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This is the best intellectual autobiography material I’ve written. I’m glad and relieved to have figured it out. This is a breakthrough, regarding reconstructing the motivating origins that drove my creation of the core Theory during 1985-1988. Any further work that I do in analyzing, characterizing, or building on my work in the thought-style of my 1986 thinking, will merely be details within this framework. I have virtually, in essence, figured out what is in my lost 1986 blank books, which are my first writings towards the Egodeath theory. I am now able to read, with surprise, my extant 1986 notes, to further deepen my reconstruction and memory of that situation and way of thinking.
The 1986-era origin and motivation of my Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence was to end the violating of my own intentions across time, intentions to get As and Bs each semester. I expected to, and would sacrifice a little classwork time now, to put an end to my being steered and controlled by my egoic, out-of-control feelings and impulses of reluctance and sudden desires. I felt bad and conflicted though also enthusiastic and highly optimistic during my series of university courses.
My motivation to work on what would become the Theory, in 1986, was: no longer violate my own intentions at a later point in time; enjoy doing the planned (intended) activities (mainly classwork); don’t be subject to feeling reluctance to do the intended activities; don’t be subject to feeling impulsive enthusiasms and then accepting those as overriding the intended plans.
I did make the honor society by getting high grades. Then things got intense and strange and tragic as my father died while I switched into high gear on this effort in Spring 1987, and then switched to a surprising direction after the Spring 1988 breakthrough, at which time I took a wholly different attitude toward my existing intentions of getting grades in those classes.
So I was still in the honor society on this side of the great divide of January 1988, but now had a distanced, semi-decommitted stance from my same-old major, and some additional bad grades from 1987 but a new profound clear theory, a new conceptual system of what ego transcendence is about, that was my true calling. Getting As and Bs in a STEM major was my intention, and that was to remain my intention, but now (1988) it is a different world, with new values that actually make sense, and I have found my calling and purpose in which I have made my breakthrough.
I have found where my potential fits and rightly contributes, a worthwhile new field and paradigm I created. I never succeeded at securing the kind of transcendent control of the mind I so entirely desired and expected in 1986 in my youthful, sophomoric, idealistic, hyper-optimistic, pre-enlightenment state. My manic vision was doomed, or at least it fell by the wayside when I came upon this all-important different model.
My 1986 vision that then motivated me: “What a joy it will be to do this meaningless frivolous STEM classwork while having transcendent rational control of my thinking! No more self-conflict across time! Release from self-violation! No more control dis-integrity, starting now! The rest of my life will be smooth easy flow, as it should be for everyone! No more lack of wellbeing, needless stress, needless dysfunctional self-creation of conflict in my life!
I now shall have, from here on out, thanks to my unintended few months of learning enlightenment about self and control, a plain, enjoyable life, not pushed and pulled by impulsive sudden desires or futile attempting to compel myself by reluctance. I now shall have transcendent, coherent, rational control of my thinking. It will be great, as it should be, starting with tonight! … And I have (in fact) another super-interesting transcendent thought, before I turn my attention to this classwork and then simply execute on this way of thinking, from here on out: …”
When I threw away my blank books 1-5 around March 1987, I meant it as a celebratory marking of my completion of fixing my thinking, so that I would no longer be self-obstructing. I would discard my earlier impulsive self-violation (deviation from my planned activities) and I would discard my more recent addiction, trap, or compulsive meta-reflection; I would no longer compulsively analyze and model my self-control integrity problem. Finally, in time to save my grades and integrity this semester, I would be free of that controlaholism and the self-control dysfunction that plagues me (and other, normal people).
As if that’s not enough to deal with, my father is dying, as if I had time to think about that. (He died April 1987, closely related to how Ken Wilber’s wife Treya died. Transpersonal Psychology = death.)
All during 1986-1987, I really did have transcendent, profound, insightful thoughts (about mental constructs, self-control) that went beyond the books of 1986, and I knew it. That made it even more difficult than 1983-1985, to focus on my classwork. Lay out textbooks and pencil in a quiet room, then a profound thought pulls my mind upward yet again… as the low scores come in, month after month. But I am only one thought away, today, from the big breakthrough and posi-control from here on out! That situation continued from January 1986 through May 1987. I got some good grades. I got some bad grades.
