I was about to start writing a review of a book that I just read and immediately felt resistance. But not the kind of resistance that Pressfield calls Resistance with a capital ‘R.’ That’s the good kind of resistance. No, this was the bad kind of resistance, that dreadful, insidious, suffocating kind of resistance: resistance with a small ‘r.’
Let me explain the difference.
The good kind of Resistance is born of fear. Fear that you’re not good enough, fear that you can’t do it, fear that you’ll fail. Whatever it is you’re pursuing, you want to pursue it yet are blocked by fear that manifests itself as Resistance. This Resistance tries to divert you from your higher self. You can beat this kind of Resistance by noticing it and summoning your courage to beat it.
The bad kind of resistance is born of “should.” When I sat down to write, I realized that I felt that I should review this book*. But I didn’t really want to because it didn’t move me and therefore, I wasn’t terribly motivated to review it. I don’t know why I felt that I should do it but I did. And then it hit me: this is the other kind of resistance, the resistance that’s not covered in The War of Art. This is the resistance to the “shoulds” of life.
There are so many things in life we as adults feel that we should do. We should go to work every day and we should keep a clean and tidy house and we should save for retirement and we should be respectable and say “please” and “thank you.” Well. With so many things that society already prescribes for us, why add more unnecessary “shoulds?” Do you realize that these “shoulds” are sucking the vitality right out of you? You already spend a large portion of your day on the “shoulds” that you can’t get away from, why would you pile on more “shoulds” that you’ve created yourself?
Take a look, a close look. Right this moment, are you experiencing resistance to anything? (Of course you are, else you wouldn’t be procrastinating by reading this post.) Does it resemble Resistance (a.k.a. Fear) or resistance? Are there “shoulds” that you’ve convinced yourself are external? That is, have you convinced yourself that all these things that you should do don’t come from you but from others around you - your boss, your spouse, society? Who says that your house has to be clean and tidy? Who says that you have to call the annoying person back? Who says that you have to eat a healthy, well-balanced meal? And who says that I should write a blog post about a book that I read? Recognize that nobody is forcing you to do these things. You created these “shoulds” and they are running your life.
Why is this a problem?
Because you’re wasting time on things that won’t make one iota of difference in your life. This is precious time you could be using to do something you enjoy. Because when you do things you enjoy instead of slogging through the day dutifully doing what you think everyone else wants you to do, you’ll feel more fulfilled. When you’re old, you’re not going to look back on your life and say, “Gee, I wish I’d kept a neater house.” You’ll look back with regret on the things you didn’t do.
Instead of dutifully following all these self-created “shoulds,” recognize them for what they are and let them go. Free yourself of the handful of “shoulds” that won’t make a difference in your life but will just rob you of time you could be using to do something with passion. Most of your life is already taken up with all the things you have no choice but to do. Don’t fill up the rest of your precious time with unnecessary “shoulds.”
* If you really want to know, the book I didn’t feel like writing about is Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.
Your to-do list is huge. The workday is only 8 hours and you can’t stay late. You only finished a fraction of what you wanted to accomplish today and now you feel guilt. Enormous guilt. Guilt that you didn’t get to everything on your to-do list. “Well, tomorrow, I’ll get in early and finish these things,” you think. And with that, you leave the office. The next day however, the same thing happens. The following day, the same thing happens again. Until you’ve had it with your disorganized self and decide to make a change. “I gotta get organized,” you think as you order that copy of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivityand gather a bunch of file folders from the supply room. “I will label and color-code my folders. I will set up my Inbox and Outbox. I’ll prune my email.” And as you’re full of resolve, your boss calls you up and asks you a simple question that sends you on an hour-long search to find the answer. You got that one done and now it’s time to turn back to your work. But your colleague drops in and has a question about something else. And pretty soon, it’s 4 o’clock and you realize that there is no way you will be able to finish this four-hour task that you set out to do today. So you beat yourself up and resolve to do better tomorrow.
But you know what? You don’t need to stay late, improve your organizational skills (though it doesn’t hurt) or learn to say, “No” to your boss. You need to change your perspective about your work. And changing that perspective is the key to reducing guilt, stress, and getting everything done on time.
How most people think about their workday
Before I stumbled upon this realization, my thought process every morning went something like this: I have A, B, and C tasks on my to-do list. A is due today and will take about 2 hours, B might take about 3 hours, and C will take only about half an hour. I have 5.5 hours of work to do today. Perfect. I’ll get all of this done and then see what else I need to do. But hey, let me get myself a cup of tea first and catch up on world events. I’ll read news for 15 minutes and then get started.
Within 15 minutes, four emails land in my inbox, which I answer. Then, my boss calls with a question, which takes me an hour to research and answer, a colleague engages me in chit-chat, and someone needs me to help them figure out how to do something (which I do). It is now 12 pm and time for lunch. After lunch, I begin work on task A. Twenty minutes into task A, someone calls with a question, and then my boss decides to have an impromptu meeting at 3 pm to go over a few things. Fine. That means I have an hour and a half to finish task A. However, then there are 6 more emails to answer, which I can just “knock off” because they’re easy and then get back to my task. Well, now it’s 2:45, the meeting is in 15 minutes and I may as well get my afternoon caffeine fix, go to the bathroom, and gather materials for this meeting. At 4 o’clock, I’m finally out of the meeting and get to finishing task A. The day is now over and I didn’t get B nor C done. Is this what your day is like too?
