The Vs. Studio Blog

“We are most productive when we focus on a very small number of projects on which we can devote a large amount of attention.” -Cal Newport

“Attention Residue is the scientific concept that there is a cognitive switching cost to shifting your attention from one task to another. When your attention is shifted, there is a “residue” that remains with the prior task and impairs your cognitive performance on the new task.” -Sahil Bloom

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” -Steve Jobs

“Attention is the most basic form of love.” -Tara Brach

Sahil Bloom recently wrote an excellent article about attention residue and how to not let it derail you. Check it out here.

In it, he provides some great strategies including having a “boot up” sequence when switching between tasks. This may involve taking a walk, doing a quick meditation, listening to classical music, etc…Anything that helps get you back on track and in flow.

Setting this advice aside, the best thing you can do happens at the outset. Which is deciding what projects (have as few as possible) are worth your consistent effort and attention.

In a world that is increasingly vying for your attention, your “No” is just as important, if not more so, than your “Yes.”

“A lot of the time I hate the theater. You think, ‘I have to climb Mount Everest, again, tonight.’ Oh, the theater is a scary place to be.” -Alan Rickman

“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” -Edmund Hillary

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again.” -Samuel Beckett

For any big goal you want to accomplish, like climbing Mt. Everest for example (as pictured above)…

You will spend 99.9999 percent of your time on PROCESS (trying, failing, iterating, trying again)

You will spend (assuming you even reach the top) 0.0001 percent of your time enjoying the view from the summit. (Then you have to get down from the mountain which is its own process.)

Therefore, if you’re gonna attempt to do something really hard, then you…

Must.

Love.

The PROCESS.

P.S. – Speaking of mountain climbing, check out this trailer from my friend John’s hilarious mockumentary “The Hillist.”

“When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you’ll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they’re misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Assume positive intent.

Almost always, this should be your cognitive bias.

A real-world example…

The next time someone cuts you off in traffic.

Pause.

Think to yourself, “Maybe they’re late to get to the hospital or pick up their frightened child or they just lost their job.”

Take another pause and then wish them well.

Be thankful for the opportunity to practice self control.

Know that even if your assumed bias was wrong, you did a good thing.

It’s a win-win either way.

Yeah, runnin’ down a dream
That never would come to me
Workin’ on a mystery, goin’ wherever it leads
Runnin’ down a dream -song, “Runnin’ Down A Dream” by Tom Petty

“What if my best isn’t good enough?”

That’s a scary question to ask yourself.

And it’s why most people don’t attempt to do hard things.

Because it’s far easier to lie to yourself. You can always blame circumstances or external forces or hide behind the excuse that “If I really wanted to, I could’ve done it or been it.”

And as much as I love a great movie montage, life just doesn’t work that way. It’s not “If I do this, then I get this.” The reality and the big risk is that you could go all out, bust your ass, give it everything you got…and still come up short. In fact the odds say, especially when it comes to commercial success, that’s probably what will happen.

But you know what? At least you tried. You went for it. You chased down a dream. You showed true courage.

And no matter what happens, you’ll always be able to live knowing that.

P.S. – This scene.

“Compassion is our capacity to relate in a tender and sympathetic way to what we perceive…Compassion means to be with, feel with, suffer with. Classical Buddhist texts describe compassion as the quivering of the heart, a visceral tenderness in the face of suffering. In the Buddhist tradition, one who has realized the fullness of compassion and lives from compassion is called a bodhisattva. The bodhisattva’s path and teaching is that when we allow our hearts to be touched by suffering—our own or another’s—our natural compassion flowers.” -Richard Rohr

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” -Elie Wiesel

“To love is to will the good of the other.” -Saint Thomas Aquinas

The reason why the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference, is because love is not a feeling or emotion (like hate is). Per Aquinas, love is a willful ACT. Thus by definition, the opposite of act or action is NON-action, which is, indifference.

So, how to overcome indifference? Here are some keys or steps…

Step One…NOTICE. Pay attention. Break through all the world’s distraction. See the signal amidst the noise.

Step Two…TAKE IN. Allow yourself to be moved with compassion. One of the beautiful things about art is that it helps engender empathy for the human condition.

Step Three…ASK. When you notice and are moved by something, ask yourself what if anything, you can do about it. Don’t just be interested. Think hard about what you can do to influence. Write down a bunch of ideas.

Step Four…You probably can guess this one…ACT. Based on your ideation, take one small step in the name of love. Voila! You are no longer indifferent.

Make the work for yourself. (You can have an ideal reader or viewer in mind, but ultimately, do it for you.)

