Story
It was nine-thirty Sunday night. Caroline slung off her coat, stashed the music from a capella practice in a random desk drawer, and flopped down to start an English paper on Romeo and Juliet due next Friday. She pulled up the notes she’d made on her laptop last night and found they bore even less resemblance to an outline than she’d thought, but she gamely tried to craft an introduction.
The first sentence, a play on Mercutio’s famous curse, “A plague o’ both your houses,” and “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind,” unfolded promisingly, but she realized that a quick internet search was not going to yield a reliable source for the latter quotation. Supposedly it was often attributed to Gandhi, but the attribution was dubious at best? There was something similar in Fiddler on the Roof? She wondered if she could just say “of unknown origin, frequently misattributed to Gandhi,” and looked up the school’s plagiarism policy. But she could not concentrate, and with a sigh of relief, she went to play a game of Tetris to clear her mind, but one game turned into five, and five turned into many — just like last night.
Monday passed in a similar blur — postering at seven in the morning, two classes, followed by an afternoon stretching invitingly free. But the memories of her late-night battles lingered. She hesitated to start, convinced it would only lead to frustration.
At section on Tuesday, her teaching assistant asked the students how the paper was coming. She moaned, and described her writing process so far. He encouraged her to give it another shot — this time Wednesday morning. Caroline went to bed at ten that night, with a sigh of relief, and at nine the next morning she sat down to write with a clear head. She wrote three paragraphs in one hour, proving to herself that finding the right moment to attempt a task was the key.
Analysis
In his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” book, Stephen Covey writes about a circle of concern and circle of influence. Our circle of concern represents what we worry and ruminate about, while our circle of influence represents what we are actually capable of changing. Covey believes that we should try to match our concern to our influence: try to place our efforts toward the things we can actually change. Nexus State Theory recognizes that in some sense, our circle of influence is just ourself – as King Alaric found out, we must control ourselves first. And in another sense, our circle of influence is less than ourselves. We can’t always get ourselves to do just anything we want to do. The Effort Timing Strategy is about carefully selecting our circle of concern. It involves timing our effort to those moments when we can influence ourselves – usually when we are in a nexus state. This means matching our circle of concern to our circle of influence.
It’s important to understand the difference between those moments when we can influence ourselves (we are in a nexus state), those moments when we cannot influence ourselves (we are in a sink state), and those moments when we can influence ourselves with difficulty (we are in a partial sink state). When Caroline is stuck in a sink state, trying repeatedly to escape the state results in frustration. On the other hand, when she does her homework from a nexus state, she learns a more positive lesson. Sometimes it’s as simple as doing something during the day vs. doing it at night. Caroline may eventually be able to deal with the really hard sink states – but these might not be the best places to being her efforts at self-improvement.
When should Caroline make an effort to change herself or to enhance her self-control? Nexus State Theory argues that self-control effort pays off the most when Caroline is in a nexus state – it is then that she has the most influence over what she’ll do next. Thus, taking action during a nexus state creates a virtuous cycle, as it further confirms that effort will lead to net positive pleasure.
However, DHR stands for “Default Human Range” and different people are different. Some people experience their hunter gatherer self most strongly in the morning, some in the evening; some when playing music, some when discussing with others. There is no one prediction that always works – one has to experiment.
If Caroline only ever tries to extricate herself from the hardest types of sink states, she may feel frustrated and feel like giving up. Her circle of concern will not match her circle of influence. This is a form of learned helplessness, meaning that she expects effort not to be rewarded.
On the other hand, it can also be good for Caroline to be hopeful, determined, and optimistic that she may be in a nexus state. If Caroline only tries when she is sure to succeed, then that is also a form of helplessness. Finding this balance may not be easy.
Vocabulary
- Effort timing strategy: any strategy for focusing one’s effort where the effort is applied to the most important and/or most solvable problems first.
- Learned helplessness: this happens when someone tries and fails repeatedly, eventually concluding that they should give up.
Nexus State Theory 