# Cautionary Tales Presents: TED Talk Daily

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 31 Jan 2020, 18 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/0c8443e2-1b30-4ca6-a023-ae39003f66f2/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

In this special episode of Cautionary Tales, we feature Cautionary Tales host Tim Harford's TED Talk Daily from 2018. What can we learn from the world's most enduringly creative people? They "slow-motion multitask," actively juggling multiple projects and moving between topics as the mood strikes -- without feeling hurried. Tim Harford shares how innovators like Einstein, Darwin, Twyla Tharp and Michael Crichton found their inspiration and productivity through cross-training their minds. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello Tim Harford here. Today we're sharing something I'm
[0:25] Speaker 1: very excited about my third TED Talk. It's about what
[0:29] Speaker 1: we can learn from some of the most enduringly creative people.
[0:33] Speaker 1: They do something very interesting, something I call slow motion multitasking.
[0:39] Speaker 1: I mean that they actively juggle multiple projects and move
[0:43] Speaker 1: between topics as the mood strikes. By cross training their minds.
[0:47] Speaker 1: Innovators such as Einstein, Darwin, Twiler, Tharpe, and Michael Crichton
[0:53] Speaker 1: discovered their inspiration. If you like it, you can hear
[0:57] Speaker 1: my other TED talks, along with talks from much smarter,
[1:00] Speaker 1: more charismatic, and more original people than me on the
[1:03] Speaker 1: Ted Talks Daily podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. To
[1:13] Speaker 1: do two things that wants is to do neither. It's
[1:17] Speaker 1: a great SmackDown of multitasking, Isn't It Often attributed to
[1:21] Speaker 1: the Roman writer Publilius Syrus, Although you know how these
[1:25] Speaker 1: things are, he probably never said it what I'm interested in, though,
[1:30] Speaker 1: Is it true? I mean, it's obviously true for emailing
[1:34] Speaker 1: at the dinner table, or texting while driving, or possibly
[1:38] Speaker 1: for live tweeting a TED talk as well. But I'd
[1:41] Speaker 1: like to argue that for an important kind of activity
[1:45] Speaker 1: doing two things at once, or three or even four
[1:48] Speaker 1: is exactly what we should be aiming for. Look no
[1:52] Speaker 1: further than Albert Einstein. In nineteen o five he published
[1:55] Speaker 1: four remarkable scientific papers. One of them was on Brownian motion.
[2:00] Speaker 1: It provided empirical evidence that atoms exist, and it laid
[2:04] Speaker 1: out the basic mathematics behind most of financial economics. Another
[2:08] Speaker 1: one was on the theory of special relativity. Another one
[2:12] Speaker 1: was on the photoelectric effect. That's why solar panels work.
[2:15] Speaker 1: It's a nice one. Gave him the Nobel Prize from
[2:18] Speaker 1: that one. And the fourth introduced an equation you might
[2:21] Speaker 1: have heard of e equals mc squared. So tell me
[2:25] Speaker 1: again how you shouldn't do several things at once. Now,
[2:29] Speaker 1: obviously working simultaneously on Brownian motion, special relativity, and the
[2:34] Speaker 1: photoelectric effect, it's not exactly the same kind of multitasking
[2:38] Speaker 1: as snapchatting while you're watching Westworld are very different. And Einstein, well,
[2:44] Speaker 1: Einstein's He's Einstein's one of a kind, is unique. But
[2:48] Speaker 1: the pattern of behavior that Einstein was demonstrating, that's not
[2:52] Speaker 1: unique at all. It's very common among highly creative people,
[2:57] Speaker 1: both artists and scientists. And i'd like to give it
[3:01] Speaker 1: a name, slow motion multitasking. Slow motion multitasking feels like
[3:08] Speaker 1: a counter into wative idea. What I'm describing here is
[3:12] Speaker 1: having multiple projects on the go at the same time,
[3:15] Speaker 1: and you move backwards and forwards between topics as the
[3:18] Speaker 1: mood takes you, or as the situation demands. But the
[3:22] Speaker 1: reason it seems counterintuitive is because we're used to lapsing
[3:26] Speaker 1: into multitasking out of desperation. We're in a hurry, we
[3:29] Speaker 1: want to do everything at once. If we were willing
[3:33] Speaker 1: to slow multitasking down, we might find that it works
[3:38] Speaker 1: quite brilliantly. Sixty years ago, a young psychologist by the
[3:44] Speaker 1: name of Bernice Aegison began a long research project into
[3:48] Speaker 1: the personalities and the working habits of forty leading scientists.
