Sometimes the only thing you can do is turn up. Whether or not anything happens after that is entirely up to the universe. Which luckily likes to deliver. It’s amazing how much you can get done without even noticing the work if you are simply there and putting a bit of time in.
I wasn’t going to write this mini newsletter at all. I planned to of course, I was going to write this newsletter about how ridiculous it is that AI wants to focus on stealing the jobs that people are desperate to have (writing, acting, music etc.), but not the administrative and bureaucratic burden we would all willingly shed. But when I saw it was already covered by this, this and this - it felt like “Well that’s already been done. Free pass to skip a week, no one is going to notice anyway”.
But I had already opened the tab. I had already popped in a title before my attention was lost and I was onto a different task (avoiding work). For days the tab sat there and taunted me. Until today when I was ready to move on from some other half-finished piece of work and this suddenly seemed like the most attractive way to spend my time. It is amazing the amount of work you can finish if you leave it there in front of you. Sure your laptop runs a little more slowly under the weight of it all, but the good ideas can percolate in the back of your mind without you ever having to spend any time on them. Then they just brew until suddenly they ‘pop’ to the front of your brain exactly when they are fully formed and ready to be used. The only thing you need to do is start. If you haven’t started they won’t come. Even just the bare minimum to get it moving along.
Is this bad advice? All a little bit too Big Magic?
Constantly switching gears into whatever is holding your interest and just hoping you meet deadlines doesn’t always feel like being productive. But I did manage to do an entire PhD thesis (which I hated) in a very reasonable 4 years by turning up a little all the time. A short stint of no more than 2 hours, so it didn’t consume my life but could just bounce off it. I like to think of it as the ‘go to the gym’ approach. If I make going to the gym a big thing then I am never going to make it. If I tell myself all I have to do is show up and once I’m there I don’t even need to try. Well then suddenly it’s a much more appealing prospect.
The question of why I choose to spend most of my time avoiding the things I am meant to like doing. Well that is something too big for me to tackle right now. I’m going to go write half a blurb for a comedy show instead.
Thanks for reading. See you next week x