"Deep Work"

COVID-19 has prevented us from going back to school and Andover has implemented remote learning techniques. In other words, there are no virtual class meetings of which attendance is required and all assignments for a particular course should take no more than 6 hours (a significant cut from the usual 10 hr load). To begin this term of history, my teacher asked us to read the introduction of the book Deep Work by Cal Newport. Until today, I’d never heard of this book but Newport’s introduction has convinced me to take a look at it sometime. Newport essentially argues that modern day work culture, which is filled with social networking distractions such as facebook and email, is leading to the production of shallow work since people rarely spend enough time alone thinking through problems and solutions. He argues that in this day and age, deep work, which entails hours of undisrupted work time, is becoming more rare while its value increases indefinitely. He provides examples such as Bill Gates, Mark Twain and JK Rowling who famously seclude themselves in silent places in order to ignite their best thinking potential. Upon reading this Deep Work’s introduction, my history teacher asked up to reflect upon whether we’ve actually ever truly engaged in deep work and under what conditions. He asked us to also consider new ideas to implement in an effort to gain more value-producing potential and what we’ve been doing so far. I quite liked my response to this discussion post so I’m sharing it below. 

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In writing this post, I aspire to be as frank as possible in my response: no route of consideration could possibly lead me to the conclusion that I’ve ever truly engaged in deep work. In fact, Cal Newport humbles himself in his belief “that [he][hasn’t] reached [his] full value-producing potential” (17). Nonetheless, I believe two factors, in particular, have helped me glimpse the experience of deep work of which Newport speaks. The first is interest and the second is impetus. On the history research paper last term, I remember locking myself in my room during the writing/polishing phase of my paper. I sat at my desk in Chase with a few days left before the paper was due and wrote from 5:45-9:00 PM. Time flew. I don’t think I could hide my surprise when I called my parents saying, wow, I just spent 3 hours writing my history paper! I believe writing that research paper was the closest (besides one English paper earlier in the fall) I ever got to what Newport calls “deep work.” What made the time fly was my sincere interest in the topic and the incentive to learn something more than likely relevant to my career in the future and turn in a piece of work that made me proud. Perhaps even that yearning to feel proud of my paper drove me closer to deep work.

It goes without saying that students naturally hone their studying skills with time. However, I don’t think I felt that my study skills improve in any tangible way until halfway through Upper fall. Since middle school, teachers have been telling us to take study breaks after 45-60 minutes of studying. Until Upper year, I’d always been using those study breaks to check my insta feed or play one song, which would unsurprisingly turn into 10 songs. This year, I made a swap. I kept Spotify to the gym and during those short study breaks, I would instead walk around the dorm/library, do a couple jumping jacks, or go stand outside. I believe this helped tremendously because my brain wasn’t focusing on something entirely new, such as someone’s vacation insta from Italy. Rather, my mind indirectly ruminated upon what I had left on the desk. A win-win: I got my break and my brain got hers too without utterly sidetracking. Even now, having incorporated this new trick, I still have trouble concentrating. For example, when I “watch” TV, it usually assumes the role of background noise while I browse Bloomingdales or something. Concentration has never been my strong suit unless I find interest and incentive. However, I am inspired to try something new upon reading the introduction to Deep Work. For all assignments, movies, articles, or books I try to consume, I’m going to commit myself to reading/watching/absorbing etc. for at least 15 minutes. I think after 15 minutes, I’ll naturally find myself more involved and focused on the material, rather than reaching for my phone before I’ve even begun to concentrate. I’m hoping this will improve the span and depth of my concentration periods so that I don’t “permanently reduce [my] capacity to perform deep work” (7). 

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And now I ask you: have you ever truly engaged in deep work and if so, under what conditions?

Lately

Lately, panic and anxiety have befuddled the country. COVID-19. That’s the catalyst. The virus has exponentially worsened around the world, with more deaths from outside China than within according to the Wall Street Journal. 

This global epidemic has affected the US stock market tremendously, dropping 6% just today. I think what’s also hurting the health of the economy is the lack of investor faith in the emergency works to alleviate the effects of the coronavirus, even though the Federal Reserve cut benchmark interest rates to near-zero percent. 

The worry about the rising prices of food drove thousands of people to local grocery stores, wholesale stores, and convenience stores. When my family and I went to Whole Foods to buy milk last Thursday, they had sold out. Not only were the refrigerators empty, but the unusual frenzy of people doing Thursday-night grocery shopping meant non-perishables like flour, soups, and pasta had also flown off the shelves. The checkout line was also overwhelmingly long. In my 17 years going to that same Whole Foods, I had honestly never seen so many people shopping there on a weekend at once, nevermind a weekday evening. 

