I’m buckling down here. I’ve got to write this quickly. Instinctually, I know what I want to write about – I’ve just got to sit here and pound it out. I’m on an airplane – there’s a limited amount of time I’ve got before we’re back in Pope City – let’s see how this book holds up. You see, I just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, a book that dissects the relevance of instinct in decision making. Weaving together an eclectic blend of personal anecdotes, interviews, and old psych papers, Gladwell spells out both the benefits and dangers of using less data to make decisions. As it turns out, our unconscious minds often know things before our conscious minds do – so working faster can oftentimes lead to better results.
Let’s give it a shot.
One of the many stories Gladwell tells to advocate for the role of automatic thought is the story of Paul Van Riper. Van Riper is a Vietnam veteran who played a key role in the Joint Forces Command’s Millennium Challenge (basically the war game to end all war games). The two players in the game were the ‘Red Team’ (run by Van Riper as a *completely hypothetical* virulently anti-American Middle-Eastern government) and the ‘Blue Team’ (the U.S.). The Blue Team was stocked with the most advanced warfare technology of the time. Their combat decisions were carefully executed based on information provided by an incredibly complex system of databases and modeling algorithms. Van Riper had significantly less technolgoy, and acted far more on instinct. His operational theory was that he was “in command, but out of control” – the idea being that, by placing nearly unfettered trust in his subordinates, he would enable a type of automatic cognition (the faster, lighter, stronger approach).
I think you can probably see where this is leading – with an unsuspected volley of fictional cruise missiles, the graybeard general crushed the nerd troupe who was left helplessly attempting to fit the attack into rigidly structured analytical models as they were being pummeled. Instinct 1, Analysis 0.
But not so fast.
As much as Gladwell advocates for a return to the primal nature of automatic thinking, Blink also warns of its consequences. In a look at the unlikely rise of Warren Harding, a dim politician whose main proclivities were womanizing, drinking and golf, Gladwell notes that the judgment of his champions was clouded by the overwhelming ‘air of distinction’ Harding seemed to emit. His advisors made instinctual decisions, but they were based on Harding’s presidential good looks, not on his political prowess. To further illustrate the dangers, Gladwell provides an analysis of the case of Amadou Diallo, the Guinean New Yorker gunned down in a hail of 41 bullets several years ago. Again, in this situation the police acted instinctually, but when placed within the context of an unusually tense environment, the officers missed all of the situational cues, and ended up making a series of, to put it mildly, ‘critical misjudgments’. Instinct 1, Analysis 2
It turns out that Gladwell is advocating more for a conscious recognition and balance of both the automatic and the analytical sides of the decision making process. As important as instinct is in decision making, in the absence of any situational data that instinct is uninformed, and can be wrong. At the same time, a glut of information clouds the dataset with noise, distracting from the key factors of an issue. Relying solely on either process is when the disasters come – the better decisions are made from an equilibrium of instinct and analysis.
The concepts of Blink track well to the creative process. In my songwriting experience, the trick is finding the balance between inspired improvisation (the automatic thought) and iterative editing (the analytical thought). So while Echo Bloom can tend towards the analytical side of things (guilty as charged), that intentional exploration enriches the instinctive output – hopefully it’s a good blend between the two.
And now, the plane is starting to land. Instinct 2, Analysis 2 – we’ll call it a draw.
More:
For those not hip to the public radio vibe, Radio Lab is a must-hear weekly out of WNYC that takes big topics, like morality or time, and assembles them into accessible, infinitely interesting audio montages. But what sets this show apart from other similar shows is the way it uses digitally altered audio as a narrative paintbrush – think This American Life, but done with Ableton Live.
A few months ago, the group excerpted a presentation hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich gave in New York City where they discussed the inner workings of their creative process. Abumrad dissects how the show advances narrative through digitally manipulated audio – Krulwich chimes in with his thoughts about how that narrative technique affects the editorial process – it’s a fascinating look into a stellar production.
Check out the piece here. Also – the Radio Lab podcast is worth your time (more information about listening to podcasts is available here).
On Sunday the New York Times did a small Workspace feature on the LA studio of Brian Burton (aka DJ Danger Mouse). As usual, the piece has a nice web buildout – key work components for the Mouse:
1 – No clocks, rather sandglasses. The reasoning? “There’s more clarity.”
2 – Keyboards and pedals occupy all available floor space – I saw an ARP Axxe, 2 Rhodes, 3 acoustic guitars, at least 2 electric guitars/basses, an array of pedals, amps, and one massive mixer (not to mention the reverb chamber in the bathroom, and drumkit in the kitchen).
3 – Sticky notes take up all the space on the walls (he naps, then sketches right when he wakes up)
4 – A sense of the temporary – Burton changes spaces every 4-5 months to stay fresh.
