Being Fast Isn't an Advantage Anymore

There's no comparative advantage in being fast anymore.

A comparative advantage is when you're better at something than all of your competitors due to your environmental (or otherwise) advantages. For example, Canada has a comparative advantage in producing maple syrup as compared to Dubai (for pretty obvious reasons). It'd be really stupid for Dubai to try to match Canada's maple syrup output considering they are situated in the middle of a desert and Canada is inundated with maple syrupy goodness.

Applying this idea to personal productivity, it used to be that you could have a comparative advantage in productivity and effectiveness if you were super fast in responding to requests and dealing with information. Before everyone had smart phones you could gain a significant advantage over other people by quickly returning emails or looking up information. Awhile ago, it would have taken some serious skills and dedication that not everyone else would've had. You would've reaped the rewards of having a comparative advantage. You would be seen as more productive, get the promotions, the adulation, and everything else that comes with being seen as a high performer. Dealing with multiple streams of information quickly and efficiently used to be something that got you noticed.

Not anymore.

Now, almost everyone can multitask pretty well. Anybody with a smart phone can respond to emails instantaneously or look up random tidbits of information at a moment's notice. Today's technology has flattened the playing field when it comes to dealing with information efficiently. Sure, some people are better at it than others, but overall there's no significant advantage to be gained by being "good" at handling lots of information.

Where's the new comparative advantage then? As multitasking and instantaneous communication become the norm, how can you stand out? I think the new comparative advantage will go to those people that can cut through the noise of always-on information and think deeply, with full concentration, and high levels of creativity, for a sustained amount of time. Almost any kind of work that ends up being new or noteworthy requires somebody (or a team of somebodies) who eliminated distractions long enough to wrestle with some hard questions. It's not easy to do -- especially since the normal operation of our society is doing an excellent job at eradicating the skills that make this possible.

As a former student of history and a self-proclaimed history nerd, I read a lot of biographies. A hobby of mine has been to take note of the people in these biographies who have done amazing things and try to find points of similarities. Obviously, they all had different styles for doing remarkable work. However, I have found one common factor that seems to unite anybody who gets a biography written about them -- they had a very developed ability to focus. Cutting out distractions and diving deep into a problem seems to be a nearly universal skill that remarkable people have.

Unfortunately, I think this ability is being swiftly destroyed. Is that worrying to anyone else? One of the only unifying characteristic of people who do great things (in my admittedly amateur research) is being largely removed from our society! Constant distractions, notifications, instant gratification, and constant streams of information allow us to never develop our ability to focus if we don't choose to do so.

That's why I think that those people who are cultivating this ability are going to reap the rewards of being a rare commodity. Being able to focus and think deeply will get you noticed in a sea of people who are skimming along the surface. The ability to dive deep and come back with important insights, creative connections, or innovative solutions is going to be something that is reserved for those who have honed their concentration and focus.

This is part of the reason why I think meditation is going to become an increasingly "normal" thing to do over the next 50 years. While still somewhat in the domain of the mystical, meditation seems to be the single best way to develop the ability to focus. Working out is the best way to strengthen your body and meditating seems to be a great way to strengthen your mind. I hope to see the day where meditation is taught in an effort to inform people about healthy living just like eating vegetables or getting enough sleep.

Let's stop acting like we live in a world where multitasking and being constantly connected will give us some kind of advantage. It's old news by now. Almost everyone can do it. What almost everyone can't do, however, is truly think.

What are you going to do to make this comparative advantage work for you?

Small Changes, Big Effect

I recently made a simple tweak to my workflow that has completely changed my mental clarity.

I recently wrote about how my GTD system turned into a database of information that was unwieldy and overwhelming. Luckily, I was able to accurately critique my situation and realize what my system lacked curation. Once you get good at maintaining a GTD system it's easy to let it get out of control. Paradoxical, I know. Reintroducing a certain level of curation helped me regain my composure when it came to keeping track of what I wanted to do.

The real difference-maker, though, was something completely different. Before I introduce it, let me explain what my brain felt like a couple weeks ago.

I have a lot of large and interesting projects that I'm currently working on. I recently moved to Prague and am working on writing a research proposal. I'm organizing a day long TEDx event for over 600 people. All of my volunteers live in the United States and I'm in Europe so the already daunting task of leading a team of 20 volunteers is compounded by distance. I'm trying to build my coaching and consulting business while challenging myself to write more in-depth and well-researched articles (like this one on passion or this one on grit). I've also just started working on a major product that I'm hoping to release to my readers some time before the end of the year. Needless to say, I have a lot going on.

