Thank you for this post! As a creative, I so needed to read this. I particularly liked the part about that "Some people prefer to be mildly contented all the time, where others derive greater happiness and meaning when their lives are peppered with high highs and low lows." How does it relate in your opinion to the widely promoted idea of maintaining a routine and 'producing creative work' every day? It seems that 95% of creatives speak for a kind of won't-budge routine. What is your take on that?
Piotr, that is a great question, and I don't have a great answer. Personally, I definitely toggle between periods of routine and periods of basically very little routine. And I noticed this with Isabel Allende, who I mentioned above. She starts all her books on January 8 (but not necessarily one book per year), and that starts a period where she goes into a very particular routine. But once she's done, she explores. Sort of the like the explore/exploit toggling that Adam mentioned above. The more I think about that, the more it feels like the pattern of the creators whose methods I know the best; they have periods of routine, interspersed with periods of exploration. Haruki Murakami talks about getting physically fit in order to start his periods of writing, which involve a lot of routine. And I think the sort of "interval" mindset can apply even during the routine periods. Gloria Mark, in her book "Attention Span" (on which I'll do a newsletter soon), writes about how Maya Angelou would intersperse her writing with knitting, and called it toggling between her "big brain" and "little brain." (Come to think of it, Isabel did this with beading.) So I don't have a good broad strokes answer, as I think there's a lot of variation, but it does seem to me that there's often this sort of underlying interval-like approach.
David, thanks for your reply! I love all the examples you gave. My personal experience is that when there is a need, a routine shows up naturally. And whenever I intend to impose a routine on myself without an underlying need, I notice my creativity shuts down. I feel like undergoing a military drill or something, and everything in me opposes that. But whenever I needed to do something importart to me (and which had at least a semi-deadline ;)), I found it very helpful and I enjoyed it.
The danger to this approach, of course, it that you might get stuck in an 'exploration limbo', always believing there is still more to learn before you do something, putting off the moment of action. The routine-no-matter-what approach is - I guess - supposed to bypass that danger, and it probably all depends how much are you prone to procrastination.
I think it would make a great topic for an article if you'd like to explore that, there's so much to unpack here esp. going beyond the 'you need a daily routine till the end of your life' cliché ;)
Piotr, man, you've hit several giant questions here. I love your thinking! How do we balance these factors...I think about this a lot, for my own life, and with an eye toward writing about. And I think you hit another important point, which is how individualized this is; one's own proclivities matter, so there's no one-size-fits-all. ...I also appreciated that very important note about a semi-deadline! I've never thought of that term, but I really like it, and realize I almost never need exact deadlines, but almost always need semi-deadlines. ...A Duke Ellington quote I enjoy: "I don't need time, I need a deadline."
Semi-deadlines are enough for me to start working. I absolutely hate the pressure of a last-minute deadline, so a semi-deadline is motivating enough to start working early enough to avoid the latter, more dreaded form of deadline ;)
As a "not creative" I can only speak to the dangers of maintaining a routine that is "not creative" in terms of weakening the ability to create anything artistic or inspired.
Yet as I elaborate in a separate comment, I think surviving in a "not creative" desert for a while might at least rekindle a spark and thirst for "creativity."
Excellent deep dive, and the lightning round was a good goal to look forward to at the end of the journey. Like orange slices after a soccer game in the 1980's. As an aside, my kid is now rewarded with cookies (instead of real fruit with fiber, water, potassium, and sugar) at the end of her tennis matches - another sign of the decline of Western civilization.
In terms of feedback for longer posts like this one, I'm good with cohesive long form mixed in. I don't have time to "read it", but I listened to this post as a podcast using the app (and the female bot voice works fine). It was a great trading of ideas, and introduction to a new author I have not read, yet!
In terms of trading progressive intimacies about oneself, I feel liberated to keep commenting about myself here, ha! In primary care I don't have the challenge of "getting stuck." The constant stream of people's problems and chaos seeking order affords me a ready made, actionable framework. But that leads to burnout, and a deep craving for creative outlets.
When I started practicing at 30, I still had time to write creatively about my patient encounters and life in medicine, ridiculously aspiring to some William Carlos Williams/Atul Gawande vignettes and reflections. Then too many responsibilities and the actionable grind took over for about a decade, and without making time for creative pursuits, I became pretty anxious, hollowed out, and resigned to the grind.
I jumped back in with the advent of Substack, and although I'm still rusty, I've been able to rescuscitate some creative parts of my brain. Forcing myself to do this has flattened anxiety, filled my sails a bit, and helped me thrive amid the grind. And in terms of getting stuck, I have a list of like 100+ ideas that I would love to type into being if only I didn't have the ever expanding day job.
So while this is not practical for creatives and intellectuals and writers who make a living by keeping their creative, well-oiled, expert engines humming along, I would add my own personal experience: that to deprive oneself of generative pursuits, and relentlessly just take care of business, might lead to a real hunger for those moments of transcendance being deferred, and a font of ideas might come bursting through the dehumanization of the grind.
So, less poetically, and without having to go through med school... maybe washing dishes for a month straight might unstick, too?
