ADD 3 What a lens cap taught me about wilful blindness (C1)

What on earth is a lens cap and how can a lens cap teach someone a lesson about wilful blindness? And what is ‘wilful blindness’? Welcome to this Deep Dive, which I confess is really rather left field. When I wrote the free episode about the discovery of the lost camcorder it was originally my intention to focus the Deep Dive on the nuances of the phrasal verbs in the transcript. But, the more I thought about the home videos and the effect they had on me, the more I realised that I just had to write something about a lens cap.

In case you didn’t know, a lens cap is a small circular piece of plastic that clips snugly over the lens of single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras or camcorders and protects the lens from damage caused by scratches or dents. The lens is the circular glass optical device that focuses or disperses light beams through refraction; in other words it is the eye of the camera. You don’t see lens caps much these days because not many people use conventional still cameras and virtually nobody uses camcorders any more.

The free podcast episode focuses on how the footage of eight years, from 2004 to 2012, taught me two powerful lessons: firstly, that precious moments are potentially around every corner and, secondly, that the duties that seem important in the moment, and that might prevent you from accessing and enjoying those precious moments, rarely turn out to matter in the grand scheme of things. By the way, the set phrase ‘in the grand scheme of things’ means ‘in the very long run’, ‘when all is said and done’ or ‘at the end of the day’. I particularly love the phrase ‘in the grand scheme of things’ because it’s quite eloquent and communicates the idea of life being part of a grand scheme or great plan which comprises all the little actions that people take in their everyday lives.

I explained in the episode about the lost camcorder footage that my parents were often not great at getting around to doing certain things that involved friction or discomfort. There was something about the way they did life that affected their motivation to face, and deal with, technical tasks. If there was a certain amount of friction involved in solving a technical issue, they simply left it unsolved. I thought an awful lot about that when I was converting the home videos to MP4 files, because Dad’s choice not to confront that friction or convert those videos to watchable files himself meant that, if I hadn’t found the camera and done it myself, they would never ever have seen those precious memories.

Curiously, this problem that my parents had with facing technical issues was also immortalised in the home videos themselves, namely in my mother’s inability to operate the camcorder properly. To be more specific, on many occasions when my mother had the camera in her hand, the footage began with a black screen and a perturbed voice saying, ‘Why is everything dark? What’s wrong with this camera?’, only for someone else to point out that the screen was dark because the lens cap had not been removed before Mum had pressed the record button. Now, this was amusing the first few times that I saw it, but it happened so many times in so many videos that I found myself becoming more than a little irked. What’s more, this was not the only technical hurdle that my mum faced. Almost without exception, the videos she shot were marred or partially ruined because she accidentally zoomed in on a target, without knowing what she’d done, and then complained bitterly that there was some problem with the camera because everything was ‘too big’, ‘too blurry’ and ‘out of focus’. Her frustration with herself was evident in the running commentary she gave while filming, and she seemed to think that the camera had some kind of personal vendetta against her.

You may recall that, in order to convert those home videos to files, I had to play them in real time, so I saw my mother hit the same technical hurdles again and again over the course of eight years. While I watched footage in which my mother was expressing intense frustration about the camera, I often asked myself, ‘Why didn’t she just stop recording and ask one of us what the problem was and how to solve it?’ We could have told her instantly that if she followed a simple, repeatable procedure when switching the camera on, she could have avoided filming several hours of unwatchable material. And if she had been even remotely interested in filming correctly and creating footage that was worth saving, she could have written down short instructions to herself on a piece of paper that could easily have been stored in the bag with the camcorder. These instructions could have been as simple as: (1) Remove the lens cap before filming. The lens cap is the grey plastic disc that covers the lens, (2) If the images look too big and blurry, the image is zoomed in too far. Zoom out by pushing the zoom lever to the left. The zoom lever is the grey lever on top of the camera.

