Deploy A Diversion

"The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours."

-Amos Tversky, would-be winner of the Nobel Prize, father of behavioral psychology

The unspoken key to unlock Tversky's insight is knowing when to "waste" hours; certainly, not all wasted time is created equal. Sometimes folks dawdle when they should be working.

But a deliberate diversion, strategically employed, becomes something much more than a waste: it can usher in a breakthrough. Einstein had his violin. Edison had his naps. Franklin had his Junto. Watson and Crick had their coffee.

Tversky and his partner, Danny Kahneman, had their joke-filled-walks.

Deliberately disengaging with the present problem — taking a "divergent diversion" — has liberated countless earnest Stanford students who, failing to recognize that not all problems bend to brute force, would otherwise have continued to power through.

One of history’s most famous examples is Claude Shannon, who wrote the revolutionary paper that ushered in the information age (he invented the bit, among other things...):

"Some mathematicians at the Labs would spend their careers working out the details... Even fifty years later, this idea would leave many engineers slack-jawed... Robert Fano, a friend and colleague, later pointed out, 'How he got that insight, how he even came to believe such a thing, I don't know.' All modern communications engineering, from cell phone transmissions to compact discs and deep space communications, is based upon this insight... Colleagues came to describe it as 'one of the greatest intellectual achievements of the twentieth century' and 'I know of no greater work of genius in the annals of technological thought.' A few observers, in time, would place the work on a par with Einstein's."

How did Shannon get his work done? Per the terrific, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation:

"Shannon would come home from work and labor over (the paper), writing equations and explanations in pencil, on lined sheets of paper, in a neat, compact script. There was little or nothing in the icebox. When he wanted to take a break he would put down his pencil, pick up his clarinet, and play."

Of all things, it’s perfectly fitting that he gravitated toward an instrument. Just like Einstein did. They knew that a strategically deployed divergent diversion is highly impactful.

So next time you find the well of ideas a little dry, perhaps consider strategically deploying a divergent diversion. It might be just the trick to break through — just don't forget your notepad.

Related: Divert Your Attention
Related: Carry A Notebook

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