xPhone

Everyone remembers the Matrix movie where the phone is one’s connection into the grid and you can hyper-transport to anywhere you want to go. It seems great till you realize that the phone is why the grid has its tentacles into you all the time. The iPhone is the umbilical cord that has insidiously eaten away your freedom. Brothers and Sisters, Big and Small, are always watching. How horrible is that?

It gets worse. The cell phone will drive us all to distraction. Of course, driving distracted with a phone is a leading vehicular problem, but more than that, the phone disrupts your life tremendously, and not just when driving. The cell phone is the leading cause of interruption in one’s daily routine. Why do we allow it to be so? If a person interrupted you ever so often while you were reading, talking or just trying to get things done, you would consider it rude. Yet we are infinitely forgiving of this inanimate object, showering it with gratitude for making a mess of our day!

The segment of the population most impacted are teens to young adults, who have been raised by a cell phone. They spend more time interacting with it than with humans, books, or nature. Being raised on a steady diet of information driblets, much of it vacuous talk, is the most unhealthy foundation on which to grow one’s mind.

It is a parasite that is destroying young minds. It sucks away useful time and destroys concentration. My casual empiricism suggests that even if there are two five minute calls each hour, each of which lead to a further loss of five minutes each in terms of interruption of some other tasks, we lose one-third of our waking hours to this scourge. For students, in terms of study time and quality of life, this is a humungous cost. In terms of mental development, the long term costs are catastrophic.

A recent study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology showed that excessive cell phone usage results in a 25% drop in a student’s grades. So a student with a 4.0 GPA falls off to a 3.0 GPA. Its become that easy to depreciate an A-student to a B-level one.

The study also showed that interruptions from a cell phone not only impacted the receiver’s performance, but it also distracted others and impacted them negatively too. Its become as bad as second-hand smoking! Maybe even worse, because while the number of smokers is declining, the number of young cell-phone addicts is climbing exponentially.

The parallels with smoking hardly end there. Have you noticed how funny it is that the orbital region of 20 feet from the entrance to a building is mostly populated by smokers or cell phone users? Sometimes the poor victim has succumbed to both scourges. Have you noticed that the way people walk when smoking or cell-phoning seems strangely similar? Self-absorption with a glazed-over look. Blissfully and self-importantly unaware of impending doom. The only problem is that we have not yet invented a “patch” for cell phone quitters.

Cell phones are of course lawful. There is no legal age before one can get a cell phone. I’d like to propose disallowing it for anyone below the age of 25. It would save an entire generation from academic deterioration and lay the groundwork for a better society. My advice to all you college undergrads is this: make the cell phone the xPhone.

Teenage Lessons

I have long been disabused of making New Year’s resolutions, yet I have not stopped experimenting in other ways in which to make life more interesting. I recently decided to try living my life in the manner of my teenage son. What does this entail? Simply put, my generation grew up with the simple attitude that we should be responsible, and take care of work. On the other hand, my son’s generation thinks that they should be responsible and take care of play. I am beginning to see the subtle wisdom in this.

Over the past week, I decided to plan a few things to do, keeping items that did not have immediate deadlines strictly off the list. Then I decided that I would finish these things off very quickly so as to make sure the more important “play time” could be accessed as soon as possible. I have been getting my day’s work done in about half the time it usually would have taken me. And I am greatly enjoying my “hard-earned” play time. In short, by not finishing one job, and then feeling guilty and finding another one and so on, thereby immersing myself in work all day, I am getting things done, and then stepping away from the computer and enjoying quality time reading and writing in a manner that is more focused and far less frenetic than skipping from one window to another, in a mad rush to chase down all the “interesting” things that one can do when one is tethered to a device that is tethered to a modem of some sort. And more than that, I am also being able to get outside a lot more, and enjoy the beautiful outdoors with a great sense of satisfaction of having put my day’s work behind me. More than that, the stuff that is urgent and needs to be done gets done, and I don’t revisit and waste time on it making cosmetic changes and corrections. Anyway, what did I learn? Lets see if I can make more sense of these lessons than the stream of consciousness you just read.

1. Make a do-able list, stick to it, and when done, stay away from work very strictly. Don’t bother with it at all, and go about doing something else that is not “work”. Of course, the other way is to only get to work at the end of the day, and then you have already limited the time for it. This is the teenage approach and I am using it – and yes, it works quite well, I am pleased to admit.
   
