Life Experiment 32, 2021

Hey There.

Last week we talked about Starting from scratch and the frustration that comes with it. Once we gain a little momentum, things become way, way easier.

The full-day hike I did last week (the "second" in the season) was exhausting but pretty nice. The First 1000 meters up the hill almost killed me, but once I ate one Carniolan sausage in one of the mountain huts, I felt like a rocket at liftoff 🙂 Full of energy again. That's what ingestion of 500+ kCal feels like.

With views:

and good company we can do a lot. Helps if you have someone nudging you a bit. OK, maybe nudging you a lot.

By simply going for a run, hike, walk repeatedly, we slowly build the shape back up. But we have to stay consistent and not lose focus, or otherwise, we have to start from scratch.

Focus Jumps

If we work on a single topic, we stay focused and in the lane:

but when we "focus" on multiple topics, we have to perform the focus jumps. As a result, we sacrifice a lot of mental power on context switching (switching from one topic to another).

If topics are not too far apart, the cost of the focus jump is lower, but it's still there.

Smaller mental jumps "overload" the brain much less and allow you to go faster on one single thing.

Now, of course, there's the argument, but I have to do multiple things at once/in parallel weekly. That's fine as long as you know what you're sacrificing by doing less of focused work.

Cost-benefit analysis of Large Focus Jumps

For example, many professors do teaching, seminars, mentoring, research work, university stuff, etc...

All of this can be done in parallel, but such work limits you very much on how deeply you can go on one specific topic.

Some are very effective at this focus switching (with daily sacred work hours). Some are all over the place. But at the end of the day, their focus is smeared among multiple things, no matter how you look at it.

When you do activities like teaching, mentoring others, management, your work has a broader impact than activities where you focus on one thing and work alone.

An argument can be easily made that collectively you move more things forward when you focus on multiple things than if you work alone on one thing.

But again question then becomes:

Is all that focus spread worth it?

Worth it in terms of the emotional turmoil and stress that working on multiple things brings.

When we work on multiple things, we don't sacrifice just focus. We also expose ourselves to more stress.

=> Less focus, broad progress, more stress.

Cost-benefit analysis of single-tasking

The alternative is to work on one single thing. This allows you to go very, very deep.

Focusing on one thing allows you to get rid of all decisions fatigue in your brain. You don't have to think if you're going to work on a.) or b.) or x.) because, well, you work only on a.). There's no cost of context switching. There's only one context.

Once you manage to sustain high focus for a while, you'll probably start dreaming about the problems you're working on. There's no need for you to force your mind to find solutions. Your mind starts to come up with the next move organically.

At some point, that focus starts to pay off, and it becomes addictive. You begin to like the focus state because you are progressing much faster. There's less frustration when things are moving along, and it makes you wonder:

Do I want to go back to working on multiple things?

Of course, there's the question of "danger". If that one thing you are focusing on doesn't work out? Then what?

=> High focus, sharp progress, less stress, all eggs in one basket.

Effect of focus on Sleep

In the last two months, I managed to consistently get to bed around 22 - 23 and wake up between six and seven in the morning.

By working less on fewer things and taking the evening from at least 19:00 - 22:00 to wind down. Do some house errands, some sports, maybe a little reading, writing and no PC. I try to make myself so board that the best option becomes going to bed and sleep.

I shift into the state in which I can't wait to get to sleep.

This is completely reverse compared to the state about two month's ago when I couldn't fall asleep before one in the morning.

There's no denying it. Early sleep and wake-ups require a lot of discipline and routine changes.

Is all the effort worth it? It is because I stress a lot less about my life when I wake up early. Finishing something before the rest of the world wakes up fills me with excitement for the day.

Neither single focus nor multiple "focus" is perfect. As with everything in life, we need to compromise and choose between multiple "conflicting" options.

Cheers

Ziga