Escaping
I love my work, it's very mental-heavy. It requires a lot of "left-brain" thinking like analyzing and solving complex problems, and answering hard questions. By the end of the day I'm exhausted even though I've been sitting all day. And throughout the day I really need breaks, or else I get fried early on, and am not very useful. When I used to work in the office (I work from home now), and I was getting fried, I'd walk over to my buddy's desk, and talk him into running to the gas station for taquitos, and a gatorade, or take a walk around the building or block. Now that I work from home, escaping from the office is not so simple.Or is it? Not too long ago I started grabbing my guitar during those 'nearly fried' moments, and I found that it was a good escape. But what intrigued me was that I was really effective with music, it was like the inspiration was just flowing, and I wished I could keep going. Sure enough it was the same thing almost every day. And it started getting me thinking. Why is music easy when I'm mentally frazzled?
About Flow
When do you find the most creative inspiration seems to come? Is it when you're driving, or in the shower? Or when you're running, or playing sports? I'm not a neuroscientist and I'm probably oversimplifying, but I like to think of these as activities where your motor skills are occupying your conscious, or sometimes referred to as 'left brain.' So if your 'left brain' is spent, or occupied, then your 'right brain' or the creative side can more easily come to the forefront.Another element of this is what experts are calling flow. This is when you are so lost in an activity that you lose track of time. And according to the experts flow is really important for happiness. Or at least people who are able to achieve flow often are also found to have much higher reported happiness. Here is a TED talk on the subject
Most of us achieve flow more often than we think, but don't usually sustain it for long, and don't usually find flow in productive activities. Let me give you a few examples. Have you ever walked into a room, and forgot why you were there? Or have you ever driven somewhere, and can't remember the drive? Or binge-watched an entire season of your favorite show, and realized it's like 3 or 4 am? These are flow moments, but they're not terribly useful if they're too short, or are not engaged in useful or productive activities.
Getting Primed for Flow
What if you are primed for flow all the time, but you're just doing the wrong activities in those key moments? Here's a funny example: When my kids come home from school, and plop in front of the tv, I like to wait about an hour or so, and grab the remote, and pause, or turn off the tv. Have you ever done this? If you have, you know what happens, and it's about the funniest thing you have ever seen. They go completely crazy! They start screaming, and jumping up and down. You would think that I had just cut off a limb. Why do they go so crazy? I think it's because they are deep in flow.Think about it. They have been spending all day trying to concentrate, and listen and behave, and suddenly, they are free to just get engrossed in whatever mind-numbing program they can find. They are escaping from the stress of their lives. This is where I think we learn our escapist media habits.
So what is there to do? I'm an avoidance addict, and I know I need to change. But what can I do about it? One way to harness your own avoidance is to identify what you are avoiding. Is it a mental activity? Does it require mental effort? Is it a creative activity? Does it require creative inspiration? Is it a brainless activity, and you can't bear the boredom (cleaning the house for example).
Ebb and Flow
Chances are you are spending much of your time on one of these areas, and not much time in the others. The trick is finding which kind of effort you are avoiding, and find productive activities that compliment your avoidance appetite, and do those activities when you are avoiding something else. I call this Ebb and Flow.So let's say you are trying to write a book, and you find yourself avoiding sitting down to it. Writing is a fairly creative activity, so if you're avoiding it, you're going to be most effective in an analytical activity. Think of some analytical activity that you haven't been able to find time for like doing your budget, or organizing the garage. Or you might want to focus on some longer term activities like learning a language, or teaching yourself a new skill. Then after you start getting tired of budgeting, try sitting back down to your computer, and pretend you are avoiding your budget, and you'll be amazed at the miraculous creative productivity that results. Then alternate between these two kinds of activities every 90 mins or so, and you'll be amazed at how much you can get done, and also how fast the time goes. You might want to set a timer to remind you to shift activities after 90 mins because you'll likely find yourself in flow, and not notice how tired you're getting.
And when you're tired creatively and analytically, it's a good time to do brainless activities such as cleaning, or exercise, or just playing, or spending time socially and connecting more deeply with friends and family members. Taking a long walk to clear your head will become a valuable activity at these times, also.
Give yourself Permission to be a more Effective Avoider
If you're being productive in another activity, you have to tell yourself that it's ok to avoid temporarily, and you'll get back to it when you've given yourself a chance to "rest" from that type of activity. This is very important. You have to give yourself permission to alternate activities, and tell yourself that you'll be more productive long-term. If you're still feeling guilty, or worrying about the other activity, you'll never be able to achieve flow. If you find your worrying getting in the way of your flow, you may be avoiding something that you shouldn't really be avoiding. It's important to listen to your intuitions. If you try to ignore it a few times, and it won't go away you might want to go back to it and make some progress to help yourself feel better about your avoidance. And I hope this goes without saying, but when things are critical, or when lives are at risk is not the time to implement affective avoidance!Seeing the Possibilities
Hopefully by now you are starting to see the possibilities in your own life. And you're probably seeing how you are spending all of your time stressing and worrying about activities that are all the same type. My wife stays at home with the kids, and especially when they were younger that meant she was spending literally weeks doing nothing but brainless activities. Most of the time all she wanted to do was escape from the house, and watch an intense movie, or have some "adult conversation." And I was fried from spending all day doing analytical work, so I wasn't much good to her. And all I wanted to do was sit brainless, or talk creatively about what if we changed this about our house. It was a source of frustration for both of us. And as you spend a lot of time being brainless, your brain muscles start to atrophy, and get weak. Now she's trying to go back to school, and to say it's not easy is a major understatement.So next time you find yourself avoiding, remember these tips:
- What type of activity are you avoiding?
- Identify some tasks in another type of activity that are important to you so you can still be productive while you're avoiding.
- Give yourself permission for effective avoidance
- Alternate activity types every 90 mins or so to stay "fresh" all day
Word.
ReplyDelete