Ryan you got a literal lol with the orange slices reference. I love analogies in general (part of the reason I enjoy Haruki Murakami's writing so much), and that was a fun one. ...Even the decline of civilization caveat couldn't spoil it;) My son (4) is on a massive kick of...drum roll...kidney beans? Seriously, he's like eating his weight in kidney beans.
Also, you should feel completely liberated to comment about yourself here. You've enriched my experience of doing this newsletter, and my greatest unforeseen bonus of doing this newsletter at all has been the comments when people share some interesting or personal tidbit. I didn't think the comments section would be so interesting. So please keep using this space for whatever you want to share, and I'll keep reading it.
And I think this is a great thought, a post really, you left here. My intuition is that even a lot of writers fall into routine once they become competent, and there's more grind and less creativity. Although I suppose, as you suggest, that in turn prompts many of them to make a change. ...It's interesting that so much great literature has come from people who were engaged in — and often subsequently wrote about — the grind. I wonder to what extent that was just the proximate canvas for the sort of hunger that developed. I have to think more about this, but you reminded me of an essay I read by Tennessee Williams, in which he wrote that becoming successful very quickly as a writer ruined him for a while, as he realized that there was a struggle he needed to have to create. I'm going to see if I can track that down again, and if I do, I'll aim to do a short post on it.
You also reminded me of reading about Tommy Orange, author of the fantastic There There, who got a job at a bookstore in his late 20s, and amid the daily toil started reading the books around him. That worked out! Anyway, very generative comment...I don't have anything to add, just thinking out loud, and maybe this will lead to a future post.
These are great thoughts in response, and I appreciate the references! The Tennessee Williams quote is really compelling, and so is your son’s kidney bean eating prowess! That is the start of a great microbiome, just make sure they are well cooked and everything in moderation 😉. Appreciate your synthesis of disparate parts as always, and the natural creativity that cross-brain traffic enhances.
The orange slices after soccer games were a thing in the 90's too! Oh sweet nostalgia.
Regarding Gawande, I don't know how he does it. He must have a horrible family life or something to be so excellent at his diversity of interests. Ok, I doubt he does, I just sometimes don't like the fact that some humans just seem objectively better than others generally. Like what happened to the theory of multiple intelligences where we all were special and good at something?
I wanted to take a moment to commiserate. I'm writing this response in between patients (~1 minute until I have to start my next encounter), but I don't know if I would be any more creative or productive in my writing if I didn't work. There is certainly a balance. I started taking Fridays off about 1.5 years ago, and I keep the kids in school/daycare. I take that day to recharge and be creative. By no means is it perfect. And it means that I make 1/5 less money (I'm self employed), but that one day makes me a better person the rest of the week and the weekend. It's like my personalized Sabbath. I know not everyone can do that. But when I meet people who have higher paying jobs, I always encourage this. The rat race isn't worth it.
Anyways, I'll end my sermon here. Thanks for your relatable words.
Oh, and regarding Williams. I never understood him. The whole Red Wheelbarrow poem... Over my head I guess. Its kind of like the art where they duct take toilet seats and bananas to the wall...
I really appreciate the dichotomies you mentioned above. Many books try to persuade people that their intervention is the one that will work, not many consider that different interventions work in different situations. My wife and I go back and forth about this in regards to behavior change. I do small steps with SMART goals which is also what I recommend to patients. My wife seems to have little success with that but much more success when she makes a drastic change all at once. So maybe certain interventions aren't only different per situation but also per person. This is dangerously close to losing the "truth" and everything being subjective - the whole, "do what works for you" thing, which I don't feel is helpful.
Also, you asked about feedback on Q&A's. My feedback isn't quite what you are asking for, but I will say that Q&A's often feel too long for me to read. I much prefer them in podcast form. But I love the content of your Q&As. Hope that helps!
You seem to have mastered the Jedi-like ability to hold contradictory truths in your mind at the same time, and have some built in ease with uncertainty! Your patients must benefit from your restraint in terms of not imposing your ego, or insisting that your one intervention has to work for them.
I've only read sections of the article so far, but it is great! I started by Ctrl "F" searching for "dialectic" to see if Janusian was more than a synonym. I love how he broke down the subtle differences between Janusian and dialectical thinking. Also this was awesome:
"I have substituted the term "Janusian" for "oppositional" because it more accurately conveys the simultaneity of opposition and because, as a metaphor, it embodies the process it denotes. Janus, of course, was the Roman god with two faces, the god who looked and apprehended in opposite directions simultaneously. He was the god of all doorways and his two faces (Janus bifrons) allowed him to observe both the exterior and interior of a house and the entrance and exit of all buildings. It
is perhaps not generally known that he was a very important god, appearing at the head of religious ceremonies and, on the Roman list, he came even before Jupiter. He was the god of "beginnings," presiding over daybreak, and was considered
to be the promoter of all initiative. His role as beginner is commemorated in the name January, the month which begins our year. In fact, he had an essential role in the creation of the world itself and was also known as Janus Pater, the god of gods. Of particular interest for this exposition of Janusian thinking, especially in relation to artistic creation, is the fact that Janus was also considered to be the god of all communication, an extension of his function as god of departure and return."