Others covered in the NYT series include poet laureate Donald Hall and artists Doug and Mike Starn.
I’ve got a lot of stuff. Ideas, instruments, data, papers – you know, stuff. But it’s not the stuff that’s the problem, it’s keeping track of it – and if it’s bad now, it’s only going to get worse. As new technology continues to enable us to externalize our memories, we’ll have more and more things to keep track of. For artists, this is a particularly thorny issue – the amount of stuff we have to keep track of expands with our creative output (disproportionally when new technology is used). So how should we keep track of everything?
Edison had a good start. Despite being a bit of a prick, Edison perfected a system of documentation that allowed him to accurately keep track of 5 million pages of notes over his lifetime – his notes were so complete, he was even using them as evidence for his (frequent) patent trials. But this type of rigor didn’t merely serve to be a record – in an excellent analysis, Lifehack describes Edison’s notes are described as:
1 – Comprehensive – Nikola Tesla called his system an ‘empirical dragnet’.
2 – Forward Looking – His system recorded everything today’s typical day planners keep track of – ideas and sketches he had for new inventions, contacts, to-do lists, and actionable items.
3 – Rearward Looking – By keeping a record of both his successes and failures, he was able to avoid repeatedly going down dead-end roads.
4 – A Memory Aid – A weird thing happens when you write something down – while you are attempting to externalize your memory, you actually internalize it more. Edison used this to his advantage.
5 – (Last and most important) Searchable – because what good is it if you can’t find anything? Edison organized his notes chronologically by subject matter – it was still a manual process, but at least it was a bit faster.
[Check out Edison's notes here...]
Modern planning techniques borrow much from Edison’s methods. The GTD method of productivity uses the a folder technique, championed by evangelists like Merlin Mann. GTD’s tickler system calls for 43 folders – one for each day of the month, and twelve for each month itself. It’s an effective trick, but still an analog beast in a digital world. Another route would be to have a private Wiki, but I’ve never found one that works for me. Tiddlywiki is nice, but frustratingly local – and I’ve yet to find a server-based model that doesn’t have an uber-complicated install (although I’d happily be proven wrong – anybody with a better experience pipe up in the comments).
I currently keep track of my stuff by applying some consistent rules religiously. I frequently work in different media – I like to use Moleskine notebooks for songwriting and any project notes I want to keep down in a more physical format, and my prose writing and recording is done on my computer. For my paper notes, I have a small stamp that I use in the bottom right-hand corner of each page 
- this allows me to quickly check dates, subject matter, and iMap categories (as well as looking pretty cool). For my digital material, I keep a rigid folder and naming convention that effectively limits the amount of places I could put something. Everything is named with a 12-digit date, category, name, and creator (this makes it sortable by date also). This file is actually called 200711131838 – Post – Organization Techniques – KSE. There are three folders on my desktop – one for personal, one for work, and one called heap (my landing folder – I try to empty it every night). It’s got nothing on Edison (and I’m always looking to improve, especially making stuff more searchable) but for now, it seems to work pretty well.
How do you keep track of your stuff?
Oblique strategies is a deck of cards originally published by uber-producer Brian Eno and his friend Peter Schmidt (a British painter) in 1975. Each card contains a mildly cryptic phrase that aims to un-jam a creative block. The cards originated when both Eno and Schmidt discovered they independently had a formalized set of mental triggers – when they were on deadline, they noticed that they would each quickly focus on the immediate, and lose the type of creative thinking that allowed them to do their best work. The Oblique Strategies were a way to jog their minds and creatively re-center. In Eno-speak:
“The Oblique Strategies evolved from me being in a number of working situations when the panic of the situation – particularly in studios – tended to make me quickly forget that there were others ways of working and that there were tangential ways of attacking problems that were in many senses more interesting than the direct head-on approach. If you’re in a panic, you tend to take the head-on approach because it seems to be the one that’s going to yield the best results Of course, that often isn’t the case – it’s just the most obvious and – apparently – reliable method. The function of the Oblique Strategies was, initially, to serve as a series of prompts which said, “Don’t forget that you could adopt this attitude,” or “Don’t forget you could adopt that attitude.” The first Oblique Strategy said “Honour thy error as a hidden intention.” And, in fact, Peter’s first Oblique Strategy – done quite independently and before either of us had become conscious that the other was doing that – was …I think it was “Was it really a mistake?” which was, of course, much the same kind of message”
Interview with Charles Amirkhanian, KPFA-FM Berkeley, 1 February 1980
Examples of some other cards in the deck:
1 – Bridges -build -burn
2 – Look closely at the most embarassing details and amplify them
3 – Twist the spine
4 – Do something boring
5 – Cut a vital connection
I think methods like this are interesting for a couple of reasons, primarily because it’s an active process intervention. So many times the response to a creative dip is to sleep on it, or take a break. With Oblique Strategies you can refocus and proactively push through. Also, it’s similar to the little tricks we play to outsmart ourselves. For example – if you need to remember something to take to work tomorrow, you can bet you’ll remember it a lot better if you leave it physically in front of your bedroom door (it’s why I so often trip in the morning). This is kind of similar – it’s a kind-of self-imposed governor for deadline thinking.
