Reward, Relief or Joy

"Pleasure is something you only deserve when the hard work is done."

“Pleasure is something you deserve only when the hard work is done.”

This logic is so familiar. We are slowly learning now that people are more capable and productive when they’re having fun. These ideas are slow to change, even with clear intention, but change they will.

It’s Friday night at 5:35. I’ve been sitting here combing through my scraps of essays and lists of ideas to find material for the post due tomorrow morning, according to my commitment to post each week. I’ve been preparing for a writer’s conference tomorrow and meetings with two agents who have received materials about my book. I have 15 minutes with each, and working with a coach, I’ve been assigned some scripting tasks to clarify and prepare questions and answers.

On Monday, I had a great chat with Rick Lewis of Write Hearted, the writer’s community I belong to. We were talking about how to juggle many-balls-in-the-air on the proverbial to-do list. We compared notes on how we each make long lists of priorities and, instead of tackling tasks one by one, we tended to wander among the items on the list according to impulse. The difference in our attitudes about doing it this way was striking.

I make my lists and proceed to mostly ignore them, doing the items that seem most easily accomplished or are most pressing, and letting the rest go. I grant myself some slack these days because I’m in uncharted territory, figuring out how to get my book published and all the research and emailing that goes along with it. But also, I’m scared and avoiding things. Sometimes I move items from list to list, taking more time to plan a thing than it actually takes to get it done!

Rick, however, while also having a sturdy grounding in self-care and family life, has a much more precisely pleasure-logical strategy with his list. He refreshes the list every day, and then he does the thing he feels like doing first. He follows his impulse in the moment to do the thing he wants to do first. When he’s done with that, and feeling good about it, he does the thing he wants to enjoy next. He goes through the day following his impulses toward doing the things he wants to do. He values the joy of it, the joy moves him from one thing to another all day.

“Joy is the muscle of action.”

We agree that there are sometimes things on the list to get done that aren’t fun or turn out to be troublesome, but in the current of enjoyment, getting these things out of the way is a pleasure in itself. Knocking out the hard stuff can feel good when you’re in the mood to do it.

On Tuesday, before my first meeting with an agent, I sat down to do the scripting I had planned with my coach and began to feel resistance. Literally. Pressure in my chest and belly, a bit of clench in my jaw. I knew the answers to each of the questions we imagined the agent asking, but I didn’t want to list them and streamline them. I listened to the resistance which said: “I’m ready to answer these questions when the agent asks in the context of that moment. I trust myself to do it well enough.”

That made me pause and say this to myself again. I felt the pressure lift. Even though I’ve never done this before, I trust myself to do it well enough.

I’m making a long slow paradigm shift in my belief systems, choosing to follow appealing impulses spontaneously without arduous planning, preparing, and perseverating, and “holding myself by the scruff of the neck to put nose to grindstone.” So far so good.

Eventually, as you’re enjoying what you do, everything that needs to get done gets done. This is a whole different energy signature to the same process of keeping lists to get things done. Follow your interest, curiosity and desire. Your impulses will show you what to do, and your extraconscious mind will organize your list for you. The pleasures of engagement in work that is meaningful to you is what makes it possible to do the hard things, and get the hard work done with enjoyment.

Off to hit the sack: writer’s conference tomorrow! Leave a comment below if you feel the impulse!

Gratuitous cat picture for today: Bosco doing what needs to be done.