Divergence and convergence

March 31, 2023May 7, 2023 Neera

On Day 10 of the first draft of my book Productive Writer (which I announced I will finish in 10 days) frantically cutting out the stuff I had so painstakingly written just a few days before. Normally I would have agonized a lot over “killing my darlings,” but after having written four books, I now know that it is part of the process.

I started off by collecting and writing several techniques, stories, ideas, and suggestions over the years. There is a concept called divergence and convergence. As creators, we play the balancing act of divergence and convergence all the time.

If you look at the process of creating anything, it begins with an act of divergence. We look at hundreds of possibilities and consider as many options as possible. We begin gathering inspiration, expose ourselves to new influences, and explore new paths. We are diverging from your starting point.

Divergence is the classic brainstorming stage — whiteboard covered in sketches, the writer’s wastepaper basket filled with crumpled-up drafts, hundreds of photos laid across the floor.

The purpose of divergence is to generate new ideas. It is spontaneous, chaotic, and messy. There is no way you can plan when you’re in divergence mode, and you shouldn’t try. This is the time to wander.

As powerful and necessary as divergence is, it has to end. At some point, we must start discarding possibilities and converge toward a solution. Otherwise, we will never finish anything.

Convergence forces us to eliminate options, make trade-offs and decide what is truly essential. It is about narrowing the range so that you can progress forward and end up with a final result you are proud of.

Convergence allows our work to take on a life of its own and become something separate from ourselves.

The model of divergence and convergence is so fundamental to all creative work, we can see it present in any creative field.

In the video below, an author and illustrator, Debra Fraiser, shares her process of creating the book This Is the Planet Where I Live. Watch it to see how clear her divergence and convergence are, that too over five years.

Divergence is the classic brainstorming stage — whiteboard covered in sketches, the writer’s wastepaper basket filled with crumpled-up drafts, hundreds of photos laid across the floor.

As powerful and necessary as divergence is, it has to end. At some point, we must start discarding possibilities and converge toward a solution. Otherwise, we will never finish anything.

Convergence allows our work to take on a life of its own and become something separate from ourselves.

The model of divergence and convergence is so fundamental to all creative work, we can see it present in any creative field.

Towards the middle of the video, she talks about how critical her journal is to her process, how it’s “this active space where a kind of magic happens… it’s not a scrapbook, it’s not a diary, it’s this place.”

For me, that place is my personal knowledge management system (PKMS), which has become the focal point of my book Productive Writer. It is something we knowledge workers can’t afford not-to have. It doesn’t matter what your PKMS looks like, what matters is how it helps you create.

Here is an aerial view of mine.

A graph view of my knowledge management system in Roam Research.

Feynman’s twelve problems approach

March 24, 2023May 7, 2023 Neera

Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. He is best known for his groundbreaking discoveries in Theoretical Physics and Quantum Mechanics for which he received Nobel Prize in 1965.

As a child, he already showed a talent for engineering, once building a functioning home alarm system out of spare parts while his parents were out running errands.

He was also known for his wide-ranging, eclectic tastes. During his colorful lifetime, he enthusiastically traveled around the world exploring other cultures and giving lectures. He learned to play the bongo and the conga drums well enough to play with orchestras. He wrote half a dozen books and played a pivotal role on the commission that investigated the Challenger space shuttle disaster

How could one person make so many contributions across so many areas?

Feynman revealed his strategy in an interview:

“You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large, they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit and people will say, “How did he do it? He must be a genius!”

This cross-disciplinary approach allowed him to make connections across seemingly unrelated subjects while continuing to follow his sense of curiosity.

In the book Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman James Gleick, tells the story of how Feynman once took inspiration for his physics from an accident at dinner:

” . . . he was eating in the student cafeteria when someone tossed a dinner plate into the air—a Cornell cafeteria plate with the university seal imprinted on one rim—and in the instant of its flight he experienced what he long afterward considered an epiphany. As the plate spun, it wobbled. Because of the insignia, he could see that the spin and the wobble were not quite in synchrony. Yet just in that instant, it seemed to him – or was it his physicist’s intuition? – that the two rotations were related.

