unfocus: Recent Episodes
Zubair and Abrar
unfocus is a podcast between two friends discussing social psychology, the human condition, and the structures that make up everyday living. As we like to say, sit back, have a cup of chai, and unfocus!
This rather rambly episode starts with Abrar explaining how he often avoids working on things he enjoys because he believes he has other important stuff to do, but when he sits down to do the stuff he enjoys, his concerns disappear. Zubair finds that his passion for his hobbies fluctuates quite a bit, and he needs to capitalize on the times when he’s really in the mood, so scheduling isn’t of much use. Abrar believes scheduling may still be useful in some cases, and suggests something counterintuitive: working on things you enjoy first and doing “productive stuff” (like school work) closer to their deadline. Zubair is skeptical, and vouches for the opposite approach, but they both agree on the importance of confining productive stuff to a well defined time of the day, while leaving other questions open.
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Get in Touch
Anchor: anchor.fm/unfocus
Email: hello.unfocus@gmail.com
Instagram: @unfocuspod
YouTube: unfocus
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Intro Music
Jazz Spastiks - Bananas (Instrumental)
Zubair opens this episode by asking, “What does art mean to the creator?” Putting aside the objective of sharing our work or making a profit, why do we create art? Zubair’s hypothesis is that the process of creating art let’s us organize our non-verbal thoughts and emotions and channel them into a tangible medium. Abrar distinguishes between different kinds of art and claims that Zubair’s idea applies more to some than others, and he explores the idea that creating art is a way for an individual to clarify their relationship to a concept. Throughout the episode, they draw on examples from Zubair’s experience with photography and the photo editing process.
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Get in Touch
Anchor: anchor.fm/unfocus
Email: hello.unfocus@gmail.com
Instagram: @unfocuspod
YouTube: unfocus
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Intro Music
Jazz Spastiks - Bananas (Instrumental)
After talking about tongue clicks, we dive into this episode's topic, the issue of setting standards for your creative work. Abrar wonders why people often set high standards for their projects that stifle them from putting stuff out. We realize that worrying about how much the audience will appreciate our work is a big factor, even though they aren't always as critical as we think. Zubair introduces the idea of capturing and immortalizing aspects of your life, with photography for example, reminding us that our future selves are also a part of the audience. And even if our work turns out to be unpopular, the enjoyment of the process may be justification enough. We also note that setting a high standard for quality comes at a cost, reduced quantity, and why that may not be ideal for people who've just started making stuff.
If you stick around till the end, there's also a surprise reveal from Abrar (which he was even surprised to have revealed).
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Get in Touch
Email: hello.unfocus@gmail.com
Instagram: @unfocuspod
Twitter: @unfocuspod
TikTok: @unfocuspod
LinkedIn: /unfocuspod
After a short exchange about the philosophy behind mountain biking, this episode turns to Statistics, the branch of math that's most applicable to the real world, but also the messiest. We point out aspects of statistical reporting that are surprisingly arbitrary, like why a 5% chance of error is considered low enough, or why the mean wealth or income are reported more than the median. We wonder whether this selectivity is inevitable, or if it's sometimes backed by malicious intentions. We think about demographics from this perspective: people look at the world's population as neatly divided into countries and regions, but in reality it's much more diverse and complex. We realize that although simplifications can be useful or necessary for some purposes, like foreign policy, on the flip side they can prevent people in general from getting a deeper appreciation of humanity.
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Links
Johnny Harris' Video: Why is Russia So DAMN BIG?
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Get in Touch
Email: hello.unfocus@gmail.com
Instagram: @unfocuspod
Twitter: @unfocuspod
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LinkedIn: /unfocuspod
This episode starts with us rambling about Zubair's new book collection, specifically The Courage to be Disliked, and hones in on the topic of how elders and youth interact when it comes to advice. Abrar claims that it's good for youth to sometimes question advice from elders instead of taking it at face value. We explore when such questioning is even possible, and when it is actually constructive. Zubair shares his experience that having open discussion with an elder can increase our respect for them, and enrich their perspectives.
