People who perform tasks known to provoke anxiety are obliged to deal effectively with that anxiety if they want to perform that task well. Dancers, singers, actors, and other performers have to deal with performance anxiety. People who must fly for a living—including pilots and flight crews—have to deal with their fear of flying if that fear afflicts them. And people who think for a living or who regularly employ their brain must deal with the real, undeniable, and often severe anxiety of thinking.
Even if we are essentially equal to a given thinking task and even if there is no disturbing smart gap to contend with, smart people will still have to deal with thinking anxiety—that is, with the anxiety that arises in us as we try to think. Just imagine getting caught in an elevator trapped between floors. Thinking often feels exactly like that. Trapped in the confined space of our own brain with a test question, a work-related issue, a personal problem, a research challenge, or an artistic conundrum that's pressuring us into an answer, our anxiety mounts.
Every manner of thinking, from calculating to imagining to predicting, produces a certain amount of natural anxiety that might be handled relatively easily once we acquire some simple anxiety management techniques to deal with it. Our usual way, however, is to not see the anxiety coming and to have no good plan for dealing with it, to be surprised anew each time, and to employ one of the following seven unfortunate anxiety reduction methods. Therefore, smart people, who have to deal with this anxiety more than the next person, need to be especially alert about moderating their use of, or not employing, the following common but unfortunate tactics.
To avoid the anxiety that we half-know is coming, we do not go near thinking, we veer off in another direction as we approach a thinking task, we begin to think and almost immediately get up and do something else, or we stay put but send our mind somewhere, somewhere easier on the system. Very often, we just shy away from thinking altogether. Like the person who is afraid of flying and steers clear of airports, a person made anxious by thinking may simply steer clear of it.
Maybe we manage to begin to think but experience the anxiety mount as the answer to the test question or the direction to take with our research continues to elude us. At some point, we stop thinking about the problem itself and only notice our distress and our desire to end the distress. Our mental confusion caused by the anxiety worsens, we are less able to think than when we first sat down, and we know it. Maybe we jump up; maybe we distract ourselves and forgive ourselves with thoughts like: I can do this tomorrow, or I need to do more research, or Nobody gets every question right. Maybe we stay put, tortured and not thinking at all, until our workday ends or the test examiner tells us to put our pen down.
How rarely do we actually make it to the end of a chain of thought in good order? We flee before we start thinking, we flee it as soon as we start thinking, we flee some tortured minutes or quarter-hours into the thinking, we flee via fantasy, we flee via distraction, or we check our email or play “just one” game of computer solitaire—we find fifty ways to leave our anxiety. Perhaps worst of all, we may talk ourselves right out of our belief in the project we've been tackling. To ease the anxiety that comes with thinking, we announce that the novel we're writing isn't working or that our scientific theory doesn't hold water. We drain meaning right out of the enterprise so then we can leave—righteously but despairingly.
In order to make ourselves stay put as thinking anxiety wells up in us, we scratch at our head, maybe until it bleeds, we bite our fingernails, maybe until they are bitten down, we keep a Scotch bottle handy, or in some other way soothe ourselves as we struggle to think.
Picture a canal filled with rushing water. You are in charge of this water but not in control of it. It is your precious charge, but you can't control how fast it rushes through the canal and, unless you take measures, you are threatened with losing some portion of this precious water sloshing up over banks. This is important, tension-producing, and even exhausting work, and while you are engaged in this momentous struggle, you may not notice that you've been clenching your jaw, chain-smoking cigarettes, or scratching your head raw.
This image of a canal filled with turbulently rushing water may help you better understand the phenomenon of canalization of energy—that is, the efforts we make and the habits we adopt to keep our thoughts on track and in the canal as they rush along. Many of these tactics produce no large negative consequences—our finger-tapping may do little more than annoy our neighbors in the café. But if your method is smoking cigarettes, you risk lung cancer. If your method is scratching at your scalp, you risk bleeding sores. If your method is clenching your jaw, you risk jaw injury.