After working out the problem, Feynman discovered a 2-to-1 ratio between the plate’s wobble and spin, a neat relationship that suggested a deeper underlying principle at work.

That simple observation became the basis of his research into rotation into the equations underlying rotation informing the work that ultimately led to his receiving the Nobel Prize.

When a fellow physicist and mentor asked what the use of such insight was, Feynman responded: “It doesn’t have any importance . . . I don’t care whether a thing has importance. Isn’t it fun?”

He was following his intuition and curiosity. Feynman’s unique approach encouraged him to follow his interests wherever they might lead.

He posed questions and constantly scanned for solutions to long-standing problems in his reading, conversations, and everyday life. When he found one, he could make a connection that looked to others like a flash of unparalleled brilliance.

I have adopted Feynman’s approach to having a list of open-ended questions. Below is the list of 12 areas I have always been interested in.

Writing
Creativity
Productivity
Learning
Marketing
Storytelling
Sketching
Fiction
Travel
Artificial Intelligence
Human Potential
Personal Knowledge Management

I have now created an overarching open-ended question about them. These questions have made my reading more intentional.

How to learn and teach the art and craft of writing?
What is creativity and how to unleash it?
How to be more productive and still live a balanced life?
How to learn fast and retain what I learn?
How to market myself and my work?
How to master storytelling?
How to convert conceptual ideas into sketches and how to sketch better?
How to master fiction writing?

How to travel deliberately?
How to embed artificial intelligence in my work and life to help me achieve more.
How to be extraordinary and help others to maximize their potential?
How can I consolidate all the information I have accumulated and make it readily available to me when I need it?

Surprisingly, it is the last area, “personal knowledge management,” will make it possible to find answers to all the above questions.

For the past two years, I have been building my personal knowledge management system. It is helping me write consistently and prolifically. Now I have added another layer of sophistication to it – Feynman’s Twelve Problems Approach.

It will make my research and notes taking more intentional.

Although the questions might seem mundane but they are relevant to so many people. If I continue to research them and share what I learn, I will not help myself but many of my readers.

When everything else fails…

March 17, 2023May 7, 2023 Neera

“When everything else fails, just tell your story. That’s what makes you unique. Isn’t that why you fell in love with writing in the first place? To tell your story.”

I stare at the above lines I had scribbled in my notebook years ago. I don’t know whether I wrote them, or I copied them from somewhere. But today they are speaking to me directly.

What story can I tell today?

I pulled out a pile of notebooks from various drawers and boxes at the start of the year with the intention to get rid of them. I pick one, go through a few pages, wondering if there is anything I can salvage in there, and stop in track. How can I go past such profound insight?

“There is an unbelievable amount of noise in the world,” I had written underneath that quote, “It’s everywhere. Social media, television, streaming, apps, ads, music devices, and screens. It’s hard to focus on anything in a meaningful way. So hard to find direction, especially in writing. Rather than contributing to that noise, why not tell stories? Your stories?”

I am doing a storytelling course, with Dan Manning. He has mastered the art of personal storytelling. Last week he asked us to make a list of ten stories from our lives. I listed fifty. Some were just ordinary everyday stories such as When I didn’t buy Rayban sunglasses or When I skydived but then there were really painful ones, How a slap on the face stripped me of self-confidence for life and the Humiliation I felt after a pathetic presentation at work. These stories were like scars on my soul, painful and ugly. But writing about them lessened the pain and helped me move on.

Find your scars and write about them. Reflection is a great tool for writing. That’s why writing is considered a form of therapy. It can help you view the trauma of an incident from another perspective.

Reflect on your life and see the scars, then write about how you got them. Easier said than done, I know. But once you start putting one word in front of another serotonin starts peaking and you’re reminded why you wanted to write in the first place.

At the end of the day, we all want to tell stories. Our stories are our connection with the world. They tell us that we are not alone.

Write about your struggles and about your achievements. Where are you in your life and how you got there? What price you had to pay? Who helped you? Talk about your mentors. Writing about the people you look up to is a great way to solidify the lessons they taught you. We are not here just to entertain others but to extend ourselves.