[3:54] Speaker 1: Einstein was already dead, but four of her subjects won
[3:57] Speaker 1: Nobel Prizes, including Linus Pauling and Richard Feynman. The research
[4:02] Speaker 1: went on for decades. In fact, it continued even after
[4:05] Speaker 1: Professor Aegison herself had died, and one of the question
[4:09] Speaker 1: that it answered was, how is it that some scientists
[4:13] Speaker 1: are able to go on producing important work right through
[4:17] Speaker 1: their lives? What is it about these people? Is it
[4:21] Speaker 1: their personality, is their skill set, their daily routines? Oh well,
[4:28] Speaker 1: the pattern that emerged was clear, and I think to
[4:31] Speaker 1: some people surprising. The top scientists kept changing the subject.
[4:39] Speaker 1: They would shift topics repeatedly during their first hundred published
[4:44] Speaker 1: research papers. Do you want to guess how often? Three times,
[4:49] Speaker 1: five times? No? On average, the most enduringly creative scientists
[4:56] Speaker 1: switched topics forty three times in their first hundred research papers.
[5:03] Speaker 1: Seems that the secret to creativity is multitasking in slow motion.
[5:11] Speaker 1: Her Agison's research suggests we need to reclaim multitasking and
[5:15] Speaker 1: remind ourselves how powerful it can be. And she's not
[5:18] Speaker 1: the only person to have found this. Different researchers using
[5:21] Speaker 1: different methods to study different highly creative people have found
[5:25] Speaker 1: that very often they have multiple projects in progress at
[5:29] Speaker 1: the same time, and they're also far more likely than
[5:31] Speaker 1: most of us to have serious hobbies. Slow motion multitasking
[5:36] Speaker 1: among creative people is ubiquitous. So why? I think There
[5:43] Speaker 1: were three reasons? And the first is the simplest. Creativity
[5:47] Speaker 1: often comes when you take an idea from its original
[5:50] Speaker 1: context and you move it somewhere else. It's easier to
[5:53] Speaker 1: think outside the box. If you spend your time clambering
[5:55] Speaker 1: from one box into another. For an example of this,
[6:00] Speaker 1: consider the original Eureka moment. Archimedes. He's wrestling with a
[6:06] Speaker 1: difficult problem and he realizes in a flash he can
[6:10] Speaker 1: solve it using the displacement of water. And if you
[6:14] Speaker 1: believe the story, this idea comes to him as he's
[6:18] Speaker 1: taking a bath, lowering himself in and he's watching the
[6:21] Speaker 1: water level rise and fall. And if solving a problem
[6:26] Speaker 1: while having a bath isn't multitasking, I don't know what is.
