Difference between revisions of "Challenge"

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Imagine you’re practicing pole-vaulting, getting ready for a big competition. You need to improve your vault by a couple inches if you’re going to have a chance of winning. How would you decide how high to set the bar to get the best practice? If you set it too high, it’ll seem unrealistic for you to clear, or you’ll get discouraged because it’s too hard. But if you set it too low, you won’t make any progress in your vaults.  
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Challenge is the third of the major core concepts of OptimalWork. Through challenging ourselves, we engage our whole self in the process of growth and reach our peak attention and performance.
  
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As you might have guessed, there’s a golden mean: you can set the bar just above your personal best. That way the challenge calls forth your best efforts, and your body will give you a boost of adrenaline to help you achieve your goal. Once you have a new personal best, you practice it until it becomes the norm; and then you raise the bar again.
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=== Preliminary Topic Outline ===
 +
----
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==== The Idea Behind Challenge ====
 +
* Application of the athlete's mindset to our daily tasks
 +
** Runner practicing for an event needs a stopwatch
 +
** Pole-vaulter needs a pole to measure progress
 +
** And the use of high-intensity training, just beyond one's historical capacity, to create that progress
 +
* Seeing one's own work, and ability to work, as a skill to be developed
 +
* Challenge as the way to be constantly improving
 +
* Psychological benefits of flow, too
  
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What would you think, by contrast, of a pole-vaulter who not only never raised the bar, but never even practiced with a bar, instead just vaulting each time onto the mats? It’s inconceivable! Without a bar to clear, there’s no way to strive, improve, or be shaped by practice.
The bar is what makes pole-vaulting an Olympic sport.  
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==== Reframing Adrenaline ====
 +
* Jeremy Jamieson's "Turning Knots into Bows"
 +
* Allison Wood Brooks' study on public speaking
 +
* Closely related to the concept of reframing: seeing the surge of catecholamines as good
 +
* There are some circumstances in which adrenaline naturally arises due to the nature of the task
 +
* Cultivation and crafting of challenge allows for one's adrenaline to be called forth at any time
 +
* Chronic effects of stress (negatively appraised adrenaline) vs. beneficial effects of reframed adrenaline
  
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The same ideas apply to your way of working. When you set out to work, do you set a bar for yourself, so that you have something to strive for? If not, you’re in for a great discovery. When you learn to set small, challenging goals for yourself in your work, you’ll turn any task into a sport — an opportunity for self-mastery.
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==== Neurological Effects of Challenge ====
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* Sends person into flow
 +
* Colloquial description of flow:
 +
** Effortless attention
 +
** Optimal efficiency of the brain
 +
** Clear sequencing of tasks within the overarching goal
 +
** Being in the "zone"
 +
* Allows the brain to be in continued mindful attention (parasympathetic activation) while re-engaging the sympathetic nervous system to enhance the mind's capabilities
 +
* Brain in harmony; 3 axes and hierarchies in the brain
 +
* Sends rush of acetylcholine and norepinephrine into the brain
 +
* [Will need to find fMRI studies that demonstrate the areas of relative activation of specific brain regions]
 +
* Increased plasticity and ability to rewire while surpassing one's own abilities, enabling maximum brain change
 +
* Also re-engages the default-mode network as a sequencing tool that carries your attention forward to the next step along the way
  
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Imagine you’re a sales clerk working in a clothing store. Your boss was recently reading some Yelp! reviews and noticed that the store’s ratings kept getting dinged because the sales clerks (including you!) are sullen. Your boss tells you that you need to work on being more cheerful when greeting customers. How would you respond to this advice?
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==== Can There Be Too Much Challenge? ====
 +
* Original conception of the Yerkes-Dodson Lawn (1908)  
 +
** "Complex tasks" had the relationship to stress that most people know
 +
** But "simple tasks" had no upper limit to the amount of arousal that could be beneficial
 +
** OptimalWork claims that "complex" and "simple" were unconscious proxies for the subjective sense of "I can rise to this challenge" that is captured in reframing
 +
*** Thus, reframed challenges can always be improved by the entry of autonomic arousal
 +
* Dienstbier: No limit to the benefit of naturally-evoked peripheral catecholamines
 +
* Hans Selye: Stress as the nonspecific response of the body to any demand for change
 +
** Stress as necessary for change to result
 +
* Jamieson's collection of sAA levels in 2010 study
  
