TED Talks · How to slow down

Slow Thinking

While running Microsoft, Bill Gates used to hide away in a cabin in the woods for two weeks every year.

Level: A2 · 38 sentences

Transcript

  1. While running Microsoft,
  2. Bill Gates used to hide away in a cabin in the woods for two weeks every year.
  3. He called them his think weeks.
  4. During these retreats, he would read, reflect, and take notes.
  5. For 14 days, he received no visitors,
  6. apart from the assistants dropping off his meals.
  7. During those think weeks, Gates stopped multitasking and started monotasking.
  8. He focused on one task at a time without distractions.
  9. None of us, not even digital natives,
  10. can think meaningfully about several things at once.
  11. Science tells us that what passes for multitasking is nothing of the sort.
  12. It is sequential.
  13. When you multitask,
  14. what you're actually doing is juggling back and forth between activities.
  15. For 20 seconds, your attention is on this.
  16. Then 10 seconds on that.
  17. Then 15 seconds on the other thing.
  18. Not surprisingly, all that gear grinding turns out to be just as sloppy and inefficient as it sounds.
  19. Once you get interrupted,
  20. it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to return to your original task.
  21. Moreover, when you toggle back and forth between tasks,
  22. you make more mistakes and take much longer,
  23. sometimes twice as long, than if you had performed each task one at a time.
  24. Monotasking helps you reflect and think more carefully.
  25. It opens you up to other points of view,
  26. other ways of seeing a problem and conjuring a solution.
  27. Now, you may not have a cabin in the woods or meal-dropping assistants a la Gates.
  28. I know I don't.
  29. But we could all choose to multitask less and monotask more.
  30. Why not designate one block of time to respond to messages,
  31. another to handle admin, and a separate block to focus on a creative project?
  32. Make each time block longer than you think it should be.
  33. maybe even twice as long.
  34. You might also ask yourself where you will do your best slow thinking.
  35. Two weeks in a cabin in the middle of a forest may not be an option for you,
  36. but two hours in your favorite coffee shop or even in a chair in a cozy corner of your home may well be.
  37. When you create the time, space, and intention to monotask,
  38. you supercharge your thinking and set yourself up to do deeper, richer work.