The Optimal Workspace

There are a num­ber of grand chal­lenges my gen­er­a­tion faces. Some threaten the way we live, like the hous­ing cri­sis. Oth­ers are dif­fi­cult to solve, like space travel. More still both threaten the way we live and are dif­fi­cult to tackle, like cli­mate change and pol­lu­tion.

But of all the dis­cus­sion of the prob­lems of the mod­ern world, one is of­ten over­looked: how do we live hap­pier, more mean­ing­ful lives.

I’ve found that there are two main po­ten­tial an­swers which in­volve the way we sleep and the way we work. They are re­lated to the on­go­ing brain dam­age of mil­lions of Americans, so­cial me­dia and light­ing. By at­tempt­ing to solve this prob­lem (that of hap­pi­ness and pro­duc­tiv­ity), all other grand chal­lenges be­come eas­ier to solve.

Unlike other grand chal­lenges, like space travel, whose so­lu­tions lie in the hands of rel­a­tively few sci­en­tists and ad­min­is­tra­tors, this prob­lem of how to live well is the re­spon­si­bil­ity of both in­di­vid­u­als and busi­nesses.

Step 1: Sleep

As a high school stu­dent, I had an ad­ver­sar­ial re­la­tion­ship with sleep. The way I saw it, every minute asleep was a minute of home­work not done, a minute of friend­ship not cher­ished. A minute of life lost.

I went many nights com­pletely for­go­ing it en­tirely, be­liev­ing that it was merely a pre­view of death. In hind­sight, I think it re­flects well on my work ethic, but poorly on my work tech­nique. The an­cient Greeks seemed to agree with me. Ac­cord­ing to them, god of sleep was Hypnos, twin brother of death.

I could­n’t have been more wrong, for sleep is in­cred­i­bly im­por­tant. In fact, I may have re­ceived mild brain dam­age for my de­ci­sions. Sleep is not mere lack of ac­tiv­ity. In the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, he dis­cusses why sleep is crit­i­cal for liv­ing a life con­tain­ing depth of work and depth of be­ing.

There are two types of sleep, and each are equally im­por­tant.

NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep

NREM sleep is crit­i­cal in the in­te­gra­tion and so­lid­i­fi­ca­tion of mem­ory. This is the por­tion of sleep where your eyes are sta­tion­ary, thus the name. In fact, NREM sleep seems to be the only time the brain ac­tively works to re­tain mem­ory. Since NREM sleep is more preva­lent in the ear­lier hours of the night, go­ing to bed two hours hours later than usual re­sults in a 70% re­duc­tion in re­ten­tion of fac­tual in­for­ma­tion the next day.

REM Sleep

REM sleep is piv­otal in cre­ative think­ing and emo­tional pro­cess­ing.

Walker mod­els ideas as a knowl­edge graph. Dur­ing wake­ful­ness, tra­ver­sal across this graph for the pur­pose of prob­lem solv­ing is some­what iso­lated. In other words, peo­ple who are awake are only think­ing of so­lu­tions or mak­ing con­nec­tions that are con­cep­tu­ally sim­i­lar to the ex­ist­ing so­lu­tions and ideas. Dur­ing REM sleep, how­ever, the brain makes finds longer-dis­tances re­la­tion­ships, from much fur­ther-apart sec­tions of the graph.

PTSD pa­tients al­ways have poor qual­ity sleep from to night­mares. It is­n’t just a cor­re­la­tion, it is lit­er­ally re­quired in the di­ag­no­sis. Walker claims this is be­cause the brain is at­tempt­ing to process the neg­a­tive emo­tions as­so­ci­ated with trauma, but, since the emo­tions are so strong, wakes it­self up. One of the main goals with cog­ni­tive be­hav­ioral ther­apy for PTSD pa­tients is get the vic­tim through a full night of sleep. By giv­ing the brain the op­por­tu­nity to prop­erly process the neg­a­tive ex­pe­ri­ence (in REM sleep), they are able to dra­mat­i­cally speed up re­cov­ery.

Main take­away: sleep more and you will live a longer, health­ier, more im­pact­ful life.

The need for sleep varies across your life­time less than many peo­ple think. The most des­per­ate need is dur­ing in­fancy, with ba­bies and tod­dlers re­quir­ing as much as 18 hours of sleep per day. As you get older, de­creases un­til lev­el­ing off at eight and half hours of time in bed. No, that is not time asleep it is time in bed. It is a myth that se­niors re­quire less sleep. In truth, they re­quire just as much sleep as in mid­dle age, but have greater dif­fi­culty achiev­ing it. This is pri­mar­ily due to the cor­re­lated dif­fi­culty breath­ing, and sec­on­dar­ily due to the ear­lier bed-time se­niors re­quire.

