Chris Burniske and Charlie Shrem on Intuition and the Flow State
"It's our subconscious mind not explaining to us why it’s going toward one direction over another"
The following is an excerpt from Chris Burniske’s December 2020 appearance on Charlie Shrem’s podcast (starts at ~11 minutes).
[lightly edited; emphasis mine]
Charlie: Someone just told me the other day, “Charlie, you need to figure out who you are outside of crypto in order to really understand who you are, as a person, inside of it.” Because my whole adult life has been BTC. I found out about it in the years from high school to college. So I don’t have a life outside of this. So now I’m thinking back and I’m saying- do you think that’s necessary? Do I have to go and try to search and be that wandering Jew again and figure out what I want to do? Do you feel that? Because, largely, your adult working life- you started off as the blockchain projects lead at ARK. Now you’re partner at Placeholder VC. You’re involved and invested in dozens of projects that everyone knows about.
Chris: Right. That’s a really deep question. Even if we step outside of crypto. I remember when I was 20, I did my first ten-day vipassana sit. Which is a ten-day silent meditation. Where you’re only allowed to talk to the assistant teachers if you have questions. And there’s a one-hour window in the middle of the day where you can wait in line to talk to people. And that was at a difficult time in my life. I had broken my collarbone snowboarding. My room had flooded. I had broken up with my girlfriend of a year and half. My mind was a mess. A friend had told me, “if you want to just calm your mind, go to this vipassana retreat. And for the first three days you’ll just focus on the sensation [in your immediate experience].” And I’m like, “that’s great.” If I can just focus on that sensation and leave all other thoughts behind, that would be amazing. But one of the things that it first taught me was – that vacuum, that void of all external things, really it meant that everything that I thought that I was kind of disappeared. Crumbled. It led to the question of- well, what does remain? And so, I was asking very similar questions to what you’re asking now. And it’s been ten years of rebuilding from that experience. And I’ve done a number of sits since. None as impactful as that first one. I highly recommend them if you can find the time and they’re free and it’s an amazing organization. But where I find myself now is really the only thing that I can trust is the sense of flow. And if I’m getting energy from an activity, that is just flowing because I’m so enthused and focused and exhilarated by what it is. And so I tend to follow those things. So surfing is a big one. Probably the biggest one in my life that gives me that. Glassblowing is another one. And just to wrap with this idea of crypto. Thinking about crypto, writing about crypto, helping our entrepreneurs, all of that gives me flow. And so I trust that and I follow that and I do that. But I have worked to develop a grounding outside of crypto. Because of exactly what we were talking about prior. It’s not just the social components of crypto that are stressful. It’s also the security components. I’ve had too many security scares to really remember at this point. Or potential breaches. Or being targeted. It’s also this constant evolution where – you can think you’ve invested in the bee’s knees technology and six months later something is coming out that is going to obviate it. So there are all these kind of neuroses that I would say require a grounding at least to live healthfully on a day to day basis outside of crypto.
Charlie: So if I understand you correctly. The intuition of flow- and that largely is like an unquantifiable intuition- is something that you use on a daily basis. And I have to tell you, you’re one of the only people outside of my family that I have spoken to about this. And I’m happy the listeners can hear about this and hopefully learn from it. But my mother-in-law, she taught me, and she is a very big believer in going with the flow. She nails it down. It’s on every poster in her room. Her dog’s name is Flow. Flow girl. Just because of this. And I can’t tell you how many deals that I am so happy that I just didn’t – you don’t feel right and it doesn’t flow. Then you have other deals that sometimes you can’t put a picture or a pin on why it’s supposed to happen, but it’s flowing. And if it flows, it goes. And you have to follow the flow sometimes. And a lot of people say that’s hocus pocus. And magic. But really if you look at flow, all it is, is our subconscious mind not explaining to us why it’s going toward one direction over another. And that’s what that is. It’s our brains basically knowing what an answer should be or which direction to go, but it’s not able to bring it to our conscious mind. And that’s the flow. It’s from your experiences, your education, and your intuition. And sometimes the harder decision is the one that is going to flow because your conscious mind doesn’t want to make difficult decisions. But your subconscious knows.
Chris: I really like that articulation of it. To layer in more, it’s kind of like – the conscious mind thinks largely through words. And words are an approximation of things. But it’s not the entire thing. Like a word – it’s trying to translate these ineffable sensations and the firing of neurons. So we approximate with words but it’s never the exact thing. And so that subconscious you’re talking about. Or that feeling in your gut or in your heart or these different things that indicate a sense of flow or a lack of flow. Those are, if you tune into them, deeper, truer sensations and places of processing. Now, it’s hard in such a rational society where we think- everything has to be logical, I have to have rational reasons for this, what’s the career path here, etc. The two don’t line up. I think it requires conditioning yourself outside the norms of what is mainstream culture to kind of tap into the flow. But certainly the more you do it, the more you become attuned to- OK, this is giving me energy. I’m feeding off of this. Therefore I’m going to be happier and do a better job of this. Rather than this other thing that my mind is trying to tell me is the logical thing to do but that my body, my spirit is like- no, I have no energy to do that.
This is something I have thought a lot about lately and would love to hear other peoples’ thoughts on. There’s a lot going on here and a lot of different themes. But for me, it kind of boils down to two conflicting values or principles. On the one hand, you have rational thinking and objectivity. I don’t plan on throwing that away anytime soon. I think it serves us well, both as investors and in other areas of life, to be able to think logically as we try to solve problems and make decisions.
And it’s not on every decision, but sometimes, that logic seems to clash with something within. Something just doesn’t feel quite right. And it’s often really hard for me to figure out whether I should listen to that intuition from within. Is this just irrational fear that’s coming from the various cognitive biases and emotional vulnerabilities we’re all susceptible to? Or is there something more to it, is there something to listen to here? Perhaps it varies from person to person and situation to situation.
It calls to mind a couple of other quotes, comments, etc. For example, George Soros:
“I rely a great deal on animal instincts. When I was actively running the fund, I suffered from backache. I used the onset of acute pain as a signal that there was something wrong in my portfolio.”
Daniel Kahneman has also made some comments on intuition. He says it is essentially pattern recognition, and it can work under the conditions that 1) the environment is sufficiently regular to be predictable, and 2) the person making the judgement is experienced enough to have observed these regularities. Notably, he says the stock market does not meet these conditions.
Another complicating factor is that for some situations, it’s not about rationality and what’s the “right” decision. It’s about what’s right for you. If you feel a management team is a little shady or you don’t believe the product is good for the world, and you just can’t get excited about that opportunity, then why pursue it? Why not pursue something where you have the flow at your back and working with you rather than against you? But to really be able to do this, you have to truly embrace a “no called strikes” perspective. It’s also important to be comfortable putting things in the “too hard” pile. And watching opportunities pass you by is often easier said than done.
My questions:
Are there times we shouldn’t seek/rely on flow? If so, when and why?
How can we reprogram ourselves from the cultural conditioning of always needing a reason to do something?
How can we learn to distinguish flow from fear? I.e. do we feel driven to not do something because that’s the right decision, or because of fear?
How can we learn to more frequently embrace flow?
What other ways can we become more attuned to flow?
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