Very sadly, tragically, and disappointingly, I never did get the expected posi-control across time. That was a shattered and then a forgotten dream. It remained a struggle to consistently do classwork, in the changed circumstances or perspective of 1988. The tragedy of failing to get posi-control was a failure of who I was, in 1986; and there was a tragedy of grades and of my father dying Spring 1987.
But those grades were due to my making huge amazing advances, switching into high gear of transcendent idea development, leading to the greatest modern breakthrough of anyone, ever, after building on that foundation, at the start of 1988. So a soundtrack song of 1988, after gut-punch grades (a sacrifice) and father dying (who did much to get me started and put me at the leading edge of thought), is “Baby You’re a Rich Man”. Epic bittersweet anguish. Deep failure and frustration and the worst possible tragedy, at the same time as greatest victory, fulfillment, validation, and reward: self-realization and self-transcendence, I reached my potential.
What a head-f*ck time it was, what a long, strange trip it’s been. I Am Triumphant — my father didn’t survive — my dreams were shattered and abandoned — my youthful self is nullified by logic, lost to Hades’ realm. Now (1988) I have to figure out my major, do my advanced classwork, and at the same time, write-up my new theory of ego transcendence, and, I am compulsively doing research in electric guitar processing, which relates however to classes. And I am pledging the fraternity I’ve been going to since High School.
It has taken a lot of persistent hammering and self-hypnosis to recall the mentality that plagued and assaulted me relentlessly during October 1985 to March 1987 (and beyond, then changing directions sharply upon the January 1988 breakthrough about frozen pre-set noncontrol). In 1986, particularly January 1986 through May 1987, I was stuck, trapped, and addicted to a particular, distinctive frenzied chase of high ideas about the mind and personal self-control, in the course of self-management each semester.
I am glad and elated that, even without my 1986 blank books 1-5 notebooks, I have managed to travel back to get back into the motivating mindset and situation of 1986, as well as the necessary lead-up years before it, and the 1988 follow-through which had a sort of discontinuous change of direction. In a way, in January 1988, I dropped, abandoned, and forgot — and maybe suppressed as a trauma — my 1986 zealous, sometimes desperate and sacrificial, quest. I never had the chance to follow through on some of those ideas as such, because in 1988 I suddenly received a different focus or way of thinking.
I never really reached closure and reviewed exactly what my 1986 effort-become-unintended-project amounted to. Yes, I continued struggling for practical cross-time self-control in 1988, but then, writing-up the Theory as a new awesome theory of what ego transcendence actually is about and entails, took up my focus. So I didn’t have a full opportunity to go back and correct and finish-up and resolve my 1986 thinking, or grasping, as such (in its own terms).
Motivation = from bad state, to good state, with ability to change
My high motivation to study and correct my thinking required that I felt I was in a relatively bad mental situation, and that I was potentially and should and could be in a very desirable, successful, enjoyable mental situation, and that I had the means or ability to figure out and repair my thinking. A vector of actual change must go from a low undesirable state to a high desirable state with an ability to move. I was sitting in an undesirable state, I saw and expected a desirable state, and I believed and experienced that I had the ability to observe, model, and repair my thinking.
That is the combination of pain and pleasure and can-do attitude from which the semi-unintended, semi-surprising Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence was discovered and constructed, in my frenzied manic high-stakes activity of October 1985-January 1988.
Most students, including my friends/roommates/bandmates/peers who were generally similar to me, left the programme. They abandoned the intention to get good grades in these classes, entirely. A minority stuck with it to the bloody end (crazy hyper-techie enthusiasts who already knew the material, compliant passive unimaginative conformists, and foreign students who had no choice): being in this programme and intending and committing to getting passing grades or good grades. As ever, I was different. To me, grades never had much value; I had a mentality of transcendent aloof superiority, didn’t take much notice of grades.
I was more focused on grades as merely an indicator of what I really cared about: enjoyment of doing classwork, and having consistent integrity of self-control and causal, while using minimalist time-management. Deluded or not, my attitude of being a student was always “I’m smarter than my mere valedictorian peers; *as long as I deign to focus on the classwork* (the big “if”), I should be able to easily keep up with them without feeling like I’m trying hard.” I probably didn’t *permit* myself to think “this content is difficult” — that wasn’t in my mental vocabulary. But I often had or experienced a big struggle against myself: a struggle to focus on and spend the time on the classwork, consistently.
