The parable of the mustard seed

When you believe (as I do) that your actions define your personal meaning, inaction is anathema. When it comes to large tasks, goals, dreams even, I have a “point of infinite procrastination,” which to me represents ultimate meaninglessness. In some ways, this is the point at which my philosphy inverts itself: Nothing I’m doing at the moment has any particular meaning, so why should I bother to act? It’s a mood, at best.

The more tired I am, the easier it is to become meaningless. At 11pm, my typical bedtime, I often continue sitting on the couch for a minute or two, trying to “work up the energy” to go to bed. This is doubly sad, because my couch is my bed, and if I’m tired enough, I will just sleep in my clothes.

Baby steps

Every once in a while through my life, I’d flirt with the idea of kaizen. If you’re not familiar, it’s the concept of starting very small and using incremental changes to slowly change the world. I’m not a neuroscientist, and no more than an amateur psychologist, so anything I say on this is just a personal opinion, but I think it has to do with flying under my own radar. It doesn’t trip my “why are you expending effort?” alarm and send me into a sleepy spiral of nested meanings that sometimes haunt me like barbershop mirrors late at night.

Kaizen became more real for me when I started working with someone who approached life a little differently. He would say, “Just get started: Get something going, even if it’s not great. You’ll find yourself motivated to do more and might even do great work.” He’s quite right.

I began to experience this idea of “start small and build” during a Saturday yardwork session. It was early spring, and as usual for the swamp where I live, plants quickly get out of hand before it’s warm and dry enough to deal with them. Every tool in my arsenal, and a couple in my neighbor’s shed, were avaialble to me. But where to start?

Then my co-worker’s words came to me. I don’t remember where I started. I just picked up some random tool and went to find the worst example of something the tool would fix, and fixed it. After a little while, what that tool could do seemed eclipsed by a different problem, solved by some other tool, so I switched.

At the end of the day, I had done a marvelous job of shaping up the yard. I was very proud of my efforts, and with valid reason. But I made no plan, created no structure, and prioritized only on the fly as the day went on.

My co-worker was thrilled a few weeks later, when I showed them that I’d added their rule to the top of my list of rules, as rule #1.

Linkage

Years ago, when I aspired to be a fiction writer, I moved to a new city to take a technical writing job, leaving my extended family behind. My brother gifted me a writing guidebook that recommended Hemingway’s approach to momentum.

It’s called “linkage.” When you’ve reached the limit of either time or writing flow, stop mid-sentence and leave it in the typewriter. When you come back tomorrow, says the theory, you will automatically jump in right where you left off and continue writing.

I think it works for me because I can’t stand to leave things unfinished. When I step back from a job not fully done, my mind somehow refuses to erase the context and stores it somewhere for the next time I’m able to continue the job.

It works for me. Though it may depend on your workstyle and temperament, I think it’s at least worth a try for anyone.