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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
John Fitch
Read between
November 12, 2021 - January 22, 2022
Arianna Huffington
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“Think about it: If employees are experiencing any of the symptoms in the World Health Organization’s new definition of burnout—depletion and exhaustion, negativism and cynicism, reduced professional efficacy—are they going to put in their best performance? Or are they more likely to cut corners or to leave?”
Huffington emphasizes, “It helps make very clear to employees that recovery isn’t separate from work. It’s an essential part of work. Taking Thrive Time isn’t a reward, it’s a responsibility. That’s why it also often comes at the suggestion of a manager, part of whose job is maintaining team performance and being vigilant to guard against burnout.”
and a lot of people fail because they try to change too much too soon.
Huffington explains, “It’s about making the ‘minimum viable effort’ – going as small as you can.”
Practice: Take a small step toward time off NOW Don’t wait for a vacation to implement your rest ethic. Consider all the actionable advice in this book, and for any aspects that speak to you, think about what microstep you could commit to and be successful at after your first go. You could do it tomorrow. Or right now!
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Stress, Burnout, and the Need for a Return to Noble Leisure
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“An eight-hour workday, for a knowledge worker, is like a 16-hour day for the industrial labourer,” remarks Stephan Aarstol. “The eight-hour workday was set up for the body, not the mind.”
we’re not advocating a culture of laziness, sloth, or stagnation. It is a culture in which productivity and the joy of life go hand in hand, a culture of productivity in a much broader sense, rather than just economic output. A culture of creative, scientific, spiritual, and humanitarian progress. A culture of noble leisure.
Creativity
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The Creative Process and Time Off
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At the heart of Wallas’s theory is the breakdown of the creative process into four distinct stages: Preparation, or sitting down and doing the hard work. Incubation, or allowing our conscious mind to rest (or focus on other tasks). Illumination, or the much sought-after aha moment. Verification, or doing more work to see if your revelation has merit.
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we should have faith in our subconscious to do its job.
Subconscious incubation happens whenever we fully immerse ourselves in something other than the actual problem itself, whether that immersion is in high-quality leisure like a hike in nature, or deep work on another unrelated problem. But the key here is full immersion, not absent minded distraction and constant task switching.
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Take some time off, focus on other things, and let incubation do its hidden magic.
Creativity is a constant interplay of time on (preparation, verification) and time off (incubation, illumination). Finding the right balance and flowing effortlessly between these two states is key.
Ludwig van Beethoven and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
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Ludwig van Beethoven, similarly, cultivated energy and creativity through walks. He knew that being physically strong and healthy was the best way to support his creativity.
Sitting at a desk can often be one of the worst ways to generate novel insights.
Taking a break, going for a walk, or doing some light exercise is one of the best ways to keep yourself healthy and sustain (or reinvigorate) creativity.
Practice: When you feel stuck and out of new ideas, walk away from your work – literally Go for a long walk, ideally out in nature, and let your legs and your thoughts flow freely. Escape the distractions and, like Beethoven, always carry a pen and notebook along with you to record any inspiration that might spontaneously come to you in this blissful state.
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Exploration Beats Specialization
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Incubation does not only happen when we relax. It can also take place while we work on other things.
Counterintuitively, putting more energy into leisure can energize us overall.
The common belief that we have to specialize to be successful is plain wrong. And more and more, it might do more harm than good. Countless examples show that it’s possible to be excellent at more than one thing. But not if we compartmentalize. Rather than pursuing our passions in isolation, we should freely let them interfere, find their commonalities, and focus on excellence in their overlap.
Tim Harford
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“The modern world seems to present us with a choice. If we’re not going to fast-twitch from browser window to browser window, we have to live like a hermit, focus on one thing to the exclusion of everything else. I think that’s a false dilemma. We can make multitasking work for us, unleashing our natural creativity. We just need to slow it down.”
And we highly overestimate how good we are at multitasking. In fact, from a neuroscience point of view, as Edward M. Hallowell points out in his book CrazyBusy, true multitasking isn’t even possible; our brain can only actively handle one thing at a time. So what we end up doing is just constant task switching – and that comes at a high cost.
Harford only suggests that the projects should overlap in their time frames. We should keep undivided focus in our minutes, hours, and maybe even days, but seek variety in the weeks, months, and years. For example, you might want to list all your different projects and interests and try dedicating each week entirely to one of them, as much as possible focusing on a single thing but then switching to another one the following week (or month, or whatever timescale makes the most sense to you).
psychologist Bernice Eiduson was studying the question of what differentiates top scientists from the mediocre ones, and she identified working on different topics as one key factor.
Human Performance Curve
The goal of slow-motion multitasking is to reverse this, to find consistency in the hours and days but variety in the weeks and months.
all-round development
Practice: Practice slow-motion multitasking Are you overwhelmed by all the tasks you have to handle simultaneously? How about slowing down and giving each one its separate day or week in your calendar? Or are you completely focused on one thing but often feel stuck? How about diversifying and elevating one of your side projects or hobbies into something bigger that deserves its own dedicated time? Try to multitask on a slow-paced macro level, and the creative insights you get might amaze you.
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Brandon Tory
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He realized that keeping his two lives so separate and hidden from each other was not only creating tremendous anxiety, but was also hindering his progress in either of the two disciplines.
Practice: Live your multidream When was the last time you proudly talked about or showcased your dreams to people you work with? Sharing more about your passions outside of work can bring you closer to your coworkers. Recognize that you do not have to focus on a single dream and give up all the others, but that you can achieve them simultaneously. Let one fuel the other(s), and let your time off from one be time on with the other. The key here is to recognize that this does not encourage context switching. As Tory says, “If excellence requires literally giving our all, context switching will
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Getting Unstuck
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To really see the interesting connections, we need to get a new perspective and gain some distance.
Just detaching from the problem for a bit can help us to gain a new perspective once we return to it.
For incubation – and ultimately illumination – to happen properly, we need time off, detachment, and a fresh perspective.
Rest
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10,000 Hours? Or Four?
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But Ericsson’s study also showed that deliberate practice must be limited per day to be effective – and four hours seemed to be the ideal number.
HPC
In fact, many creatives and successful leaders use naps as powerful tools to incubate after getting their four hours of focus done.
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Rest is Productive
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A study by the University of Southern California neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and her colleagues has found that DMN activity is highly correlated with intelligence, empathy, emotional judgment, and even overall sanity and mental health.
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As the DMN kicks in, our intuition takes center stage and our creativity and problem-solving skills become more non linear, making more distant associations.
It has been shown that the brains of creative people have a more strongly developed DMN, allowing them to keep working more effectively when they rest.
And investing it in a variety of passions can be the key to making your creativity soar.
.dopamine dopamine diversity (diversification)
Henri Poincaré
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“Often when one works at a hard question, nothing good is accomplished at the first attack. Then one takes a rest, longer or shorter, and sits down anew to the work…. All of a sudden the decisive idea presents itself to the mind. It might be said that the conscious work has been more fruitful because it has been interrupted and the rest has given back to the mind its force and freshness.”
