The Einstein Principle

From Study Hacks comes The Einstein Principle: Accomplish More by Doing Less.

Einstein’s push for general relativity highlights an important reality about accomplishment. We are most productive when we focus on a very small number of projects on which we can devote a large amount of attention. Achievements worth achieving require hard work. There is no shortcut here. Be it starting up a new college club or starting a new business, eventually, effort, sustained over a long amount of time, is required.

In a perfect world, we would all be Einsteins. We would each have only one, or at most two, projects in the three major spheres of our lives: professional, extracurricular, and personal. And we would be allowed to focus on this specialized set, in exclusion, as we push the projects to impressive conclusions.

But this doesn’t happen…

Our problem is that we don’t know in advance which project might turn out to be our theory of relativity and which are duds. Because of this, most ambitious people I know, myself included, follow a different strategy. We sow lots of project seeds. We e-mail a lot of people, join a lot of clubs, commit to a lot of minor projects, set up lots of meetings, constantly send out feelers to friends and connections regarding our latest brainstorm. We don’t know which seed will ultimately take root and grow, so, by planting many, we expose ourselves to enough randomness, over time, to maximize our chance of a big deal, interesting, life-changing success eventually happening.

These numerous seeds, however, have a tendency to transform into weeds. While some of them clearly grow into pursuits worth continuing, and others die off quickly, many, instead, exist in a shadowy in-between state where they demand our time but offer little promise of reward in the end.

These weed projects violate the Einstein principle.

We can no longer focus on a small number of important project, but find ourselves, instead, rushing between an increasingly overwhelming slate full of a variety of obligations. This time fracture can prevent real accomplishment. Imagine if Einstein maintained a blog, wrote a book, joined a bunch of clubs at ETH, and tried to master rowing at the same time he was working on General Relativity? We’d still be living in the age of Newton.

Filed for future reference.

The See-Food Diet

After reading Penelope Trunk’s recent post about eating disorders, I ordered the book Breaking Free from Emotional Eating by Geneen Roth. I figured it was cheaper than paying Lauren for another batch of wellness coaching sessions. I’m willing to give it a shot.

The first chapter of the book is fairly straight-forward: “only eat when you’re hungry”. I’ve heard that advice before. It’s good advice. I’m just not good at following it.

But the second chapter was startling. In “Deciding What You Want to Eat”, Roth offers advice similar to that which GRS-reader Sally gave me last spring: Tell yourself that you can eat what you want, and you’ll eventually find that you don’t want to eat junk food. This is Roth’s story:

For two weeks I ate chocolate chip cookies in varies shapes and consistencies for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in-between. On the fourth day of the second week, I ate an egg for lunch. For dinner on the fourteenth day, I ate some lasagna that [a friend] had made. And a ball of dough for variety. On the fifteenth day, I never wanted to see a chocolate chip cookie again.

I tell this story at the beginning of every workshop because it’s absurd and because it’s true. I tell it because almost everyone there has fantasized about eating as much as she wants of whatever she wants without feeling guilty, and few people will allow themselves this freedom (or this madness).

[…]

One of the reasons it’s terrifying for compulsive eaters to believe we can eat what we want and not become obese is that we think we want so much…We feel bottomless, as if we could never get enough. We try to make up for years of dieting in two weeks of chocolate chip cookies or a month-long binge. Until we realize we are grown-ups. When I looked at the package of Hostess Sno-Balls and told myself that I really could have them if I wanted them, I realized I did want them…when I was ten years old.

For the past week, I’ve been heeding this advice. Whatever I want to eat, I eat. The very first night, I wanted chocolate chip cookies. Kris baked them, and I ate them. The next day I wanted an ice cream cone. I’ve eaten three pickled sausages. I’ve had plent of Sno-balls. I’ve eaten a lot of candy and drank a lot of Mexican Coke. Tonight I will probably have Gino’s clams.

But you know what? Eating like this has made me even more miserable. My stomach is a mass of percolating gas. My bowels are like a giant nuclear furnace. I find that I’m actually craving salad — spinach salad.

The truth is that the chocolate chip cookies and the ice cream and the pickled sausages don’t hold as much appeal when they’re not “off-limits”. I don’t feel guilty about eating them, it’s true, but I also find that I don’t really want to eat them. Right now, at this very moment, I want nothing more in this world than a tuna fish sandwich. (I’m going to lunch with Mac this afternoon — maybe we can find a place where I can get one…)

My friend Sally told me that when she craves cake, for example, she tells herself that she could have the best cake in Atlanta if she wanted. And sometimes she goes and gets it. But most of the time, the thought that she could have a very fine piece of cake is enough. She’s learned to trust herself, to trust that she can indulge herself in the future, and that she can make smart choices now. In her book, Roth writes that trust is the key:

Trust develops and builds when I am given a choice (and not, as in dieting, denied it). Trust develops when I choose to make myself comfortable, not miserable, to take care of myself rather than hurt myself. Trust develops when you learn from actual experience that you can decide which desires to act upon and which you will leave to fantasy.

I haven’t reached the end of the tunnel yet, but I believe I see a pin-prick of light…

Emotional Eating and Self-Regulation

One of the benefits of having a popular weblog (not this one, obviously) is that your readers send you lots of interesting reading material. Here are a couple of blog posts that are actually closely related to each other:

First up, at Brazen Careerist, Penelope writes about four weight-loss tips from her month in the mental ward. This is raw stuff:

Understand that any weight problem is an emotional problem.
Take time off so you can change bad patterns.
Don’t be a snob. (In other words: know thyself.)
Stop using your life as an excuse.

Trunk writes:

I’m telling anyone with an eating problem — if you are overweight or underweight — [life] can wait. Stop kidding yourself that [other stuff] is more important. People are always worrying that they will mess up their career by stopping their work to fix themselves. But the worst job is the job that you use to avoid your personal life.

I immediately ordered Breaking Free from Emotional Eating, which somebody recommneded to me long ago, but which I’ve conveniently ignored. Emotional eating is what I do. I need to stop it.

Meanwhile, here’s a related article on creating a habit of self-regulation. The author writes:

If you do ANYTHING that requires self-regulation, then that makes it EASIER for you to have self-regulation in EVERYTHING.

Self-discipline is one of my weak spots. It always has been. I don’t know how to change it, how to improve. This article claims that even practicing good posture on a regular basis can improve self-regulation in other areas of life. I’m skeptical, but I’m willing to give it a try (especially since my posture is poor to begin with).

Someday I will be a whole, complete person. I just wish it were today.

(P.S. On a related note, Dave sent me this story about mindless eating.)