This checklist could have been written in less than a minute, and Mum could have read it in fewer than ten seconds every time she was about to start filming. But she didn’t ask us for help or reminders and didn’t write anything down, and therefore didn’t learn anything about how to solve the problems. Believe me, after watching nearly twenty hours of footage playing back in real time, I was so frustrated with my mum’s apparent helplessness and inability to learn the basic functions of the camcorder that I could barely contain my irritation. On more than one occasion, I found myself yelling at the screen, ‘Yes, it’s dark because the lens cap is on. Take it off!’ She fell into the same hole again and again without learning anything at all about the camcorder, and the consequence of this was that a fair chunk of the footage was unusable.

At this point, you may be thinking, ‘Come on, Jason, give your parents a break.’ I agree. I am being overly harsh. But there is a reason for it. Watching my mother make the same technical mistakes again and again without learning triggered a kind of epiphany within me. Yes, I was angry and frustrated that she seemed not to care, but really, I was angry with myself for not learning similarly basic and easy things that would save me a huge amount of time in my own daily life if only I could be bothered to learn them. Watching my mother struggle only reminded me of my own issues with technical obstacles; in other words, I have exactly the same problem as my mother but in different areas, to which I choose to be blind.

I’m very interested in metacognition, which, in broad terms, means ‘thinking about thinking’. These days, whenever I feel intense emotion about something, I automatically stop mentally and think, ‘What emotions am I feeling and why? What is at the root of this feeling?’ This is now my standard modus operandi in life, and I must say that it has paid immense dividends. Allow me to explain how metacognition helped me understand the emotions I had about the lens cap and zoom function:

(1) I watched my mother struggle with apparent helplessness in dealing with a very simple technical problem.

(2) I felt irritated and frustrated because her inability or unwillingness to solve the problem had consequences, in the undeniable fact that a lot of potentially good footage was ruined.

(3) The root of this feeling was, in fact, discomfort: I felt profoundly uncomfortable because, watching my mother struggle with something that was easy to solve, inevitably made me think about areas in my life where I struggle with things that other people would probably consider easy to solve.

(4) I struggle with those problems for exactly the same reason that my mother struggles with the camcorder: whether through laziness or a desire to protect my threatened ego, I simply can’t be bothered to dedicate any time or energy to solving them.

And there it is. I am very able to identify the areas where other people have weaknesses in solving problems or completing tasks, but not so able or willing to identify those areas in my own life. I’m too lazy or incapable to face the friction of dealing with them, even if not doing so has real and negative consequences for me. Why don’t I turn that critical eye back on myself and identify the areas where others may think I’m lazy or incapable?

In order to redress the balance and demonstrate that I am willing to turn that critical eye back on myself, I would like to specify a couple of areas in my life where problems could be solved very easily and quickly but, for reasons which I will explain later, I choose not to think about them, so I simply live with the consequences.

First, until this year, I have never bothered to complete my online tax return until the last possible deadline. Is it difficult to complete an online tax return? No. Are the technical barriers to completing a tax return insurmountable? Also, no. However, the fact that I chose, year after year, not to bother doing my tax return until the eleventh hour meant that I wound up paying far more tax than I needed to. Effectively, my procrastination was giving the tax authorities (known as HMRC, or His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) a free cash loan for a calendar year.

But it’s not just about finances. Last year, I started doing some basic decorating in our family home. Part of that decorating involved replacing the door handles on all the internal doors. I replaced about half of the handles in the house and then gave up with the project. Now, the door to my office, the door to the bathroom and the door to my bedroom are without handles. That’s right: for at least the last year, there have been no handles on any of these doors.

The lesson that I learned from watching my mother choose to struggle with the lens cap and the zoom function turned out to be a lesson on what I call ‘wilful blindness’. It is ‘wilful’ in the sense that I choose it, albeit somewhat subconsciously, and it is ‘blindness’ because it is the inability to see the solution to a problem. When I think of the technical problems to which I have chosen to be wilfully blind, I see a mixture of laziness and discomfort; sometimes I don’t bother to solve the problem because I consider that there’s something more valuable that I could spend my time doing and sometimes I don’t bother to solve the problem because the requirement to focus on the fact that I can’t do a relatively simple thing really threatens my ego, and that makes me feel uncomfortable.

Every time I consider putting door handles onto the doors, my immediate internal thought is, ‘This is going to take hours. I just can’t be bothered with it. And besides, I have a hundred and one other things to do that are a higher priority than this. I’ll solve this problem later.’ This is pure laziness and procrastination.

