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Debunking the "1,000 hours of practice" myth
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Posted by Ken
Nov 13, 2011 at 12:41 AM
First, a big thank you to JB for not taking offense at my earlier post. The topic he raises is quite interesting, and the discussion that has followed has made for great thought. As I am stretched for time, I will sum up my feelings by saying that while good software can enhance a person’s focus, I really feel that the discipline and desire need to be there to really obtain maximum benefit. And, to just touch on the issue raised by Dr. Andrus, what I would really like is not better software, but an editor. Sometimes I find that there is no substitute for talking an idea out with another person. Technology can be useful towards this solution by allowing a person to work closely with somebody who is not physically present (e.g. Skype or Google+), but for me, there is often no substitute for discussion.
I will say one thing, as time has gone on my ability to concentrate has become harder and harder. I do not know if it is related to age, or to having 24/7 access to the world through the internet, or some combination of these and other factors, but my concentration habits have gone from those of a long distance runner to that of a sprinter. Not that it was ever that easy for me, but it’s just that much harder now, and my desire to focus is that much greater.
—Ken
Posted by JBfrom
Nov 13, 2011 at 12:44 AM
“Playing a musical instrument also involves physical dexterity and coordination that is absent from knowledge work (assuming you can already type extremely fast).”
Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s all about the myelin, baby: http://www.viperchill.com/productivity/
“it means consciously working at the edge of one?s abilities to increase the failure rate (and therefore the learning rate).”
One can do the same in knowledge work, by working at the edges of one’s knowledge base instead of repeating the known. Think boring vs. learning jobs. It doesn’t have to be a new skill, it can be a deeper application. The violinists are not learning a new instrument every practice session.
I disagree that an initial decision is required for focus. Tight integration of habit with workflow with software affordance can lead one insensibly into focused productivity.
It happens to me every morning. I wake up blearily, check email and RSS for a stimulation hit because I’m just completely lazy, find something interesting and start writing a response in a (highly-focused) Emacs scratch file (out of sheer laziness, so I can get it out of my head, because thinking requires effort), run out of new RSS entries, and then I’m off to the races because I’m already in my workflow environment, and the next step is as habitual as “left foot after right foot”.
I would say that the defining minimum is not so much FOCUS as ENERGY. Below a certain energy level the brain cannot actively engage stuff, and is forced to passively consume mindless entertainment.
Focus is much more involuntary than I think most people credit it. What most people consider to be “focusing” is to me just burning energy to compensate for poor passive barriers against emotional and informational distractions. This can work but is fatiguing. But if you have good passive barriers, you don’t need to burn energy to focus. If you’ve ever stared at a wall for hours in a stupor, that much is obvious.
So yeah, to return to my morning example, by the time I’ve exhausted the RSS and gotten my first cigarette and meditation going, I already have so much momentum that it would take a serious effort not to continue working in a focused productive way. As long as I’m not sick, this holds true.
Sure, there are super-challenging cognitive tasks I may not feel like tackling right away, but that’s more a function of energy level. Trying to take them on before energy levels are sufficiently high would induce a spike in cortisol, which would require deliberate “focus” to push through. There’s no need, since I can just wait till later in the day, when I’ll be bored with the easy stuff.
Which brings up a related point - it’s good not to micro-manage task sequencing, but just select areas of work. That way you can pick subtasks by available energy. Also, it’s good to have a workflow that allows pedantic plodding with predefined baby steps, or complex leaps of genius, so that you can tackle topics in either a low-energy or high-energy way.
Yep, that got me through half a morning cigarette. Thanks guys!
Posted by Chris Murtland
Nov 13, 2011 at 05:38 AM
JBfrom wrote:
>It
>happens to me every morning. I wake up blearily, check email and RSS for a stimulation
>hit because I’m just completely lazy, find something interesting and start writing a
>response in a (highly-focused) Emacs scratch file (out of sheer laziness, so I can get
>it out of my head, because thinking requires effort), run out of new RSS entries, and
>then I’m off to the races because I’m already in my workflow environment, and the next
>step is as habitual as “left foot after right foot”.
Hmm, I guess it might depend on what’s in your email. Email is stimulating to me, but it’s negative stimulation about 90% of the time. I get a lot of stressful things constantly coming in through email. I’ve found if I can just put off checking mail for as long as possible each morning, I can make a lot more progress on more demanding tasks that require an hour or two of complete focus. Also, there is something satisfying about starting out in a cocoon of self-directed work rather than turning on the external world first thing - at least for me.
RSS is less stressful to me and sometimes worthwhile, but it also just feels like noise most of the time, so I tend to only do that on my phone when I’m waiting somewhere.
>Focus is much more involuntary than I think most people credit it. What most people
>consider to be “focusing” is to me just burning energy to compensate for poor passive
>barriers against emotional and informational distractions. This can work but is
>fatiguing. But if you have good passive barriers, you don’t need to burn energy to
>focus. If you’ve ever stared at a wall for hours in a stupor, that much is obvious.
How is it burning energy to decide not to check email? Or really whatever happens to constitute focus at the moment? It’s just an up-front decision (and assume you already have enough glucose for decision-making), and really a micro-decision. Once that one-second decision is made, all the energy can go to the task at hand.
In any case, it’s really just a matter of whatever works.
Chris
Posted by JBfrom
Nov 13, 2011 at 06:04 AM
Yeah, infrequent checking is what Tim Ferriss recommends.
I don’t find it’s a problem. Yes, sometimes stressful things come through. But I have pretty good passive meditation barriers to stress.
And there are benefits. At the initial read, I will just scan and star if it requires real actual work.to answer. That way I know if anything urgent comes up, which allows me to mostly cut off the phone and chat channels, which are more interruptive, and yet I’m still reachable for urgent matters.
As far as stress, I find that it can be eustress, in that it gets the right brain working on the new problem, which you then dump into a scratch file, as a resource for later when you deal with teh problem. The longer I let a problem like this sit, the better my solution tends to be. I don’t like answering difficult emails without the benefit of a percolation period - I think this is a downside of Tim’s methodology, in addition to it forcing you to be reachable by phone or chat interruption.
Posted by JBfrom
Nov 13, 2011 at 06:08 AM
Focusing requires energy if you have to push out mental fragmentation, distraction, worry etc
It can be quite draining to force yourself to work on something under difficult circumstances, as I’m sure everyone has experienced. Difficult circumstances can include a poor state of info organization or a choppy workflow.
Better to spend that energy without stress on work, so that you feel refreshed by the positive energy of work, rather than drained by it.