There are a num­ber of traits of the mod­ern world that have re­sult­ing in the WHO di­ag­no­sis of sleep de­pri­va­tion as a pan­demic. More than 28% of Americans are chron­i­cally sleep de­prived.

The Danger of Sleep Deprivation

Chronic sleep de­pri­va­tion can re­sult in brain dam­age. While you are awake, the glym­phatic sys­tem (which is sim­i­lar in func­tion, dif­fer­ent in im­ple­men­ta­tion to the lym­phatic sys­tem) is in­ac­tive. As a re­sult, there is a grad­ual buildup of garbage in the brain, block­ing neu­ro­trans­mit­ters and gen­er­ally dis­rupt­ing the abil­ity for neu­rons to com­mu­ni­cate with each other. One pro­tein that builds up: beta amy­loid, the same pro­tein that causes Alzheimer’s dis­ease. When you sleep, the glymph sys­tem starts up and cleans up the garbage wake­ful­ness ac­cu­mu­lated. How­ever, if not given enough time to do its work (by sleep­ing), the glym­phatic sys­tem is not able to do its job en­tirely. This is why your like­li­hood of get­ting Alzheimers in­creases the less you sleep.

Sleep de­pri­va­tion also causes in­creased con­cen­tra­tions of cannabi­noids. Just like Marijuana, these in­creases ap­petite for un­healthy foods. Ad­di­tion­ally, sleep is an en­ergy in­ten­sive process. The body burns more calo­ries at night dur­ing sleep than dur­ing harm­ful wake­ful­ness. All in all, there is a very strong con­nec­tion be­tween sleep de­pri­va­tion and obe­sity.

Matthew Walker high­lights one es­pe­cially crit­i­cal time when phys­i­cal and men­tal health (especially mem­ory re­ten­tion) are im­por­tant: school. The pri­mary goal of school is to learn, to which NREM sleep is crit­i­cal (due to its role in mem­ory re­ten­tion).

Starting in mid­dle school, chil­dren’s cir­ca­dian rhythms start to shift later. In other words, teenagers nat­u­rally fall asleep and wake up later than other age groups. Walker at­trib­utes this to the need for teens to be­come more in­de­pen­dent. Evo­lu­tion pushes them to op­er­ate by them­selves by forc­ing their par­ents to go to bed ear­lier.

Schools op­er­ate un­der the cir­ca­dian rhythms of par­ents and teach­ers. 7 o’­clock in the morn­ing is the ideal time for them, but not for the stu­dents. But we find that stu­dents don’t go to bed any ear­lier, even though they are forced to awake at the same time as their par­ents. The end re­sult: mil­lions of mid­dle and high school stu­dents are cur­rently ex­pe­ri­enc­ing chronic sleep de­pri­va­tion, just be­cause school starts too early.

The eat­ing and phys­i­cal habits de­vel­oped dur­ing one’s school years serve as the tem­plate for the re­main­der of their lives. If one spends their de­vel­op­ing years un­der sleep de­pri­va­tion (which is the case for mil­lions of stu­dents in the U.S.) they are learn­ing how to live their life un­der the in­flu­ence of cannabi­noids, all the while get­ting grad­ual brain dam­age from the buildup of beta amy­loid.

Sleeping Pills

As an aside, I feel the need to ad­dress sleep­ing pills. Do not take them.

There are cur­rently no med­ica­tions on the mar­ket that in­duce real sleep. There are med­ica­tions that slow and stop brain func­tion, like Ambien. They do not pro­vide real sleep, and as such do not re­sult in mem­ory in­te­gra­tion, emo­tional pro­cess­ing or any of the other ben­e­fits of sleep. In fact, stud­ies with Ambien show that in­duced “sleep” ac­tu­ally re­sults in a net loss of mem­ory, com­pared with not sleep­ing at all. Not only does Ambien stop nat­ural mem­ory in­te­gra­tion, it ac­tively causes for­get­ful­ness.

Phones and Blue LEDs

The part of the brain that runs your cir­ca­dian rhythm is called the su­per­chi­as­matic nu­cleus. This is an ex­tremely small clus­ter of neu­rons that sits on the in­ter­sec­tion of your two op­tic nerves. It watches for sig­nals of blue light. If is any is de­tected (since the only sig­nif­i­cant, nat­ural blue is from the sky) it can safely as­sume it is day and will slowly ad­just it­self un­der that as­sump­tion.

Phones and other sources of blue light mess with this process. If your eyes de­tected any at night, you are guar­an­teed to sleep worse.

There are other neu­ro­log­i­cal ef­fects at play. Most ac­tiv­i­ties that take place on a phone ac­ti­vate the part of the brain called the amyg­dala, which we most com­monly as­so­ci­ate with the fight or flight re­sponse. When ac­ti­vated, your body pre­pares it­self for sur­vival. It slows or halts di­ges­tion, di­lates the pupils and in­creases me­tab­o­lism. In other words, pre­pares your body for ac­tion, not rest.