[6:32] Speaker 1: The second reason that multitasking can work is that learning
[6:35] Speaker 1: to do one thing well can often help you do
[6:38] Speaker 1: something else. Any athlete can tell you about the benefits
[6:42] Speaker 1: of cross training, but it's possible to cross train your
[6:44] Speaker 1: mind too. A few years ago, researchers took eighteen randomly
[6:50] Speaker 1: chosen medical students and they enrolled them in a course
[6:54] Speaker 1: at the Philadelphia Museum of Art where they learned to
[6:58] Speaker 1: criticize and analyze works of visual art. And at the
[7:02] Speaker 1: end of the course, these students were compared with the
[7:05] Speaker 1: control group of their fellow medical students, and the ones
[7:09] Speaker 1: who had taken the art course had become substantially better
[7:13] Speaker 1: at performing tasks such as diagnosing diseases of the eye
[7:17] Speaker 1: by analyzing photographs that become better eye doctors. So if
[7:23] Speaker 1: we want to become better what we do, maybe we
[7:25] Speaker 1: should spend some time doing something else, even if the
[7:28] Speaker 1: two fields appear to be as completely distinct as ophthalmology
[7:33] Speaker 1: and the history of art. And if you'd like an
[7:36] Speaker 1: example of this, should we go for a less intimidating
[7:40] Speaker 1: example in Einstein? Okay? Michael Crichton, creator of Jurassic Park
[7:45] Speaker 1: and er so in the nineteen seventies. He originally trained
[7:49] Speaker 1: as a doctor, but then he wrote novels, and he
[7:53] Speaker 1: directed the original Westworld movie. But also, and this is
[7:57] Speaker 1: less well known, he also wrote nonfiction books about art,
[8:00] Speaker 1: about medicine, about computer programming. So in nineteen ninety five
[8:06] Speaker 1: he enjoyed the fruits of all this variety by penning
[8:10] Speaker 1: the world's most commercially successful book and the world's most
[8:16] Speaker 1: commercially successful TV series and the world's most commercially successful movie.
[8:23] Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety six, he did it all over again.
[8:28] Speaker 1: There's a third reason why slow motion multitasking can help
[8:33] Speaker 1: us solve problems. It can provide assistance when we're stuck.
[8:38] Speaker 1: This can happen in an instant. So imagine that feeling
[8:42] Speaker 1: of working on a crossword puzzle and you can't figure
[8:45] Speaker 1: out the answer, and the reason you can't it is
[8:47] Speaker 1: because the wrong answer is stuck in your head. It's
[8:50] Speaker 1: very easy just go and do something else, switch topics,
[8:54] Speaker 1: switch context. You'll forget the wrong answer and that gives
[8:57] Speaker 1: the right answer space to pop into the front of
[9:00] Speaker 1: your mind. But on the slower time scale that interests me,
[9:05] Speaker 1: being stuck is a much more serious thing. You you
[9:09] Speaker 1: get turned down for funding, the cell cultures, won't grow,
[9:13] Speaker 1: your rockets keep crashing, nobody wants to publish your fantasy
[9:17] Speaker 1: novel about a school for wizards. Or maybe you just
[9:22] Speaker 1: can't find a solution to the problem that you're working
[9:24] Speaker 1: on and being stuck like that, I mean stasis, stress,
[9:30] Speaker 1: possibly even depression. But if you have another exciting, challenging
[9:36] Speaker 1: project to work on, or being stuck on one, it's
[9:39] Speaker 1: just an opportunity to do something else, and we can
[9:42] Speaker 1: all get stuck sometimes, even Albert Einstein. Ten years after
[9:47] Speaker 1: the original miraculous year that I described, Einstein was putting
[9:52] Speaker 1: together the pieces of his theory of general relativity. His
[9:56] Speaker 1: greatest achievement and he was exhausted, and so he turns
[10:01] Speaker 1: to an easier problem. He proposed the stimulated emission of radiation, which,
[10:07] Speaker 1: as you may know, is the zer in laser. So
[10:12] Speaker 1: he's laying down the theoretical foundation for the laser beam.
[10:16] Speaker 1: And then while he's doing that, he moves back to
[10:19] Speaker 1: general relativity and he's refreshed. He sees what the theory implies,
[10:25] Speaker 1: that the universe isn't static, it's expanding. It's an idea,
[10:30] Speaker 1: so staggering Einstein can't bring himself to believe it for years. Look,
[10:37] Speaker 1: if you get stunt and you lay the ball, you
[10:41] Speaker 1: get the ball rolling on laser beams, you're in pretty
[10:45] Speaker 1: good shape. So that's the case for slow motion multitasking.
