The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

It’s uniquely American. We celebrate our busyness as a measure of our success. So, what if we stopped celebrating being busy? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?

And that’s where the story begins.

My friend, Matt Tarkenton, recently recommended a book called Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown. I thought Essentialism sounded like a disease you get in your mid-40’s.

But, it turns out that Essentialism is a thing. Essentialism suggests that life is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy. Which allows us to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.

The Juggler

See, being really busy is like juggling. A good juggler touches each ball for only a millisecond but keeps them in the air. They seem to float effortlessly, in perfect unison.

But have you noticed that if a juggler misses one ball, they all come crashing down? When the balls hit the floor, it’s chaos. Like somebody kicked over an anthill.

That’s what happens when life goes awry.

Monkey Mind

Monkey Mind is a funny Buddhist term that describes the persistent and rapid churn of thoughts in the undisciplined mind. The mind monkeys around, so to speak. The English translation from the Chinese dictionary is “fickle in the mind”. I like that one.

Or, as Bikram said:

Obviously monkey mind is not an ideal state unless you are a drunken monkey. But monkey mind has become our normal state. We may hyper-focus for a minute, but we ultimately return to monkey mind. Thoughts come and go outside of our control. As if a four year old has the remote control. He’s flipping through 200 cable television channels at warp speed. Occasionally he pauses on a Sham-Wow! infomercial before moving on.

Juggling vs. Deep Work

We’ve been led to believe that overcommitment is the most efficient way to manage the multiple strands of our lives. But people are starting to wise up. Instead of being the secret weapon of the overachiever, overcommitment is actually making us more anxious and less efficient.

For example, a study published in PLOS ONE reveals that people who frequently use several media devices at the same time have lower grey-matter density in one particular region of the brain compared to those who use just one device occasionally.

Another study by the University of California, Irvine focused on measuring the cost of disruptions at work. Surprisingly the results show that interrupted work is performed faster. Apparently, when people are constantly interrupted, they work faster to compensate for the lost time. Yet working faster with interruptions has its cost: people in the interrupted conditions experienced a higher workload, more stress, higher frustration, more time pressure, and effort. So interrupted work may be done faster, but at a steep price.

The alternative to chronic busyness is called deep work. Deep work is the ability to work in a hyper-focused state with an intentional effort to increase the quality of your work. Like Bob Ross, for example, but I think he was high on grass.

The idea was recently championed by MIT alumni and Georgetown professor Cal Newport in his groundbreaking book, Deep Work. Newport breaks down activities into two distinct categories. They are as follows:

• Deep work is made up of activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive abilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill and are hard to replicate (similar in concept to purposeful practice); and

• Shallow work is made up of non cognitively demanding, logistical style tasks often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.

Newport claims that excessive exposure to shallow work has a negative affect on our ability to focus our attention. And that negative affect is not easy to reverse.

For me, the last year has been a shallow work extravaganza. Working from home, on a modified Coronavirus lockdown, was clearly not my thing.

On the surface, working on multiple things at once can seem like a state of hyper-focus or flow. But in reality, it’s the ultimate state of distraction. While the brain can seemingly focus on multiple things at once, it is impossible to be in multiple states of flow at one time. 

With multitasking, each task only gets a few precious seconds of attention before the brain has to move on. It’s like a long strand of Christmas lights where there isn’t enough electric power to keep all the bulbs lit.

So some bulbs light up, only to immediately go out as another bulb further down the strand lights up. Yes, there are moments of near perfection in multi-tasking, but ultimately the strand fails and is worthless. 

On the other hand, Deep Work engages the mind in a 100% engaged state.

So why are we in such a big damn hurry? Because, everything today is about the destination. Because we no longer value anything about the journey. Because we no longer perceive anything of value in the traveling.

“The Indians Called it Maize”

I love America. But this land belonged to the Indians long before we arrived with the Pumpkin Pie and the bullets. But that’s a story for another day.

I’ve never really known any American Indians, but I love the spirituality and intentionality of the people.

The only indigenous person I’ve met is Chief Noc-A-Homa. He was the original mascot of the Atlanta Braves from the 1950’s until 1986. Oddly enough, the Chief was actually a Canadian Indian of the Odawa Indian tribe. Only in America do we hire a Canadian to play the part of an American Indian, but I digress.

If the Braves scored, he came out of the teepee and did a little dance. Would never fly today.

As a kid growing up in Atlanta, we used to visit the Chief in the teepee for autographs during the games. The Braves never scored so you could hang out with him for the whole game.

A few years ago I participated in a Native American Sweat Lodge ceremony. A sweat lodge is a low profile hut, typically dome-shaped (see above). Twelve participants gather in a circle, sitting “cross-cross, applesauce” or what we used to refer to as “Indian style” before that term went out of favor. Glowing hot rocks are stacked in the center of the tent. It’s excruciatingly hot. And the ceremony is not short. Indians are notoriously patient people.

The sweat is an offering to the Gods – in anticipation of the harvest, or the battle, etc. Similar to purifying yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka. (Click here is you don’t get that reference.)

There were lots of offerings to the gray wolf and the west wind. There was chanting. I smoked something in a pipe. Didn’t inhale, though.

It was interesting except the lady next to me was nekkid; nothin’ on but her Keds. (I don’t think her cornbread was done in the middle.)

The Indians knew something about deep work long before Cal Newport. They recognized the wisdom in stillness and quiet. And I think they also knew that all this busyness can steal your soul.

Think Week

My friend, and New York Times best-selling author Tommy Newberry, is a fan of the “Rejuvenation Day”. That is, as often as possible, you should take a day to rejuvenate your mind, body and spirit. It’s not a day to run errands or go to the Dentist. It’s a day to turn off the phone, unplug everything and just be still. p

See, sometimes you don’t realize how fast you’re moving until you stop. Like the end of a roller-coaster ride. When the car stops abruptly, but your body wants to keep moving.

The goal is to do something that allows your mind to get still. Last quarter I took a day off and built a small, wood railing in my backyard. No phone. No internet. No music. Just peace and quiet. It took a while to relax. It took a while to stop reaching for my phone. (Okay, maybe I reached for it a few times and it wasn’t there.) But after a few hours I started to settle in. My mind got quieter and more focused.

As I worked on the fence, I started thinking about deep work. (This story is a result of those thoughts.) How else could I connect Chief Knock-a-Homa and Shawshank Redemption together? And in the next paragraph I’ll weave in Michelangelo. Wait for it…

Here’s a selfie I took at the end of the Rejuvenation Day.

Michelangelo

A few years ago I visited the Sistine Chapel at The Vatican in Rome, Italy. When Michelangelo was selected by Pope Julius II to paint the ceiling, he was mostly a sculptor. He was reluctant to take the work, but eventually agreed. Nobody says no to the Pope. He started work in 1508.

By 1512, the ceiling contained 343 figures, each painted meticulously. He started in one corner and worked outward. The artistry and detail from start to finish is remarkably different.

You can literally see the transformation of Michelangelo’s artistry evolve across the ceiling.

It’s an incredible example of what deep work can produce.

Final Thoughts

For most of us, being overcommitted is a part of our daily lives. Maybe it’s because of our jobs or our busy family life.

But since we have a few more months in lockdown, let’s take full advantage. Let’s take some time to unplug. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pause, rejuvenate and think. Who knows, you might decide you like it.

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