The truth is, “doing more” creates a lot of noise.
Do you feel like a victim of time? Do you compete with the hours in a day? Who will win…your desire to complete certain tasks or the arrival of bedtime?
If this sounds familiar, read on!
(If you can find the time, that is. Haha. Check the couch.)
Here’s what competing with time has looked like for me.
Immediately upon waking, my mind tries to inventory everything I need to do. It’s as though a bucket of marbles is dumped onto a wooden floor. Each marble represents a task.
The task-marbles careen and dart and ding and find their way into all the nooks and crannies of the room.
My brain frantically tries to track each marble. Apparently it believes I have eyes like a fly and can see the room through thousands of lenses. Accordingly, it directs my body to sweep all the marbles, at once, into the middle of the room.
So I reach and whack and scoop and slide a mental broom with frantic, pointless flailing. The task-marbles scatter further into oblivion, powered by the additional energy I have generously provided.
Finally I stop, exhausted. A few marbles have mercifully rolled to a halt in the middle of the room. I record those on paper.
Voila! I now have a to-do list.
Yet I know there are dozens of task-marbles scattered and hidden. It causes anxiety. Will I have time to find them? Will they “fit” into the day? Have I missed some Very Important Ones?
Meanwhile, I think longingly of the marbles I WANT to do. These are the ones that bring me relief, nourishment, joy.
My mind says: the Must Do Marbles come first. If there’s enough time later on, then I can have a Joy Marble.
(See what happened there? More time competition!)
All of this casts a cold darkness upon my psyche. I get easily overwhelmed. I procrastinate. I resent my various inboxes. I feel haunted by the emails and texts and phone calls I haven’t made to people I care about.
I start to feel like a failure. I self-isolate.
Or I swing completely in the other direction. I give myself a Big Break, release all expectations, and putter contentedly with A Day of Joy Marbles. Maybe I’ll climb a mountain!
Other times, I get really organized. I deploy project management tools. I create the world’s most eloquent action plan. Two minutes upon the plan’s completion, I lose focus and momentum. Plus I’m totally spent from planning.
Nothing gets done. I start to feel like a failure. I self-isolate.
This is a bleak cycle!
Happily, this doesn’t happen to me much anymore. My years of inner work have made a huge difference.
Sometimes, though, part of me still conflates task completion with forward progress. (Not to mention with self-worth!) That part of me believes being a successful entrepreneur-coach requires relentless activity.
The truth is, “doing more” creates a lot of noise. It makes it harder to see what really matters. Usually it creates as much wheel spinning as forward movement.
Annddd it puts us into competition with time.
Spoiler alert: we will never win. Time literally runs out on us.
My Troubadour Year is helping me recognize and release some deep patterns related to my relationship to tasks and time.
For example, I can now see that time flows through me. I do not compete with it.
Everything I need to do, want to do, hope to do…it all requires time. There’s no way to be any version of me without doing it within and through time.
So why do I rush to get to the “good marbles?” I might as well enjoy the experience of doing all of it. It’s all the good marbles.
Being alive is one huge, good marble.
Another insight has to do with life’s basic order of operations. I used to believe that:
a) If I had a clear purpose,
b) made a solid plan, and
c) implemented it well, then
d) good things would happen that
e) bring me joy.
Now I focus on experiencing joy first. And you know what? Good things follow, more quickly and with greater regularity than before.
Funny, that.
As a one-time program evaluator, I can’t deny the evidence this is true. Even though I can’t map it out with my logical, strategic mind.
But it makes sense.
When we operate from a mindset of joy, we’re more likely to get into a flow state. We think more creatively. We see more opportunities and are more open to unimagined possibilities. We exude easeful gratitude, which makes it easier to connect with others.
There are a lot of benefits to being joyful. (Profound, right?)
However…a key skill is knowing the difference between intuitive, open-hearted joy and avoidant escapism, which can also bring positive feelings.
How do YOU tell the difference?