Haha, I appreciate the compliment! It is definitely something I strive for, but, like all Jedi, I have a long path ahead. Honestly though, the idea of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) for treating borderline personality disorder has always stuck with me. The idea of a dialectic might be so enticing specifically because it is so difficult yet rewarding. I question the tenets of much of psychiatry, but DBT, in my opinion, should be a required class in high school - part of the adulting 101 that is missing today.
Oh, and I love your lightning round question about flow being possibly unhelpful. I wish their was more to that answer! I think you were on to something there.
Paul, I'll respond to your earlier comment later, but just in brief: I agree, and there will be at least a bit more on this topic in an upcoming Q&A with Gloria Mark. I'm a little behind so not quite sure when I'll get that one out, but won't be too long!
Love the (implied) circumstantial nature of so much of this. Leads to better developed theory. Eg in this circumstance, pausing and reflecting makes sense but in this one do y instead. Etc etc. Helps parse between things that are seemingly opposite (quit vs persist) but are really circumstantial.
Michael, thanks for this comment. I completely agree. And I think that mindset — not "Does it work or not?", but "When might it work?" — is probably a really productive one when it comes to thinking about human development. The more I learn, the less bothered I am by apparent surface contradictions.
Completely agree. I just wish academic journals helped in this cause to give the boundary conditions rather than (unintentionally perhaps) essentially pitting findings against each other.
That's a great point. And, frankly, I feel like academic journals could do a lot of things better, but seems like they haven't been pressed to change much, even with more preprint availability and open source publishing. Might take a little push from their customers.
This was such a lovely and helpful interview. I put a copy in my notion and have taken copious notes.
Edit: Since it seems like David reads his substack comments...I just wanted to say thank you for Range. As a career late bloomer who felt lost for a long time and beat myself up a lot, I found it very consoling. I need to re-read the book, come to think of it.
Kyle, that is so kind of you to say, and I'm so glad you found this thought-provoking.
And I do read and respond to many comments! I don't always manage to get to all of them, but the comments have been really the main wonderful surprise of this newsletter. I had gotten so used to thinking of comment sections as horrible places, but I love this one. Finally, thank you for the kind words about Range. I actually felt similarly in some ways, and only realized late in the project that I was doing "mesearch" as much as research.
Thanks for the response, yay. Hey, where is the best place to buy a book from an author in order to give them the most? Is one place better than others in terms of your cut?
Kyle, that is a very thoughtful question. I think I speak for authors generally when I say that, at this point, anything that isn't piracy is much appreciated, as that's probably the biggest issue for a lot of authors, and the publishers that support them. Otherwise, the author cut depends on how discounted the book is. Amazon tends to have the deepest discounts; sites like bookshop.org and libro.fm (audiobooks), usually sell with very small discounts, and share some revenue with independent bookstores to help them stay in business. (With Libro, you can pick your own local store to get credit for the purchases.) But again, my opinion is that anything that isn't piracy is good for authors. I buy a ton of books; some of those at my local independent store; through a subscription to Libro; and some (especially ebooks) from Amazon.
So glad to hear that Steve, and glad that you recognize this as not a sort of silver bullet topic, but useful frames that we have to tailor to our situations. Thanks for reading!
The more time passes and I look back on pivots or decisions I have made I find myself becoming resistant to defining anything as quitting. We stop doing an activity or change jobs or foci but when I pull back the question I always find is, in a running context as usual, what is the race? Following that metaphor, I might drop out of X race because an injury would result but the actual race is long term improvement over a season or a career.
When we “quit” a job in pursuit of a better quality match, that is not really quitting but relentless forward progress in pursuit of the more ultimate goal.
Perhaps my beef is more with the connotation of the word quit which implies some amount of giving up. It is a short term assessment of a small part of a long game.
Katie, great point. You reminded me of a program I wrote about in the afterword to the paperback edition of Range — the Army's "talent-based branching" program. It sought to give people a period of sampling career fields so they could triangulate a better fit. It's a really neat program, and in many ways I think of it as smart quitting, but I think "talent-based branching" is much better branding, just because of the stigma associated with the word "quit." I think we need more branding like that. Or Angela Duckworth, the guru of grit herself, wrote a newsletter titled the "paramecium principle," and it was about smart quitting, but, again, with more productive branding.
I really like the way you put this, Katie, and especially your running metaphor! I agree. Quitting can be so tough because of the connotation, and sometimes that (and the sink cost fallacy) is enough to keep me doing something even if I can’t think of a single other reason not to quit. But I really like the way you put it -- I just need to think with a longer time horizon in mind!
Interesting thought! Thanks for that feedback, Alex. And I have a question: Substack added a feature where I can upload audio. If I were to upload a recording of me reading the Q&A, would that be of any interest? i.e. Not cool and produced like a podcast, but in a form that can be listened to instead of read for someone who wants to consume while driving or running or whatever else.
100% yes. I think it would be great to have the other person’s voice too, but also understand all the extra work that entails. But I’d still totally prefer to hear you read this over the robot voice (so I can listen in podcast format).