More resources! Somebody has hacked together a fantastic OSX widget, a version for the iPhone, and a version for Palm. You could also go full-bore and buy an authentic set straight from Eno (£30.00 – ouch!)
The atmospheres we surround ourselves with while we are creative is a personal thing. Some people feed on the pure silence of a library – some prefer the faceless environment of a coffee shop – tonight, I’m in a bar. Why? A few recent events got me thinking about where people work:
1 – A brilliant article in the Guardian about writer’s rooms – the article profiles the locations and accouterments required by notable writers for their craft.
2 – An invitation by my friend Matt to experiment with a weekly writing session he refers to as ‘Sunday Night Bar Writing’.
So some beer, one garden burger, a few singer songwriters, and two hours later I had a different perspective on how I work. Hit the jump for a breakdown of how the evening went. [more...]
Time: 7:25 – I arrive at the bar, greet Matt, and order food and beer – I notice a singer songwriter is setting up shop on the bar floor about 15 feet away from our table. It’s a struggle playing in a small room with a group of people who aren’t there to see you – so I’ll do my best to be a good listener while participating in this experiment.
My first step when writing anything is to briefly outline what I want to talk about, and then progressively flesh out more of the details in subsequent iterations through the rough content. I would like to think that my physical location is less important than my process – my workstation is mobile, and I frequently have to work whenever I find time for it. This often means working in coffee shops, subways, and anywhere else I’ve got some spare time and a flat surface. But by keeping the process consistent I can best utilize the time I get when I get it, regardless of location.
Time: 7:45 – The food has arrived – so I take a break to enjoy some vegetarian bar food. While eating, Matt and I discuss our previous working tendencies. I’d always been a fan of libraries during undergrad – there were a few in particular that had that sun drenched, dark wood paneling, scholarly feel. Those were the ones I really felt comfortable in – I could go in at nine and work until about noon, and then go about the rest of my afternoon business. The Guardian article contains a great account of Jonathan Safran Foer’s daily trips to the New York Public Library’s branch in Brooklyn – I can identify.
Time: 8:04 – The singer has begun. He is playing a low-slung stickered Takamine guitar and sounds like a mix between Dashboard Confessional and Staind. About three songs in, he’s launched into a spirited cover of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Hungry Heart’ – as a fervent admirer of all thing Boss, I don’t know if I’ll be able to concentrate much through this protracted butchering.
When I’m songwriting, I’m split between trying to pounce upon any time opportunities to write as much as possible, and scheduling out chunks of time to work on material. I oftentimes have the structure and melody of several pieces fleshed out in my head, and spend time focusing on particular stanzas, themes that I want to develop. A stout outline helps immeasurably in instances like this – with a good roadmap, any discretionary time can be efficiently used to write brief sections or edit others – almost like modular songwriting.
Time: 8:23 – Fuck. Walking in Memphis. This is going downhill (I suppose it comes with the territory).
I’ve often thought that a good deal of quiet was required for most to concentrate fully on writing. I often get the most done in the hermetic silence of hotel rooms. But the low level buzz of an airplane engine or the drone-like sound of a plaza of people speaking a foreign language can be equally conducive to my writing. It’s important for me to have easily accessible tools at my command that offer the smallest amount of distraction in themselves – I use a program called Writeroom for distraction free text editing – it’s what I’m pounding this post out on now. I frequently carry multiple notebooks with me, with multi-colored pens to take notes, edit past writing, and sketch. Whenever I get an idea about something, I want to have the tools to capture it at my immediate disposal.
One of my most important writing tasks is frequent, savage editing – I found that after about 8:30 my thinking became progressively less organized, either due to the beer working its way through my system or the punishing repetition of the music. So I’ll can the rest of it, and move straight to my closing thoughts. The experiment has been useful – I tend towards more distraction-free environments usually, but tonight let me know that with a modicum of distraction, I can actually focus more on the tools I have in front of me. For something like a blog posting, this is great news (though I doubt I could work on songs in an environment like this). The tools I’ve collected to help me write more efficiently are more fully utilized when another external element is around – and it’s nice to get a change of pace.
Plus, you get to eat and drink while you work. Not too shabby.