2. It helps to walk away from the computer. I am a pack rat and when I read a magazine and want to look something up that strikes me as I read I would usually go to the computer and make a note of something there, or look up the item being referred to in the magazine. I don’t do this anymore. I just dog ear the page in the magazine and then keep it on the desk for when I am next going to be on the computer. Which is probably the next day. Just so you know, teenagers don’t even really bother with email. They know its inefficient.
   
3. By staying away from work you are also staying away from email. Email is fast becoming the greatest time sink of most working people. Just yesterday, the Chronicle released a study where employers were all commenting on the amount of time being wasted in trivial email tasks and various protocols have been suggested to people so as to avoid clutter in in-boxes, for example, we should not copy people more than absolutely necessary. Teenagers do not copy people – I notice they usually send messages to one person only most of the time.
   
4. Read and delete stuff, and only respond to the absolutely essential. When responding, keep it to two to three lines maximum. A teenager would not go more than a line.
   
5. Make email the last thing you do in the time set aside for work. Once you have done your chosen work tasks, you are ready to play, so opening email then will force you to be efficient with it, because its what’s standing between you and the good times. Teenagers don’t even make email something that needs to get done. I rarely get a response from a teen on emails that I send. There’s a reason that email arrangements for my son’s scout troop are sent to parents and not the kids.
   
6. Texting, phoning, and instant messaging are all more efficient than email. Yes, this is true. Teens already know this. I find it incredibly efficient now that I am getting away from email. The big advantage of email is that it is totally asynchronous, whereas all the others are completely or somewhat synchronous. However, this is also email’s major source of inefficiency, it rewards delay and lack of brevity, both of which teens have eliminated already.
   
7. Time away from the computer is time that gets used thinking better. I find that since I am now spending at least 2/3 of my day not working, much of it goes into thinking, some of that about the next day’s work. I find that I am much better “prepped” to get my planned work done the following day, as I have run it through my mind many times, turning it round and round, so that when I sit down to write, it flows smoothly, and takes half the time it normally would otherwise. This was an epiphany to me when I saw what was happening. (This blog post has been running in my head for a week now so much so that it took very little time to write out just now). Teens seem to know this already, and they talk through things a lot more before getting down to work them out – it seems to really work well. Of course playing several hours of video games must definitely keep help in background processing all those important tasks for the following day! (Thats a joke).
   
8. I have learnt that trying to organize all the information that we get (and I do try very hard to do so) is a waste of time. I spend a lot of time filing things into folders, keeping PDFs and so on, and really, this is unnecessary. When needed these things may be accessed. My generation spends so much time organizing things that the time left for processing information is too low. Teenagers on the other hand, just dont bother, they process what they need and let the rest go, relieving themselves of lots of overhead, and keeping their minds clear for information analysis and not organization. Better to carry a few things in one’s head than use one’s head to store many things on a hard drive. Just ignore much of what flows across one’s computer, it surely improves the signal to noise ratio of what we digest. Otherwise, information overload will become the cancer of our minds. The great secret of mastering digital media is letting go.
   

I am also learning to stay awake all night enjoying both consuming digital media, as well as generating my own content. There always needs to be a good balance between consumption and production of content, preferably more to the latter. But to dissipate some of those activities toward organization is wasteful. Keep that to a bare minimum and you will see what our teenagers already seem to know only too well.

Email Intrusions

There is this general notion that every email deserves a response. This idea seems to be present in the minds of senders and receivers of email. Why this should be so for solicitous email has me baffled. And I dont mean spam – solicitous email is not mass-mailed.

Is this also the case for snail mail? When we send someone a letter, do we unreasonably expect a guaranteed response? I am sure this is not so. Even when we write to family and close friends, we would love to get a nice letter back, but are not greatly offended when none transpires, nor do we really feel guilty about not replying. So then why have we developed this strange guilt that drives us to respond to all mail, even if just to say “thanks”?

I get a lot of email where someone tries to get me to do something I am not really interested in based on the recommendation of someone who knows me. Does such email deserve a response? I am very often guilted into responding because of the one-removed personal connection that has been invoked through the connection with the recommending friend. Lets call this the “personal ” hook.

