Get Out of Your Own Way

One of the primary issues I've worked through in my own life involves the idea of not making things unnecessarily difficult for myself. Trying to live a conscious life is hard enough; I shouldn't be making it any harder than it already is. Looking at the idea of ego depletion, or willpower, has been one way I've helped myself get out of my own way in terms of personal development.

What's ego depletion?

Ego depletion is essentially the idea that our willpower is a finite resource that can be used up by activities that require self-control. Once you've used up that reservoir of willpower you'll no longer be able to use it on other activities that require self-control. This is one of the reasons why after a long day you may feel a lack of motivation to go to the gym or why after sticking to your diet perfectly for a couple days you ultimately end up eating a large pizza in one sitting.

Roy Baumeister and his colleagues have done a lot of the research that explores this idea of a finite well of willpower that we all seem to have. For example, they did a study where two groups of people watched a comedian and one group was instructed not to laugh and the other one was free to laugh as much as they wanted. After watching the comedian, the two groups completed a task that required self-control. The group that was not allowed to laugh did significantly worse at the task than the group that was allowed to laugh. Evidently, forcing themselves not to laugh while watching the comedian sapped them of much of their self-control, leaving less for the task that followed.

In another study, two groups of hungry participants were led to a room with a plate full of freshly baked cookies and a plate of radishes. One group was instructed to only eat the radishes. One group was allowed to eat the cookies. Much like the study described above, the two groups were then instructed to complete another task. This time, the researchers were measuring how long the two groups would stick with an unsolvable puzzle. The group that was allowed to eat cookies lasted about 20 minutes, on average. The group that was not allowed to eat the cookies and could only eat radishes lasted about 9.

How can you prevent ego depletion?

When I learned about this concept I saw an opportunity to eliminate needlessly using willpower throughout my day. I realized there were several things I was doing that required me to use willpower when it really wasn't necessary. I'd much prefer to save my willpower for the activities and tasks that truly need it. Let's take a look at a couple of small changes I made to my day to fix this problem.

1. Resisting the urge to check sites like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and my email when I'm supposed to be working: Knowing that blissful distraction is only a click away when I'm working at my computer (which is where 99% of my work happens) can be a massive drain on my willpower. Constantly resisting that urge to see if someone responded to my latest hilarious tweet was profoundly draining. To counteract this siphoning of my willpower, I use a program called SelfControl (appropriate name, eh?). When I use it, it completely and utterly blocks me from all of the websites I've put onto a blacklist. I no longer have to use my willpower to not check these sites because it has become impossible.
2. Resisting the urge to eat pre-packaged, processed, junk food at my apartment when I should be snacking on something healthier: Sometimes I have delicious junk food in my apartment. Convincing myself that I shouldn't eat the Swiss Cake Roll in my cupboard is a drain on my willpower. The simple (and utterly obvious) solution is to not bring any food in my apartment that requires willpower not to eat. If my only options are relatively healthy then I don't need to waste willpower resisting the urge to eat the junk.
3. Resisting the urge to buy drinks or food when I'm on campus: I started a terrible, terrible, muffin habit last semester. Every Tuesday and Thursday before my morning class I would walk over to the campus cafe and buy a massive blueberry muffin. It was one of those muffins that makes you thank our ancestors of the agricultural revolution for the knowledge of how to craft such a delicious bakery item. But it certainly wasn't healthy and I usually had an epic battle with myself every morning where I told myself I wouldn't cave into my muffin craving. I usually failed. Until I just stopped bringing money with me to campus. Suddenly, it was no longer an issue of willpower because it wasn't even possible for me to buy a muffin. Problem solved.
4. Resisting the urge to use my phone to distract myself when I should be working: Everything I'm blocking in item #1 above can also be checked on my phone. When I'm serious about eliminating the drains on my willpower I'll turn my phone completely off and put it somewhere where I can't see it. This seems to help fight the urge to use it as a distraction.
5. Resisting the urge to be distracted by other applications on my computer: SelfControl (the program, not the psychological concept) will keep me from distracting myself on the Internet, but it doesn't block other applications on my computer from distracting me. If I'm constantly resisting the urge to fire up a video game or check out some other enticing app then I'm surely sapping my willpower. To combat this, I work in full screen mode as much as possible. When I can't see the other applications floating around behind my active window it seems to require less willpower to not give in to their distracting allure.

While it has been pretty well established in the psychology literature that willpower seems to be a finite resource, there are some nuances that are coming to light that are helping us better understand it. There are some studies that seem to suggest how much ego depletion we experience doing an activity that requires self-control depends on our age. The parts of our brains that seem to regulate self-control are not fully developed until our mid-twenties. Similar studies done with older people have shown less of an effect of ego depletion. Additionally, Carol Dweck has done work that seems to show that our beliefs about willpower also have an effect on how long and well we'll work on a difficult exercise.

Taking a "get happy" break

One helpful study seems to show that positive affect (basically, positive emotions) help restore willpower after a ego depleting activity. Test subjects who were shown a funny video after completing an activity that taxed their self-control but before a similar second task did better than those who were not shown a funny video in between the two tasks. In everyday terms, perhaps taking a break to do something that makes you feel good is a great way to break up various tasks throughout your day that require major use of your willpower. For example, in between classes I like to listen to podcasts or music as a way to help improve my mood before launching into another activity that requires self-control.

The science is still being developed at this point but I'm comfortable suggesting that you look at your daily life and see if there are activities or situations where you're using self-control when you may not have to. Let's save our self-control for those things that really need it and not waste it on activities that can be better regulated by a simple piece of software or a minor tweak in our behavior.

I'm always curious to hear about ego depletion leaks people have identified in their own lives and how they've eliminated them. Where have you stopped your limited supply of willpower being sapped? What did you do?

Sam Spurlin is a graduate student studying positive developmental psychology in Southern California. He's primarily interested in how good science can lead to better coaching. He writes about personal development, positive psychology, and his own experiences in trying to live a more conscious life at SamSpurlin.com.

Sometimes I Do Dumb Things

I'm a warrior. A modern-day samurai. A Jedi of epic responsibility. You see, I'm in a constant battle. A battle that wages every day, every minute, every second, of my life.  

I'm in a constant war against my own idiocy. 

I came to the realization awhile ago that I do really dumb things sometimes. I've always done dumb things, but it's only recently I've been able to notice and catch myself doing something dumb. Instead of just living with my dumbness, I decided to try implementing some simple behaviors as a self-protective mechanism against my dumbness. Here's what I've come up with so far.

Dumb Thing I Do, #1: Stare at my task list because I'm too tired to actually decide what I should be doing.

Sometimes I do dumb things like not get enough sleep or think I can work for 10 hours straight. This means that sometimes I'm really, really, tired. Ideally, that would mean it's time for me to take a nap. While that's the best course of action you have to remember that I do dumb things. So, sometimes I decide to keep working even when I probably shouldn't (maybe that should actually be Dumb Thing I Do #1…). Anyway, when I'm too tired to be doing important and thoughtful work, it's nice if I've already figured out the not-so-difficult work I COULD be doing instead. I have lots of those tasks because I don't have a secretary to take care of administrative BS or errands or anything else that sucks to do but is necessary to running a business and life. The best time to do these tasks is when my mind is fried because even if I'm only working at 25% of capacity, they only require 10% to do. The problem is that if I haven't figured out what the tasks are ahead of time, I'm too tired and/or dumb to figure it out later on. To combat this, I add a simple tag to each of my tasks in my task management system; Easy, Medium, or Hard. The trick is to do this ahead of time, when I'm not tired. Basically, it's well-rested Sam taking care of tired and dumb Sam. Hard things require me to be on top of my game. Medium things are kind of difficult and I should probably be somewhat aware of what's going on when I tackle them. Easy things a monkey could do. Unfortunately, I have no monkey so the next best thing is to do them when I'm fried. Now I don't waste time, I get stupid/easy tasks out of the way without taking up my more productive time, and I can stop feeling so dumb.

