Month: September 2018

Take the pressure off you

Neera

I read the following story in “O’s Little Guide to Finding Your True Purpose” and couldn’t help sharing it.

A friend had an Indian guru who was the embodiment of love, and the guru died. Bereft, my friend, went back to India and stayed with the guru’s principal disciple, and one day the disciple said, “Do you want to see the precious thing the guru left for me?” Then he pulled out something wrapped in an old Indian cloth and ceremoniously uncovered a beaten-up pot. He said, “Do you see?” My friend answered. “No. What are you trying to tell me?” And with a mad glint in his eye, the disciple said, “You don’t have to shine!”

What a great idea! You don’t have to shine.

We have such high expectations of ourselves all the time. Whatever we do, we want to be top-class in it.

We want to write a perfect story in the first draft. We expect our very first blog to be amazing.

We want to dress perfectly, work effortlessly, speak fluently, and so on.

What if we take the pressure off ourselves and just be ourselves?

Mediocre but daring; inept but forgiving; troubled but enduring. 

Permission…

Neera

Elizabeth Gilbert, in her book Big Magic wrote:

A clever, independent, creative, and powerful woman in her mid-seventies offered me a superb piece of life wisdom. We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect because we’re so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we decide that we don’t give a damn what anyone thinks about us. But you won’t be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you finally realize this liberating truth—nobody was ever thinking about you, anyhow.

They aren’t. They weren’t. They never were.

People are mostly just thinking about themselves. They don’t have time to worry about what you’re doing or how well you’re doing it, because they are caught up in their own dreams.

Go be whoever you want to be then.

Do whatever you want to do.

How to do nothing and more…

Neera

Below are ten things I find worth sharing this week.

  1. This week I wrote about how you can be creative on demand based on William S. Burroughs’s cut-up technique. It seems the cut-up technique has been useful not only for poets and novelists but also for songwriters like David Bowie and Kurt Cobain.
  2. My Monday post talked about the Four stages of creative process proposed by Graham Wallas in his book The Art of Thought. The book was published in 1927 and is out of print, but an excerpt from it beautifully explains how the brain can be in one or all of these four stages at a time.
  3. Want to be more creative? Go for a walk. This TED talk showcases a study conducted on a number of people walking indoors or outdoors.
  4. My post on Why Cal Newport is right about productive meditation accentuates the same principle.
  5. I found a post on How to find and make time for your passion even when you’re busy where Sara Woehler of Career Contessa talks about finding what makes you tick. Her quote, “Self-actualization doesn’t come from people-pleasing, it comes from being you, which sometimes requires finding you.” is spot on.
  6. In how to do nothing Jenny Odell, a writer and artist makes the case for doing nothing.

Decades before the advent of social media as we know it, Gilles Deleuze observed it was “a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying.” Nothing has become more precious, in today’s economy of attention, than nothing. In this talk, Jenny covers various instances of nothing from art history and contemporary projects, arguing that the cultivation of nothing has new salience in the age of everything.

  1. From 30 Readers a Day to Profitable in Less Than 2 Years About two years ago, after a career in Air Traffic Control and dealing with health issues, Michele Robson started a blog about luxury travel on a budget called Turning Left for Less. Her blog started out slowly but has now reached a point where she earns a liveable income. In this week’s podcast, Michele shares 2 breakthroughs that helped her do it.
  2. Looking for quick meals, I found Ten Quick and Nourishing Meals to Make on a Sick Day. Recipes not only look good but also taste good.
  3. The book I am reading is Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk, the guy who revolutionized his family business wine shop into the internet phenomenon. He was one of the early ones to harness the power of online marketing. His book is outdated, watch his YouTube video instead.
  4. And last but not least is 15 Time Management Lessons I learned in the First Year of Blogging, the post every new blogger needs to read.

Creativity on demand

Neera

Lately, I have been lamenting that I do not have time for creativity.  

My excuses are: it is winter, it is too cold, days are shorter, I am too tired, and I need to wind down after coming back from work. Blah! Blah! Blah!

In Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, John Robinson, a sociologist, in an interview with the writer Brigid Schulte says:

“It’s very popular, the feeling that there are too many things going on, that people can’t get in control of their lives. But when we look at peoples’ diaries, there just doesn’t seem to be the evidence to back it up.”  

She has nailed it. Time is not the issue. There are so many other factors at play. Lack of prioritization, the tendency to procrastinate, and preoccupation are to name a few. (There are tons more, I just picked some starting with the letter ‘P’)

What is the solution?