How difficult will it be to quit smoking if you are using smoking to canalize energy and reduce anxiety as you think? It is one thing to deal with the addictive power of nicotine and another, maybe even harder task, to try to quit when smoking has become your number-one anxiety management technique. And what if your repertoire of canalizing techniques includes cigarettes, alcohol, and another drug or two? Can you see a poly-addictive problem looming on the horizon?
We may have a certain novel in mind that we want to write. We sit down to begin it, anxiety quickly wells up in us, and we decide to write a blog post instead. Writing the blog post allows us to congratulate ourselves on having gotten something done—but inevitably those congratulations will be mixed with feelings of disappointment and chagrin since we know exactly what our real intention was when we sat down.
A given architect may dream of really thinking about his next steps as an architect but feel anxious each time he entertains the thought only to discover that he has spent two decades profitably but boringly engaged with remodels. Each day he goes through the motions, working hard, solving countless practical and tactical challenges, making money, feeding his family, and taking care of his obligations. No one could fault this picture—except, as is so often the case, the architect himself, who wanted more from a life in architecture and who recognizes that some large thinking about architecture never occurred just because of anxiety.
Small may be beautiful, but it is less beautiful if we meant to do something larger and especially if we know that it is only the larger projects and the larger challenges that provoke in us the psychological experience of meaning. In that case, small is not beautiful but an incipient meaning crisis. Thinking anxiety can cause what at first glance seems like an unthinkable outcome: preventing us from experiencing life as meaningful. If we meant to work large but we shrink from that task because of anxiety and work small, we may find the consequences of that self-soothing maneuver dramatically negative.
It is much easier on the brain for it to be asked to repeat a memorized message than to think. Most people who regularly communicate with others do not think on their feet, as that is hard and anxiety-provoking work, but instead craft a message and then repeat it. Those repeated messages are woven into their stump speech or become the tapes that they run. We sound more intelligent and more confident and do a better job of staying on point when we just repeat our messages.
When our boss stands up, he speaks automatically. When the principal at our daughter's school stands up, she speaks automatically. When an author is interviewed about his latest book, he speaks automatically. Indeed, this is expected and demanded, since folks who are engaged in public performance have almost zero permission to gather their thoughts, take their time, and think on their feet. Our modern world has eliminated pauses.
It is natural that we will do the same sort of thing internally to reduce or eliminate the experience of thinking anxiety. Instead of actually thinking, we run a tape, tell ourselves a story, dredge up an old thought, return to a comfy place in our mind, and play it safe. Folks run their tapes in public, and they also run their tapes internally. They will find ways of rationalizing why they seem not to be having any good new ideas and may even create a rationale for the benefits of avoiding good new ideas. That rationale then becomes the tape they run, further soothing them.
As soon as thinking anxiety begins to mount, a smart person—someone who naturally loves story, metaphor, narrative, and fantasy—may, for example, stop working on his novel and instead fantasize about winning the Nobel Prize. He purposefully lets his mind wander and fantasize success, conquests, revenge, or anything else that might prove soothing and distracting. Some of the time, the daydreaming quality of the thinking person is a state of working reverie in which his mind wanders in the service of his thinking tasks; more often it is simple, soothing daydreaming.
Because the brain of a smart person is so agile with narrative, it can spin itself lovely fantasies all day long, winning a battle with ferocious creatures in the morning, winning at love at midday, and winning a Pulitzer in the evening. Good brains regularly do this. But fantasizing doesn't get diseases cured, novels written, children bathed, or homes built. Those vicarious exploits are not real exploits, and in the end, a person fails to make himself proud by succeeding only in his daydreams.
In the language of natural psychology, you garner the psychological experience of meaning—and make yourself proud in the bargain—by making value-based meaning investments and actively seizing meaning opportunities that present themselves, not by spinning fairy tales. Overindulging in fantasy is a regular risk for people endowed with the ability to create beautiful narrative who know that if they were to stop fantasizing and turn to their thinking work, along would come anxiety.