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Links
Vsauce's Video: The Future of Reasoning
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Get in Touch
Email: hello.unfocus@gmail.com
Instagram: @unfocuspod
Twitter: @unfocuspod
TikTok: @unfocuspod
LinkedIn: /unfocuspod
Welcome back! It's been a few months, hope you missed us. In this episode, Zubair recounts some of the lessons he learned from An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, an autobiography by Chris Hadfield. We discuss each lesson using examples from the book and elsewhere. Along the way, we get a glimpse into the life of an astronaut, which is both extremely unique and relatable at the same time.
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Links
Chris Hadfield's Book: An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth
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Get in Touch
Email: hello.unfocus@gmail.com
Instagram: @unfocuspod
Twitter: @unfocuspod
TikTok: @unfocuspod
LinkedIn: /unfocuspod
This episode starts with the question of why we have default limits on how much we're able to accomplish in a day, and why these limits vary so greatly between people. We soon realize that the way we take breaks during (or in between) tasks can "make or break" productivity. We classify three different types of breaks based on mental activity: active (like spending a few minutes practicing a foreign language), passive (like watching an episode of a show), and inactive (like taking a walk and daydreaming). We discover the importance of taking the right kind of break at the right time, like taking active breaks between tasks to avoid losing momentum and to sneak in some enjoyable extra productivity.
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Get in Touch
Email: hello.unfocus@gmail.com
Instagram: @unfocuspod
Twitter: @unfocuspod
TikTok: @unfocuspod
LinkedIn: /unfocuspod
This episode is about debate. We explain how there are two opposing modes of debate: doing it to seek the truth vs. doing it to "win", named Mode 1 and 2 respectively. For Mode 2, a.k.a argument, we explore how people often win by strawmanning their opponents position or by nitpicking on semantics or technicalities, and how this pulls the arguers deeper into their own echo chambers (see Ep.11 for more)! We contrast this with Mode 1, a.k.a discussion, which is more collaborative and lets both sides learn from eachother, but is also inherently fragile. As expected, we get meta and evaluate our own episodes on this podcast to see whether they're more like arguments or discussions. Finally, we admit that despite all the flaws with arguments, they can be kind of fun.
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Get in Touch
Email: hello.unfocus@gmail.com
Instagram: @unfocuspod
Twitter: @unfocuspod
TikTok: @unfocuspod
LinkedIn: /unfocuspod
The last episode of 2020 is here! Zubair introduces the idea of intellectual bubbles, and wonders how they affect our perception of the world and our identities. We investigate the forces that pull people into bubbles and, conversely, what drives us to break out of them. We refer back to conversational blackholes from Ep.09 and suspect that incompatible bubbles may be the underlying cause. On the other hand, we explore the benefits of having a constellation of bubbles and combining them to forge new ones. Finally, we look at bubbles gone bad: echo chambers and intellectual shells.
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Links
David Epstein's Book: Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
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Get in Touch
Email: hello.unfocus@gmail.com
Instagram: @unfocuspod
Twitter: @unfocuspod
TikTok: @unfocuspod
LinkedIn: /unfocuspod
This episode is about privilege (don't worry, it's not very political). We've all had to reckon with the question of whether success is the result of privilege or hard work. For the first part of the episode, we take the perspective of the "privileged", arguing that it's easy to ignore the amount of work that goes into a project, and that the harder you work on a skill, the more effortless it looks when you use it. In the second part, we ask what causes some people to fall behind, especially in education. We discuss how the effect of small setbacks early on can magnify over time, especially when everyone is expected to progress at the same rate. We also look at the benefits of mastery-based learning and replacing competition with collaboration in the classroom.
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Links
Veritasium's Video: Is Success Luck or Hard Work?
Sal Khan's Ted Talk: Let's teach for mastery – not test scores
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Get in Touch
Email: hello.unfocus@gmail.com
Instagram: @unfocuspod
Twitter: @unfocuspod
TikTok: @unfocuspod
LinkedIn: /unfocuspod
This episode is a spiritual successor to Ep.04, and we reuse a lot of terminology from it. We start with Zubair's gripe about conversational black holes, pondering why conversations between some people invariably devolve into talking about one thing. We list some examples of these blackhole topics, such as school/work life and TV shows, before turning to how their pull can be escaped. Some ideas we bring up include talking more about personal projects that one or both people are involved in, and maintaining a diversity of things to talk about to keep conversations from reaching their event horizons.
