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Distraction, Simplicity, and Running Toward Shitstorms

Merlin Mann | Oct 5 2010

It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the

irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to

surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.

Albert Einstein, On the Method of Theoretical Physics (1934)

Context: Last week, I pinched off one of my typically woolly emails in response

to an acquaintance whom I admire. Hes a swell guy who makes things I love,

and he'd written, in part, to express concern that my

recent Swift impersonation had been directed explicitly at something he'd made.

Which, of course, it hadntbut which, as I'll try to discuss here, strikes me as

irrelevant.

To paraphrase Bogie, I played it for him, so now I suppose I might as well play it

for you.

(n.b.: Excerpted, redacted, munged, and heavily expanded from my original

email)

There are at least a couple things that mean a lot to me that I'm still just not very

good at.

Make nuanced points in whatever way they need to be made; even if that

ends up seeming un-nuanced

Never explain yourself.

I want to break both these self-imposed rules privately with you here. [Editors

Note: Um.] Because, I hope to nuance the shit out of some fairly un-nuanced

points. And, to do that, I'll also (reluctantly) need to explain myself. But, here

goes.

First [regarding my goofing on distraction-free writing environments] I think there

are some GIANT distinctions at play here that a lot of folks may not find nearly

as obvious as I do:

1. Tool Mastery vs. Productivity Pr0n Finding and learning the right tools

for your work vs solely dicking around with the options for those tools is

just so important, but also so different. And, admittedly, its almost

impossible to contrast those differences in terms of hard & fast rules that

could be true for all people in all situations. But, that doesnt make the

difference any less qualitatively special or real.

Similarly

2. Self-Help Vs. SelfHelp Solving the problem that caused the

problem that caused the problem that caused the symptom we eventually

noticed. Huge. Arguably, peerless.

o Viz.: How many of us ignore the actual cause of our problem in favor

of just reading dozens of blog posts about how to turbocharge its

most superficial symptoms? Sick.

3. Focus & Play Yes, focusing on important work is, as Ford used to say,

Job 1. But, that focus benefits when we maintain the durable and

unapologetic sense of play that affords true creativity and fosters an

emergence of context and connection thats usually killed by stress. BUT.

o Again, what conceivable rule could ever serve to immutably

declare that THIS goofing-off is critical for hippocampal plasticity vs.

THAT goofing-off is just dumb, distracting bullshit?

o Impossible. Because drawing those kinds of distinctions is one of our

most important day-to-day responsibilities. Decisions are hard, and

theres no app or alarm gadget that can change that.

Although, they certainly can help mask the depth of the

underlying problem that made them seem sowhats the

parlance?indispensable.

Think: Elmo Band-Aids for that unsightly pancreatic tumor.

4. Reducing Distraction through Care (Rather than braces, armatures, and

puppet strings). Removing interruptions and external distractions that

harm your work or life? Great. Counting on your distraction-removal tool

to supplement your non-existent motivation to do work that will never get

done anyway? Pathetic.

o Frankly, this is a big reason I'm so galled when anyone touts their

tool/product/service as being the poor, misunderstood artists new

miracle medicinerather than just admitting they've made a slightly

different spoon.

o Because, lets be honest: although most of us have plenty of perfectly

serviceable spoons, everybody knows collecting cutlery is way more

fun than using it to swallow yucky medicine.

5. Using a System Vs. Becoming a System. Having a system or process for

getting work done vs. making the iteration of that system or process a

replacement for the work. This is justwowbig.

But, maybe most importantly to me

6. Embracing the Impossibles. Getting past these or any other intellectual

koans by simply accepting lifes innumerable and unresolvable paradoxes,

hypocrisies, and impossibilities as God-given gifts of creative constraint.