Most days I felt like I was in a constant struggle to move all of these projects forward. It was as if I had 25 soccer balls lined up on an open field. Each soccer ball represented some kind of project or commitment. Each day I would go from ball to ball to ball just barely tapping each of them down the field. I'd tap the first ball a couple inches and then move on to the next one. And then the next one, and the next one. I'd look back at my progress at the end of the day and all my projects had moved forward an inch or two. Perhaps some people would look at this and appreciate the amount of work that had to go into moving so many balls just a couple inches, but I usually felt profoundly deflated.

I decided to change my approach to getting those soccer balls down the field. Instead of tapping all of them forward a couple inches, I decided to focus on one or two and really boot them as far as I could. In GTD-speak, I told myself I'd focus on one "Area of Responsibility" per day. In that first week I decided to do this I worked on TEDx stuff on Monday, SamSpurlin.com stuff on Tuesday, coworking stuff on Wednesday, TEDx stuff again on Thursday, and left Friday open to work on whatever most had my attention. This simple tweak in how I approached my workday allowed me to get SO much more done (or at least feel like I accomplished more).

WHY DOES THIS WORK?

I think the key to adopting this approach requires a couple things. First, you have to have a certain level of control over deciding when you're going to work on things. There are many jobs where that luxury isn't possible. Luckily, all of my work has pretty nebulous due dates so it's merely up to me to figure out how it all gets done. The second key is actually scheduling your week in advance. I'm not talking about breaking down your task list and assigning it to 15 minute blocks. I've tried scheduling things like that and while it may work for a day, the first time something unexpected happens and your schedule gets completely shot it can feel like a waste of time. My previous mindset was one of, "Ok, this project I'm working on is important and I like it. But, I really need to be moving this other project forward. I haven't done anything for it in awhile." That's how I found myself interacting with 20 projects a day and feeling like I got nothing done. Now, when I begin to feel stressed out about the other things I need to do my mental chatter goes something like this, "Man... I really should be writing for SamSpurlin.com instead of doing this research. Wait! I've got all of Thursday scheduled to work on SamSpurlin.com stuff. Awesome! I don't have to worry about it right now."

Being good at GTD made it easy to shift between projects. I always had a next action written down and ready to go; just like you're supposed to when you adopt GTD. And because I was so good at GTD I always had a well (perhaps over) populated project and task list. The problem was that even though tasks were out of my head and in the system, I felt like I should do something to move the project forward all the time.

It's kind of silly as I look back on this problem and what I've written so far. I realize now that I was good at focusing on one thing at a time but I wasn't giving myself enough time to actually get dirty with a project. I'd brush it off, engage with it on a superficial level for an hour or so, and then feel so worried about everything else I needed to do that I'd end up putting it back on the shelf and engaging with something else. It really was just a matter of giving myself enough time to really dig into it and feel like I've given made significant progress. Roughly scheduling my week into Areas of Responsibility or significant projects seems to release my brain from feeling like it had to be doing everything at once all the time.

This may be old hat to a lot of you but I was always highly resistant to scheduling my week in advance. I realize that I've failed with it in the past because I've tried to take it to too granular a level. There's a continuum of planning that I had largely left uninvestigated, though. Are you having trouble feeling like you've accomplished anything at the end of the day? If so, try committing a specific day of the week for the projects that are swirling in your head and give yourself permission to go deep with whatever you're working on right now. You're likely to feel better at the end of the day and get more meaningful work done as well.

Predictors of Success: Growth Mindset

Our beliefs lead to our behavior. The way we think about the world and the things that happen to us affect the actions we take. Two people can experience the exact same stimulus and react in two totally different ways. Carol Dweck and her associates have developed a line of research to help us better understand the various types of beliefs we can have about ourselves and the world. She has identified a continuum she describes as having a Fixed Mindset or a Growth Mindset.

The easiest way to think about these types of mindsets is to look at them through the lens of failure. When somebody with a Fixed Mindset experiences failure they take it personally. As Dweck says, "Failure has been transformed from an action (I failed) to an identify (I'm a failure)." On the other hand, failure when you have a Growth Mindset is an opportunity to learn. Who do you think experiences the greatest amount of success in the long run?