Perhaps I always laughed and disbelieved I’m as smart or smarter than my achiever peers. I always felt like it was just an act, a bluff, a conventional role: “the super-smart guy”. I was merely good at playing the part, psyching-out the test; I was good at guessing the answer based on my limited, patchy studying. By a dishonest selectivity, I can list facts about my achievements that prove impressively what an accomplished genius I am. On the other hand, inversely, I could list things about my life to show what a stupid, hopeless loser and poser I am.
For example, in Spring 1988, I got the highest test score the Physics professor ever saw on the Relativity exam (and without cheating) — but the circumstances are painful, frustrating, and humiliating (tangled up with my father’s death and struggles with grades). Struggles with the course content? Unthinkable. Struggles with controlling my mind and actions across time? Formidable.
Spring 1988, I realized that my calling, the area where my genius and potential is rightly applied, is in this higher layer of thinking, that developed while trying in 1986 to finally put an end to the dysfunctional struggle against myself across time. In 1986, I was entirely and only concerned (officially) with classwork, and had an unfortunately necessary side-project of trying to finally get transcendent control of the mind. By 1988, my classwork was fully recognized as trite and mundane, beneath my potential.
It’s not that my attitude or valuation of the STEM programme changed; I never was particularly enthusiastic or identified with the conventional STEM programme. It’s not bad, but my area is More than that; higher, newer, more fundamentally innovative — transcendent, applying STEM to the personal mind and its operation. In 1988, I discovered and created a higher, new field; I found the field that you could say I was lacking and missing and looking for in 1986. The field I created from within the STEM programme is a kind of Cognitive Science but with a focus on loose cognition and mental model transformation regarding cross-time self-control dynamics.
I was doing Cognitive Science and metaprogramming of the mind, as a scientist and engineer. Among the courses I had taken, I liked Interpersonal Communication and I particularly related to General Semantics, Control Systems, and the Relativity portion of Modern Physics. In 1988 I found Godel Escher Bach, and the High Frontiers/Reality Hacker zine.
Therefore in Spring 1988, happy with having found and created a new field where I am at home, worthy of my potential (per Maslow), I decided to leave my previous intention completely, not get any grades in these classes in my programme, and change to a major that is relevant to the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence (which includes mental construct processing, self-control across time, mental constructs, reconceptualizing the self as controller, enlightenment as mental model transformation, and loose cognition).
I considered the majors of Religion, Philosophy, Psychology, and Computer Science. I decided all those fields sucked, guided by unimaginative, backwards dolts stuck in the 1950s.
The academic field of Religion (unimaginative idiots stuck on and limited to supernaturalist theology) as of 1988 had little relevance for my Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence.
The academic field of Philosophy (unimaginative idiots stuck on and limited to propositional logic) had little relevance for my Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence.
The academic field of Psychology (unimaginative idiots stuck on and limited to the study of rats; brain-dead behaviorism) had little relevance for my Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence.
The academic field of Computer Science (unimaginative idiots stuck on and limited to business databases) had little relevance for my Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence.
I was underinformed and unimaginative; I was too hastily dismissive. But in any case, it was effortless to remain in STEM, and extremely uphill in every way, to switch to non-STEM. I realized that, after all, the life of taking STEM classes was successful and relevant in that it *did* produce the breakthrough theory, and it was no less relevant than the badly conducted and uninspired non-STEM fields. Also, in 1988 I related to STEM at least through electric guitar technology; indeed STEM has been helpful and relevant for that. And in the end, I do identify a lot with STEM — it’s just not sufficient to define my higher portion of my identity.
The Cognitive Science portion of STEM comes closer to my character. In 1989, I learned of Cognitive Science. I am still trying to understand why the field of Cognitive Science died… in the very same timeframe as the zines and Cyberpunk died, *when the Web arrived*. Apparently the Web frenzy and new, mobile computing killed the nascent field of Cognitive Science, as evidenced by the timing. Cognitive Science books sharply fizzle out after 1996. The field just vanishes as the Web appears. Cognitive Science died from a brain drain; students who would’ve enrolled in Cognitive Science in the late 1990s were instead drawn away into Computer Science.