Dumb Thing I Do, #2: Stare at my task list because I just woke up and don't want to do anything except eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch in the morning.

I like getting up early. I'm definitely a morning person. I'm not sure why I self-identify that way, though, because I'm an idiot in the morning. I'll wake up and putz around for hours trying to decide what I should try to do. Whatever part of my brain that looks at the things I have to do and makes the decision that it's something I'm capable of doing today doesn't seem to wake up with the rest of my body. The part of my brain that can do work if it has been clearly defined and laid out in front of it is always raring to go in the morning, though. So, to combat the dumbness of getting up super early and then not being able to decide what to do, I've started selecting the 1 or 2 tasks I want to do the next morning the day before. Now, the last thing I do before I wrap up work for the day is decide what I'm going to work on when I wake up. No more wasting time trying to figure it out in the morning and no more time feeling like an idiot for scrolling through my task list at 6 in the morning trying to figure out what strikes my fancy.

Dumb Thing I Do, #3: Have an awesome, earth-shattering, polio-vaccination, Wright-brothers' airplane, theory of relativity-esque idea that I'm convinced I'll never forget. And then forget it.

Sometimes I have good ideas. Not often, but sometimes. The tricky thing about a good idea is that it seems so obvious, "Of course I won't forget this idea -- it's basically the best thing that has happened to me!" Five minutes later I have a stupid song stuck in my head and I'm grasping at straws in my now vacuous brain. This is a dumb thing to do. Now, no matter where I am, I will write down a good idea the moment I have it. Front left pocket, pen. Back left pocket, notebook. Front right pocket, phone with note taking and voice recording capabilities. Sitting at a desk, computer with key combo that allows me to add a note to my inbox seamlessly. In my bed, notebook and pen on the nightstand. Brushing my teeth, scamper back to the bedroom and tap it out on my computer. In the car, repeat it endlessly to my passenger until I get somewhere I can safely dig out my notebook and pen. See? No more losing great ideas.

Dumb Thing I Do, #4: Getting interrupted by some piece of information and having to think deeply and thoughtfully about where to put it. 

As a fairly dumb person, when I have too much going on I get overwhelmed. When I get overwhelmed I get whiny and annoying. We live in a world where information is cheap and plentiful (and often hilarious, useful, vital, or interesting). I used to keep important pieces of information in lots of different places. When I had to find a specific piece of information there would be about 10 different places I had to look before I could find it. This is a dumb thing to do so I decided to fix it. The first thing I realized is that I have an Internet connection 95% of the time I'm at my computer. I also realized that about 95% of the information I'll ever have to look up I can find in about 3 minutes on Google. Anything I can find with Google doesn't need to be saved on my computer. Next, I had to decide what specific pieces of information I received most often and then decide where I'd keep it. Here's what it looks like for me right now:

• "I came across something on the Internet I want to read later!" --> Save to Instapaper. Read on iPhone or computer at my leisure.
• "This blog/website looks interesting. I want to know when this person writes something new!" --> Add to Google Reader (and if a new article comes up and I don't have time to read it right now, see above)
• "This email has important information but I can't deal with it right now!" --> Star the email in Gmail. Within 24 hours review the email and either respond, or enter a to-do in Things. Unstar email.
• "This email needs a response and it won't take me long to deal with!" --> Respond right now.
• "This email has important information in it and I don't have to respond to it." --> Archive it.
• "This email might be relevant at some point in the future. Maybe not, though." --> Archive it.
• "This person called, instant messaged, Facebook messaged, or Twitter DM'ed me with something I need to do." --> Add task to Things.
• "This reference "thing" is something I'll look at a lot (Weekly Review checklist, list of movies to watch, etc.)!" --> Stick it in Evernote.
• "This reference "thing" is something I probably won't ever look at again, but if I ended up needing it I won't be able to find it in Gmail or Google!" --> Stick it in Evernote.
• "I just had an incredible idea (or a mediocre idea) or remembered something I have to do later!" --> Add task to Things.
• "I just downloaded something I'll be using regularly for awhile!" --> Move it from Downloads folder to Dropbox if it's something I need to keep. Otherwise, Trash it after using it.
• "I just posted an article or turned in an assignment that had been sitting in Dropbox while I worked on it!" --> Move it to Evernote or Trash it.
• "I just created a new username and password for this website!" --> Click yes when 1Password asks if it should save it. Hit Command  + \ the next time I need to log in to this website.
• "I just bought something with my credit card!" --> Cool. Mint will keep track of it automatically. Check it monthly to make sure nothing funky is going on.
• "I just got some information that I have no idea what to do with!" --> Create a new task in Things that says "figure out what to do about X."

There are probably other instances that I'm forgetting. This probably also looks very confusing but you have to remember that most of these things happen many times every day. It's gotten to the point where I immediately recognize where I keep any kind of information and I don't have to think about where I should stick it any longer. Plus, if you know the keyboard shortcuts for your various programs it ends up being super easy and quick to do all of this.

One of the biggest things that has moved my personal development and productivity forward is realizing that I do dumb things sometimes. Noticing immediately when I do dumb things and then figuring out ways to fix it has made a huge difference. Do you do dumb things? Have you changed your behavior or habits to take care of it? I'd love to hear about your methods in the comments.

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The Life Reboot

I recently decided to wipe the slate and start my blog from scratch. However, there are some articles from my past that I'd like to update and reintroduce to the blog. For the next several weeks, I'll be sharing some of these articles. If you've been following my writing since the beginning of The Simpler Life, you may recognize some of them. More than likely, however, this will be brand new content to you.

Habit change has been written about to death and back. Anything you could ever want to know about how to change a habit can be quickly found by heading over to Zen Habits or spending about .3 seconds on Google. I'm not here to rehash that old topic again. However, I do want to talk about a specific type of habit that I've been working on recently.

A default is the setting something reverts to. It's the original configuration that you're stuck with originally. When it comes to computers, defaults are generally what feels like "normal." Lots of people like to tweak the defaults that a new computer comes with to better suit their needs. However, computers aren't the only thing with default settings. People have defaults, too. We all have the automatic actions we take without thinking about in our lives. Our defaults are what we do when we aren't thinking about what we're doing. Are you still operating with factory-set defaults? Do you think it's time for a little customization?

How many of your defaults are affecting your life in a positive way?

 A couple months ago I sat down and took a serious look at what my defaults were. I didn't like what I saw.

• My default behavior when I was bored was to check Twitter, Reddit, or my email.
• My default emotion when I received criticism was defensiveness.
• My default activity when I got out of bed in the morning was to plop down in front of my computer.
• My default decision when I was procrastinating seemed to be pretty similar to my boredom default.

For every stimulus in your life you have a default reaction. What do you seem to automatically reach for when you get hungry in the middle of the day? Do you crack open a soda every time you get thirsty? It's 2:30 in the afternoon and you're tired, what do you always seem to automatically do?

Defaults can be very destructive if they aren't set to help you. There's no reason they have to be negative, though. In fact, harnessing and changing your defaults for the better is one of the most powerful things you can do to make a lasting positive change in your life. If you can mindlessly do something positive every time your default action is triggered, you are going to be in a much better position -- and you won't even realize you're doing something incredibly positive. Default actions are mindless so why not make them as positive as possible?

After I took stock of the negative defaults I wanted to change, I started systematically improving them one at a time. This is where the traditional advice about changing habits comes into play.

