The Troubling Enigma of Our Very Own Goals

Why is it so easy to form terrible habits and so excruciating to create ones that will benefit us in the long-term?

This is a question that I’ve asked myself over and over but never sought a true answer to. Perhaps it’s based in the fear of confronting myself and my weaknesses. The perfectionist in me recoils at the thought of it. But the ever-evolving version of myself gently presses on, knowing that this exact encounter is necessary for growth.

Cal Newport lays out his methods of crafting habits in Rule #1 of his book Deep Work, which is aptly called, “Work Deeply”. He first describes the different philosophies of depth.

There’s the Monastic Philosophy, in which a knowledge worker will abandon all shallow activities for the sake of their true, deep calling. Then there’s the Bimodal Philosophy, which adopts a monastic practice for certain stretches of time, leaving the rest to the shallows. TheRhythmic Philosophy is one that involves creating an automatic response to your work – deciding your deep time for you, to avoid spending mental energy in preparation. Lastly, there’s the Journalistic Philosophy, for the uber-busy, which entails jumping into deep work whenever their schedules allow.

He then goes on to introduce another idea that I found particularly inspiring: Ritualizing your work. This concept is intriguing because it offers a fresh perspective. Doing the work to achieve your goals is often a daunting task. It isn’t the hard work aspect that is so intimidating – we all possess the capability of working hard at what we put our minds to. It more so has to do with the idea of achieving and living up to your own expectations. Self-sabotage becomes inevitable when one gets stuck in this sort of thinking trap.

A “change of mindset” seems to be the elusive goal of this problem, but the methodology of that task is unclear. Newport actually emphasizes this exact conundrum in the chapter; sharing Harvard business professor, Clayton Christiansen’s experience while working with Intel CEO Andy Grove,

“As Christiansen recalls, Grove asked him during a break in this meeting, ‘How do I do this?’ Christiansen responded with a discussion of business strategy, explaining how Grove could set up a new business unit and so on. Grove cut him off with a gruff reply: ‘You are such a naïve academic. I asked you how to do it, and you told me what I should do. I know what I need to do. I just don’t know how to do it.’”

The book The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Jim Huling, and Sean Covey (foreword by Christiansen, detailing his account with Grove), creates solutions for that exact issue. But what Newport does in his writing, is explain how to apply it to your own deep work.

He dives into these disciplines, what he abbreviates to 4DX, highlighting the benefits of working this way, and the perils of deep work without a concrete strategy.

That is the beauty of Newport’s ritualization. Turning this big swirling idea of “accomplishment” into a focused, automatic, and concrete plan. That in and of itself is inspiring.

We exist in a society that is so individualistic and achievement-oriented. It tells you to do a lot of things that are simpler said than done – “follow your dreams”, “work hard”, “be organized” – but what it fails to hold space for is the ambiguity of these phrases, and the circumstances each person faces while doing so.

One of those things this world is constantly pushing is the idea of multitasking. In many cases, it’s a requirement to be just that. In a highly-competitive professional market, employers often list the skill in their job descriptions. People feel the need to take on more and more, becoming the “jack of all trades”, but the often left-out second part to that phrase is “master of none”.

Jonah Malin’s article, “Why Multitasking Is a Myth, Backed by Science”, published on Medium, highlights the negative qualities experts find when it comes to multitasking. Malin writes,

“In reality, we are never truly multitasking. While it may feel like you are successfully completing two or three objectives at once, it is far more likely that that the brain is processing individual actions in rapid succession.”

He goes on to support his point, discussing our brain’s nature – to mono-task. We were not naturally wired to multitask. And that’s why it is so challenging for us.

Other studies have argued this long-standing stance in the productivity world. For example, a 2017 paper by Shalena Srna, Rom Y. Schrift, and Gal Zauberman, “The Illusion of Multitasking and Its Positive Effect on Performance” actually find that people perform at a higher rate under the perception that they are multitasking,

“We find across multiple studies, using both self-reported and physiological measures, that the mere perception of multitasking increases engagement in the activity. We conjecture that one reason for this increase in engagement is the motivation to appear as an adept multitasker.”

What does this mean? Is multitasking good or bad? Well, I would say that it’s complicated. There’s that societal perception of multitasking as an important skill – one that can be as motivating for some as it crippling to others. But as Cal Newport suggests, our focus on the idea of multitasking shrouds our ability to execute our true goals and motivations in a qualitative sense.

So sure, it is possible we are more productive when we think we are multitasking. But what exactly are we productive at? Are we meeting our true goals or are we lost in the shallows?