Many times we respond because its Pavlovian. We are so used to reading and replying as if they are one and the same thing. With snail mail these two functions were never melded together into the same neurological response. But with email, we are progressively trained to do so. As the number of messages arriving rises with time (as all of us know it does), the urge to respond reaches a suffocating crescendo, and we just end up committing to something we would never have agreed to when faced with the calmer reading of a written letter. No other activity I can think of lulls us into a feeling of being productive while wasting time than replying to email. And the number of people trying to help you stay far away from what you really want to do appears to be growing.

Solicitous email is like the vicious dog that latches on to your ankle and does not let go until you do what it demands. Even when you possess that will power needed to put unresponded emails aside and get back to other things, you will eventually re-open email, only to be instantly reminded of all those emails you failed to deal with the first time around. Like ghosts of minutes ago, they rear their ugly heads, demanding your mind share like a petulant child in a tumult of tantrums. No wonder it evokes a response very different from snail mail. which when put aside, doesnt actively intrude, unless you remind yourself of it.

I have written in the past about how the only solution is vast rejections of email by reducing the frequency of attention to less than once a day. But that does not change the fact that solicitous email remains in one’s inbox and taunts you repeatedly. It will have its pound of flesh, no matter what. Here are some ideas for dealing with the problem.

1. If you dont want to respond immediately or ever, and dont have to (this should cover more than 3/4 of the email I get), then move the solicitous email out of the Inbox. I usually forward the email to another email account that I check only very infrequently. You can use a folder also. I’d name it “black hole”. Seems appropriate. You can even move it to a folder called “Urgent” – trust me, it will feel less urgent than the Inbox.
   
2. I get more than my fair share of “please help” emails. I have been burned trying to help too many times. One feels bad and guilty, despite knowing full well that you cannot do anything. Yet, I end up trying, thus wasting other people’s time in the process, and only prolonging the time it takes to respond in the negative, usually hours later and after many back-and-forth emails. Barring the rare exception, such emails are best euthanized.
   
3. Remember that solicitous emails are often mis-directed. Based on hearsay that you are the “one” most knowledgeable about the subject. Should you even reply explaining that you are a misfit, and completely unfit for the request? Probably not. Half the time when I write explaining a negative reply, I get another message in return completely changing the request to account for the reason for not engaging in the requested activity. So its best to lie low. Any response sets off a chain reaction that then eats up much more time than we can ever forecast. The best response is not “no”, it is no response.
   
4. But sometimes one should not just ignore messages, especially when you are aware that a non-response will be interpreted by the sender as a failure of transmission, resulting in new deluge of messages that you already deemed fit to expunge. Therefore, one might want to acknowledge the message in a non-committal manner. Then, ignore the repeat or follow-up requests.
   

Unsolicited email is like someone walking into your house to ask you for a favor without bothering to knock first. I believe the best response is not to lock one’s house, but to refuse to engage in dialogue.

Communication Compactness

Languages support communication. Hence, mathematics is a language, just as much as English is. Languages may be ordered in terms of their “compactness”, that is, how many characters/words are required to convey a single idea in the given language. In general mathematics is more compact than English. A single idea can often be transmitted in one formula, or theorem. This is very unlikely in the communication of non-mathematical ideas in English. You will no doubt point out various exceptions, and I will say that they only serve to prove my point. I am in short, being a little loose. I am speaking generally.

Compactness explains why journal articles in law and literature tend to run fifty to hundred pages, whereas those in social sciences such as economics are about 30 on average. And many in physics, mathematics and computer science run just 10. This is by no means a value judgment, all I am doing is trying to elucidate this idea of compactness. Compactification of intellectual communication does not mean its all good. When communication becomes too compact, the quality and clarity of the communication suffers, resulting in lowering the value of the communication.

On the other hand, compact communication reduces the sheer physical size of the communique, meaning that it more likely to be read fully. I suspect that fewer people read the longer journal articles properly, and more people read the short ones. One way to test this hypothesis is to do so indirectly – see whether shorter articles tend to have more citations than longer ones, after controlling for quality somehow. I suspect someone will eventually run this research idea through the data.

Should academics in the field of literature seek to make communication more compact? Should they write fewer books and more short articles? I think not. In their case, the message is the medium, and many times, longer communiques are far more aesthetic. Likewise, in mathematics, artful compactification of theorem and proof is also highly aesthetic. In the end, depending on field, one has different trade-offs of clarity, size of communique, and aesthetics.

Compactness is obviously not a new idea, it is an obvious relative of the ideas in Information Theory (Claude Shannon) and Algorithmic Information Theory (Gregory Chaitin).

