Ivory Tower

Hey - It’s Michael.

Recently reminded of just how important being your authentic self is. Enjoy the newsletter!

You sit down to work. Within 30 minutes, you get 27 new notifications across 6 different apps on your phone. 12 new emails. Finally you get this one thing going when your colleague blasts in and asks you about xyz. You start browsing and end up on social media. An endless feed slams bits of information into you. Moving over to the next platform it just gets worse. This irrelevant post here, that AI nonsense there.

We live in a world where every company fights for your attention - the most valuable currency there is.

This diverts your attention and that is killing your ability to think clearly and deeply, thus killing your ability to create.

Most people look for hacks to be more productive, when it’s often easiest to simply avoid being unproductive due to distraction.

Great work is created when people work on a meaningful goal for a prolonged period without distraction.

Whether it’s an olympic athlete sweating away in their gym, musicians locked down in their rehearsal studio, scientists grinding in their lab, programmers building in dark rooms or executives discussing strategy at a retreat, all of them create best in their personal ivory tower.

While there are certainly tasks that require early contact with the outside world, this is not the case for most creative work in the purest sense of the word.

Principle

Retreat to your personal ivory tower to create your best work.

In a fast-paced world, a personal ivory tower is nothing else but:

Then watch the magic happen while you do your best work.

One of my favorite blog posts ever is Paul Graham’s Manager vs. Maker Schedule. It’s a nice reminder of how different work requires a different schedule.

And it’s quite apparent that if you do work requiring the maker’s schedule, it is imperative to design your personal ivory tower.

Try it for a day or two.

Empty your calendar from all obligations and choose a long stretch - 4-5h minimum - to work on a complex task.

Prepare your environment in advance. Think of an ivory tower that would work for you.

Wherever that space is and whatever it looks like, make sure there is no possibility whatsoever for anyone or anything (!) to interrupt you.

Stop Rule

Stop giving others the possibility to interrupt you during your most important work.

Remember, the ivory tower is a concept that applies to teams just as well. Give them a challenging goal, put them in a room without distractions with everything they need and see what happens.

“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.” - Albert Einstein

What if I only did things that excite me?

See you next week - Michael