Grow With Soul: Episode 124 - Efficiency & Direction Q&A

5 Nov

Today I am back answering your questions following the mindset Q&A episode a few weeks ago. Today’s questions are more practical, about sticking with your path, redirecting your career, choosing which ideas to follow, figuring out what you want and simplifying rather than being stuck in the busy trap.

What we talk about in this episode:

What to do when what you want to do goes against what is expected of you
Fighting the urge to be ‘busy’
Avoiding the over complication of our time, and our work
Keeping momentum going when life makes work slow
Letting go of one career path to follow another
What to do when what you want to do goes against what is expected of you.What to do when what you want to do goes against what is expected of you.
Grow With Soul: Episode 121 - Mindset Q&A - Crisis, Comparison, and Cultivation — Simple & Season

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Read the episode transcript:

In the last Q&A I answered questions about comparison but I didn’t feel that these questions lived there. These questions are not from people for whom what they want is swayed by others, they seem steadfast in the path they want to take. These are not questions of comparison, but of expectation. What to do when what you want to do goes against what is expected of you.

Expectation is a highly magnetic force. To follow expectations is easier; you slide into a well worn groove, there is little resistance, you do not need to explain or justify yourself, everybody “understands” you and your role. And yet, it also feels, in a way that nags at you until you can no longer bear it, like self-betrayal. Getting out of that groove makes the record scratch and people frown at you and try to pull you back in and although it’s hard it feels like a truer, freer, more honest existence.

But because expectation is this magnetic force, it is something we always have to work at resisting. These questions seem to seek a final solution when really this is an ongoing process of ensuring your commitment and belief in your own path is stronger than the magnetism - daily, weekly, quarterly refocusing and refreshing so you don’t find yourself one day on the precipice of falling back into that groove. It’s maintaining a constant connection to the reason why you’re doing it your way, indulging in those benefits of freedom, and refusing to justify your methods to those who would pull you away from your path. You are allowed to protect your energy, protect your work, protect your self from those expectations.

And with that unbridgeable gap… why is that a bad thing? If the way you want to do things and the way everyone else does things are so different, why do you want to build a bridge to them anyway? Perhaps that bridge will make you feel more like you’re doing things right, give you comfort in proximity, perhaps help create community. But that bridge isn’t one way; as much as you can go over to them, they can come over to you with their expectations - and is that the kind of access you want to allow to yourself and your work? What if you saw that gap as safety, as a moat around your castle? A place where you were able to do things your way and only lower a drawbridge to those who got it, to those who wanted to come in?

If you’re full of ideas how do you know when to confidently go with one?

Ideas are the worst, aren’t they? You either go months without a single one, or you get ALL of the ideas in one go jumping up and down in your brain demanding attention. When you’re all full of ideas, leaning back into your big picture is, to my mind, the only way to ascertain which ones to use and which to put away. Ideas can be very short term and exciting - “ooooh let’s do THIS” - but are you building something that is short term or something that has longevity, direction? What is the big picture of the work in life you’re wanting to create, how is it you want to feel in your day to day, what body of work do you want to build? Who do you want to be in 30 years? These questions help to give perspective to the ideas - it becomes clear which ideas will compromise that vision, or at least don’t as strongly contribute to it in the way others do.

Another thing to find out is which ideas are patient? One of the benefits of working for yourself is you can rip up a plan and action something straight away, but the downside of that is that often you’re putting something into motion without letting it brew and work out if you actually want it. If you could only work on two projects a quarter, which ones would you choose? Which ones would you put aside for 6 months? I did this with the idea for Mapping. I actually had the name come to me about three years ago, and at first it was going to be a course on strategy, and then maybe a group programme but none of it felt quite right and I kept parking it, kept parking it. But Mapping was patient and last month presented to me the form it is indeed supposed to take, which I’ll be working on this winter. It might be meant to be, but not meant to be right now.

And with the question of confidently going with one - sometimes you can’t. Sometimes you can’t with full confidence say this is IT, because the only way to know is to do. To want to have full confidence in an idea before going with it is a one way ticket to immobility and paralysis. It’s so much pressure! And also, often the idea that means the most to you is the one that’s most scary. So perhaps instead, think about picking the one you want to try doing first, with the others as back up. Less attachment to the outcome with the knowledge that everything can be undone and redone.

Any advice on fighting the need to be busy?

To be honest I really have the opposite problem, creating the need to be somewhat busy. But as I’ve spoken about before, this wasn’t always the case and there was a time I couldn’t go outside for half an hour without thinking about how I was going to “make back” the time. I think the need to be busy comes from a different place for all of us - a parent, a teacher, a boss, a culture - and identifying that for yourself is the equivalent of finding the root of particularly intrusive weed.