Lately, I’ve noticed differing degrees of practiced precautions against COVID-19. Some people refuse to leave their homes. Some people are at the beach or traveling nonetheless. I’ve been at home this past one and a half weeks, leaving the house once a day just to get some fresh air and go for a walk. It’s scary when things have started shutting down. Dining in at restaurants is no longer possible, exercising at Barry’s is no longer possible, Harvard Square is virtually empty, and shopping in-store has become hazardous. It feels like our country must fundamentally lockdown all public places in order to fight this disease. I dislike being cooped indoors in one place for too long so the thought of having nowhere to go makes me a little bit anxious. 

Our school extended Spring Break. It’s completely within the realm of possibility that the administration may extend it even further, considering that they encouraged all international students currently not with their families to return home. I’m anticipating a month of online classes, followed by the potential to return to school by May. Anyhow, these next couple of weeks are going to be quite a memorable ride and we’re just at the beginning…

The developmental phase

Ever hear of the phrase, everything will work out in the end? Or there’s light in the tunnel? The 2019 seniors in my dorm told me that repeatedly during periods of stress. At the time, I failed to fully appreciate the meaning behind that saying. I had supposed the light at the end of the tunnel would suddenly come together, or that the “end” would be when I finished high school. I’m on Spring Break for the next two week so I’m writing this from a retrospective point of view. What I can confidently say is that this term forced me to take a new look at these two sayings.

I suppose there’s something we could call a lag time where we’re waiting for the results of things we submitted/completed a while back. That period I’m going to dote the developmental phase. I realized this past term that a large part of what caused me stress was that I was waiting for the results of many things I had set forth or completed, such as standardized testing, summer programs, and schoolwork. I had completed most of these tasks from late December to early February so this past term, it felt like I was constantly anticipating the results of each major task. 

I think the anticipation during the waiting period caused me the most stress. I was constantly thinking about things that were out of my control, such as how well I’d done on a test I took or a paper I had submitted.  I thought about the results of my applications to summer programs and what scores I would get on my standardized tests. I realize now how unhealthy these behaviors can be because, by the end of February, things began to fall into place as I received the results of each article I had set forth. When these uncertainties solidified towards the end of February, I felt an utter relief, as if the weight from the worrying had been alleviated.

I suppose life has always been like that, for the developmental phase didn’t just emerge spontaneously. I believe a combination of Upper year and the weight of every task I complete added an additional stress by bringing a new degree of heft of the development phase that made it stand out this term. But I’ve learned from this experience and I’ve energized a new outlook on the saying everything will work out in the end. 

The end by no means refers to the end of high school or the end of college or when I find my first job. The end doesn’t refer to major stepping stones, rather, it refers to the small steps that it takes to get us there. Waiting for those small steps to work out is what working out in the end entails. I hope that I will remember this in subsequent terms. I hope that I will remember this on the days when it feels like nothing is going right when in reality, I’m just waiting for the results of different tasks I complete. There’s a nuanced difference here and I see the importance in its acknowledgment. 

A single shortcoming

“Being aware of a single shortcoming within yourself is far more useful than being aware of a thousand in someone else.”

 -Dalai Lama

My thoughts heading into finals week of my upper-year winter.

The crossroads of bliss and rationality

There’s something addictive about conversations with certain people. The energies just flow from each other and we seem to understand exactly how to roast, tease, and listen to each other. Addictive there lies in a good sense but there are times when the other party crosses the line, overrunning the most fundamental premise of a relationship of which is respect. It is in those circumstances when we must recognize the necessity of renouncing whatever fun had existed prior and remove the weight of another burden. 

Lately, there’s been a friend to whom I’ve been getting close. We share a mutual history teacher so I began getting to know him through a paper and some homework. We get along very well. We feel comfortable roasting and teasing each other while creating something productive with our time. He’s also a savvy investor in stocks, so there exists a common platform of conversation, debates, and interest in that regard. I truly thought he would be a keeper since every time I walked away from a conversation, I felt like I had something to think about and I felt happier. 

But he crossed the line of respect this past week by throwing a laptop at me after getting angry at my response to a political question regarding the 2020 presidential election. I was shocked when he threw the device at me. It wasn’t even his laptop. It was then that I began to question his inner conscience. Perhaps his sanity and energy on the exterior only masked an internal wreck. I dislike speculation but in all honesty, who throws their friend’s laptop at another friend? It was at that moment that I decided I had to hang around this person with caution. If he dared throw a heavy object at me, who knows the extent of the damage he could further inflict. 

