by Brian Solis
In that time, she had temporarily placed her startup on hold and traveled the world to explore its beauty while also exploring the beauty within herself. She'd also written two books along the way. But what served as the centerpiece for our conversation this particular evening, other than the enchanting scenery that is Lisbon, were the awe-inspiring stories she shared about how in her travels, she set out to embrace spirituality, mindfulness, meditation, and learn and practice the art of creative flow.
One year earlier, I wouldn't have had anything to contribute to the conversation. But by this time, I was well into my lifescaling journey. I was a little hesitant to share my story of having become so overwhelmed by distraction and disconnected from my creativity. She'd been public with her journey, sharing videos, pictures, and posts about what she'd learned, her struggles, her adventures, and the exotic places her quest for meaning had taken her. I, on the other hand, had yet to tell anyone outside my closest personal circle about lifescaling. But her story of reigniting her own creativity was so in sync with the journey I was on that I went ahead and told her all about my discoveries.
She made sharing easy, conveying that she was as genuinely curious about my journey as I was of hers. The conversation consumed a long evening and I left even more inspired about the road I was on and with a wealth of great insight to carry with me.
Some friends and family members you share with may not be supportive of some of your plan. You might hear some doubts and cautions may be offered. Or some people might seem to be just supporting you without really thinking deeply about what you've shared. Don't be discouraged. Opening up to feedback is a great strengthener of our creative muscles. It's one of the hallmarks of what Carol Dweck calls the growth mindset. I'm sure you will also get lots of great encouragement and tips about resources that can be helpful, offers to connect you with people who can assist you, and suggestions of possibilities you might otherwise never have imagined.
Opening up to feedback is a great strengthener of our creative muscles.
I've shared that one of my lifescaling goals has been to do more networking. I decided to use the writing of this book as one occasion for that, and I reached out to a number of people to get feedback. They offered many wonderful suggestions about research to read and shared their own stories of creative struggle, which was all so helpful in honing the concept and discovering some new thinkers whose work has been profoundly mind-opening.
Select those you share with carefully, but trust that by opening up your vision to them, they will help you see it, and achieve it, in invaluable ways. You are the author of the book of your life, but all authors need good editing!
Chapter 14
Dive
Wading through the Shallows to Dive into Deep Creativity
“You don't get results by focusing on results. You get results by focusing on the actions that produce results.”
– Mike Hawkins
Okay, you've got your action plan worked out. Now it's time to apply your renewed ability to focus, your positive thinking and motivational visualization, and your passionate sense of purpose to creative productivity. That requires carving out time for deep dives into creative work. Instead of always treading water in a desperate effort to keep up with the relentless onslaught of distractions, you allow yourself to plunge into the projects that are the most important, and the most meaningful, to you.
For so many of us, when we do give ourselves time for creative work, we don't take the deep plunge. It's like we're snorkeling rather than scuba diving. We just don't think we can afford to take the time to really go deep. That's in part because we don't realize how productive we can be during creative work sessions if we are truly, utterly focused.
We tend to think that creative output requires a large time commitment. And we're concerned that if we fail to answer all, or at least most, of our emails, take phone calls when we get them, and process through all of the flotsam and jetsam of bureaucratic paperwork (so much of which is online now), we'll find ourselves drowning.
The truth is that most of us do have to keep up with a large volume of basic work tasks and we do have to be responsive to messages and calls. We have to get paperwork done on time and we can't just beg off on all, or even most, meetings. So in order to make time for deep creative work, we have to master the art of switching from the shallows to the depths. What's vital is to establish a basic pattern to your days for moving from deep concentration on creative projects, to attention to all of the routine demands you've got to keep up with.
To make time for deep creative work, we have to master the art of switching from the shallows to the depths.
Professor Cal Newport of Georgetown University has written several books on personal and professional performance, and he addressed the need to develop the ability to switch back and forth from the shallows to the depths in his 2016 book Deep Work. He has inspiring things to say about the payoffs of deep work, which he defines as, “the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time.”
“The ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task."
Newport is a computer scientist and he has studied the advance of the “second machine age” in which robots will be taking over so much work. He highlights that the ability to get into deep work mode is becoming ever-more important not only because of the epidemic of distraction but because the better we are at deep work, the more competitive advantage we will have in performing the jobs that even very smart machines won't be able to perform. He posits what he calls his Deep Work Hypothesis:1
The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.
