READING TIME: 1 MINUTE
19 December 2018
Airports
The Person Who Has Everything
READING TIME: 1 MINUTE
Wants everything plus one
Meanwhile, someone is looking at you
and thinks you have everything
And yet, there is something you are thinking about right now
that you want
To that person
you have everything
And you want everything plus one
Through constraint the mind is free: PART 3
The
life of freelancers and artists is feast or famine. When it rains
it pours. You are either twiddling your thumbs or overwhelmed. And the time between projects is "free time" -- one project ends, a tour, a film, album, painting, etc, and the next will (eventually) begin. Sometimes it's back-to-back, sometimes it's weeks or months. Things tend to move slowly until they don't, then they move really fast.
That free time in between -- to an outsider -- can seem like a vacation. But no artist or freelancer is following a script. When a project ends, you don't know what the next project will be, don't know where it will take you. That makes the "free time" fun for all of about two days. Then the question of "what am I supposed to do now?" ensues. And if you aren't careful that question can be a slow winding staircase down into the basement of existential crisis. It looks something like this. Day 1: Sleep. Day 2: Sleep and Eat. Day 3: Sleep, eat and ask "what should I do now?"
Free time can be hard to handle because you don't know how long it will last. Maybe a day, maybe a month or longer. Money can be an issue, but as you grow in your business you learn to budget accordingly (hopefully.) Don't spend everything when flush, save some for the winter months.
What's as difficult to cope with as budgeting for money is budgeting for time. Days might stretch into weeks or months and once a person gets busy again she might look back and say "that was weeks offs." But in the moment, it is today and that is what beckons the "what am I supposed to do now?" question. The hours, right now. Wake up. Eat breakfast. Read the news. Now what? In your head there is hope or worry for next week, next month, but what about right now? How do you dismantle today?
**********************
Charles Duhigg in his book The Power of Habit defines a habit as a loop:
CUE - ROUTINE - REWARD
Whether it's good or bad, a habit looks the same. See a cigarette (cue), smoke a cigarette (routine), get pleasure from smoking (reward). Time of day to exercise (cue), exercise (routine), feel good after exercising (reward).
To create a habit you have to have a CUE and a REWARD. For something like "going for a run", the REWARD might be obvious -- feel good after running -- but the CUE, the part where you do it the same time of day for multiple weeks in a row might be the elusive part. Or if you actually hate to run, and don't feel good, there may be no REWARD. In both cases no ROUTINE would form. But if a routine does form, then there is no thinking about when to go for a run. It just becomes a habit and there would be no brain activity of "when should I go for a run?". Duhigg uses this quote to paint a picture:
He uses an experiment as an example. Individual rats were put into a maze with chocolate at one end. Scientists using "new micro-technologies" observed activity in the rats' skulls as they encountered the maze for the first time. Initially, the brain was working hard the entire time until it found the chocolate. After a week, once the routine was familiar and the scurrying became a habit, the rats' brains settled down as it ran through the maze.
Once you understand what a habit is, and how it forms you can look at "keystone habits" -- -- habits that have the power to start a chain reaction, changing other habits. These few key priorities act as levers. The habits that matter most are the ones that dislodge and remake other patterns.
**********************
Back to our freelancer. Here's an idea that might seem crazy: set an alarm and wake up the same time every day. Could be 6am or 1pm, but get up and go from there. Create a plan, a schedule the previous day and then do it. And if it doesn't work, iterate the following day. And keep doing that over and over.
Asking "what am I supposed to do now" is incredibly taxing, mentally. It requires you to think hard, requires brain activity. Instead, know what you are going to do. Have a routine.
Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow lays out the difference between System 1 and System 2 thinking.
System 1 thinking operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. Think of it as instincts. Imagine trying to solve 2 + 2 while driving on an open highway.
System 2 thinking allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. Its operations are often associated with the experience of choice and concentration. Think of it as trying to solve (2 x (19 x 37)) while trying to park in Times Square at 4pm. NO, I mean stop and actually think about trying to solve 19 x 37. In order to do it, you have to concentrate on nothing else.
When you wake up in the morning, deciding what to do should be like driving on an open highway. It should be routine, not thinking about what to do. The schedule you create constrains your day. And then you can take comfort in that constraint. You can do anything you want, but not everything.
**********************
In their book Nudge, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein expand on their notion of "choice architecture" -- the idea that a person can be indirectly influenced by outside forces, that a system can "nudge" a person to make a decision on something (hopefully a good one.)
For instance, an employer can set up a retirement plan that automatically deducts from an employee's wages each month unless the employee "opts out." Everyone knows they should save for the future, but if they have to "opt in" they may be less likely to save. Choice architecture defaults to the option that is best, but gives the person the ability to choose.