In my own field of finance, the size of journal articles appears to be growing. We are generating immense bloat in many journals. So, is there some way to determine what an optimal compactness is for research communication in any field? This may be a useful question because the answer enables us to ascertain what page limits might be imposed by journals in the field. But more important, readers will be able to get the most from the journals they read, by not reading too much or too little. I am going to leave this thought out there, just in case someone does come up with some way to determine what on average, optimal compactness should be. And in the name of compactness, I will stop here.

One Thing at a Time

Successful academics (in terms of quality and quantity of output) fall into two categories, those that work on one thing at a time, and those that are seasoned multi-taskers. Many academics are neither – many check out from active research after burn out. Then there are some that are simply awesome, and are able to keep churning out great work with little effort, in seemingly no time at all.

After a decade of casual observation, totally uninformed by any framework whatsoever, I believe that the “one-thingers” do, by and large, generate higher quality work. This seems somewhat obvious I suppose. Sadly though, I remain in the set of struggling “multi-taskers” who on average, do well on quantity, but may produce less seminal work. Given that there is a wide range of styles, my polarized classification is surely dissatisfactory. But like any taxonomy, it supports analysis.

Doing one thing at a time is a luxury, but an important one (I am in the camp that sort of feels that most luxuries are frivolous, and am told frequently by my spouse that I am wrong many times over on this; usually I am wrong only slightly!). So when I use the words Important Luxury, it is not to be taken lightly. Doing one thing at a time is a societal plus. I used to get up every morning and make a longish to-do list, planning to get more than one research project worked on, along with a plethora of little admin things. I am now experimenting with just doing one research related activity all morning, nothing else. Only when this is done do I stop and make a list for the rest of the day, when I plan no tasks that really need quiet and focus. So far, this has been working like a charm. There are two reasons for this. One, it keeps me away from debilitating and fruitless administrative chores and detail, which one can easily lapse into in the multi-tasking mode, and then suddenly find that the day is gone, and nothing really valuable was done. Two, by not making The List, there is nothing in my mind calling me to rush through my research writing, which needs complete absorption in a timeless manner. I feel already that the quality of work has been much better, and the satisfaction from it at a different level altogether.

Less is more. Multi-tasking actually causes me to pollute the environment with a lot of rushed output that the world can do well without. Hence, doing one thing at a time directly helps in filtering out bad work in two ways. One, it calls up the needed patience to greatly improve rough work. I call this “sculpting time”. Two, having time to look carefully at irredeemably low quality work brings forth the resolve to euthanize it. Lets call this “killing time”. Never mind what happens, its all good.

In the end, its a zen approach. Devote exclusive time to one single thing, and be immersed in it. Be one with it. Thus, it is never painful – all time is well spent. The undivided mind works miracles, and academic work demands it. There is no other way. Singularity wins.

Loving Writing

What makes writing a labor of love? Appropriate to discuss this on Valentine’s day I suppose! Following up on my writer’s block article, here are eleven things that keep me writing:

1. Read a lot of books, mainly non-fiction.
   
2. Write a little bit every day, stay in touch, stay in form. Its an imperative, not a choice.
   
3. If you get stuck, handwrite first, it usually releases word-processing block.
   
4. Keep a chunk of time free for writing, free from people and email.
   
5. Write at a time of the day that ensures emotional calm for you, usually before doing anything else.
   
6. Always have two to three favorite writing places, such that at least one is always accessible.
   
7. Use good writing instruments, they make a bigger difference than one would perceive.
   
8. When word processing, make the pages look aesthetically pleasing, and if this means ignoring journal guidelines, go right ahead!
   
9. Make outlines before word-processing – sometimes very detailed, at other times sketchy, as required.
   
10. Beware of administrative work – it is the disease that impedes writing, while making you feel like you are justifying your existence. Administration is anathema to academia. If you find yourself doing too much, start worrying deeply about your writing.
    
11. Be creative and have fun in the process.
    

Writer’s Block

I was recently asked to talk about my strategies for successful writing. I write a reasonable amount, both for academic purposes as well as for fun, but I have never felt like characterizing my writing as “successful”. I write best when I feel the urge, but I write often because I have to. Maybe the first type is successful to me, the other one is not.