Nonduality is trite and insufficient.
The Cybernetic Theory of Enlightenment is bigger and better and more relevant and more encompassing than Advaita nonduality. The Egodeath theory contains nonduality but nonduality is merely a small portion of enlightenment. Enlightenment must explain much more than just nonduality. The Cybernetic theory is clearly like Western religion, while Ken Wilber and Chogyam Trungpa and most other 1985 spirituality is clearly like Advaita nonduality.
In 1986, I started by taking and modifying some ideas from nonduality religion, but I had to do a lot of work and innovative creation and theory-construction before producing in 1988 a useful, valuable, relevant theory, focusing on self-control across time, using mental construct processing. My result was more like Western religion than nonduality Eastern religion. Western religion is centered on non-control, rather than on nonduality, though I have identified and revealed the role of both non-control and nonduality themes, in both Western and Eastern religion.
Advaita vs. the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence: I had to create the latter (October 1985 – January 1988), through chasing Transcendent Rational Control of the Mind. The expected promise of having non-dysfunctional control of the mind was that it would end the stupid unnecessary conflict between my cross-time intentions (get As and Bs in classes and enjoy that and enjoy the prospect of related jobs) and impulsive time-slice intentions (record albums, play electric guitar, shop at the student bookstore, socialize, random activities).
Around Summer 1986, I read about ideas like nonduality and Advaita and enlightenment, and sought to apply them to my goal and interest, in having non-conflicting self-control across time, and unconditional enjoyment of my planned activities. I wanted to study without the thought of “What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you do this before, as planned? Why did you keep violating your own intentions?” Part of my mid-1986 strategy was to apply enlightenment about nonduality toward gaining non-dysfunctional control over my feelings, to enable cross-time self-control integrity and have through that, success and smooth enjoyable action, and enjoyment.
Sometimes I think I was far too idealistic, sometimes I think I was totally reasonable and justified — a great way to put it: I simply wanted to be *consistently* together, integrated, pulling in the same direction — like I was in my 1-dimensional, classwork-only year of tech school. I wasn’t demanding something that I had never done; I was demanding that I *consistently* be the coherent controller that I *sometimes* was. My scores ranged from record-setting to bafflingly low in subjects I knew. Consistent focus was the challenge. The level of math or work was not at all the problem. I don’t remember thinking “This material and classwork is too hard.”
I remember all the time thinking “If only I would follow-through consistently on my intentions to study and do classwork, this experience would be easy and enjoyable.” I almost never thought of the classwork as hard; I thought of consistently working on the classwork instead of other things hard. I basically enjoyed classwork — but due to omni-aptitudes (later assessed), I had too many interests. Nearly 100% of the effort and strain for me was the near-impossible task of *focusing* *consistently*, narrowing my focus and time, to work *only* on the classwork.
When I tried to have an enlightened, confident attitude, immediately a thousand impulsive enticements would take my attention away from classwork. I wouldn’t permit myself to feel bad, because that’s an emotional, egoic, absurd, irrational game, a crude way of trying to make control have power across time — but plainly, I proved all too clearly, self-control cannot reach across time. I was subject to egoic control (enticements, reacting to them) and I recognized it, yet couldn’t resist them. And then, the effort to gain transcendent control of the mind became itself an *additional* dysfunctional time-consuming trap or addiction.
Figuring out how cross-time self-control integrity works or malfunctions, became itself a new way of impulsively overriding and violating my cross-time plans. Even when I did classwork, I would impulsively stop myself and meta-reflect, to attain another enthusiastic insight about the malfunctioning of cross-time self-control — even to the point of doing poorly, losing time for classwork. The plan and strategy that developed in 1986 was to keep violating my plans, to finally, immediately today, get the insight that would secure cross-time self-control integrity, so that from now on, I will have transcendent control, producing smooth-functioning success and enjoyment.
