The productivity myth, the end of procrastination, maybe even addiction?
the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input.
- A few of you are dealing with the issue of speed… how long it takes to get done what you need to get done.
- Others of you are dealing with the issue of speed… zero is also a speed. Said in another way: you don’t get done what needs to get done. What should be done. What is essential to get done.
Why? You don’t like to do it. You don’t want to do it. So you suffer.
- I have a ton of low priority stuff that nearly never gets done.
- And I have a few very high priority stuff that I don’t get done…
The first category: I don’t consider procrastination: life works, my life, works well with those not done.
The second category: it’s deadly.
- For most business owner, the second category includes: getting new business and billing.
- For me: it is only getting new business: I have no billing.
- For a student: it is getting the schoolwork done, in a timely manner
Now, why are those tasks so hard to get done? Because they are a real pain, not just to start, it is a moment to moment pain.
All pain comes from resistance. So if there is pain, there is resistance. But what is that resistance about?
I am now going deep, and look at the feelings… fear is there. Anxiety is there: a fear of some future. And some kind of grief… of past failures? The inside is weeping. Hm… interesting.
Let me look at the student who is losing attention while he is attempting to write a paper. The brain is going to sleep… it’s resisting doing what it isn’t interested in doing.
What’s there? Past failures. Feeling stupid. Shame.
Turning point
I have had an interesting and unexpected thing happen: Yesterday and today I did my laundry, without resisting it. I cooked some vegetables, without resisting it. I removed the hard drive from the old computer, without resisting it. WTF… Not my normal behavior.
Then I got an email from a client who reported the same thing. He asked:
I don’t want to jump the gun here but the first thing I am recognizing is procrastination lifting. I didn’t even realize until a few minutes ago: the first thing I did when I got home was to clean. I never do that first thing usually pop the TV when I get home. Is detached automatic like this? If it is it will be a game changer for me.
He also got his billings done… I can’t find the email just now.
So, what happened? What “pulled” resistance?
My hunch is that it’s the “detached” capacity.
You cannot be effected by resistance if you are out of the way… like an aikido master would be.
It seems, and I am sharing my own experience here, that resistance, distaste, inner pressure was replaced with an “of course, no problem” willingness.
I need more people to test it, preferably people who are not prone to the “flash in the pan” placebo effect. And preferably people who have some high-priority stuff they procrastinate on.
Productivity is a speed-thing. How fast you get done what needs to get done. It can go from zero to whatever time it gets done.
Being distracted, resisting doing what you need to do, is a productivity issue, but unless you have some capacities to counter dislike, pressure, resistance, fear, fear of success, fear of failure, blame, etc., all the productivity tricks out there are going to produce, at best, a flash in the pan result for you. A day, a week… than back to “normal.”
As I see it, the capacities, the spiritual capacities, that I am tending to rename as social capacities, are most effective when they are disengaging your customary reaction to what you don’t like, what you don’t want, what you fear, what you resist.
Generosity, the capacity, disengages your forceful way of putting yourself above others, so you avoid… whatever you are avoiding… being worthless, nothing, not respected, not valued? What you are resisting is colorful, while generosity is a strong white light.
Remember the astonishing quote from Leo Tolstoy? “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” ~ Leo Tolstoy, form the novel Anna Karenina
Success in anything is like the strait and narrow… while the “no success” is the wide world, the land mass around it.
Let’s look at another capacity:
Resilience, the capacity, allows you to be bent by forces you can’t control. But as soon as the forces weaken, or stop, you return, undamaged to your original position: into your undamaged, untouched Self.
When this capacity doesn’t work, you resist everything. You become an activist, a hater, a cheerleader, a positive thinker… all ways to fix the world… or run from it. And while this is going on, you either never developed a sense of Self, or you don’t know what it is, you are so busy resisting.
You see: resiliency is the singular light… the rest is darkness.
Let’s look at detached: when this capacity doesn’t work, you are always in the middle of things, and you are spinned and used, and tossed and pushed by every emotion swirling inside you. It’s a miracle if you can get anything done.
Many ways, it is clear to me that this capacity can stop addiction. Because addiction is escape. If there is no need to escape, there is no need for addiction.
This is an untested theory… I don’t have any active addicts among my people, at least they haven’t raised their hands.
Detached is a life of freedom, grace, and ease.
As rare as a big diamond.
Meditators, gurus, are detached conditionally. The moment they are put inside real life, they lose it. They need the circumstances to change, they cannot change themselves… because they cannot turn on capacities.
And that is how it is.