Take this idea of "choice architecture" to set up our days. Create choices the previous day so that you automatically "opt in" to doing constructive or industrious tasks. Make an outline, a schedule to follow. "Do this for an hour, then this for fifteen minutes, then this for two hours, etc." And over days repeat and refine. Wake up the same time and do the same things. Iterate on that routine.
That free time in between -- to an outsider -- can seem like a vacation. But no artist or freelancer is following a script. When a project ends, you don't know what the next project will be, don't know where it will take you. That makes the "free time" fun for all of about two days. Then the question of "what am I supposed to do now?" ensues. And if you aren't careful that question can be a slow winding staircase down into the basement of existential crisis. It looks something like this. Day 1: Sleep. Day 2: Sleep and Eat. Day 3: Sleep, eat and ask "what should I do now?"
Free time can be hard to handle because you don't know how long it will last. Maybe a day, maybe a month or longer. Money can be an issue, but as you grow in your business you learn to budget accordingly (hopefully.) Don't spend everything when flush, save some for the winter months.
What's as difficult to cope with as budgeting for money is budgeting for time. Days might stretch into weeks or months and once a person gets busy again she might look back and say "that was weeks offs." But in the moment, it is today and that is what beckons the "what am I supposed to do now?" question. The hours, right now. Wake up. Eat breakfast. Read the news. Now what? In your head there is hope or worry for next week, next month, but what about right now? How do you dismantle today?
**********************
Charles Duhigg in his book The Power of Habit defines a habit as a loop:
CUE - ROUTINE - REWARD
Whether it's good or bad, a habit looks the same. See a cigarette (cue), smoke a cigarette (routine), get pleasure from smoking (reward). Time of day to exercise (cue), exercise (routine), feel good after exercising (reward).
To create a habit you have to have a CUE and a REWARD. For something like "going for a run", the REWARD might be obvious -- feel good after running -- but the CUE, the part where you do it the same time of day for multiple weeks in a row might be the elusive part. Or if you actually hate to run, and don't feel good, there may be no REWARD. In both cases no ROUTINE would form. But if a routine does form, then there is no thinking about when to go for a run. It just becomes a habit and there would be no brain activity of "when should I go for a run?". Duhigg uses this quote to paint a picture:
"Water hollows out for itself a channel, which grows broader and deeper; and, after having ceased to flow, it resumes, when it flows again, the path traced by itself before."
- William James from The Principles of PsychologyHabits form because they allow the brain to work less. As Duhigg puts it "when a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks."
He uses an experiment as an example. Individual rats were put into a maze with chocolate at one end. Scientists using "new micro-technologies" observed activity in the rats' skulls as they encountered the maze for the first time. Initially, the brain was working hard the entire time until it found the chocolate. After a week, once the routine was familiar and the scurrying became a habit, the rats' brains settled down as it ran through the maze.
Once you understand what a habit is, and how it forms you can look at "keystone habits" -- -- habits that have the power to start a chain reaction, changing other habits. These few key priorities act as levers. The habits that matter most are the ones that dislodge and remake other patterns.
**********************
Back to our freelancer. Here's an idea that might seem crazy: set an alarm and wake up the same time every day. Could be 6am or 1pm, but get up and go from there. Create a plan, a schedule the previous day and then do it. And if it doesn't work, iterate the following day. And keep doing that over and over.
Asking "what am I supposed to do now" is incredibly taxing, mentally. It requires you to think hard, requires brain activity. Instead, know what you are going to do. Have a routine.
Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow lays out the difference between System 1 and System 2 thinking.
System 1 thinking operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. Think of it as instincts. Imagine trying to solve 2 + 2 while driving on an open highway.
System 2 thinking allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. Its operations are often associated with the experience of choice and concentration. Think of it as trying to solve (2 x (19 x 37)) while trying to park in Times Square at 4pm. NO, I mean stop and actually think about trying to solve 19 x 37. In order to do it, you have to concentrate on nothing else.
When you wake up in the morning, deciding what to do should be like driving on an open highway. It should be routine, not thinking about what to do. The schedule you create constrains your day. And then you can take comfort in that constraint. You can do anything you want, but not everything.
**********************
In their book Nudge, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein expand on their notion of "choice architecture" -- the idea that a person can be indirectly influenced by outside forces, that a system can "nudge" a person to make a decision on something (hopefully a good one.)
For instance, an employer can set up a retirement plan that automatically deducts from an employee's wages each month unless the employee "opts out." Everyone knows they should save for the future, but if they have to "opt in" they may be less likely to save. Choice architecture defaults to the option that is best, but gives the person the ability to choose.
Take this idea of "choice architecture" to set up our days. Create choices the previous day so that you automatically "opt in" to doing constructive or industrious tasks. Make an outline, a schedule to follow. "Do this for an hour, then this for fifteen minutes, then this for two hours, etc." And over days repeat and refine. Wake up the same time and do the same things. Iterate on that routine.
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