Random writing points for a Tuesday

• If you wake up naturally at 4:30 a.m., consider that the summer's early light is telling you something. You can get a lot done of writing done then. 
• Writing makes me hungry, and not the faux "let's avoid this paragraph by seeing what is in the refrigerator" kind of hungry. I'm talking light-headed and stomach-growling hungry every few hours. Is it because of the brain using up glucose? I've taken to eating smaller meals more often. In case you were wondering: none of this results in any weight loss.
• I wish there were a Hallmark card that you could send to say, "I'm sorry I'm not getting it done as fast as you'd like it to be done, but I'm working really hard on it--honest."
• You can trim down a long chapter by a lot if you read it paragraph by paragraph and ask yourself two things: 
• What's the subject of this paragraph? 
• And what's the point of this paragraph? 
• I figure I should be able to write a 1-word tag for the subject, but if I can't identify how the second contributes to the argument, it gets condensed, moved, or chopped.
• I have been gleefully ransacking my files for my old manuscripts, things I've reviewed, and so on.  Why? For the paper, not the great thoughts contained therein. Everything that's not already printed double-sided goes into the maw of the printer for printing drafts on the clean side.  And my files get cleaned out, too.  Win-win!

Decision fatigue

Dame Eleanor has a fascinating post and links to good articles about something called "decision fatigue." Put simply, researchers have found that your willpower goes down, as does your ability to make good decisions, when you've had to make a series of decisions over the course of a day.  You'll do anything to make it stop, including compromising in ways that you don't want to do or refusing to make any decision at all. The effect is magnified if your brain is starved of glucose: it needs that energy for willpower, which is in keeping with what other brain researchers found earlier this year.

In personal terms, this makes a stunning amount of sense. All those chirpy self-help fillers in magazines and web sites urge us to "Try something different! Break up your routine! Take a new route home from work! Brush your teeth in a different direction!" as a route to creativity. But if you've ever tried those strategies, you realize that they're only for leisure times when you have no work to do, because they are exhausting.

Think about it.  When you have to shop at a different grocery store, everything is in a different place and finding what you want among innumerable brands is tiring. Unless you have the fashion gene, which I do not, shopping for clothes is exhausting.  Controlled novelty--going to the farmer's market or an art gallery--can be stimulating and get the creative juices flowing, but what allows creativity to survive on a daily basis is the certainty of a physical routine that lets your mind go free. Thoreau had this one right: "Simplify, simplify." So did William James on the value of habit. One person's controlled novelty might be another person's occasion for decision fatigue, but the principle is still there.

The recent Vanity Fair article on President Obama indicated that he's cut his wardrobe down to blue suits and gray suits, or something like that, so that he can cut down on the time spent deciding.  Good call, Mr. President. Don't we do the same kinds of thing when we buy the same pair of pants or sweater in a couple of colors, just so we don't have to go to the department store again for a couple of years (or is that just my strategy)?

According to the researcher quoted in the New York Times article above,  "people with the best self-control are the ones who structure their lives so as to conserve willpower. They don’t schedule endless back-to-back meetings. They avoid temptations like all-you-can-eat buffets, and they establish habits that eliminate the mental effort of making choices. Instead of deciding every morning whether or not to force themselves to exercise, they set up regular appointments to work out with a friend. Instead of counting on willpower to remain robust all day, they conserve it so that it’s available for emergencies and important decisions."

In other words, a regular routine isn't limiting to creativity. It's freeing because it conserves your energy to make the important decisions related to your creative life.

Brain news: proving the attention span analogy

Time, which does think Americans are just stupid (whereas some politicos in this country are betting on the fact that we are stupid and proud of it), nevertheless proves my point about the Skinner box of email in this week's issue. Some fact nuggets from "Getting to No: The Science of Building Willpower":

• Kelly McGonigal: "Short bursts of dopamine that come from things like e-mail make it hard to focus on long-term goals."
• Addiction specialists doing brain scans of gamblers and non-gamblers found out that when there's a "near miss" on the slot machine screen (i.e., two cherries on one line and one cherry on the line down), non-gamblers' brains are all "eh, who cares" and see it as a loss, whereas gamblers' brains are on fire with "SO close!" and see it as a win.
• Replacing a habit is possible if you maintain the same trigger and reward system. When you get home from work, set your running shoes beside the door and go for a run instead of sitting on the couch. You can then reward yourself with tv or whatever. Soon you will not want to sit down and will totally want to run because of the reward, or so they say.
• Instead of getting up, thinking about the day's activities, racing out the door, and reading the always-depressing news online, we should "lie awake in bed, following our thoughts where they lead (with a pen and paper nearby to jot down any evanescent inspirations). We'd stand a little longer in the warm water of the shower . . . take some deep breaths" and drink some coffee, because "Caffeine increases the brain's level of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that promotes feelings of motivation and reward when we hit on a great idea."
• This bullet is for Sisyphus, who longed for M & M's: turns out your brain "needs a lot of glucose" and that test subjects who drank sugary sodas were able to defer rewards better than this who drank artificially sweetened ones, presumably since the glucose gave the test subjects better wherewithal to plan and use their willpower.
• The halo effect--when you go to the gym and figure, "aw, I deserve these fries after that workout"--is a real brain feature, as is the "what-the-hell" effect when you eat a little ice cream and decide that as long as you've broken a diet, you might as well eat the whole thing. I think this would apply to "I haven't written yet today, so it's a total loss and I might as well give up and not look at my work from yesterday."

In other brain-related news:

• Statins, which were recently touted by Big Pharma as something that ought to be given to everyone, regardless of age or heart condition, as a preventive measure are now found to lead to memory loss and confusion as well as diabetes and well-known side effects such as leg pains.
• Anticholinergic drugs, many of which are given to the elderly, may "cloud the brain": "The heart drug digoxin, the blood thinner warfarin, the painkiller codeine and prednisone are considered mild anticholinergics. Those with the most severe effects include Paxil, Benadryl, a drug for overactive bladder called oxybutynin, and the schizophrenia drug clozapine." Sometimes it's absolutely necessary for people to take these, but at the very least, say the authors, those taking these drugs should discuss the possible effects with their doctors.

The writing-related takeaway? Give your brain some rest, a warm shower, and some time to relax and be creative, preferably with caffeine.