Rather than, say, a mimeographed page of long division problems that

must be solved for a whole number, n.

o I just cant ever get away from this one. For me, its what everything

inevitably comes back to.

o The very definition of our jobs is to solve the right problem at the

right level for the right reasonbased on a combination of the best

info we have for now and a clear-eyed dedication to never pushing

an unnecessary rock up an avoidable hill.

o YET, we keep force-feeding the monster that tells us to fiddle and

fart and blame the Big Cruel World whenever we face work that

might threaten our fragile personal mythology.

Sigh. I wish I could finally start writing My Novel.Ooooooh,

if only I had a slightly nicer penand Zeus loved me more.

All that stuff? That theres a complex set of ideas to talk about for many complex

reasonsnot least of which being how many people either despise or (try to)

deny the unavoidable impact of ol' number six.

But, heres the thing: as much as saying so pisses anybody off, I think the topics

we're NOT talking about whenever we disappear into Talmudic scholarship

about full-screen mode or minimalist desks or whatever constitutes a zen

habitthose shunned topics are precisely the things that I believe are most

mind-blowingly critical to our real-world happiness as humans.

In fact, I believe that to such a degree that helping provide a voice for those

unpopular topics that can be heard over the din is now (what passes for) my

career. I really believe these deeper ideas are worth socializing on any number of

levels and in many media. Even when its inconvenient and slightly disrespectful

of someones business model.

So, thats what I try to do. I talk about these things. Seldom by careful design.

Often poorly. But, always because they each mean an awful lot to me.

[]

But, no matter how I end up saying whatever the hell I say, I believe in saying it

not simply to be liked or followed or revered as a nice guy who pushes out shit-

tons of whatever to help people.

Because, believe me, friend, a great many of those apparently nice guys

swarming around the web helping people these days are ass-fucking their

audience for nickels and calling it a complimentary colonoscopy. And, while I

absolutely think that in itself is empirically wrong, I also think its just as

important to say that its wrong. Sometimes, True Things need to be said.

Which in this instance amounts to saying, a) selling people a prettier way to

kinda almost but not really write is not, in the canonical sense, nicebut, far

worse, b) leaving your starry-eyed customers with the nauseatingly misguided

impression that their distraction originates from anyplace but their own

busted-ass brain is really not helping. Not on any level. It is, literally, harmful.

Helping a junkie become more efficient at keeping his syringe loaded is hardly

nice.

Its the opposite of nice. And, its the opposite of helpful. These are my True

Things.

And, to me, saying your True Things also means not watering down the message

you care about in order to render it incapable of even conceivably hurting

someones feelingsor of even conceivably losing you even one teeny-tiny slice

of that precious market share.

Well, thats the price, and I'm fine paying itbest money I've ever spent.

But, it also means trusting your audience by letting each of them decide to add

water only as they choose toby never corrupting the actual concentrate in a

way that might make it less useful to the smartest or most eager 5% of people

who'd like to try using it undiluted. Because, at that point, you're not only

abandoning the coolest people you have the honor of servingyou risk becoming

a charlatan.

And, thats precisely what you become when you start to iteratively inbreed the

kind of fucktard audience for whom daily buffets of weak swill and beige

assurance are lifes most gratifying reward.

Sure. Those poor bastards may never end up using any of that watery

information to do anything more ambitious than turbocharging their most

regrettable symptoms. But, whos the last person in the universe whos going to

grab them by the ears and tell them to get back to work? Exactlythat same

nice guy whose livelihood now depends on keeping infantalized strangers

addicted to his help.

Holy shitno way could I ever live with that. Its so wrong, its not even right.

ESC, ESC, ESC!

[]

Okay. So anyhow, theres a really long-winded, overly generous, and extremely

pompous way of trying to say I dont know how to do what I do except how I do

it. But, I do genuinely feel awful when innocent people feel they have been

publicly humiliated or berated simply because I'm some dick who hates people.

Which has to be my favorite irony of all.