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Get in Touch
Follow us on:
Instagram: @unfocuspod
Twitter: @unfocuspod
TikTok: @unfocuspod
LinkedIn: /unfocuspod
This is our first inter-city episode, with Abrar in Ottawa and Zubair in Toronto. What starts off as a rant by Abrar about a poor decision to TA for a course (while his hands are already full) turns to a discussion about the importance of making time for personal endeavors amidst institutional commitments. We realize that the value of your free time depends on how much you already have. We discuss our gripes with the "busy-ness" mentality and and explain why people should measure how much value they get out of their time rather than how much money.
Please excuse the audio quality on Abrar's end.
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Get in Touch
Follow us on:
Instagram: @unfocuspod
Twitter: @unfocuspod
TikTok: @unfocuspod
LinkedIn: /unfocuspod
In this episode, we try to get to the bottom of why we guard our ideas for projects. We hash out a model to classify ideas as urgent vs. luxurious, and novel vs. iterative (this seemingly nebulous terminology is defined as the model is developed). We ask what makes a project novel, and when an idea should be shared or kept secret for moral or personal reasons. Examples served include cooking blogs and search engines, with a side of Vsauce.
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Links
Visual Model: Idea Compass
Michael Stevens on YouTube: Vsauce
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Get in Touch
Follow us on Instagram: @unfocuspodcast
On the 50th reunion of Harvard Business School's Class of 1963, class members shared advice they had for young people. One of the topics was "turning points", which we discuss in this episode. The advice (and our discussion) touched on turning points in the context of themes such as how to turn around setbacks to one's advantage, taking the road less travelled, and being ambitious with careers while relying on personal relationships for stability.
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Show Notes
Harvard Business School Class of 1963 Blog: If I Knew Then
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Get in Touch
Follow us on Instagram: @unfocuspodcast
We started this episode without any clear topic in mind, but then started talking about lightbulbs (CFL bad, LED good), the pros of nuclear energy, and finally settled on the idea of risk. We discuss how the element of control makes us more willing to take risks, and how invisible threats can be made easier to perceive. We draw on COVID-19 to talk about the importance of "health culture", whether seeing everyone else wearing masks makes people more or less cautious, and the importance of learning from others' mistakes so you don't make them.
Stick around till the end of this episode for a pleasant surprise (Hint: Starts with "o" and rhymes with "intro").
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Get in Touch
Follow us on Instagram: @unfocuspodcast
This episode starts with the question of why we hesitate to reach out to friends we haven't spoken with in a while and the kinds of excuses we develop. We talk about the difference between imposed versus intentional circumstances in the context of friendships, and the importance of "graduating" to the latter kind. We also ponder over why our parents (who immigrated to Canada) had an easier time maintaining long-term friendships. Throughout this episode we draw on personal examples from our lives, including discussing our own friendship.
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Get in Touch
Follow us on Instagram: @unfocuspodcast
Welcome back after our long (unplanned) hiatus! To make up for it, this episode is a long one. You may need a few sittings to get through it all!
In this episode, our talk revolves around the conflict between living in the present and wanting to be productive and achieve future success. We begin by discussing how we often put off living life for the sake of work, and also how to do things with more purpose and set broader goals. We reminisce on what made high school so enjoyable and "present-minded". Finally, we talk about the problems with productivity as an ideal, and why we should keep competition out of friendships.
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Links
CGP Grey Video: Lockdown Productivity: Spaceship You
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Get in Touch
Follow us on Instagram: @unfocuspodcast
In this episode, we talk about praise. Do we praise each other too much or too little? What are the different kinds of praise, and which ones are more meaningful? How does praise change in a group setting as opposed to in a one-on-one conversation? To help us answer these questions, we introduce some helpful terms, like "praiser", "praisee", and even "unpraised". Later, we get into a meta-discussion about our podcast, and the value of recording our thoughts.
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Get in Touch
Follow us on Instagram: @unfocuspodcast
On our first episode, we discuss hobbies, and go on a lot of (relevant) tangents. Why do we give up on hobbies? How do we make time in our lives for the things we want to do? What’s the right attitude to have towards failure?
This is our very first episode, and we’re excited to see where things go from here. Stay tuned!
Note: There may be some inconsistencies in sound from Zubair's end. We are currently troubleshooting the mic, so this will be rectified from the next episode onward!
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Get in Touch
Follow us on Instagram: @unfocuspodcast
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Intro: Henyao - Fredagsmys K2