Share the work for others.

The poem below is so good, I’ll just let it speak for itself…

“I Dreamed I Lived In Austin” by Albert Huffstickler

I dreamed I lived in Austin
with legs like a sparrow
and a hungry heart.
I was looking for God
but kept finding people—
strange little people
with pieces of their bodies missing:
an arm, a leg, a nose, a belly button.

They kept offering me ham sandwiches
and telling me I was going to die.
I’d already died, I told them,
chewing mightily and wishing I
 had some water.

That was just a preview, they said.
Next time, you’ll really die.
And they marched ahead of me,
flip-flop, as I combed the streets
searching for God.

Suddenly it was night
and I was standing on the edge of town
alone.

A cold moon shone over me
and the lights of a little café
gleamed down the road.

An old man wobbled up to me and said,
“Well, here I am.”
“God?” I asked.
“Who else? Got a quarter?”
“Yes.” I gave it to him.
“Let’s make it to that diner,” he said.
“Refills are free.
I’ll tell you anything you want.”
“For just a quarter?” I asked
God chuckled. “Got a cigarette?”
I gave him one.

We made it to the café and ordered coffee,
hunched in a booth in the warm room,
the lights soft and comforting.
“Anything special you want?” God asked,
taking another cigarette from the pack
and lighting it with my Bic.
“Love,” I said. I started to cry.
“O.K.,” he said, patting my arm
with a bony hand.

The room vanished and once more
I was in Austin. I was fifty-four
with legs like a sparrow
and a hungry heart.
She stood before me, eyes
misty and tender.

“God sent me,” she said.
“I know.”
She offered me a ham sandwich
and told me I was going to die.
“But not for a while,” she said
and took my arm.
“Good enough,” I said.
“I’m not going to die for a while,
I have you,
And God owes me a quarter
And two cigarettes and”—
I felt in my pockets—
“a Bic lighter.
Would you like to hear
what I dreamed last night?
“Yes.”
“Well, I dreamed I lived in Austin.
I was fifty-four
I was looking for God
but kept finding people.”
“And love,” she added.
“Yes, love,” I agreed.
“I think it’s a set,” she said.

Many thanks to the excellent substack, Poetic Outlaws, for this poem. I’m a huge fan and subscriber. Check it out!

The excellent chart above is a comprehensive list of our cognitive biases.

Whether we admit it or not, when it comes to making decisions, we’re all prone to one or several of these. Factors like our background, current circumstances, age, peer group, life experiences, etc…play a part in determining which are the biggest culprits.

So, what to do with this intel?

Here’s a proposition…

For the next big decision you have to make, before deciding, do the following:

First, bring awareness to it. This is key. Be aware that we’re all subject to preconceived notions and cognitive biases.

Second, take a pause.

Third, identify which specific bias from the chart above, might be in play.

Fourth, give the decision some careful thought. Pros and cons, fear setting, and journaling are some good tools at your disposal. Utilize them.

Fifth, if you have a trusted friend or two, talk it out loud with them. (They may also shed some light on which cognitive bias most affects you.)

Then, decide.

You might still make the exact same decision as before. That’s cool. At least you now made it with eyes (and mind) wide open.

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7)

“To love is to will the good of the other as other.” -Saint Thomas Aquinas

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” -Gustave Flaubert

“You know when you’re walking in the woods on a dark night…and you see a light shining far off in the distance…and you think to yourself: even though I’m tired and it’s dark and the branches are scratching my face…everything is gonna be okay…because I have that light? And I’ll get there eventually? Well, I work–you know this–I work harder than anyone else in this county. I mean, I’m beaten down, Sonya, I suffer unbearably…but I have no light in the distance. I can’t see anything up ahead.” -Astrov to Sonya in Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (adaptation by Annie Baker)

True love is reckless love.

It’s not “What’s in it for me?”. It’s “What’s in it for THEM?”

True love is not transactional. Not rational. Not logical. It’s out of line with most worldly thinking.

It requires putting yourself wholly out there. Going out on the ledge. Walking blindly through the forest.

That’s reckless.

But when it comes to love and art, it’s the only way to be.

“Each thing is not going to top everything that came before it. Progress is rarely smooth.” -Seth Godin

You turn something in because it’s due and think to yourself, “Not my best.”

First of all, there’s only one “best.”

Second, you’re aware. That’s good. You didn’t lie to yourself or anyone else.

Third, you turned it in anyway. You didn’t hide. You shipped your work.

Maybe it’s not your best.

But it’s something.

Which is a whole helluva lot better than nothing.