Working is easy - figuring out what to do is hard

in #productivity8 years ago

They say humans are evolutionarily conditioned to follow, except for a very small minority which deviates from the norm and is preconditioned to lead. This creates a hierarchy which constitutes a natural order but inevitably followers are unsatisfied with their social position and want to rise to the top.
So we see people like you and me working our asses off to get on top in life, but often it seems like we are just burning our tires and not getting anywhere.
Think about it, how often do you work all day and have nothing to show for at the end of the day?

Good days

It seems like i have worked tirelessly for the last couple of years yet i have nothing to show for it. Nevertheless every now and then i have a day when all things i touch seem to fall in line. My work seems so simple and easy, nothing goes wrong and it feels more like i am playing than working. In the end of the day it seems like i have achieved so much that it is like a miracle.
I bet most people reading this can relate.

If we could all be so productive every day we could downright build Rome in 1 week… or could we?
I have observed that the effort i put into those ultra-productive days is no higher and no lower than the effort i put into the least productive days. The amount of work i do is absolutely the same. It is not even necessary that i am more focused on the ‘’good’’ days, it really only depends on two things:

  1. How many ‘’blocks’’ i have created earlier
  2. How suited are the tasks to my skills

You probably know what i mean with no.1 if you are familiar with object oriented programing. Consider any task you have is made up from several smaller tasks - blocks. You can do a few of these ‘’blocks’’ on day 1 and you don’t really have anything to show for it. You do a few more of these blocks on day 2 and you still don’t really have anything to show for it. On day 3 you do only one task - joining all prior tasks together - and you have a lot to show for because everything came together.

Let me give you an example in writing for STEEMIT: on day 1 i think about the possible thematics i could write about, check how those thematics have ranked on STEEMIT in the past and then filter out those which are unlikely to succeed; on day 2 i make a list of possible headings i could make and create premises with ‘do not forget to include’ points; by now i have spent 2 days of my free time and i literally have nothing to show (ok, maybe a list with 5 points on it) but on day 3 it all comes together as i can write 1000 words in under 2 hours.

The point no. 2 considers my knowledge and experience in relation to how i can apply them to a given task. If i am not well suited to some blocks of the task i might outsource them. Or spend an hour or two learning it before i start doing it. All in the name of completing the task faster and with spending less energy.

Bad days

Then there are the bad days when i run around like a headless chicken, work on everything (un)humanly possible and at the end of the day my ‘to-do’ list is just as long (if not even longer) than it was at the start of the day. Often i look back on a day like that and can’t understand how nothing got (seemingly) done.
But upon a deeper reflection there is a trend - i don’t know what exactly to do. Thus a lot of time and energy is spent on trying to figure out what to do and which things to do first. Making decisions is what consumes most of the time and energy, and as ‘decisions’ are not something visible/tangible thus despite all that time and effort i have seemingly not accomplished anything.

Conclusion?

From the dichotomy between the good days and the bad days i gather that making decisions is vitally important for doing things fast and effective, yet while it leads to good days it gives a feeling of not getting anything done. I could argue that this is a consequence of the ‘i want it now’ mentality we were raised in (and still live in it) the issue stems from much further back - the tribal times.
See, like we say that corporate leaders and government leaders get huge paychecks for no work, the common people claimed the same back in the middle ages. In the Roman times misunderstandings (on both sides) between the vulgars and the plebeians were no different. And no matter how far back in the recorded history we go, this duality remains the same. One side sees only ‘’work’’ as being worth anything and the other side sees only ‘’decisions’’ as being worth much.


(A single chain link does not create a chain does it?)

But the reality is that one without the other brings us absolutely nowhere. This is why anyone who ever wanted to climb high in life had to embrace both - a lot of hard decision making and a lot of hard work.

Now, can we get over this ‘Work vs. Decision’ and ‘Idea vs. Execution’ supremacy mentalities?


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Enjoy the day

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I would stop judging days by deliverable that takes out the good and bad already :-). The question is always about climbing high - it is different for different people. Climbing High has also a huge price tag attached and sometimes it can pay off long term to be rather in the main stream/level. I do not know people really like to leave high up in the mountain to take this as a metaphor because it is cold, it is lonely and the storms really hit you....

i totally agree. It's like the failure being step backward vs. step forward.
Thank you for the comment :)

Nice read mrlogic... keep it up

Thank you :)

"Now, can we get over this ‘Work vs. Decision’ and ‘Idea vs. Execution’ supremacy mentalities?"
No. We need to discuss in order to advance.

well i already had my discussion (monologue), i welcome yours :)

How can a monologue be useful to anyone? Advancement can go only so fast when you are solo, but when you get a discussion ( with two or more) the process is overwhelmingly faster. No need to go at snails pace when you can hop on a rocket.

So you are saying that SteemIt would benefit by giving a "boost" to articles that have long discussion threads? I was thinking along these lines earlier this morning. As of right now, SteemIt is setup more for the presentation of material than the discussion of it.

yes exactly!
Forum like discussions, with 2 options, 1 for immediate responses (like the old MSN messenger) and 1 for a long response time (chess like) debate

You need to first build a rocket to hop on it...
Besides you're never up for a discussion/dialogue XD

I have been trying to figure out how to buy myself out of "wage slavery" for some time. Debt freedom is the answer of course.

Agreed, but debt sucks the most when someone makes it and you're the one who will ultimately need to pay it off. Things can turn so ironically sometimes XD

I ended up with a bunch when I divorced my ex, I fully understand.

cogs in the machina man. I try everyday to break the circle.

Many times, after a while you are stuck with what you are doing.
You don't think you have time to figure what to do.
When you have to starting figuring out, then it becomes too late. sigh...

We all have good days and bad days. Life just goes on. Hang in there.

I think you hit it on the head when you mentioned the modern Western (American?) tendency toward only being satisfied with instant gratification. The feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction you mentioned are entirely of your own internal construction. This is important because you get to decide how you feel. If you feel a way you don't like, pause, self-observe, then move forward.

Some people will feel highly satisfied having accomplished their outline on day one. Still others will feel satisfied without any regards to how much they got done. After all, to butcher Alan Watts, the point of life isn't to get to the end any more than that's the point of music or dancing. Enjoy each note as it comes, each step in the dance. If you prefer not to enjoy it, that's your choice.

Also, there have been some good studies on delayed gratification and personal success. Here are three:

There's reference to the marshmallow experiment done in the 60's and recreated in the 80's that first brought this subject to light. You can read about those studies on G Scholar or Wikipedia.