Your Life is Context Engineering

“It depends” is the best adage, or at least generally speaking (depends). It’s often quoted sarcastically in tech jobs as a joke, but it’s just as often given as serious advice.

The middle ground between “it depends” the joke and “it depends” the serious advice is context. We take for granted how much of our lives are based on context.

Story time

I remember my first time living in a foreign country in a closet-sized Airbnb studio. I had never felt so free. Every day in the city was different and far away from anything familiar, for better or for worse.

Four years later in the same foreign city I lost count of the number of closets I had stayed in. One day I was sick with a virus and then the metal roof started leaking overnight. I woke up drenched in water and shaking from cold at 3am. There was nowhere to run.

The difference between the Narnia closet and the hellish closet was context.

What is Context?

Life is not the exact sum of its parts. We understand so little about the systems that make up every aspect of our lives. Every field of science has a different way to express how humans find meaning. Sociology has social constructionism—spiders aren’t scary until we see someone scared by one! Anthropology says meaning is constructed through culture. Psychologists say it’s about mental framing.

None of those theories matter because ultimately only our lived experience is what matters. We can try our best to control the pieces of our lives—the context—but ultimately the “it depends” systems determine the final output, the lived experience.

Controlling the Context

So, if our lived experiences are a result of context, how do we context engineer our lives? Is it the Bryan Johnson playbook of optimizing every aspect of life like a chess match? In theory we could callously measure every minute of our sleep and every calorie of food. Would that help?

Storytime 2

Imagine you’re living somewhere “nice for families.” Every neighbor has green, well-maintained grass. It’s quiet, except for the birds. Every neighbor knows your name. At the end of the day you shut your laptop. You’re a bit stressed from work so you drive to the gym. You get home and realize you haven’t said a single word today.

Now imagine you’re walking through a city that’s far away from green grass and silence. There are noises and smells and novelty on every block. After work you pass by groups of kids drinking and laughing outside a grocery store. You’re a bit stressed from work so you keep walking. You say hello to the barista at the cafe, the guy hitting you up for money, the dog that comes to sniff you. You didn’t ask for any of that.

Context Matters

At some point you have been on a first date with someone making small talk and eventually someone asks some variation of “would you rather live in the city or a town?”

For me it depends.

There’s a time for living in a closet and a time for a lease. There’s a time for silence and a time for noise.

> “Locus of control is the degree to which people believe that they, as opposed to external forces (beyond their influence), have control over the outcome of events in their lives”

Ultimately we want to feel in control of our lives. Some of the worst feelings of the human condition: terror, despair, depression, anxiety—all just variations of feeling trapped.

The best way to escape suffering is to take action. We can’t always control how we feel but we can control the context. If you’re surrounded by a deafening silence you can seek noise. The idea that you can’t run from your problems is partially correct. Avoidance and anxiety go hand in hand, but you can solve silence by getting on a plane to the city. Become a good context engineer and life will get better. It depends on you.

Tl;dr If you can’t run from your problems, take a plane.