I was drawn to his personality like a drug; it was something I wanted to keep coming back to. He brought out a side in me that few people do. We’re the same level of “delicacy” in the sense that it’s hard to offend each other and we share similar interests. For that reason, it made it especially difficult to cut out this relationship, particularly when I genuinely felt content in his presence. But for reasons beyond happiness that I felt took priority, I had to distance myself. 

It’s surprisingly difficult. It was when I realized the potency of happiness and bliss. Bliss is one of those feelings that has the ability to shroud one’s rationality against all principal values I’ve worked hard to ingrain within myself. What further makes bliss so difficult to neglect is the fact that it’s a natural, addictive high. The days I tried to cut him out, a part of me always wanted to see where he was on Snapchat or see what he was up to and the rational side constantly had to remind me of what he did. So here we are again at the crossroads of bliss and rationality. Perhaps a crossroad I will come across repeatedly indefinitely.

Anxieties into anger

The weather has been tough on my mood. I don’t want to say I get seasonal depression but during the winter months, I struggle to rekindle happiness and positivity when the nights are long and the days short. Walking back and forth from classes becomes tedious and even waking up to do something I’ve loved since middle school – running – has taken on an element of duty.

It’s the little things that bother me the most. Things that may not have irritated me in the past find their way into my cycle of grievances and I’ve been struggling to overlook them. When I forgot my umbrella in Commons, that annoyed me tremendously. When I did poorly on a history pop quiz, I became really upset. When I failed to make proper sense of redox reactions in chemistry, I also reacted poorly.  

These minor grievances have taken a toll on my mental state. I’ve rarely felt so pessimistic and morose for such this long a period of time. I feel sad constantly and waking up has never felt more difficult, particularly when I look out my window and see nothing but pitch blackness. When I ask myself what is causing my sadness, I can’t muster a single, coherent answer. Maybe this goes to suggest that there isn’t one single area of my life causing sadness, but rather the eclectic composition of all the elements formulating a type of pressure I have yet to learn how to handle maturely.

Talking my through my feelings has historically proven successful in helping me cope with problems. I was talking with my longtime friend at school who shares similar responses to the dark New England winters, and she helped me realize my tendency to turn my anxieties into waves of anger.  I seem to get angry at things that I feel vulnerable about or things I’m unconfident about. I think I need to adopt a mechanism for recognizing things that make me uncomfortable and/or vulnerable so that I don’t confuse it for anger. 

For example, when a sale with my business club took some unexpected avenues, it induced great amounts of stress when the faculty member I was working with began texting me to express the exigency of the situation. Or when chemistry an entire chapter of chemistry failed to make sense in my mind. I was also putting together a last-minute English project with another classmate for extra credit, which we both finished last night believing had done a horrendous job.  These are the instances my friend helped me identify that have caused me stress that has transformed into self-anger. I have to avoid expecting perfection in everything I do. 

I’m striving to move past my sadness. I read like a book, so others have noticed my drop in vivacity this past term. A part of me selfishly wants to grip onto the sadness as an excuse, but it’s driving me in a direction in which I’m not exactly proud. But sometimes there are instances where one cannot get out of the circle of despair. But I’m trying. I really am. 

Coronavirus, memes, and repetition

If nothing else major happened this week, the World Health Organization declared coronavirus an international emergency on Thursday. News of the virus began to appear earlier this week, having originated in Wuhan, China. Since then over 300 people have died in China and the disease has managed to make its way into other countries. Nearly 12,000 infections have been reported since then. Coronavirus is particularly dangerous because of its air-borne nature, which leaves victims unaware that they’ve been infected until days later when they’ve already interacted with so many more people to whom they could have spread the disease. I believe the aspect of how quickly and unknowingly it spreads scares people the most, as a person will appear healthy until several days later. Coronavirus has not only brought about the deaths of hundreds of people but it has resummoned prejudice and xenophobia.

Just by scrolling through my social media feed, I have seen several coronavirus memes, often referring to the beer brand Corona or holding Chinese people responsible for this world epidemic. This is an international emergency where hundreds of people have already died. These memes about coronavirus screamed insensitivity to the people suffering from the disease or of whom have lost family members. Furthermore, some of these memes accomplish nothing other than placing blame upon the Chinese when mankind should be focusing on finding cures and keeping noninfected people safe. 

I was particularly shaken by a conversation I overheard at the downtown Andover Starbucks on Wednesday between two men sitting by the window. At that hour on Wednesday afternoon, I was the only Asian in Starbucks but not the only student from Andover. While I was waiting for my drink, I overheard one of the men spontaneously begin talking to the other about the diversity of Andover’s student body. May I gently remind you that I was not the first Andover student at Starbucks. He said something to the effect of how diverse Andover is and how we have a lot of people coming from all over the world, in particular, China. I saw the two men avert their eyes when they caught me glance at them. Shortly after, they left. 

