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October 5 - October 12, 2023
Immersion: total engagement in their work with deep, unremitting focus 2.Incubation: a period of rest and recovery when they are not at all thinking about their work 3.Insight: the occurrence of “aha” or “eureka” moments—the emergence of new ideas and growth in their thinking
PERFORMANCE PRACTICES •Alternate between cycles of stress and rest in your most important pursuits. •Insert short breaks throughout your work over the course of a day. •Strategically time your “off-days,” long weekends, and vacations to follow periods of heavy stress. •Determine when your work regularly starts to suffer. When you find that point, insert a recovery break just prior to it.
stress + rest = growth.
Put all this together, and a paradox emerges. Stress can be positive, triggering desirable adaptations in the body; or stress can be negative, causing grave damage and harm. The effects of stress depend almost entirely on the dose.
Other research showed that many physicians actually got worse at making diagnoses from radiographic scans as they gained more experience.
It isn’t experience that sets top performers apart but the amount of deliberate practice they put in. Although Ericsson would become associated with the Malcolm Gladwell–popularized 10,000-hour rule—the notion that anyone can become an expert at anything by practicing for 10,000 hours—his actual findings represent something quite different. Expertise is not about a certain number of hours practiced. Rather, it’s about the type of work that fills those hours. Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.
When a gambler awaits their next card at the blackjack table or pulls down the lever on a slot machine, they get a hit of the powerful neurochemical dopamine. Dopamine excites and arouses us. Under the influence of dopamine, we feel revved up and alive.
Great performers, Ericsson found, generally work in chunks of 60 to 90 minutes separated by short breaks.
Rennels told us that as he ramped up the duration and frequency of his meditation sessions, he began to feel more in control of himself and no longer at the behest of the world around him. “It was as if every element of my life improved,” he recalls.
Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking,
stress + rest = growth.
Whereas positive moods were conducive to problem solving and creativity, negative moods inhibited these functions at a deep neurological level.
The Evolving Self, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, PhD,
If you were entirely free to set up your evening, with no commitments in the morning, what time would you go to sleep? 2.You have to do 2 hours of physically hard work. If you were entirely free to plan your day, when would you do this work? 3.You have to take a 2-hour test, which you know will be mentally exhausting. If you were entirely free to choose, when would you choose to take the test?
“We are wired for empathy.”
In other words, the makeup of your social circle has profound implications for your own behavior. While what you do and when you do it is important, so is who you do it with.
“I cannot stress enough the importance of building a ‘village’ of the right personal and professional supporters—it’s everything.”
That different manner is “giving back” to your field. This can take many forms, including volunteering and mentoring, but the basic gist is that you should focus on helping others.
•It’s also okay to have only one purpose. Some people have one purpose that cuts across everything they do. For example: To serve and honor my god by being the best person I can be every day. To bring positive energy to everything I do and to share that energy with everyone I interact with. To pause and reflect on how my actions (prior to acting) will impact others.
•Kindness
•Loyalty
•Positivity
•Responsibility
•Self-control
