Habits of the mind

President Kim likes to talk about “habits of the mind” in his speeches to the undergraduates. I recently read a piece at convocation for the entering Dartys (Class of 2014):

http://now.dartmouth.edu/2010/09/convocation-address-by-president-jim-yong-kim/

It hit me when he discusses his example of procrastinating . . . I mean “writers block” while writing his own PhD thesis which he overcame by doing exercises he called “morning pages” in which he just woke up in the morning and wrote about anything.

It is interesting to map this onto my own experience in which I have developed since b-school the habit of being a little hypomanic in order to improve my productivity. For example, to overcome my own procrastination, I use deadlines both real and artificial and set them closer together so that my time being productive can be maximized.

The unusual problem which I have encountered with this method though is that I end up having to “pay the price” of this adrenaline and hypomania with some subclinical depression when I feel like I must just lay around and do nothing for as long as a night to a few days and as long as two weeks.

For example, during my last 3 months at Dartmouth, I organized the Dartmouth Summit on Healthcare Delivery, matched at Hopkins Anesthesiology, got two business job offers and started a business while finishing my last term of business school. After this, I had about two weeks to finish packing and say good bye to friends, instead I lay around sometimes feeling so disinterested I literally did nothing or perseverated playing video games etc.

I had an interesting conversation with Ji Soo who I just saw for the first time in 5 years. We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of focus vs the approach I have been taking to a dual track life and career. On the one hand, defining success as creating something valuable, achieving something prestigious which is what Ji Soo suggested involves spending 110% of one’s time on one thing. Especially as he describes when everyone else competiting with you is doing the same. However, I simply love being involved in multiple things. I think there is a synergy for me in climbing up the first 80% of my attention and focus curve and once my productivity/attention/focus/effectiveness plateaus moving onto another project so that I can constantly stay on the steep part of my learning and passion curve. For example in bschool I remember spending one term focused completely on school then the next term doing 2-3 things while taking classes and noting that I sometimes did better in the classes despite doing other things. I suppose if you assume my grade reflects what I actually learned in the class then this means that somehow I can get a “twofer” by doing more things at once. Either way, this may just be a habit I cannot change. Something tells me that I am destined to a life of throwing on multiple hats and loving every minute of it. ;)