Lifestyle, Routines, and Creative Output

I've been writing now for 12 years, ever since I was 24 years old (before that I kept journals). Much or most of the writing has been done in bursts of up to several thousand words on a nearly daily basis for weeks at a time. Sometimes I've gone weeks and months without writing anything "productive" at all.

During my better periods the writing has gone into some larger project such as a website or a future book. During less productive periods I'll still continue to write, but in the form of essays or pieces that almost no one will read. It seems that during such periods I lack the will and purposefulness to work on large-scale endeavors and simply continue to write because thoughts and impressions build up in my mind.

Lately I've been building up a lot of momentum in life and seem to have begun a new highly productive phase where I'm working on projects that are going somewhere. It feels great to have overcome the doldrums and doubts of the past few years.

What's different this time around is that my lifestyle and routines are entirely self-crafted. I live alone and have no committed relationship that would require making compromises. It appears I've managed — finally — to find that odd combination of factors that keeps me in good spirits and allows for sustained high creative output. As I've mentioned in past posts, my particular formula includes nutrition, exercise, walking, and a variety of shared activities and often intense socializing.

Due to my high sensitivity, I also prefer to protect myself from sensory and information overload by limiting Internet access, shunning media entertainment, and spending large amounts of time alone. I find I (and probably other highly sensitive people) don't do very well in standard conditions, but flourish in special conditions.

Since my current lifestyle fills my needs well and is almost entirely immune to the most common types of external shakeups (relationship turmoil, job changes, addictive behaviors, etc.), I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to continue living this way for another 1, 5, 10, or 50 years. Indeed, there is a new sense of permanence that I haven't experienced for a long time, if ever.

Then I come across this book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. The book contains descriptions of the daily routines of over 150 well-known creative individuals who lived in during the past 400 years.

The typical creative person spends 2-4 hours a day engaging in the most important — and demanding — aspect of the creative process: writing, composing, drafting, or creating original work. This is usually done in complete isolation with no distractions. There are exceptions, but they are few. The creative work is usually done first thing in the day, before errands and socializing. If the creative person has a regular job, it is almost always something that doesn't tax the mind, leaving the person free to think their own thoughts.

Productive creative people also usually "self-medicate" in order to keep their mind in shape for their work. Tools used include: alcohol, nicotine, caffein, amphetamines, and sleeping pills. Other mechanisms include: exercise, meditation, long walks, and sex. I apparently am in a minority with my rejection of addictive substances, but I too do a number of things to influence my hormones and neurotransmitters in a particular way: I engage in near-daily varied exercise, I strip down and take sunbaths during the colder part of the year, and I swear by my fermented cod-liver oil with butter oil.

Another universal among productive creative people is that all of them have a lifestyle that satisfies their needs for communication and socializing on a daily basis. I've come to see this as perhaps the most crucial element of personal productivity. While socializing needs vary from person to person, there were almost no creative people who didn't need a hefty dose of interpersonal communication every single day.

Typically, to sustain creative output people need both someone to bounce ideas off of and share impressions with a regular basis (usually daily or on most days) and unstructured or unpredictable socializing (generally daily). This mirrors what I discovered from long-distance hiking: a good day includes conversation with a friend, a number of interactions with strangers or acquaintances, and at least some group interaction. It can all total up to as little as two hours. Productive artists have found ways to get these three components of communication in a high-quality form on a daily or near-daily basis.

For some more introverted types, it seems that some of this meaningful interaction can be had online. That definitely doesn't work for me or for most other people.

Recharged from an evening of socializing, boozing, card-playing, or whatever she finds relaxing, the productive artist goes to bed and wakes up the next day to continue the thing that their life revolves around — their creative work. They see it as their primary activity and move everything out of the way in order to engage in it.

It seems that creativity, like willpower, is a limited resource. In order to be highly creative in one part of life, one needs to automate other areas. This could mean taking a maid or a cook (yep, I've done that) or putting in the effort to learn those skills oneself and turn them into routines (I've done that, too). It could mean paying the bills through work that one doesn't have to think about much (my favorite was packing Pepsi-cola) or by doing work that is closely related to one's primary creative work.

Doing creative work requires a lot of planning and coordination of complex components, whether parts in a symphony, characters and plot in a novel, or elements of a building design. After straining his brain's executive functions for several hours, the artist may wish to let them rest for the remainder of the day. Having to plan, manage, coordinate, and execute logistics in one's everyday life almost always uses up energy that might have been spent on one's creative product. Developing near-fixed daily routines (i.e. planning once and then just following that plan) and outsourcing management are typical ways that artists maintain their productivity.

