31. Going Deep
I spent last week meditating.
It would seem like a big time commitment to spend a week at a meditation retreat. Or to take a month out of every year to go into the woods and camp and fish.
People (or at least American people) are taking fewer vacations than the previous generation.
Workers are feeling the crunch financially. Everything costs more. Job security ain't what it used to be. We're working more and living less.
Without vacations, without deep changes of pace, we miss out on everything that matters.
Why is this so?
Don't we live in the era of optimizing everything? With all our productivity, you'd think we'd all be sunning on yachts by now.
Where's my yacht?
It's not without a sense of sacrifice that I choose to spend a week in meditation. After all, I could be spending that time getting caught up on any number of projects.
A lot has been said -- with good reason -- about the perils of task-switching and the myth of multitasking. Many a self-help guru has built a thriving career entirely on concepts as simple as the value of deep work and habit forming.
There's a huge need for such "obvious" arguments as these.
In tandem with this, I'm beginning to notice something that concerns me.
Unstated beliefs are the most impactful
We all believe we are getting a lot done. Life is moving at a faster pace, we say. It's hard to keep up with all this innovation, we say.
And while in the macro-scale this is true, it's not true for the individual.
Heresy!
The productivity all belongs to corporations, not individuals.
Individually, we are all getting less done than previous generations, and it's because we aren't in touch with our depth.
We're distracted, overworked, and persuaded into unsatisfactory compromises. Taking it back won’t be easy, because our social conditioning insists that pursuits need to have a clear and measurable outcome. Even though we suspect it matters most of all, deep creative work looks unoptimized and downright unproductive. Because it’s enjoyable, it’s optional.
Outpaced by a British potter from last century
I learned recently that a good friend of mine studied under a student of Bernard Leach, so I figured I'd check out Leach's book. While I looked through it, I was transported to this paradoxical realization -- here was a man who accomplished a tremendous amount, and it came not from optimizations or life hacks.
Ordinarily, I have a trigger around "solo pursuit" style mastery because I secretly believe that because I didn't have such a linearly focused life path, such a person could never serve as a model for a guy like me. Because I have chosen to dive into one thing, and then another, and then another, I will forever be left out in the rain, jack of many trades but master of none. Instead, the best I can hope for is to do my best to maximize my time, grasp intensely at different pursuits, and swill the kool-aid of "optimize."
You don't win the race by hurrying to the wrong destination
Here's another disturbing unwritten rule. Although time spent at work is generally a compromise a person makes to pay the bills, such time is universally respected as if it's sacred time.
Suppose you need to ask someone to help you with something important. "Oh, he’s at work," you might say. "I totally understand. I won't bother him."
Present the same situation to someone who is sitting on their couch practicing the harp.
"Hey, do you have a minute?"
"Oh, sure!"
What I'm trying to point to here are not the obvious restrictions placed on someone when they're on the job. It's the way we have silently internalized this side of life as if it's something more than it is. I don't care if you're a cop, a politician, or a rocket scientist. Those are professions -- maybe even callings -- but in the context of life and death and a more pure perspective on being a sovereign conscious being, the whole shebang is artificial. It’s a character you’re playing. It’s not you. It just so happens that the system is constructed to reward this type of character.
I suspect that part of what allows employers to treat workers as replaceable is this loss of consciousness about the value of earnest creative endeavors, which may have no certain aim.
Such valuation of work is dehumanizing. And it creates false beliefs that some people are more important, which sucks for everyone involved — including the important people.
Creativity is easier to value once you're winning
If you're already nailing it as a creative person, the work/deep work rule might not apply.
But what about the vast majority of people who are living with the risk of dying with their song still inside them?
It's hard to value what's invisible. It's hard to persist at something that you suspect may take a while to be good at.
Pottery, for example, is a slow practice. Technologically, it's a backward pursuit. Despite its massive growth in popularity, it is wholly unnecessary in "this digital era." Ikea will get you whatever you need, sir. Why go to such trouble?
Precisely the point. What starts off as effortful eventually becomes a process that flows.
Pursuing depth is not about resisting change.
Having a foot in two realms is to dance more interestingly through life
My belief is that for the vast majority of people, two hours of deep work per day is all it takes.
How would your life be different if you spent two hours each day in deep work?
Set aside for the moment that it's not possible and just imagine how your life could have been ten years ago if you had done this.
What would you choose to spend those two hours doing?
It's not important whether or not anything amazing happens for any period of time. The discipline works out a groove—you're making a choice to show up for something. It's an appointment with a deeper desire.
The script we're conditioned to have is "I don't have time for [insert here the thing I would actually like to be doing]."
It merits some real consideration as to whether this is true.
Usually, we externalize the blame, which is disempowering.
Spending two hours a day on what matters most is disproportionately rewarding, like the math of 1000 true fans (even if it's 10,000). That leaves ample hours every day to fill with activities that contribute to the nation's thriving economy.
It's not easy, but it's not easy mostly because of conditioned beliefs and the unspoken scripts about what you're supposed to do.
If you challenge the script, the initial pushback is the strongest.
That's the phase where it's most important to be kind to yourself.
At first, you have to be your own support because no one else will be able to see the value of what you're doing.
Once you have momentum, disciplined deep work becomes easier. It becomes who you are, and it's how people see you.
But initially, it will feel wrong. Too hard. You’re not enough.
So do this: follow the example of an animal with a disability. A kitten with three legs plays and lives fully. I’m certain that it’s well aware that it is missing a leg, but I don't see such animals investing in that absence. There’s nothing to be gained by dwelling on the fact.
Yes, it takes more work. But compared to what? Things are how they are.
I know I have spent far too many cycles comparing where I should be to imaginary ideals. If only I hadn't needed to sell the Bitcoin that I bought back in 2015 or the Tesla stock at $20/share, or any of a number of other things.
Especially in the early phases of a creative endeavor, it's important to stay positive.
When I'm making pottery, I put myself into what I'm making. If I were trying to make a perfect form, that would put me in competition with Ikea. Writing in the age of AI may come to be like pottery -- increasingly valuable because it's human-made.
When I see a handmade vessel, it naturally evokes something in me. It's organic. The stuff of life. Raw material fashioned with purpose. Precisely because it's simple, it reconnects me to something intrinsically beautiful.