Selective attention is incredibly beneficial to us in that it allows us to focus on what matters in a complex and dangerous world. But for creatives, this kind of behavior can also cause us to lose sight of the big picture, and what’s really going on in the grand scheme of our life, for the sake of what’s immediately urgent or pressing. Often we unconsciously compartmentalize data as relevant or irrelevant to the problem at hand, conceptually dividing our life into various “airtight” chambers that don’t interact with one another. We like to think that the various areas of our life are like file folders that we can pull out of the cabinet, explore, then replace without affecting the other folders in the cabinet. We examine the various areas of our life and work, make commitments on them, and generate ideas for them, in isolation.
To reinforce this, the preponderance of self-help literature over the past few decades has focused on effectiveness in various areas of our life. There are books on managing work, managing home life, and effectively managing time by dividing responsibilities into categories. But this kind of “divide and conquer” technique is destined to fail because it ignores the interconnectedness of all areas of our life and the effects that a commitment in one area has on another. We need to build the practice of occasionally stepping back to examine our life as a whole and establishing a rhythm around energy that accounts for all the commitments in our life. This will help us avoid the energy drains that zap our capacity for regular insight.
The Fallacy of Compartmentalization
Because we tend to divide our life into buckets, we talk about things like our “work life” and our “home life” as though we can somehow slip out of our skin and assume another identity when transitioning between them. But trying to compartmentalize the various parts of life can take a toll.
Every area of our life is hardwired to every other area. It is impossible to perform a task in one sphere and not have it affect another. Energy we put toward a work task is energy we can’t put toward a personal project. Similarly, every personal commitment we make, even if it’s just a commitment to think about something, requires energy that will not be available when it’s time to focus on our work.
How does this affect our ability to generate ideas? When we are in a very busy time at work, one in which we’re required to generate a lot of ideas in a short amount of time, we need tremendous amounts of energy and focus. But many of us make commitments and expend energy on other, less critical projects thoughtlessly during these time without considering the consequences. We don’t realize that each commitment we make affects every other. We fail to plan ahead and take into account the creative energy that will be required by our work during a specific week and continue to make commitments, plan meetings, or allocate time to work on unrelated projects.
Most of us assume that as long as time is available, we can continue filling it up. This is how we have been trained to think about productivity—it’s all about efficiency. But mindlessly stacking unrelated activities and projects into a week where we expect creative breakthroughs on important projects only drains our energy and fractures our focus. This goes for personal commitments, too. We will miss critical insights that could lead to conceptual breakthroughs simply because we are operating at less than optimum capacity. However, if we take into account the season we are in at work and at home, along with all the associated demands, we will be able to make commitments wisely rather than by instinct.
When you are planning your life, you need to account for every commitment you make in every area. This means that when you are in a busy season at work, you need to be disciplined enough to trim back the number of personal commitments you make. Similarly, when you are entering a busy season in your personal life, you need to be purposeful about the extra commitments you take on for work. While you can’t always choose what you work on, you can be careful and strategic about where you focus your energy outside of those core commitments.
Question: Can you think of a time in your life when the convergence of your personal commitments and your work commitments have caused you to feel overwhelmed and ineffective?
The Three Horizons of Whole-Life Planning
There are three horizons of whole-life planning that I (Todd Henry) recommend to clients: weekly, monthly, and quarterly. It is critical to get ahead of your energy commitments and examine them objectively. Saying no to a new opportunity is very difficult in the moment, but if you have been strategic in your planning and know what a new commitment will truly cost you, then you can refuse new opportunities with confidence. Once you understand your limits, you will be able to manage your energy more effectively. Remember, this is about setting yourself up to have conceptual breakthroughs in the areas of your life and work that matter most.
Whole-life planning recognizes that your creative process is the result of the merging of all your experiences, skills, and passions. When you are able to strategically and purposefully structure your life so that you are giving your best energy to what’s most critical, ideas will naturally start to flow in situations when you need them most.
* Source: The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry