Law #23: Concentrate Your Forces
In The 48 Laws of Power, Robert Greene’s twenty-third law is, “Concentrate Your Forces.” “We are all in a state of total distraction and diffusion,” he writes, “hardly able to keep our minds in one direction before we are pulled in a thousand others. The modern world’s level of conflict is higher than ever, and we have internalized it in our own lives.” The solution is a form of retreat, Robert writes, “to more concentrated forms of thought and action…You gain more by finding a rich mine and mining it deeper, than by flitting from one shallow mine to another—intensity defeats extensity every time.”
Concentrating your forces, resisting the pull of distraction and diffusion, intensity defeating extensity—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
A Classic Error
In a conversation with the psychologist Daniel Gilbert, the economist Steven Levitt confessed that he has difficulty resisting the pull of distracting and diffusion. At the time of the conversation with Gilbert, Levitt had seven projects he was working on. “And I’m doing each of them pretty poorly,” Levitt said. “I’m trying to get better at saying No. Seven things is probably four too many, and I’ve yet to figure out how to get from seven down to three.” “My guess,” Gilbert replied, “is that when somebody says, ‘Steve, I’ve got this idea for a project,’ you go, ‘Wow, that would be really fun.’ And this is what we call affective forecasting.” Affective forecasting refers to our tendency to incorrectly predict how we’ll feel in the future. So we commit to collaborating on projects, attending events, going on exotic trips, imagining only the excitement and the fun and the adventure. When Levitt agrees to work on this or that project, Gilbert continues, “you’re imagining only how great it will be to do the project. And we know from a lifetime of research that there’s a whole bunch of things you’re not imagining, particularly how it will impinge on all the other things you already said Yes to.” “Yes! Absolutely,” Levitt says. “That’s exactly what happens.” “Classic error,” Gilbert replies.
A 50 Percent Athlete Vs. A 100 Percent Athlete
Entering his final year of college at Michigan, Tom Brady was deadlocked in a battle with a player named Drew Henson to be the team’s starting quarterback. Henson was a local legend, a once-in-a-generation talent. He was a 6’4’’, 210-pound, three-sport superstar from Brighton, Michigan, just fifteen miles from the University of Michigan’s campus. In high school, he set multiple national records in both football and baseball, and along with being one of the most sought after football players in the country, the New York Yankees drafted him out of high school and gave him $2 million to spend his summers playing minor league baseball. While Brady spent his summers in Ann Arbor, singularly focused on football, Henson was flitting from one baseball game to another. His natural abilities were such, however, that when Henson started practicing with the Wolverines, Michigan’s head coach Lloyd Carr said in a press conference, “Without question, he’s the most talented quarterback that I’ve been around.” So, after Brady and Henson battled it out, before the first game of the 1999 season, Coach Carr decided to implement an unusual “platoon” system: Brady started, Henson played the second quarter, and then at halftime, Carr would pick which one played the rest of the game. The platoon, flitting from one quarterback to another, didn’t work great, and after back-to-back losses, Carr named Brady the sole starting quarterback. Michigan didn’t lose another game the rest of the season, finishing the year as the #8 ranked team in the nation, earning a trip to Miami, Florida to play in the FedEx Orange Bowl against #5 ranked Alabama. Brady completed 34 of 46 passes for 369 yards and four touchdowns, including the game-winning 25-yard-pass for a touchdown. After Brady graduated and began his 23-year-career in the NFL, Henson continued to spend his summers playing minor league baseball. He juggled football and baseball until, prior to what would have been his final season at Michigan, he left to play for the Yankees full time. He got one major league hit, a single, before returning to football in 2004. He was picked up by the Dallas Cowboys, and in his one NFL start, he threw 18 passes. He was cut from the Cowboys in 2006, threw two passes with the Lions in 2008, and after he was released the following year, Henson retired from pro sports. He briefly worked as a part-time broadcaster for ESPN, returned to the Yankees organization as a scout for a short period, and now works in financial planning and wealth management. He wishes he had sooner concentrated his forces on one sport. “I reached the level I did as a football and baseball player by being a 50 percent athlete my whole life,” Henson said. “It all works until you get to the very highest level of sports, when everybody is basically as good as you or better, but has more experience or is farther along the development line than you are, and you have to play catch-up.” There’s that line, “Somewhere out there, someone is working harder than you, and when you meet them, they will win.” Also: somewhere out there, someone is 100% committed, and if you aren’t, when you meet them, they will win.
