A Slacker’s Guide to Deep Thinking
TL;DR (for the true slackers) — try this 30-minute meditation on Spotify for a dope approach to “deep thinking”
Now for the director’s cut:
“I don’t know what that is, but I have to find out!”
To say my curiosity was piqued the first time I saw the mysterious cover art on a VHS copy of Slacker at the Tower Records on Rockville Pike would be a profound understatement. I had just graduated high school, bound for college where I planned on majoring in Mass Communications. I’m still surprised that I not only stuck with that plan, but actually graduated with a degree that helped me get various jobs related to my major…most notably an 11 1/2 year gig shooting tv news. After a couple of semesters I settled on concentrating on film, a decision primarily motivated by the attractive prospect of upper level classes in which I either made “films” or watched movies in order to write papers about them. For an afro-sporting, juggling, stoner freak, it was very on-brand and enabled a…let’s just call it a not-terribly-demanding course load.
As an aspiring filmmaker, Richard Linklater’s Slacker was a profoundly influential movie. So much so that I wore out my copy of the “making of” book with the inspiring introduction by Douglas Coupland. Yes, the same Richard Linklater who would go on to crank out Dazed and Confused, the Before trilogy, School of Rock, and the incredible Boyhood. But I honestly wasn’t surprised by Linklater’s success. Slacker, in my disaffected GenX eyes, was a film that should’ve swept the Academy Awards. Apparently I wasn’t the only one inspired by Slacker:
When I saw ‘Slackers’ [in 1991], I thought, ‘If this is a movie, I can make movies.’ It really inspired me. I had never seen a movie like that before.
- Kevin Smith
Linklater was one of a few auteurs I got turned on to in college. My roommates and I were more than a little obsessed with getting high and watching Bad Taste and Dead Alive, and to this day those repeated viewings remain the reason I have so much admiration for Peter Jackson. [Humble brag: during my short-lived career as a street performer in Amsterdam, I had the good fortune of meeting Jonathon Acorn, the supervising puppeteer on Meet The Feebles, Jackson’s depraved homage to the Muppet Show, who then, as now, also made a living as a street entertainer. With puppets. Because if you’re good enough at anything, there’s a chance people will pay you for your talents. He was super cool.] I can honestly say that I wasn’t the least bit surprised that the man behind some of my most beloved, over-the-top, B-movies was the same Peter Jackson who would go on to make one of the most epic trilogies in cinematic history: The Lord of the Rings. Same thing with Christopher Nolan. Following was good, but totally creepy, and Memento remains one of my favorite films of all time. And, of course, studying film when Pulp Fiction was released was totally mind-blowing.
But let me be clear, I never pretend to have highbrow taste in film because one of the only movies that I can recite line-by-line is Weird Al Yankovic‘s masterpiece, UHF.
So, like any self-respecting hipster, I was smugly vindicated and validated when Boyhood and Richard Linklater found such critical acclaim for a movie that was produced in the most slacker-y way possible. With all due respect for Linklater and Boyhood (which is a LOT of respect), I can imagine him saying, “yeah…I got this idea for another film, but I only wanna work on it for like a couple of weeks a year. Don’t rush me!”
Boyhood may be worlds apart from Slacker, but I still cling to and embrace the derisive term for me and my fellow GenXers who eagerly devoured Douglas Coupland’s work in our 20s. I’m not even ashamed to admit how much I loved the movie SFW, despite the abysmal 12% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. As far as I’m concerned, Stephen Dorff’s Cliff Spab is still up there with Christian Slater’s J.D. in Heathers, not to mention Happy Harry Hard-on in Pump Up the Volume, and, of course, The Dude as iconic, cinematic role models for slackers the world around. I don’t bristle at calling myself a slacker, because I recognize how lazy I can be. I also recognize that most of us, if not all of us, are lazy about certain things in some way, shape or form…so I believe there’s a little slacker in all of us.
A curious slacker
While sloth has, at times, been my big part of my identity, I’ve also been driven by curiosity for as long as I can remember. In so many ways, the true “ABC” of my life has been Always Be Curious. And as luck would have it, I’ve ended up with a job that rewards curiosity. In fact, it demands it. Indulging curiosity can be a whole lotta fun, but it can also be really dangerous. That’s part of the interesting duality of our innate motivational drives that, on one hand, manifest as fear of the unknown, mistakes, uncertainty and ambiguity, and on the other hand play out as curiosity, exploration, learning, and mastery. As the sayings go, curiosity killed the cat, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I recently came to the realization that for as long as I can remember, I’ve not only been curious in general, but I’ve been especially curious about how things work. I think it’s a distinct subset of curiosity, and there are plenty of suggestions and indications that certain kinds of curiosity may in fact be hardwired in us, as some people are genetically predisposed to seek adventure as well as knowledge. Many of us say that we like to learn something new every day, but for me, learning as much as possible — shoving as much smart stuff in my brain as I can — has become a daily aspiration.
I also try to have as much fun as possible in any given moment, and pop philosopher (and personal hero) Derek Sivers is clearly a kindred spirit on that front:
Usually, I choose things more based on the compass of fun and adventure, right? Having a different perspective can make something more of an adventure.
- Derek Sivers
Desirable difficulty
By my logic, I like having fun, and learning is fun, therefore I like learning. It’s a simple formula, but here’s the rub: learning is hard work, and hard work is like kryptonite for slackers like me.
