Adam Grant's recent NY Times article about languishing -- the psychological middle state that exists somewhere in between depressed and flourishing -- has been making the rounds online. Perhaps it is because COVID sucks and many of us can relate.

Either way, three points in the article really stood out to me (at least one of which, in my mind, directly ties back to real estate).

Firstly, I found it helpful to hear him describe what flourishing is. In his words, "flourishing is the peak of well-being: You have a strong sense of meaning, mastery and mattering to others." This resonates with me. I know that I am at my best when I'm accomplishing things and making progress.

Secondly, he puts forward a possible solution to languishing -- it's the concept of "flow." Flow is when we are absorbed in meaningful and challenging work and where, again in his words, "your sense of time, place and self melts away." This also resonates with me. I am a big fan of a flow (even if I didn't know what it was called).

Thirdly -- and this one is important as we all think about the future of work/office space -- focus is paramount to doing exceptional things! Here's an excerpt that I immediately paused on as I was reading the article:

Fragmented attention is an enemy of engagement and excellence. In a group of 100 people, only two or three will even be capable of driving and memorizing information at the same time without their performance suffering on one or both tasks. Computers may be made for parallel processing, but humans are better off serial processing.

For the rest of Grant's article, click here.

Lately I’ve been finding that I need to divide my time between multitasking and blocks of uninterrupted time. The multitasking phase is doing calls, responding to emails in 3 seconds, going from meeting to meeting, and so on. It’s a mode that many of us probably exist in virtually all of the time.

But I can’t stay in this mode all of the time. I think of it as short attention span mode. There are times when I need blocks of uninterrupted time so that I can “go deep.” One example would be to review drawings. I really need to focus so that I can think of all of the externalities associated with the decisions being made.

This is related to my post about managers and makers, but it’s also the focus of a recent book by Cal Newport called, Deep Work: The Secret to Achieving Peak Productivity. You can read more about the book here at Knowledge@Wharton, but I wanted to highlight two concepts. The first is this equation:

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus).

Obviously the argument here is that if you want to maximize your output, you need to increase the intensity of your focus. Minimize distractions. Ratchet up the intensity. There’s only so much time in the day.

Newport gives the example of Adam Grant. He is a New York Times bestselling author and the youngest tenured professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. 

He is so committed to intensity of focus that he batches all of this teaching into the fall semester, allowing him to truly focus on the students. He’s the highest rated teacher at Wharton. At the same time, this lets him focus on research and writing during the spring and summer semesters. He’s also known to regularly use auto-of-office responders when he’s in the office, but needs to focus.

The second concept is that of “attention residue.” The idea here is that when we switch from some Task A to some other Task B, our attention doesn’t immediately snap over. A portion of our attention remains on the original task and distracts us from fully focusing. There’s residue.

An example of this would be when you’re working on something and you see an email come in. As soon as you turn your attention to that notification, your attention gets divided. And even if you don’t immediately respond to that email, a portion of your attention now remains with that uncompleted task. It lingers in the mind.

The above probably makes intuitive sense to a lot of you, but in many ways our work culture today does not encourage intensity of focus.

Thanks for reading today. There’s lots of evidence to suggest that the best way to learn new things is to not simply read about it, but to share it with others. That’s one of the reasons I blog and hopefully you find that valuable.

“How are you?”

“Busy!”

How many of you say this? I say this all the time, even though I am trying to resist and come up with more creative responses.

I recently tweeted this idea out and then my friend Brad sent me this article from HBR: Why Americans Are So Impressed by Busyness. It’s a fascinating topic because, historically, not being busy was a sign of status. It meant you had enough money to not have to do anything. 

But things have changed – at least in this part of the world. (Italy doesn’t seem to feel the same way based on some studies.) Here’s a snippet from the article:

“What has changed so dramatically in one century? We think that the shift from leisure-as-status to busyness-as-status may be linked to the development of knowledge-intensive economies. In such economies, individuals who possess the human capital characteristics that employers or clients value (e.g., competence and ambition) are expected to be in high demand and short supply on the job market. Thus, by telling others that we are busy and working all the time, we are implicitly suggesting that we are sought after, which enhances our perceived status.”

So the reality is that there’s actually a good reason for always talking about how busy we are. But as Silvia Bellezza points out in her article, there are also physiological consequences to always being: “busy!” 

On that note, I think I’ll go snowboarding.

“How are you?”

“Just living the dream.”