Now, my new list of default actions looks something like this:

• When I'm bored I automatically pick up a book or my latest writing project.
• When I'm criticized, I take a step back and decide if it's valuable feedback.
• When I get out of bed in the morning, I pour a cup of coffee and read for half an hour.
• When I get hungry in the middle of the day, I drink a big glass of water.

 By changing my default behavior I've been able to add a huge dose of positive change into my life without having to think about it every time. It's just automatic. Once you've put forward the energy and the effort to change your default you are essentially reaping the rewards for free from that point forward.

How to reset your default settings

If you want to start profiting from your defaults instead of being hurt by them you need to do two things. First, figure out what your defaults are. Think about all the various triggers you face throughout the day that automatically make you do something. What do you do when you get up in the morning? What do you do when you get to work? What do you do when you turn on your computer?

Once you've made a list of your defaults you need to decide which ones to change. Don't bite off more than you can chew by trying to change too many of them at once. In fact, just do one at a time. It's not easy to break a default and if you spread your focus across many of them then you won't be able to break them. Start practicing your new default every time you hit that specific trigger. You'll have to think about it for awhile. In fact, I made sure I had constant visual reminders about what my new default was supposed to be. For example, when I was trying to break the default of always opening my email and Twitter when I opened my browser, I changed the settings so that it would automatically open my Google Docs first. That way I'd be reminded that if I'm just trying to distract myself from being bored, I should probably do some writing instead. Leave yourself notes wherever you're likely to see them until your new default becomes automatic.

I'd love to hear about the defaults you've broken in the past and your new, more positive, alternatives in the comments!

Freedom On My Terms

Freedom is a word that drives almost everything I do. When I graduated from BGSU in 2009 and began the search for a teaching job, I don't think I had a very good handle on just how important this concept was to me. Teaching is an incredibly difficult profession that I respect to an almost reverant degree -- but it certainly isn't marked by a high amount of freedom. I quickly realized this when I took a good look at my schedule and realized there was no physical way for me to go to the bathroom for about four hours during my teaching day. There just wasn't time for me to go between classes due to the unhappy circumstances of classroom location and absurdly short passing time between bells.

For me, freedom is waking up every morning and getting to work on something that is mine. Not necessarily all day and it doesn't mean never doing anything for anyone else, but working on something borne of my own creativity and devotion. That led to the creation of this website and the growth of my business. It led me to graduate school to study the scientific discipline that helps me better understand how to help people. It explains why I'm sitting in a coworking space in Prague as I write this, working in the midst of other people who by choice or by circumstance are working for themselves. It's why the top of my list of research ideas sits the equation, "meaningful work = meaningful life". We spend the vast majority of our lives working. I want to help people make sure they're getting the most out of that time.

Freedom can be scary and not everybody values it as highly as I do. I certainly respect those who value the security of a salaried job and regular paycheck. I'm just glad I figured out that wasn't for me before I had bought so completely into the system that says that's what you're supposed to do that I never could've fought my way out. I'm excited that by creating my own freedom I can help other people find their freedom. Whether that's starting a business of their own or carving out their own definiton of freedom while working for someone else. I'm not here to define freedom for anyone -- only to help people find it once they've defined it for themselves.

Freedom. It's not a matter of being able to work from anywhere or never doing anything for anybody else. It's not about sticking it to the man or raging against the machine. It's about knowing what I'm good at, what I like to do, and combining them in a way that helps people and allows me to earn a simple living. Sometimes freedom is not knowing what the hell I'm doing or how I'm going to make something work. It can be a cycle between great ideas and difficult/impossible execution that can seem like a perverse perpetual motion machine of frustration.

But I wouldn't trade it for anything. And you shouldn't trade your freedom, whatever it means to you, for anything either.

Happy Independence Day to all my fellow American readers. Regardless of your national origin, think a little bit about what freedom means to you today. Can you take a step in a direction that will make you more free? Can I help?

Putting a Number on the Entirety of Your Existence

I recently decided to wipe the slate and start my blog from scratch. However, there are some articles from my past that I'd like to update and reintroduce to the blog. For the next several weeks, I'll be sharing some of these articles. If you've been following my writing since the beginning of The Simpler Life, you may recognize some of them. More than likely, however, this will be brand new content to you.

The most scarce resource in the world isn’t oil, water, or anything else you can wrap your hands around. You could make an argument for Time, but I’d like to take it even a step further. 

Our ability to pay attention to is truly what our lives consist of. What we allow to have our attention in terms of thoughts, observations, and actions is completely non-refundable and non-renewable. How much of our lives is spent barely attending to what is happening around us and how much of it is spent truly immersed in what has our attention?

In class last week, Professor Czikszentmihalyi spent a substantial amount of time talking about how what we choose to attend to will make up the details of our lives. In order to really drive the point home he took us through the following progression:

Studies have shown that you can attend to 5-7 bits of information “at a time.” A bit of information is any sensation, thought or other piece of information that enters your consciousness. “At a time” refers to about 1/15 of a second. With this information you can then extrapolate how many bits of information you can handle per minute, per hour, per day, and per year. Multiply that number by the average life expectancy and you can get a rough estimate of how many bits of information you can attend to in your entire life. In class, that number came out to 150 billion bits. That sounds like a huge number, but is it?

When talking about the entirety of everything you could possibly experience, think, or do over the course of your lifetime that number starts to look much smaller. Putting a number on the limit of human experience is a very humbling exercise.

 The take away from this activity, then, is to think about how you’re going to utilize the limited amount of attention that you have at your disposal. Basically, are you going to fill your attention or are you going to allow it to be filled?

What’s the difference?

Allowing Your Attention to Be Dictated

• Mindlessly watching television: It takes approximately 60 bits/second to understand human speech. Think about the number of bits of information that you’re using every time you plop into the front of the television to watch something inane. Those are bits you’ll never get back and can never be used on something to make your life more enjoyable.
• Not living in a way aligned with your values: Your values help provide order and priority to the way you spend your bits of attention. Figuring out what you truly care about on a basic level and then aligning your actions and your attention with those values is almost a surefire path to increased wellbeing.

Controlling Your Attention

• Approaching each moment mindfully: The bits of information that make up your life will be used up regardless of whether or not you’re aware of them. Not approaching each second of your life mindfully, with an awareness and appreciation of the moment, means that your attention is being squandered away. Take a moment to step back and ask yourself what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, and what you’re experiencing. Try to make mindfulness a part of your life.
• Participating in active vs. passive leisure: Most people spend about a third of their waking hours in some sort of leisure pursuit. Obviously, not all leisure is created equally. Dr. Czikszentmihalyi has done research that has shown people who pursue active leisure activities vs. passive leisure report more instances of flow, more happiness, and greater overall wellbeing. Active leisure is characterized by the pursuit of intrinsically motivating hobbies and the intentional use of attention. Passive leisure is characterized by lethargy, decreased happiness, and decreased mental activity. Try to pick active leisure as much as possible.

The main take away from this idea of attention management is that we are all given essentially the same number of bits of information to utilize in our lives. We must approach our understanding of attention with the knowledge that we control it. At the end of our lives, the totality of our life will be the way we used our 170 billion bits of information. The more bits that you directly controlled, experienced, and chose, the better off you’ll inevitably be.

How do you control and develop your attention? Are there any strategies you’ve used that have been helpful?

Is Your Passion Making You Unhappy?

"Follow your passion," they say. It's one of those pieces of advice that sounds good. Obviously, nobody is actually going to tell you to do something you hate, right? Don't worry -- I'm not here to burst that bubble with some sort of counter-intuitive psychology research. Instead, I'm here to ask if you're approaching your passions in the right way. Robert Vallerand and his associates published a paper in 2007 that looks at the Dual Model of Passion and found some interesting results. The Dual Model of Passion essentially says there are two types of passion, harmonious passion and obsessive passion. As you might expect, people with harmonious passion seem to have better outcomes than those with obsessive passion. 