While there are a few basic commonalities in the lives of all productive artists, each has found a lifestyle formula that is well-suited to her personality and physical constitution. What works in one's youth may not work in one's maturity. In any case, the would-be artist must come to know himself and have the courage to craft a life that works for him.

Career Opportunities for the Future

This is a follow-up to my posts "More on Career Recommendations" and "The Energy Descent Future", both of which have little to do with socionics but contain information that could be important for developing career and business opportunities that both fit your personality and will be in demand in the future. So, this post should be at least as useful as more traditional discussions of what careers are suitable for different personality types. The shortcoming of such discussions is that they assume that the job market will continue evolving in the same direction as it has been over past decades. There are a number of reasons to suppose that this will not be the case.

My comments below are based on the expectation of an energy descent, or reduction in total energy available to the economy, due to the exhaustion of cheap fossil fuel sources. There appears to be no way to avoid an energy descent, and probably no way to avoid a drop in economic output as a result. The energy descent has likely just begun, and there is no end in sight.

There will be winners and losers in the new economy that will take shape as fossil fuels are phased out (whether through high prices or centralized measures). People who align themselves correctly with the underlying trends stand to gain, while those who try to play by old rules will lose.

In general, the losers will be any goods or service industry that is heavily dependent upon cheap fossil fuels to function (whether directly or indirectly). That means:

- international trade

- large corporations

- administration and management personnel

- bureaucratic structures

- industrial agriculture

- automobile industry

- federally funded science

(and many others)

In general, the winners will be small local businesses and entrepreneurs who are the first to occupy vital niches in the new economy.

- locally produced goods

- traditional home builders and home retrofitters

- people who build useful things in their garages

- mechanics who can build useful things out of cars and other machinery

- scrap material collection and trading

- people who can convert lawns into gardens

- local organic farmers and backyard gardeners

- plant nurseries and seed banks

- people who know how to set up and run non-mechanized aquaculture, animal husbandry, and small-scale agriculture

- people who have means of transportation allowing them to trade goods across modest distances (5-100 miles or so)

- family doctors and dentists who have their own equipment

- local chemical labs (think insulin and other critical medications)

- people who can solve local engineering problems, such as stabilizing riverbanks, building waterwheels, hooking up solar panels, etc.

- security guards

- teachers of practical trades

This is just a partial list. There will be tons of these opportunities, and much of this type of work may be under-the-table at first, unless government regulations are rapidly adapted to changing conditions (very doubtful).

People who are primarily employed in the first group may experience a long period of increasing disappointment and shattered expectations before finally making the transition to the second group. Those who foresee these changes are able to provide useful services or goods from the beginning will be in a great position to benefit from the new opportunities available.

UPDATE 4/3/2011:

I just came across a great article that goes into greater detail on the professional opportunities of the future with thinking along the same lines as my own. It's got quite a few good ideas:

An Employee's Guide to Catabolic Collapse

More on Career Recommendations

Some readers may have thought that my recent post on career recommendations for socionic types (2010) was written in jest. Actually, it was quite serious. I would like to develop the topic here further.

The current economic system is only possible thanks to the recent availability of cheap energy sources in the form of easily accessible fossil fuels. Take nonrenewable resources away, and we are almost instantly back to a pre-industrial economy where automatization meant using a waterwheel to set in motion cleverly devised contraptions made almost entirely out of wood. Try to find an "Operations Research Analyst", "Network Administrator," or "Human Resources Manager" in such an economy.

Even if alternative energy sources are developed soon on a large scale, it is becoming more and more clear that many elements of our oil-based economy will change drastically over the coming decades. These changes are not a distant prospect; they are already beginning to happen. For instance, automobile transportation will gradually fall out of usage, agricultural production will take place on a smaller scale, closer to population centers, and involving a greater number of people.

An almost certain result of a Peak Oil scenario is ballooning national and personal indebtedness, which has prolonged economic depression as its inevitable consequence. The thing about national debt is that a country has to pay it off while still in a growth phase, otherwise it careens toward default. The giving of loans assumes a growth scenario which allows the debtor to increase his capital at a rate greater than the interest of the loan. In a shrinking economy $1000 invested today yields $900 tomorrow. If the interest on a $1000 loan is $100, then the debtor is now $200 in the hole and is worse off than when he started. Then he takes out another loan based on the assumption that growth will resume later, leading to a deeper hole if growth doesn't materialize. Eventually he goes bankrupt or defaults on his loans. Economic growth is possible only if energy inputs are increased or if energy is used more efficiently.

Are these prospects significant when thinking about your career plans? I tend to think so, particularly if you are under 30 years of age and not yet established in a particular career.