When I was a kid, I thought my Mom was mean not to let me play in traffic on

busy Galbraith Road. Today, I'm not simply grateful that she had the strength

and resolve to be so meanI actually cant imagine how sad it would be to not

have people in your life who care enough about your long-term welfare to tell

you to stop fucking around in traffic. To where you eventually might start even

seeking 12x-daily safety hacks from some of the very same drivers whose

recklessness may eventually kill you. Wow.

[]

Admitting when life is complicated or things arent shiny and happy all the time

strikes me as a wonderfully sane and adult way to conduct ones life. That there

are so many folks offended by even the existence of this anarchic idea is not a

problem I can solve.

No more than I can wish useless email away or pray hard enough that it never

rains on anyones leaky roof. All out of scope.

And, then, I jizzed on at length about how much I admire the recipients work.

Which I do.

Good work doesnt need a cookie

I may admire your work, too. Especially if you care a lot about that work and

dont overly sweat peoples' opinions of it. Most definitely including my own.

For these purposes, it doesnt really matter whether we're friends and, honestly,

it doesnt even matter whether I love, use, or agree with everything you do, say,

or make in a given day.

It doesnt matter because good work doesnt need me to love it. Like tornadoes

and cold sores, good work happens with total disregard to whether I'm into it.

But, conversely, lets stipulate that the points-of-view undergirding our

opinionsagain, including minewill and should survive either agreement or

lack of agreement with equivalently effortless ease. Because, like really good

work, a really good point-of-view doesnt require another persons benediction.

Guess we'll have to disagree to agree

Now, to be only vaguely clearer here, I'm not posting this circuitous ego dump in

the service of altering your opinion of either me, my friend, his work, or

practically anything else for that matter.

But, I would love it if we could all be more okay with the fact that real life means

that we do each have a different, sometimes incongruous, and often totally

incompatible point-of-view. Yes. Even you have a point-of-view that someone

despises. Ready to change it now? Jesus, I sure hope not.

Then, to be only slightly more clear, I'm also not advocating for that fakey brand

of web-based kum ba ya that gets trotted out alternately as tolerance or

inclusion or some styrofoam miniature of civility.

I'm absolutely not against all of those things when authentically practiced, but

I'm also really skeptical of the well-branded peacemakers who are forever

appointing themselves the Internets Now-Now-Lets-All-Pretend-We're-Just-

Saying-the-Same-Useless-Thing-Here den mothers.

Because we're not all saying the same things. Not at all.

And, it infantalizes some important conversations when we tacitly demand that

any instance of honest disagreement be immediately horseshat into a photo opp

where some thought leader gets to hoist everyones hands in the air like hes

fucking Jimmy Carter.

Nope. Not saying that.

Who will you really rely on?

What I AM saying is that alllllll this seemingly unrelated stuff is absolutely

relatedthat the pattern of not relying on other people for anything you really

care about is arguably the great-grandaddy of every useful productivity,

creativity, or self-help pattern.

Wheres this matter? Pretty much everywhere you have any sort of stake:

Dont rely on other people to remove your totally fake distractions.

Dont rely on other people to pat your beret, re-tie your cravat, and make

you a nice cocoa whenever that mean man on the internet points out that

your distractions are totally fake. (Which they are)

Dont rely on other people to tell you when or whether you have enough

information.

Dont rely on other people to define your job.

Dont rely on other people to design your lifestyle.

Dont rely on other people to decide when your opinions are acceptable.

Dont rely on other people to tell you when you're allowed to be awesome.

Dont rely on other people to make you care.

Dont even rely on other people to tell you what you should or shouldnt

rely on.

Yes. I went there.

Because thats the point. These hypocrisies, paradoxes, and ambiguities that

people get so wound up aboutthat many of us are constantly (impotently)

trying to resolvecannot be resolved.

Because, yeah: all of these harrowingly unsolvable problems are immune to new

notebooks and less-distracting applications and shinier systems and nicer self-

help and pretty much anything else that is not, specifically, you walking

straight into the angriest and least convenient shitstorm you can find and getting

your ass kicked until the storm gets bored with kicking it.

