It’s hard enough to do something valuable in this world, but sometimes the barriers, paperwork, rules, and formalities of getting something done can be beyond frustrating. And if you’re already struggling, it can kill the project.
This clip from The Wire shows a man who’s recently been released from prison. He’s never had a normal job or run a normal business, but he’s in the process of trying to turn things around and trying to help his neighborhood in the process.
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That’s a pretentious title, but in this case, the brevity is worth the loss in folksiness. So forgive me for that.
A couple of days ago, I wrote about how the trouble with everyone watching TV on their own schedule is that it becomes hard to find someone to talk with about what you just watched.
So quickly, I’m going to toss off some thoughts about what an answer to that problem might look like. [click to continue…]
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I like to watch TV on my own schedule. I do this with a mixture of DVR, streaming from the web, and rentals. This is increasingly common, now practically mainstream, for people to watch shows weeks after they air or even years after they are canceled.
The trouble is, it’s hard to talk with people about shows when you’re each watching it on a dramatically different schedule. It’s harder to even know to strike up a conversation on the topic if it’s not something in the public consciousness in real time the way a show like Lost, for example, is right now. [click to continue…]
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Panic is an immanent sense of hopelessness. Because it involves hopelessness, panic tends to discourage reasonable effort.
Frustration is a valid emotional response to the failure of a given cause to produce an expected action.
Discouragement is the result of repeated or stubborn frustrations. Often, these frustrations generalize.
Perseverance is the quality of resisting panic, dispelling frustration, and avoiding discouragement altogether.
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The purpose of complaining is to get someone to validate that what you are doing is hard. It’s an emotional and mental outlet and a sanity check all at once.
And that’s okay in some contexts, when it’s a controlled release that is prefaced and followed by a general sense of perspective.
Where it becomes cancerous is when it seeps across boundaries–when we start trying to gain empathy from the wrong people or for the wrong reasons.
Complaints in business work the same way. This article at Online MBA highlights how that same principle applies to patronizing a restaurant which is interesting because I was having this conversation about complaining with some friends last night in a restaurant.
We don’t want to hear about how hard the waiter’s job is or why the food came out late. We go out to dinner to escape problems, not to vicariously share in the problems of the person we are paying good money to.
Trying not to complain is noble but hard. Picking when, why, and to whom you complain does a lot to neutralize the poison and is eminently more easy to do.
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It’s fashionable in the popular discussion about business to talk about “fail early, fail fast, and fail often.” This is a more attention-grabbing way of saying that when you’re trying something new, mistakes are inevitable, so there’s no sense in being overly cautious.
I’m currently involved in a “thrown into the deep end” kind of project. I signed up for it for exactly that reason. I knew it would involve leaving my comfort zone, that it would be difficult, and that the steep learning curve would give me the challenge I need at this point in my career. [click to continue…]
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When a character grows from the start of the story to the end, the middle is usually unflattering to that character in some ways. They get emotional. They are exhausted. They may fail or wander as if lost. It’s a universal aspect of storytelling. That’s because it’s true to life.
Pushing past boundaries requires full effort, even that which we usually reserve for saving face and buttoning up.
My online presence right now is a mess. I’ve got scattered websites and abandoned efforts and brands. Disparate descriptions of what it is that I’m doing or what I’m about can be found anywhere I’ve ever written about myself, I’m sure, and while these symptoms sometimes indicate someone who lacks purpose and focus, I can happily say that’s not the case with me.
I wanted to write this not as an account for where I’ve been, because that’s not interesting or dramatic in the slightest. But I wonder if we, as a species, would do well to forgive a little bit of fruitful dishevelment now and again–both with ourselves and others.
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What’s it called when you take something with some truth to it and allow it to slip into an excuse or worse?
The example that comes to my mind right now is, “I’m not suited to do that work because it’s not my strength,” an invocation of the idea that what you are best at is where you should spend your energy and time to be maximally productive and fulfilled.
That advice has the same appealing ring to it as, for example, the Atkins diet (or almost any faddish diet) did for many people a first blush. Just eat bacon and burgers. Only the tastiest morsels is the best approach.
When it comes to making a living, it’s good advice for those with the self-knowledge and means to live it out. But as for making a life, it gets applied too broadly, slipping, as I said above, into an excuse to avoid any work that is unpleasant or difficult, traits that are ubiquitous with personal growth, political progress, and moral imperatives.
The reality is that many of society’s most important roles require that someone embrace the undesirable and be willing to take on work that feels nothing like those pleasant and confidence inspiring pursuits. It’s unsurprising that these roles are often unfilled.
The advice is good where it belongs, suiting abilities and interests to the work that needs doing as efficiently as possible, but when abused to justify the avoidance of any and all difficult and uncomfortable work, then it falls to the few to bear those burden which they no more want to carry than you or I do, and while we can tell ourselves that “they must have a passion for that cause” or “a heart for the poor,” in many cases, they are just less lazy.
Occasionally I’m the one to step up and do the difficult stuff, but by and large, I’m a member of the excuse-making sect. This is as much a letter for myself as it is for anyone else, and I really am curious as to what it’s called when we let good ideas slip into bad justifications if any of you happen to know.
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In Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food, he describes a study in which Americans are more likely to rely on external cues for when to stop eating than those from other countries. While people from other cultures would stop eating when they were full or nearly full, an internal cue, the Americans were more likely to eat until the food was gone or until others stopped eating, factors that are external to their bodies.
One experiment along these lines had a table rigged to create a bottomless bowl of soup. It continuously refilled from the bottom secretly, and some of the unknowing participants consumed far, far more than normal because they were controlled by how much was left rather than how much was enough.
With work, I have the exact opposite problem because, with work, the appropriate cues are the other way around. External cues provide a much better indicator that work is getting done; the stack of papers goes down, the laundry is now put away, the website is up and running. The internal cues, stress, a feeling of productivity, a sense of accomplishment, are often real-life red herrings, diversions from the task at hand, especially when you let them dictate when to start and stop working.
So where that leads to is a place where work can never just be a relaxed, normal event. It either has to be laborious or envigorating, stressful or rewarding in order for it to feel legitimate. If that sounds ridiculous to you, good. But for many of us, our wires are crossed in this way for whatever reason.
If this sounds like you, on the other hand, I invite you to join me in some reprogramming. Pick your external goals, identify the external cues you’re aiming for, and rather than succumbing to the false dichotomy where work is either highly rewarding or laboriously stressful, allow for the more relaxed middle ground.
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I have a vivid memory from when I was about 11 years old. We were given the opportunity to try every musical instrument that you could study at the school, and if you found one you enjoyed and seemed suited for, you were encouraged to sign up for band or orchestra classes.
Through the combination of having some fun and finding out that I had natural ability, I wound up signing up to take band classes. Here’s the part where my memeory becomes clear.
Walking out of that room, I thought, “Today, I don’t know anything about music, but by this time next year, I’ll understand this stuff and be able to play this instrument.” It seemed exciting and almost mystical, but there it was. Like doing arithmetic, I just put together my commitment to taking these classes and the inevitability of time’s passing, and that’s what came out.
Recently, this has started happening again and with greater frequency because I’ve bought a home. Installing a ceiling fan, patching drywall, hanging blinds, redoing electrical wiring, installing pot racks–for some people these are trivial tasks, but for me, having not done much of that kind of thing in my life, each time I get to the end of the project successfully is an accomplishment.
When you envision a the future state in which you’ve put in the time to learn how to do something well, it is powerfully motivating and energizing. Because from that vantage point, our ability to grow and learn really does seem like magic.
By the way, the image above is by puck90 and happens show the exact pot racks that were my first project.
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