In an academic setting successful writing probably means writing that leads to eventual publication. I am definitely not good at this. My co-authors will tell you that my writing stinks. Many of them tell me to refrain from writing the final version of the paper – I am too likely to take risks with the writing, whereas sanitized, safe writing seems to work better. I don’t do play-it-safe writing. Its often been said that one should write papers not to get them accepted, but to prevent them from getting rejected. I hate that idea.

Nevertheless, I have learned various ways to write even when I do not feel like it, simply because I have found that I need it for my sustenance. Its an essential part of life, and I think especially so for an academic. Here are some typical things that help me write and more important, glean real enjoyment from it.

1. I write best soon after I read well. I read a lot, and buy a lot of books. In a good month I will often buy twenty or more books, and obviously they will not all be read. There are some people who do guilt when they start a book and then cannot finish it, and it blocks them up from reading more. I got over this a long time ago. Since I really need to read good writing so as to inspire me to write, I keep a constant supply of books nearby (mainly bedside) and this does help me immensely. This comprises mainly non-fiction, but I think good fiction does just as well. In short, reading well leads to writing well. Even if it feels like there is no time to read, one must make time. Its the only way to be a writer. I recall reading extensively a while back a series of books on how to write science fiction and the one theme that ran through all the books was that one had to read a lot of science fiction to be able to know what good writing in that area means.
   
2. I do have some favorite books that I read more than once that deal with writing itself. First, let me tell you about two remarkable essays that my son guided me to. Both are titled “Why I write” – one by George Orwell mentions ego needs, the need to express oneself and the need to change one’s environment. I find I share these goals to varying degrees, but they are all there. Mainly I write for myself – therein lies the key – writing is in the end a selfish personal hobby, and why not? The second essay is by Joan Didion, who mentioned that she writes so that she may know herself, and this resonated with me too. We are here and not here at the same time, and when I write, I truly feel all here. Its wonderful. Didion pointed out that the intonation of the title of the essay is a series of monosyllabic “I”s (why I write) – a fair indication of how self-centered this pursuit it.
   
3. Other books. Isaac Asimov has been a great inspiration. I have this book of his short stories titled “Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection” which contains three parts and the third is on writing. Did you know he almost never wrote a second draft, he was that good. Of course, I read this a while ago, and told myself, if Asimov can do this why can’t I? This has been for many years a constant source of frustration to my co-authors! Another book that has greatly inspired me is titled “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” by (guess who?) – Stephen King. And you thought he only wrote grisly stories! This is a wonderful book. I have also greatly enjoyed “The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work : A Collection from the Washington Post Book World” by Marie Arana. Her interviews and personal reflections of well known people and writers show how differently people write and come to the craft. It seems that almost all writers there appear to have discovered their muse at a time of hardship, and in many ways for me this is true as well. Writing is a refuge, be it writing for work or pleasure.
   
4. What? Writing is just an expression of creative spirit. I do not think of writing as very different from doing mathematics, or writing program code. Just as there is some difference but more similarity in reading prose or a book on mathematics. Writing is in many ways the lazy person’s way of being creative, which explains a lot about me I suppose.
   
5. How? – Implements. Pen. Desktop. Laptop. I use all of them. But I write best when I handwrite out things first, either in short form or complete paragraphs, depending on my mood. If I write at a desk I usually use a fountain pen. If in bed, a pencil. Then I transcribe to computer. My best writing has always been handwritten first. I tend to handwrite much less for research writing, which explains why that tends to be my worst efforts. Ideas flow faster and more coherently when handwriting. Thought flows nicely from the tip of a pen. I spend an exorbitant amount of money on good writing instruments but it pays off in the immense enjoyment from writing with them.
   
6. When? Usually in the early mornings. My best days are when I rise early like 4 or 5am and then just write, not watching the clock and definitely not doing anything else, especially not email. I avoid all distractions by not going in to work. I keep emotionally relaxed by taking a meditation break. And I definitely avoid obviously gratifying interruptions like administrative work, which make one feel useful even while being quite useless.
   
7. When I don’t find work-writing working, I do fun writing instead. Its like keeping fit, daily exercise is best. When the usual rigorous workout is impossible, one should not miss out on a light one. Thats what fun writing is. Think of fun writing as cross-training.
   
8. Good writing has been repeatedly defined as re-writing. I find it very hard to throw away even one word once its out there! I try but it does not help, each child is as favored as the other. But some prose just needs to be euthanized, and I am getting only a little better at this. So, it pays to develop a sentimental detachment at times from writing thats been done already.
   