Then, you find an even angrier storm. Then, another. And, so on.

Get the fuck off of my obstacle, Private Pyle!

Doing that annoying hard stuff is how you grow, get better, and learn what real

help looks like. Even if thats not the answer you wanted to hear. You get better

by getting your ass out of your RSS reader and fucking making things until they

suck less. Not by buying apps.

You dont whine about distractions, or derail yourself over needing a nicer pencil

sharpener, or aggravate your chronic creative diabetes by starting another

desperate waddle to the self-help buffet. No. You work.

And, for what its worth, just like you cant get to the moon by eating cheese,

you'll also never leave boot camp with your original scrote intact by telling your

drill sergeant to try using more honey than vinegar.

No. That sergeants job is to make you miserable. Its his job to break down your

callow conceits about whats supposed to be easy and fair. Its his job to

emotionally pummel you into giving up and becoming a Marine.

You? You're not there to give the sergeant notes; you're there to sleep two hours

a night, then not mind getting beaten for 20 hours until a decent Marine starts to

fall out.

Who knows? He may even surprise you by introducing a surprisingly effective

distraction-free learning environment.

Tee ell dee ahr, Professor Brainiac.

Like most humans, I like things I can understand. Like most readers, I love

specificity. Like most thinkers, I love clarity. Like most students, I love relevance

and practicality. And, like most busy people, believe it or not, I actually do really

like it when someone gets straight to the point.

But, heres the problem. If my 2-year-old daughter asks me about time travel,

and I blithely announce, E=mc2, I will have said something that is entirely

specific, clear, relevant, practical, and/or straight-to-the-point. For somebody.

But, not so much for my daughter. And, to be honest, not even to any useful

degree for me.

She'd probably either laugh derisively at me (which shes great at), or she'd

pause and ask, Whuh dat? (which shes even better at).

Thing is, her understanding that jumble of characters less than meand my

understanding it WAY less than Professor Alhas zero impact on the profundity,

truth, beauty, or impact of the mans theory.

Sure. You could quite accurately fault me for being a smartass and a poseur, and

you could even berate my toddler for her unaccountably shallow understanding

of Modern Physics. But, in any case, you cant really blame either Albert or his

theory.

You're turbocharging nothing

Specifically, Albert cant begin to tell us what he really knows if we dont

understand math.

So, lets say this theory you've been hearing about really interests you. And, lets

also pretend, just for the sake of the analogy, that you havent completed

Calculus III (212) or Quantum Mechanics (403) or even something as

elementary as, say, Advanced Astrophysics II (537). I know you have. Obviously.

But, lets pretend. Where do you start?

Well, you could read some tips about learning math. You could find a list of 500

indispensable resources for indispensable math resources. You could buy a new

distraction-free math environment. Heck, theres actually nothing to stop you

from just declaring yourself a math expert. Congratulations, Professor.

Thing is: you still dont know math.

Which means you still cant really understand the theoryno more than a

pathetic Liberal Arts refugee like me or a dullard Physics ignoramus like my kid

can really grok relativity.

Difference is, you will have blown a lot of time hoping that actual expertise

follows non-existent effortwhile my daughter and I get to remain total novices

without charge. Only, we dont get all mad at the theory as a result; a staggering

number of fake math experts do.

I mean, be honestafter all that recreational non-work and make-believe

dedication almost trying to kinda learn math sortayou might actually get

frustrated at how brazenly Al defies your fondness for shortcuts by continuing to

rely on so many terms and proofs and blah-blah-blah that you still just dont

understand. So annoying.

You may simply decide that Albert Einsteins a huge dick for never saying things

that can be completely understood solely by scanning a headline.

EPIC EINSTEIN FAIL, amirite?

You never really know what you didnt know until you know it

But, Al just told the truth.

