine a child visualizing her neurons “holding hands” as she tries to figure out multiplication? Can you imagine teachers having the practical skill of saying the appropriate words of encouragement to a student having difficulty pronouncing a new vocabulary, or how to praise to a student who always get a perfect score in such a way it won’t harm his self-image in the long run?
How will I pull this off this big undertaking? I don’t know. Everything is still an agenda. I’m not even sure when. I can’t even see myself yet preaching in front of grade three students or teachers, but I can imagine a future where ideas like neural plasticity, habit formation, or use of will power is a part of common knowledge for many Filipinos teachers and students.
For now I will start with what was handed to me.
Notes & References:
- Book - 5000 Words Per Minute by Chris Fox
- Video - Ali Abdaal: "How I Type REALLY Fast (156 Words per Minute)"