Sometimes I write essays on work and life. Past essays are below, and I add new ones whenever I write them (slowly and sporadically).
This is it
I was once working on a project that involved interviewing some leaders about their jobs. When we started to parse the interview notes and conduct our needs analysis, we socialized some of our findings with other coaches to get their thoughts.
One of the coaches noticed that the majority of the leaders interviewed talked about a bunch of stuff they had to do in their roles that felt like headwinds — stuff that was standing in their way of doing their real job. Many cited stakeholder management, dealing with performance issues, going to lots of meetings, resolving conflict, and communicating what their department was doing to their managers and peers.
This coach said something along the lines of “what a lot of leaders don’t realize is, they’re describing all of these things as headwinds, when in reality the stuff they’re talking about is their job.”
Realizing this was a huge mindset shift for me, and it’s completely changed how I think about my own life and work as well as the lives and work of my clients. When you’re a leader in a company, managing stakeholders isn’t an annoying thing that’s standing in the way of you doing your “real job.” Managing stakeholders is your job. Communicating what you’re doing is your job. Dealing with performance issues is your job.
It sounds simple, but most of us live in a fantasy world where we believe that the thing we’re doing now is just a hurdle or a step that we have to get over so we can get to the magical land where no problems exist. If we could only just fully optimize our to-do system, clear our inbox, time-block our calendar, then we’ll be able to live in a future where we have nothing to worry about and we’ll finally be able to start living the life that we think we should be living right now.
In his ridiculously-good book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman deftly dismantles conventional productivity culture and the work-life balance trap through this lens.
“The fundamental problem is that this attitude toward time sets up a rigged game in which it’s impossible ever to feel as though you’re doing well enough. Instead of simply living our lives as they unfold in time… it becomes difficult not to value each moment primarily according to its usefulness for some future goal, or for some future oasis of relaxation you hope to reach once your tasks are finally ‘out of the way.’ Superficially, this seems like a sensible way to live, especially in a hypercompetitive economic climate… It also reflects the manner in which most of us were raised: to prioritize future benefits over current enjoyments. But ultimately it backfires. It wrenches us out of the present, leading to a life spent leaning into the future, worrying about whether things will work out, experiencing everything in terms of some later, hoped-for benefit, so that peace of mind never quite arrives.”
I have certainly felt this throughout my entire life, and continue to feel it especially now that it has been 18 months since a pandemic upended our lives as we knew them. Even though I’m vaccinated, bars are open, and I’ve been able to see my family, things still don’t feel normal to me. (Nor should they — thousands of people are still dying every day.) But I have found myself feeling like I’m just waiting around for all of *this* to be over. Like my life is on pause and I can pick it back up again once… something changes.
Back in March 2020, like many people, I initially approached the shutdowns with a very temporary mindset. I knew it wouldn’t just be a few weeks, but I couldn’t really wrap my head around how long it might take, so I just grinned and bore it for a while so I could get through to the other side. The other side where I could eat in restaurants, go on vacations, and hug my friends. Now we’re 18 months in and I’m still not doing some of those things and it sucks.
But this is it. This is life. Time did not pause for the last 18 months. I turned 34 and my dog’s fur got a little more gray and my baby niece started walking. I built a business and had hip surgery and my grandpa died. Life keeps happening all around me, and it’s not going to wait for me to decide to embrace the uncomfortable truth that this is it. It may not be what I’m used to, and it may not be as bright or fun, but it’s what I’ve got.
I have found myself coming back to a central line of questioning time and time again when I’m feeling impatient, dealing with drudgery, or helping one of my clients with a challenge. What if this is it? What if this is the job? What if this is your life? Asking this question of myself has allowed me to do things like signing up for the virtual workshop that I was putting off because I was really hoping it would happen in person. It has also allowed me to accept that there is one corner of my apartment where stuff just tends to accumulate, even though I see myself as being the type of person who does not have a stuff-accumulation corner.
To some, this might sound depressing, and I get that. It can be challenging to confront our lack of control over life. To me, it has become liberating. Knowing that doing the dishes isn’t the annoying thing that’s standing in the way of me living my super-fun, super-optimized life — but rather, that doing the dishes is just part of my life — that makes me less irritated when I’m standing at the sink. Knowing that doing my quarterly taxes isn’t some stupid roadblock to my real work, but that doing my taxes is a very important part of my work, helps me approach those spreadsheets with a bit more calm. And trying to accept that my real life isn’t on pause while we’re very much in an active pandemic has helped me continue to pursue things that I put on hold for much of the last two years.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t do things that set us up well for the future, but rather that we should work toward accepting that life is partially made up of activities that we would rather not have to do. It’s also realizing that we don’t do ourselves any favors by wishing those things didn’t exist, or trying to ignore them, or rushing through them so we can get through to the other side. It’s at this level of awareness that we find patience and sometimes even joy in the mundane and the necessary. Because there is no other side. This is it.