Problem is, Als truth not only requires fancy things in order to be truly

understoodthe more of those fancy things you take away from his truth, the

less true it gets. And, by the time its been diluted to the point where you're

comfortable that you understand it? You'd be understanding the wrong thing.

Even I can understand that.

But, not one bit of any of this is Als fault. Al doesnt get to control who uses,

abuses, gets, or doesnt get what he said or why it matters. Especially since hes

been dead for over fifty years.

All I know is, regardless of who has ears to hear it on a given day, it would be to

Als credit never to mangle something important in order to get it into terms

everybodys ready to handle without actually trying.

And God bless him for never agreeing that your distractions to learning math

are his problem.

So, yeah, if you only need to hand in a crappy 5-page paper, you could certainly

Cliffs Notes your way through Borges, Eliot, or Joyce in an afternoon, and feel

like you havent missed a thing. Trouble is, if you did care even a little, its

impossible to even say how much you're missing since you cant be bothered to

soldier through the source text. The text itself is the entire point.

Even the wonderfully cogent and readable laymans explanations Einstein himself

provided dont really get to the nut, the application, and the implications of his

real theory.

That all takes real math.

That single datum of experience matters

Sometimes, complex or difficult things stop being true when you try to make

them too simple. Sometimes, you have to actually get laid to understand why

people think sex is such a thing. Sometimes, you need to learn some Greek if you

really want to understand The Gospel of John. And, yeah, sometimes, you're

going to have to just work unbelievably hard at whatever you claim to care about

before anyone can begin to help you get any betteror less distractedat it.

The part I really know is what doesnt work. Reading Penthouse Forum wont

help you CLEP out of Vaginal Intercourse 101. Watching a Rankin-Bass cartoon

about the Easter Bunny will teach you very little about the intricacies of

transubstantiation. And, if you cant be troubled to care so much about your

work that you reflexively force distractions away, dicking around with yet

another writing application will merely aggravate the problem. Ironic, huh?

These quantum mechanics of personal productivity are rife with such frustrating

paradoxes.

These are True Things.

Achieving expertise and doing creative work is all horribly complicated and

difficult and paradoxical and frustrating and recursive and James Joyce-yand

any guide, blog, binary, guru, or nice guy that tries to suggest otherwise is

probably giving you a complimentary colonoscopy. Do the math.

Want a new syllabus? Sure:

Run straight into your shitstorm, my friends. Reject the impulse to think about

work, rather than finishing it. And, open your heart to the remote possibility that

any mythology of personal failure that involves messiahs periodically arriving to

make everything easy for you might not really be helping your work or your

mental health or your long-standing addiction to using tools solely to ship new

excuses.

Learn your real math, and any slide rule will suffice. Try, make, and do until you

quit noticing the tools, and if you still think you need new tools, go try, make,

and do more.

If you can pull off this deceptively simple and millennia-old pattern, you'll

eventually find thatgod by dying godany partial truth thats supported your

treasured excuses for not working will be replaced by a no-faith-required

knowledge that you're really, actually, finally getting better at something you

care about.

Which is just sublimely un-distracting.

Dedication

This article is dedicated to my friend, Greg Knauss. No, hes not the app guyhes

just a good man who does good work, who accidentally/unintentionally helped

me write this rant. He also happens to be a fella who could teach anyone a thing

or two about writing with distractions. Thanks, Greg.

POSTED IN:

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TOPICS: Creative Work, Distractions, Features

About Merlin

Bio

Merlin Mann is an independent writer, speaker, and broadcaster. Hes best known

for being the guy who created the website youre reading right now. He lives in

San Francisco, does lots of public speaking, and helps make cool thingslike You Look

Nice Today, Back to Work, and Kung Fu Grippe. Also? Hes writingthis book, he lives

with this face, he suffers from this hair, he answers these questions, and hes had this

life. So far.

Merlins favorite thing hes written in the past few years is an essay entitled,

Cranking.

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