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There’s a gravity and sense of importance inherent in deep work—whether you’re Ric Furrer smithing a sword or a computer programmer optimizing an algorithm. Gallagher’s theory, therefore, predicts that if you spend enough time in this state, your mind will understand your world as rich in meaning and importance. There is, however, a hidden but equally important benefit to cultivating rapt attention in your workday: Such concentration hijacks your attention apparatus, preventing you from noticing the many smaller and less pleasant things that unavoidably and persistently populate our lives. (The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whom we’ll learn more about in the next section, explicitly identifies this advantage when he emphasizes the advantage of cultivating “concentration so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems.”) This danger is especially pronounced in knowledge work, which due to its dependence on ubiquitous connectivity generates a devastatingly appealing buffet of distraction—most of which will, if given enough attention, leach meaning and importance from the world constructed by your mind.
Even if we accept the idea that a safe life is a small life, many of us reassure ourselves that we’ll take the real risks later, one day, when we’re rich enough, successful enough, popular enough. In other words, we’ll take risks when it’s safe to do so. I can tell you from personal experience that that magical day will never come. You will begin to take risks only when you realize it’s more dangerous not to. Success only raises the stakes, making risks harder to stomach. Once you have popularity and money, the necessary creative risks become scarier than ever. Worst of all, this trap is a gilded cage. To everyone else, and even to yourself, it can look as though you have everything you ever wanted. I’m grateful for that avalanche. Looking back, I can see that if I’d continued on my path by making one safe choice after another in the hope of preserving my newfound success, my creativity might have slowed to a stop as I lost touch with what had motivated me to work in the first place. You’ve got to be willing to risk what you’ve got or you risk losing it. Now’s the time to decide: What price are you willing to pay to live your best life?
Creative Calling
Chase Jarvis
To beat the market, focus on investments well within your knowledge and ability to evaluate, your “circle of competence.” Be sure your information is current, accurate, and essentially complete. Be aware that information flows down a “food chain,” with those who get it first “eating” and those who get it late being eaten. Finally, don’t bet on an investment unless you can demonstrate by logic, and if appropriate by track record, that you have an edge. Whether or not you try to beat the market, you can do better by properly managing your wealth, which I talk about next.
A Man for All Markets
Edward O. Thorp
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