Perhaps you had a parent who would chastise your “laziness” and when you heard them pull up outside you would jump up in order to look busy. Perhaps you had a teacher who would say the only way to succeed was to work really hard and do all the extra reading. Perhaps you had a boss who expected everyone to work late and taking a full lunch break was frowned on. Perhaps we all just grew up in this culture where ceaseless productivity was valued above all else - the expectations to do it all, have it all. Perhaps it’s a combination of all those things. But understanding the specific root of your belief helps to relearn it - when you don’t want to be like your mother, or that boss, or that colleague it can help provide perspective. It’s all just made up; your busyness, your productivity, has no bearing at all on how good of a person you are.

And then it’s identifying what’s more important than that need to be busy. The want to be fulfilled, to help, to create, to rest, to be calm, to thrive, to connect - whatever it is for you, how can you make it your focus? For me, shifting my working focus from “how can I be the most busy, successful person?” to “how can I be the most fulfilled version of myself?” enabled, over time, the busyness to entirely fade away. Because with all of those things worth having, being busy is actually an obstacle. It gets in the way and hinders everything you actually want.

How do you work more simply without over complicating it, which adds on more hours?

I’m not sure whether this refers to over complicating the working simply, or over complicating work in general. But I suppose my answer is the same either way. Imagine time is a finite resource and all you got was 24 hours a day, and that on your desk was a timer counting down all the minutes that you’ll never ever get back. What if you used that as motivation, as a new focus, to treat those minutes as the most precious things you have and use as many as possible for joy? I guess what I’m saying is, what if you removed it as an option to “add on more hours”? What if those hours were so precious you protected them rather than threw them away with “oh I’ll just do more hours”? If you orientated your work with that focus, what might change?

Perhaps you’d prioritise more ruthlessly, perhaps you’d say no more, perhaps you’d check your emails less, perhaps certain things would suddenly become less important. A question I like to ask is “what’s the least I can do?”. We’re always told to do our best and try really hard, but maybe we don’t actually have to? Perhaps we can get the same results in a more streamlined way by doing the least amount possible. What “working simply” looks like will differ from person to person; it’s not about what you do, it’s about how you approach it. That galvanising fire of “I have to use as few minutes as possible” or “it has to be done in two hours with no extensions” forces you into simplicity because there’s just no time to over complicate.

How do you connect the dots in figuring out what you want?

This is something I want to spend some time unravelling this winter as I work on Mapping; at the moment it’s as if I have so much to say that I don’t have anything to say. It’s all so big and nebulous that turning it into a pithy few paragraphs is impossible. Maybe I’ll revisit this question in a few months. For now, I’ll say this: you can’t try. This is the hardest hardest thing. When you don’t know what you want and all you want is to know it’s consuming. You think about it all the time, “maybe this, maybe that” but nothing lands. And you think if you just try hard enough, think hard enough, push hard enough, you’ll get there.

The trouble with this is that it all happens very consciously. In your hard trying you’re looking around at what others doing, thinking about what you’ve done before, thinking about what you might like, taking advice from others - and all of this is coloured in expectation and none of it is coming truly from you. And so you need to lean back from the drawing board and allow your inner self to ruminate, stay attuned to the bubbling up and remain open to receiving the unexpected. Create your way through it, nourish your way through, socialise your way through it, journal your way through it - but you can’t obsess your way to an answer. Trust me, I hate this advice. It’s not the advice I want to give and certainly not the advice I want to receive. But it is what feels true.

How do I keep the momentum going for a business project when life circumstances make progress slow?

I really feel this one; I thought I was going to be moving house in mid-August and it didn’t happen until the end of October. That was two months “lost” from work projects to life circumstances where I didn’t have the head space, capacity or resources to have momentum for work. It feels immensely frustrating, and at times hopeless.

So I would say, it’s shifting your job. Your job is not to make progress, but to keep it alive. Remove that pressure for forward motion; all you need to do is nurture the flame inside you and keep it burning, however weakly. That can look different in different weeks; sometimes it might be taking one or two actions towards it, others it might just be remembering to think about it as something that will exist rather than something that will never happen. Every day, every week, how can I keep this work alive?

How to let go of one career direction and redirect to another path?

There’s a lot unsaid in this question because a lot depends on what you are letting go of. First of all, are letting go out of choice, necessity, or against your will? Are you letting go of something you really loved, letting go of the status it inferred, letting go of stability, letting go of skill? Whatever the scenario, do what you need to make peace with what you’re letting go of. It is natural and necessary to grieve, even when it is your choice. Even with a good change, there will still be things you’re losing, things you’ll miss. Treating that with respect rather than rushing to make yourself “let go” will help the transition be more peaceful.

I’m not sure whether you know what career path you want to move into or not. If not, then what I just said about finding what you want may help. If you do know where you want to go then actually what I want to say is go easy. So often we rush head first into something because we’re so excited and we have so many ideas and we really want to do it - but this can also mean that we push ourselves down roads without really thinking about whether they’re what we want. This is how we get backed into corners, burnt out, stuck, dissatisfied later down the line - because at the beginning we rampage rather than think about where we’re placing our feet. Take each step with intention, thinking long term, conscious of what you want to create and how you want to feel. It may be slower, but in the longer view it makes the change far more easeful.

Kayte Ferris