Speaker (Stephen Shapiro) argues for having a "third place"—a dedicated location distinct from home and office—to minimize everyday distractions and boost focus and creativity. He uses personal anecdotes (writing in coffee shops and an Applebee's) and explains that unfamiliar environments force the brain to think differently, producing new experiences and ideas; cites Steve Jobs’ idea that creativity connects disparate "dots."
Chapters
I'm recording this video in Orlando, Florida, and it's to make a point. It's to make the point that everyone should have their third place. Your first place is your home. But when you're working at home, it's easy to get distracted by the things around the house. It could be as mundane as thinking you should be doing laundry or washing the bathroom. So our mind gets distracted and called to things that aren't really the productive things we want to stay focused on. Our second place is the office. And the office, of course, has a million distractions, whether it's someone stopping by your cubicle at the last minute or could be calls. So having a third place is the place you get away. It's where you get away from the other two places. It's the place where you don't have distractions. So for me, I do a lot of my writing in coffee shops and restaurants. And if I'm so fortunate to be able to go to a place like this where I can sit on a balcony and write for hours on end by shutting off the phone, this is what you should look for for yourself. Find a place that you can go, and it doesn't have to be fancy. I wrote one of my books in an Applebee's. I was there every day for hours and hours, and the woman behind the bar kept on just filling up my Diet Coke. So I was fully caffeinated. But that's what I needed because I wasn't distracted by the things around me. And here's the other thing you're going to find is if you're in a third space, and especially a space that's not a place that you go a lot, but it's somewhere uncomfortable. That in itself is going to tell the brain you need to think about. About different things. If you're at home, you're going to fall into old patterns and old ruts and old beliefs and old behaviors. And the same thing is true at work. But if you're in your third place somewhere that you don't go a lot, the brain is unsure of what's going around. So that has to think a little differently. And this is fantastic because new environments, new experiences and new people will always stimulate new ideas. It was Steve Jobs who said that creativity is just having enough dots to connect. Dots being ideas or experiences. And the reason why creative people are so is they've either had more experiences or they thought more about their experiences. Being in a third place is an awesome way to create new experiences, new people, new ideas, all of these things will help you be more creative and maybe look at the world in a different way. I hope to see you at some point and bump into you at your third place sometime soon.