9. Writer’s block is often not really that. Its sometimes location staleness. You cannot write because you are in a location of poor energy. So the simplest thing to do is just move to another location, and this works very well for me. As a child, I used to carry around a little exercise book in which I would write my views of the world. I would walk from my parent’s home to an embassy library a mile from home and write there. I must have filled more than twenty such notebooks a year and my mother kept some of them even when I went to college. I remember how happy I felt when a female friend read one of them, and it was nice to have someone else relive those moments, and enjoy them too. But I digress – my point was that when you get stuck in one place, just move to another. I have some favorite coffee shops in Berkeley and Oakland where there is a quiet buzz that really works for me. I also drive down to the sea (I grew up on the ocean) and write there, or up at Grizzly peak in the hills atop Berkeley. Location is everything – you have to tap into the energy where it flows in sync with you.
   
10. Be prepared. You never know when the muse comes calling. I carry a notebook in my bag always, and write things down when I get the urge. There is a favorite black exercise book form that works for me. I also carry sometimes a smaller blue plastic-covered ring binder book to jot down notes. But I rarely use a writing pad, unless its for class notes. Instead, at home, I have two to three clipboards with used computer paper, where I write on the unused side. One is on my desk, one at my beside, and the other at large. Being lazy, I keep things handy, for sometimes the ideas one jots down may not be worth retrieving pen and paper for unless they are just there.
    
11. Electronics. I have developed another recent method of keeping ideas. When I think I might later write a blog about something, and just need to write down the title of the idea, I use a web-based stickies program called “Webnote” – its free, just google it, and you can use it right away too. The beauty of it is that you can access your electronic stickies no matter what computer you are using. Also I often attend talks and things, and when I am there it just releases ideas, many times having nothing to do with the talk itself. So I write them down and then scan them in when I come home. I am a PDF rat – I keep thousands of PDFs with all sorts of things, and have devised an elaborate file naming convention so I can quickly list anything similar. Using a Mac helps. But I store everything on servers in my office, so that they are accessible to me anywhere in the world. Finally, I use a phone with a nice keyboard so that I may email notes to myself for writing up later.
    
12. Proof-reading. Do it – a lot. I am very bad at this. But whenever I have been patient enough it has been most enjoyable experience and made me proud of my work. Sitting and reading one’s own work and getting thrilled with it is such an incredible act of self-indulgence, everyone must try it!
    
13. Read non-fiction. I am convinced that all good writers must be avid readers of non-fiction. When I have read biographies of fiction writers I have found that they inevitably read a lot of non-fiction. I think this is because great writers are innately curious people and often write to understand things better, and therefore will be drawn to non-fiction just as they would to fiction. Reading non-fiction to me is like leading multiple real lives, and it lets me borrow freely from one life into the other. It makes my writing fun and wild.
    
14. Finally, the most important reason I write is to have fun. Write for fun, even with research writing. Too much research writing seems aimed at desultory, dry exposition, sanitized to death. Just recently I got a paper accepted in a good journal that had taken me five years to find a home for. It encountered rejections along the way, some of them characterized by an absence of humor too painful to describe. But the paper is about computers understanding human conversations, and my early versions of the paper contained an introduction that was pure fiction, about computers running the world’s financial system, and the only role of humans being to inject randomness now and then to make life interesting. To me this was the most beautiful science fiction beginning to any paper I had written, except that every referee report categorically demanded immediate expungment of my energetic preface. Not willing to give in (sentimental attachment reigning strong), I moved it from preface to epilogue, eliciting no change in response. The final version contains no trace of that prose whatsoever, but I had so much fun with it, that it made the paper one of my favorites despite the repeated rejections. Maybe I will one day write that introduction into a science fiction story and publish it as such, but the academic paper still sings to me with that prose even though no one else will hear it. But thats just the point, you have to have fun writing, for yourself, not for publication.
    

On Creativity

I recently had an interesting email conversation on creativity. So I figured I would list ten things that I believe about the creative process:

1. Creativity works better in the absence of distractions.
   
2. It takes work to get into a creative mood. There is a hump to get over.
   
3. There is a link between mindfulness and creativity. Meditation can help being mindful, and hence clearing the mind is an essential cleansing in preparation for good work.
   