Wow this is great. Your enthusiasm for this book really leaps off the page, and I find it all so fascinating. Your talk about nuance and being able to listen to contradictory pieces of advice reminds me of this F. Scott Fitzgerald quote: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." (Or, alternatively, Toynbee's "No tool is omnicompetent" -- but I was too afraid to mention that one outside of the parenthetical because I know it's Range's epigraph and I don't want to preach too much to the choir.)
I also really loved Alter's note about how Messi begins games. LeBron does something similar, where he shoots much less in the first quarter than he does in all others. It also reminded me of the possibly apocryphal Lincoln quote: "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." All of this is to say I love all of this.
What you said about plateaus is also really resonating for me. Was it difficult to make that switch from SI staff writer to ProPublica intern? Looking back, did it help you grow in the ways you thought it would?
Also, do you just casually have chats with Isabel Allende?? That conversation sounds very cool. Thanks again. Another great one as always.
PS - I think for Q&As of this length I have a slight preference for splitting it up.
I must say, I'm never one to mind "preaching to the choir" — at least when I myself am the choir. I think I mentioned to you that I've taken a few beginning writing classes, and I think of it as reminding and reinforcing, as opposed to useless redundancy. I'm always reminded of something useful. I'm very much of the Frances Hesselbein "you have to carry a big basket to bring something home" mind. ...Actually, sometimes when someone says to me, "Stop me if I told you this already," I'll encourage them to tell me anyway, because it obviously came up for a reason, and I'll either pick up something new or just remember it better. ...And that's a great Fitzgerald quote. This idea came up elsewhere in the comments here, so I dropped this link to a concept I like, called "Janusian thinking": https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/30203400/The%20Process%20of%20Janusian%20Thinking%20in%20Creativity%20%282%29.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
As far as the transition from SI to PP intern. I didn't find it difficult. It was a relief. I needed a change, and a break from what I was doing at SI at that moment. I sold it to my bosses (who let me come back to SI) as a way to improve my skills in a manner I couldn't at SI, and I'd bring those skills back. And that's just what happened. I came back with more tools, and reinvigorated. If we could build this kind of short tool-building sabbatical into more careers, I think we'd unlock a ton of value. At one point, SI was one of the Time Inc publications that would sometimes pay for people to further their education, I think. That was gone by the time I was there, but I think we should have programs where people can do like a work exchange. Cheaper for the company of origin, and massively valuable. For me, it didn't just expand my skills, it expanded my network of colleagues and teachers, which continues to pay dividends today. Suddenly the number of domains covered in my personal network was much larger. I hadn't thought so much about that aspect. Eventually I went back to PP full time, and I hadn't expected that either. ...That transition really was easy, at least after the part where the person at PP who interviewed me for an internship was grilling me about whether I understood that I'd be scanning documents and so on. But, of course, I was trying to learn as much as I could, and ended up with a neat project that literally came out of me scanning documents for another reporter: https://www.propublica.org/article/beryllium-1-stimulus-workers-confront-legacy-of-contamination
Now, when I went back to PP full time, that was a very tough transition. Story for another comment section;)
Thank you for conducting this interview and sharing it with all of us! This interview and the discussion were just what I needed. I downloaded the book before finishing the column, have read 1/3 of it and will finish the rest today, because it is so helpful for this moment in time in my life. I will also be sharing it after reading. Thanks, David, for this interview. Thanks to Adam for not giving up when it got hard.
Wow, Julie, thanks so much for the kind words, and I'm glad it resonated! If any particular part of the book strikes you, and feel like sharing, I'd love to hear about that too. But, mostly, I just hope you enjoy it or find it stimulating. I certainly did.
On diversity of behaviour: If two directors always agree, one is not needed. Disagreement is essential to the exploration of concepts. Dr Meredith Belbin told us a long time ago that an effective team was a collection of differences. And he told us why.
On quit/persevere: I worked with a Zimbabwean organisation that decided to 'get the business into Zambia'. We tried and tried and tried again. We were caught in the 'sunk cost fallacy' where because we had spent so much time and money on the project, we thought it 'stupid' to stop. Eventually after spending far too much, we quit. We would have been far less stupid to have quit a whole lot sooner.
David, thanks for a great comment. The first part reminded me of an idea I read in Kevin Dunbar's research on group problem solving, in which he wrote that having a team with the same experiences and expertise is often no better than having just a single brain.
And that's a great sunk cost anecdote. It is such an incredibly strong bias. Not sure if you saw the Q&A I did with Annie Duke for this newsletter, but her book Quit has some really fascinating material about sunk costs, and how to attempt to counter the bias. Some of the most interesting parts of the book, to me, included researchers who had studied the sunk cost fallacy and yet weren't able to avoid it themselves.
For me, it didn't. Shout out from Brazil :)
Very cool idea!
Thank you for this post! As a creative, I so needed to read this. I particularly liked the part about that "Some people prefer to be mildly contented all the time, where others derive greater happiness and meaning when their lives are peppered with high highs and low lows." How does it relate in your opinion to the widely promoted idea of maintaining a routine and 'producing creative work' every day? It seems that 95% of creatives speak for a kind of won't-budge routine. What is your take on that?
