Go Deeper, Not Wider

So unless we’re locked up in a room with only a piano and a pile of Tolstoy, or we partake in the fictional tradition of a Depth Year, we need to find a way to put up our own limits. When we give ourselves fewer places to dig, we go deeper, and what we uncover is more rare and valuable than the usual stuff near the surface.

The joy and enrichment you could derive from a single musical instrument, or a set of paints, is enough to fill a lifetime, and many people have demonstrated that. But those deeper levels are effectively inaccessible without some limit to the splitting of your attention and interest.

It’s wonderful to have the freedom to continually widen our interests. But like many luxuries, it has an insidious downside. Ever-branching possibilities make it harder for us to explore any given one deeply, because there’s always more “newness” to turn to when the old new thing has reached a difficult or boring part.

The consumer economy nurtures this sweet tooth. There’s just so much money to be made in selling people new paths—new equipment, new books, new possibilities. The last thing marketers want is for people to get their excitement and fulfillment from what they already have access to. They would hate for you to discover the incredible wealth remaining

A big part of the Depth Year’s maturing process would be learning to live without regular doses of the little high we get when we start something new. If we indulge in it too often, we can develop a sort of “sweet tooth” for the feeling of newness itself. When newness is always available, it’s easier to seek more of it than to actually engage with

Having completed a Depth Year would be a hallmark of maturity, representing the transition between having reached adulthood chronologically and reaching it spiritually. You learn not to be so flippant with your aspirations.

By taking a whole year to go deeper instead of wider, you end up with a rich but carefully curated collection of personal inter

People are already getting sick of being half-assed about things, I like to think.