Passion, in general, is defined as a strong inclination toward an activity that you like (or love), find to be important, in which you spend time and energy, and which comes to be internalized as part of your identity. If you're passionate about playing guitar you're likely to define yourself as a "guitarist." Passionate video game players are "gamers" and people who feel passionately about dancing think of themselves as "dancers." That's what it means to internalize something as part of your identity. Passion is fine, as long as it develops in a healthy way.

 Obsessive passion results from what is called a "controlled internalization of the activity." Basically, you tie social acceptance ("I do this because other people like me more when I do it") or self-esteem ("I'm a better person when I do this") to the activity. What develops is an unhealthy obsession to execute the activity even at the expense of your social relationships or work commitments. The real kicker, however, is that you probably won't even feel very good while you're partaking in your passion if you have an obsessive orientation to it. You'll likely feel guilty while you're doing it ("I shouldn't be doing this right now") and have trouble engaging with the activity (or entering flow).

Harmonious passion, on the other hand, is marked by "autonomous internalization" of the activity into your identity. There are no contingencies on doing the activity and you're free to choose whether or not to do it. The activity still occupies a significant amount of time but it does not overpower your identity. The real bonus is that if you have a harmonious passion approach you're likely to feel happier when you're doing the activity and be more likely to become fully immersed in the activity.

Anders Ericsson's 10,000-hours-of-practice-makes-an-expert (deliberate practice, remember) research is pretty much accepted nowadays thanks to Malcolm Gladwell. To practice something so consistently, especially considering deliberate practice is rarely fun in itself, obviously requires passion. According to this paper, it looks like both obsessive and harmonious passion can result in performance attainment (being a master guitar player, artist, or athlete, for example). Both types of passion positively correlate with deliberate practice and that is the most important factor in reaching goals. However, the path from passion to actually achieving a concrete goal is much more direct with harmonious passion.

 If you care about something deeply, strive for harmonious passion. If you have this type of passion you focus almost exclusively on mastery goals (getting good at the activity itself -- not the results of being good at the activity). When you care about mastery goals, you focus your attention and time on activities that lead to performance improvement. For example, you practice guitar because you love playing the guitar and not because you want to be a rich rock star. Mastery goals lead to deliberate practice which eventually allows performance attainment to happen. As a nice added bonus, your subjective well-being (happiness) is likely to be high and you're likely to experience flow.

On the other hand, you can care deeply about something and have an obsessive passion toward it. In this case the path to your ultimate goal is not so straightforward. You pursue a variety of goals including mastery (like people with harmonious passion) but you also care about not appearing less capable as compared to other people (performance-avoidance goal). Your focus on mastery goals will help you in your quest for performance attainment but because you're also worried about not appearing less capable than the people around you, you progress more slowly in your development as an expert. You may eventually reach whatever your ultimate goal is, but it'll likely take you longer, you won't be very happy while you do it and you won't have fully enjoyed yourself in the process of becoming an expert.  

Think about the things you're passionate about. How do you feel when you can't partake in them? Do you feel lost and irritable or are you able to move on with your day and not let it bother you too much? Do you enjoy the time you spend in your passion or do you feel guilty when you're doing it because you should be doing something else? The sign of a healthy passion is something you love to do for the sake of doing it, not because you think it will provide the path to some kind of external goal later on.  

If you're concerned that your passion is perhaps entering the obsessive realm (or already has), it's worth thinking about how you can align it to be more harmonious with your life. Not only will you enjoy the time you spend doing it more, you're likely to reach your end goal of mastery quicker. A win-win situation if there ever was one.

Do you have any stories about a passion that ended up becoming obsessive and the effect it had on your life? Have you successfully navigated the path between obsessive and harmonious passion? I'd love to hear about your experiences in the comments below.

Reference

Vallerand, R. J., Salvy, S.-J., Mageau, G. A., Elliot, A. J., Denis, P. L., Grouzet, F. M. E. and Blanchard, C. (2007), On the Role of Passion in Performance. Journal of Personality, 75: 505–534. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2007.00447.x

The Simple Truths of Happiness from the Dalai Lama

I recently decided to wipe the slate and start my blog from scratch. However, there are some articles from my past that I'd like to update and reintroduce to the blog. For the next several weeks, I'll be sharing some of these articles. If you've been following my writing since the beginning of The Simpler Life, you may recognize some of them. More than likely, however, this will be brand new content to you.

There are few people in the world as qualified that people turn to for advice and insight on happiness than the Dalai Lama. As the living spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, the Dalai Lama has seen and lived through the dislocation of his country and people. Despite the difficult events he has lived through, most people would agree that it is impossible to not feel happier after being in his presence. He will tell you that happiness is the purpose of life and that "the very motion of our life is towards happiness." In this book, The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama expounds on day-to-day anxiety, insecurity, anger, discouragement and other difficulties common to all human beings. In a series of conversations with Dr. Howard Cutler in Arizona and India as well as excerpts from a speaking engagement in Phoenix, the Dalai Lama provides interesting insights into the problems that we all face.

I read this book a long time ago and on top of simply recommending it, I thought I would pick and expand a few quotes from the text that spoke to me. Each of these ideas is resoundingly simple yet speaks volumes to attaining happiness. 

1. "I believe that happiness can be achieved through training the mind.": I think this quote is incredibly optimistic and hopeful. Many of us operate under the assumption that our happiness is dictated by outside circumstances; when I get the raise I'll be happy or when I get accepted into this top-ranked university I'll be happy. The beautiful thing about this quote is that if you believe it, you have complete control over your own level of happiness. It may not be particularly easy to develop that mental discipline or control, but it's attainable through practice and training. Removing the external control of our happiness and placing it within something we can control, our own mind, is absolutely huge to achieving lasting happiness.
2. "Unhappiness...comes to each of us because we think ourselves at the center of the world, because we have the miserable conviction that we alone suffer to the point of unbearable intensity.": It is easy to shut the world out of our thoughts when we are unhappy. Our focus turns inward until we can only see our own sorrows and situation; our perspective narrows. If we can train ourselves to prevent this narrowing at times of difficulty our unhappiness will lose its acuteness. Most importantly, I think this quote speaks to the power of letting other people help us in times of sorrow and difficulty.
3. "It's the very struggle of life that makes us who we are. And it is our enemies that test us, provide us with the resistance necessary for growth.": If we lived in a world without difficulty, without enemies, nobody would grow. You can't grow your muscles without resistance-- that's why hockey players will skate with weights on their feet during practice. That's why you read difficult books and that's why difficult situations provide the greatest opportunity for growth. I like to interpret the "enemies" in the above quote in very broad terms. I don't really think I have any enemies in the true sense of the word but I do have plenty of goals, events, and situations that can provide the same resistance as enemies. They are enemies of my own choosing, but they still spur me toward growth. Cherish your enemies, your difficult tasks, and anything that pushes you out of your comfort zone.

The book continues to expound on these, and many other, ideas. As I read it, I think what struck me the most was that even though the Dalai Lama is a spiritual/religious leader, his advice on attaining happiness is rational and based on solid observation. As somebody who doesn't put much stock in any kind of organized religion, I wasn't sure if the Dalai Lama would have much to say that would resonate with me. However, there is nothing religious about training our minds to respond to stimuli in a positive manner, broadening our focus to other people in times of unhappiness and embracing the difficult aspects of life while using them as a basis for growth.

