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Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello Tim Harford here. Today we're sharing something I'm

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Speaker 1: very excited about my third TED Talk. It's about what

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Speaker 1: we can learn from some of the most enduringly creative people.

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Speaker 1: They do something very interesting, something I call slow motion multitasking.

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Speaker 1: I mean that they actively juggle multiple projects and move

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Speaker 1: between topics as the mood strikes. By cross training their minds.

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Speaker 1: Innovators such as Einstein, Darwin, Twiler, Tharpe, and Michael Crichton

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Speaker 1: discovered their inspiration. If you like it, you can hear

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Speaker 1: my other TED talks, along with talks from much smarter,

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Speaker 1: more charismatic, and more original people than me on the

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Speaker 1: Ted Talks Daily podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. To

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Speaker 1: do two things that wants is to do neither. It's

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Speaker 1: a great SmackDown of multitasking, Isn't It Often attributed to

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Speaker 1: the Roman writer Publilius Syrus, Although you know how these

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Speaker 1: things are, he probably never said it what I'm interested in, though,

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Speaker 1: Is it true? I mean, it's obviously true for emailing

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Speaker 1: at the dinner table, or texting while driving, or possibly

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Speaker 1: for live tweeting a TED talk as well. But I'd

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Speaker 1: like to argue that for an important kind of activity

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Speaker 1: doing two things at once, or three or even four

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Speaker 1: is exactly what we should be aiming for. Look no

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Speaker 1: further than Albert Einstein. In nineteen o five he published

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Speaker 1: four remarkable scientific papers. One of them was on Brownian motion.

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Speaker 1: It provided empirical evidence that atoms exist, and it laid

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Speaker 1: out the basic mathematics behind most of financial economics. Another

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Speaker 1: one was on the theory of special relativity. Another one

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Speaker 1: was on the photoelectric effect. That's why solar panels work.

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Speaker 1: It's a nice one. Gave him the Nobel Prize from

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Speaker 1: that one. And the fourth introduced an equation you might

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Speaker 1: have heard of e equals mc squared. So tell me

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Speaker 1: again how you shouldn't do several things at once. Now,

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Speaker 1: obviously working simultaneously on Brownian motion, special relativity, and the

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Speaker 1: photoelectric effect, it's not exactly the same kind of multitasking

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Speaker 1: as snapchatting while you're watching Westworld are very different. And Einstein, well,

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Speaker 1: Einstein's He's Einstein's one of a kind, is unique. But

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Speaker 1: the pattern of behavior that Einstein was demonstrating, that's not

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Speaker 1: unique at all. It's very common among highly creative people,

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Speaker 1: both artists and scientists. And i'd like to give it

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Speaker 1: a name, slow motion multitasking. Slow motion multitasking feels like

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Speaker 1: a counter into wative idea. What I'm describing here is

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Speaker 1: having multiple projects on the go at the same time,

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Speaker 1: and you move backwards and forwards between topics as the

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Speaker 1: mood takes you, or as the situation demands. But the

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Speaker 1: reason it seems counterintuitive is because we're used to lapsing

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Speaker 1: into multitasking out of desperation. We're in a hurry, we

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Speaker 1: want to do everything at once. If we were willing

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Speaker 1: to slow multitasking down, we might find that it works

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Speaker 1: quite brilliantly. Sixty years ago, a young psychologist by the

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Speaker 1: name of Bernice Aegison began a long research project into

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Speaker 1: the personalities and the working habits of forty leading scientists.

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Speaker 1: Einstein was already dead, but four of her subjects won

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Speaker 1: Nobel Prizes, including Linus Pauling and Richard Feynman. The research

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Speaker 1: went on for decades. In fact, it continued even after

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Speaker 1: Professor Aegison herself had died, and one of the question

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Speaker 1: that it answered was, how is it that some scientists

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Speaker 1: are able to go on producing important work right through

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Speaker 1: their lives? What is it about these people? Is it

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Speaker 1: their personality, is their skill set, their daily routines? Oh well,

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Speaker 1: the pattern that emerged was clear, and I think to

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Speaker 1: some people surprising. The top scientists kept changing the subject.

