What room 552 of the Balmoral Hotel can teach you about focus
Three lessons from the hotel suite that ended the Harry Potter series.
If you ride the elevator to Room 552 of the Balmoral Hotel in the heart of downtown Edinburgh, you may find yourself with a number of questions.
First, you might question why its door is painted a deep violet, while all the others are plain white. Or why it’s adorned with an owl knocker and a shining gold sign that reads J.K. Rowling Suite. Enter the room itself, and you’d be met with more trinkets uncharacteristic of a typical hotel suite, including a hardcover set of Harry Potter novels.
The story of these oddities, and how they found themselves in Room 552 of the Balmoral Hotel, imparts an unexpected lesson in focusing your attention on a singularly important goal.
Let me explain.
Lesson #1: The Environment Factor
Behaviour is a function of a person in their environment.
You can have the most incredible combination of ability, motivation and intent, yet struggle to control your behaviour in a sub-optimal environment. And the environment J. K. Rowling found herself in while under the gun to complete the final Harry Potter book was anything but optimal:
“There came a day where the window cleaner came, the kids were at home, the dogs were barking and I could not work,” she describes in an interview with Oprah.
So, what did she do?
She made her way down to a century-old hotel at the center of the city and checked into a large, luxurious, and most importantly, distraction-free suite. It cost her over £600 for the day, but in hindsight, was worth many times more than that.
On that day in August 2006, she sat down at the suite’s small wooden desk, and the words again began to flow.
Lesson #2: The Law of Distraction
The law of distraction: when willpower fails, behavior often takes the most attractive, least-resistance path available.
We see this in action in Rowling’s busy Edinburgh home. It was a buffet of endless temptations for her attention. She had a baby, a toddler and a teenager at home, and a husband and dog all fending for her attention. In that house, the most attractive path was far from tying together a demanding end to the Harry Potter series.
Now, compare that to Room 552 at the Balmoral Hotel.
Room 552 was a spacious suite with quiet corners and a view overlooking downtown Edinburgh. In that room, sitting down to write The Deathly Hallows was much higher on the list of ways she could spend her time.
After a successful first day at the Balmoral, she soon came back to write. And again, until it quickly became her daily place of writing refuge.
Lesson #3: The Magic of Deep Work
It takes an incredible mental effort to tie together an 880,000-word, roughly 700-character series that’s beloved by hundreds of millions of fans.
It requires deep work: a state of intense concentration and focus on a task that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limits. Deep work is a space where creative ideas flow easily, and you tend to produce your highest-quality work.
In the calm, quietness of Room 552, the rain would often patter on the window that overlooked the busy capital of Scotland. Here, J. K. Rowling was able to immerse herself completely in the world she’d created, often working deep into the nights. It was the perfect environment needed to write the 759-page monolith that would become The Deathly Hallows.
Deep work doesn’t tend to come when the dogs are barking or the window cleaner is wiping muck from your office window. Deep work requires an undisturbed space – a sanctuary, much like Room 552 at the Balmoral.
On January 11th, 2007, in Room 552, J.K. Rowling wrote the very last words of the Harry Potter series. For nearly six months, the room had become her place of solitude that offered the depth of focus needed to finish the series, without tempting her with other distractions for her time.
And upon finishing, she celebrated with a lasting commemoration, scribbling a short message on the back of a marble bust:
“J.K. Rowling finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room (552) on 11th Jan 2007.”
And with that momentous end to the series, the J.K. Rowling suite was born.