The way we develop our particular mindsets has a lot to do with the type of praise or encouragement we were given when we were younger. Dweck has found that parents and teachers who praise a child's effort, instead of their accomplishments, help support a Growth Mindset. On the other hand, praising accomplishments or how "smart" a child seems to be can lead to the development of a Fixed Mindset. If you're constantly being praised for being smart and then run up against something difficult that takes effort then your "smartness" can take a hit. On the other hand, being praised for effort can result in a difficult task being seen as an opportunity to increase effort even further.

Effort is a key concept when talking about the difference between Growth and Fixed Mindsets. Being good at things is not the sole worry of someone with a Fixed Mindset. Instead, it's important to be good at things while also not having to spend a lot of effort. It's important to be perfect. As a result, most people with a Fixed Mindset stay firmly entrenched in what they know and what they already do well. They do not expand the boundaries of their abilities or interests because it would be a threat to their identity as a "smart" person.

As you can imagine, the Growth Mindset approach is largely the opposite. Increasing difficulty is not a signal to stop, but a signal that you're heading in the right direction. A Growth Mindset uses difficulty and setback as guideposts for where effort should be spent. In one study, children who tested as having more of a Growth Mindset had to be wrestled away from difficult puzzles and wanted information about where they could get more puzzles like the ones they were having trouble with so they could practice at home. Children with a fixed mindset couldn't get away from the puzzles fast enough. When faced with the opportunity to either complete a puzzle they had already completed successfully once, or to try a slightly harder puzzle, Fixed Mindset children were content to complete the same puzzle again.

Luckily, mindset, like any belief, can be changed. Your predilection for having a Growth or Fixed Mindset may be originally genetically set, but it appears to be able to be changed over time. An important first step is simply learning about Growth and Fixed Mindsets. Becoming aware of the difference and thinking about your own beliefs can set you in the direction of changing them to a more conducive approach. Another avenue to changing mindsets is to learn about the plasticity of the brain. Dweck has used this concept to develop a workshop and software program for adolescents that helps them learn about how the brain is like a muscle. Using your brain more strengthens it just like going to the gym and lifting weights strengthens muscles. This can help eliminate the belief that anything that doesn't come naturally or immediately is not possible.

I think one of the most interesting implications of this research into mindset has to do with happiness and success. There are lots of people with Fixed Mindsets who are wildly successful. Talent is completely separate from mindset and many people have an absurd amount of talent. There are also people with Growth Mindsets who are absurdly successful. What's interesting is that those successful people with a Fixed Mindset have expended all the time and effort into being successful because they are striving for some kind of external reward. Whether it be prestige, money, power -- a Fixed Mindset is not satisfied until it attains those. Somebody who is equally successful but has a Growth Mindset may reach the same level of success but it is a byproduct of the enthusiasm for what they do. They tend to be happier than those who have fixated on external proof of success (I wonder if obsessive/harmonious passion is related to Fixed/Growth Mindset at all?).

Looking at the way you deal with failure and success can help you  figure out what kind of mindset you have. If you're unhappy with your personal development it's possible you've been operating under a Fixed Mindset. If you can shift that to a more Growth-oriented mindset you're likely to find greater success and be happier in the process.

Carol Dweck's book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, is a great place to learn more about this idea and get more ideas about how you can improve your own mindset.

Make Yourself Uncomfortable to Unlock Your Subconscious Mind

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.

30 Days Will Not Change Your Life

I think I can be unnecessarily hard on myself sometimes (I did just draft an article tentatively titled "I Do Dumb Things"). I get disappointed with myself when I don't follow through with habit changes as completely as I imagined I would. I've started and failed a myriad of activities, hobbies, and new habits. Just a couple of highlights from my own personal Wall of Shame include; meditating every day for over two months, going to a meditation retreat, and then not meditating for 5 months after that; still biting my nails; wasting huge swaths of time doing stupid things on my computer; eating like an idiot more than I should (donutsssssssssssss) and I'm sure many others that I'm conveniently forgetting. I started thinking about why I seem to have had trouble with certain habit changes but have done fine with others. What's the difference? And then, a stroke of insight slapped me on the back of the head -- maybe I've been miscalculating the size of these habit changes.

