3308: Dangerous Ideas: What If Everything We Thought Was True About Productivity Was Wrong By Cal Newport on New Habits

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[00:00:39] This is Optimal Living Daily. Dangerous Ideas What If Everything We Thought Was True About Productivity

[00:00:45] Was Wrong By Cal Newport of CalNewport.com and I'm Justin Malik.

[00:00:50] I'm going to jump right into today's post as we optimize your life. Dangerous Ideas

[00:00:59] What If Everything We Thought Was True About Productivity Was Wrong by CalNewport of CalNewport.com

[00:01:07] The surprising hardness of the symbol. I just observed something distressing about my behavior.

[00:01:14] The absolute most simple component to my productivity repertoire is to keep a notebook and a pen

[00:01:20] within reach at all times. In the standard GTD Canon this allows me to immediately capture any

[00:01:26] tasks or ideas that pop to mind. In theory, this basic behavior taking a notebook out of my backpack when I sit down

[00:01:34] should present no difficulty. What tasks could be more simple? All I have to do is move my arm

[00:01:40] literally just a few feet from my bag to my desk. No thinking is required. No more than three to five seconds

[00:01:47] transpire. No sweat. Many times however, I can't stand the thought of it. In fact as I write this,

[00:01:56] such an occasion just occurred. I returned to my office after a lunch sat down and found that every

[00:02:02] ounce of my being was resisting this trivial act. I had to fight to rally the energy to get out

[00:02:08] that notebook and this is a fight I often lose. The problem with the hardness assumption.

[00:02:15] This observation contradicts a lot of what we assume about productivity. We like to imagine that

[00:02:21] the difficulty of starting something is in linear proportion to the difficulty of a task.

[00:02:28] When we see right turn paper on a to-do list, we know that we have our work cut out for us to overcome

[00:02:34] the urge to procrastinate. Something simple on the other hand like taking notebook out of your backpack

[00:02:40] should be a breeze. But it's not. To my continual consternation, the simple and hard at times

[00:02:48] can be equally difficult to get started. In this causes trouble. The core of most modern workflow

[00:02:55] management systems depend on the use of easy habits to support and simplify the hard.

[00:03:02] If these gradated designations fail, so does perhaps many of the claimed benefits of these systems.

[00:03:09] Toward a more realistic theory of motivation. The obvious question remains,

[00:03:15] what does explain our varying motivation levels? I don't really know, but it's likely quite complicated.

[00:03:23] One thing I have noticed, however, is that I tend to move between grooves and slumps.

[00:03:29] When I'm in a groove on a certain type of work, it's relatively painless to switch between tasks

[00:03:34] within this same type. For example, if I'm in a blog groove, it's easy to knock off tasks related

[00:03:41] to the blog. This is similar to Mihai Chixen Mihai's flow state, but not quite the same.

[00:03:47] In a groove you're able to move between many different tasks within a broad type,

[00:03:52] whereas flow typically refers to your concentration during a specific activity. The slump

[00:03:58] is the evil twin to the groove, it describes a general period of low energy where anything beyond

[00:04:04] desultory email checking seems impossibly distant. What's key is that in both situations,

[00:04:11] the hardness of the task at hand plays a minimal role in determining my motivation to tackle it.

[00:04:17] The key is not only that I'm not in a slump, but also that I'm in the right groove for the type

[00:04:22] of work I face. The important questions. If this general model holds universally, it begs

[00:04:30] some interesting questions. For example, how do you avoid slumps? How do you jump from a slump

[00:04:36] to a groove? How do you know what a groove you are in? Is it possible to jump from one groove

[00:04:42] to another? Do we have any control over what grooves we land in? And if not, does it hold

[00:04:48] that the optimal workflow is one in which you learn to identify and then extract the maximum amount

[00:04:54] of work out of whatever groove you happen to be in? From control to accommodation. I'm fascinated

[00:05:02] by these questions, but I have no real answers. It seems that the general paradigm shift at play

[00:05:08] here is one away from rigid control over your entire workday, and toward one where you acknowledge

[00:05:15] a big part of your motivation is out of your control. And the best you can do is be aware and

[00:05:21] leverage what you face each day. For future reading, there are no doubt relevant lessons in

[00:05:27] chicks and me high. There's probably also a lot to be learned from Jim Law and Tony Schwartz's

[00:05:32] work on energy management. I leave a more rigorous examination of these issues as future work.

[00:05:39] For now, however, as I sit and ponder the notebook that sits beside me and the Hercules struggle

[00:05:45] that preceded its arrival in this position, I can't help but feel a slight shiver of discomfort.

[00:05:51] Maybe the whole productivity game is much more elusive and much more non-deterministic than we

[00:05:57] would like to believe. You just listen to the post titled Dangerous Ideas. What if everything we

[00:06:07] thought was true about productivity was wrong by CalNewPort of CalNewPort.com? And I'll be right

[00:06:14] back with my commentary. Take it a call. You might come out of this thinking, what this post says

[00:06:20] I have no answers so what's to take away here? I really think it's important to simply know or be

[00:06:26] aware of what state you're in. Awareness I think plays a huge factor in our overall happiness

[00:06:32] and acceptance of life. After tracking my daily mood for six months personally, this is becoming

[00:06:39] more and more clear to me. Even when circumstances are amazing and I can't quote unquote complain,

[00:06:46] it's not sustainable to consistently have days that are like an 8 out of 10. And again,

[00:06:51] that's even when things are great. Life just doesn't work that way. There always will be those

[00:06:57] slumps that he talked about. They're not easy to get out of. And simply knowing what state

[00:07:02] we're in can change that from like a 2 out of 10 day to like a 5. We can say to ourselves,

[00:07:09] that's one of those days and simply not expect to finish everything on our to-do list at day,

[00:07:15] which is totally fine by the way. And of course, we're talking moderation because if we say that

[00:07:20] every day for months or years, then that's a bigger problem to be addressed. But day to day,

[00:07:27] if we can be aware of our current state or even season of life, well then that's a good place to be.

[00:07:33] So something to think about this week. Thank you for listening. Have a great rest of your day and

[00:07:38] I'll see you tomorrow. Wear optimal life. I'll wait.