I did a little housekeeping over the weekend and updated the About, Coaching, and Books pages. Everything is fresh and ready for you to take a look. I also added buttons to sign up for the RSS feed and email subscription to the right sidebar. If you don't want to miss an article, signing up for one of those two options is a good idea.
 

I also started up my Weekly Video Update series again. Each weekend I record myself talking about what's on my mind the most for a couple minutes. You can watch this week's video and see all other recorded videos by clicking here. The latest video can always be found in the right sidebar on SamSpurlin.com as well.

Predictors of Success: Grit

Over the past couple of months I've become very interested in what factors predict success. Traditionally, and according to most public schools today, IQ is the primary predictor of success. If you have a high IQ you should be set up for success later in life, right? It doesn't take too much digging to find a boat load of anecdotal and empirical evidence to refute that, though. How many intellectually powerful people do you know that haven't really achieved any measure of success? Most of us have that one cousin that could do differential calculus in his sleep but fills his days with Cheetos and pot instead of solving complex problems for NASA. There's definitely more to success than being smart. Considering it appears that a large part of our IQ is genetic, the fact that it's not the primary predictor of success should make you pretty happy (unless you're a Cheeto eating pot head).

One of the predictors of success I was introduced to this year is "grit." Grit was developed by a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania named Angela Duckworth. She defined it as "perseverance and passion toward long-term goals." She developed a scale to measure this trait and has administered it to some interesting groups of people with fascinating results. For example, she gave incoming West Point freshmen her grit scale and then observed which of them made it through Beast Barracks (the mentally and physically exhausting summer training before freshman year begins). Obviously, West Point has a lot riding on selecting students that they think will do well in the unique military environment the school provides. Selecting students that end up dropping out of school because they can't handle the environment is a serious pain for the school. Now, back to Duckworth and her grit scale. Those students who scored high on her grit scale before Beast Barracks ended up being much more likely to not drop out during or immediately after the experience. Those who scored low on the scale were much more likely to bow out in the middle of that first summer. The most interesting aspect of this study, however, was that Duckworth's grit scale predicted success much more than any of the tests West Point administers. More than SAT score, more than any IQ test, and more than any proprietary test they've developed.

Interesting, eh? However, I understand you probably aren't going to be doing anything as strenuous as Beast Barracks any time soon. The grit scale has also been given to Ivy League undergraduates and high level spelling bee contestants. In both cases, the grit scale predicted success more than anything else. In the case of the Ivy League undergraduates, scoring high on the grit scale correlated with higher GPAs when they graduated than SAT scores and for the spelling bee contestants scoring high on the grit scale resulted in greater success than even a test of their verbal intelligence. Having a high level of perseverance and passion for long term goals seems to result in some pretty excellent results.

The next obvious question, then, is how do you develop grit? From my research experience, it doesn't look like there has been a lot of scientifically rigorous studies about how to systematically develop grit in a specific population. Logically, however, it seems like having an opportunity to experience failure and then bounce back from it is a good way to learn how to stick to a long-term goal. In fact, the New York Times recently published an article about a prestigious New York private school that has made the development of character strengths like grit a cornerstone of their philosophy. To encourage this, teachers have been encouraged to cut back on the amount of homework they assign and to provide students more experiential learning opportunities with legitimate chances of failure. This can be seriously uncomfortable for highly intelligent kids (and their parents) who are used to flying through homework assignments and dominating standardized tests. More work needs to be done on specific interventions and programs that directly develop grit, but this seems to be a step in the right direction.

Everyday life, however, doesn't necessarily promote the development of grit. One of the major barriers to developing this character strength is information overload. Our attention is under unprecedented siege right now. Considering it is truly our most valuable resource, it's in high demand by advertisers, entertainment outlets, and, hopefully, ourselves. The problem with this information overload is that it's incredibly difficult to keep our attention fixated on one task or project for very long. Nowadays, when things start to get difficult there is always a plethora of other options and activities we can undertake. Particularly in an economy centered on "knowledge work" it is incredibly easy to keep jumping from one project to another. I'm sure you're familiar with the rush of motivation and excitement that accompanies starting something new. While super helpful for getting new projects off the ground, that response isn't very helpful for developing grit.

Overall, grit is a relatively newly defined construct that is still in its formative years. More work needs to be done on learning how to measure it accurately, differentiating it from perseverance, and developing empirically validated ways to nurture it in various populations. If the early research is any marker, though, it appears to be an exciting way to predict success. If future research shows that grit is more a matter of learning and development instead of genetically set, schools, other youth institutions, and organizations committed to developing employees must take note. 

For now, I'll keep my nose to the grind stone and keep working on the projects that matter most to me even when things go poorly. With a name like "grit" the name itself precludes any expectation for it to be a smooth ride in development.

References:

Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of personality and social psychology, 92(6), 1087-101.

Make Yourself Uncomfortable to Unlock Your Subconscious Mind

I recently decided to wipe the slate and start my blog from scratch. However, there are some articles from my past that I'd like to update and reintroduce to the blog. For the next several weeks, I'll be sharing some of these articles. If you've been following my writing since the beginning of The Simpler Life, you may recognize some of them. More than likely, however, this will be brand new content to you.

In The Talent Code, a book about figuring out how to become an expert at something, author Daniel Coyle discovered that many training facilities in talent hotbeds, geographic areas that produced an unusual number of people with world-class talent, tend to be run-down, shabby, and nearly dilapidated. He said that if all of the training grounds of all the talent hotbeds he visited were magically assembled into a single mega-hotbed facility it would "…resemble a shantytown. Its buildings would be makeshift, corrugated-roofed affairs, its walls paint-bald, its fields weedy and uneven."

What Coyle uncovered, according to John Bargh, a psychologist at Yale University, is what's called the Scrooge Principle. It states that "our unconscious mind is a stingy banker of energy reserves, keeping its wealth locked in a vault. Direct pleas to open the vault don't work; Scrooge can't be fooled that easily. But when he's hit with the right combination of primal cues-- when he's visited by a series of primal-cue ghosts, you might say-- the tumblers click, the vault of energy flies open, and suddenly it's Christmas Day." Training in a gorgeous, state-of-the-art facility does not provide any of the primal cues needed to trick our subconscious into unlocking that energy vault. Bargh says, "If we're in a nice, easy, pleasant environment, we naturally shut off effort. Why work? But if people get the signal that it's rough, they get motivated now. A nice, well-kept tennis academy gives them the luxury future right now-- of course they'd be demotivated. They can't help it."

How can you make your environment more conducive to unlocking your energy vault? What can you learn from the Scrooge Principle?

1. Create adversity for yourself: The best talent hotbeds are not extremely pleasant places to be-- by design (sometimes). The mind is cued to work harder. What can you do to make your own working environment a little less luxurious? If you're a writer, is it possible to shut off the Internet and only access it for a short time each day? When I was Internet-less in my old apartment for about 6 months, I saw my creativity and production sky-rocket. Try working without the air-conditioning for a week or use a couple blankets to keep warm at night instead of a heater. It may seem silly or counter-intuitive but making your environment less comfortable might be a great first step toward developing your own talent.
2. Use the simplest tools available: Youth baseball in the Dominican Republic does not have the fancy equipment or specialized training tools that many elite baseball teams have in the United States. In the Dominican, athletes use the simplest equipment. I remember when I was 11 or 12 I played a couple exhibition games against a youth hockey team from Russia. They were all using wooden sticks (everybody on my team was using expensive composite sticks), and old equipment. My teammates and I thought we would dominate them. We quickly discovered that top of the line equipment was not needed to be a good hockey player and we were soundly beat several times. In your own work, what is the simplest tool that you can use and still be productive? If you're a writer, try writing with a piece of paper and a pen for awhile. Try running without your iPod or even shoes. Use the simplest tools available.
3. Focus on your core competency: At the Spartak Tennis Club in Moscow, a club that produced more top-twenty-ranked women than the entire United States did from 2005-2007, students spend hours practicing without tennis balls. They call it itimitatsiya and it develops the core competency of every tennis player: their swing. If you are a writer, write. If you are a runner, run. If you are a painter, paint. It can be easy to get caught up in the related yet non-essential tasks that your work creates. If I'm not careful I can find myself spending my time researching an article much longer than is truly necessary. Formatting my writing is important; but, not nearly as important as actually writing. Connecting with other writers via Twitter may be mildly productive, but it's not writing. Reading about running may be inspirational, but it's not going to make you suddenly able to run a marathon. Mastering the component parts of your activity is what will make you improve just like the tennis players practicing their swing without balls. What distractions can you eliminate from your working environment. 

