One of the early important learnings for me, personally, in my studies of human cognition, is the paradox of my being a highly effective reader with a high level of retention for what I've read combined with an unusually short attention span for text.
The way it manifests is that I can be presented with a complicated and difficult text like a contract, or a research paper involving probability, and for fifteen minutes, vacuum up that information into my brain while whirring it into pattern recognition.
Then my Reader attention span shuts down.
I can keep turning the pages, and my eyes are seeing word after word, but the information is being indifferently uploaded and what gets in then bounces off the storage cabinets. My attention span for reading is spent.
One of the most common responses we get when we teach people about their own cognitive processes is, "I wish I had known this twenty years ago." For me, I wish I had been taught this when I first learned to read more than three times twenty years ago. I misspent unknown amounts of energy in college and graduate school trying to flog my attention for text into activation.
What I do now, is recognize my Reader attention as a renewable resource. I live within the discipline of fifteen minutes, then switch to another task using a different source of attention. After fifteen to twenty minutes of another kind of cognitive task, I cycle back to reading.
For example, I tell my colleagues, I can read a contract in ten hours; I can't read it in two hours. I need to cycle in and out of close reading and note taking in approximately fifteen minute task periods all day. In the off cycles, I'm getting a lot of other stuff accomplished.
Vacations
I can't remember when I last took a traditional vacation. I get bored really fast -- even when I'm doing interesting stuff. I lose attention for recreational activities after about two hours. I'm not advocating this as a good thing, it's what I have. Once, when I sat in the chair in front of a new dentist, he said, "Sit back and relax." I said, "I don't know what that means. I don't have a setting for "relax."
What I can do, is unhook from purpose-driven activity for about two hours at a time. Today is Saturday of what, for some, has been a four-day weekend. I've taken the lowered expectation for my time to take a series of two-hour sprints of relative aimlessness and similar sprints of purpose -- like this post. It's been very refreshing for me. Had I taken the full four days off, I would have been bored and restless for a lot of it. Maybe some of you, instead of a two-week or four week vacation in a chunk, would benefit from breaking it up into three-day weekends across the year.
Again, I'm not recommending this unless it resonates with you. One of the principles of my work is that there is no one-size-fits all. The financier, J.P. Morgan, was my opposite, and was famous for taking extended vacations. He said, "I can do twelve months of work in nine months. I can't do it in twelve months." He unhooked for months at a time. The problem comes when people authoritatively try to conform us to some imagined standard for health, happiness, productivity, longevity.
If you find that certain off-the-rack thinking fits, use it. Nearly all of us, however, need at least some custom thinking. Some of you need bespoke thinking most of the time.
Right now, I'm leaving for a two-hour vacation.
Warm regards,
Francis Sopper
REFERENCED IN THIS LETTER:
J.P. Morgan: https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/john-pierpont-morgan