[10:52] Speaker 1: And I'm not promising that it's going to turn you
[10:54] Speaker 1: into Einstein. I'm not even promising it's going to turn
[10:56] Speaker 1: you into Michael Crichton. But it is a powerful way
[10:59] Speaker 1: to organize our creative lives. But there's a problem. How
[11:06] Speaker 1: do we stop all of these projects coming completely overwhelming?
[11:12] Speaker 1: How do we keep all these ideas straight in our minds. Well,
[11:16] Speaker 1: here's a simple solution, a practical solution from the great
[11:21] Speaker 1: American choreographer Twiler Tharp of the last few decades. She's
[11:26] Speaker 1: blurred boundaries, mixed genres, one prizes, danced to the music
[11:31] Speaker 1: of everybody from Philip Glass to Billy Joel. She's written
[11:35] Speaker 1: three books. I mean she's a slow motion multitasker. Of
[11:39] Speaker 1: course she is. She says, you have to be all things?
[11:45] Speaker 1: Why exclude you have to be everything? And Tharp's method
[11:53] Speaker 1: for preventing all of these different projects from becoming overwhelming
[11:57] Speaker 1: is a simple one. She gives each project a big
[12:00] Speaker 1: cardboard box, writes the name of the project on the
[12:03] Speaker 1: side of the box, and into it she tosses DVDs
[12:06] Speaker 1: and books, magazine cuttings, the programs, physical objects, really anything
[12:12] Speaker 1: that's provided a source of creative inspiration, and she writes
[12:17] Speaker 1: the box means I never have to worry about forgetting.
[12:22] Speaker 1: One of the biggest fears for a creative person is
[12:25] Speaker 1: that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn't
[12:29] Speaker 1: write it down and put it in a safe place.
[12:32] Speaker 1: I don't worry about that because I know where to
[12:36] Speaker 1: find it. It's all in the box. You can manage
[12:42] Speaker 1: many ideas like this, either in physical boxes or in
[12:46] Speaker 1: their digital equivalents. So I would like to urge you
[12:50] Speaker 1: to embrace the art of slow motion multitasking, not because
[12:54] Speaker 1: you're in a hurry, but because you're in no hurry
[12:58] Speaker 1: at all. And I want to give you one final example,
[13:03] Speaker 1: my favorite example, Charles Darwin, a man who's burning. Multitasking
[13:11] Speaker 1: is so staggering, and he's a diagram to explain it
[13:14] Speaker 1: all to you. We know what Darwin was doing at
[13:17] Speaker 1: different times because the creativity researchers Howard Rubert and Sarah
[13:21] Speaker 1: Davis have analyzed his diaries and his notebooks. So when
[13:25] Speaker 1: he left school age of eighteen, he was initially interested
[13:28] Speaker 1: in two fields, so it's zoology and geology. Pretty soon
[13:33] Speaker 1: he signed up to be the onboard naturalist on the Beagle.
[13:37] Speaker 1: This is the ship that eventually took five years to
[13:40] Speaker 1: sail all the way around the southern oceans of the Earth,
[13:44] Speaker 1: stopping at the Gallapicas passing through the Indian Ocean. While
[13:47] Speaker 1: he was on the Beagle, he began researching coral reefs.
[13:50] Speaker 1: This is a great synergy between his two interests in
[13:53] Speaker 1: zoology and geology, and it starts to get him sinking
[13:56] Speaker 1: about slow processes. But when he gets back from the voyage,
[14:03] Speaker 1: his interests start to expand even further psychology botany. For
[14:08] Speaker 1: the rest of his life he's moving backwards and forwards
[14:11] Speaker 1: between these different fields. He never quite abandons any of them.
