Jeffrey Davis - Tracking Wonder: Reclaiming a Life of Meaning and Possibility in a World Obsessed with Productivity

To Hillary, youve believed in this endeavor from the beginning.

To Dahlia and Alethea, youre my daily reminders of why I do what I do.

To Mom, you saw my young genius in all the ways it needed to be seen.

THE DAWN OF POSSIBILITY

TO EXPERIENCE WONDER IS our birthrightespecially in times of challenge and change. In a fleeting moment with rippling effects, wonder can transfix us with the elegant design of a coat hook or the massive wafer of a harvest moon. It can help us delight in a mathematical insight or the surprising eloquence of a six-year-old child. For wonder is the one human experience that dissolves our biases so we can see the beauty of ourselves, one another, and our world more clearly. Wonder cracks us open to the beauty of this one life amid rampant uncertainty. But how does it do soand what gets in our way with wonder?

Mornings can brim with possibility, afterall. Sunlight breaks the dark sky, your eyes open onto the ceiling, and you might wonder, What could I experience today? Maybe you imagine the ways your hours could unfold so that by night you felt youd had a meaningful adventure. Yet, maybe your mind simply starts fretting about that unanswered email from your colleague or your childs lost retainer that exhausted your budget.

I begin the first hours of almost every morning with both minds. One is a summer camper who relishes the idea of mornings because I equate them with open opportunity to make the most of the day. Ive been known to ask my family to join me in impromptu dance parties at breakfast, sometimes to their grumbling annoyance. As a result, even on a gray winters morn, the inner light of our family amps up a few watts. Yet I also have a nervous Piglet mind. Even before I get out of bed, tiny worries can hijack huge amounts of mental megabytes that threaten to fritter away my energy. To waste time with constant worry seems like a petty crime to me. Id rather expire at the end of a day with my pockets stuffed with wonder.

Wonder? Yes, even as a bespectacled, silver-haired man weighted down with responsibilities, I say wonder. Let me say this to you from the outset: Wonder is not simply for kids. Wonder is also radical grown-up stuff. Its for you, too.

Wonder is not simply for kids. Wonder is also radical grown-up stuff.

This book begins with this simple premise: when we look at visionaries, artists, scientists, and inspirational figures, we see that some of them have indeed practiced the proverbial ten thousand hours or demonstrated remarkable grit and focus in order to manifest their great work and fulfilled lives. But even more of them have a surprising advantage: theyve kept alive an abiding sense of wonder. We now have increasing scientific evidence that experiences of wonder play a big role in sparking innovation, motivating us, and allowing us to derive meaning from what we create and experience.

The good news is that we all have access to this capacity to wonder. We always have. We just forget. Tracking wonder is the approach I have developed and tested so you can learn again how to reclaim a life of meaning and possibility without burning out. For as you will discover and as this book argues, wonder offers a beautiful counterbeat to our cultures obsessive drumbeat of productivity.

Imagine wonder as a multifaceted prism through which you can see and experience your days anew. In this book, we explore six such facets of wonder. Track wonder through each of its facets and you can live more creatively, deepen your relationships, and navigate surprising challenges with more flexibility.

The science, stories, and invitations I share here allow you to sharpen your understanding of wonders dimensions and, if you choose, to apply them toward advancing an endeavor (personal, business, or otherwise) creatively.

Tracking wonder, then, is in part another form of paying attention. Maybe youve tried to app your way to happiness by downloading a dozen apps to help you meditate, measure your steps, and calculate your calories, all before 10:00 a.m. For some people, these methods are tremendously helpful. But many people are unsettled by messages of Crush it! Hack your productivity! and the incessant command to Get things done! If that sounds familiar, yet youre still looking to boost your creativity and find more fulfillment, you might benefit from experiencing wonders facets.

Or perhaps you have a steady meditation or mindfulness practice but find that it doesnt give you the clarity and agency youre craving. A dose of wonder could be the missing ingredient of your practice that helps you foster a wholly new relationship with your mind. Tracking wonder every day in fact could help you measure the real value and beauty in your life.

THE HEART OF LIVING CREATIVELY

If you ever doubt your own creative potential, youre not alone. Over two-thirds of Americans believe creativity is valuable to our world, and a solid 75 percent value their own creativity in addressing personal and professional challenges, yet only one in four believes they are living up to their own creative potential.

Part of the problem is we sometimes get creativity all wrong. We dont view ourselves as creative or as leading fulfilling creative lives because we misunderstand what creativity is. When we talk about creative here, I mean creative in the sense of how you handle the inevitable uncertainties, doubts, and challenges in your life. Creative is not something reserved only for artists. Creative refers to how you can bring your ideas to fruition. What if the surprising advantage to living a life rich with creative possibility, meaning, and mastery is something we all have access to? What if each of us could shape such a life, no matter our circumstances?

In this age, your ability to fulfill your creative potential has less to do with developing a single-track talent in a specific domain and more to do with how you finesse challenges in pursuit of your aims. And as well see, it turns out that tracking experiences of wonder is the ideal skill set to do so.

RIPPLES OF WONDER

Imagine an experience of wonder like a pebble dropped into the pond of your perception. These moments, often quiet and fleeting, make ripples that expand and linger. Attend to enough of these rippling moments over time and your overall outlook just might shift for the better. What are some of those rippling effects?

Wonder is what can nudge your most meaningful ideas toward fulfillment even amid inevitable challenges: a computer crash, the toddler tantrum, or your own mental fatigue. Wonder, as we will see, also can provide the perspective to push through difficult experiences of grief, illness, or failure. For unlike almost any other emotional experience, wonder can keep us buoyant amid waves of uncertainty, sorrow, and fear without sinking into complete despair.

Thats because wonder momentarily dissolves our habitual ways of seeing, relating, and thinking so we can glimpse again what is real and true, beautiful and possible. Consider what the English poet William Blake said about our perception: If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern. We each are wired to see things through narrow caverns for survival, but we human beings also have this extraordinary ability to trip our wiring with wonder and cleanse our perception.