When I come to filling out my tax return, I have usually completely forgotten how to answer some of the technical questions in it because it is something I only do once a year. When I see them, my first thought is one of self-disgust: ‘Why on earth haven’t I created some kind of checklist to remind myself how to do this? How could I have been so shortsighted as to think I would be able to remember how to gather the evidence to answer these questions?’ This is profoundly uncomfortable because it forces me to consider my lack of accounting ability and it severely dents my ego.

When I think of my mother externalising her intense frustration with the camcorder, I suppose she was thinking, ‘Solving the technical issues that prevent me from recording footage requires a kind of thinking that makes me feel rather incompetent. I want to enjoy this moment. The last thing I want right now is to have to deal with something technical that I consider beyond me.’ The cognitive dissonance she felt about her own limitations led her to say things such as, ‘Why won’t it work?’ or ‘Why is it doing this to me?’ Wilful blindness led her to blame the camcorder, which provided her with a way to protect her bruised ego. If the camcorder was in the wrong, then that gave her a way out. Unfortunately, the camcorder could never have removed its own lens cap.

I love my mother very much and if, in this episode, I have reflected on her technical limitations, it has only been so that I can turn that focus back on myself, recognise the areas where I have exactly the same problem and square up to it. I really want to stop and think about the invisible psychological forces at work when I feel thwarted by something technical.

I have come to understand that my brain likes cognitive ease, which is the state of being at peace and harmony, understanding what is happening and being capable of dealing with problems that arise. My brain does not like unexpectedly being required to solve complex analytical or technical problems, particularly when I want to enjoy an outcome. The sudden requirement to deal with a difficult thing, when I am looking forward to a lovely thing, feels like a stealthy assault intended to assassinate my joy. It attacks my self-esteem, so I react by blaming the tech and feeling generally furious. Doing this, rather than taking a step back and analysing my thoughts, keeps me embedded in a state of learned helplessness, caused by the wilful blindness.

So, you may ask, what lesson did the lens cap actually teach you?

First, it taught me that when wilful blindness strikes me, I need to put it centre stage in my mind and identify what has motivated it. That’s actually quite difficult because wilful blindness, by its very nature, does not want to be identified. In fact, it does its very best to remain in the shadowy recesses of my thinking. The reason it does this is because it is trying to hide one of two unpleasant character defects.

At the time of creating this episode, I am 52 years old, so you may be slightly surprised when I tell you that I have only just learnt that my wilful blindness is motivated either by pure laziness or ego preservation. For me, it is always one or the other. Either I’m too lazy to bother or I don’t want to face the fact that I can’t do a relatively simple thing. Interestingly, when the technical problem I have is caused by an outside force other than my own character weaknesses, I don’t suffer from wilful blindness at all. For example, recently I have wanted to do exercise but I’ve had to give up and stop midway through. Now, the reason for having to stop is that I’ve been ill and my body hasn’t fully recovered. The technical problem of not being able to continue workouts is due to something over which I have little control. In this case I’m able to see with total clarity, accept that I’m facing an obstacle, understand why that is and move on. Why is there no wilful blindness in those situations? Because the cause of the obstacle is not based on a character defect in me.

Once the wilful blindness is fully in my focus and I have identified what has motivated it, the next stage is to take a deep breath and recognise that I alone must solve the problem. Nobody else will do it for me. Either I will step up to the plate and attempt to solve the problem or it will continue to exist until I do so. Ignoring it or trying to forget about it will only lead to more frustration the next time I encounter it.

