Forty miles from Johannesburg SA is a vast gold mine called Mponeng, and it’s the deepest manmade hole on earth, according to a fascinating article in last month’s WSJ. It is so deep that one elevator does not reach to the bottom, because the steel suspension cable gets heavier with every foot descended. It is so deep that the cold winter temperature at the surface increases to 140 degrees at the bottom. The entire three mile journey to the bottom takes an hour. But it’s the only way to get to where the gold is.
I’ve learned that with some tasks, it takes about that long to get deep enough to where the gold is. In my case, it’s usually writing an article or working on my book, but it also applies to solving problems, strategizing, or just about any task that requires quality thinking. It’s why I’ve learned to schedule my writing in time blocks of 90 minutes; it takes that long to get deep enough to where the good thoughts come.
I often begin an article with an idea that I want to flesh out, and frequently the first outline comes quickly enough. Filling in the words and choosing the right metaphors and stories takes a little longer. But all told, I can often churn out an average article in 30-45 minutes.
Yep, average.
But who wants to be that? The rich veins of gold lie much deeper. It’s easy to skim the surface of the trite and true in the first couple of passes through an idea, but it takes time to go deeper. Deeper is where the new ideas come from. Deeper is where your mind starts freeing up some half-buried memories that suddenly seem to be exactly the right analogy you’re looking for. Deeper is where just the right word or turn of phrase presents itself, like an old friend who turns up unannounced at your door. Deeper is where the hidden connections between seemingly unrelated ideas reveal themselves. Deeper is where insight lurks.
In fact, as I’ve thought deeper about it for this article, I’ve realized that there are generally four layers to a deep session:
- The first layer is the Distraction Zone, where you still haven’t cleared your head of other thoughts or your previous tasks. Plenty of research[1] has shown that there is a cost involved in switching between tasks because our minds have trouble quickly locking in to a task after an interruption.
- The second layer is the Cliché Zone, where all the easy thoughts are found. Some ideas come quickly to mind, but they come up first precisely because they are the most common, so you haven’t really created anything new or worthwhile.
- The third layer is the Struggle Zone, and it’s where most of the real work gets done. When you realize that the clichés are not good enough, you struggle to think of better ideas. You may stare at the screen for minutes on end trying to come up with just the right word, spend time re-writing sentences or rearranging paragraphs, or deleting entire blocks of text—sometimes you delete the whole thing and start over. It’s hard, frustrating, very discouraging, and absolutely necessary, because this is where you stretch. You’re not just dredging up old ideas, you’re creating new ones.
- The fourth layer is the Flow Zone, where you break through to the gold beneath, and the ideas start coming fast enough that you’re not always sure you can keep up, and you eventually look up and realize that an hour has gone by and you’ve actually produced something you’re not entirely embarrassed to show to the world.
- Actually, there’s an unofficial fifth layer, and it’s a free added bonus. After your deep session, your subconscious mind keeps working, and new ideas or refinements will pop into your mind at the oddest times.
(Of course, this is totally unscientific, being based on a sample size of one and recorded by a biased observer. But Cal Newport, who has studied this more deeply than I have, tells us that that notable creative people spent an average of 5.25 hours per day in deep work.)
Going deep is not easy, but I suppose that’s precisely the point, isn’t it? Here are some suggestions to get more deep work done:
- Cultivate a ritual. Rituals are a great way to prime your mind and get through the Distraction Zone.
- Set time blocks. Make an appointment with yourself and keep it. Just make sure you have buffer times set up between blocks to deal with all the unplanned stuff that will come up. I find that 90 minutes works for me, although I’m planning on increasing that.
- Use the nothing alternative. If you don’t feel like it, you don’t have to write, or plan or think about your problem during your time block, but you’re not allowed to do anything else during that time.
- Record your sessions and time. It will keep you honest, and especially works well if you’re competitive with yourself.