While they never explicitly directed any commentary towards me, at the moment it was quite obvious that the way I looked had sparked this random discussion topic about Andover’s diversity. This moment has stuck with me because until now, I’ve never actually ever felt my physical presence alienate the security of someone else. I’ve also never walked into a room where people indirectly called me out because of preconceived notions on the basis of how I look. 

Looking back at the situation serves as a reminder of our society’s continued prejudices and biases towards immigrants on the basis of physical appearance. The fact remains that preconceived notions will always prevail to exist and implicit bias isn’t easily dismantled. I cannot seem to locate the quote in my history book of which this scenario reminded me, so I will share a newer quote whose message echoes something to a similar effect:

“Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.” -Paulo Coelho

The world breaks everyone

a cloudy night on campus

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." -Ernest Hemingway

The UM App

This week was very stressful. Heavy school work, an exam, and applications made this week particularly difficult. I cried numerous times, sometimes the only coping mechanism I know to turn to when things become difficult. 

Yet it wasn’t school work that made this week difficult. Rather, my upper management application for our school newspaper, The Phillipian, flooded my mind with stress. To people outside Andover, stressing about a school newspaper application may seem petty. The thing about being on the UM of The Phillipian is that it’s like having a part-time 25-hour-per-week job. We publish a 20-page paper every week, which requires 20 pages worth of articles every week, and meetings to review the previous papers every week. 

Since the job itself is so arduous, the difficulty of the application comes as no surprise.  The most important thing I learned about from completing this 23-page application (in addition to writing two articles, using Adobe InDesign to layout a page in the paper, and performing a Web-Demo) is that applications are not just tests of what you know or who you are; they are also a gentle reminder of where you lack. 

The Phillipian app tested me in areas that even my high school applications didn’t touch. I must admit, the writing part of the app was easiest. The questions required thinking deeply but there wasn’t a right or wrong answer which made it almost enjoyable to do. While putting myself on paper was the primary part of the app (hence the 23-pager), the application also tested my digital editing and design skills. I struggled with this part. I was particularly flustered when I had to use Adobe InDesign to layout the page. This assignment was difficult because I had never used InDesign in depth. I tweaked with my layout for over 90 minutes but it still didn’t resemble the layout of the paper. 

I ended up submitting my not-so-correct layout of the paper. While I didn’t feel too good about that part of my application, I realized that if I want to be a part of The Phillipian’s UM, I would have to better my skills with InDesign. I left the computer where I had finished my Layout feeling a bit frustrated by my ineptitude with InDesign, but more so recognizing a hole in my skill set. 

So here I am now. I turned in my application at 9 AM this morning in person after having worked for an entire week on the components. Regardless of whether I get onto Phillipian UM, I have finished the process feeling like I at least know where I can improve myself. I’m grateful for having been able to participate in this opportunity.

Trust is the easiest thing to lose and the hardest thing to get back

Trust is powerful. This week, I realized that trust entails more than just having the power to confide secrets in someone. It also involves more than just believing someone for their credentials. Trust is more than just a verb or a noun. After thinking about it for a bit, I believe it’s a state of being with someone else. 

Trust enables one to get angry at another. I, at least personally, have never felt comfortable expressing resentment towards people I’m not super close with. Beyond minor annoyances, I never complain or express judgment to those whom I’m can only say “Hello”. One of my friends was mad last week, not at me, but at someone else. Instead, they vented their anger at me and I took that as a compliment that they had instilled enough trust in me to know I wouldn’t take it personally. It requires trust to get angry at people. 

Anger is just one element. I’ve discovered that trust allows us to forgive another. I have a very deep level of trust with my best friend. She has that level of trust in me too. This past week, I was involved in a confusion that she had to clear up with another friend of ours. I was ashamed of myself for my involvement. When I went to her room, she was busy explaining to the third party involved. She was a bit flustered and out of words for the situation, which we ended up working through together to explain. After, I apologized for what happened, a true apology where I realized the extent of the repercussions of what I’d stated. I was touched by my friend’s response: “Don’t worry about it. We have that level of trust”. 

Trust allows us to listen to others. Advice is almost never reciprocated by those whom we do not trust. We hear it, but we forget it. It’s when we remember the advice someone gave from a while back that we can fully appreciate how they had our best interests at heart. It’s where one takes into consideration the words of another before making a decision or performing an action. 

Trust has the potency to help us overcome difficulties in life. It has power in a human connection to dictate behavior that no other state of being can quite accomplish. To conclude this post, I’d like to share a piece of advice my elementary school teacher told me: Trust is the easiest thing to lose and the hardest thing to get back.