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Speaker 1: They would shift topics repeatedly during their first hundred published

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Speaker 1: research papers. Do you want to guess how often? Three times,

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Speaker 1: five times? No? On average, the most enduringly creative scientists

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Speaker 1: switched topics forty three times in their first hundred research papers.

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Speaker 1: Seems that the secret to creativity is multitasking in slow motion.

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Speaker 1: Her Agison's research suggests we need to reclaim multitasking and

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Speaker 1: remind ourselves how powerful it can be. And she's not

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Speaker 1: the only person to have found this. Different researchers using

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Speaker 1: different methods to study different highly creative people have found

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Speaker 1: that very often they have multiple projects in progress at

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Speaker 1: the same time, and they're also far more likely than

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Speaker 1: most of us to have serious hobbies. Slow motion multitasking

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Speaker 1: among creative people is ubiquitous. So why? I think There

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Speaker 1: were three reasons? And the first is the simplest. Creativity

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Speaker 1: often comes when you take an idea from its original

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Speaker 1: context and you move it somewhere else. It's easier to

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Speaker 1: think outside the box. If you spend your time clambering

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Speaker 1: from one box into another. For an example of this,

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Speaker 1: consider the original Eureka moment. Archimedes. He's wrestling with a

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Speaker 1: difficult problem and he realizes in a flash he can

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Speaker 1: solve it using the displacement of water. And if you

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Speaker 1: believe the story, this idea comes to him as he's

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Speaker 1: taking a bath, lowering himself in and he's watching the

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Speaker 1: water level rise and fall. And if solving a problem

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Speaker 1: while having a bath isn't multitasking, I don't know what is.

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Speaker 1: The second reason that multitasking can work is that learning

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Speaker 1: to do one thing well can often help you do

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Speaker 1: something else. Any athlete can tell you about the benefits

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Speaker 1: of cross training, but it's possible to cross train your

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Speaker 1: mind too. A few years ago, researchers took eighteen randomly

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Speaker 1: chosen medical students and they enrolled them in a course

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Speaker 1: at the Philadelphia Museum of Art where they learned to

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Speaker 1: criticize and analyze works of visual art. And at the

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Speaker 1: end of the course, these students were compared with the

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Speaker 1: control group of their fellow medical students, and the ones

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Speaker 1: who had taken the art course had become substantially better

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Speaker 1: at performing tasks such as diagnosing diseases of the eye

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Speaker 1: by analyzing photographs that become better eye doctors. So if

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Speaker 1: we want to become better what we do, maybe we

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Speaker 1: should spend some time doing something else, even if the

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Speaker 1: two fields appear to be as completely distinct as ophthalmology

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Speaker 1: and the history of art. And if you'd like an

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Speaker 1: example of this, should we go for a less intimidating

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Speaker 1: example in Einstein? Okay? Michael Crichton, creator of Jurassic Park

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Speaker 1: and er so in the nineteen seventies. He originally trained

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Speaker 1: as a doctor, but then he wrote novels, and he

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Speaker 1: directed the original Westworld movie. But also, and this is

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Speaker 1: less well known, he also wrote nonfiction books about art,

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Speaker 1: about medicine, about computer programming. So in nineteen ninety five

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Speaker 1: he enjoyed the fruits of all this variety by penning

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Speaker 1: the world's most commercially successful book and the world's most

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Speaker 1: commercially successful TV series and the world's most commercially successful movie.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety six, he did it all over again.

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Speaker 1: There's a third reason why slow motion multitasking can help

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Speaker 1: us solve problems. It can provide assistance when we're stuck.

