Time is non-linear

There is a fallacy going around that we need to address: time is not linear.

I don’t mean that in the metaphysics way, I’ll leave that to others. What I mean is that way too often, we look at time spent on activities and think this:

It seems simple and instinctive enough: want to get stuff done? Spend more time on it. It works on a variety of activities:

• Learn more? Spend more time studying
• Be more productive? Spend more time working
• Solve more problems? Spend more time thinking about them

The problem of course, is that none of that works.

It’s been researched, proven, again and again… yet we keep falling back on those mistaken views.

Learn more by studying less

Ever spent long hours cramming everything in just before an exam? Sure, didn’t we all.

Turns out, research shows that this is a GREAT approach to retain stuff… in the short term. So yeah, it works for that exam. Only problem is, the knowledge you just crammed in doesn’t “stick” over the long-term.

The secret to actually acquiring knowledge that you retain? Slow learning.

• Spacing (distributed practice): when you space learning & practice, rather than practice just after learning, you retain that knowledge better. So read something, take a break and revisit it / test yourself on it later. An hour, a day, or even a month — it works!
• Desirable difficulty: seek to struggle, not to ace tests. The more complex the topic you’re learning, the slower it will take to sink in. Unfortunately, students (and parents) want to ace tests to “see progress” which will tend to disappear much faster. But the longer-lasting lessons are the ones where you struggled and maybe even failed tests (a message that my students didn’t love).

At a neuronal level, research shows that our “short-term memory” overloads at around 20 minutes — and we need a break to “push” those memories into long-term storage. So even at the micro-level, chunking down your studies to 20-minute blocs is preferable. The breaks don’t need to be long, and can be related to your learning (talk about it with a friend, write down some notes, reflect on how it connects to your situation), but they just give your brain the time to do some background processing!

What does this mean? Expanding your knowledge isn’t a case of guzzling down content (what do you remember about those 3 fascinating TED talks you binge-watched on x1.5 speed last month?).

Take the time to revisit things, pick up a book, leave it, share your ahas with your partner, pick the book up a month later to go through it again, try to write some thoughts about it… and slowly build up new, durable knowledge.

Be more productive by working less

Ever had a huge pile of work on your plate with a tight deadline? Whether it’s a presentation to prepare or a report to send out, you probably tend to approach this by staying at your desk the whole day and “pump it out”.

It sounds logical enough. You need time to type, proofread and pimp up your work. You can’t do that if you’re not on the keyboard, your fingers dancing their ballet from letter to letter. True enough.

But unbeknownst to many, we do all tend to have a natural rhythm of bursts and dips of productivity. If you’re a morning person, you’ll go through a peak, trough and rebound (and reverse that if you’re an evening person). It’s weird, but it’s oddly consistent based on LOTS of research. The dips tend to happen after lunch, and have the equivalent impact on your capacities as drinking a beer or wine (whichever you prefer). Still think it’s good to “power through”?

The solution is simple enough. Take breaks.

Having moved from France to Australia, one thing in the work culture was a HUGE shock. Lunch.

• Work lunch-break in France can be 2 hours long and nobody will skip a beat. While you may have days where you just eat a sandwich quickly and head back to work, it is also completely okay to meet up with friends / colleagues, walk or drive over to a nice restaurant and enjoy a restorative long lunch, with several courses and top it off with a coffee. Oh, the sweet memories…
• Work lunch “break” in Australia was an interesting cultural shock, realising that stuffing your face with food while sitting in front of your computer could be considered a break. Beyond the inevitable messiness (and joy of having someone munch & slurp in your face), that hardly qualifies as restorative and goes to the logic of spending as much time as possible at your workstation.

What does the science say? To fight the natural dip in energy we all face post-lunch, there are simple approaches that will boost your productivity by working less!

