The Strokes of Daily Effort

Lately, I identify as a procrastinator. Most mornings, I wake up and spend far too much time scrolling through social media feeds when I could be exercising, reading a book, working, or sleeping. A little more sleep would be nice.

I have more unfinished projects than I can keep track of. I’ve recently hired four new people in my job to help me do the work I was doing by myself for five years and still I fall further behind each day. I start a new thing, then get distracted by another new thing. Then something else comes along and distracts me from that thing. Before I know it, I’ve started a dozen things and not finished any.

The phrase “indiscipline of overwork” is attributed to John Steinbeck, though there are no credible sources that I can find actually linking Steinbeck to those words. Steinbeck was a good writer, though, so we may as well give him credit.

There’s an interesting problem in starting new things. You have to start something to finish it, but starting too many things means you struggle to get anything done. Having a mountain of to dos is a recipe for overwhelm and burnout, professionally and personally.

I have a lot of responsibilities in my job, and I often take on more responsibility than I should. I struggle to say no. Five weeks ago, I set a top priority that had to be accomplished that week.

It’s still not done.

I’ve started sacrificing evenings and weekends to work on it because I’ve reasoned that I don’t have time during the workday to get them done.

The “indiscipline of overwork.” I’m too busy to be disciplined enough to get anything done.

When you’re not your own boss (and often when you are), establishing priorities and sticking to them can be tricky. Having new employees adds to that trickiness, though that particular flavor of trickiness yields big dividends when people learn their responsibilities and can act in an autonomous way most of the time.

The key to starting the right thing rests in knowing how to evaluate what brings the greatest value to your work then being disciplined enough to stand up for your priority. Rarely is that easily accomplished when working for someone else.

The same holds true outside of professional work. Parents often wake up in the morning with a set of to dos that day which can be derailed by a sick child or family emergency.

Once you’ve started something, there’s only one thing to do to finish it: show up regularly. Consistent effort is the only thing required to make progress and succeed at doing anything. Sometimes we have to be real with ourselves in recognizing that no amount of effort will help us achieve unrealistic goals. For example, at my age the effort required to become an astronaut would likely require more time, attention, and effort than I could muster in the years of life I have remaining.

For realistic goals, maintaining a steady effort over time, builds the kind of momentum required to accomplish those goals.

We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead. . .By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities. — William James

While James seems to nod here at material possessions, this applies to every facet of intra- and inter-personal development. While the steps required to build a business may differ from building a relationship both require deliberate effort without overworking at it.

Most of us have heard of the greatest regrets of those who lay dying:

Courage to live a life true to oneself, not the life others expected.
Wishing one had not worked so hard.
Wishing for the courage to express one’s feelings.
Wishing one had stayed in touch with friends.
Wishing for allowing oneself to be happier.

Strokes of daily effort are required to accomplish anything. Too many strokes, however, won’t result in a masterpiece, they’ll result in an unrecognizable mess. I mostly live in the space of unrecognizability, but I know there’s a masterpiece in there somewhere. Now, I just need to NOT do enough to uncover it.