The strategy was expensive, costly, involving failure and sacrifice and yet more of that very self-conflict about daily planning that the effort was supposed to cure. The effort did eventually pay-out, into a great breakthrough about self-control across time — but, the nature and power of this breakthrough mental-model was *not* the expected securing of cross-time self-control integrity, or control-power over myself across time. Instead, I discovered that we have interesting fundamental limitations of control-power, we must trust, we must simply visualize success and accept the lack of forceful control over our control.
I expected a breakthrough, and I got a breakthrough, but it gave more interesting content and not the “posi-control across time” that I expected. The balance of my life flipped then, in 1988; instead of classwork being the given, important measure, and forming Transcendent Control of the Mind to assist with that in terms of success and enjoyment, now it became official that indeed, my main interest, innovation, talent, creation, and contribution would be in the field of Mind, not conventional STEM classwork. (Science/Technology/Engineering/Math) I had no objection to STEM except that it is limited, pedestrian, and conventional.
I was born and cultivated to theorize and explain the mind and personal self-control as my original innovative contribution, not mainly to contribute to routine STEM.
As much as I respect the Web that Tim B-L invented when I started researching networked hypertext in 1989, and as much as I respect the 1982 Compact Disc, 1984 Mac, Rio MP3 player, iPhone, and iPad, these are not transcendent knowledge about the mind. Everyone treated and saw and assessed me as a genius, 5th grade through 1990, and they were mute and open-ended about what specifically I would accomplish.
I never read what people wrote in my high school yearbooks, then long after, in January 2008, I read them, and found a write-up of my math award and predictions about great college work, and a girl, Celeste, I liked wrote that I would accomplish great things. I was aloof, head in the sky; I didn’t really take note of these specific things. I was not all there, and have amnesia about it. I am only now piecing together these things, these remarkable realities from my past.
In High School and after, I had no plans. No one ever asked what I would major in, what career I would choose. These questions don’t apply to the genius in high school, apparently. My mother was an arts and music student when I was in 5th grade through high school. I got a lot of arts and bohemian intelligence from her. My father got a PhD in Philosophy, and followed the leading edge in Human Potential and Transpersonal Psychology, sharing that with me while in High School. My other families were upper class with business involvement. I received tons of support and opportunities, but wasn’t steered in a particular direction; I was independent, in that sense.
No one was presumptuous enough to steer my genius in any particular direction, except my uncle who always pushed me toward electric engineering, a choice which I took to well enough but never felt was my passion, my enthusiasm, my calling. My spirit was looking for something suitable for genius to work on. My uncle could keep me grounded and give me a conventional viable direction, but he couldn’t suggest that I develop a form of Cognitive Science, a new field, or “design my own unique multifaceted career” as the later aptitude testers vaguely advised me.
STEM classwork — actually, self-management in the doing of STEM classwork — turned out to be the launchpad and trellis on which my calling grew: it turned out, my calling was of course naturally enough, innovative theory-development about the mind, like Cognitive Science relating to {self as control-system}. In spirit, I was the Head of my very good schools.
In 1985-1988 I am not about religion; religion is not my target and focus; rather, I use religion (nondualism, enlightenment) toward what I am about, which is: the mind, the idea of transcendent control of the mind, self-as-controller, cross-time self-control conflict, and mental-model transformation. I had no respect for religion as a goal; I only sought to take from religion whatever potential it has, to put it to practical use, toward attaining what I thought all people should always have: self-control integrity, not self-conflict, and also, rational control over the mind, not being subject to our uncontrolled emotions.
That’s what I took away from the Spring 1985 self-help and awareness seminar and the similar books from my father, 1985-1986. I always felt this way, since 7th grade homework, since the first time I had self-control dysfunction and had to therefore stay up all night trying to get myself to focus on (potentially enjoyable) classwork — but the seminar and books and conversations with my father, and my baffling failures often at doing classwork, made me focus explicitly on this idea, and made me try to make good on the idea and expectation of eliminating cross-time self-control conflict.
Religion is worthless and irrelevant, except for studying the mind and self-management.
The Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence was produced in the context of personal management toward classwork grades, course grades, per semester, with the problem being set up from 7th grade to Spring 1985. Religion was irrelevant, except insofar as religion had any utilitarian value in constructing an understanding of self-control integrity and conflict across time, including impulse-reaction, cross-time intention (“enjoy getting As and Bs”), versus time-slice intentions (what I choose and desire to do at each individual point in time).