Just about the worst thing to do, in my opinion, would be to put yourself many tens of thousands of dollars in debt for schooling on the wager that economic growth will continue for at least another decade, allowing you to pay off your loans. For years the establishment has been telling people that student debt is "good debt," because it pays for itself in the long run. However, note that the cost of higher education has been rising a lot faster than people's real earnings. Slowly, the absurdity of the U.S.'s overbuilt and inefficient (but highly effective as a money-making scheme) education system will reach the mass consciousness.

Now, back to the question of "ideal jobs." In the current economy, most people will not get their ideal jobs. The needs of modern economic production and human organization correlate rather poorly with the needs of the human participants in these systems. Hordes of potential politicians, generals, philosophers, writers, artists, musicians, actors, and explorers spend their days selling mass-produced merchandise, administering machines, developing marketing plans, fixing network problems, and writing reports.

There always seem to be more applicants for ideal jobs than there are positions available! How many of us have been Presidents, famous actors, and world travelers in our dreams?

My view is that traditional lifestyles may actually provide greater opportunities for self-realization than a modern economy. Growing one's own food provides a sense of personal power and stability and probably reduces anxiety. Engaging in crafts and participating in a local physical (as opposed to virtual) community allows more people to find recognition for their work and talents than in an enormous and highly interconnected community where a few individuals inevitably end up getting most of the attention. Of course, if you are truly a "big fish," you may feel somewhat limited in a "small pond," but overall a greater number of people will be able to enjoy recognition for skills that they might otherwise have to abandon in the modern economy due to its much higher level of competition. In the modern economy the entire world listens to Madonna and Michael Jackson; in a traditional economy people listen to the guys next door.

The fact is that every type is suited to traditional lifestyles. Some types gravitate more to social aspects of such a life; others may tend to focus on crafts. Some will hoard useful information, others will end up teaching and playing with youngsters, etc. And pretty much any person enjoys food that they grew themselves. A few fellows will just become drunks, but even these will still retain their usefulness as a source of brute strength and for performing simple tasks.

Traditional living is not "old fashioned"; it is how most people lived for thousands of years until, well, several decades back. It is the modern oil-based economy that is the fragile anomaly, not traditional economies.

It is very likely that with the end of cheap energy we will move from a highly specialized economy to one with much more general (i.e. wider) niches. The good news is that wider niches can mean more self-realization, more variety, and much less of a sense of simply being a cog in a soulless machine.

Traditional societies are/were able to satisfy basic human needs quite well, including emotional and intellectual needs as well as physical. As we can see from the pre-industrial history of advanced societies (Europe, China, India, the Arab world, etc.), there is plenty of room in such societies for more single-minded artists, actors, scholars, generals, etc. -- all those typical "ideal jobs" that so many would like to have but so few actually obtain.

The irony is that if you visit traditional societies I think you generally find that people engage in no less philosophizing, play, hobbies, and arts as in our society. Even hunter-gatherers typically spend under 20 hours a week procuring food. What do you think they spend the rest of their time doing?

My basic point here is that we are likely to see a return to a more traditional lifestyle and that the "careers" available in such an economy are no less fulfilling than those of today.

Career Recommendations for Socionic Types: 2010

Socionics can be a powerful tool for making wise career choices and achieving professional self-realization. Here I've listed the best professions for young adults of different types given their particular functional strengths and weaknesses:

ILE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
SEI: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
ESE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
LII: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
EIE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
LSI: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
SLE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
IEI: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
SEE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
ILI: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
LIE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
ESI: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
LSE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
EII: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
IEE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
SLI: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor

Career preparation

1. Stay out of debt at all cost.
2. Consider college only if it costs you nothing and can provide opportunities to learn more about the areas of specialization listed for your type above.
3. If you're paying for college and are in debt, you've almost certainly been tricked. Do a clear-headed cost/benefit analysis given the realities of 2010 (see below) and consider whether to continue studying law, business, or whatever it was the economy needed 10 years ago.
   
4. Cultivate meaningful relationships in the real world. Put the Internet in its place, if necessary. Get to know your neighbors. Experiment cooperating with people in little, material things like cooking, gardening, sharing tools, etc.
   
5. Decrease your energy consumption and lower your baseline expenses as necessary to ensure your continuing security and freedom.
6. Find mentors and develop the professional skills needed for the careers listed for your type above.
   

Outlook for 2010 and beyond

Economic stimulus packages have helped the economy make a modest comeback, and 2010 should see a tentative economic recovery, despite lingering unemployment and a depressed housing market...

Blah blah blah. You've heard it all before. How about a different perspective that doesn't come from the mass media?

"We Are Hiring Logical Intuiters..."

Today I got a message in Russian from a legal company in Kiev looking to hire logical intuiters:

We are hiring logical intuiters...

We are hiring attorneys of logical-intuitive and intuitive-logical types!