Writing is meditative and constructive and there is no comparison to the feeling of finishing a writing project. Sure writing and resistance go hand in hand. Resistance only wins if it succeeds in “not letting you sit.” Once you put your butt in the chair and write the first sentence, you win. I started this letter with a single sentence I found in my diary. The whole story developed from there.

One of many things Lynda Barry has taught me: “If you don’t know what to write in your diary, you write the date at the top of the page, as neatly and slowly as you can, and things will come to you.”

“Going through the motions” is the writers’ great secret for getting started. Austin Kleon wrote in his book Steal Like an Artist, “If we just start going through the motions, if we strum a guitar, or shuffle sticky notes around a conference table, or start kneading clay, the motion kickstarts our brain into thinking.”

Get your pen moving, and something will come out. It might be trash, but it will be something.

I Created A Comic Strip

March 16, 2023April 9, 2023 Neera

Tom Kuegler wrote the other day, “If writing an article feels like pulling teeth, then you need to change the topic.”

Lately, I have been feeling that my writing is getting stale. That I am running out of fresh ideas. I love writing about traveling, writing, productivity, and personal development, but I can’t do it over and over again. It feels like I am just adding to the noise.

So I changed the topic. I created a comic strip.

I gave the main character my name — Gogi. My nickname. The name my grandfather gave me. A name nobody has. And today, I found a comic character with the same name. A Pakistani girl created it. She gave her heroine my name! And she sketches much better than me. BBC even did a story about her and her comics.

But her topics are different. She creates comics about women’s issues and social constraints, whereas I will tackle productivity, writing, and creativity challenges.

How I Made My Willpower Work For Me

March 14, 2023April 2, 2023 Neera

I was resisting the temptation to indulge in a slice of birthday cake since yesterday. At the start of the year, I made a pact with myself to cut sugar from my diet. But at night, just after dinner, my resolve crumbled.

I don’t even remember how I ended up in front of the fridge, took out the slice, and ate it.

I thought I had enough willpower to control my cravings but apparently, I didn’t.

It’s not just with food that my willpower fails me, it is with other things too.

I send out a newsletter every Friday. This Friday, I woke up energized. I had the topic in mind which I have even researched previously. I knew I will be able to pull it off. So I got a bit relaxed and allowed myself to get distracted by other tasks, such as responding to emails, working on a LinkedIn post, and researching for my next book.

The day wore on, and before I realized it, it was 5 pm, my usual newsletter posting time. I started to panic. Despite all my efforts, the words just wouldn’t come. I even tried to find something I had written previously that I could refine and send, but to no avail.

After two hours of frustration, I gave up and turned to mindless entertainment, watching a movie before finally going to sleep.

Once again, my willpower had failed me.

These experiences (and many similar ones before these) pissed me off and I decided to figure out how to make my willpower work for me.

I read everything I could find on the topic including, scientific research and research papers by psychologists on how to cultivate and maintain willpower.

This is what I found.

I will start with the definition.

What is willpower, anyway?

Willpower refers to the ability to resist short-term temptations and override unwanted thoughts, feelings, or impulses in order to achieve long-term goals.

It is conscious, effortful self-regulation and can help overcome procrastination and stay focused despite obstacles.

All of that make willpower a very desirable trait to have.

But, sadly, not everyone has willpower.

If you have achieved a goal or accomplished something worthwhile, you know how hard it was to keep pushing through to get over the line.

Makes you believe some people have strong willpower and others do not.

Incorrect.

Contrary to popular belief, willpower is not an innate trait that you’re either born with or without. Rather it’s a complex mind-body response that can be compromised by stress, sleep deprivation and nutrition and that can be strengthened through certain practices.

Willpower is a lot like stress.

Stress is a reaction to an external threat for example a row with your boss, whereas willpower is a reaction to an internal conflict such as resisting the temptation to smoke or eat unhealthy food.

The need for self-control sets into motion a coordinated set of changes in the brain and body that help you resist temptation and override self-destructive urges.

