A while back, I posted about David Epstein’s new book, which breaks down how constraints can help us live better lives. Ironically, making things a little harder can lead to increased productivity, creativity, and happiness.
This resonated with a lot of readers, but many were understandably hesitant to deliberately make their lives more difficult. (Apparently, this was a task that, up to this point, the world had handled for them just fine.) So the most common reply I got was: “What’s the best way to get started?”
My knee-jerk reaction was to say, “Do whatever you want.”
Dumb. I forgot that “Do whatever you want” is the most paralyzing sentence in the English language, surpassed only by “We need to talk” and “The doctor will call you with the results.”
So today we’re going to cover how to put constraints into practice, and I figured the best way to do that was to interview David. This way: 1) we get the answers from the man himself, and 2) I get to do a lot less thinking and merely provide snarky commentary.
Alright, obligatory intro time:
David Epstein is the author of The Sports Gene, Range, and the just-released Inside the Box. If you haven’t read any of them, congratulations: you are one of approximately 9 people left in the English-speaking world who hasn’t.
I recommend David’s work because he makes self-deception harder. People just loooove to pick some big mainstream cliché and go all-in: “Hard work is everything.” “Specialize early.” “Think outside the box.” The culture gets itself into death spirals where every parent, manager, and podcaster gets convinced there’s a single perfect formula for excellence, and then David has to come out with a new book like a weary public health official saying, “Once again, I am begging you to stop licking the railings.”
That’s the role he plays. He’s the designated driver of modern nonfiction. Which is beautiful and exactly the sort of thing that makes it harder for me to make fun of him.
Still, I persist.
His latest book is Inside the Box, which, title-wise, sounds like a magician’s autobiography or a memoir written by a cat. Despite this, it’s excellent.
Let’s get to it…
The Single Most Useful Constraint
Q: If somebody could only add one constraint to their life this week, what should it be?
David: Monotasking. Just doing one thing at a time.
Do one thing at a time. Sounds like the kind of advice you see on a laminated poster in a kindergarten classroom. Right next to “Raise Your Hand” and “Don’t Eat Paste.” And yet, like most pieces of advice you’re embarrassed to need, it’s obviously correct.
David: At first, you might feel a physical drive to switch between tasks, because your attention has been trained for switching, which is terrible. As psychologist Gloria Mark’s work has shown, we become accustomed to a certain cadence of interruption. Once that happens, even if we remove the distractors, we “self-interrupt” with intrusive thoughts to maintain our usual rhythm. But if you start monotasking (checking email in blocks, not 77 times a day, as Mark found was average), within a few days you’ll begin retraining your attention and recapturing your ability to focus deeply.
If you checked your postal mailbox 77 times a day, your family would stage an intervention. But do the same thing electronically and you are said to be “responsive.”
David: At the very least, pick your most important task for the day, set a timer for an hour, put your phone in another room, and do only that one thing. Then take a break. Intrusive thoughts will probably pop up if you aren’t used to deep focus, so keep a pad nearby to write them down—“cognitive outsourcing”—and get them out of your working memory. In two or three blocks, you’ll probably get more done than in an entire normal workday.
Writing them down tells the brain, “Yes, yes, noted, now sit down and shut up.” You don’t need inner peace. You need a scrap of paper and the willingness to tell your own nonsense to wait its turn.
(For 6 ways neuroscience can increase your attention span, click here.)
Okay, that’s the best constraint… but what’s the easiest one?
Good Enough Is Good Enough
Q: What is the smallest constraint most people underestimate?
David: Probably what Nobel laureate Herbert Simon called “satisficing,” as opposed to “maximizing.” Maximizing means trying to evaluate all options and make the best decision. We spend a ton of time agonizing over decisions that either don’t matter, or where the agonizing doesn’t lead to a better choice. As it turns out, maximizers are less happy with their choices and their lives, and more prone to regret.