THE MARATHON METAPHOR

When training for a marathon you don't strap on your shoes and go out for a 15 mile run as your first training session. That's stupid because a marathon is a huge thing that needs to be broken into smaller steps as you train for it. First you run a mile, then you bump it up to two, then five and eventually, after many months, you're running 26.2 miles. Nobody looks at you funny if you tell them you're training for a marathon and going out for a three mile run, especially when you've just started. Why, then, do we think changing some other behaviors or reaching other goals is something that can be done over the course of 30 days? Stopping biting fingernails can be like running a marathon for some people. They are completely different domains but I think it might be a bad idea to think of this habit change differently from training to run a marathon. It must be broken into steps and you must not beat yourself up if you still haven't run a marathon (or stopped biting your nails) after one or two or even three months. 

The nice thing about training for a marathon is that it's easy to break it up into smaller chunks. Miles are nice and convenient units of measurement that help you see you're making progress over time. Habit changes like not wasting time on the computer or stopping biting your nails are not as easily broken into smaller segments. What if you were able to, though? What if instead of shooting for complete mastery over the way you work at your computer you just aimed for an incremental improvement over the next 30 days? I worry that perhaps we are shooting for unrealistic goals. If you told someone you were going to run a marathon in 30 days (especially with no physical activity background) they'd tell you to hold your horses, cool your jets, perhaps to even take a chill pill. So why don't we respond similarly when someone says, "I'm going to start a 30 minute daily meditation practice in 30 days!" or, "I'm going to completely stop biting my fingernails in one month!" or, "I'm going to work completely distraction free from here on out!" All of these are admirable goals but not particularly realistic. It's romantic and exhilarating to think you can become a completely different person in 30 days. Undoing 20 or 30 or 50 or 60 years of NOT being that person, however, is not something that will be easily vanquished. You can make incremental changes over the course of one month and when you add that on top of another month where you made an incremental change and another and another and another, you suddenly have the makings of a new habit or begin closing in on a new goal (your behavioral marathon, if you will).

For the next habit change you have in mind, try to break it into smaller chunks and focus on only one of those chunks for the next 30 days. If you can resist the feeling of impatience I think you'll set yourself up for a much more sustainable change. Almost anyone can do anything for 30 days. It's incredibly hard to make those 30 days stick forever, though. Take your time, make small changes, and enjoy your new behavior. Below is an example of how you could break up the goal of "stop biting my fingernails":

• Spend a month thinking about and writing about why you want to stop biting your fingernails. Get every single reason, thought, and impulse down on paper.

• Write down what you were doing and/or thinking about immediately before each time you started to bite your fingernails.

• Keep a running tally of every time you notice yourself biting your fingernails.

• Pick a hand. Focus on only using the nail clipper on that one hand for an entire month. Notice the difference between your hands. Which one feels better?

• Switch hands. Focus on only using the nail clipper on that one hand for an entire month. Notice the difference between your hands. Which one feels better?

• Spend a month not biting your fingernails. If you do, notice what you were thinking/doing when you did.

• Look at your notes and figure out how you can address those specific thoughts/activities (I've noticed I bite my fingernails when I'm reading so I gave myself something to chew on while I read, like a toothpick).

And so on. If it feels absurdly slow -- it should. Let's think about this for a second. If you're trying to make a habit change that has thus far eluded you I think we should probably treat it with a little more gravitas than, "Just put your head down and focus for 30 days. Then you'll have it licked!" If you've had success with that, good for you. Some habit changes may be susceptible to that approach. The ones that seem more like a marathon or have been especially stubborn require a more systematic approach.

It takes awhile but if you break it into smaller steps, like training for a marathon, I think you're much more likely to be successful in the long-term. What would you rather have, a month (maybe two) of not biting your nails before you revert or many months of working toward not biting your nails, a couple months of "kind of" biting your nails, and eventually not biting your nails at all -- forever? You could go out and walk/run 26.2 miles right now but you'll probably end up in the hospital and hate running. Or, you could build it up over time and become healthier and potentially gain a new passion.

What Is Positive Psychology?

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.

Inevitably the first question I’m asked any time I tell someone I’m in a graduate program in positive psychology is, “What’s positive psychology?” It’s a logical question that I’m going to do my best to answer in this short article. Obviously, explaining any academic discipline in 1000 words or less is a tall order, but I’ll try to lay out the basics.