Your subconscious is an extremely powerful component of your mind. Learning to setup your own working environment like some of the greatest talent hotbeds in the world; the run-down baseball fields of the Dominican Republic or the dilapidated shack of the Spartak Tennis Club in Moscow, can help unlock the energy you need to develop your own talent. Send yourself the primal cues that you haven't made it yet, you aren't living the high life, you aren't a master of all you do, and you will be closer to the world-class talent that you desire.

The Role of Curation in a True GTD System

Today's post is all about David Allen's personal management system called Getting Things Done. If you aren't familiar with it, you may want to read the book, or at least the Wikipedia article first.

I've seen a lot of chatter recently in the blogs I follow about whether GTD is "good" for creatives. As an ardent follower of David Allen's seminal personal management system, I must say I feel compelled to share my thoughts. If this little flare up had happened a couple of months ago, I probably would've been right in the thick of defending canonical GTD. I've had a lot of success using the system to help me manage my student teaching experience, my long-term substitute teaching experience, coaching a college hockey team, starting graduate school, starting a business and a multitude of small and medium-sized projects in between. GTD has been my stalwart companion during this entire time. However, I realized even though it may seem like a lot when it's all listed out like that, each of these times of my life usually featured one or two major projects that spawned smaller projects. I've always had a lot to do, but up until recently I've never felt that my ability to manage the sheer number of possibilities has been tested. Now? Things are different. 

Graduate school seems to have the unique property of providing exponentially more (quantitatively) and more interesting projects the better work you do. The more I buckled down on my rock solid implementation of GTD, the more opportunities I had for really interesting projects. It's cool to have things to choose from, but this pattern is not sustainable. Eventually something had to break; either me or my system (or both).

I became bogged down in the details of following up on my huge list of available projects. I spent more time making sure I had next actions defined than I did actually doing the work. Let me stop you right now if you're a GTD fan because I know what your counterargument is going to be. This isn't a failure of the system, it's a failure in my ability to be crystal clear about what's true for me right now in terms of how much I can really accept on my proverbial work plate. It's a failure of priority, not the system. However, being a staunch follower of GTD led me to feel I could accept anything and everything because I had become so good at handling the never-ending stream of information. I felt like I could take something else on because I had a very clear sense of what I've currently committed to. I just had a bad case of eyes-bigger-than-my-stomach syndrome. Because I always knew what the next action was for any of the projects in my system, every time I sat down to work on one project all I could think about was how I should be doing any number of other projects (and not on an amorphous level -- I knew what the next actions were for each of them). It resulted in me flitting from project to project on a typical day, knocking out next actions and slowly, achingly slowly, moving my entire retinue of projects toward completion.

Something needed to change and last week I made those changes. First, it was simply a matter of ending commitments to those activities and responsibilities that weren't fulfilling me in the way they should (beating them with my GTD club in MacSparky parlance). Then, it was committing to one area of responsibility, or even better, one project, for an entire day and scheduling out my week in advance. Immediately I stopped feeling like I needed to be working on projects X, Y, and Z every time I sat down to do A. I think my brain realized I had already slotted myself time to work on those projects later in the week so I was finally free to bring my mental power to bear on one project. I'm currently tweaking this approach as it turns out some areas of responsibility, while important, can't fill an entire day. For the upcoming week I'm trying breaking my day into two chunks, Morning and Afternoon. Each chunk gets an area of responsibility or a specific project. Friday is mostly for taking care of whatever is on my mind at the most at that time.

This may not work if you don't have the benefit of having some serious control over how you spend your time. Luckily, since I'm not currently in classes and I'm largely self-employed so I can decide what my days look like to a very large extent. Another test to this early modification of my GTD implementation will be when mission critical information for non-active projects enter my awareness (like an important email to move forward my TEDx planning that arrives on a non-TEDx work day). Will I be able to resist the urge to throw my plan to the wayside and dive back into a certain project? If that's on my mind should i even be trying to ignore it or save it for another day? I haven't figured it all out yet, but I feel better about where I am now as compared to a couple weeks ago.

And the ultimate conclusion from all of this, obviously, is that GTD really wasn't the problem. Losing the critical eye that helped me differentiate between "hell yeah!" and "eh, I guess," is what resulted in me resenting my GTD system. I don't use a canonical GTD system anymore. I can't remember the last time I used a context list and I can't tell you the natural planning model off the top of my head, but that's okay. GTD is much more a system of behaviors than it is an external "thing" that has to be maintained.

What it comes down to is that I became so good at keeping track of everything happening to me I stopped asking myself what was actually necessary to do my most important, and best, work. At some point I lost the curation process and turned my GTD system into a database of everything in my life, not a reflection of my true priorities and values.

This isn't a matter of a system that's good or bad for one type of person or another -- it's a matter of figuring out what matters for you and creating something that allows you to do more of it.

Distraction is Procrastination

I recently decided to wipe the slate and start my blog from scratch. However, there are some articles from my past that I'd like to update and reintroduce to the blog. For the next several weeks, I'll be sharing some of these articles. If you've been following my writing since the beginning of The Simpler Life, you may recognize some of them. More than likely, however, this will be brand new content to you. 

Procrastination is often more about distraction than anything else. When you are easily distracted, or there are many things that can distract you nearby, it is easy to procrastinate. With the new year I'm sure many people will be resolving to stop procrastinating. Whether that means your job, school work, or other tasks you need to get done but can't seem to sit down and do, procrastination is a killer. Instead of resolving to end your procrastination, try resolving to eliminate distractions instead. In my experience, distractions are the true culprit. If you've trained your mind and prepared your environment, the distractions are removed and the procrastination seems to fade away.

What distracts you? When you sit down to do some serious work, what do you find yourself doing instead? My biggest distractions come to the fore when I try to write. My biggest ones are:

• The need for order: If I sit down to do something that is not particularly easy (like write a blog post or prepare a lesson plan) I immediately seem to realize that my surroundings are out of order. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't bother me too much that my books are not in alphabetical order or my pens are not arranged in my drawer by level of remaining ink. As soon as I sit down to write, however, I have an incredible (and utterly useless) urge to clean, organize or put things in order. It never fails.

• Perfectionism: How can I expect to write an article when I haven't picked the perfect title?! How am I supposed to plan a lesson on World War II if I haven't found the perfect opening question or activity?! I can't use this PowerPoint presentation because all of the pictures are not perfectly aligned! That battle between attention to detail and perfectionism is one that quite often will stymie me from doing anything particularly productive. Breaking out of that commitment to perfectionism is incredibly important to getting anything done.

• My own inadequacies: Writing for this blog has made this a new distraction for me. I've always been pretty good at the things I try to do. I was a pretty good hockey player. I was an excellent student. However, I've never written for an audience (even the small one I've been able to accumulate at this blog). How can I sit down and write about this stuff when a.) I'm not very good at the stuff I write about (even though I think about it a lot and try to implement it) and b.) there are so many other blogs out there with huge readerships and really interesting things to say. 

