Unfortunately, I can’t find the time to do that often enough, because it involves at least half a day of travel back and forth.
I find myself extraordinarily relaxed when coming back from a rowing trip from a lake. Rowing is technically very challenging and requires total focus, or you’ll capsize and find yourself swimming. I have this experience when rowing on a lake. But my disappointment with the quote is at the beginning, “Baseball is a bunch of thinking.” God forbid that some thinking break out while trying to spectate. Football can also be much slower and longer then baseball in most instances. Football has many of the set breaks and by-design turns just like baseball and can be another opportunity for developing listening skills. I disagree with the person quoted in the article. Listening to a baseball game also requires other skill sets like visualizing the situation through what the broadcaster is telling you and creating a mental model of the game allowing the listener to anticipate what moves the teams will be trying to make in the game. I find listening to baseball games to be great training for being a good listener in the lecture setting and for being mindful in other listening scenarios. Just like reading demands cognitive skills, so does listening.
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I am suggesting, however, that if you take deep work seriously, it’s worth having some rituals outside your professional life that help you practice the states of mind it requires.Īlthough I think your findings are a bit anecdotal, I agree with your conclusion. I’m not suggesting that everyone become baseball fans. Listening to a ballgame, in other words, becomes excellent training for reaching and maintaining the deep mental states that produces things that matter. If I stick with it, however, my mind eventually downshifts - quieting the noisy neuronal clamoring for easy entertainment, and leaving instead an unencumbered attention of a type that I often seek in my work. My experience is that the slowness of the games, combined with the lack of visual stimuli, can be, at first, excruciating. When listening, I maintain a strict “no technology” rule - no phones, no iPads, no other source of electronic distraction (I do allow myself to read during commercial breaks). In particular, I try to listen to at least one baseball game per week on the radio (we don’t have cable, and I can’t stream local coverage, so there’s no other way for me to legally catch the games).
Baseball, undoubtedly, is a slow sport: even more so for spectators than the players.īut while this might be bad news for those hoping to attract the allegiance of the iPhone generation, I’ve found it to be quite useful in my own quest to sharpen my deep work skills. In basketball and football, you live in the moment. Here’s an articulate 15-year old, as quoted in the article, explaining his reasons for quitting baseball:īaseball is a bunch of thinking, and I live a different lifestyle than baseball. There are various reasons for this decline, but the story emphasized the sport’s lack of action. Reduce the urge to whip out your phone and be ok with being a little bit bored.Last week, the Washington Post featured a front page story about the declining number of kids who play organized baseball. Try it next time you're standing in the line at a bank. Improving your ability to focus means training your brain to be a little bored. "Your brain loses its tolerance for boredom and lack of stimuli which means when it comes time to do deep work it's going to have a hard time staying focused," says Newport. Many of us fall into the habit of whipping out our phones every time we feel a little bit bored. "Be wary of the habit of never being bored," says Newport. If someone asks to meet at noon and that's in the middle of your deep-work time, schedule the meeting for another time. Once it's in your calendar, treat that time like an important meeting or appointment. If you're engaging in a cognitively demanding task, Newport recommends no less than a 90 minute chunk. Schedule time on your calendar to work on something. In order to engage in deep work, Newport says you need to develop a few habits: Block out time. This also means training your brain to focus. "You have to treat your attention with a lot of respect, like a professional athlete might treat their body," says Newport. Engaging in deep work isn't as simple as setting aside a chunk of time to work on something.
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