I’m drawing from a few different sources as I think about how i want to go about this website and blog. This entry is an attempt to spell out what’s on my mind. I’m aware that this is extremely long-winded and analytical and personal. After these initial statements of purpose, I will get to the documentation and the doing, I promise.

10,000 hours

One is that i’m interested in the “10,000 hour rule” which was brought to my attention by Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers.

Basically the idea is that when researchers looked at violinists and then moved to many different disclipines, the major factor that differentiated the top people in the field, from the pretty-good folks, from those that are just ok, is how much time they put in. The question “how long does it take to be good” seems to be nearly the same in so many different areas: 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice.”

Here is an interview that Gladwell did with Charlie Rose

What Gladwell leaves me with is that it is a combo of opportunity (which is surprising and may include those slighted from the obvious opportunities) and love/passion is what makes people great. I feel hopeful about this because I have a large body of experiences and learning that i have undertaken only out of love and are often not things that I have seen elsewhere but seem important. I don’t think I’m going to be the “top of my field” but I like the honest realization that success is about opportunity and drive rather then some sort of innate genius that you either have or don’t. I like that it balances between two explanations: external ones and internal ones; and I’m asking myself the question of whether i want success in my life badly enough… I’m pretty sure I do.

I’m also enjoying this article which has “six keys to achieving excellence”:

“1. Pursue what you love. ”

“2. Do the hardest work first… delay gratification and take on the difficult work of practice in the mornings, before… anything else.” This is suggesting to me that I really should take the morning shifts for Yoga, Mediation, and Running in my schedule and set myself up for an early schedule.

“3. Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break… [also, in all] great performers practice no more than 4 ½ hours a day.” When I was learning to play piano, I set an egg-timer for 45 mins. I would often check to see if my time was up, but I did it and that’s what it took to learn. Since I have several things I’m wanting to do, I can set much shorter periods of time, but I seriously want to set that level of intention for my projects and this blog.

“4. Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses.”

“5. Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing after intense effort not only provides an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and embed learning.” Another thing that I don’t usually do.

“6. Ritualize practice. Will and discipline are wildly overrated. As the researcher Roy Baumeister has found, none of us have very much of it. The best way to insure you’ll take on difficult tasks is to build rituals — specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.” I really appreciate this idea that most of us don’t have sheer willpower or discipline. But then you still need the discipline to build those rituals.

He also writes ” it’s possible to build any given skill or capacity in the same systematic way we do a muscle: push past your comfort zone, and then rest.”

Flow

But how do I maintain these states of mind? I want to draw from another concept that informs how I work through this: “flow.” The concept was introduced after psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi decided to research what made people happy. He identified a key state of mind which many people call “flow.” Flow is state of mind with intense focus, absorption, and engagement. People in flow loose themselves and become immersed in their work.

This diagram shows one way to think about flow:

In this diagram, a person may start out at A1 with a task that is relatively easy but still engaging. The example that Csikszentmihalyi gives is a child hitting balls with a racket. After a while, they will learn how to do the task and get bored (A2) if they take on a new task better matched with their new skill level they will get out of boredome and back into flow at A4. Alternatively, they might have an adult come and try to play a more advanced game and end up anxious at A3. If they are anxious but keep at it they will improve in skill and end up at A4.

A1 and A4 are both moments of flow, but they differ in complexity. This “flow channel” is how people get good at things.

This diagram, taken from Wikipedia, is a more advanced model developed by Csikszentmihalyi. I like that it shows a little more nuance. In this diagram the center is a persons average perceived skill level and perceived challenge level.

When you are working on tasks that push your skill level, you experience flow. Lower the challenge and you feel in control of the situation. Lower it more and you have relaxation.

I find that I learn things intellectually and them move on to the next thing very fast. This means that i am always in over my head and never pushing into “control.”

It is important to realize that this is build around your perception of how hard a task is and how skilled you are. I think in many ways the Anxiety and Worry that i experience often is tied to perceptive mistakes rather than real ones. I also am always challenging myself intellectually and moving on to new things without mastering the details of the task.

The first diagram suggests a way around this; to take the time need to learn something before I move on to greater challenge.

How this applies to thinking about this blog.

As I move forward on my design business and this website, I want to start out with the tasks that match my skills. I can think about my schedule with the “flow channel” in mind.

An important aspect that I’m learning from the literature on expertise is that I need to deliberately focus on practicing my limits. If I start out east with flow, I need to quickly move into challenge. I suspect that resigning for flow will mean that I can learn at a more rapid rate than normal.