The heartening news he shares about this is that the ability to dive deep isn't something that's just bestowed by birth on some crème de la crème of the super-focused. It's a skill that we can all learn with practice.
©Paula May
Key to this is what Newport refers to as “alt tabbing” between shallow and deep work. How does he distinguish between them?
Deep Work = Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.
Shallow Work = Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend not to create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.
He outlines a number of basic approaches for toggling. They're not mutually exclusive, and I've been experimenting with all of them. You should, too, and you can adjust your approach as best fits your work situation over time.
The Monastic Philosophy: This approach is based on the practice of monks of retreating to isolation, renouncing worldly pursuits to devote all of their time to spiritual work.2 The idea is to protect yourself from all distraction by physically removing yourself to a quiet place and unplugging, for at least one or more days, to allow yourself the space and time to engage in uninterrupted work.
The Bimodal Philosophy: Here, you're balancing between monastic self-imposed exile and everyday social and professional engagement. You schedule a large block of time entirely away from the shallows of your everyday work every day, which is often best to do in the morning, and then attend to everything else for the remainder for the day.
The Rhythmic Philosophy: Here you're oscillating more frequently between deep and shallow work, so in shorter increments of time. A version of the Pomodoro technique would be a great way to create a rigorous pattern for this, perhaps dedicating several 90 minute blocks a day to deep work and coming up for check-ins with email and all in the time in between.
The Journalistic Philosophy: This is for when carvin
g out substantial chunks of time in advance for deep work is simply not possible. We train ourselves to get into deep work mode quite quickly and take advantage of any opportunities as they come. It's named after a journalist's need to dig deep to focus and crank out a story on deadline in very little time and even with lots of noise going on all around them.
This one takes more practice. I've struggled with it but am beginning to find that I can get back into creative work more and more quickly and take good advantage of unexpected moments without demands on my time, such as when takeoff of a flight is delayed for 15 or 20 minutes. I can pull out my laptop and get right back into writing and get some significant work done that I've found I am happy with later.
Depending on the nature of your work, there are probably always going to be some days or weeks when you can't schedule much if any creative deep time. But this journalistic approach is not optimal, and you should strive not to let this become your default mode for deep work.
Ritualize the Dedication of Time and Space
It's said that greatness is founded on establishing a routine and the discipline to keep to it. As you work to establish your toggling system, be ruthless about time you have scheduled for your deep dives. Give that time up only for truly urgent demands.
Greatness is founded on establishing a routine and the discipline to keep to it.
This is hard. I know. I struggled mightily with it. It's such a fight not only because of intrusions, but because of what I call the cult of busyness. The work world has glorified being busy as a badge of honor, and we've learned to believe we have to show people we're really busy. If we're not emailing or on the phone or in a meeting, how can they see that we're busy?
©Lost Co
Busyness is distraction masquerading as productivity.
Busyness is distraction masquerading as productivity. If you make deep time and increase the quality of your output, trust me, no one will care how busy you look. Or, actually, they'll be amazed and impressed by what you've been able to produce even though you didn't seem to be crazy busy. There is no prize for answering x emails or attending y meetings every day. There's no reward for self-inflicted burnout.
A few key things made dedicating myself to scheduled deep work time much easier for me.
©Artiom Vallat
Establish a dedicated space. Find a place away from work and home that you can escape to. I tried locking myself in a conference room at my office and taking coffee/water/snack breaks or bathroom runs only when I knew there would be no one around for chitchat. That did help, but I found that the distractions of the office still invaded my mind. All of the sudden I'd find myself thinking about a client meeting or a report I had to get done instead of the project I had decided to focus on. My home office was worse. It's strewn with stacks of paperwork that always need filing, receipts to organize, bills to pay, and when my adorable daughters are home, I always want to go and play with them.
Some people find working at cafes does the trick. That wasn't possible for me. Their hubbub doesn't serve as focus-inducing white noise for me as I know it does for some people. I find myself listening to conversations, even if I put on headphones. Cafes are just filled with so many interesting people to ogle over!
Eventually, I began allocating regularly scheduled time to visit a small place in Lake Tahoe. I got the idea from the extraordinary creative producer J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books.
Guests at the five-star Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh3 pay upwards of £1000 to stay in room 552, much more than the rate for other rooms. Why? Because that's where Rowling famously checked herself in to finish the final volume of the Harry Potter series. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey4 in 2010, Rowling explained how she needed to remove herself from everyday life to stimulate deep creativity.