• The need for constant new information: This might be the number one distraction that constantly begs for my attention. Checking email, checking my RSS feeds, Twitter, instant messaging, and news websites all provide little shots of stimulation that aren't particularly important but take up an disproportionate amount of my time. One of the biggest "tips" that I've discovered I need to do to do anything particularly productive or difficult is to turn all of that off. All of it. No texting, no Twitter, no email, nothing. Breaking the hold that these services have over my attention is something that I work on everyday. Anything that breaks up your attention is something that takes away from you doing truly great and important work. It's tough, but get rid of it as much as possible. 

Lastly, I realize the irony of writing an article about distraction when the chances are  I'm distracting you by writing this article.  Please forgive me for taking a few minutes of your time. However, if this has gotten you to think a little bit more about the role distractions play in your work, I think this initial time investment might be worth it. Now stop being distracted and go do what you know you're supposed to do!

The Science of Self Improvement

Steven Handel of the website The Emotion Machine has recently released his first e-book titled, The Science of Self Improvement. Knowing my proclivity for science and self improvement, he graciously forwarded me a copy for my own perusal. I think it's one of the better e-books I've had the good fortune to read and I'd like to share my thoughts.

First, The Emotion Machine was actually one of the first blogs I started to read. Steven started it 5 months before I started The Simpler Life and I remember being super impressed with the content and overall quality of the site. Steven seemed like a superstar to me and I can honestly say I used him as one of my role models when I began this whole writing on the Internet adventure. Steven has continued to keep up the great work and has turned to an even more scientific focus doing a great job breaking down and exploring ideas and articles that are normally locked up in academic circles. I think we have similar goals in making what can sometimes be difficult scientific writing and ideas more accessible to a greater number of people.

This e-book spans the gamut of what you might expect in a book about self improvement featuring chapters on beliefs, emotional intelligence, changing habits, work and leisure, relationships, and the ever important connection between physical and mental health. Nothing too out of the ordinary with that list of topics, except I rarely see people attacking the topic of beliefs and how they create our map of reality. It's an important concept that is a cornerstone of neurolinguistic programming (which many psychologists, although probably less than 10 years ago) might balk at seeing in a book with "science" in the title. Regardless, I really enjoyed that chapter and think Steven did a good job unpacking how important our beliefs are. Starting the book with this topic was a good idea because our beliefs form the bedrock of any self improvement effort.

More generally, the book is very well-written with minimal typos and grammatical errors (a feat that many e-books I read never accomplish). The design is understated and simple which keeps the focus on the writing and ideas instead of photographic distractions or silly design elements.

My primary point of criticism is that for a book with "science" in the title I'd like to see more focus on actual empirical studies and more diligent citation of where his information is coming from. The sections where he was able to point to specific psychologists or studies stand out as the strongest in the book. However, not all of the facts he presents in the book are accompanied by some kind of information where you could follow up their scientific validity. At the same time, I never read something and found myself thinking, "Well that's just not right," (again, a somewhat rare occurrence in most of the e-books I read). Of course, I'm not an expert on all of the topics Steven wrote about, either.

I'm comfortable admitting that my primary beef with the book probably comes from the fact that I'm currently in graduate school and I mostly read academic write-ups of studies or experiments. I understand that a book aimed at a general audience isn't going to have the same level of citation as an academic piece of writing. I just know that a lot of the ideas that get thrown around in general self improvement books sometimes seems to just seem like common sense and for whatever reason get bandied about without any sort of scientific basis. I can assume that most of what Steven writes in this book is correct (or close enough to correct as to not cause problems) but without better citations I can't be 100% certain. At any rate, I don't think there's anything in there that will assuredly mess you up, so you can mostly dismiss this part of the critique as the annoying rants of someone who gets chewed out by his professors for writing anything that can't be scientifically supported.

The e-book is on sale now and you can head over to The Emotion Machine to check it out. The full package is selling for $29.99 and includes the e-book (PDF, 112 pgs.), Meditation Guide: 8 Exercises for Improving Awareness in Your Everyday Life (PDF), a 1-month subscription to the Growing Minds Community and free lifetime updates to the e-book. Steven was kind enough to set up an affiliate program for his e-book, which means if you buy it using this link I receive a few bucks for sending you his way.

Developing an Autotelic Personality, Or, How to Enjoy Everything

I recently decided to wipe the slate and start my blog from scratch. However, there are some articles from my past that I'd like to update and reintroduce to the blog. For the next several weeks, I'll be sharing some of these articles. If you've been following my writing since the beginning of The Simpler Life, you may recognize some of them. More than likely, however, this will be brand new content to you.

Imagine deriving the utmost enjoyment and pleasure out of nearly every aspect of your life.  Listening to music, doing dishes, talking to a friend, cooking a meal, or doing errands--what if you looked forward to all of these activities equally? In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, he describes a type of person with an "autotelic" personality.  According to Csikszentmihalyi, "The term "autotelic" derives from two Greek words, auto, meaning self, and telos meaning goal.  It refers to a self-contained activity, one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward." 

Engaging in autotelic activities is what many people describe as "flow."  Think back to a time you were doing something you loved and really got wrapped up in the project.  You probably lost sense of time and you felt challenged, yet capable, of handling whatever you faced.  This is the making of an autotelic experience and the more of these occurrences we can have, the greater enjoyment we can get out of life.

Finding the Flow State

Some activities are conducive to entering this flow state.  For example, athletes and surgeons both report high levels of autotelic experiences while they partake in their professions.  The true test of an autotelic personality, however, is being able to enter that state of flow even while doing things that many people consider boring.  A person with an autotelic personality can take something as mundane as mowing the lawn and turn it into an opportunity for growth.  Therefore, the argument that developing an autotelic personality will directly impact your quality of life is quite easy to make.  Deriving true enjoyment out of every aspect of is the key to separating the quality of our lives from external (and therefore uncontrollable) forces.

Becoming somebody with an autotelic personality is not something that can be done overnight.  It must be actively practiced until it becomes part of your personality.  The rules are very simple and can be broken down as follows:

1. Setting goals: To experience flow you have to have clear goals to strive for.  This includes massive lifelong goals to something as small as figuring out what to do this afternoon.  An autotelic personality can make these decisions with a minimum of extra effort which allows her to focus energy on attaining that goal.
2. Becoming immersed in the activity: An autotelic personality will give all of his or her attention directly to the task at hand.  Being in control of your own attention is one of the most powerful skills a person can develop.  A wandering or constantly distracted mind is a the mercy of every passing stimulus and therefore attention is spread and diluted.
3. Learning to enjoy immediate experience: Our bodies and minds have incredible capabilities of enjoyment.  Gaining control of your mind opens an individual to experience almost anything and derive joy.  Every taste, smell, sound, thought, and observation can be the anchor of immediate enjoyment if we take the time, focus, and effort to experience it.

We all have amazing capabilities to control our level of enjoyment in everything we do.  Practicing the steps to developing an autotelic personality is a very concrete way to improve the quality of your own life. As Csikszentmihalyi writes, "Only direct control of experience, the ability to derive moment-by-moment enjoyment from everything we do, can overcome the obstacles to fulfillment." 

What can you do today to derive enjoyment in your life? 

Want to learn more about flow? Robert Wall of Untitled Minimalism interviewed me for his podcast and we spent most of the time talking about flow. Check it out here.

Attention to Detail vs. the Curse of Perfectionism

I recently decided to wipe the slate and start my blog from scratch. However, there are some articles from my past that I'd like to update and reintroduce to the blog. For the next several weeks, I'll be sharing some of these articles. If you've been following my writing since the beginning of The Simpler Life over two years ago, you may recognize some of them. More than likely, however, this will be brand new content to you. 