So how to reconcile the apparent incompatibility of being lazy and learning? That’s where, in my experience, cognitive science comes to the rescue. We have to use our brains to learn, and what I’ve slowly started to realize is that if we can learn how to use our brains better, learning itself can be a lot more fun. That’s a big part of the reason that, despite the world feeling like a real-time disaster movie with a script so bad not even Michael Bay would make it, I’ve had a blast reading a ton of books over the past few months. Here’s an incomplete list, not to brag but rather to highlight how even an unabashed slacker can find joy in learning (especially learning about learning):
Mindset; How We Learn; Grasp; Surfaces and Essences; Think Like a Rocket Scientist; Creativity; Ignorance; Experimentation Works; Transcend; Your Brain at Work; Atomic Habits; A Mind for Numbers; Ultralearning; Humility is the New Smart; The Knowledge Illusion; Curiosity Studies; and Being Wrong.
I’ve been incredibly fortunate to learn about how our brains work and how to better use them from a guy I usually describe as my best friend, boss, and “sensei,” Kes Sampanthar. Kes is the most well-read person I’ve ever known, I recently figured out that in order to “catch up“ with Kes on the reading front, I’d have to read a book a day for the next 10 years. Yeah…I don’t see that happening.
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
- Isaac Newton
For me, being able to stand on Kes‘s shoulders is like being able to stand on the shoulders of The Iron Giant. It’s thanks to him that I’ve learned about some of the coolest aspects of not only how our brains work, but how to apply that knowledge or understanding in both my personal and professional life. I finally figured out ways to channel my lifelong curiosity, creativity, and, let’s just call it what it is, odd way of seeing the world, into gainful employment. And it’s through learning how our brains work, and how to use them better, that I’ve started to figure out how to make work more fun.
Work can be fun
That comes in the form of techniques like combinatory play, Einstein‘s favorite approach to creative thinking. Question Storming, an approach to brainstorming using only questions rather than trying to come up with answers, leverages Loewenstein‘s information gap theory and also brings into play my favorite part of creative thought: incubation, the deepest kind of thinking I’ve ever experienced.
Incubation isn’t a new thing. Nearly 100 years ago, Graham Wallas, one of the OG experts on creativity, included it as one of the key stages of the creative process. In 2020 however, we know a lot more about how our brains work then we did back in Wallas’ day, and thankfully we’ve started to figure out some really cool ways to harness the power of incubation. The way I think about it, incubation is just a fancy term for unconscious thought. Yes, I know it gets instantly meta — thinking about how we think when we don’t know that we’re thinking — but that’s the joy of metacognition. It might sound academic, but in the interest of full disclosure, the main reason I loved learning about incubation so much is because it’s perfect for slackers like me.
Anybody who’s had a conversation with me over the past few months is sick of hearing about how excited I am about my new morning routine. I’m still excited about it, and I try to talk about it a bit less because I know how annoying it can be, but for an avowed night owl, voluntarily waking up as early as four in the morning to go for a 6 mile walk, while listening to audiobooks about cognitive science, returning home to do yoga followed by meditation, is a huge personal accomplishment. Just like a year ago I never could’ve imagined what life could be like today, even six months ago I couldn’t imagine doing what I do every morning now, let alone enjoying it so much.
Yoga-tation
A couple of months ago, I had this flash of insight, the kind of “eureka moment” that exemplifies the core benefits of incubation, that there might be a way to combine yoga with meditation. I called it yoga-tation. I know, not terribly creative, but it did make me chuckle.
I happened to mention my “brilliant” idea to my friend Amber, someone who’s been practicing yoga for a hell of a lot longer than I have, and she asked whether I knew about yoga nidra. I did not, so naturally I was instantly curious. Yoga nidra is “yogic sleep,” and while I’m sure it’s a great way to fall asleep, I was much more interested in trying it out as a new meditation technique.
Amber suggested I experiment with a few of the various yoga nidra meditations available on Spotify. [Side note: I’m dying for Andy Puddicombe to do a yoga nidra meditation on Headspace. So Andy, if you’re reading this, please hook us up!] This is the one that I landed on. The only thing you have to do is follow the instructions and not fall asleep. That’s it! I really like it because it’s only 30 minutes long (we’re all busy people), the background music doesn’t suck, and I like the dude‘s voice. It does make me chuckle to myself, however, thinking about listening to a favorite meditation on the same platform as a lot of my favorite music. Especially because I imagine what it would be like for Jason Stephenson going on tour with his yoga nidra meditation. But I digress.
A big idea?
So here’s where we finally get to my big, current hypothesis: this yoga nidra approach facilitates entering a hypnagogic state, the fancy term for the state between being awake and falling asleep, a state of mind that has been shown to be most conducive to some of the most creative ways that our brains think. Your mileage may vary, but I’ve had some wildly successful “hypnagogic ideation” sessions using this approach. Case in point, I came up with a good 90% of this article while doing one of these wacky meditations. Seriously. All I had to do was a quick brain dump using voice-to-text after my session and spend a little time editing.
Yes, I have a lot of questions about how scientifically valid my hypothesis is. I really want to do this in an fMRI machine, but don’t really have one of those handy. I’m cautiously optimistic that a device like one of the Muse headbands might be able to better assess the veracity of my claim. By the way, if anyone has any connections at Muse, I really hope that they open their platform so that other people can develop applications on top of their really cool technology. I’ve looked through Google Scholar for existing research to validate or invalidate my hypothesis, and have some leads, but unfortunately the demands of work currently don’t allow me to dive down all those rabbit holes.
The greatest joys I’ve experienced during this galactic dumpster fire of a year have come from learning things and sharing the things I learn with other people, in case they help them like they’ve helped me. I won’t pretend that because this slacker’s approach to “deep thinking” has worked so well for me that it will also magically work for you. YMMV.
But seriously dude, it’s a 30-minute track on Spotify. What have you got to lose?