It’s called the pause-and-plan response and it puts your body into a calmer state and sends extra energy to the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which helps to keep track of goals and override impulses and cravings.

The result is the motivation and mindset needed to achieve what is most important.

But how can I cultivate and maintain willpower?

There are three factors that affect our ability to resist temptations and accomplish what we really want, or need to do.

Stress
Sleep deprivation
Nutrition

Let’s dissect them one by one.

Stress

Chronic stress can make it more difficult to find willpower because the biology of stress and willpower are incompatible.

The fight-or-flight response triggered by stress causes the body to focus on immediate, instinctual actions and detracts from the areas of the brain needed for wise decision-making.

To better manage your stress one of the easiest technique is to take a few deep breaths when you’re feeling overwhelmed or tempted.

Meditation is also an effective way to enhance a range of willpower skills, such as attention, focus, stress management, impulse control, and self-awareness. Meditation changes both the function and structure of the brain to support self-control.

Sleep deprivation

Sleep deprivation, can cause chronic stress and impair how the body and brain use energy. The prefrontal cortex, which controls cravings and the stress response, is particularly affected.

Without sufficient sleep, the brain can overreact to stress and temptations. Studies show that the effects of sleep deprivation on the brain are comparable to being intoxicated.

To cultivate and sustain willpower, getting an adequate amount of high-quality sleep is crucial.

Nutrition

Nutrition affects willpower by influencing the availability of energy to the brain.

Eating a plant-based, less-processed diet can make energy more readily available to the brain, thereby improving all aspects of willpower, including overcoming procrastination and sticking to resolutions.

Is willpower a limited resource?

The research in the field of willpower suggests that people who use willpower appear to run out of it, but it is both a limited and renewable resource.

Acts of self-control tap into the same source of strength and deplete willpower for unrelated challenges.

The research also shows that willpower decreases over the course of the day, as your energy gets “spent” on stress and self-control.

This is known as “the muscle model” of willpower. Like your body muscles, the willpower “muscle” can get exhausted from the excessive effort.

To make the most of your willpower, start your day with your hardest task first.

Devote 90–120 minutes to the hardest task of the day when your energy and willpower are at their peak.

How to keep the willpower going?

The most recommended way to keep your willpower going is to change your state.

If you’re sitting down and working on a computer, go for a long walk, take a nap, do some exercise, or do a meditation session.

Your beliefs and attitudes can also keep willpower depletion in check.

People who are driven by their own internal goals and desires are less easily depleted than people who feel compelled to exert self-control to please others.

And the good news is that willpower is never completely exhausted.

We appear to hold some willpower in reserve, conserved for future demands. The right motivation allows us to tap into those reserves, allowing us to persevere even when our self-control strength has run down.

So what changes I have made after learning all this about willpower?

I have started doing my hardest task (article writing) first.
I have built routines for walking, power napping, and meditating to supplement my willpower all through the day.

What is your experience with your willpower?

What steps will you take to make your willpower work for you?

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Cruising Through The Eighth Wonder Of The World (Part 2)

March 12, 2023March 18, 2023 Neera

It was barely six in the morning, I leisurely opened my eyes, and saw a densely forested hill pass by.

What the heck?

For the past three days, I had seen nothing but water around me. What is this? A mirage in the sea?

But no. The ship’s Communication Director, Steve From Canada (as he called himself) announced on the internal communication system that the ship was passing through the Milford Sound, and if we wanted to have a better view, we should head for deck 15.

I quickly changed and headed there. The deck was already full of people. People were taking photos and making videos as island after island of hills passed by. There was hardly any space to stand by the glass panels surrounding the ship. I found my brother and sister-in-law in the crowd and stood next to them. Together we took in the beauty of the eighth wonder of the world, as called by Rudyard Kipling when he first visited the place in the nineteenth century.

Milford Sound

Milford Sound is one of New Zealand’s top attractions.

The early European settlers named this place ‘Sound’ but they were wrong. Sounds are formed when a river valley is flooded by the sea, whereas Milford Sound was formed by the erosion of ancient glaciers.