. . . there came a day, the window cleaner came, the kids were at home, the dogs were barking and I could not work. And, this lightbulb went off in my head, and I thought, I can throw money at this problem. I can now solve this problem. For years and years and years, I could go to a cafe and sit in a different kind of noisy work. I thought, I could go to a quiet place.
Going to Tahoe worked for me largely because it was such a significant gesture. It's a four-hour drive from my home in the San Francisco Bay area and it cost quite a chunk of change. But I have friends who have converted garden sheds available at Lowe's and Home Depot for several hundred dollars into creative studios right in their backyards. Other friends have rented campsites and set up a pop-up creative shop complete with batteries, solar recharging stations, and even generators.
Consider making an investment in a getaway space as you begin to develop your deep work rituals. This can be a great shock to the creative system, forcing it to focus and providing fantastic positive reinforcement about how valuable disciplined deep time will be.
I found that once I had built up my deep work muscles this way, I was able to focus deeply at the office, too, and even at home. I'd lock myself in a room in the basement and come out only for pre-timed breaks.
©Stil
Establish the Time and Scope of Sessions. It's also extremely helpful to plan the duration of your sessions and to set a goal for your output per session. I would dedicate sessions to completing specific sections of the chapters of this book, with a rigorous plan for word count, and as I learned how much time it would take me, with my new focus, to write the amount of words that I was happy with, I fine-tuned my scheduling of sessions accordingly.
Construct a Creativity Support System. Gather everything you will need to help you keep your energy up and stay comfortable and focused during your sessions and make sure you've prepared the environment. Obviously, turn off your email and phone. That's your bare minimum environmental control. I always bring my favorite monitor with me; make sure I have coffee, water, and some snack food at hand (and sometimes champagne, if I'm feeling celebratory, like if I'll be finishing a chapter); bring an exercise recording so that I can take quick workout breaks by my desk; classical, old school jazz and lo-fi music playlists loaded; and if I'm working in a public space, headphones.
What would your list look like?
My list:
The Value of not Working Alone
Once you have developed your ability to reliably dedicate yourself to deep work in your dedicated getaway space, you should try spending some creative time in one of the wealth of open workspaces that have cropped up. This allows for working in a manner Cal Newport calls the hub-and-spoke model. The idea is to place yourself in a creative space with others who possess disparate skillsets, mindsets, and goals.
Place yourself in a creative space with others who possess disparate skillsets, mindsets, and goals.
Working in these spaces can be challenging at first. They can be like cafes, with lots of conversations, clanking of glasses, and hubbub of chairs being moved around. But whereas at cafes, usually most people are there to enjoy cappuccino and pastries, or have meetings, with only a minority there to work alone, in open workspaces everyone is there primarily to work. You're surrounded by people who also need to toggle between deep and shallow work. That creates the opportunity to make great creative use even of your shallow time. Because open workspaces are talent pools.
Plug into the serendipity of the space to stoke creativity by exposing yourself to all sorts of interesting people doing interesting things.
The idea of a hub-and-spoke model is to have a dedicated quiet space for doing your deep work, which most of the spaces offer, and then to plug into the serendipity of the space to stoke creativity by exposing yourself to all sorts of interesting people doing interesting things during the time you come up for air. Meeting other people engaged in creative work can be so stimulating. Creativity is buzzing all around you, and you are perked up by the creative energy. You meet people working on some of the most amazing projects, and they can share ideas that can help you take your work in even more exciting directions. Such encounters often le
ad to creative collaborations. Working in these spaces can also create a healthy sense of competition, encouraging you to get the most out of your deep work dives so that when you emerge you feel pleased with yourself and a rightful member of this creativity hub.
©Angelo Pantazis
I learned the benefits of working in a creativity hub early in my writing career. As I was developing the manuscript for Engage!, I leased a second office space to place myself right in the thick of the creative outburst that would come to be called Web 2.0. All around me, people were creating the innovations that have so profoundly shaped our lives. The building was located in the San Francisco SoMa district, on Second St., and was packed with tech startups. Creativity coursed through the place. Innovation was happening in every room. The concentration of game-changing companies and leaders, both in my building and across the street in South Park and around the neighborhood in many converted open workspaces was incredible. Simply going out to get lunch or dinner, or to pick up coffee, you couldn't help but overhear people discussing brilliant ideas for some new program or invention that would become the next new big thing.