The Vs. Studio Blog

“There is an ongoing battle between algorithmic mass distraction and focus. Excellence requires winning it.” -Brad Stulberg, book The Way Of Excellence

You may think you’re great at multitasking, but you’re not. No one is. We delude ourselves into thinking we are.

Brad Stulberg cites several studies in his book The Way Of Excellence, which reveal that “the consequence of multitasking is that the quality and, ironically, even the quantity of our work suffers.” He writes:

The costs of task-switching may seem trivial, sometimes requiring only a tenth of a second to go from one tab to another on a computer. But over time they add up. When you switch from task to task, it’s not just the physical act of shifting your gaze that consumes attention and energy but also the attention and energy required to transition your thinking and feeling.

My colleagues at the University of Michigan demonstrated that even seemingly innocuous multitasking, such as looking over to an on-screen advertisement while reading an article, can cannibalize as much as 40 percent of someone’s productive time. A study conducted out of King’s College in London found that persistent interruptions in our attention lead to a ten-point drop in IQ, or about twice the decrease one experiences after cannabis use and on par with what you’d expect after staying up all night.

Other research shows that scattering our attention also negatively impacts our emotional health. A study from Harvard University found that when people are fully present for what they are doing, they are much happier and more fulfilled than when they are thinking about something else. The more diffuse our attention, the more likely we are to feel angst, restlessness, and discontentment. “A wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” conclude the researchers.

Multitasking detracts not only from how we feel and what we do today but also our tomorrows. Over time, people who are chronic multitaskers become worse at filtering out irrelevant information and slower at identifying patterns, and they experience a decline in long-term memory. Not to mention, constantly switching and fragmenting our attention exhausts and depletes us, leaving us with less energy for what actually matters in life. If we fry our brain on the trivial, we cannot expect it to be fully present for the significant.

Unfortunately, for many people, fragmented attention has become the default way of existing. Research from the United Kingdom’s telecom regulator shows that the average person checks their phone every twelve minutes, and this doesn’t include instances when someone thinks about checking their phone but does not. Other research shows 71 percent of people never turn off their phones and 40 percent look at their phone within five minutes of waking up, and that’s apart from the alarm clock app.

The consequence of all this checking is that we are habituating ourselves to distraction. Gloria Mark, an attention researcher at the University of California, Irvine, and author of the book Attention Span, began studying people’s ability to focus in 2003. Back then, the average duration that someone could maintain deep attention was about two and a half minutes. Today, she says, that number is forty-seven seconds, and it’s only getting worse. We’ve been conditioned to believe that if we aren’t constantly being entertained or excited, if we aren’t looking back or thinking ahead, then something must be wrong. But the opposite is true: When we scatter our attention, when we are constantly interrupted and distracted, we become alienated from whatever it is we are doing. Excellence, and the deep satisfaction it brings, requires the ability to sustain focus. And the ability to sustain focus is increasingly becoming a competitive advantage in today’s world.

The counter to these switching costs?

Focus.

We must do everything we can to rebuild our focus and attention muscles. Mindfulness meditation, reading, walking, executing 1-3 deep focus blocks per day, and leaving our cell phones in other rooms are some suggested practices.

We’d also be wise to remember the ancient phrase, “Age Quod Adis” before engaging in any task. It translates to “Do what you are doing.”

“A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. -James P. Carse, book Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“Games make us happy because they are hard work that we choose for ourselves, and it turns out that almost nothing makes us happier than good, hard work.”
― Jane McGonigal, book Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” -George Bernard Shaw

“It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.” -Grantland Rice

“In the game of life, we must play what is dealt to us, and the glory consists, not so much in winning, but in playing a poor hand well.” -Josh Billings

“Pick your game carefully. Pick one that you’ll be glad you played even if you don’t get all the glory you hoped for.” -Gabe Andersen

Instead of looking at life as one problem after another to be solved, what if you looked at it as one long, infinite game to be played?

The goal?…To play it for as long as you can and play it as well as you can.

If we do this, then life becomes so much more exciting and enriching and fulfilling. We never stop growing, never stop learning, never stop having fun.

What a great life!

So, what’s holding you back? Start playing.

For the actor…

As you’re working on the character, it’s important to fully explore both extremes. Go all the way to one pole and all the way to the other pole More often than not, that middle ground will be just right.