A Kiev-based legal company that provides services to major industrial companies of Ukraine in corporate, business, banking, and other types of law, announces the opening of new vacancies for the position of attorney/lawyer. We invite representatives of logical-intuitive and intuitive-logical types, as well as a Sensing Logical Extravert. 

Our team is made of highly professional young lawyers and attorneys. We provide a complete technology package (laptop, cell phone, company car, etc.). Pay is more than decent.

Requirements: Man (!) between 25 and 35. At least two years' work experience. Full-time work. Knowledge of foreign languages is not mandatory. Work will be in an office in Kiev. We are interested in employees who can devote themselves entirely to their work and perform their tasks quickly and creatively.

Resumes can be sent to... . For inquiries call... 

I have mixed feelings when I see something like this. On the one hand, it's good that people in business are becoming aware of the importance of types and are looking for ways to make their teams more productive. On the other hand, I have doubts as to whether socionics is being applied competently or on a whim. It is well possible that an influential person in the company learned about socionics and got excited about using it to make the hiring process easier. This could be his first try (and quite possibly his last):

•  The e-mail was apparently sent to all the members of a Russian language socionics forum. Do high-powered, ambitious young attorneys hang around socionics forums? Hm...
  
• Why specifically logical-intuitive types? What about the job necessitates that selection? Does the hiring company specifically want to rule out competent and effective LSIs, LSEs, and other types? 
• Does the company have a sufficient number of sensing-ethical types to make life tolerable for all the intuitive-logical types it expects to hire? 
• Does the company realize the ramifications of hiring a group of people from opposing quadras? Is there intention to polarize the company and develop groups with clashing work styles? Perhaps each new employee will be working wholly on his own?
• Why the lone Sensing Logical Extravert? Presumably it will be his job to whip the others into shape or "build a team," while being alienated and scoffed at by the other attorneys?

In other words, it seems that socionics is being applied as an MBTI-esque test of professional abilities with little awareness of intertype interaction and information flow between types. The fact that the e-mail was sent to members of a socionics forum confirms to me that it is a "first-time experiment," following which they will probably revert to more conventional methods of looking for employees to hire. 

Socionics and Careers

I'll start off this topic with a question: Which of the following would provide the greatest assistance when making a career choice?

a) a socionic type test
b) the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory
c) the Keirsey Temperament Sorter
d) a career preference test

I hope you chose d) ! That is correct. Of these, the socionics test would be least useful, and the MBTI and Keirsey test somewhere in between. Why is that?

The career preference test will give you results specifically related to careers, based on questions about various work activities. The socionics test will have neither of these. Keirsey and the MBTI are more predictive of career choices because, compared to Jung's "original typology," the Myers-Briggs and Keirsey typologies have over time become more closely associated with professional behavior and professions (especially in Keirsey's case) than was true in Jung's time (essentially, I'm claiming their type distributions and type definitions have drifted). This is probably due to the high demand in the U.S. for all kinds of business applications (the U.S. has a dominant culture).

Socionic type, in comparison, has less relation to profession. Why this is the case has been discussed indirectly in my article "Socionics and Evolution" in the "Group Strategies" section. Each profession consists not only of individual specialists who are performing work unique to the profession, but also all sorts of auxiliary functions, as well as complex relationships between all people and work functions involved. When we think of a profession like "physicist," we usually think of someone who looks like this. However, what about all the physicists who do this? In almost every profession there are different roles that require different capabilities. In each industry (such as the medical industry, or the film industry) the range of roles is yet greater.

The irony of career counseling is that most of today's careers really aren't that different. Most people don't become "physicists" or "teachers" or "artists." Most people end up doing some sort of office work. Where is the career preference test that gives you a realistic answer: "you are best suited for general administration work that involves sitting at a computer, creating and editing Word and Excel documents, writing several dozen e-mails a day, and attending the occasional meeting or luncheon. Some kind of auxiliary skill - such as legal knowledge, programming abilities, or tax expertise - may prove worthwhile." It seems that there is a discrepancy between what we are "best suited for" and what we actually end up doing. This is because the economy exists to produce goods and services, and not to ensure the self-realization of all participants :)

So, if socionic type is not very predictive (or not predictive enough) of profession, can it be used in career counseling at all? Probably not, in my opinion. It would be better to use traditional instruments such as career preference tests, and then talk to an experienced and talented counselor who can recognize your strengths, interests, and preferences and help you to formulate them.

However, socionics could be useful after one has chosen one's profession and is trying to find one's niche within the field - assuming that one is essentially satisfied with one's choice of profession. For example, one-on-one counseling with an experienced socionist could be useful for artists and actors who are trying to find their "voice," or for managers and other professionals who are trying to develop the work style that works best for them. For such cases, I can't think of anything more insightful than socionics.