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AS A DISCIPLINE

Traditionally, the focus of psychology has been on diagnosing and “fixing” mental disorders. Schizophrenia, phobias, obsessive compulsive disorder and other mental sicknesses are usually what psychologists are looking to diagnose and correct. This is obviously very important work that strives to improve the quality of life for many, many sick people. However, positive psychology focuses on a different aspect of human behavior.

Instead of taking people who are in the negative range of the mental well-being continuum and trying to elevate them back up to neutral, positive psychologists are interested in studying how to take people who are perfectly healthy and elevating them to an even higher level of well-being. Instead of going from −7 to −1, the aim is going from 0 to +8. This is a fairly new, and yet, ancient aim. Philosophers such as Aristotle, Socrates and Epictetus all asked the same question that positive psychologists ask, “What does it mean to live a good life?”

THE TWO "FATHERS" OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi are generally considered the “founding fathers” of positive psychology and each head up graduate programs at their respective universities (Seligman at University of Pennsylvania and Csikszentmihalyi at Claremont Graduate University). Obviously, it’s not that well-being and the other aspects of positive psychology weren’t being investigated prior to Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, but they led the charge in creating a specific subset of psychology focused on the positive approach.

WHAT DO POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGISTS STUDY?

The topics positive psychologists are interested in are incredibly broad. A good place to start is with the research interests of the two most well known positive psychologists, Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi.

MARTIN SELIGMAN AND OPTIMISM

Seligman first did work on learned helplessness. This is the idea that animals, and people, can learn to become helpless when they are placed in a situation in which they have no control. This helplessness can then be transferred to a completely different situation that is actually under their control. Because of the helplessness that was learned in the first situation, most animals then don’t even try to escape in the new situation. If you think you’re helpless, what’s the point of even trying?

However, Seligman noticed that there was always a minority of test subjects that were resistant to learned helplessness. These subjects were very resilient and led him to ask, why don’t they become helpless when most of the other test subjects do? Thus, his research into "learned optimism," the antithesis to learned helplessness, was born.

MIHALYI CSIKSZENTMIHALYI AND FLOW

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi is best known for his work on the concept of flow. Flow is the state of mind you enter when you’re working on something that challenges your abilities, provides direct feedback on your success, and is autotelic (you do it just for the sake of doing it). Any time you have lost track of the time because you were completely engrossed in a project or sporting event is probably an example of being in the flow state. Why can some people enter this state with nearly everything they do and others seem to never experience flow? How can work and school be structured to become conducive to flow? Can entering the flow state be taught and practiced?

THE POSITIVE ASPECTS OF BEING HUMAN

These are only two of the many topics that positive psychologists cover. Other topics include motivation, mentoring, effective leadership, organizational dynamics, happiness, emotions, longevity, health, decision making, character, and developing passion. As you can see, positive psychology is truly the science of studying what is right with people and how to live a better life.

Over the next several weeks I will be unveiling a series of articles that break down some of the more important topics, issues, and introduce the most important people of positive psychology.

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?

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.

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.

The Life Reboot

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

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

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.

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.

Distraction is Procrastination

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!

Developing an Autotelic Personality, or, How to Enjoy Everything

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

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.

A Year Without Meat

Last year on April Fool’s day I did something that was not a practical joke -- I became a vegetarian. I did eventually feel like a fool but only because I realized a.) how much I was lying to myself in order to eat a “normal American diet” an b.) how easy it was to eat more in line with my values. When people ask me about what it’s like to make the switch to vegetarianism I always tell them it’s one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. I don’t say that to downplay others’ more difficult transitions or to somehow make myself look better. I’ve honestly found this change to be one of the easiest habit changes I’ve ever undertaken. I’m happy to share my experience with becoming a vegetarian in this article but I’d like to take a step back and try to suss out why this behavior change was so easy for me. There are lessons somewhere in my experience that I want to try my best to uncover. But first, a couple thoughts specific to becoming and being a vegetarian.

LIMITATIONS ARE NOT A PROBLEM

The obvious assumption is that by removing a whole class of food from my diet I was going to end up feeling deprived or limited in some way. As many people have described in their own switches to vegetarianism, I did not feel limited in any way. In fact, it was the complete opposite. By giving myself guidelines and restrictions I suddenly had to use more creativity to eat a diet I wouldn't get completely bored of. I started trying food that I never would have if I had been eating my normal diet. I realized there is a whole world of food out there beyond my normal rotation of meals.

