Accept The Initial Agitation
Every morning when I sit down to read and then when I sit down to write, I say to myself, “Accept the initial agitation.” When you try to focus, Dr. Andrew Huberman explains, “the brain circuits that turn on first are of the stress system.” Meaning that when you try to lean into a bout of focused work, at first, the brain naturally tries to resist. It might have you reflexively reach for your phone, tempt you to pull up your email, or remind you about that text you still need to reply to. In any case, Huberman says, “The agitation and stress that you feel at the beginning is just a recognized gate…There is a gate of entry.” There’s a common misconception, Huberman continues: “The misunderstanding around how certain brain circuits work has led to this idea that there’s some secret entry point—maybe marked ‘flow’ on the door—and there’s a trampoline up to that door, and you just open that door, and you’re immediately in a deep state of focus. And nothing could be further from the truth.” The truth is: “There is a gate of entry. You have to wade through some sewage before you can swim in clear water. That’s the way I always think about it.”
Accepting the stress and agitation—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
The Essence of Mastery
In a 1987 Esquire piece, George Leonard described the process of learning anything with what he called the “Mastery Curve”—a series of long stretches of plateaus, “where you seem to be getting nowhere,” punctuated by brief spurts of progress. Learning the guitar, for instance: you start out “terribly clumsy and disjointed,” fumbling around the strings. Then, after weeks of frustration, you can suddenly play a few basic chords. So you start working on moving fluidly between them, “and again, you feel clumsy, disjointed.” But eventually, those chord changes start to feel natural, and with this brief spurt of progress, you are ready to learn barre chords, which puts you back on the plateau, now just at slightly higher skill level. There you remain until the next brief spurt of progress brings you up against the demands of the next, slightly higher plateau. This is the “path to mastery,” Leonard wrote: not one initial period of agitation followed by smooth, steady improvement, but an endless succession of new challenges, each making a clumsy, disjointed, agitated beginner of you again and again. “And this is the essence of mastery,” he added: “you must be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere.”
Everyday I Sit Down And Go, “I Got Nothing”
The Oscar-winning writer and director Peter Farrelly was asked if he gets writer’s block. “Writer’s block is my natural state,” he said. “Everyday I sit down and go, ‘I got nothing.’” Then he forces himself to write, to pass through that recognized gate. “I always say, ‘I’d rather write shit than nothing.’ Because with shit, you got something to work with. You can make it less shitty and then not horrible and then decent and then pretty good and then good and then very good and then excellent. But you gotta start with shit.” Everyone does, Farrelly continued: “When you read a book or a screenplay and think, ‘Wow, I could never do this.’ Well don’t forget: that person didn’t start with that. They started with shit—that they fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed.”
You Have To Get Comfortable With That Anxiety
Bruce Springsteen is one of the most prolific songwriters in modern music, with 21 studio albums, 121 live albums, and 66 music videos spanning over six decades. He’s famous for writing far more songs than he releases, like the 70-plus songs he wrote for Born in the U.S.A., of which only 12 made it onto the album. He has also written hits for other artists, like Patti Smith’s Because the Night and the Pointer Sisters’ Fire. Asked about his extraordinary output and if he’s ever experienced a period of anxiety, worrying that his creative well has dried up, that he’ll never be able to write another song, Springsteen said, “Of course. I have that all the time.” He repeated, “I have that all the time. I’ve gotten used to that being part of the natural state of the artist’s consciousness.” He compared going to the writing desk every day like going to start an old, beat-up car: “Some mornings, you try to start the car, and it runs—great…Most times, you start the car, it runs for a half an hour, breaks down, won’t start up for two weeks. You try to start it—[makes sputtering sound of an engine failing to turn over]—nothing. Again, [makes sputtering sound of an engine failing to turn over]—nothing. Records are made like that. You know? I’ve written six songs that I think are record-worthy in six days and then spent an entire year trying to write six more. It’s simply not predictable. You have to get used to withstanding that anxiety, you have to get comfortable with it…I’ve gotten comfortable with that anxiety.”
Going “In There”
The great writer Joan Didion said she almost always dreaded sitting down to write. As she approached her office each day, she’d think, “Oh, I don’t want to go in there at all.” If not an enthusiasm for going in and working through draft after draft until a book was finished, what did she have? “Blind faith,” Didion replied, “that if you go in there and work every day it will get better. Three days will go by and you will be in there and you will think every day is terrible…I keep saying ‘in there’ as if it’s some kind of chamber, a different atmosphere. It is, in a way. There’s almost a psychic wall.” An invisible psychological barrier, often disguised as the pressing need to run errands, tend the garden, reply to a few emails, get into the right mood, or abandon the project altogether. But if you accept that agitation as the gate of entry, Didion continued, “on the fourth day, if you do go in there, if you don’t go into town or out in the garden, something usually will break through.” As Didion talked about her commitment to pushing through the dread that greeted her each morning, the interviewer recalled her once mentioning that—unlike so many who save it for special occasions—Didion used her good silverware every day. “Well,” she replied, “every day is all there is.”
The Second Effort
“I am bold in taking the first steps,” the 20th-century Nobel Prize-winning novelist André Gide admitted in his journal when he was 21, “but I stop after the first effort; and you never get returns before the second effort.” Twenty-four years later, he marveled in the same journal, “I have never produced anything good except by a long succession of slight efforts. No one has more deeply meditated or better understood than I Buffon’s remark about patience: ‘Genius is but a greater aptitude for patience.’ I bring it not only to my work but also to the silent waiting that precedes good work.” Genius is but a greater aptitude for accepting the agitation. You never get returns except through a long succession of slight efforts that appear, for long stretches, to be getting you nowhere.