That’s the problem with Advaita: oneness is trite, useless, irrelevant. The Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence incorporates Advaita as one tiny input, but goes way beyond Advaita in terms of relevance and breadth of theory. “We’re all One and non-dual” is merely a given at the start of constructing the Cybernetic theory, in 1986. Advaita is kindergarten enlightenment. Ramesh Balsekar was further along toward ancient Western religion, in his focus on no-free-will. But the Cybernetic theory of enlightenment goes beyond Balsekar too.
Eventually the Cybernetic theory should incorporate more practical technique of: given no-free-will, how can we attain something like my 1986 motivating-goal of Transcendent Rational Control of the Mind, to produce cross-time self-control integrity and enjoyment or transcendent unconditional well-being in conjunction with practical success and consistent action rather than self-violation of one’s planned intentions chronically interrupted/preempted by impulsive pseudo-priority escalation?
After the January 1988 breakthrough, I continued to do some work on that original 1986 problem or project, such as logging my actual activities against my planned activities (my time-slice impulsive micro-selves, battling against my big-scale, cross-time planned-self). But I was so busy writing up my January 1988 breakthrough, the new worldmodel of time, self, and control, through 1997, and then applying that to explain religion/history/myth through 2012, that I never really got closure or follow-through on the 1986 project as such.
The 1986 project, continued in a deeply changed version in 1988, was chasing cross-time self-control integrity, as transcendent control of the mind, including transcending, detaching from, critically perceiving, and controlling impulsive impelling feelings of reluctance and enthusiasm that arise in the immediate time-slice. That was my monkish-life, monastic-like Way out of which the breakthrough Theory careened into a different direction. The main equivalent idea of 1988 was TRA — Transcendent Recursive Assumption, rather than posi-control forcefully controlling and chaining, constraining, your future time-slice actions.
At the start of the day, or during class, I can’t now make the future me-after-class do classwork. At the start of semester, I can’t now make myself, in each day, do classwork. That became clearer and clearer during 1986, and the 1988 breakthrough showed the extreme version: non-control of our thinking, ever, in that all our thinking at all points in our crystalline-embedded worldline is pre-set and unchangeable.
But then how, in practical terms, can I control myself to do classwork each day, to produce As and Bs and enjoy that and not feel reluctant or give in to enthusiastic impulses to do a thousand other things like experiment with gear to try to have an immediate breakthrough in getting album sounds with electric guitar? My frenzied theory-development 1986-1988 was a matter of manic enthusiasm for modelling the mind and control, for the practical and concretely measured purpose of getting As and Bs and enjoying my should-be-good life unconditionally, transcendently controlling feelings of reluctance and regret and enticement to violate my intentions.
I thought (and still think) that spirituality is empty irrational pop fluff for poor thinkers, but I knew that a kind of meditation technology of observation of thought, providing insight into the nature of the self-concept, like loose cognition, would making the thought-process explicit, and would disengage thinking including dysfunctional thinking.
Ideas and observations from meditation traditions, like loose cognition, would obviously help toward a breakthrough change of the mental stance, a change of self-concept and ideas about control, that would be useful and perhaps even required, to operate on thinking like holding your thinking at arm’s length and controlling your thinking rather than being controlled by your habitual dysfunctional irrational thinking. To solve and eliminate the problem of cross-time self-control, which will unblock success and enjoyment at getting As and Bs, requires studying the self-management aspects of the mind.
To study the mind, requires the equivalent of meditation-observation of the mind, including observing dynamics of self, immediate impulsive feelings that cause a dysfunctional overriding of cross-time intentions, and loose cog metaprogramming of the mind. I had no interest in religion beyond the potential to rip out these few potentially valuable useful aspects.
Religion provides some satori insights about the cognitive dynamics of the self, and feelings that are impulsive toward actions, feelings of reluctance to do planned classwork, and endless feelings of immediate enthusiasm for many practically random unofficial activities such as recording Rock albums and playing electric guitar. I suspect a problem worse than mere inadequate and unrealistic time-management skills. I knew perfectly well, that there is one and only one important or intended activity: classwork; yet I would promote an endless series of other activities as if I “should” do those, such as relatives and social.
