productivity Archives - Ingrid Murray

Permission to Be

I chose “ease” as my word of the year precisely because recently, it hasn’t been easy. And I haven’t yet figured out how to write through it, preferring instead to emerge from my protective cocoon once everything feels more manageable again, painting in the meantime.

I took part in Oliver Burkeman‘s Designing Your System for Creativity workshop this past weekend. His book 4000 Weeks is one of the first I read last year, and it’s had a lasting impact on me and my thinking, frequently working its way into many conversations with friends and family.

So attending his workshops — I also took part in The Art of Imperfect Action in January — made sense.

The most significant realization I had was I find worthwhile only the things are literally unmanageable, and anything less is evasion. But this mindset results in inevitable failure: if some action is of value (ie. impossible) and I can’t do it, but also if I can do something and it’s not that valuable (ie. feasible), I am telling myself that I am incapable of accomplishing anything meaningful.

I’m trying to unlearn that there is no such thing as too small if the alternative is doing nothing at all.

Increasing ease — and reducing friction — has immense value, too, because it is the key to sustainability. So does consistency. (In the words of another favorite author, Brad Stulberg: “Do not focus on being consistently great; focus on being great at being consistent.”)

So I ask you and myself both: what is the minimum manageable thing that you can do every day that will still move you forward?

You Are a Garden

A field of tiny white flowers at dusk. Those closest to the camera are in focus.

We’re constantly bombarded with messaging about how we can be better, more efficient humans. Defy aging with this eye cream! Optimize your SEO for maximum views! Use this app to reach maximum productivity!

It’s exhausting.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be human. At one time, I thought that there a perfect version of myself that I needed to strive for, someone who had no flaws or feelings or difficulties. I thought that to be human was to reach the most unmarred of myself. If I could just TRY harder, I’d get there. And if I couldn’t bring myself to try hard enough, then there was something inherently wrong with me.

With time, my perspective has shifted. I’ve given myself grace. I am learning to lean into being a messy, inconsistent human who feels things deeply and makes mistakes and changes her mind and has good days and bad days. I’ve remembered that the urgent chant of “more! more! more!” is a toxic characteristic of white supremacy, and I’ve complained about being told to do more in the midst of a pandemic.

Perfectionism is poisonous

There have been two pieces of writing that have deeply influenced me this year. The first is this:

You are not a machine. You are more like a garden. You need different things on different days. A little sun today, a little less water tomorrow. You have fallow and fruitful seasons. It is not a design flaw. It is wiser than perpetual sameness. What does your garden need today?
If you expect a garden to “produce” things with the same regularity and sameness as a machine, you will be disappointed. If you try to maintain a garden the same way you would a machine, you will destroy it. The same is true of your body and emotional life. Give into your garden.
Joy Marie Clarkson

The second is Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.

What both have in common is a recognition that striving for perfection — a mastery of everything, all at once, unendingly — is not only completely impossible, but will break us. We cannot achieve everything, and we can achieve no one thing perfectly.

Embrace your humanity

You and I are not machines. We were never machines. We are “child[ren] of the universe, no less than the trees and stars.” At one point, our ancestors spent all of their lives creating, whether it be shaping pottery or cooking or telling stories or making music or sewing. At one point, we remembered who we were.

You and I, we’re human. We are full of contradictions and limitations, and that is what gives us character and substance. That’s what makes us everything we are and, in a paradoxical way, perfect.

Remember to slow down. Embrace your full humanity. Tend your garden.

Here’s the Thing

Between a pandemic and relentless capitalist culture — and also this question of “What is your quarantine masterpiece?” that still lingers over my head a year into COVID — I am getting increasingly frustrated with the idea of being consistently productive in the face of such overwhelming circumstances.

In his newsletter last week, Austin Kleon shared this video by Ali Abdaal (titled, not subtly, “How Writing Online Made me a Millionaire”). Yes, Ali’s thoughts are interesting and helpful and inspiring…

… but this still emphasizes an end product that is the result of extreme focus, and at this point in time I find it laughably depressing. If you do everything I do, maybe you can find even find your life partner, Ali says in the video above. Okay.

During the pandemic, I have mastered the art of stacking dirty dishes high in the sink. My cats are still alive. Netflix has been nearly conquered. Most of the time, both my day pajamas and the night pajamas are clean.

Sometimes I paint. Sometimes (maybe once a month, if I’m feeling it) I journal.

And most of the time, I feel like I’m failing, wasting time, and that I need to be more productive in order to prove my worth.

So — to Austin and Ali and everyone else who is driven and consistent and has a huge amount of work to show for it: I am seriously impressed. And sure, I am jealous. And I’ll get there someday, but for now, I’m going to keep myself and my furry companions alive and get through as best I can.

More Creation, Less Perfectionism

The more uncertainty and fear and there is — like, say, in this apocalyptic year — the more I desperately try to hold on to control of anything within grasp. Perfectionism and control go hand in hand; perfectionism, really, is having ultimate control. But that attitude is crippling and focusing on perfectionism stifles everything from creativity to racial justice.

Being human is messy. We’re complicated beings filled with emotion and impulse. It’s how we have evolved, and it’s generally served us well. We are adaptive, creative, and innovative. We’re empathetic and have survived millennia by caring for and leaning on one another. The shiniest bits of this year have been these things.

But we’re also obsessed with “more” and “better”. At its extreme, your inner goblin may be chanting: You’re not special unless you are the best and the brightest and everyone knows it. You are not an artist — and shame on you for having pride in your work — unless you are the most perfect. If you’re not, don’t even try.

Brené Brown is a researcher, author, and decades-long advocate of challenging this inner voice and tearing down the impossible expectations we set for ourselves. She has a whole book about the gifts of imperfection. She says:

Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.

But what if we redefined “perfection” as actually leaning into the messiness and the emotion of existence? Maybe perfection is actually showing up as, and celebrating, the whole complicated human you are.

In a heavy, heavy year, art is what will help us process and work through all the worry, fear, frustration, and uncertainty. Art, one of the most ancient human practices, allows us to express all that we feel and experience where words fail. It’s served us for thousands upon thousands of years.

Art is a place to show up as your messy, human self.

You deserve the best, the very best, because you are one of the few people in this lousy world who are honest to themselves, and that is the only thing that really counts. – Frida Kahlo

We may have little control over this pandemic or politics or even our own lives right now, but we can create. We can acknowledge and embrace all that we’re thinking and feeling. We can name our selves and our experiences through the stroke of a brush or the movement of your body or a trembling note that encompasses your own humanity.

And that’s more than enough.