[14:15] Speaker 1: In eighteen thirty seven he begins work on two very
[14:18] Speaker 1: interesting projects, one of them earthworms, the other a little
[14:24] Speaker 1: notebook which he titles the Transmutation of Species. Then Darwin
[14:30] Speaker 1: starts studying my field economics. He reads a book by
[14:37] Speaker 1: the economist Thomas Malthus, and he has his Eureka moment.
[14:42] Speaker 1: In a flash, he realizes how species could emerge and
[14:46] Speaker 1: evolve slowly through this process of the survival of the fittest.
[14:50] Speaker 1: It all comes to him. He writes it all down,
[14:53] Speaker 1: every single important element of the theory of evolution in
[14:57] Speaker 1: that notebook. But then a new project, his son Williams
[15:03] Speaker 1: born well as a natural experiment. Right there you get
[15:07] Speaker 1: to observe the element of a human infant. So immediately
[15:11] Speaker 1: Darwin starts making notes. Now, of course he's still working
[15:14] Speaker 1: on the theory of revolution and the development of the
[15:17] Speaker 1: human infant. But during all of this he realizes he
[15:21] Speaker 1: doesn't really know enough about taxonomy, so he starts studying that,
[15:26] Speaker 1: and in the end he spends eight years becoming the
[15:30] Speaker 1: world's leading expert on barnacles. Then Natural Selection, a book
[15:37] Speaker 1: that he's to continue working on for his entire life.
[15:40] Speaker 1: He never finishes it. Origin of Species is finally published
[15:45] Speaker 1: twenty years after Darwin said out all the basic elements.
[15:49] Speaker 1: Then that a center man controversial book. And then the
[15:53] Speaker 1: book about the development of the human infant, the one
[15:56] Speaker 1: that was inspired when he could see his son William
[16:00] Speaker 1: crawling on the sitting room floor in front of him.
[16:03] Speaker 1: When the book was published, William was thirty seven years old.
[16:08] Speaker 1: And all the time Darwin's working on earthworms. He fills
[16:14] Speaker 1: his billiard room with earthworms in pots with glass covers.
[16:19] Speaker 1: He shines lights on them to see if they'll respond.
[16:22] Speaker 1: He holds a hot poker next to them to see
[16:24] Speaker 1: if they move away. He too tobacco, and he blows
[16:28] Speaker 1: on the earthworms to see if they have a sense
[16:30] Speaker 1: of smell. He even plays the bassoon at the earthworms.
[16:35] Speaker 1: I like to think of this great man when he's tired,
[16:40] Speaker 1: he's stressed, he's anxious about the reception of his book,
[16:43] Speaker 1: The Descent of Man. You or I might log into
[16:47] Speaker 1: Facebook or turn on the television. Darwin would go into
[16:51] Speaker 1: the billiard room to relax by studying the earthworms intensely.
[16:58] Speaker 1: And that's why it's appropriate that one of his last
[17:01] Speaker 1: great works is The Formation of Vegetable Mold through the
[17:05] Speaker 1: Action of worms. He worked upon that book for forty
[17:12] Speaker 1: four years. We don't live in the nineteenth century anymore.
[17:18] Speaker 1: I don't think any of us could sit on our
[17:21] Speaker 1: creative or scientific projects for forty four years. But we
[17:26] Speaker 1: do have something to learn from the great slow motion multitaskers,
[17:30] Speaker 1: from Einstein and Darwin to Michael Crichton and Twilight Fop.
[17:36] Speaker 1: The modern world seems to present us with a choice.
[17:40] Speaker 1: If we're not going to fast twitch from browser window
[17:43] Speaker 1: to browser window, we have to live like a hermit,
[17:46] Speaker 1: focus on one thing to the exclusion of everything else.
[17:50] Speaker 1: I think that's a false dilemma. We can make multitasking
[17:54] Speaker 1: work for us, unleashing our natural creativity. We just need
[17:59] Speaker 1: to slow it down. So make a list of your projects,
[18:07] Speaker 1: put down your phone, pick up a couple of cardboard boxes,
[18:12] Speaker 1: and get to work. Thank you very much. H

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