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Speaker 1: This can happen in an instant. So imagine that feeling

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Speaker 1: of working on a crossword puzzle and you can't figure

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Speaker 1: out the answer, and the reason you can't it is

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Speaker 1: because the wrong answer is stuck in your head. It's

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Speaker 1: very easy just go and do something else, switch topics,

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Speaker 1: switch context. You'll forget the wrong answer and that gives

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Speaker 1: the right answer space to pop into the front of

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Speaker 1: your mind. But on the slower time scale that interests me,

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Speaker 1: being stuck is a much more serious thing. You you

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Speaker 1: get turned down for funding, the cell cultures, won't grow,

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Speaker 1: your rockets keep crashing, nobody wants to publish your fantasy

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Speaker 1: novel about a school for wizards. Or maybe you just

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Speaker 1: can't find a solution to the problem that you're working

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Speaker 1: on and being stuck like that, I mean stasis, stress,

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Speaker 1: possibly even depression. But if you have another exciting, challenging

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Speaker 1: project to work on, or being stuck on one, it's

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Speaker 1: just an opportunity to do something else, and we can

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Speaker 1: all get stuck sometimes, even Albert Einstein. Ten years after

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Speaker 1: the original miraculous year that I described, Einstein was putting

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Speaker 1: together the pieces of his theory of general relativity. His

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Speaker 1: greatest achievement and he was exhausted, and so he turns

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Speaker 1: to an easier problem. He proposed the stimulated emission of radiation, which,

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Speaker 1: as you may know, is the zer in laser. So

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Speaker 1: he's laying down the theoretical foundation for the laser beam.

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Speaker 1: And then while he's doing that, he moves back to

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Speaker 1: general relativity and he's refreshed. He sees what the theory implies,

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Speaker 1: that the universe isn't static, it's expanding. It's an idea,

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Speaker 1: so staggering Einstein can't bring himself to believe it for years. Look,

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Speaker 1: if you get stunt and you lay the ball, you

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Speaker 1: get the ball rolling on laser beams, you're in pretty

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Speaker 1: good shape. So that's the case for slow motion multitasking.

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Speaker 1: And I'm not promising that it's going to turn you

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Speaker 1: into Einstein. I'm not even promising it's going to turn

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Speaker 1: you into Michael Crichton. But it is a powerful way

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Speaker 1: to organize our creative lives. But there's a problem. How

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Speaker 1: do we stop all of these projects coming completely overwhelming?

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Speaker 1: How do we keep all these ideas straight in our minds. Well,

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Speaker 1: here's a simple solution, a practical solution from the great

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Speaker 1: American choreographer Twiler Tharp of the last few decades. She's

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Speaker 1: blurred boundaries, mixed genres, one prizes, danced to the music

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Speaker 1: of everybody from Philip Glass to Billy Joel. She's written

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Speaker 1: three books. I mean she's a slow motion multitasker. Of

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Speaker 1: course she is. She says, you have to be all things?

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Speaker 1: Why exclude you have to be everything? And Tharp's method

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Speaker 1: for preventing all of these different projects from becoming overwhelming

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Speaker 1: is a simple one. She gives each project a big

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Speaker 1: cardboard box, writes the name of the project on the

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Speaker 1: side of the box, and into it she tosses DVDs

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Speaker 1: and books, magazine cuttings, the programs, physical objects, really anything

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Speaker 1: that's provided a source of creative inspiration, and she writes

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Speaker 1: the box means I never have to worry about forgetting.

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Speaker 1: One of the biggest fears for a creative person is

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Speaker 1: that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn't

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Speaker 1: write it down and put it in a safe place.

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Speaker 1: I don't worry about that because I know where to

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Speaker 1: find it. It's all in the box. You can manage

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Speaker 1: many ideas like this, either in physical boxes or in

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Speaker 1: their digital equivalents. So I would like to urge you

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Speaker 1: to embrace the art of slow motion multitasking, not because

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Speaker 1: you're in a hurry, but because you're in no hurry

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Speaker 1: at all. And I want to give you one final example,

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Speaker 1: my favorite example, Charles Darwin, a man who's burning. Multitasking

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Speaker 1: is so staggering, and he's a diagram to explain it

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Speaker 1: all to you. We know what Darwin was doing at

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Speaker 1: different times because the creativity researchers Howard Rubert and Sarah

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Speaker 1: Davis have analyzed his diaries and his notebooks. So when

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Speaker 1: he left school age of eighteen, he was initially interested

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Speaker 1: in two fields, so it's zoology and geology. Pretty soon

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Speaker 1: he signed up to be the onboard naturalist on the Beagle.

