The Yearning Octopus
Hello there!
Welcome to Knowhere!🚀
This is the newsletter where we discover tools and techniques primed to optimize your life, live better and get smarter!
Sign up below to get it delivered to your inbox every Tuesday.
The Yearning Octopus
The Yearning Octopus has been one of the most influential reflection models I’ve come across. Originally a graphic in a larger WaitButWhy article about choosing a career, the yearning octopus has taken on a fanbase of its own and can be applied across domains - from choosing a career, to deciding where to move, to taking stock of your life as a whole. [My interpretation and use of the octopus is probably far broader than for what the author intended, but it’s been more helpful to me the broader the application gets; to read the original article, click here]
We each have our own yearning octopus in our heads. This wild animal that dictates what we need along different dimensions, to feel satisfied with our lives.
For example, in the case of a career, the lifestyle tentacle will look toward industries with the right amount of flexibility and freedom while the practical tentacle tries to maximise financial security.
The crucial thing here is that each tentacle is at war with you and each other. Each tentacle has a set of requirements that you need to meet in order to feel like your life is fulfilled along that dimension. Your body and mind abruptly tells you if you’re lacking in one dimension because when a tentacle starves, you quite literally hurt - from constant worry and anxiety to mental instability and illness. The difficult bit is that we can only do so much - so we try to optimize our resources, methods and way of life to satisfy the yearning desire of each tentacle - but most often it comes down to a game of compromise; one tentacle must give something up to give another tentacle what it wants.
Sketching your octopus gives you a clear indication of what you’ve got handled and what you need to focus on. More importantly, it gives you an opportunity to figure out what’s most lacking and what you’re gaining by sacrificing that thing - it forces you to confront yourself and be intentional about your priorities. Then, you get to tackle the arduous task of working through the solution space; trying to figure out how to balance those competing tentacles and satisfy the octopus.
But at the very start of it all, we begin with a feeling. We feel unsettled because we know that something is missing from our lives; but we can’t pin down what that is. The octopus model offers clarity around those questions - “What problem do I need to solve in the first place?”
[P.S The Octopus above was taken from an article about career picking. The author once tweeted that if he had made an octopus about life in general, it would probably have a tentacle each for health and love/connection]
Enjoy this content? Please consider subscribing and sharing with someone who might like it too 🕺
I create content primed to help optimize your life, live better and get smarter🚀
Thanks for reading
Delano