Tuesday, May 21, 2019

4 hours of work per day and recovery, a recipe for creativity?

You might expect that most creative geniuses are workaholics and they work relentlessly from day to another. The surprising truth about them is that many of them spend their days working for approximately four hours. The rest of the day is for the ”recovery”. In this text, I will tell you about the working hours of some of the greatest creative minds, about the four factors that contribute to recovery and the concept of deep play which relates to how you can get your mind off work efficiently.

Working hours of the creative minds

The most creative scientists, artists, authors, and many other creative types have or have had surprisingly similar working patterns. Their days are not focused only on working. Their days have long breaks and their work doesn´t take all day. Most of them keep their working hours in predetermined times of the day. And they keep on ”showing up” for work day after day at the same time. Here are some working hours of the greatest intellectual minds, world-class authors, and other famous creative types:

  • Charles Darwin: 8.00 AM – 9.30 AM, 10.30 AM - 12.00 PM, and 4.00 PM. - 5.30 PM
  • Henri Poincare 10.00 AM – 12.00 PM, and 5.00 PM – 7.00 PM
  • Charles Dickens 9.00 AM – 02.00 PM
  • Ernest Hemingway 6.00 AM – before noon
  • Norman Maclean 9.00 AM – 12.00 PM
  • Ingmar Bergman 9.00 AM; - 12.00 PM
  • W. Somerset Maugham 9.00 AM – 1.00 PM
  • Thomas Jefferson 4 hours in the morning

As you can see, most of these examples worked from three to six hours a day. Most of them worked a maximum of four hours. Hemingway´s and Dickens´ breaks during the work are not known. At least they are not mentioned in my source of information. As you can see, none of the examples worked through the whole day. At least they consciously. Truth is that when you think you stop working, your brain is using almost as much energy than during your conscious working hours. Some researchers estimate that this figure is close to 90 percent.

Four factors of recovery

Recovery is an important part of efficient work. Without proper recovery results from work are worse. There are four important factors of recovery: relaxation, control, mastery experiences, and mental detachment from work. Relaxation is the simplest form or recovery. Getting a release from tension at work helps you to recover from work. For our purposes, the control means an ability to decide how you spend your time, efforts, and energy. Free time is not optimal for recovery if somebody else like your significant other decides your schedule off the work and tells you what to do and when. Mastery experiences can be seen as being in a flow state. Flow state is rewarding, it is accomplished by doing challenging actions and doing them well. Mental detachment is the ability to forget your work in this case. Your evenings, weekends, and vacations are for mental detachment.

Deep play

All of those four factors mentioned in the last paragraph are useful for recovery. The concept of deep play is a way to combine those factors in your free time. The deep play has four characteristics: you don´t need any effort to feel engaged in it, you can use your work-related skills in a new context, its rewards are not the same as at work, and it has a connection to your past.
Effortlessness is a deep play that comes from challenges you encounter, no matter whether you have to compete with others or solve problems. You will probably learn new things about yourself or other players. Your work-related skills are put to use in a completely new environment. There are no reminders about your work. Deep play activities have clear rules like predefined durations. These clear rules give you different rewards than you get from work. Deep play can remind you of your past experiences with people you love or keep your remind you from your past successes like winning a competition when you were young. The combination of these characteristics makes you happier and better at your work.

Until next time,

-TT

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Managing your nontalent weaknesses

Weakness is not the complete opposite of the edge. It is close to the opposite. Your nontalent weaknesses are closely related to your genes. There is no practice component in these weaknesses. You have weaknesses without doing anything. You can´t have any edge without practice. You have inner qualities that create your weaknesses. There are three simple and constant signs of weaknesses. All of them are not always related to your particular weakness. Weaknesses leave track records. When you poorly execute whatever you are doing, you have found a weakness. Negative emotions during and after the activity also tell you that you are dealing with a weakness. You can even be good at it, but negative emotions don´t leave. The third sign is that you don´t even want to start doing it. You prefer someone else do it for you. After identifying your weaknesses you can start managing them.

Managing weaknesses

Weaknesses that are related to your nontalents can create most of your problems. There are five ways to manage them:

  1. Improve in it a bit
  2. Design a support system
  3. Find a partner
  4. Use your edge to overcome it
  5. Stop doing it or do less of it

Some people think they can improve their weaknesses so much that they become their edges. When you have no talent in something, you have to put too much effort into improving it. You have limited time for getting great at something. And this time is away from your actions that are related to your talents. The opportunity costs are too high for developing an edge in your nontalents. This doesn´t mean that you can´t put any effort into diminishing the bad effects of your weaknesses. You can have better returns for the used time by getting a little bit better in your weaknesses. You can probably improve your performance from poor to mediocre with not too much effort or time.

You can design a support system for managing your weaknesses. Modern societies are full of support systems like Excel spreadsheets. Your imagination is a limit to creating these systems. For example, if you have a poor memory, you can use your phone calendar to remind you when you have to do something or be somewhere. If managing your weaknesses requires these systems ask your friends or colleagues about them. You must know someone who has already created something you need. You can also try using Google to find out how to get one.

You have to remember that you can´t be good at everything. Having a partner to overcome your weakness is a good idea. In the corporate world, this is possible. I am sure you have a colleague that has an edge in one of your weaknesses. If you have an edge in something your colleague is bad at, you can suggest a mutual agreement to help each other. Finding a spouse who balances your weaknesses with his/her edges can be a good way of getting a better relationship and a happier life.

Using your edge to overcome your weakness is hard. My imagination is limited, but I have found at least one way of using your edge to overcome your weakness. If you are a comedian, you can probably create a character that has a special handicap. This handicap is your weakness. As a comedian, you can become a funny character with a special handicap that makes people laugh if they have an edge in being funny.

Last but not least is stop using your weakness. Find ways to avoid it. For example, I don´t like to be in contact with people I vaguely know. I try to avoid them as well as I can. I even time my grocery shopping in a way that the probability of having contact with these people is small. You can´t always avoid using all of your weaknesses, but you can use them less in your life. Design your environment in a way that using them is least probable in your life.

Edges and weaknesses, which are more important? Should you focus on managing your weaknesses or creating edges and upkeeping them? The answers to these questions are not either/or type answers. You can do both, but creating edges is more important unless your weaknesses destroy your life. You have to do mental cost-benefit calculations about these two things and find the most useful approach to deal with edges and weaknesses. Nobody can do these calculations for you.

Until next time,

-TT