Piotr, that is a great question, and I don't have a great answer. Personally, I definitely toggle between periods of routine and periods of basically very little routine. And I noticed this with Isabel Allende, who I mentioned above. She starts all her books on January 8 (but not necessarily one book per year), and that starts a period where she goes into a very particular routine. But once she's done, she explores. Sort of the like the explore/exploit toggling that Adam mentioned above. The more I think about that, the more it feels like the pattern of the creators whose methods I know the best; they have periods of routine, interspersed with periods of exploration. Haruki Murakami talks about getting physically fit in order to start his periods of writing, which involve a lot of routine. And I think the sort of "interval" mindset can apply even during the routine periods. Gloria Mark, in her book "Attention Span" (on which I'll do a newsletter soon), writes about how Maya Angelou would intersperse her writing with knitting, and called it toggling between her "big brain" and "little brain." (Come to think of it, Isabel did this with beading.) So I don't have a good broad strokes answer, as I think there's a lot of variation, but it does seem to me that there's often this sort of underlying interval-like approach.
David, thanks for your reply! I love all the examples you gave. My personal experience is that when there is a need, a routine shows up naturally. And whenever I intend to impose a routine on myself without an underlying need, I notice my creativity shuts down. I feel like undergoing a military drill or something, and everything in me opposes that. But whenever I needed to do something importart to me (and which had at least a semi-deadline ;)), I found it very helpful and I enjoyed it.
The danger to this approach, of course, it that you might get stuck in an 'exploration limbo', always believing there is still more to learn before you do something, putting off the moment of action. The routine-no-matter-what approach is - I guess - supposed to bypass that danger, and it probably all depends how much are you prone to procrastination.
I think it would make a great topic for an article if you'd like to explore that, there's so much to unpack here esp. going beyond the 'you need a daily routine till the end of your life' cliché ;)
Piotr, man, you've hit several giant questions here. I love your thinking! How do we balance these factors...I think about this a lot, for my own life, and with an eye toward writing about. And I think you hit another important point, which is how individualized this is; one's own proclivities matter, so there's no one-size-fits-all. ...I also appreciated that very important note about a semi-deadline! I've never thought of that term, but I really like it, and realize I almost never need exact deadlines, but almost always need semi-deadlines. ...A Duke Ellington quote I enjoy: "I don't need time, I need a deadline."
Semi-deadlines are enough for me to start working. I absolutely hate the pressure of a last-minute deadline, so a semi-deadline is motivating enough to start working early enough to avoid the latter, more dreaded form of deadline ;)
As a "not creative" I can only speak to the dangers of maintaining a routine that is "not creative" in terms of weakening the ability to create anything artistic or inspired.
Yet as I elaborate in a separate comment, I think surviving in a "not creative" desert for a while might at least rekindle a spark and thirst for "creativity."
Love the idea that you reach good ideas once you exhaust bad ones. So counter intuitive yet still makes sense when I'm writing!
I know I love that too! The "creative cliff illusion" really lodged in my mind.
Excellent deep dive, and the lightning round was a good goal to look forward to at the end of the journey. Like orange slices after a soccer game in the 1980's. As an aside, my kid is now rewarded with cookies (instead of real fruit with fiber, water, potassium, and sugar) at the end of her tennis matches - another sign of the decline of Western civilization.
In terms of feedback for longer posts like this one, I'm good with cohesive long form mixed in. I don't have time to "read it", but I listened to this post as a podcast using the app (and the female bot voice works fine). It was a great trading of ideas, and introduction to a new author I have not read, yet!
In terms of trading progressive intimacies about oneself, I feel liberated to keep commenting about myself here, ha! In primary care I don't have the challenge of "getting stuck." The constant stream of people's problems and chaos seeking order affords me a ready made, actionable framework. But that leads to burnout, and a deep craving for creative outlets.
When I started practicing at 30, I still had time to write creatively about my patient encounters and life in medicine, ridiculously aspiring to some William Carlos Williams/Atul Gawande vignettes and reflections. Then too many responsibilities and the actionable grind took over for about a decade, and without making time for creative pursuits, I became pretty anxious, hollowed out, and resigned to the grind.
I jumped back in with the advent of Substack, and although I'm still rusty, I've been able to rescuscitate some creative parts of my brain. Forcing myself to do this has flattened anxiety, filled my sails a bit, and helped me thrive amid the grind. And in terms of getting stuck, I have a list of like 100+ ideas that I would love to type into being if only I didn't have the ever expanding day job.
So while this is not practical for creatives and intellectuals and writers who make a living by keeping their creative, well-oiled, expert engines humming along, I would add my own personal experience: that to deprive oneself of generative pursuits, and relentlessly just take care of business, might lead to a real hunger for those moments of transcendance being deferred, and a font of ideas might come bursting through the dehumanization of the grind.
So, less poetically, and without having to go through med school... maybe washing dishes for a month straight might unstick, too?
Ryan you got a literal lol with the orange slices reference. I love analogies in general (part of the reason I enjoy Haruki Murakami's writing so much), and that was a fun one. ...Even the decline of civilization caveat couldn't spoil it;) My son (4) is on a massive kick of...drum roll...kidney beans? Seriously, he's like eating his weight in kidney beans.
