TOM: The Omni-Maestro
Published:
Iāve just been rejected from something cool that I applied to, and within half a second Iām beating myself up. Not in the sense of ādamn, you should have tried harderā, or āyour proposal wasnāt interesting enoughā, but in a āyou are demonstrably contributing negative value to this fragile planet and itās cute you dreamt otherwiseā kind of way. Because you see, what this rejection shows is that Iām falling behind. Iām slipping gradually away from a trajectory Iāve been silently plotting out for myself, starting from my teenage self and culminating with a flourish at majestic, crystalline success at some point in the increasingly-imminent future. Forget the ongoing pandemic; this rejection is the single most important event in the universe because it shows beyond any doubt that I have already failed and neednāt have bothered with anything.
This pattern of thought is all extremely melodramatic, but I canāt seem to stop it. Itās happened before (because letās be honest, Iāve definitely faced rejection in the past), and itāll continue to happen with increasing frequency unless I change something quite fundamental about my self-image. But what exactly?
People always talk about how you should have positive reasons for choosing a path in life. Do what you love; follow your passion; find your calling. Iāve tried my level best to follow this advice. While my love, passion and calling have thus far been rather vague in their messaging, I do know what sort of thing excites me. Thatās the prospect of gaining a deep, visceral understanding of both the mind and the external world, and applying this insight practically to engineer both towards radically better states. Iām now doing a PhD in artificial intelligence, arguably the single most vibrant melting pot of unsolved mystery and latent, world-changing potentiality in the world today. On the face of it, I am following my curiosity and passion; I am doing what I love. But day-to-day, it doesnāt feel like this is why Iām doing it. Instead, the driving force behind a frankly embarrassing proportion of my moment-to-moment decision making is a brutal regime of comparison to some abstract version of myself who is relentlessly successful and smashes absolutely everything out of the park. Letās call him The Omni-Maestro (TOM
).
TOM
is the Platonic ideal of innate, effortless polymathy, whisked into a soufflƩ of ludicrous productivity and daubed liberally across every field of endeavour for the benefit of all sentient life. TOM
is only six months into his PhD but has already kicked out a dozen top-quality papers. TOM
is learning French and German and Cantonese on the side. TOM
isnāt massively into football, but always scores a perfect hat trick. TOM
has never dropped a plate of spaghetti, and always gets the teabag in the bin with nothing but net. TOM
is Turing, Obama and Messi rolled into one. TOM
is typeset in monospace font, because heās effectively a robot, but come to think of it he probably also loves deeply and unreservedly, and has thousands of impossibly close friends, and writes effervescent poetry, and spends his whole time partying on superyachts. Never in a million years would TOM
have had his application rejected. But I did.
When did this completely stupid point of comparison became so entrenched in my pysche? Why is it so effective at riddling any new project I start with a kind of enthusiasm-sapping barbed wire? How is it that when I learn about other peopleās work on artificial intelligence, in books or journal papers or podcasts, it all sounds profound and world-changing, but when my own work plan is presented to me as a to-do list, it loses that quality and becomes a mere benchmark of productivity? [TOM
enters uninvited: āBecause the work youāre doing is unimaginative and trivial, you idiot!ā] Can I flip my incentive structure back from the stick of self-critique to the carrot of unassuming curiosity (which Iām absolutely convinced is just waiting to be re-ignited)? Is it even possible to just decide to make a motivational switcheroo like this?
Iāve got to this point in the writing process, and itās already been relatively cathartic, but alas I have no simple answers to any of these questions. At least now I feel like I have a firm grasp on the nature of the problem.TOM
needs to pack his bags, and create room for plain old Tomās suppressed passion for learning and exploration to re-emerge. This really, really canāt be a case of moderating my ambition (the idea genuinely sends chills down my spine), but rather re-focusing it on the object of my work itself, rather than its potential to furnish my ego. I must do things because I want to do them, not because I want to be the sort of person who can.
Live in the moment. Enjoy research for itās own sake. Let yourself breathe.