Originally I was going to write an article about how paying attention to detail and "going the extra mile" is a fairly simple way to make yourself stick out from the crowd. I still believe this, but I realized that it is a more complex issue than I initially thought. As with almost anything in life, there is a delicate balance between two extremes that must be negotiated. Attention to detail vs. the curse of perfectionism, a battle royale for information workers everywhere!

People like to be recognized for hard work. Everyone has their own reason for working hard, whether it be in the hopes of a promotion, to impress someone, or because of their own innate desire to do good work. Whatever the motivation, good work is the goal. In an environment where you might be vying for attention or prestige, taking the time to pay attention to the details of your work can be what separates you from the pack. When I student taught, I tried to make sure that all of the handouts I made for my students, all the presentations that I gave, and all the homework I assigned were free from grammatical and typographical errors and were very well formatted. When I was a student, I was always annoyed to receive a worksheet with a spelling error on it or when I had to look at a PowerPoint slide that looked like it was thrown together by a 2nd grader. I think these transgressions, albeit minor, really give off a sentiment of carelessness by the teacher. The last thing I want my students to think is that I'm careless or sloppy in my own preparation. How can I demand top-notch work from them if I can't demand top-notch work from myself?

However, this can be a dangerous and slippery slope. While attention to detail is important, obsession to detail is self-defeating. The saying, "The enemy of the good is the perfect," fits this concept very well. How many times have you been afraid to start a project because you got bogged down by the details? Have you ever had to write a paper and spent more than two seconds thinking about a title before having even typed a sentence? Or, on the flip side of that, have you ever felt like a project wasn't finished because you just had "one more little thing" to do to it?

I quickly discovered while I was student teaching that at some point I just had to admit to myself that my lesson might not be as perfect as I wanted it, but it would be suitable. I always wanted to add a couple more pictures to a slideshow, or look up a couple more facts for my lecture, or change the wording on my worksheets a little bit more. It was tough for me to admit that I would never create the perfect class materials, just like I would never be the perfect teacher or perfect anything else-- and that's OK.

So, how can I sit here in good conscience and tell you to pay attention to the details in order to stand out while simultaneously stating that striving for perfection is folly? I don't pretend to know where that equilibrium between the two extremes lies. I think I am constantly finding out for myself. Sometimes I feel like I should have spent more time on something, and sometimes I feel like I passed the "sweet spot" on a project several hours earlier. However, if you keep these two conflicting principles in mind I think you are much more likely to come closer to that ultimate balance.

My Intellectual Side: A Year of Graduate School Papers

I think a good place to begin my reentry into regularly scheduled writing is to show you guys what I've been up to since September. I wrote a fairly in-depth review of my first semester over at my other blog, process>product.  The latest semester featured three different classes including statistics (Applied Multiple Regression & Categorical Data Analysis), Applied Developmental Psychology, and Comparative Evaluation Theories and I'd like to think this semester was another positive step in my own development as a careful thinker and nuanced writer. I wasn't able to write for the blog very often because each semester featured several long writing assignments on top of the pages and pages of reading and other assignments I got to tackle each week. I'd like to share some of that writing with you. Here are the major papers (not including stats homework write-ups, which sometimes entered the realm of paper-length) from my first year of grad school. Feel free to download and read them at your leisure if you're curious:

1. Foundations of Positive Psychology - "The Rise of Coworking: Positive Psychology, Flow, and Meaningful Work" (download here) 

The capstone paper of my Foundations of Positive Psychology class was a 13-page effort investigating any concept we discussed in class and a proposal to do further research. I've been very interested in coworking for awhile now and have used it in several contexts (as you'll see) in my academic writing. In this paper I propose an introductory study to begin understanding why people seem to enjoy working in coworking spaces as opposed to home offices, libraries, or cafes. I look at the idea of cultivating flow in our work and how coworking spaces may facilitate that process. I also present an idea of thinking about coworking spaces as more than just places to work, but as hubs of positive psychology in the greater community. Looking back on the paper I realize my proposed research project is a little bit untenable, especially for an initial foray into the subject. It can be drastically improved by simplifying the overall approach and utilizing more of an exploratory method since it would be the first academic look at coworking. 

2. Introduction to Research Methods - "The Effects of Coworking on Subjective Well-Being" (download here)

This was kind of a strange paper. The final paper in this class was to simply write a research proposal on any topic we wished. However, this paper was kind of unique in that the actual content didn't matter (as long as it was fairly well-written and logical) because we were being graded on our ability to create a properly formatted APA-style paper. I write about the research proposal I discussed in the above paper in greater detail. Kind of a strange paper, but another example of how I'm using the idea of coworking and coworking spaces to advance positive psychology. BONUS: The Prezi for the presentation I gave to my class.

3. Foundations of Evaluation - "An Evaluation of American Development Model Implementation" (download here)

This class was my first foray into the science of evaluation. Our professor was possibly the most eminent evaluation scholar alive and his class was incredibly difficult to follow. Our final assignment was to describe the way we would evaluation a fictional or real program. I decided to look at the USA Hockey American Development Model which was a program to change the way U.S. youth hockey operates. I described a fictional evaluation in which a specific youth hockey organization is evaluated on how well they've implemented the ADM as it was intended. Even several short months beyond the completion of this paper my knowledge and understanding of evaluation is much better than it was when I wrote this. I see an almost never-ending list of ways I could improve this paper.

4. Comparative Evaluation Theories - "Theorist Papers: Carol Weiss, Michael Scriven, Michael Quinn Patton, Jennifer Greene"

In this class we had to write a series of small papers describing and critiquing various evaluation theorists. Each paper was relatively short and followed the same format. We had to look at each of these evaluators and be able to role-play their positions in an in-class debate. Each of these evaluators are known for something different within the field of evaluation. For example, Michael Quinn Patton developed Utilization-Focused Evaluation which is built around the idea that the only good evaluation is an evaluation that actually gets used by stakeholders. Carol Weiss is well-known for her work on evaluation at the policy level. Scriven is kind of like the Godfather of evaluation.

5. Applied Developmental Psychology - "Predictors of Success in the Knowledge Economy Other than IQ: Are Schools Preparing Students for Life in the Real World?" (download here)

This was the main intellectual baby I birthed this semester. I really respect the professor and wanted to make sure I turned in something that truly reflected my abilities. Of course, as I say that and look over the paper I see ways I could have made it better. In this paper I look at three characteristics that I think predict success in a typical knowledge-economy job (if there is such a thing) and propose a study to determine if these characteristics are being supported in schools. I look at the idea of grit (essentially sticking with something even when it gets difficult), initiative (the ability to set goals and start projects), and growth mindset (viewing failure as an opportunity to improve and not as something to be avoided at all costs). You'll be seeing more about these three ideas in the coming weeks on the blog because I think they're really important and represent some interesting work being done in positive psychology.

Final Thoughts

If you actually read all of those papers you're either a.) already in grad school and therefore a glutton for punishment, b.) really need something more exciting to do, or c.) need to apply to a graduate program in psychology because you evidently like this stuff more than most people. Those of you who may be graduate students or have experienced graduate school might be wondering if any of these were actual papers (i.e. published). I'm in an MA program that doesn't require me to publish or do research. All of these papers were just assignments done for class. One of my major projects this summer is to figure out if I'm going to apply to a PhD program or just stick with the MA program I'm currently in. If I end up going the PhD route I'll obviously be writing papers for publication and doing unique research. 

Does one of these papers or ideas resonate with you? Do you have any questions about these papers or want to know more about any of the ideas within them? Leave your thoughts in the comments below and I'd be happy to elaborate.