The is­sue: one of the most com­mons sta­ples of mod­ern of­fice spaces are the rows upon rows of flo­res­cent lights. All peo­ple work­ing in build­ings out­fit­ted with these lights may be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing worst qual­ity and quan­tity of sleep as a re­sult, es­pe­cially those work­ing later or longer hours.

In the search for pro­duc­ing deep work and liv­ing a full life, get­ting enough sleep is para­mount. It is the sin­gle most ef­fec­tive move one can make, since it makes all other ac­tions more ef­fec­tive.

However, as I pre­vi­ously pointed out, suc­cess in the new econ­omy re­lies par­tic­u­larly on deep work, which re­quires deep fo­cus.

Step 2: Deep Focus

At the be­gin­ning, I men­tioned there are two prob­lems re­strict­ing the abil­ity for peo­ple to live happy, ef­fec­tive lives. The first was re­lated to sleep, the sec­ond was re­lated to deep fo­cus.

Before I can ex­plain how to achieve deep fo­cus (according to Cal Newport), I first need to ex­plain why it is so crit­i­cal.

The Information Age

We like to sep­a­rate his­tory into ages. The age of the di­nosaurs was fol­lowed by the ice age which was fol­lowed by the hu­man age (the Anthropocene). Granted, that’s an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, but it high­lights the point: we de­lin­eate swaths of time with the most im­por­tant and unique vari­able at play.

The in­dus­trial age be­gan with the wide­spread use of the steam en­gine. With steam en­gines came fac­to­ries, and with fac­to­ries came fac­tory work­ers.

We live in a new age, iden­ti­fied by the in­te­gra­tion and ad­vance­ment of com­puter and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­ogy. We call it the in­for­ma­tion age. With the in­for­ma­tion age comes in­for­ma­tion or knowl­edge work­ers.

This is the sub­ject of Cal Newport’s fan­tas­tic book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.

Knowledge Work

Knowledge work is de­fined by the need for a depth and breadth of knowl­edge, and a high abil­ity to ma­nip­u­late it. Pro­gram­ming, writ­ing, ac­count­ing, and teach­ing are all ex­am­ples of knowl­edge work. They re­quire enor­mous amounts of knowl­edge and the value the pro­vide is ac­com­plished through thought.

Cal Newport makes the case that the glob­al­iza­tion of knowl­edge (via the in­ter­net) has ini­ti­ated an eco­nomic shift that will ben­e­fit just a few knowl­edge work­ers, the most skilled su­per­lin­early rel­a­tive to the rest.

Before the in­ter­net, any given com­pany had a lim­ited pool of po­ten­tial work­ers: those in the ge­o­graphic vicin­ity. This meant, if a com­pany wanted to hire the best pro­gram­mer for a job, they would have to make do with what was avail­able.

Today, how­ever, if a com­pany wants to hire the best pro­gram­mer, they have the en­tire world’s pool. Knowl­edge work does­n’t typ­i­cally have a strict on-site re­quire­ment. Com­pa­nies also have much more to gain from get­ting the best than get­ting pretty good, so they’re will­ing to pay much more. The end re­sult: the peo­ple at the top of their field are in higher de­mand now than ever be­fore.

Cal Newport iden­ti­fies two key traits in these “superstars” at the top of their field. First, “the abil­ity to quickly mas­ter hard things.” In other words, learn com­plex and ap­plic­a­ble things.

Second, “the abil­ity to pro­duce at an elite level, in terms of both qual­ity and speed.”

All of this is to say: to be suc­cess­ful in the chang­ing econ­omy, peo­ple need to be­come bet­ter at deep, mean­ing­ful work. Since the most valu­able re­sources are the re­sult of deep thought, it makes sense that the high­est achiev­ers are those who prac­tice deep fo­cus.

In Deep Work, Cal Newport high­lights a num­ber of strate­gies for achiev­ing true, deep fo­cus. How­ever, only one is broadly ap­plic­a­ble for most peo­ple. The oth­ers re­quire an of­ten un­rea­son­able amount time set aside, some­thing that most em­ploy­ers do not al­low, un­for­tu­nately.

Rhythmic Deep Work Scheduling

This is most ef­fec­tive strat­egy for achiev­ing deep fo­cus for most peo­ple. There are oth­ers Newport high­lights in his book, but this is the most im­por­tant. Par­tic­u­larly, most peo­ple have daily oblig­a­tions that halt them from deeply fo­cus­ing for more than 22 hours. This could be due to your job, fam­ily, or school.

Either way, a num­ber of peo­ple have cen­tered on a seem­ingly sim­ple so­lu­tion: make a habit. In­stead of forc­ing your­self to make a de­ci­sion to move into deep work, reg­u­larly sched­ule it.