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If you’re like most people, your first response might be, “But this is just the way I am!” In psychology, this is called having a fixed mindset, because you consider your personality to be fixed in a certain way. When you have a fixed mindset, trying to change can seem strange, futile, and inauthentic.
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==== Quantitative and Qualitative Challenges ====
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* Quantitative:
 +
** Amount per hour
 +
** "How much of this task can I possibly accomplish within the time I've allotted to myself?"
 +
** Can clearly measure improvement
 +
** Good introductory concept, but has limitations:
 +
*** In some tasks, some people may truly have reached their own human limits (e.g. manual work, reading, or doing anything that involves learning, which does require some temporal engagement for encoding purposes
 +
*** In other tasks, especially with academic work, it can be difficult to know exactly how long a specific task will take
 +
* Thus, qualitative:
 +
** Incorporates the ideals we identify in reframing and sets about using them as metrics for growth
 +
** For example:
 +
*** "How can I do this task as generously as I can?"
 +
*** "How can I approach this hour more patiently than I ever have before?"
 +
*** "If I could measure attentiveness on a scale out of 10, what would a 10/10 look like?"
 +
** Ideals are especially good challenges because they can never be accomplished fully
 +
** Because we can always grow in ideals, we can always challenge yourself with them, higher and higher
 +
** Endless sources of growth, and inherently motivating
  
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The opposite response is to have a growth mindset, that is, to recognize that you can change. With this way of thinking, you would welcome your boss’s suggestion to work on cheerfulness and start thinking of how to set goals for your growth. You would see cheerfulness as something to practice by raising the bar of your current performance. This might mean engaging customers sooner when they enter the store, smiling at and making eye contact with them before saying anything, or waiting until you fully understand their questions before starting to answer. If you were to start working toward just one of these goals, the behavior would become a habit with practice, and you would grow in cheerfulness.
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==== Challenges in Work ====
 +
* [See Golden Hour]
 +
* High-intensity interval training
 +
* Within our work, a challenge should have a crisp deadline, clear tasks to accomplish, and breaks in between
 +
* Crisp deadline:
 +
** 60–90 minutes is best
 +
** 90 minutes is close to the maximum intensity that we can achieve before requiring a mental break
 +
** A crisp deadline allows us to reap the "deadline benefit" of increased intensity before the break approaches
 +
* Clear tasks to accomplish:
 +
** The clearer the sequence of tasks is, the more possible it is to imagine ourselves performing them
 +
** This allows for the default mode network to act as a sequencing tool during task attention
 +
** Each task accomplished, if the project is broken down, serves as a small reward to increase dopamine and allow for continued engagement with the challenge
 +
* Breaks in between:
 +
** [Cite Huberman] The optimal "mental cycle" of work, relaxation, and re-engagement with work appears to be 90 minutes
 +
** The ideal break is one in which we allow our mind to focus on nothing in particular, and we remove ourselves somewhat from the setting in which we've been working  
 +
** Focusing on nothing in particular allows for maximum encoding of what we've learned and best improves our memory for the task 
  
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The same process applies to any kind of work. Remember that the brain is the organ that is most responsive to our behavior. When we challenge ourselves — in sports, work, or any part of our life — the brain strengthens and prunes synapses to make that action easier the next time. If you learn to set the right challenges, you’ll find that those challenges become easier and more enjoyable.
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==== Challenge and Growth ====
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* Challenge as the fulfillment of mindfulness because it allows for greater growth than does mindfulness alone
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When you start setting challenges in your work, you’ll quickly discover that there are a couple of ways to do this. The one that usually comes to mind first is to challenge yourself to get more done in less time. If you normally write one page an hour, you might challenge yourself to write two; if you read 200 words a minute, you might challenge yourself to read 300.
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* Can refer to Peak: several hours of deliberate, focused, intense practice creating growth
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* Again can refer to the study of superagers
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Challenging yourself to work faster, however, can backfire. It is difficult to challenge yourself well by aiming to do more, because work is unpredictable. How much you actually get done often depends on factors outside of your control: you might be interrupted with something more important, or an aspect of the work might be more difficult than you had anticipated.
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* Seeing challenge as the raw material for growth
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* OptimalWork focused on reframing any challenges along the way that might otherwise become negative difficulties, but also seeking out challenge to be inducing growth continually
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The best strategy for growing in your capacity to work is to challenge yourself to improve the quality of your work. This allows you to keep the focus of your challenge on the way you are working, rather than on the outcome or result of your work.
 
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Since the way you work is entirely within your control, it’s easier to shape by setting challenges. Aiming to work according to ideals — for example, with greater order, intensity, or constancy — depends only on how you approach a task, so it’s always attainable. Over time, these ways of acting will become habitual for you; in the end, you’ll actually get more done, because you’ll be working so well. When you aim to increase the quality of your work, you’ll end up increasing the output as a consequence.
 
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You can grow in any way you choose; all you need to do is set a challenge when you set out to work. Every hour of work can then become a time of stretching and growing. Even if the challenge you set is a small one, the habit of challenging yourself in an hour of work can be multiplied hour by hour, day by day. Just learning to pause and set a challenge before starting to work can set you on a trajectory of unlimited growth.
 

Latest revision as of 17:53, 25 November 2022

Challenge is the third of the major core concepts of OptimalWork. Through challenging ourselves, we engage our whole self in the process of growth and reach our peak attention and performance.