4. Its hard to be creative when you are too sure of where you want to end up.
   
5. Creativity is all about the process, not the goal.
   
6. It needs deep think, and then down time for background processing. Being creative is not a matter of a single epiphany – it takes many sessions of sink time.
   
7. Being motivated by money is a negative – it allows the goal to supercede the process.
   
8. Sometimes you need to change environment to light the spark, or in other words, you cannot think outside the box if you are sitting in it!
   
9. Creativity is a gift you cultivate and give yourself, but it has an impact on more than many.
   
10. Creativity does not have to be paradigm shifting – even learning about yourself is highly creative.
    

Being creative is a process that comes from truly taking responsibility to learn from your own actions, and not being dependent on anyone else for it. Find yourself a creative person, and you will see someone who has failed many times, but has not given up trying to learn.

Blocking Time

As an aging academic, I am beset with scholarship sclerosis, that is a clog in the smooth flow of writing output. All academics face these problems. We write more and more about less meaningful things, and yearn for a return to the days of Assistant Professorship, when no one knew of our existence and left us alone to enjoy the great freedom of time to think and write well.

Writing today comprises responding to numerous unproductive emails, administrative work, editorial and referee work, reports on our own work, creating syllabuses and slides, giving presentations, etc. Much of this has been brought on by the computer. Were it not around, there would be no emails, no slides, much fewer reports, and in general better writing (and better handwriting too!).

But the big problem seems to be that we have become multi-taskers, resulting in a loss of the ability to spend large blocks of time on specific deep-involvement production. And, I am convinced that this leads to lower output quantity (despite all the stated virtues of multitasking), to compound the problem of the drop off in quality.

Here is how this happens. Many, if not all of us academics, need blocks of time in which we can sit down and attend to the serious business of writing a good academic paper. We are unable to begin the process of writing unless that chunk of time becomes available. Hence, the absence of a block of time turns into writer’s block. With the greater arrival of distractions, like emails, web events, etc., there are shrinkages in the blocks of time, resulting in fewer episodes where we feel ready to sit down and write. Hence, we write less of what matters, and write more of what does not.

The antidote to all this is to just sit down and write, without thinking about completion. In fact, it is recommended that we sit down with the idea of writing for a fixed amount of time, and then we should stop, whether done or not. It is said that Oscar Wilde wrote four hours a day and then always stopped, even if he was in the middle of a sentence. Knowing that you have a fixed, limited time for something actually helps avoid distractions, since it implicitly raises the cost of being distracted.

Another thing I have noticed is that we tend to overestimate the effort and time to complete a task. Often I assume a writing task will take two hours and then do not begin if I have but a half hour available. If I do start to do it, I find that it has only taken 20 minutes and I am actually done with time to spare. I do not believe there is any way to avoid the time overestimation problem, which seems to me to be pretty much hardwired in our brains. So, the only way to deal with it is to just start the task. The Nike people got this all figured out I guess – we just need to do it.

There are people who just cannot gain from regular writing for a fixed period of time. I know some of them. They go for days doing nothing, and then in one day, can accomplish what I usually need two weeks for. But then, such folks do not need to worry about blocks and so on. All they need to do is manage their guilt for the time they sit around waiting for their burst of output. For the rest of us monkeys, we better sit and pound on our keyboards, even when we don’t know what we are doing.

Is the Pen mightier than the Keyboard?

Resistance to change is universal. Stability is an integral part of self. Yet adaptability is just as important in a changing world. Hence, a flexible and evolving self has become the personal paradigm of the modern world. Nothing epitomizes the conflict between the old and the new as much as the question: Is the pen mightier than the keyboard?

It is often said that thinking flows as the ink from the tip of a pen. That summarizes the need to get the mind going by first getting the hands moving. To me, this is a beautiful example of the essential interaction between mind and body. Just think of it – all beautiful writing requires this intrinsic dual role play of physical expression and intellectual thought. Therefore, why should things be any different if we replace the pen with a keyboard. One might argue that a keyboard is even better, as now both hands are brought into play, and it is just that – being totally engaged in good writing is as much play as it can be!

