From Russell Moore’s column:

Reading Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity, I was struck by one of his suggestions for how to “obsess over quality” without burning out: “Start your own Inklings.”

Newport references, of course, the group—including C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and others—that would meet to talk at the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford. After discussing how several books most of us know came out of those meetings, Newport dismisses the idea that the group had a mission to fight modernism with fantasy literature. This was a group of friends, he says—people who cared about some of the same things and enjoyed being together when they could.

This is how to get better at whatever you set out to do, Newport writes: There is “a focusing effect that comes from performing for a crowd. When you want to impress other people, or add to the conversations in a meaningful way, your mind slips into a higher gear than what’s easily accessible in solo introspection.”

Not long ago, I was having lunch with a friend who identified one of the key differences among the ways people work. Some people, he said, are collective thinkers, and some are solo thinkers. Neither is particularly good or bad; it’s just the grain of how different minds function. It’s not true (necessarily) that collective thinkers just go along with the hive mind of a group, and it’s not true (necessarily) that solo thinkers are on their own and without community. It’s just that they reach ideas in different ways.

I immediately said that I am a solo thinker. It would be a waste of your time and mine if you were to call a brainstorming session to find out what I think about Richard Dawkins’s “cultural Christianity” comments. I didn’t really know what I thought about them until I sat down and wrote about it just now.

So, I agree with Newport that you should try to find your own Inklings, though I would frame it differently than he does. I really don’t think you should find people you want to impress. That doesn’t work. In fact, it’s exhausting. What I think Newport is getting at here is that you should find a group of people whom you respect, not for whom you want to perform.

As a matter of fact, the best thing is to find people whom you don’t have to impress. Tolkien and Lewis couldn’t have argued over elves and dryads if one had been the editor at the other’s publishing house. The reason they could spur on each other’s creativity is that they really weren’t collaborators. They were sitting around smoking pipes. The pressure to perform wasn’t there, at least not in the way we typically think of performing.

If you can find a group of people like that, you will find something special. Will it make you more productive in your work? Maybe. Is it worthwhile even if it doesn’t? Yes.