One final note of encouragement: like training for a marathon, it gets easier over time. But you have to start.
[1] Worker, Interrupted: The Cost of Task Switching, Kermit Pattison, Fast Company
No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work, Gloria Mark, Victor M. Gonzalez, Justin Harris
What problems will you solve this year?
It’s January 2, so most of you have not yet broken your New Year’s resolutions, assuming you made any.
But you will.
There’s a reason we call them “re-solutions”: we keep making them over and over, and we keep solving the same old problems over and over.
Don’t misunderstand; I am in favor of starting off the new year with good intentions and improvement ideas, even if the likelihood of sticking to them is remote. It’s always a good thing to take time out to reflect on what needs to change or improve in your life and to at least make the occasional effort, because not trying either means you’re admitting defeat or you think you’re perfect.
But if the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, why not begin again a little more intelligently? That’s why I’m suggesting solutions instead of resolutions. What’s the difference?
Resolutions are positive: I will lose weight, make more cold calls, take an on-line course. But loss aversion (moving away from pain rather than towards gain) makes us more likely to act. That’s why solutions, which focus first on the problem, (especially on its costs) can be much more motivating. A good friend of mine was once more than 100 pounds overweight, and the only thing that finally motivated him to successfully slim down was envisioning his own corpulent body lying in a coffin surrounded by crying family and friends. He used the negative to get him to act, and the positive to set the direction.
Resolutions are optimistic, which also might seem like a good thing, except when it leads you to ignore the inevitable issues and obstacles that will get in your way, and overestimate the willpower that your future self will have. Solutions anticipate the inevitable problems, so that you’re not surprised or discouraged when they occur and so you can figure out contingency plans in advance.
Resolutions are measurable, which you would think would be a good thing. But the problem is that they can take on the air of zero tolerance, so that missing your resolution on one single day means you “broke” it, and in our throw-away society, who fixes things anymore? Solutions, on the other hand, imply that you can make progress toward your goal, and that you can be flexible and ingenious in your strategies to get back on track when you miss. Solutions focus first on process and let the results follow.
Resolutions can be shallow. It’s easy to come up with a resolution: you see that some behavior is lacking or excessive so you resolve to do less or more of it in the coming year. Solutions are deep: you recognize a problem, and you think, and you analyze, and you diagnose, you figure out a realistic and sustainable solution, and—most importantly—you plan. Because you have thought more deeply about it, you have fully engaged your brain and your heart, so you will forge a much stronger commitment.
If you solve this year, you won’t need to re-solve next year!
I read an average of two books a week, and have done so all my adult life. (Before then, I read even more.) Not only that, but when I really relate to a topic, I write notes in the margins and highlight important parts, and because most of what I read is non-fiction, one would think that I have filled my head with close to 3,000 books worth of information, knowledge, and maybe even some accidentally accumulated bits of wisdom.
The problem is that apparently my mind has been like a river, with a torrent of information flowing through it but very little staying behind in deep pools of knowledge. To give you an example of how bad it can be, on a recent trip I read Roy Baumeister’s book, Willpower. I found the book fascinating and full of good sense, but I also had the strange feeling that some of the stories were vaguely familiar. When I returned home I checked my bookshelves and discovered that I already owned a copy of the book which I had read a couple of years before and filled with highlights—many of them the same exact ones that I highlighted this time!
So, while it’s great to constantly refresh your stocks of knowledge, I’ve learned that there is a huge difference between lifelong learning and lifelong reading.
It’s an illusion of learning. When I read a book and the ideas make sense, it’s easy to fool myself into thinking that just because I get it now, I will still have it when I need it. You probably remember your school days when everything seemed so clear while you were studying but you could not bring it to mind when you needed it for the test.
Like so much in life, things seem easy until you actually put them to the test. That’s when you find the gaps and weaknesses in your understanding, when you realize how little of what you have read or heard has actually stuck in your mind. If you can’t remember it or apply it when you need it, the time you have invested in learning it the first time has been wasted.
