Reflecting on self-judgement & deep work

Here’s an equation that described how what deep work tends to look like for me:

Time*(Long periods of distraction+Flashes of focus)+Lots of guilt=Output

When I need to do any kind of research, be it for work or education, I tend to let it stress me out. Research projects fill my waking hours because I seem to spend a lot of time stressing about what I have to rather than actually doing it. This illustration from Alex Maese Juarez reminds me of me.

Self-judgement

I spent a long time working in Dublin City University where colleagues used to nudge me to consider doing a PhD. But the thoughts of undertaking that scale of research terrify me. I’m not sure I fancy being stuck in the swamp for that long.

Instead of getting on with work, I feel guilty if I’m not making progress as quickly as I’d like. If I were to do a PhD, I envision myself missing out on family holidays and special occasions because I don’t have the confidence to get my work done in a disciplined and timely fashion. The reality of course is that while the nature of research means that a topic can expand as you dig into it, my own personal judgements about what constitutes meaningful work and progress actually hinders me from doing deep and meaningful work. I know that part of my challenge is that I find it hard to align the idea of reading about a topic for several hours as “work”. Work has inputs and outputs and when the outputs don’t come quickly, it’s easy to get disheartened and make judgements about progress that may not be accurate.

Towards deep work

I’m on a quest to live a deeper life. Deeper relationships. Deeper work. Deeper engagement in every moment. With regard to work and study, I want to use my mind to its fullest capacity. To do this I need to dial down my propensity to get distracted by personal judgements about performance and dial up my capacity to focus.

If I can do this I can update my equation for deep work. I’d like to borrow an equation from Cal Newport who defines high-quality work as time spent multiplied by intensity of focus.

Time*Intensity of focus = High-quality work

By dialling up intensity of focus and dialling down the time it takes to get work done, I’ll be more effective. I’ll be happier. And I’ll have more time for unconscious, diffused thinking.

How can I do this? Here’s what I'm working on:

Step 1: Work in Pomodoro sprints of 25 minutes on and 5 minutes off. During the 5 minutes off, relax. Step away from the desk. Look out the window. Breath. Don’t look at social media. That’s still focused thinking.

Step 2: Bring attention to my breath. Investigations into the physiological effects of slow breathing have uncovered significant effects on the respiratory, cardiovascular, cardiorespiratory and autonomic nervous systems. It’s the effects on the autonomic nervous system that I’m most interested in. Breathing deeply, with a slow and steady inhalation to exhalation ratio, signals our parasympathetic nervous system to calm the body down. When I was younger I became an Emergency First Responder. One of the things we learned is that a normal breathing rate should be 16–18 breaths per minute. Nowadays, science indicates that long, deep breaths, an average of around 6 breaths per minute can manage our stress responses to help decrease anxiety, fear, racing thoughts and rapid heartbeat. This requires conscious breathing. Whenever I relax, I’ve been trying to become aware of my breathing so I can slow it down. I try to breathe in for a count of 6 and out for a count of 8. That seems to work out at around 5 breaths per minute.

I’ve also been doing Wim Hof breathing since January. To be honest, his methodology is completely contrary to slowing your breathing down. In fact, it’s controlled hyper ventilation. But I always feel energised afterwards.

Step 3: Go for walks at lunchtime. Nietzsche said, “It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth”. Charles Darwin had a thinking path. While working on his theory of evolution, he took a daily walk to exercise his mind and body. He’d walk the same route through shady woods and back along a hedge-lined field. He called it his ‘thinking path’ as it was on these walks that he worked on his theories and ground-breaking book ‘On The Origin Of Species’. If he had a particularly challenging problem to consider, he would walk for longer. Isn’t that interesting? For many people, there’s an assumption that if you’re not at your desk, you’re not being productive. But in actual fact for a lot of creative or research work, maybe the most productive thing you can do is get away from your desk. Go for a long walk, preferably in nature.

Step 5: Don’t be afraid to take breaks. This is related to going for walks. Desktime, a company that develops desktop productivity software, has looked at the results of their users and determined that, on average, the ideal break for maximum productivity would be to take 17 minutes off for every 52 minutes of work. Imagine you went missing for 17 minutes every 52 minutes at work. You’d be fired! Mind you, maybe smokers intuitively get this. I wonder is there research that indicates smokers are more productive?

Step 6: Nap. I used to think that if I ever had the chance to work from home, I’d lay on the couch during my lunch break. I’d watch some TV and I’d snooze. I’ve never done it. Not even once. But Daniel Pink writes in his book “When: that a 10- to 20-minute nap can provide the napper with three hours of improved focus and a higher capacity for retaining information. He also writes about what he calls a napuccino. Studies have shown that a cup of coffee before a nap can give you an even better boost. Since caffeine takes about 20 minutes to enter the bloodstream, it’s actually perfect for incorporating into a well-timed nap. Some day I’ll get around to trying this. I’ll drink my coffee and I’ll set my timer for 20 minutes so I can wake up ready to take on the world!

Step 7. Stack new habits. Habits are a central part of our lives; we all live with good and bad habits. The goal is to double down on the good ones and prune the bad ones.

Actually, we’re prone to falling into habitual behaviours when we’re stressed. In the book Mini Habits by Stephen Guise, the author cites a study at UCLA that uncovered human beings’ tendency to revert to habitual behavior when under pressure, tired or overwhelmed. Unfortunately, this happens whether the habits are good or bad for us. And so when we’re stressed, we’re less capable of making good decisions so we resort to habits. The good news is that bad habits can be changed. They are, after all, just neural pathways in the brain. They get thicker the more they’re used, and deteriorate when neglected. You create your own habits simply by repeating good activities until they get easier and easier or stop doing bad activities until they get easier. Of course habits worth stacking are taking breaks, bringing awareness to breathing, going for walks. The more you do them, the more they become part of your essential being.

By the way, if anything I’ve written here reads as preachy, it’s not meant to be that way. I write to think. I write to remind myself about how I’d like to live rather than tell other people how to live. Hopefully that makes sense.

A final thing that occurs to me is that some of the things I’ve mentioned are not new. They’re as old as time. And yet we still need to be reminded about them. Isn’t that odd? It’s like we allow the hustle and bustle of daily life to get in the way of our own knowing. Our own wisdom.

Step 8: Trust my own wisdom. Truth be told we all know when we’re tired. When we’re hungry. When it’s time to take a break. But often we don’t listen because we respond to external pressures of deadlines and social pressures. Maybe if we all trusted our own knowing we’d be more productive. We’d be more relaxed. We’d be happier. Maybe we’d even earn more? Discuss!