YOU CAN BE AN UNHEALTHY VEGETARIAN

Being a vegetarian doesn't mean I'm automatically healthier. I've struggled with this at times because some of my favorite junk foods fit right in with my vegetarian diet. Huge muffins, donuts, bread -- I could eat all of this for days. They may lack meat but they definitely don't lack in empty calories. Being a vegetarian requires an increase in my mindfulness regarding food and being a healthy vegetarian requires even more.

SOME PEOPLE CAN BE MEAN — MOST AREN’T

I've answered the question, "Why?" a lot over the past year. At first I felt a little self-conscious while answering this question. I felt like I immediately had to defend myself from those who were looking to denigrate my decisions. Then, I realized that most people were just genuinely curious. Being a vegetarian seemed like a crazy thing to them and they wanted to know what it was like. I'm happy to share that I have a myriad of reasons for why I've become a vegetarian and much of the time it's a nice segue into a great conversation.

THE LESSONS BEYOND VEGETARIANISM

My specific experiences becoming and being a vegetarian aren’t much different from anyone else’s who have made this same change. What may be a little bit unique is how easily I made the change into this type of lifestyle. This is what truly fascinates me because generally habits are incredibly difficult to change. I’ve had success changing some, utter failure changing others, but changing my diet like this is arguably my largest yet most successful change. What can I learn from this experience?

TYING INTELLECTUAL KNOWLEDGE TO VALUES IS POWER

When I was first becoming a vegetarian I spent a lot of time researching where most of our food comes from as Americans. I read about factory farms and the effect they have on the human workers who operate them, the environment we all live in, and obviously the animals that lose their lives there. I learned about the health benefits of a diet that features mostly plants and other whole foods. I discovered that being a vegetarian doesn't have to result in me being super skinny or frail. I then took all of this intellectual information that I learned through reading, watching documentaries, and talking to people and directly tied them to my values. I value Peace very highly and I could see that my normal diet was not particularly harmonious with that aim. I value Growth and I realized that challenging myself to undertake a diet that more closely aligned with what I believe would be a perfect avenue for growth. When I felt the urge to eat meat I didn't have to think only about the intellectual side of things (factory farms are terrible places, you can be healthy without meat, etc.) or only the values side of the equation (supporting the factory farm industry doesn't promote peace, etc.). Instead, I could think about both of these approaches and tie them together into a much more compelling reason to stick to my goals.

PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY IS PRETTY HUGE

I've been writing online for well over 2 years. Over a year ago I wrote about my switch to vegetarianism and wrote about my plan to stick with it. I didn't want to bail on this life change and have to write about how I failed. An even more powerful component of accountability was with the people that I interacted with on a daily basis. My family quickly realized that I was serious about this life change and I didn't want them to think I was giving up by eating meat. Same with my friends and other people I hung out with regularly. I didn't want to slap a piece of meat on my plate and then explain that I had failed. I didn't have a good reason for reverting to my old diet other than enjoying the taste of meat. That wasn't reason enough for me to let down my commitment.

STOPPING A HABIT = STARTING A NEW ONE

Changing my diet to a vegetarian one was the same as any other habit. It becomes much easier to stop doing something detrimental if you replace it with something positive. Instead of viewing my diet change as removing meat I tried to think of it as adding much more varied and interesting food. I tried to view it as an opportunity to practice mindfulness when I'm eating at a restaurant or catching a waft of barbecuing meat on a summer day. My diet change was growing a series of positive changes across my life, not just ending and removing something else.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Obviously, considering the tone of this article, I’m not going back to eating meat any time soon, if ever. In fact, the next inevitable step is going completely vegan. Considering the ethical and moral undertones of my reasons for being a vegetarian, I can’t continue participating in the dairy and egg industry with a clear conscience. I’ve already been moving in that direction for the last couple of months by removing most of the obvious sources of dairy and egg from my diet (like glasses of milk and hardboiled eggs). Once I’ve lived comfortably for awhile with these obvious sources removed I’ll then concentrate on those food items where they are somewhat hidden. I’ve been on the lookout for substitutes and have been trying various brands so when I do finally make the switch I’ll be used to what’s out there. Once I feel ready to make the final surge into full veganism I’ll probably spend some time doing additional research into the dairy and egg farming industry to make my commitment as real as possible.