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Speaker 1: This is the ship that eventually took five years to

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Speaker 1: sail all the way around the southern oceans of the Earth,

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Speaker 1: stopping at the Gallapicas passing through the Indian Ocean. While

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Speaker 1: he was on the Beagle, he began researching coral reefs.

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Speaker 1: This is a great synergy between his two interests in

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Speaker 1: zoology and geology, and it starts to get him sinking

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Speaker 1: about slow processes. But when he gets back from the voyage,

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Speaker 1: his interests start to expand even further psychology botany. For

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Speaker 1: the rest of his life he's moving backwards and forwards

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Speaker 1: between these different fields. He never quite abandons any of them.

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Speaker 1: In eighteen thirty seven he begins work on two very

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Speaker 1: interesting projects, one of them earthworms, the other a little

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Speaker 1: notebook which he titles the Transmutation of Species. Then Darwin

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Speaker 1: starts studying my field economics. He reads a book by

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Speaker 1: the economist Thomas Malthus, and he has his Eureka moment.

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Speaker 1: In a flash, he realizes how species could emerge and

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Speaker 1: evolve slowly through this process of the survival of the fittest.

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Speaker 1: It all comes to him. He writes it all down,

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Speaker 1: every single important element of the theory of evolution in

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Speaker 1: that notebook. But then a new project, his son Williams

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Speaker 1: born well as a natural experiment. Right there you get

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Speaker 1: to observe the element of a human infant. So immediately

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Speaker 1: Darwin starts making notes. Now, of course he's still working

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Speaker 1: on the theory of revolution and the development of the

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Speaker 1: human infant. But during all of this he realizes he

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Speaker 1: doesn't really know enough about taxonomy, so he starts studying that,

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Speaker 1: and in the end he spends eight years becoming the

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Speaker 1: world's leading expert on barnacles. Then Natural Selection, a book

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Speaker 1: that he's to continue working on for his entire life.

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Speaker 1: He never finishes it. Origin of Species is finally published

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Speaker 1: twenty years after Darwin said out all the basic elements.

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Speaker 1: Then that a center man controversial book. And then the

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Speaker 1: book about the development of the human infant, the one

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Speaker 1: that was inspired when he could see his son William

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Speaker 1: crawling on the sitting room floor in front of him.

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Speaker 1: When the book was published, William was thirty seven years old.

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Speaker 1: And all the time Darwin's working on earthworms. He fills

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Speaker 1: his billiard room with earthworms in pots with glass covers.

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Speaker 1: He shines lights on them to see if they'll respond.

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Speaker 1: He holds a hot poker next to them to see

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Speaker 1: if they move away. He too tobacco, and he blows

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Speaker 1: on the earthworms to see if they have a sense

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Speaker 1: of smell. He even plays the bassoon at the earthworms.

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Speaker 1: I like to think of this great man when he's tired,

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Speaker 1: he's stressed, he's anxious about the reception of his book,

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Speaker 1: The Descent of Man. You or I might log into

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Speaker 1: Facebook or turn on the television. Darwin would go into

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Speaker 1: the billiard room to relax by studying the earthworms intensely.

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Speaker 1: And that's why it's appropriate that one of his last

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Speaker 1: great works is The Formation of Vegetable Mold through the

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Speaker 1: Action of worms. He worked upon that book for forty

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Speaker 1: four years. We don't live in the nineteenth century anymore.

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Speaker 1: I don't think any of us could sit on our

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Speaker 1: creative or scientific projects for forty four years. But we

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Speaker 1: do have something to learn from the great slow motion multitaskers,

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Speaker 1: from Einstein and Darwin to Michael Crichton and Twilight Fop.

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Speaker 1: The modern world seems to present us with a choice.

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Speaker 1: If we're not going to fast twitch from browser window

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Speaker 1: to browser window, we have to live like a hermit,

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Speaker 1: focus on one thing to the exclusion of everything else.

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Speaker 1: I think that's a false dilemma. We can make multitasking

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Speaker 1: work for us, unleashing our natural creativity. We just need

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Speaker 1: to slow it down. So make a list of your projects,

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Speaker 1: put down your phone, pick up a couple of cardboard boxes,

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Speaker 1: and get to work. Thank you very much. H