Viewed as such, there should be little difficulty in moving from the pen to the keyboard. Yet, many people are unable to make the switch easily. They still need to use a pen to think at their best. What changes? Indeed, there are many changes. One, the physical orientation of entry and display is disconnected. When you write on paper, both input and display are on the same paper, in the horizontal orientation. Not so with the computer. Here entry is horizontal, but display is vertical. Does this require extra processing by our brains? It might just be, though there is no scientific evidence of it that I know of, and I expect this has still to be investigated. Yet, over time, the extra processing does add up, and clever people might find that handwriting is just superior for the thought process, as it wastes fewer brain cycles.

Two, unstructured thought seems better done on paper than on the computer. When writing on paper, the ability to access any coordinate of the writing space with equal ease makes for much more flexible expression, and frees the mind up for creative processing. When working with a screen, most word processing programs, or even presentation programs impose a linear layout on our expression, which implicitly impacts the freedom of thought. Yes, there are desktop publishing programs that are certainly geared to full range layout, and which certainly help. And with the new tablet computers, this might be changing. However, the tablet is as much an admission of the intellectual advantage of thought through the pen than via a keyboard.

Three, the variety of writing instruments is far greater with pens than with keyboards. Even with keyboards, I find that I write better with some than with others. Do you also find that when word processing, certain fonts are easier to think with than others? In my case, I certainly find that the helvetica or arial font leads to better thought than times roman in flat files (its the opposite for me when reading Latex output). I also find that editors that automatically word wrap leave me more time to think than editors that do not. There is something about an untidy paragraph that needs constant re-alignment that throws off my writing. With paper and pen, I get a range of colours, tips, nibs, tactile feels, and other choices that are conducive to the specific writing I am doing. For instance, when doing a referee report, I like to use green highlighter and green ink. When proof reading my papers I like using red ink. When handwriting I use a fountain pen with black ink. And when deriving mathematics, or taking class notes, I always use a mechanical pencil. Mostly the 0.7mm tips suit me best, but then, every now and then I just have to use a 0.5mm lead. And when writing checks and signing documents, I use a black ball point. Call me crazy, but I never get such well defined choices with a keyboard. Mostly its a font choice, and I seem to have become used to Apple, Dell QK and Logitech keyboards. And oh yes, I also vary the location of writing from desk to couch/bed. On desks, I use a desktop (surprise) and on the couch, a laptop. I need both – dont know what I would do without either. Thats the big problem with working on campus – no couch – hopefully my new office will accommodate one.

There is something interesting I have learned by watching people write and keyboard. I use the Latex typesetting program, and prefer to have the input screen on the left, and the preview screen on the right. I have noticed that people who prefer this tend to also write with the paper to their right. When they read and type, they prefer the document being read to be on their left. If the writing is being done on the left side of the keyboard, and the reading from pages on the right of the keyboard, people tend to have the input screen on their right, and the output screen on their left. This left-right to input-output orientation seems to be an interesting regularity based on (very) casual empiricism, and maybe there is some deep left brain right brain logic for it.

The growth of voice recognition programs raises an interesting issue – do we write better when dictating or when we use our hands. I have tried voice to text programs, and my writing comes out very different. I guess its worse. I do not speak in the way I want to write, And I feel it reads worse too. There is something about using my hands to compose what I write that is critical. It cannot be substituted for by my voice.

Despite some of the advantages of the pen, the keyboard is gaining rapidly in relieving the pen of its role. Certainly, for a trained typist, it is much faster to type than to write. The keyboard is also economical because many times we use the keyboard to write as well as to visit web sites while doing research on what we are writing about. This makes the efficiency of keyboarding higher than writing, because the keyboard becomes both, the medium of research and the producer of output.

There are folks I know that have made the shift from pen to keyboard and find it hard now to write well unless seated in front of the keyboard and screen. I am still half way. In fact, I like to handwrite the basic structure before sitting down at the keyboard. What I do find is that I end up with something completely different than what was planned. For example, I wrote the notes on a small piece of paper for this blog post last night, and then used these notes to flesh out my typing today. Since I do this often, it has now stopped surprising me as to how different the typed version is from the original handwritten ideas. There is clearly a different thought process that results when one uses a keyboard than a pen.

All said and done, expressing one’s writing in pen seems more fulfilling to people who write regularly. Yet, the new generation is leaving this behind, and becoming the keyboard crew. The tablet computer is an interesting innovation that will likely span those offered. Maybe voice programs will become very accurate and hence useful, making the traditional approach a thing of the past. The time has come now when we need to look for a completely different way to solve the problem of expressing ourselves in a total mind-body way. Till then, the pen and keyboard will joust.