Just like a wild river needs to be dammed to capture the benefit of its power, the secret to retention and understanding is testing. Don’t wait for others to test you, or for life to test you, test yourself. Test yourself by trying to explain it aloud, either to someone else or just to yourself. You can also write down a summary of the ideas, and then go back and check yourself.
Researchers have compared various learning strategies, including highlighting, or reading the same material several times, and have found that the single most effective method of really learning is testing. That’s because when we pull something out of memory, it’s not like opening that drawer in our minds where we stuffed the information—the memory is reconstructed each time we need it. The more we reconstruct it, the easier it is. Testing yourself strips away the illusion of learning and exposes what you do or don’t know.
But testing doesn’t just test—it teaches. It teaches in the same way that lifting a heavy weight several times to failure makes you stronger. You have to find your limits in order to exceed them which is why when testing yourself, the best thing you can do is fail. If you haven’t failed you haven’t found your limits. Failure doesn’t cost you anything, except a little extra time—but that time makes all the difference.
How would you apply this? After you read a page or a chapter or even a whole book (depending on the density and difficulty of the information), set aside a few minutes and try to explain the key ideas out loud or on paper. Explain does not mean a bullet-point listing of the key points. It’s an actual description using full sentences that links the ideas together in narrative or causal links. If you have trouble remembering a key piece of information, resist the temptation to check back—really test yourself by trying to fill in the missing pieces to make complete sense. Then, go back and check yourself. When you find you’ve left out a key point, try again.
It can be devilishly hard to do the first few times, but it does get easier. After you’ve done it enough times, you’ll find that the nature of your reading or listening will also change. You will begin mentally organizing the information in ways that will be easier to retain and call to mind when you need them.
Remember Beanie Babies? They were a fad that took off in the late 90s when my kids were young enough to participate. They were little stuffed animals that only cost about $5 apiece, so when I first found out about them, I thought it was a good idea. They were nice wholesome toys that didn’t cost much, so I was all for them.
But the low price actually was the problem, because my wife would think nothing of picking up a couple here and there when she was at the mall. Then McDonalds started giving them away in Happy Meals. Pretty soon it became competitive, because other kids had more and different ones than mine did. They started figuring out strategies. The idea was that different cities would have different varieties, so, since I traveled a lot, I had to be on the lookout for new ones everywhere I went. Once we took a family trip to Alaska and almost missed our connection in Seattle because Lisa and the kids had fanned out to case all the airport stores.
The worst part was when I took stock one day, and figured out that they had spent over $800!
Little things add up to a lot over enough time. It was bad enough with Beanie Babies, but even worse with other bad habits. I suspect that if I added up all the time I’ve wasted in my life giving in to this distraction or that every once in a while, it would add up to years.
But let’s focus on the positive side of the Beanie Baby effect. The rest of the world knows it as kaizen, and it is a powerful, powerful tool for productivity and self-improvement. People tell me all the time they would like to write more, or work out more, or learn more, but they just can’t find the time. Maybe their mistake is in trying to do it in large chunks (although there are definite benefits to spending larger chunks of time with thinking work, but that’s a different article). If you can’t dedicate large blocks of time to a worthwhile goal, set aside just five minutes. Maybe five minutes at the start of your day, or five minutes right at the end, or squeeze in five minutes reading an informative article, or just writing between appointments and tasks. After a while, just like Beanie Babies, you find that the more you pick up a few here and there the more motivation you have to get even more, so five minutes turn into ten, ten into fifteen, and so on.
Precisely because the individual inputs are so small, it may not seem like much is happening, until one day you suddenly realize how much you have done. Like drops of water wearing away the hardest rock, little bits of effort and attention here and there can accomplish a lot. And the best part is that the benefits tend to accelerate, because hard things get easier or turn into habits.
By the way, does anyone want to buy some Beanie Babies?