The Key to Time-Management: Mastering Not-Doing, and Refusing Tasks
I always hated the popular concept of ‘procrastination’ because it is so inadequate; there is intriguing, profound dynamics going on in self-management, far deeper and more interesting than the dismissive, belittling concept of mere “procrastination”. For example, the real key to time management, contradicting all the books — which are just part of the problem and give precisely the wrong, bad advice — is to infinitely procrastinate everything and then say yes to only around 3 activities for the day. Time management is not about saying “I will do this” — it’s exactly the opposite. Time management is all about saying “I will not do anything except this.”
In this sense, Alan Watts has great time-management advice: the first, key step to time management is to sit and do nothing. If you cannot do nothing, you cannot do time-management. Time management is 99.9% about *not* doing activities, and is only 0.1% about *doing* activities. You must be a thousand times better at saying “No, I will not do that or that or that” than saying “Yes, I will do that.” Don’t practice doing; practice *not* doing. That’s the only way to clear your time and your priorities, to make the room to focus *exclusively* on the true priority items.
Every activity you do requires that you accept and commit *not* doing an infinite number of other activities. An hour of doing classwork demands an infinite sacrifice: sacrifice an hour of practicing electric guitar, and sacrifice an hour of relatives, and sacrifice an hour of decorating your dorm room, and sacrificing an infinite number of other activities during that hour: everything else that’s on your infinitely long to-do list, your list of unstated values and policies.
To Hell with all values and policies and to-do items, I am committed to not doing any and all of them, and, I am only saying Yes to classwork. Thus balance is the key, and the key to balance of time-management is to perfect your *defensive* game, demoting and avoiding tasks, rather than your *offensive* game, of promoting and accepting tasks.
Mundane time-management was not my main self-management problem 1983-1988, that motivated me to work toward what would become the Egodeath theory, but it was part of the problem. I stayed focused on the main problem, impulsive self-violation across time, in the moment, against my long-term plans and intentions. I knew from experience that a minimalist system was appropriate and effective: do the classwork.
But I would impulsively spontaneously add endless other pseudo-important tasks constantly, and then wonder in great puzzlement: “Seriously, how is this possible? I was given this assignment an entire week ago, intended to do it right away, and I continued to intend seriously to do it, and yet I have been incrementally promoting other tasks again and again for a week? I can’t even begin to understand how broken my self-management is.” (Spring 1986) I was despairing not because I was disappointed, or even because I was very frustrated. I think more accurate is that I would do anything to end the situation, to stop existing in this dysfunctional irrational state.
It was more of a HAL-like double-bind. The harder I tried to control my impulsive in-the-moment choice-making, the more acutely I was aware of my failure and inability. (Despite getting some of my highest grades that semester, after that anguish or terminal frustration.) The rock-bottom question around April 1986 when time was running out and the first phase of attempting my self-repair was always consistently failing: “If I don’t try to control myself, I make bad choices and fail to do classwork. If I try to control myself, the problem is worse. If I don’t try, I’m doomed. If I do try, I’m doomed. I *must* end this malfunctioning.
I am a genius — so why do I suffer this ignominy? All my average, not-too-reflective classmates have no problem. [Ignoring that my friends and roommates are leaving the programme entirely — and leaving university entirely.] No matter how I try, I fail; I chronically block and obstruct and conflict with myself. The problem is *me*, my fundamental character, my very personality, at root. There’s only one way to end this malfunctioning.”
Somehow I survived, got good grades, made the honor society, and in the Summer of 1986, I think, I moved into the 3rd-floor single dorm room (for 12 months), read Ken Wilber and skimmed Chogyam Trungpa, was pulled out of class to be told of my father’s cancer, and continued metareflection in my blank books.
In that colorful room, of a continuous series of daily breakthroughs, struggle, tragedy, Rock albums, classwork, and attempts to bring my mind down to the classwork, the first year of the Theory was born, including Control Beyond Control, Mental Construct Processing, Domain Dynamics, and Loose Mental Functioning Binding, and some deciphering-type highlighting of the King James bible.
— Michael Hoffman, November 3, 2012
Copyright (C) 2012, Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved.
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The Egodeath theory 