Let yourself experience “too hot.” Let yourself experience “too cold.”

Then, you will really know what “just right” is like and you can live in that space.

P.S. – A great note to give yourself is “split the difference.”

“In the end Is my beginning.” -T.S. Eliot

For the actor…

The intensity (aka “how you’ve got sh*t cooking inside you”) you have at the end of the scene?…Now go back and start the scene with that same intensity.

Note: This is especially helpful for auditions. (h/t to my friend Ron for reminding me of this.)

“Work norishes noble minds.” -Seneca

“Depression hates a moving target.” -George Mack

Feeling blah? Not sure what to do? Wanting to keep “The Black Dog” (aka Depression) from visiting you?

Stop thinking and start working. Especially something physical.

How about bricklaying? It worked for Winston Churchill (his daily regimen was “200 bricks and 2000 words”) and it can work for you.

P.S. – This article.

“Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.” -Scottish mountaineer and writer W. H. Murray

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” -Goethe

“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe” -Saint Augustine

“When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.” – ancient Hasidic Proverb

“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” -Rumi

Here’s the thing about going all in…

You have no idea if it will work.

There is no turning back.

You must throw your cap over the wall.

And the people, things and events you truly need to materialize for your success don’t actually show up until you’re all in. It’s blind faith.

So ask yourself, are you really all in?

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say. -“The Walking Song” in The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our souls
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold, yeah
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all is one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll, not to roll -“Stairway To Heaven” by Led Zeppelin

The road ahead to your desired destination will most assuredly not be straight.

It will be filled with all kinds of twists and turns that you didn’t anticipate. There will be long stretches where you will lose sight of the road or other stretches where you will feel like the road never ends.

You will feel like giving up and going home, especially because that road back is very clear and easy to navigate.

But don’t.

Don’t turn back.

Be a rock. Don’t roll.

Onward brave one. Forge ahead!

“People who get an unusual amount of work done are maniacal about removing things from their lives that others tolerate.” -Shane Parrish

Artistic work isn’t for everyone. It requires total focus and concentration on the task at hand. You must shut everything out. Eliminate all distraction. Treat this work and time as precious, sacred, consecrated even.

Some excerpts from Mary Oliver’s Upstream: Selected Essays that reinforce this principle (h/t to Maria Popova’s always excellent Marginalian blog for inspiring).

Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.

In creative work — creative work of all kinds — those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. It is, simply, something else. Its labor requires a different outlook — a different set of priorities.

Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always — these are forces that fall within its grasp, forces that must travel beyond the realm of the hour and the restraint of the habit. Nor can the actual work be well separated from the entire life. Like the knights of the Middle Ages, there is little the creatively inclined person can do but to prepare himself, body and spirit, for the labor to come — for his adventures are all unknown. In truth, the work itself is the adventure. And no artist could go about this work, or would want to, with less than extraordinary energy and concentration. The extraordinary is what art is about.

Of this there can be no question — creative work requires a loyalty as complete as the loyalty of water to the force of gravity. A person trudging through the wilderness of creation who does not know this — who does not swallow this — is lost. He who does not crave that roofless place eternity should stay at home. Such a person is perfectly worthy, and useful, and even beautiful, but is not an artist. Such a person had better live with timely ambitions and finished work formed for the sparkle of the moment only. Such a person had better go off and fly an airplane.

The working, concentrating artist is an adult who refuses interruption from himself, who remains absorbed and energized in and by the work — who is thus responsible to the work.

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” -Mary Oliver

If you’re fortunate to receive the call to do creative work, you must answer it.

Otherwise it will haunt you the rest of your life.

Go make your art.

“If you speak any lines, or do anything, mechanically, without fully realizing who you are, where you came from, why, what you want, where you are going, and what you will do when you get there, you will be acting without imagination. That time, whether it will be short or long, will be unreal, and you will be nothing more than a wound-up machine, an automation.” -Konstantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares

To be effective in any scene or entire play, the actor must know (a) what they want, (b) why they want it and (c) what obstacles stand in their way.

Sounds simple enough.

And it is. Provided you do massive prep work beforehand to figure out the answers to these questions. If you don’t?…Well, good luck.

Note: This isn’t just for actors. Anyone looking to accomplish anything would be wise to heed Stanislavski’s advice.