Milford Sound is actually a fiord. Full of mountains, waterfalls, passes and valleys, Milford Sound is part of the Fiordland National Park and has a history going back thousands of years. When New Zealand was an unspoiled land of just forest and mountains, rivers, and sea, Māori tribes used to travel there to fish, hunt, and collect precious pounamu (a variety of jade).

In 1823, a sealer called John Grono was the first European settler to visit Milford Sound. Later that century, a Scotsman called Donald Sutherland became Milford Sound’s first permanent resident. Together with his wife, he built the first hotel in Milford Sound, to accommodate the growing number of walkers arriving there on what is now the Milford Track (Source).

We stood there transfixed, watching the lush green hills and markings on the rocks where the waterfall would spring in rainy seasons.

After taking the ship as far as he could, the captain found a cove big enough to turn the ship around. On the way back, we were even more up close to the hills.

Once again, Steve From Canada (the communication director of the ship) announced we will reach the next fjord at 1:00 pm. That was enough time to have a stupendous breakfast at a buffet restaurant and then head for the spa. I was wearing my swimsuit underneath my dress so without missing a beat; I was in the bubbly spa.

Oh! my.

The water was really hot. My aunt and sister-in-law joined me too, and we sat there for longer than an hour. There was no urgency to vacate the place for someone else, as there were six spas and four swimming pools on the same deck.

We had a hefty breakfast earlier, but as we got out of the spa, we spotted an ice cream parlor. All that ice cream was free. You could have ten cones if you wanted, but we limited ourselves to one soft-serve each.

We had barely ingested that when we spotted the Fish and Chips outlet. It served shrimp (prawns) as well. There went my five months of weight loss efforts. “Don’t ask for fish and chips,” said my husband, “Ask for fish and shrimps.” He was right. The chips were not nice, but the shrimps were delicious.

Doubtful Sound

At around 1:00 pm, we reached Doubtful Sound.

Doubtful Sound is the deepest and second-largest fjord in New Zealand. It was named so by Captain Cook because he was doubtful that he would be able to sail his ship back out of the Sound. I stood by the glass panel the whole time, chatting with my niece. We spotted dolphins following the small tourist boats.

We were told to look out for sunbathing seals on Seal Rock, but it was a pretty hot day for sunbathing.

After lunch, the whole party (the eleven of us) found a spot on Deck 6 and played cards. We play a game called Teen Patti (a very famous Indian also called Flash). It is a gambling game, but we played it with counters rather than real money. It is like the British 3-Card Brag game and poker put together. The eleven of us made so much noise that it drowned the annoying voice of the inexperienced Bingo host.

Dusky Sound

While we were playing cards, the ship sailed by Dusky Sound. But no one bothered to go to the deck this time. We took some photos and got on with our card game.

Dusky Sound was named by Captain Cook as well when he sailed by the area at dusk on his first voyage in 1770. It is almost 25 miles long and is the largest fjord in New Zealand. During the rainy seasons, hundreds of waterfalls splash down from the verdant green hill into the dark deep waters.

Tonight was the first formal dinner night. Thankfully, my husband who was threatening to appear in shorts wore his jacket and had a photo with me.

After dinner, we headed for the dance hall called Two70 (for it gives a 270-degree view of the sea) to try our luck to sneak into a cabaret show. The previous day’s show was canceled because the ship was too bumpy. All those who book were transferred to today. But the doors were to open as soon as the show started and anyone could attend if you could find an empty seat or didn’t mind standing at the back, you could.

We were first in the line to sneak in as soon as the doors opened. With our luck, we got the seats as well, that too near the entry and exit of dancers.

The show was not what I expected (nothing can beat Bollywood actress Helen’s cabaret), but I enjoyed watching the dancer from close by as they entered and exited from where we were sitting.

Immediately after the cabaret, we head for the Royal Theatre to watch an R-Rated comedy show. The Royal Theatre had a capacity of 1000.

Having done all the hot stuff in the day, we went to bed to get up early the next day for our first port — Dunedin.

I will write about that in my next post.