Other than removing the last bit of incongruence from my diet I’d like to make a more concerted effort to just eat better. I can still fall into lapses where I eat lots of baked goods and crappy (yet vegetarian) food. I need to challenge myself in the kitchen more so I can continue to grow my skills in preparing food for myself. I don’t necessarily need to be eating new and exotic food all of the time since I’m pretty content with a couple staples, but it’s still nice to be pushing the boundaries with my cooking abilities.  Lastly, I’ll soon spend a month or so recording everything I eat so I can make sure my macronutrient intake is where it should be. Even though protein suggestions seem to be overblown in our society, I am lifting weights regularly and I want to make sure I’m getting enough to make my time in the gym worth something. I also want to make sure I’m not somehow missing vital vitamins or minerals with what I’m currently eating (yes I am taking a multivitamin with B12).

If there’s any parting advice I can give you if you’re thinking about becoming a vegetarian it’s to just try it. This entire lifestyle change started with a 30 Day Challenge where I firmly intended to go back to the way I was eating before. If I hadn’t done that challenge just to see what it was like I probably would have never made the change. The other aspect is to focus on what you can eat — not what you can’t. If all you think about is what you can’t eat you’re setting yourself up for some serious mental anguish and likely failure. Instead, try to focus on the new things you’re trying and how much you enjoy them. Lastly, try to tie the behavior change to a deeply held belief or value. When you can do that it’s no longer a matter of “not eating meat” but “not participating in a cruel industry” or “not contributing to the environmental destruction that factory farms cause” or “not supporting an industry that mistreats its workers.” Those are powerful emotions and reasons that will help you get past the fact that hamburgers taste good.

Have you made the switch to vegetarianism or veganism? I’d love to hear your experience in the comments below.

The Experimenting Self

One of the preeminent figures in the social sciences is an individual named Donald Campbell. His primary contribution to science was through methodology and epistemology. One of the phrases that is historically attached to his name is “the experimenting society.” Campbell’s idea of a utopian society was one where policy decisions were made based on actual experimental data. Therefore, those programs and activities that were shown, experimentally, to be beneficial would be funded and those that were not validated by good science would be left by the wayside. The experimenting society would constantly search to improve itself through the use of the scientific method. There would be no place for cronyism, shady business dealings, or bribery in the experimenting society because all decisions would be data based.

I like the idea of the experimental society and applying it to my own life. What would my life be like if I constantly challenged myself to improve and used experimental methods and data to drive that improvement? I don’t think there’s any reason we can’t follow in the footsteps of Campbell and institute our own experimenting society within the confines of our own lives. It’s really actually quite simple; identify areas of your life that you want to improve, measure you’re current state, try something different, measure yourself after doing the new behavior, and analyze the results. This is one of the simplest experimental designs (pre-test post-test) and yet, has powerful implications for figuring out what actually is capable of making a measurable change in your life.

STEP 1: IDENTIFY AREAS WHERE YOU'D LIKE TO CHANGE

This is the one step that I'm really, really, good at (probably too good). I always have an idea for something I can do to improve myself in some way. Whether it's an idea to make myself physically healthier, mentally stronger, a more caring person, or some other habit or quirk that could stand for improvement, I have a long list of possibilities to pursue.

A helpful starting point is to think about your values and ways in which you might make them a more prominent part of your life. For some people it's really easy to point out the handful of values that undergird and guide their actions. However, I don't think everybody always has success with this method. I recentlywrote an article proposing an alternative method, which I'll summarize quickly here. Instead of trying to focus on values, think about times in your life where you felt "on top of your game" or "truly happy." Whatever you were doing to elicit these feelings in the past is probably a good candidate for something you should try to do more of in the future. Make a list of times where you felt awesome and what you were doing at that time. Those activities and actions are now on your list of things you'd like to change.

STEP 2: MEASURE YOUR CURRENT STATE

The basis of the experimenting society, and therefore the experimenting life, is making data driven decisions about what to do in the future. Campbell would design and implement research studies to generate the best data possible to answer questions about programs and policies. It's your job to collect the data on what you're currently doing so you can make your own decisions about how to best move forward.