In one of my previous posts, I talked about the four stages of the creative process where an idea needs to go through preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification.

Creativity takes time.

But what if you can take ideas through these stages quickly so that there is something tangible at the end of the process? Something that gets your creative juices flowing.

Well, I found this technique by William Burroughs, which has been around for ages.

In the mid-twentieth century, William S. Burroughs, one of the most adventurous writers, famously employed the cut-up method to override the inner critic.

In Burroughs’ own words:

“The method is simple. Here is one way to do it. Take a page like this page. Now cut down the middle and cross the middle. You have four sections: 1 2 3 4 … one, two, three, four. Now rearrange the sections, placing section four with section one and section two with section three. And you have a new page. Sometimes it says much the same thing. Sometimes something quite different–(cutting up political speeches is an interesting exercise)–in any case, you will find that it says something and something quite definite. Take any poet or writer you fancy. Hearsay, or poems you have read over many times. The words have lost meaning and life through years of repetition. Now take the poem and type out selected passages. Fill a page with excerpts. Now cut the page. You have a new poem. As many poems as you like.”

This is one way of doing it. There could be infinite ways to do it. I cut short paragraphs from four different articles and then put four of them together to make a story. It worked like magic.

Now it can be creative on demand.

Here is the video on William S. Burroughs you can listen to:

Why Cal Newport Is Right About Productive Meditation?

Neera

Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th US President, had hopelessly scattered attention.

He had what his friends called an “amazing array of interests” — a list that contained boxing, wrestling, bodybuilding, dance lessons, poetry readings, and a lifelong obsession with naturalism. While studying at Harvard, his landlady was not pleased with her young tenant’s tendency to dissect and stuff specimens in his rented room.

To support his extracurricular exuberance, Roosevelt restricted the time he spent on his studies. He applied a unique approach. In his daily schedule, he first slotted the classes he had to attend in order to remain in the college, then all the extracurricular activities. The fragments that remained were then allocated to studying.

These fragments, when added, weren’t much. But Roosevelt would get the most out of them by studying with blistering intensity. One would think his grades would have suffered by studying only intermittently, but they didn’t. He might not be the top student at Harvard, but he didn’t struggle either. He earned honors in five out of seven courses.

How did he do that?

By studying with intense concentration. Something we, normal beings, are not capable of.

Cal Newport used Roosevelt’s example to introduce a concept in his book, The Deep Work, that we all can build in our routines.

He called it Productive Meditation.

When we think of meditation, we think of the time when we sit cross-legged, trying to focus on our breathing and working frivolously to calm our minds.

All of us have given meditation a try at one time or another. Some swear by it, others can’t get a hang of it.

Usually, meditation is used to quieten the mind. To be in a peaceful state where thoughts come and go freely. And ultimately to reach the point where the mind stops thinking altogether.

Productive meditation is the complete opposite. It is meant to make your mind think deeply. To concentrate on a single topic. And its purpose is to help you become more productive.

Although we might already have been using concentrated thinking previously, Cal Newport has given it a proper name and put it forth as a strategy to improve productivity.

He writes in “The Deep Work”:

The goal of productive meditation is to take a period in which you’re occupied physically but not mentally — walking, jogging, driving, or showering — and focus your attention on a single well-defined professional problem. Depending on your profession this problem might be outlining an article, writing a talk, making progress on a proof, or attempting to sharpen a business strategy. As in mindfulness meditation, you must continue to bring your attention back to the problem at hand when it wanders or stalls.

Although hard to develop, it is the single most useful tool for creatives.

Creativity needs time. It needs an idle brain to make connections.

Most of us don’t have the luxury of time or the idleness of the brain. Using the time when the brain is on autopilot is a great way to develop thinking muscles.

I do that at the gym. Instead of listening to music, I listen to myself. It is the time when solutions tend to appear out of nowhere. Shower and driving are two other activities I use invariably to think. I never listen to the radio or music while driving. It is too precious a time to be wasted listening to repetitive news.

But of all the activities, walking is my favorite. Cal Newport practiced productive meditation during walks between his home and work. As spring is here, I have gone for walks on the hills behind my home to practice productive meditation.

Like any other form of meditation, it requires practice. I often get distracted and find it hard to bring my mind back to the problem. Despite that, I get snippets of gems here and there to keep me committed.