• Take breaks — and ideally many short ones. As with learning, chunking down your work helps: one company (DeskTime) estimated that its most productive staff work 52 minutes then take a 17-minute break. If it feels like too much for you, don’t worry: even micro-breaks help restore your energy, so just break it!
• Move yo’ body — sitting at your desk actually lowers your energy, so get out and moving. Walk around, do a quick series of jumping jacks… get your blood pumping! As with breaks, plenty of “microbursts of activity” will beat a single long one, keeping your levels of motivation and concentration high to kick those goals much better than by “powering through” (which is more of a “powering down to exhaustion”). And if that feels like too high a mountain to climb, start with some exercise in the morning to get a mood-boost for the day.
• Think outdoor-social, not social-media — aim for a break with someone for some friendly chat in the sun rather than glued on a device. What’s important is to detach yourself from the work, and let your brain reload. As much as it’s tempting, a “break” checking your e-mails or the latest sports results is not as effective as the same amount of time just breathing in fresh air. Rainy day? No problem: just looking out a window at nature or having some plants around can do the trick.

So when you have a big day ahead of yourself, don’t feel bad taking plenty of short walks outdoors checking in on friends or sneaking out for a run / swim / whatever. As counterintuitive as it sounds, you’re actually making yourself MORE productive!

Solve problems more effectively by switching off

For workers, some situations are more than having to pump out “stuff” by a deadline. Being productive is good, being effective is better — and you might have been stumped by one of those wicked problems at work. You know, the ones where there is no clear answer and you need to a creative solution to a nagging problem? You might be tempting to “think harder” to crack the nut… but maybe you’ve also realised that your best ideas happen when you’re in your shower, or off running?

Some people may still be tempting to apply the “think harder at your desk” approach, or cram a team in a room to “figure it out”, often leading to exhausted, uninspired thoughts. But as with the productivity boosting breaks above, the solution is to step away from your work.

Again plenty of studies support breaks act as creativity boosters. But the reason is not that the break “recharges” you in this case. Turns out, these breaks are a case of letting your unconscious brain do the work, as weird as that sounds. What gives?

• Your conscious brain, as powerful as your thinking can be, has limited capacity. This means you there’s a limited amount of data you can process at any one time… and that can lead you to “cut out” important data points when you’re dealing with one of those wicked, multi-angle problems. That’s when biases kick-in, and we tend to reuse known patterns even though we’re facing unknown situations. Not the best combo.
• Your unconscious brain, as intangible as that feels, is much better at connecting plenty of dots in new ways. Rather than the rigid and linear thinking you do consciously, your unconscious mind is free flowing. Hence the shower or running a-has: while you aren’t consciously thinking about your problem, your unconscious brain is powering through it.

Seems too good to be true right? The crazy idea that taking breaks, naps, playing, exercising, etc… actually makes you a better problem solver? And yet here again research is categorical. Procrastination helps! Well, to be accurate, not any procrastination: you have to “feed” your brain with all the data, then procrastinate (i.e. let your unconscious brain do the work while you’re enjoying life), and let the magic happen.

You can’t force a good idea out of your brain, but that doesn’t dispense you from forcing some good information in. As the adage goes, crap in — crap out. So be purposeful with your learning. Hey, wait… didn’t we talk about this before? Fancy that…

Time for an update!

So, why are we still stuck in the “linear time” paradigm? Simple enough: (1) it’s quite instinctive, and (2) the productivity one is quite true when it comes to industrial work (a factory that runs more, pumps out more). The problem is that staying stuck in those old views drives millions of people to study harder, work harder, think harder… and get less done.

Do I feel bad applying all of the above? Sure, one part of me is wired to think that I’m slacking off by schmoozing in all those ways. But knowing the science means I can remind myself that my break walking in the sunshine or playing with Lego with my kids is helping me the best at learning / working / innovating as I can be.

As a manager, I did get some weird look from my team when they went from an ‘old school’ management to me: who’s this guy hassling his team to head out of the building, encouraging them to take long lunch breaks and congratulating those borrowing my office to meditate? Turns out, beyond the initial weirdness of it, these habits not only feel good but also made us a better team.

So spread the good news, and go play games / take a nap / go for a run… then share your thoughts!

Sources:

• Range, by David Epstein
• When, by Dan Pink
• The Best Place to Work, by Ron Friedman

(they each refer to plenty of academic papers — but yeah I’m 100% too lazy to dig all those back up one by one)