Also, you should feel completely liberated to comment about yourself here. You've enriched my experience of doing this newsletter, and my greatest unforeseen bonus of doing this newsletter at all has been the comments when people share some interesting or personal tidbit. I didn't think the comments section would be so interesting. So please keep using this space for whatever you want to share, and I'll keep reading it.
And I think this is a great thought, a post really, you left here. My intuition is that even a lot of writers fall into routine once they become competent, and there's more grind and less creativity. Although I suppose, as you suggest, that in turn prompts many of them to make a change. ...It's interesting that so much great literature has come from people who were engaged in — and often subsequently wrote about — the grind. I wonder to what extent that was just the proximate canvas for the sort of hunger that developed. I have to think more about this, but you reminded me of an essay I read by Tennessee Williams, in which he wrote that becoming successful very quickly as a writer ruined him for a while, as he realized that there was a struggle he needed to have to create. I'm going to see if I can track that down again, and if I do, I'll aim to do a short post on it.
You also reminded me of reading about Tommy Orange, author of the fantastic There There, who got a job at a bookstore in his late 20s, and amid the daily toil started reading the books around him. That worked out! Anyway, very generative comment...I don't have anything to add, just thinking out loud, and maybe this will lead to a future post.
These are great thoughts in response, and I appreciate the references! The Tennessee Williams quote is really compelling, and so is your son’s kidney bean eating prowess! That is the start of a great microbiome, just make sure they are well cooked and everything in moderation 😉. Appreciate your synthesis of disparate parts as always, and the natural creativity that cross-brain traffic enhances.
Honestly, we're struggling with the moderation part in this particular area!
The orange slices after soccer games were a thing in the 90's too! Oh sweet nostalgia.
Regarding Gawande, I don't know how he does it. He must have a horrible family life or something to be so excellent at his diversity of interests. Ok, I doubt he does, I just sometimes don't like the fact that some humans just seem objectively better than others generally. Like what happened to the theory of multiple intelligences where we all were special and good at something?
I wanted to take a moment to commiserate. I'm writing this response in between patients (~1 minute until I have to start my next encounter), but I don't know if I would be any more creative or productive in my writing if I didn't work. There is certainly a balance. I started taking Fridays off about 1.5 years ago, and I keep the kids in school/daycare. I take that day to recharge and be creative. By no means is it perfect. And it means that I make 1/5 less money (I'm self employed), but that one day makes me a better person the rest of the week and the weekend. It's like my personalized Sabbath. I know not everyone can do that. But when I meet people who have higher paying jobs, I always encourage this. The rat race isn't worth it.
Anyways, I'll end my sermon here. Thanks for your relatable words.
Oh, and regarding Williams. I never understood him. The whole Red Wheelbarrow poem... Over my head I guess. Its kind of like the art where they duct take toilet seats and bananas to the wall...
I really appreciate the dichotomies you mentioned above. Many books try to persuade people that their intervention is the one that will work, not many consider that different interventions work in different situations. My wife and I go back and forth about this in regards to behavior change. I do small steps with SMART goals which is also what I recommend to patients. My wife seems to have little success with that but much more success when she makes a drastic change all at once. So maybe certain interventions aren't only different per situation but also per person. This is dangerously close to losing the "truth" and everything being subjective - the whole, "do what works for you" thing, which I don't feel is helpful.
Also, you asked about feedback on Q&A's. My feedback isn't quite what you are asking for, but I will say that Q&A's often feel too long for me to read. I much prefer them in podcast form. But I love the content of your Q&As. Hope that helps!
You seem to have mastered the Jedi-like ability to hold contradictory truths in your mind at the same time, and have some built in ease with uncertainty! Your patients must benefit from your restraint in terms of not imposing your ego, or insisting that your one intervention has to work for them.
Love it when people interact in the comments! ...And just wanted to add that you reminded me of a concept I learned about in reading research on creativity: "Janusian thinking" — holding two contradictory ideas in mind can be a spur for innovative thinking. And, as it happens, I came across it in the writing of a psychiatrist: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/30203400/The%20Process%20of%20Janusian%20Thinking%20in%20Creativity%20%282%29.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
I've only read sections of the article so far, but it is great! I started by Ctrl "F" searching for "dialectic" to see if Janusian was more than a synonym. I love how he broke down the subtle differences between Janusian and dialectical thinking. Also this was awesome:
"I have substituted the term "Janusian" for "oppositional" because it more accurately conveys the simultaneity of opposition and because, as a metaphor, it embodies the process it denotes. Janus, of course, was the Roman god with two faces, the god who looked and apprehended in opposite directions simultaneously. He was the god of all doorways and his two faces (Janus bifrons) allowed him to observe both the exterior and interior of a house and the entrance and exit of all buildings. It
is perhaps not generally known that he was a very important god, appearing at the head of religious ceremonies and, on the Roman list, he came even before Jupiter. He was the god of "beginnings," presiding over daybreak, and was considered
to be the promoter of all initiative. His role as beginner is commemorated in the name January, the month which begins our year. In fact, he had an essential role in the creation of the world itself and was also known as Janus Pater, the god of gods. Of particular interest for this exposition of Janusian thinking, especially in relation to artistic creation, is the fact that Janus was also considered to be the god of all communication, an extension of his function as god of departure and return."