In the academic world, there is a certain level of tension between the two major categories of data, qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative data is what you generate with words through observation and description. It generally takes the form of interviews, structured observations, case studies and other methods where the primary vehicle of information is the written word. Quantitative data, on the other hand, is based on numbers. Survey data, census information, and other techniques that generate numbers you can run statistical analyses on fall under the umbrella of quantitative.

We're going to combine the best of both worlds into what academics call "mixed methods." In my own data collection efforts, an example of qualitative data I collect on myself is through journal writing. I'll pay attention to the area of my life I want to improve and write down my observations. At this point I'm not consciously trying to make any changes. 

On the quantitative side of things, it depends on the type of improvement I'm trying to make. For example, in past efforts I've recorded the number of times I've meditated or bitten my fingernails. Right now I'm using the software program RescueTime to collect quantitative data about how I spend time on my computer. The nice thing about quantitative data is that it can be much more objective than qualitative data. As the cliche goes, "Numbers don't lie." (Although, if you're any good at statistics you can do some serious truth bending).

This step is all about figuring out the best way to measure the level of whatever you decided you'd like to improve in Step 1. For instance, if you looked at your life and decided that you wanted to try being a more outgoing person, for Step 2 you could measure the number of times you went out with friends (quantitative) and how you felt after each time you did or didn't accept (qualitative). A nice little bonus, however, is something called the Hawthorne Effect. Essentially, sometimes just observing something will actually cause it to improve. Several times I've ended up improving my area of concern from Step 1 just by becoming more aware of it.

STEP 3: DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT

This is the fun part. Now that you've decided what you want to change and recorded data about where you currently are, you get to change your behavior! For me, this usually takes the form of a 30 Day Challenge. I'll make a conscious and concerted effort to improve the area of concern I fleshed out in Step 1. In terms of specifically what I end up doing, I usually try to base it on some kind of research that has already been done. For example, there has been a lot of research into the benefit of cultivating gratitude. One of the habits the research supports is keeping a Gratitude Journal. For 30 days I'll make sure I write down a couple of things I'm grateful for at the end of the day. Presumably, I've done some kind of happiness measurement before beginning this behavior (see Step 2) so I'll have something to measure against at the end of the 30 days. Sometimes I'll get ideas from other bloggers or friends of mine who have done something interesting that I want to try as well. The cool thing is that this doesn't have o be a huge change in order to see pretty big results. Try to pick something small that you know you can stick with instead of a huge behavior change that you aren't likely to sustain.

STEP 4: MEASURE AGAIN

This is basically the same as Step 2. Now that you have your baseline data and have changed your behavior for at least 30 days, it's time to see if there's any change in your outcome. Obviously, you need to collect data on the same issue (and using the same methods) that you did in Step 2. 

STEP 5: REPEAT

What do you find? Did 30 days of a behavior change create any difference in the area of your life you wanted to improve? What does the data say? If you found a positive difference -- great! Assuming the change you made in Step 3 was something you can sustain indefinitely, you've found a way to measurably improve your life. If your data doesn't show any difference, why might that be? Is it possible that the action you took in Step 3 actually affects something else? For instance, maybe you wanted to become happier so you decided to meditate every day for 30 days. You may feel that the experience was very worthwhile but the data doesn't support your gut feeling (you didn't score any higher on a happiness survey, for instance). Perhaps meditation tapped into something different? Perhaps meditating everyday made you more mindful but not any more happy. Still a worthwhile effect, just not the one you measured. Or, perhaps you didn't implement the change in Step 3 consistently enough to see any changes? Either way, you've now made a scientific and systematic approach to improving your life and you're ready to start your next attempt!

CONCLUSION

Campbell's utopia of the experimenting society never actually came to be. Political and corporate pressures proved to be too much for our politicians and policy makers to handle. Instead of letting science drive their policy decisions the sway of money, prestige, or other non-scientific forces end up playing a large role. While the experimenting society may be far from our current situation, there's no reason we can't create our own individual utopias through the experimenting self philosophy. The more mini-experiments you run on yourself the better you'll get at it and the more you'll learn about how to make your own experience as a human being a better one. Much of the research done in positive psychology has shown that happiness is not something that just randomly descends from the heavens to anoint the chosen few. Instead, there are actual steps and actions you can take to create happiness for yourself. Adopting the mindset of permanent curiosity and perpetual self-improvement will help you figure out what those activities are for yourself.