Breadth vs Depth — Which Is Your Brain Conditioned To?
Learn how to mould these two concepts to your lifestyle.
I’ve always had quite a perfectionist attitude towards things. Whilst striving for the absolute best can be beneficial, it also has some major drawbacks. This trait demonstrates one of two polarising concepts: a lifestyle of depth and a lifestyle of breadth. You can probably figure out which being a perfectionist corresponds to.
It’s fascinating how understanding these two different approaches can change the ways you live your life. Having recently finished exams, I have learnt to anchor my mindset when studying away from excessive depth towards focussing on what really matters for me to accomplish my goals, which in this case was my exam grades.
No longer was I sweating over unnecessary details that didn’t really require any attention in the long run. This is one of many harmful consequences of pursuing too much depth. In short, I was sacrificing adequate breadth for unnecessary depth.
Depth and Its Consequences
‘Getting caught up in the small details’ is a perfect way of describing the lifestyle of emphasised depth. This often leads to a misjudgement of priorities.
This can become impactful in situations where a deadline is involved, whether in education or the workplace. Say, for instance, you are a games developer set with the task of polishing up a level by tomorrow morning at the latest. If you focus too much on depth, you may find that you have spent plentiful time tweaking the appearance of a particular object but in effect left little time to fix a critical bug.
Often depth disguises itself in that when we’re working on a project, we seldom realise how deep we are in tasks that may be unnecessary. One thing I’ve learnt is that whilst particular tasks may seem important in the moment, it is only in retrospect when we realise the irrelevance of such tasks in achieving the main goal.
This has parallels with procrastination, yet rather oddly is a type of procrastination where we are doing work. Here, getting distracted by unnecessary details becomes the obstacle to defeat.
Combating Depth
One of the best ways to prevent the illusion of importance that depth can provide is to consciously take a step back and view things from a wider lens. Ask yourself: ‘Is what I’m working on right now actually significant?’ You may find in such cases that there is something you could be doing that is more important and switch tasks accordingly.
In scenarios with a deadline, this needn’t be overused, however — you may find you’ll struggle to gain momentum in a task and never get going with it. The aim here is to ask yourself this once in a while to prevent you from becoming carried away, dismissing your list of priorities.
Breadth, Depth, and Wider Life
The concepts of breadth and depth are not solely for education and work-related scenarios; they can be applied to everyday situations too.
Considering a scenario we’ve all been in: needing to leave the house for a specific time. Whether an appointment, meetup with a friend or bus to catch, the heat of needing to leave on time sets up a game of ordering priorities.
There will be tasks that are crucial for you to do before leaving, such as ordering a bus ticket or packing essential items. But here again is where depth can become danger — failure to zoom out and view things from a wider perspective will often lead to an incorrect ordering of priorities. Especially if you’re in a rush, the stress that is carried along in such cases can blind you from doing what is crucial before setting off.
Of course, the digital world of push notifications and message alerts plays no helpful role in this — remember, some emails can be dealt with later.
Working Backwards
A useful exercise that combats disarranging priorities is the idea of working backwards. This involves flipping the timeline of events such that you consider end goals at an earlier stage.
As a music student, one way I incorporated the working backwards approach was through a composition assignment. As the deadline grew close, I was working very deeply refining and tweaking the composition but importantly, I remembered to take a step back and double-check the specific details of what we needed to submit (i.e. the ‘end goal’.) To my surprise, there were some details that I had missed or forgotten about such as adding a cover page and including the duration of the piece. At this moment, my priorities shifted immediately.
When placing end goals at the forefront of your mind, the brain automatically skips unessential details.
This works perfectly with the leaving the house scenario. A small hack I use here is, when I’m not quite ready, pretending to leave the house. This urgently puts my brain into high-alert mode as my mind is drawn to those critical things to be done before leaving.
Tailoring Breadth and Depth
Do you ever find yourself getting carried away with something late at night? Whether it’s a deep conversation or creative work session, science is beginning to how the evolutionary structure of our brains contributes to these in-depth late-night attitudes.
The morning is the time where our problem-solving and decision-making skills are at their sharpest. Thus, this is probably a good time to incorporate breadth into your day. Perhaps it’s a larger task or project with several subtasks. But nobody wants to fly through a list of tasks in the afternoon hours nor after a big evening meal.
Nighttime however is where different regions of the brain are activated as the logical parts of the brain begin to wear out. This explains those timeless conversations and may be the best point to bring depth into your schedule. Focussing on one set task is perhaps the best approach here; you can allow your brain to become naturally immersed in whatever you are doing.
Learning to recognise and apply these two concepts can significantly improve how you work, think and create. Become observant next time you’re in a creative workflow and see how tailoring these approaches to your lifestyle creates better results.