Haha, I appreciate the compliment! It is definitely something I strive for, but, like all Jedi, I have a long path ahead. Honestly though, the idea of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) for treating borderline personality disorder has always stuck with me. The idea of a dialectic might be so enticing specifically because it is so difficult yet rewarding. I question the tenets of much of psychiatry, but DBT, in my opinion, should be a required class in high school - part of the adulting 101 that is missing today.
Oh, and I love your lightning round question about flow being possibly unhelpful. I wish their was more to that answer! I think you were on to something there.
Paul, I'll respond to your earlier comment later, but just in brief: I agree, and there will be at least a bit more on this topic in an upcoming Q&A with Gloria Mark. I'm a little behind so not quite sure when I'll get that one out, but won't be too long!
Love the (implied) circumstantial nature of so much of this. Leads to better developed theory. Eg in this circumstance, pausing and reflecting makes sense but in this one do y instead. Etc etc. Helps parse between things that are seemingly opposite (quit vs persist) but are really circumstantial.
Michael, thanks for this comment. I completely agree. And I think that mindset — not "Does it work or not?", but "When might it work?" — is probably a really productive one when it comes to thinking about human development. The more I learn, the less bothered I am by apparent surface contradictions.
Completely agree. I just wish academic journals helped in this cause to give the boundary conditions rather than (unintentionally perhaps) essentially pitting findings against each other.
That's a great point. And, frankly, I feel like academic journals could do a lot of things better, but seems like they haven't been pressed to change much, even with more preprint availability and open source publishing. Might take a little push from their customers.
This was such a lovely and helpful interview. I put a copy in my notion and have taken copious notes.
Edit: Since it seems like David reads his substack comments...I just wanted to say thank you for Range. As a career late bloomer who felt lost for a long time and beat myself up a lot, I found it very consoling. I need to re-read the book, come to think of it.
Kyle, that is so kind of you to say, and I'm so glad you found this thought-provoking.
And I do read and respond to many comments! I don't always manage to get to all of them, but the comments have been really the main wonderful surprise of this newsletter. I had gotten so used to thinking of comment sections as horrible places, but I love this one. Finally, thank you for the kind words about Range. I actually felt similarly in some ways, and only realized late in the project that I was doing "mesearch" as much as research.
Thanks for the response, yay. Hey, where is the best place to buy a book from an author in order to give them the most? Is one place better than others in terms of your cut?
Kyle, that is a very thoughtful question. I think I speak for authors generally when I say that, at this point, anything that isn't piracy is much appreciated, as that's probably the biggest issue for a lot of authors, and the publishers that support them. Otherwise, the author cut depends on how discounted the book is. Amazon tends to have the deepest discounts; sites like bookshop.org and libro.fm (audiobooks), usually sell with very small discounts, and share some revenue with independent bookstores to help them stay in business. (With Libro, you can pick your own local store to get credit for the purchases.) But again, my opinion is that anything that isn't piracy is good for authors. I buy a ton of books; some of those at my local independent store; through a subscription to Libro; and some (especially ebooks) from Amazon.
Awesome topic, I learned so much from this. I can see why some of my strategies of dealing with problems work or fail and I reset.
Thank you for this article.
So glad to hear that Steve, and glad that you recognize this as not a sort of silver bullet topic, but useful frames that we have to tailor to our situations. Thanks for reading!
The more time passes and I look back on pivots or decisions I have made I find myself becoming resistant to defining anything as quitting. We stop doing an activity or change jobs or foci but when I pull back the question I always find is, in a running context as usual, what is the race? Following that metaphor, I might drop out of X race because an injury would result but the actual race is long term improvement over a season or a career.
When we “quit” a job in pursuit of a better quality match, that is not really quitting but relentless forward progress in pursuit of the more ultimate goal.
Perhaps my beef is more with the connotation of the word quit which implies some amount of giving up. It is a short term assessment of a small part of a long game.
Katie, great point. You reminded me of a program I wrote about in the afterword to the paperback edition of Range — the Army's "talent-based branching" program. It sought to give people a period of sampling career fields so they could triangulate a better fit. It's a really neat program, and in many ways I think of it as smart quitting, but I think "talent-based branching" is much better branding, just because of the stigma associated with the word "quit." I think we need more branding like that. Or Angela Duckworth, the guru of grit herself, wrote a newsletter titled the "paramecium principle," and it was about smart quitting, but, again, with more productive branding.
I would absolutely throw all my enthusiasm behind talent-based branching.
And here I ended up with the hard-cover version of Range. Dang!
I really like the way you put this, Katie, and especially your running metaphor! I agree. Quitting can be so tough because of the connotation, and sometimes that (and the sink cost fallacy) is enough to keep me doing something even if I can’t think of a single other reason not to quit. But I really like the way you put it -- I just need to think with a longer time horizon in mind!
two-part posts that preserve more content, please :)
Thanks for that feedback! ...And did this one strike you as too long as a single post? It was the longest one yet.
Please do a podcast version!