Failure to predict the future
What happened is that I failed to take into account all the interruptions, meetings, emails, calls, and needs of other people. When I envisioned what I would accomplish today, none of this stuff that I couldn’t have predicted entered into my plans. I never predicted that I might get 20 emails today that I need to respond to (despite the fact that this happens every day). I didn’t predict that my boss would call an impromptu meeting. In other words, I didn’t realize that I only focused on what I needed to do and failed to think about what other people were going to do. But how can I or anyone possibly think about or predict what other people are going to need from me today?
The short answer is, you can’t. But the good news is that you don’t have to.
Dark matter
The thing is that your workday isn’t now, nor has it ever been, like you imagine it to be. It never was this sprawling expanse of time and space that you only needed to fill up with your work. Your workday is full of dark matter. Just like the universe has dark matter and that dark matter accounts for more “stuff” than the matter that we see, your workday is mostly dark matter. And as such, it’s untouchable, unseeable, and uncontrollable. It really is. Just try to control it and you run into trouble. I see people do this all the time and they don’t succeed. Some people have learned that they need to become firmer by saying “no” to people and projects so that no one can encroach on their work time. They close their doors. They don’t answer email and they don’t pick up the phone. I work with people who are always saying “no” and I don’t like working with them. Neither does anyone else. In a team-oriented environment, people rely on each other and being available to others is important for having good relations. If a team member comes to me with a question, I won’t tell her that she needs to make an appointment with me in advance. Nor am I going to ignore an email from someone who just has a quick question. These people will get frustrated because I’m the bottleneck blocking their ability to get work done. So being more protective of your time isn’t a good solution. What about better organization? Being more organized certainly helps but it doesn’t solve the problem of guilt at the end of the workday or the stress you will feel from all that work that you didn’t get to.
Somewhere there is advice that you should estimate how long something will take, then double or triple that estimate to account for the unknown. I used to do that too. If I knew a task would take 2 hours, I would double my estimate to account for complexity of the task or whatever. But the thing is that it has never worked. And it hasn’t worked because it encourages procrastination. Because deep down, you still know that the task takes only two hours and not four hours. And it doesn’t get rid of the dark matter anyway because all those interruptions will come your way regardless of how you’ve estimated your task time.
The above are all techniques for attacking the dark matter directly. But what I’m about to suggest is to stop attacking the dark matter and embrace it instead. Do not fight the dark matter. It is a losing battle and will only create guilt, stress, and ultimately dissatisfaction. Loosen your grip on the dark matter and accept it instead. How?
Shorten your workday
Yes, that’s right. Shorten. And when I say shorten, I mean REALLY shorten, to about 2 hours. Yes, 2 hours out of 8. I know HR and your boss would frown on you leaving mid-day so that’s not what I’m recommending. What I am saying is that you only need to THINK of your workday as 2 hours long and not as 8. That’s because dark matter can account for about 6 hours of every day. That includes emails, chit-chat, meetings, lunch, going to the bathroom and getting those color-coded folders from the supply room. I know this is hard to stomach because every day, we wake up idealists (”today will be different!”) and go to bed realists. Do not believe your idealistic self. It is pure fantasy. If it were really true, you wouldn’t keep feeling guilty at the end of every day. So let me repeat: ACCEPT that there are 6 un-usable hours every day and plan your day around the 2 hours that you can use and control. Now that you’re going to get only 2 hours of work done today, relax and let the dark matter roll in: phone calls, email, bosses, meetings.
If you change your perspective of how long your day actually is, you will begin to plan better. You will look at your to-do list and know that if you have 4 things of 2 hours each, they are not all going to get done today. Instead, you will get A done today, B done tomorrow, etc. You will become more realistic, you will procrastinate less, and you will be accessible to the people you work with. Your boss will love you because you will always be available to do what he/she needs (since all that work falls into the dark matter category) and you will feel less guilt and stress at the end of the day because you didn’t expect to do 8 hours of work in only 2 hours.
I recommend that you try to do your 2 hours of work as early in the day as possible. In fact, it’s absolutely critical that you pretend that you only work from 9-11 am (or whenever your day starts). Take a few moments at the beginning of each day to envision that you absolutely must leave in two hours. This will create a sense of urgency for you so that you can begin work on your 2-hour day as quickly and efficiently as possible. Because as the day wears on and the dark matter of work accumulates, you will be spending down those 2 hours as well. It is likely that you will only get 15 minutes of work done before the first interruption comes. If you keep working through the task or tasks that you’ve allocated for your 2-hour workday, by the end of the day, not only will you have accomplished all that you set out to do, but you also accomplished all the things other people wanted you to do as well.
So, you don’t need to change the way you work; you just need to change how you perceive your time.
and gather a bunch of file folders from the supply room. “I will label and color-code my folders. I will set up my Inbox and Outbox. I’ll prune my email.” And as you’re full of resolve, your boss calls you up and asks you a simple question that sends you on an hour-long search to find the answer. You got that one done and now it’s time to turn back to your work. But your colleague drops in and has a question about something else. And pretty soon, it’s 4 o’clock and you realize that there is no way you will be able to finish this four-hour task that you set out to do today. So you beat yourself up and resolve to do better tomorrow.