There are countless prethinking activities—from researching to list making to brainstorming to brain quieting to informational interviewing to workshop attending to file organizing—that may serve our thinking needs but may also be dodges that we use to avoid our actual thinking tasks and their attendant anxiety. Often these are variations on the theme of “I can't begin until I am absolutely ready.” Is a person who says that a lot typically ever ready?
It is absolutely the case that we may not be able to solve the problem in theoretical physics that we've undertaken to solve unless we attend a certain conference where we stumble upon a missing piece of the puzzle or read a journal article that provokes an insight that leads us to a solution. But it is also the case that if we are not actually working on our problem, if we are only saying that we are working on it when in fact we rarely think about it, then it is altogether likely that we will sit in on that lecture or read that journal article and gain nothing.
The activities meant to help our thinking only help our thinking if we are thinking. If, because thinking makes us so anxious that we secretly avoid it, we engage in potentially useful activities only for the sake of making a good appearance, maintaining our identity, and soothing our nerves, those activities are unlikely to prove particularly useful. In a corner of awareness, we probably know exactly the game we are playing—which further distresses us and disappoints us.
Thinking is a process that, like all genuine processes, comes with unavoidable mistakes and unpleasant messes. Because these mistakes and messes are quite real and produce negative consequences—like sending our novel off in the wrong direction and taking two years to recover from our misadventure—the thinking process naturally produces pain. Who wouldn't want to circumvent or skip all that?
It is part of the process of thinking to add two plus two plus two plus two and, because we are tired, distracted, or momentarily dumb, get ten, which error perhaps only causes us to misunderstand how many people are showing up for dinner and buy a little too much salmon or which error causes us to incorrectly set our sights and fire on our own troops. Thinking is a process that comes with errors. That very thought provokes anxiety! To repeat, who wouldn't want to circumvent or skip all that?
But you can't. Thinking is that sort of process. You will be led down false paths and drawn along by false scents. Your best guesses will sometimes prove completely in error. The facts at your disposal may be wrong. You may have a good hour and undo that good thinking with a bad minute. That is what is. We may wish that it were different, we may find ourselves attracted to seminars called things like “The Ten Tricks for Mistake-Free Thinking” or “The Secret to Perfect Thinking,” but what we are actually doing is avoiding the process, avoiding the anxiety, and avoiding doing the thinking.
John, a biological researcher, explained:
I use all these methods! I had no idea I was doing any such thing until I encountered this list. I had no idea that my cigarette smoking, my procrastinating, my fantasizing, my reading yet another journal article, and my opting for a tiny corner of my field when in fact my heart is interested in much larger questions are all connected at this base level as ways to avoid the anxiety of thinking or to deal with it when it commences. Now I see exactly how they connect! I have to face the fact that aiming my brain at a difficult research question and tackling that question is going to make me anxious—period. I have to embrace that truth . . . and deal with it!
Imagine that you run marathons. That is a hard thing in and of itself, yet most marathoners stick it out and manage to cross the finish line. The essential hardness of the enterprise doesn't prevent them from completing their task. But imagine that running a marathon was more like thinking. Now you would face the added challenges of not being certain which turn to take, not understanding the route markings, not being able to see the road in the intermittent fog—and, as a result of these new difficulties, growing anxious. This makes for a much harder marathon! At some point, these added difficulties might even make you throw in the towel.
Thinking is like running a marathon in a thick fog with our anxiety mounting. One of our jobs, if we are to cross the finish line, is to deal effectively with that mounting anxiety. We do this by actually learning how to effectively manage anxiety. There are scores of techniques to try—breathing techniques, cognitive techniques, relaxation techniques, stress discharge techniques, reorienting techniques, disidentification and detachment techniques, and more—all of which amount to nothing if an anxious thinker won't try them. We'll return to this theme when, in a later chapter, we examine the smart practices you'll want to adopt to deal with the many challenges we've been discussing.