Maximizers. You know the type. They hover over paint swatches like they’re selecting a pope. And in the process, they become the kind of person who can’t enjoy what’s in front of them because they’re still obsessing over what isn’t.
David: We should “satisfice”: proactively pick “good enough” criteria for our decisions. Once those criteria are met, just go with it.
And now someone’s gonna reply, “But shouldn’t we try to make the best decisions possible?”
Look, nobody’s suggesting you use “good enough” criteria for picking a cardiac surgeon. But a vast chunk of your day consists of choices that aren’t worth the full resources of your inner tribunal.
You can’t think your way into a regret-free life. What you can do is decide what matters, choose according to that, and save the rest of your mind for the few things that are important.
(For more on the power of constraints and the science of why they work, click here.)
So what’s the constraint that’s needed at work?
Stop Brainstorming
Q: What’s one constraint every knowledge-work team should adopt tomorrow?
David: Stop brainstorming. There’s a mountain of research showing that team brainstorming doesn’t work. There are several reasons why, some having to do with unconscious conformity, others with fear of being judged, and still others with unclear norms. (For example, people are often told to say whatever comes to mind, but also not to criticize.)
Most people know how brainstorming at the office really works. The actual assignment is not “say what comes to mind.” The actual assignment is “say something that sounds original but not risky, confident but not arrogant, strategic but not boring, and above all, something that does not inconvenience power.” So you get the blandest ideas imaginable.
And they always say, “There are no bad ideas.” Are you kidding me? The phrase “There are no bad ideas” should automatically trigger a trapdoor beneath the speaker’s feet. Most of recorded history refutes it. That phrase belongs in the pantheon of everyday lies like “we’re all family here” or “this won’t take much of your time.”
David: Teams should try “brainwriting” instead: everyone writes down their ideas separately, and only then comes together to share as a group. It’s easy to adopt, and it leads to more equal conversational turn-taking, which—according to research from Carnegie Mellon and MIT, as well as Google’s internal research—is a hallmark of the most intelligent teams.
It’s no coincidence that “brainstorming” sounds like a migraine symptom. You know what it really is? It’s a system for ensuring the least inhibited person gets mistaken for the most insightful. People will tell you it “gets everything out there.” Sure. So does vomiting.
Humanity can put a man on the moon, but we still haven’t solved “Don’t let Kevin dominate the meeting.” And that’s where brainwriting can help. It dials down the theatrical component with the radical proposition that adults should arrive at a discussion having done five minutes of actual thinking.
(For more on why brainstorming doesn’t work and what works better, click here.)
And what constraint can help us at home?
Shared Obligations
Q: What kinds of constraints help families and relationships?
David: Shared obligations. The Harvard Study of Adult Development tracked people for 86 years, and the overwhelming finding is that strong real-world ties to family, friends, and community are the best predictors of health and longevity.
86 years isn’t a study. 86 years is a curse placed on a bloodline. But I digress.
Okay, “shared obligations.” Sounds boring. Sounds like the opposite of freedom, the opposite of romance, and the opposite of anything I’ve ever wanted on purpose. But of course it’s right, because God loves irony and also apparently wants all of us to become our grandparents.
Families and relationships work better when people are tied to one another by actual duties. Real ones. Not just a warm feeling in your chest when somebody looks cute in kitchen lighting. Responsibilities. Expectations. The daily, repetitive, aggressively unsexy nonsense of building a shared life.
Romantic notions like “I would die for you” are easy to say because nobody’s asking you to do that on a Wednesday. We’re talking about: “I took the kid to soccer, ran the dishwasher, texted your mom back, and bought toilet paper so we didn’t need to start using old takeout napkins.”
David: As political scientist Robert Putnam put it, “Your chances of dying over the next year are cut in half by joining one group.” An analysis of 148 studies with more than 300,000 participants basically backed him up.
Jeez. The terrible thing about getting older is that every piece of advice that sounded oppressively wholesome when I was younger keeps turning out to be true. You cannot build a life entirely out of leisure, procrastination, and pretending you didn’t see the laundry.