Interesting thought! Thanks for that feedback, Alex. And I have a question: Substack added a feature where I can upload audio. If I were to upload a recording of me reading the Q&A, would that be of any interest? i.e. Not cool and produced like a podcast, but in a form that can be listened to instead of read for someone who wants to consume while driving or running or whatever else.
100% yes. I think it would be great to have the other person’s voice too, but also understand all the extra work that entails. But I’d still totally prefer to hear you read this over the robot voice (so I can listen in podcast format).
Wow this is great. Your enthusiasm for this book really leaps off the page, and I find it all so fascinating. Your talk about nuance and being able to listen to contradictory pieces of advice reminds me of this F. Scott Fitzgerald quote: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." (Or, alternatively, Toynbee's "No tool is omnicompetent" -- but I was too afraid to mention that one outside of the parenthetical because I know it's Range's epigraph and I don't want to preach too much to the choir.)
I also really loved Alter's note about how Messi begins games. LeBron does something similar, where he shoots much less in the first quarter than he does in all others. It also reminded me of the possibly apocryphal Lincoln quote: "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." All of this is to say I love all of this.
What you said about plateaus is also really resonating for me. Was it difficult to make that switch from SI staff writer to ProPublica intern? Looking back, did it help you grow in the ways you thought it would?
Also, do you just casually have chats with Isabel Allende?? That conversation sounds very cool. Thanks again. Another great one as always.
PS - I think for Q&As of this length I have a slight preference for splitting it up.
I must say, I'm never one to mind "preaching to the choir" — at least when I myself am the choir. I think I mentioned to you that I've taken a few beginning writing classes, and I think of it as reminding and reinforcing, as opposed to useless redundancy. I'm always reminded of something useful. I'm very much of the Frances Hesselbein "you have to carry a big basket to bring something home" mind. ...Actually, sometimes when someone says to me, "Stop me if I told you this already," I'll encourage them to tell me anyway, because it obviously came up for a reason, and I'll either pick up something new or just remember it better. ...And that's a great Fitzgerald quote. This idea came up elsewhere in the comments here, so I dropped this link to a concept I like, called "Janusian thinking": https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/30203400/The%20Process%20of%20Janusian%20Thinking%20in%20Creativity%20%282%29.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
As far as the transition from SI to PP intern. I didn't find it difficult. It was a relief. I needed a change, and a break from what I was doing at SI at that moment. I sold it to my bosses (who let me come back to SI) as a way to improve my skills in a manner I couldn't at SI, and I'd bring those skills back. And that's just what happened. I came back with more tools, and reinvigorated. If we could build this kind of short tool-building sabbatical into more careers, I think we'd unlock a ton of value. At one point, SI was one of the Time Inc publications that would sometimes pay for people to further their education, I think. That was gone by the time I was there, but I think we should have programs where people can do like a work exchange. Cheaper for the company of origin, and massively valuable. For me, it didn't just expand my skills, it expanded my network of colleagues and teachers, which continues to pay dividends today. Suddenly the number of domains covered in my personal network was much larger. I hadn't thought so much about that aspect. Eventually I went back to PP full time, and I hadn't expected that either. ...That transition really was easy, at least after the part where the person at PP who interviewed me for an internship was grilling me about whether I understood that I'd be scanning documents and so on. But, of course, I was trying to learn as much as I could, and ended up with a neat project that literally came out of me scanning documents for another reporter: https://www.propublica.org/article/beryllium-1-stimulus-workers-confront-legacy-of-contamination
Now, when I went back to PP full time, that was a very tough transition. Story for another comment section;)
Thank you for conducting this interview and sharing it with all of us! This interview and the discussion were just what I needed. I downloaded the book before finishing the column, have read 1/3 of it and will finish the rest today, because it is so helpful for this moment in time in my life. I will also be sharing it after reading. Thanks, David, for this interview. Thanks to Adam for not giving up when it got hard.
Wow, Julie, thanks so much for the kind words, and I'm glad it resonated! If any particular part of the book strikes you, and feel like sharing, I'd love to hear about that too. But, mostly, I just hope you enjoy it or find it stimulating. I certainly did.
On diversity of behaviour: If two directors always agree, one is not needed. Disagreement is essential to the exploration of concepts. Dr Meredith Belbin told us a long time ago that an effective team was a collection of differences. And he told us why.
On quit/persevere: I worked with a Zimbabwean organisation that decided to 'get the business into Zambia'. We tried and tried and tried again. We were caught in the 'sunk cost fallacy' where because we had spent so much time and money on the project, we thought it 'stupid' to stop. Eventually after spending far too much, we quit. We would have been far less stupid to have quit a whole lot sooner.
Thanks for an as always, useful read
David, thanks for a great comment. The first part reminded me of an idea I read in Kevin Dunbar's research on group problem solving, in which he wrote that having a team with the same experiences and expertise is often no better than having just a single brain.
And that's a great sunk cost anecdote. It is such an incredibly strong bias. Not sure if you saw the Q&A I did with Annie Duke for this newsletter, but her book Quit has some really fascinating material about sunk costs, and how to attempt to counter the bias. Some of the most interesting parts of the book, to me, included researchers who had studied the sunk cost fallacy and yet weren't able to avoid it themselves.