Even when I’ve identified the cause and agreed with myself to solve the problem, I still have the friction of my own laziness or inability as a secondary obstacle to actually doing anything. Now, here is the stage where the greatest breakthrough has occurred for me: I make sure that I choose a moment in the day when I have the bandwidth and sufficient energy to square up to the problem. I don’t simply try to solve the problem when it arises, especially if I’m tired or in a bad mood. In fact, experiencing wilful blindness usually triggers a bad mood in me, so attempting to solve an unexpected problem while trying to fend off a strong feeling of frustration and irritation brought on by the wilful blindness actually only makes things worse. There’s a big difference between stopping and recognising a problem, making a note of it and choosing to solve it later, on the one hand, and, on the other, trying bloody-mindedly to force my way to a solution from a place of frustration and irritation. This all sounds simple and obvious but it is true. Once I’ve identified wilful blindness and its cause, I then schedule a time when I can face the problem with a cool head. Unsurprisingly, that time is usually in the morning. I’m also careful to ensure that I give myself the best chance for success by creating an environment that is conducive to problem-solving. If I have a lot of work and few opportunities to attack the problem when I’m fresh and focused, then I simply have to wait until the circumstances and environment are right. When I have those circumstances in place, I sit down and work on it. I’m a big believer in using AI as a guide and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve solved really difficult technical problems by asking AI to help me troubleshoot the issue. However, I have a rule for myself that if I resort to using AI, I must also assimilate, as best I can, the understanding that underpins the solutions that AI suggests. That way, I can use the knowledge gained from AI to grow my own technical understanding.

To finish, I’d like to give two examples of successes I’ve had when facing wilful blindness in myself. The first relates to pure laziness and the second to ego preservation.

I mentioned previously that I had never really bothered to work out how to do my tax return until the last minute. I have exactly the same problem with other financial issues that require analysing numbers and figures. Earlier this year, I looked at our mortgage account online and noticed that we still had twenty-two years of mortgage repayments left. It dawned on me that I had never considered exactly how much we would have to pay in interest, over and above the actual cost of the house. Realising this made me feel ashamed and angry. How could I possibly have chosen not to bother working this out? My first thought was to close the banking app and forget about it, but then I identified wilful blindness brought about by pure laziness. This wasn’t a difficult thing; I just couldn’t be bothered to do it. Maybe I just didn’t want to face the depressing reality of what we still owed the bank. In any case, I decided to shelve the problem and face it the next morning, when I was very quickly able to work out exactly what we owed and how we could reduce that debt by overpaying the mortgage. It was easy, quick and painless. Even now, I can barely believe that I did nothing for years simply because I had been too lazy to bother.

I had similar negative feelings when I started trying to record the second cycle of podcasts for Linguacade. I had written and proofread the transcripts and was ready to record them. But when I opened the recording software Audacity, I realised that I had completely forgotten how to set it up in order to get the best audio quality. Not only that, but I’d forgotten the macro chain that I had used to master the audio after recording. Worst of all, I hadn’t created any kind of instructions as reminders. My first reaction was intense frustration at the software for being so complex. I opened various drop-down menus in Audacity, trying to recall where the key functions I needed were located, but to no avail. Fairly soon, I started to get really angry. Why was it so complicated? Then, of course, I realised that I was displacing my anger with myself onto the software because I was actually ashamed of myself for being so incapable. I was also somewhat relieved that I’d been able to see the ego preservation behind the wilful blindness. I stopped the session, identified a time when I’d be able to tackle the problem and walked away from the computer. When I came back to solve the problem I was mentally ready. I looked through all the documents I had relating to recording, asked AI some questions, and wrote myself a set of instructions that became a bulletproof workflow, not only for the recording and mastering but also for all other aspects of writing and publishing the transcripts as blogs.

I think it’s good to stop at precisely this point because it illustrates that choosing to wait, rather than trying to solve the problem in a moment of frustration, can actually lead to results that are far better and more beneficial than simply overcoming the obstacle that caused the wilful blindness in the first place. Choosing to wait and having time to consider the fact that I couldn’t recall how to record or master audio set me thinking more deeply about how I also couldn’t recall the order of other necessary steps for publishing the transcripts as posts, or publishing the podcast episodes in such a way that they would appear correctly on all podcasting platforms. So, when I had the energy and focus to deal with the original problem I was also ready to deal with a number of other related problems that were at least as important as the initial problem that triggered my wilful blindness.

I hope that you won’t judge me too harshly for using my mother as an example of a problem that, I suppose, most of us face on a rather frequent basis. Sometimes life lessons and transformational epiphanies come from the strangest of situations and events. Suffice it to say that I am extraordinarily grateful to have watched all that footage that was marred by over-zooming and a grey plastic lens cap.