Just-In-Time PM #17: States of Mind

In Part 16, we refined our understanding of Return on Attention by taking into account our biggest constraint as knowledge workers – not just our attention but our deeply focused attention in particular.

But human attention is not a simple commodity like oil or gold. It can’t be stored in barrels or vaults or measured in liters or grams. Attention emerges from deep within the human psyche, which means that all aspects of human psychology come into play.

Luckily, we don’t need to understand the full complexity of our minds to become more effective at shaping and deploying our attention. We just need to learn how to manage our states of mind, each one representing a certain kind of attention applied in a certain context.

I believe that our states of mind have become our most important assets as knowledge workers. In an economy based on creativity, it is the state of mind that we enter through our creative process that is even more rare and valuable than any product or deliverable we produce while in it. Our ultimate competitive advantage is a way of thinking.

Because of this, it is worth designing a way of working that puts us in certain states of mind as often and for as long as possible, and leverages what we produce during that time into tangible results.

Let’s start with a definition for “state of mind.” A SOM is:

• difficult or expensive to reproduce (in contrast to simple emotions)
• illegible and more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts (in contrast to cause-and-effect habits)
• primarily somatic and affective, not intellectual (in contrast to belief systems or worldviews)
• temporary and ephemeral (in contrast to mindsets or attitudes)

In the past, SOMs were often treated as a threat in the workplace. The path to success was clear and obvious – it was just a matter of staying consistent and getting yourself to walk it. In this context, how you were feeling was a distraction. Finding yourself in lazy, contemplative, social, or creative state of mind threatened to knock you off your well-laid path. Thus your emotions, moods, intuitions, ideas, and needs were best avoided or suppressed.

But working with way no longer makes any sense, because the future you’re counting on isn’t going to happen. There is no path to be discovered; there is a path to be made. “Making a path” is the new “finding yourself.”

Making such a path is not a linear, step by step process, like laying one stone after another. Because the path exists only in your mind, it can bend and break, reshape and reform at a moment’s notice. It is an act of pure creation. Each and every one of you is an artist, and your greatest masterpiece is your future.