You Should Give Productive Meditation A Go.

If you are a busy professional or an artist, you should adopt productive meditation practice in your life. You don’t need a serious session every day, but your goal should be to take part in two or three such sessions in a typical week.

You will need two things to practice — time and technique.

How To Find Time For Productive Meditation.

Finding time for normal meditation is a big limitation. Most people don’t stick to the practice because they can’t find fifteen to thirty minutes to meditate.

Fortunately, finding time for productive meditation is easy.

You can do productive meditation while driving, exercising, walking, washing dishes, cooking, or gardening. The time which was otherwise going to be wasted can be used to increase productivity.

You can even consider scheduling a walk during a workday, specifically to apply productive meditation to your most pressing problem at that moment.

What Is The Technique?

Surprisingly, there is not too much to the technique either. The idea is to give your mind free rein.

But there is one constraint. To make your mind go deep, you need to define the topic or problem you want to solve clearly. Having a loose topic wastes mental energy, and you don’t get the full benefit of the exercise.

The other day, I went for a walk to figure out a theme for the novel I was going to write the next week. By concentrating just on the theme and not on any other aspect of the story (character, plot, structure, and so forth) I could come up with a relatively unexplored theme.

After you have settled on the topic, Cal Newport makes three suggestions to improve the practice and to make your session more fruitful:

  • Be wary of distractions and looping.
  • Watch out for looping thoughts.
  • Use structure.

Be Wary Of Distractions.

Distractions are not just from social media. Most of our distractions are internal. Our mind is the biggest source of distractions. It is thinking of fifty thousand thoughts a day. Which means it jumps from one thing to another in a split second.

Getting to concentrate on one problem or topic is hard. Initially, your mind will rebel. There will be more interesting thoughts that will derail you from the topic.

When you notice your attention is slipping away from the problem at hand, you do the same thing you do in a normal meditation. Gently remind yourself that you can return to the thought later and redirect your attention to the topic.

Watch Out For Looping Thoughts

Distractions are relatively easy to manage. Looping is hard to control. It would help if you were on guard for looping, as it can quickly subvert an entire productive meditation session.

Looping happens when our minds want to avoid thinking about a hard problem and try to sidestep it. We know from experience that when things get hard; we put them off.

During productive meditation sessions, our minds keep bringing back the same things that we already know about the problem/topic we are thinking about. Rather than moving forward or bringing back a solution, it keeps going in circles.

If that happens:

  • Acknowledge that you are in a loop.
  • Gently direct your attention to the next step.
  • Use some clues to take the mind in a completely different direction.
  • Use “what if” scenarios.
  • Think of at least ten possible (doesn’t matter how radical) solutions for the problem. For example, if you are thinking about progressing your story where your protagonist is in a conundrum about paying the medical bills, think of ten completely different outrageous ways he can raise money.

Use Structure

Thinking about something might seem like an easy activity, but in reality, it is not. Even when you have a distraction-free mind and time to think, it is still hard to think deeply about a hard problem.

It helps to have a structure for productive meditation sessions.

Cal Newport suggests starting with a careful review of the relevant variables and storing them in the working memory. For example, if you are working on an article outline, the relevant variables might be the main points you want to make in the article.

Once the variables are identified, define the next step questions, you need to answer using these variables.

Questions are a great way to keep the mind focused because our minds are designed to look for answers.

In the article example, the next-step question could be —

  • How will I start the article effectively?
  • What story can I use to hook the readers?
  • Do I have a personal story that fits the topic? Is it going to be a “discovery” article or a “how-to” article?
  • What three points I want to cover in the “discovery” article?
  • If it is a “how-to” article, what are the steps?

Once you have figured out the next step questions, the final step of the structured approach is to consolidate your gains by reviewing clearly the answers you have identified.

You can push yourself to the next level by starting the process over. This cycle of reviewing, storing variables, identifying and tackling the next-step question, then consolidating learnings is an intensive workout for your concentration.

It will help you get more out of your productive meditation sessions and accelerate the pace at which you can develop Roosevelt-like intense concentration.

Action Step:

Think of a problem or a topic you want to explore.

Select a routine activity (driving, walking, gym, cooking, dishwashing) you can use to practice productive meditation.

Practice productive meditation.

Write about what you discovered in the session immediately afterward so that you don’t forget (with time you will get better to remember what you discovered).

Schedule another session for the week.

Photo by Noelle Otto from Pexels