Last week, I wrote about the autotelic self. I found the idea of the autotelic self compelling because Csikszentmihalyi suggests by engaging in flow activities—i.e., getting “in the zone” in the course of some hobby, game, or practice—for no other reason than because they are enjoyable, that we can increase control of our consciousness. His specific argument is that by pursuing flow, we are better able to direct our attention at will, tune out distractions, and focus for as long as it takes to achieve some kind of goal.
One of the reasons I was struck by this was because I had long been interested in improving my performance at work. What I discovered in 2020—and am now refining in 2021—is that I had all the tools I needed, already at my disposal. I had already begun to develop an autotelic personality at work, but I had stalled out hard during the final stages of writing my dissertation. So It was good to be reminded of all the little mental tricks that I had used in the past—but I was still in deep trouble.
As I have learned, the problem with my work was much deeper than a question of technique or disposition. I was fundamentally conflicted about the value and purpose of my thesis and the possibility for professional advancement that it represented. I felt like I had not developed the kind of expertise that I wanted to, nor the kind that was going to move me forward in an academic career path. Truthfully, I had felt that way for some time; I tried to allay this anxiety in a variety of ways, but my attempts to get out of these negative loops weren’t working.
So, I did what I had done many times in the past when confronted with a problem for which I felt like I had no solution: I turned to self-help books.
My first source of inspiration for increasing my feeling of flow at work was Cal Newport’s book “Deep Work—Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.” There is a lot to say about “Deep Work,” and I will certainly be coming back to it. But for now, the important point is that Newport outlines a theory of work and guide to practice that creates the conditions for and leverages flow states.
Newport cites Csikszentmihalyi favorably in several of his books, but the idiom that he uses is more directly shaped by Anders Ericsson’s model of “deliberate practice.” For our purposes, deliberate practice is nearly synonymous with “flow activity.”
Ericsson studied expert performers in many fields for decades. Like Csikszentmihalyi, he found that across fields, the most effective forms of practice are fairly consistent and follow a similar set of principles. The basic insight is that the human mind and body are innately adaptable and are capable of step-by-step creation of novelty.
The idea with deliberate practice is that there is actually a formula for accomplishing goals, increasing your abilities, and developing expertise. The cut of this jib is: if there is something that you really want to excel at, you must change the way that you practice it. The six steps of deliberate practice are:
Get motivated
Set specific, realistic goals
Break out of your comfort zone
Be consistent and persistent
Seek feedback
Take time to recover
Ericsson’s research shows that top performers and experts in many domains maintain a similar practice regimen: “brief (but intense), daily or semi-weekly solo practice sessions.” Musicians call this “shedding.” Regular, focused practice, has a major impact on outcomes with respect to performance level. Consistent, intense bursts of effort help maintain momentum and build expertise.
Deliberate practice transforms desire into self-actualization. What Ericsson showed is that for your practice to improve, it is necessary to constantly challenge yourself and push yourself to expand your abilities and capacities. Simply repeating things you already know how to do will not enhance your skill level or improve performance. The question is not trying harder, but trying differently. This is perhaps for some, a no brainer. I would contend that we all know this deep down, and it is helpful to be reminded now and again, in case you’ve forgotten for one reason or another.
At any rate, what makes deliberate practice deliberate is that the practitioner identifies the areas of practice where they are on the edge of being capable of doing something and pushing forward from there. If a barrier is reached, or one cannot move forward with one technique or approach, then a different one is required. Expert performers keep experimenting until they see some kind of appreciable improvement. Feedback is also important, because one needs to know exactly where and how they are falling short. Without this, it can be difficult to figure out what needs improvement or how close one is to achieving their goals. This is why coaches, teachers, and mentors are so important. Someone who is already familiar with the kinds of obstacles that one is likely to encounter in a given domain can suggest known work-arounds and “hacks” to try to transcend these barriers. Again, I recognize that this is self-evident to some, but bear with me.
Newport’s “Deep Work” shares many valuable ideas about how you can mold your work life to create the conditions for successful deliberate practice. The book’s basic advice is to structure your work life around maximizing the amount of time that you can spend during your work time in “deep work.” This maximization involves numerous practical strategies regarding how to schedule your time; how to combat distractions and other attention-sapping forces; how to formulate goals; how to be self-accountable; and how best to use your spare time. But what I want to focus on here is deep work as a form of deliberate practice or flow activity.
Newport regards the core of deep work as a form of “meditation.” He calls it Deep Thought in some places, productive meditation in others; we might call it mindful work.
What deep work entails is focusing your attention on a single well-defined professional problem. This could be during the time when you are actually at your desk or when you are occupied physically but not mentally, e.g., while walking, doing dishes, cleaning house, running errands, etc. This problem could be a question, an idea, an article, a talk, or anything that you have to deal with. The point is, as you are engaged in something else, as your mind wanders, you consistently bring your attention back to the problem you’ve identified. In this way, you turn the quandary into a mantra of sorts; the equivalent of the breath in mindfulness meditation.
The steps in this process are as follows:
Identify the problem that you want to address
Review relevant variables related to problem and store it in your short-term memory
Turn over the variables in your mind and either:
solve the problem, or
define next-step question that you need to answer using these variables
Consolidate your gains by either:
Writing down the answer to the question
Writing down the new question and next steps
I have found this to be an excellent practice, but, as I will write about in future posts, one must take care with this mental tool. It is extremely powerful, and if you are not careful about choosing the problems that you want to address, negativity and anxiety can hijack this formula and take you on a seemingly never-ending journey to the “valley of shit.”
I have more to say about Newport’s formula for deep work and his overall life-system framework to support the effective use of productive meditation, but I will stop for now. I will, however, be returning to the question of “productive meditation” as a deliberate practice or flow activity before long to explain my model of the creative process, so watch this space.