Curating Your Context Window

I'm trying to cultivate a habit of dedicating Fridays to writing. So here I am, with an Americano at Tim Hortons, typing these words onto my computer screen, not exactly sure where I'm heading next, with this blank page.

This week, I've tried to go to sleep before 11pm. By and large, I've succeeded.  I'm at the park at 7am, walking for an hour, listening to my favourite podcasts. I'm always wearing my Shokz headphones; they have become almost as important as my spectacles. Every moment of my waking existence is filled with learning and exploration. 

I'm happy to see that podcasts have become mainstream in Malaysia these days. Anyone who aspires to be somebody has to have a podcast these days. I've been a longtime podcast listener since before the advent of YouTube, when the Apple iPod was its main distribution channel. My iPod and earphones used to be part of my everyday carry, before smartphones became the more convenient option.

The advantage of audio content is that you can listen to it while you are commuting. In this article I posted almost 20 years ago, I listed my favourite podcasts. After 2 decades, I am still listening to Bill Maher! Actually, technically, Real Time with Bill Maher wasn't produced as a podcast; it was just the audio recording of his weekly HBO political talk show, which is still running now. Only recently, in the last few years, did Bill Maher have an actual podcast show on YouTube called Club Random, which I also watch every now and then. The latter is quite fun because it is an unstructured and uninhibited conversation with a wide range of interesting guests, from Richard Dawkins to Bo Derek, which he conducts while, famously, smoking pot!

I have been listening to Sam Harris' podcast, Making Sense, for many years too. Over the years, I've also enjoyed listening to Insights at the Edge, hosted by Tami Simons where she had conversations with many spiritual teachers. But these days, with so many other podcasts vying for my limited listening time, I pick and choose my listening more selectively.

The king of podcasters in the US is, of course, Joe Rogan.  But I'm not a regular listener because his shows are simply too long, and some of his guests are not worth your time. The Lex Fridman podcast is the better one, if not the best, especially for people who are in technology.  If you have that kind of long hours to spare listening to podcasts, choose Lex Fridman. 

While you see the rise of multi-hour-long podcasts like Joe Rogan's and Lex Fridman's, at the other end of the spectrum, we are also seeing the increasing popularity of TikTok-style short-form video clips. I personally am not very fond of them and seldom watch any, but I can understand why they are popular. This bite-sized content serves our ingrained need for mental junk food. And they can also be very addictive. Hop on any LRT ride, and you will see that everyone on board is happily doomscrolling.

The nature of the mind is that it abhors a vacuum. Yet, ironically, it is the very vacuum of silence that is the wellspring of wisdom. What do I mean by that? 

What happens when the mind is not consumed by some external distraction? Internal ones begin to surface. These would be memories, worries, fears and inferences. The quiet mind allows us to examine this residual content. You get to observe your own context window.

Just like how we carefully manage the context window of our AI agents, our own context window needs to be curated just as carefully. It can only be done by observing it. What's in the back of your mind? What thoughts keep on surfacing every time you are not occupied? And most importantly, why?

Thinking is nothing but inference. The quality of thinking comes from what's present in your context window. To improve one's thinking, we have to deliberately inject better content into our finite context window. It is the mix of content that one keeps in the current context window that determines one's next thought and action. 

Now that you have spent the last 5 minutes or so reading what's on this page, what's in your context window? And what thoughts are stirring in your mind? What's the next token you are predicting?