The brain has a lim­ited num­ber of deep con­cen­tra­tion hours per day (I’m not sure why, but I sus­pect it is re­lated pre­vi­ously de­scribed buildup of pro­teins in the brain). Use them up front, when you are least likely to be dis­tracted: in the morn­ing.

This is some­thing I’ve adopted. I sched­ule all my classes in the af­ter­noon and most so­cial en­coun­ters nat­u­rally hap­pen in the evening. This leaves the en­tire morn­ing ded­i­cated to deep fo­cus. I put my phone out of sight and work, undis­tracted, from 5:45 AM to 11:00 AM.

Since im­ple­ment­ing this habit, I’ve found that I’m able to com­plete the ma­jor­ity of my work twice as fast, leav­ing more time for other pur­suits, like Harper.

The Open Office Plan

The open of­fice plan it an ex­am­ple of a gen­eral trend in many mod­ern com­pa­nies. Man­agers be­lieve the largest bar­rier to pro­duc­tiv­ity is a lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. In the­ory, knowl­edge work­ers will be able to com­plete work faster if they are able to share knowl­edge faster.

For ex­am­ple, a ju­nior ac­coun­tant needs to per­form an op­er­a­tion in Excel to tab­u­late a com­pa­ny’s ex­penses for this year. This process, with the knowl­edge they cur­rently have, will take three hours to per­form. They have to write the for­mu­las, im­port in the data, and pre­sent it in a graph.

A se­nior ac­coun­tant, how­ever, if given the same job, would know that there is a sin­gle but­ton in Excel that does all the same op­er­a­tions in five min­utes.

The fric­tion at play, is that the se­nior ac­coun­tant has more knowl­edge of Excel ca­pa­bil­i­ties than the ju­nior. If they could com­mu­ni­cate this knowl­edge, the ju­nior’s work could be com­pleted much faster. This is why man­agers be­lieve that in­creas­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion in­creases pro­duc­tiv­ity.

However, most at­tempts to in­crease pro­duc­tiv­ity have a neg­a­tive ef­fect on the abil­ity for knowl­edge work­ers to fo­cus, which re­sults in a net de­crease of pro­duc­tiv­ity in the team.

For ex­am­ple: the open of­fice plan. Sure, there may be in­stances where a se­nior ac­coun­tant sees that a ju­nior needs help on some­thing, but if any two peo­ple are talk­ing else­where in the room, their noise dis­rupts the fo­cus of every sin­gle worker pre­sent.

Hub and Spoke Model

There is one tried and true method of in­creas­ing deep fo­cus with­out sac­ri­fic­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion: chang­ing the way our build­ings are de­signed.

The Bell Labs Holmdel Complex is a fan­tas­tic ex­am­ple of this. At its peak, it was filled with some of the great­est minds of a gen­er­a­tion. Ten Nobel Prizes, five Turing Awards, and twenty-two IEEE Medals of Honor were awarded for work done in this build­ing

The Holmdel Complex was de­signed like with a Hub and Spokes. Each worker had their own pri­vate of­fice, so they could work com­pletely un­in­ter­rupted. You can think of each of­fice as a spoke on a wheel. How­ever, if they needed to go any­where else in the build­ing, they had to en­ter the hub: a large hall­way that con­nected all rooms in the build­ing. This meant that chance en­coun­ters with other work­ers were com­mon­place, but only when a worker was­n’t ac­tively try­ing fo­cus. They re­tained the ben­e­fits of both deep work and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

These chance en­coun­ters gave rise to un­ex­pected ap­pli­ca­tions of each in­di­vid­ual re­searcher’s work. The peo­ple work­ing on Unix dis­cov­ered they could help the in­for­ma­tion the­ory re­searchers and vice versa.

Conclusion

Let us re­turn to great chal­lenge I’m try­ing to high­light: the ques­tion of how to live hap­pier and more ef­fec­tively. The an­swers are sur­pris­ingly sim­ple.

We need to sched­ule our schools and work­places to ac­count for the needs of sleep for our work­ers and stu­dents. Stu­dents that re­mem­ber more ma­te­r­ial be­come more ef­fec­tive prob­lem solvers later on, which makes all other prob­lems eas­ier to solve.

The peo­ple who are at­tempt­ing to solve other great is­sues, like un­equal ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion, cli­mate change, and pol­lu­tion will be able to work more ef­fec­tively given the op­por­tu­nity to en­ter deep fo­cus.

So please, sleep well, and don’t be dis­tracted by the things that don’t mat­ter.

Works Cited

[1] M. Walker, Why we sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Simon and Schuster, 2017.

[2] C. Newport, Deep work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Hachette UK, 2016.