objects in motion
a long time ago, maybe like 12 years ago at this point, i was reading this blog and someone was talking about advice their mom gave them for tough times:
get up and start your machines.
it meant - get up, start your laundry, your dishwasher, do your ironing - but do the things that get your space and head cleared out so that even if that’s all you do that day, your space is somewhere where you can tolerate being.
i don’t actually even like that advice - it’s not particularly eco conscious, i hate doing laundry and will 100% avoid that forever, and i haven’t ironed in years, but there’s a kernel of truth in there that i’ve taken with me ever since.
if you want to get moving, start moving wherever you feel like you can because, objects in motion tend to stay in motion - and objects at rest tend to stay at rest.
how many times have you gotten up and had a to-do list that started with something really hard, so you just…..didn’t do it? in some ways, it’s physics - it takes a lot of force to get an object that just got up and is sleepy and tired and groggy and get it to write new words on the page! but if you already have tackled your email, opened up your document, made a few notes, reread some paragraphs - it might just be easier.
even if the tasks aren’t related, doing one thing usually leads to doing more things. so say your to do list looks like this:
write 2 new pages
start laundry
answer 6 emails
grade 2 papers
workout
there can be a tendency to go in order - especially if there are things that seem like a “reward” - but if you stall out because you can’t seem to get those 2 pages written, then you still have 5 things to do. but if you jump around, you might get some energy from the workout, feel better without the emails hanging over your head, and have clean clothes to wear to start tomorrow. 3 things done is better than no things done. any motion can help get you moving.
the question i keep coming back to is: what feels possible right now? and trusting that anything i get done is going to remind me that i can do things. and that the more confidence i have in my abilities, the easier it will feel to try the hard stuff, too.
do what you can, and be proud of what you do. but if you have the resources, put them in motion. movement will breed more movement. and that will only help.
Being okay with 60%.
I'm about to tell you something radical. Get ready.
In my experience, the goals you set, the plans you create, the schedules you obsess over, the systems you use, are less important than this:
Being able to be okay with a 60% day.
I have seen clients finish their dissertations under a variety of conditions - teaching or working full time, navigating a family, working through serious health conditions, having restarted halfway through - and not one of them used the same skills. They used different software, different schedules, different workspaces, and different workflows.
But they all decided to release themselves from needing to use any of those tools 100% of the time, or to 100% of its efficiency potential. They got comfortable with a 60% day, feeling good about what they did do, paying attention to what could be better and working towards a better flow all the time without tying their emotional state to that 100% benchmark.
Use whatever structure works for you. Do you love goals? Go for it! Set as many as your heart desires, but I encourage you to not let the structure overwhelm the reasoning. The goals are there to give you something concrete to focus on, but it's your commitment that actually moves the project forward.
100% is amazing, but difficult to sustain. Life, invariably, happens. So if you have a tendency to always strive towards the 100%, and lapsing into frustration, avoidance or anxiety when you don't hit it, try focusing instead on seeing the good in a 60% day - What did you accomplish? What did move forward? What made you feel good? Conduct an experiment where you track how you feel over a few weeks where you focus on smaller, more focused bursts of work - are ten 60% days better, overall, at moving you forward than two 100% days? Commitment, not the perfect work day, is what moves you forward. Commit to showing up, and maybe even learning to value, for a 60% day.
Just 1%
Yesterday, I woke up feeling overwhelmed by my to-do list, and an old pal of a thought pattern showed up:
"If you had been more on top of things last week, you wouldn't feel like this."
"If you had started that [new plan that was definitely going to fix everything] when you first thought of it, you'd be farther along now."
"If you had just been better earlier...."
And when these thoughts come to play, I often don't want to do anything at all, because obviously, the only solution to feeling better now was to start weeks ago, and I didn't do that, so what's the point, bring on the Netflix and chips!!!!
But as I scrolled through Instagram, I saw this post from Karamo, king of my heart, where he said:
You just have to be 1% better today.
And pals, I promise that this is good, useful advice.
You do not have to, in this session, this month, or this week, fix everything that you want to be fixed.
Just do one thing that gets you closer to where you want to be.
Haven't opened your dissertation in a while? Open it up.
Feeling like you haven't gotten enough movement lately? Go for a short walk around the block, or park farther away than you might have otherwise.
Have one vegetable or fruit.
Write just one paragraph, or one sentence!
Go to bed a half hour earlier, or get up 15 minutes earlier.
Clean up one area of your office or house.
It doesn't have to be big. You just have to be 1% farther than you were when you started. Because the magic is that the first 1% is often the hardest, but it can unblock you. Once you open the file, you read it a little, and then maybe you see a sentence you want to fix, and then you fix it, and then you read the paragraph, and then you see where you want to go next, and....
And even if all those steps don't happen at once, you've started down the path. And you've countered the voice that says: "if you started this a week ago!" because you've started it now.
And then, maybe, you'll look back in a month, or in three months, and say, this was the day I said yes to trying a new way of thinking about my work, and the scale felt laughably small at the time, but look where I am now....