A 5-Minute Interruption Is Really A 45-Minute Delay
Whenever I’m trying to focus, hit a mental block or challenge, and consider a flitting glance at texts, email, social media, et cetera, I remind myself, “A 5-minute interruption is really 45.” The fiction writer Brandon Sanderson explains, “One thing that people don’t generally understand about writing—for most writers, it takes time to get into it.” Sanderson writes in 4-hour blocks. “For me,” he says, “the first hour is like 200 words, as I’m warming up and getting into it. Then in the second and third hours, I write about 1,000 words. And by the fourth hour, I’m starting to run out of steam, and it’s just a couple hundred words.” As I wrote about not too long ago, when you begin to try to focus—whether it’s reading, writing, studying for a test, preparing for a presentation, thinking through this problem or that project—“The brain circuits that turn on first are of the stress system…The agitation and stress that you feel at the beginning of something—when you’re trying to lean into it and you can’t focus: you feel agitated, your mind’s jumping all over the place—that is just a gate. You have to pass through that gate to get to the focus component.” Essentially, Sanderson is saying that it takes him 45 minutes to an hour to pass through that gate to get to the focus component. “So,” Sanderson continues, “if I get interrupted for 15 minutes—after I’ve spent 45 minutes really getting it going—what it does is it resets me back to the beginning…So a 5- to 15-minute interruption is really more like a 45-minute delay in me getting back to that zone where the writing is really working.” Worse—in addition to restarting the process of getting to the focus component, giving in to the pull of distraction and diffusion triggers a psychological effect known as “attention residue.” Coined by Dr. Sophie Leroy, “attention residue” is the term for what happens when attention is interrupted—even if the interruption is brief: When your attention flits from a writing task, for instance, to checking emails—when you return to the writing task, a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the emails. This cognitive carryover divides, diffuses, and dulls your cognitive capacities, reducing the depth, clarity, and creative energy you can bring to the writing task. “If, like most,” Cal Newport writes in a piece about attention residue, “you rarely go more than 10–15 minutes without a just-check (a quick glance at texts, emails, social media, etc), you have effectively put yourself in a persistent state of self-imposed cognitive handicap. The flip side, of course, is the cognitive enhancement that follows by minimizing this effect,” by concentrating your forces.
Major In Your Majors
At one point, Matthew McConaughey had his acting career, his family, a foundation, a film production company, & a record company. In 2008, he got a call from his production office. He reached for the phone, but when he saw the caller ID, his hand paused. Instead of answering, he let the call go to voicemail, and once the ringing stopped, he called his lawyer. “Shut down the production company and shut down the record company,” McConaughey told his lawyer. “I’m making B’s in 5 things. I want to make A’s in three things.” By shutting down the production company and the music label, McConaughey said, “I got rid of two campfires, and I was left with the three things that were most important to me—my family, my charity work, my acting career—and those three campfires turned into bonfires. I got rid of two minors that I was trying to major in, and whereas I was making B’s in everything, when I got rid of two classes and concentrated on the three that I really wanted to major in, I started making A’s. I majored in my majors. I quit majoring in mine minors and got rid of them.”
If You Send Forces Everywhere, You Will Everywhere Be Weak
In The Art of War, Sun Tzu says, “We must keep our forces concentrated, while the enemy’s must be divided…For should the enemy strengthen his van, he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear, he will weaken his van; should he strengthen his left, he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right, he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.” Concentrate your forces. Resist the pull of distraction, diffusion, and division. Say No. Be 100 percent committed. Minimize attention switches. Major in your majors. Intensity defeats extensity every time.