Preliminary Topic Outline

The Idea Behind Challenge

  • Application of the athlete's mindset to our daily tasks
    • Runner practicing for an event needs a stopwatch
    • Pole-vaulter needs a pole to measure progress
    • And the use of high-intensity training, just beyond one's historical capacity, to create that progress
  • Seeing one's own work, and ability to work, as a skill to be developed
  • Challenge as the way to be constantly improving
  • Psychological benefits of flow, too

Reframing Adrenaline

  • Jeremy Jamieson's "Turning Knots into Bows"
  • Allison Wood Brooks' study on public speaking
  • Closely related to the concept of reframing: seeing the surge of catecholamines as good
  • There are some circumstances in which adrenaline naturally arises due to the nature of the task
  • Cultivation and crafting of challenge allows for one's adrenaline to be called forth at any time
  • Chronic effects of stress (negatively appraised adrenaline) vs. beneficial effects of reframed adrenaline

Neurological Effects of Challenge

  • Sends person into flow
  • Colloquial description of flow:
    • Effortless attention
    • Optimal efficiency of the brain
    • Clear sequencing of tasks within the overarching goal
    • Being in the "zone"
  • Allows the brain to be in continued mindful attention (parasympathetic activation) while re-engaging the sympathetic nervous system to enhance the mind's capabilities
  • Brain in harmony; 3 axes and hierarchies in the brain
  • Sends rush of acetylcholine and norepinephrine into the brain
  • [Will need to find fMRI studies that demonstrate the areas of relative activation of specific brain regions]
  • Increased plasticity and ability to rewire while surpassing one's own abilities, enabling maximum brain change
  • Also re-engages the default-mode network as a sequencing tool that carries your attention forward to the next step along the way

Can There Be Too Much Challenge?

  • Original conception of the Yerkes-Dodson Lawn (1908)
    • "Complex tasks" had the relationship to stress that most people know
    • But "simple tasks" had no upper limit to the amount of arousal that could be beneficial
    • OptimalWork claims that "complex" and "simple" were unconscious proxies for the subjective sense of "I can rise to this challenge" that is captured in reframing
      • Thus, reframed challenges can always be improved by the entry of autonomic arousal
  • Dienstbier: No limit to the benefit of naturally-evoked peripheral catecholamines
  • Hans Selye: Stress as the nonspecific response of the body to any demand for change
    • Stress as necessary for change to result
  • Jamieson's collection of sAA levels in 2010 study

Quantitative and Qualitative Challenges

  • Quantitative:
    • Amount per hour
    • "How much of this task can I possibly accomplish within the time I've allotted to myself?"
    • Can clearly measure improvement
    • Good introductory concept, but has limitations:
      • In some tasks, some people may truly have reached their own human limits (e.g. manual work, reading, or doing anything that involves learning, which does require some temporal engagement for encoding purposes
      • In other tasks, especially with academic work, it can be difficult to know exactly how long a specific task will take
  • Thus, qualitative:
    • Incorporates the ideals we identify in reframing and sets about using them as metrics for growth
    • For example:
      • "How can I do this task as generously as I can?"
      • "How can I approach this hour more patiently than I ever have before?"
      • "If I could measure attentiveness on a scale out of 10, what would a 10/10 look like?"
    • Ideals are especially good challenges because they can never be accomplished fully
    • Because we can always grow in ideals, we can always challenge yourself with them, higher and higher
    • Endless sources of growth, and inherently motivating

Challenges in Work

  • [See Golden Hour]
  • High-intensity interval training
  • Within our work, a challenge should have a crisp deadline, clear tasks to accomplish, and breaks in between
  • Crisp deadline:
    • 60–90 minutes is best
    • 90 minutes is close to the maximum intensity that we can achieve before requiring a mental break
    • A crisp deadline allows us to reap the "deadline benefit" of increased intensity before the break approaches
  • Clear tasks to accomplish:
    • The clearer the sequence of tasks is, the more possible it is to imagine ourselves performing them
    • This allows for the default mode network to act as a sequencing tool during task attention
    • Each task accomplished, if the project is broken down, serves as a small reward to increase dopamine and allow for continued engagement with the challenge
  • Breaks in between:
    • [Cite Huberman] The optimal "mental cycle" of work, relaxation, and re-engagement with work appears to be 90 minutes
    • The ideal break is one in which we allow our mind to focus on nothing in particular, and we remove ourselves somewhat from the setting in which we've been working
    • Focusing on nothing in particular allows for maximum encoding of what we've learned and best improves our memory for the task

Challenge and Growth

  • Challenge as the fulfillment of mindfulness because it allows for greater growth than does mindfulness alone
  • Can refer to Peak: several hours of deliberate, focused, intense practice creating growth
  • Again can refer to the study of superagers
  • Seeing challenge as the raw material for growth
  • OptimalWork focused on reframing any challenges along the way that might otherwise become negative difficulties, but also seeking out challenge to be inducing growth continually
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