In the hollywood blockbuster “Interstellar”,
the crew lands the spaceship on Miller’s planet where 1 hour is equivalent to 7 years on
Earth. And when they return back to the earth, their children are on the deathbed but
they themselves have not aged at all. Now you and I don’t have the luxury to visit another planet to slow down time but can we use science to make
4 hours of study equivalent to 12 hours? Time slowed down on Miller’s planet because
it was right next to a black hole called Gargantua. And the gravitational pull of
Gargantua was the invisible force that was dictating how time passed on Miller’s
planet. Is there an invisible force that dictates how time passes for you and me? And
can we control this force to slow down time? Before I answer all these questions, is it
even possible to work less and achieve more? From childhood, our parents and teachers have
constantly reminded us to work hard if we want to succeed in life. And sometimes these reminders
looked more like a heavy hand coming towards your face at the speed of light. No? Maybe it was
just me. But I am sure your teachers had their own ways to admonish you when you did badly on the test. The point is, working hard equals better results is so ingrained in our brains that it’s
almost impossible to imagine any other reality. But in my opinion, trying too hard can
lead to worse results. Let me explain this with an example. I want you to remember
a night when you struggled to fall asleep? The harder you tried to sleep, the longer you
stayed awake. And the longer you stayed awake, the more frustrated you got. This frustration
led you to try even harder which made you stay up even longer. At some point, you gave up
trying. And then, you slept like a baby. If you have experienced this, you are not
alone. A study done by the University of Glasgow showed that the insomniacs who tried
to keep their eyes open fell asleep faster than the insomniacs who actually tried to
sleep. This paradoxical effect is called the Law of reversed effort. The harder you
try to achieve something, the more difficult it gets. And the same can happen
when you are learning new things. But, isn’t our day just a collection of 24 hours?
Everybody has the same 24 hours when they wake up and with each passing hour, we lose them
linearly. When you look at your day like that, you are not accounting for an invisible but
very powerful force. This force has the same effect on time as the gravitational pull of
Gargantua. It slows the time down. And this force is your Brain Power or Mental Energy. Your
brain power decides how focussed you are when you are trying to learn something complex. The brain
power is different from productivity. That's because everybody gets a fixed amount of brain power in
a day but the productivity can be changed. Under the influence of the force of Brain Power,
you will see that time passes much faster right after waking up when compared to later in
the day. That’s because the loss of brain power is not uniform across the day. Let’s say that
this is the total brain power you get in a day. And each glass here represents 4 hours of your
day. In the first few hours after waking up, we lose much more mental energy than the later
half of the day. That’s because towards the end of our day, our brain turns the energy saver
mode ON because we are low on energy. That’s why, capturing the first four to six hours of
your day is essential if you want to work less and achieve more. But
most people wake up and the very first thing they do is to pick up their phone
and start scrolling mindlessly. And the next thing they know is 2 hours have passed
and they have not done anything meaningful. What makes capturing these early waking
hours even more important is the fact that our prefrontal cortex, which is the rational part
of your brain, is still asleep at this time. So, we are less likely to overanalyze and stress
during this time. And this can help us get into this state that they call “Wu Wei” in
the Chinese philosophy of Taoism. “Wu wei” literally translates to “effortless
action” in English. In the western world, this state is called “Flow State”. In the flow
state, our actions become effortless as if the next action is happening automatically as a result
of the previous one. We are so absorbed in the task at hand that the time seems to have slowed
down and 5 hours pass like 5 minutes. For me, it happens when I am doing my programming projects.
But you might have experienced it while painting, dancing or maybe playing sports. When I am
in the flow state, it feels like the program is writing itself. Everything starts coming
together so effortlessly that I don’t even feel the need to take a break. Let me know in the
comments if you have ever felt something similar. Before I tell you how to enter the flow state, if you are finding this video helpful,
you can subscribe to the channel. First thing that can help you get into
a flow state is starting the important tasks right away after you wake up. As we already
discussed, your brain is less likely to wander and stress about other things at this time. In
my case, I usually make a rough plan of what I am going to do in the morning, the night
before. And right after my morning rituals, I start acting on my plan. No use of the phone,
no mindless scrolling at this time. Even if I want to make a coffee or something, I wait to
get into the flow state first. And if I still feel the need of a coffee, I would make one
while reflecting on something I just learnt or something I am trying to solve. I also make
sure I don’t have any meetings scheduled during this time. On most days, I spend the
first 4 hours in this state. Another thing that can help you get into
the flow state is choosing the right tasks to work on. Generally speaking, you want to
select the tasks that would command complete attention from you. According to Steven Kotler,
the author of the book “The Art of impossible” In other words, you want to challenge yourself so
that the task requires you to stay engaged. But, you don’t want it to be so hard
that you get frustrated and give up. Another thing that can help you get into flow
is getting rid of all the distractions. That’s because one context switch to check that
notification might cost you 15-20 minutes to get back into flow state. But getting rid
of distractions is extremely hard in a world full of Instagram and Tiktok. So, here’s what
I propose. Practice “Deliberate Distraction”. What this means is to become more mindful
of your distractions and make them part of your routine. So, set a dedicated time aside
in your day to check Instagram or any other social media. And do nothing but Social
Media during this time. Here is what I think is the best strategy to select a time for your
Mindful Distraction. One, pick a time that you are least likely to be in a flow state.
Sometime later in the evening works the best because you are anyway low on mental energy at
this time. Two, timebox your distraction time. You can start with 2 hours or however much time
you currently spend on social media. And then you can slowly try to reduce it over time. By doing
this, you will enjoy your distraction time much more because it would actually serve
as a reward for being productive during the day. One more technique that can help you enter the
flow state is creating deadlines for yourself. Remember that day before the exam when you could
somehow magically complete all the syllabus within one day. Or the assignment that you finished in
the last hour before the submission deadline. You could do that because you gave yourself
a fixed amount of time to finish the task. In productivity literature, this is called
Parkinson’s law. Parkinson’s law tells us that the task would expand or contract to fill
the time you allot for it. That’s because if you allot more time than required, you will
end up taking a lot of those 5 minute breaks thinking that you are following some variation of
Pomodoro technique. In reality, you might not even realize when those 5 minute breaks actually
become a 50 minute jam session of Instagram, Tiktok and Youtube. But, if you carefully plan
and timebox what you are going to accomplish, there’s a better chance that you will enter a
flow state and end up finishing all your tasks. Entering the flow state can help you learn faster but how do you remember everything that you are learning?
This is where “Active Recall” comes in. “Active Recall” is nothing but a fancy way of saying
"make a conscious effort to remember what you learnt". Here are a few ways to do that.
One, when you are learning something new, rather than making notes of what you learnt,
write down questions that you learnt the answer to. And at a later time, come back to
these questions and try to remember if you still know the answers to these questions.
Second way you can do Active Recall is by using the Feynnman technique. The Feynnman
technique is very simple. Teach what you have learnt to someone else. And when you
try to recall what you learnt for teaching, you will discover some gaps in your knowledge.
Fill those gaps and simplify your learnings. Today, I gave you general tips on how to
learn more in less time. But I did not show you the exact methods I used to hack
my mind to learn coding and get jobs at Google and Amazon. If you want to know the
absolute best techniques to learn coding, watch this video. My name is Sahil
and I will see you in the next one.