Believe me, I have tried.
David: For kids, one recommendation from the Harvard study was to start chores young. It gives them a sense of obligation and competence, and the feeling that their participation in the family matters.
Chores tell a kid, “You live here, therefore you matter here.” They also tell them, “This household is not a luxury hotel staffed by your mother.” Every family eventually has to decide whether it’s raising kids or breeding aristocrats.
Self-esteem based on accomplishment is called “confidence.” Self-esteem based on constant affirmation is called “needing constant affirmation.”
(To read my previous interview with David where we covered how to find your passion and become an expert at it, click here.)
And how do we make sure we actually follow through and use these constraints to reach the outcomes we want?
Use Deadlines And Commitment Devices
Q: How do you make a constraint stick when nobody’s enforcing it but you?
David: In many cases I’d say someone else is enforcing it. The most obvious are deadlines.
Deadlines are the only reason civilization ever got built. They take all that glorious abstract freedom and hammer it to a specific date. Before a deadline, your project is a beautiful floating possibility. After a deadline, it’s either done or it isn’t, which is the sort of brutal binary that humans go to heroic lengths to avoid.
Of course, that’s exactly why it works.
David: You can also use various “commitment devices,” from pledging money to charity if you don’t accomplish a certain goal, to simply signing up for something and putting it on the calendar—which instantly multiplies the chance you’ll actually do it—so there’s a psychological cost if you bail. The idea is to move away from relying solely on willpower every time you face a decision. You want to design your environment so the desired behavior is the default.
Translation: stop trusting yourself so much.
You need less faith in the imaginary version of yourself who is motivated “tomorrow” and more respect for the actual version who will absolutely, totally, 100% fold under the right conditions.
“I just need more discipline.”
No, you need more consequences.
And that’s what commitment devices provide. Stop asking, “How can I be more disciplined?” and start asking, “How can I make the wise choice the path of least resistance?” Then start piling resistance in front of the alternatives.
(For more on how to stop procrastinating for good, click here.)
It’s settled. You need constraints. If you disagree, you’re welcome to your wrong opinion. That’s your right as a free person, and as we have established, free people are terrible at making good decisions.
Now let’s round it all up and learn what happens when we properly shackle ourselves…
Sum Up
Here’s how to get better at anything…
- The Single Most Useful Constraint: Stop multitasking. It’s the equivalent of repeatedly smashing your concentration in the face with a folding chair.
- Good Enough Is Good Enough: Every minute you spend wringing your hands over unimportant details is a minute you’re not spending on something that could actually improve your life.
- Stop Brainstorming: You’re told, “There are no bad ideas,” which is obviously a lie, since there are SO SO SO many bad ideas. If you really believe there are no bad ideas, take your 401(k) to the roulette table.
- Shared Obligations: You don’t get strong relationships by avoiding every inconvenience. You get them by accepting that other people are gonna cost you something… and deciding they’re worth it.
- Use Deadlines And Commitment Devices: If you want a behavior to happen, build a structure around it that makes not doing it annoying, embarrassing, or expensive.
“I wish someone would make me get this done.”
You’ve had this thought. I’ve had this thought. And then I filed it in the mental cabinet marked “deal with later,” which is the largest cabinet I own and the one I open least frequently.
We’re just not as effective when we have endless freedom. Stop pretending that keeping every door open makes you free. It usually just means you’re standing in the hallway.
Look at it this way:
You’re not a diamond.
I’m not a diamond.
I’m actually more like cubic zirconia: similar from a distance, much cheaper, and disappointing upon close inspection.
ANYWAY, we’re not diamonds.
But we’re both carbon. We both have the raw material. But that raw material, without pressure, without constraint, without the compression of a deadline or somebody on the other end impatiently waiting for the thing, just sits there. Being carbon. Being potential. Being the stuff that could be a diamond and isn’t.
Apply the pressure. Apply the constraint.
You can become a diamond.
