Tools for Thought

We lack a language to express the full depth of what’s encompassed by “work.” Work is more than activity, more than the validation that accompanies checking a completed task off a list. Authentic work fulfills some agreement we’ve made with ourselves and others. Projects and actions are unresolved agreements, “open loops” that create some degree of cognitive dissonance as long as the agreements haven’t been brought to closure — a dissonance that’s experienced as anxiety.

Each cycle of intention and action toward a meaningful outcome has a measure of life energy bound up in it. As we complete each cycle, we release that energy. With each completed action that brings us toward meaningful outcomes, we increase our reserve of energy to complete still another, with a cascading effect. A well coordinated succession of completed actions is experienced as decreasing effort. We act with a sense of direction that’s strong enough to allow us to deviate from our initial plans if they begin to feel off course or unreal.

An authentic action list can help carry our intentionality forward into the world, having real impact. The opposite is a list filled with “stuff” — actions that look productive because they can be scored as completions, but in fact act as buffers against anxiety inducing change, progress that takes us out of our comfort zone. Stuff is usually measured in a results-by-volume fashion: I crank widgets, therefore I am. A good way to assess whether or not an action counts as stuff is whether or not the action resolves an anxiety. If not, it’s probably stuff that holds a person back from getting unstuck.

Change is the cycle of moving between states of stability and instability. We want to go from an undesirable stable state (for instance, being sedentary and unfit) to a desired stable state (being active a fit). To move from the initial stable state we have to pass through an unstable state — a learning curve, an exertion of effort, an awkward moment, a “dip” — until the instability subsides to a higher order of stability.

Prioritizing by Anxiety

When reviewing your action list, look for the item that most makes you anxious. It may or may not be the most important task by any objective measure, but it probably contains the most life energy. In my experience, the most anxiety inducing next action is the linchpin to releasing that energy. Assuming there are no hard landscape items that take precedence, try completing the action that’s most making you anxious first, then see how it feels to take on the next action.

There are two other possibilities:

• The action generates anxiety because it’s understood on some level that it doesn’t carry you forward toward a meaningful outcome.
• The timing of the action is wrong. It’s either obsolete, or requires a change in circumstance to have an impact.

In most cases, actions fitting the latter two descriptions should either be discarded or deferred. Sometimes a moment’s reflection makes it obvious the action is simply “stuff,” and should just be eliminated. If in doubt, see if the action is part of a larger outcome that needs to incubate on your Someday/Maybe list instead of being committed to as an active project.

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