Basic Shit I Should Know By Now: Being Productive Is the Most Fun

This is my new series on some really basic shit that I should know by now, and yet somehow I still need to be reminded of. Maybe you do, too? 

Last weekend, when I was taking my day long break from the internet, I cracked open one of my favorite books of all time, The Complete Tightwad Gazette.

The Gazette was a newsletter in the 90s, dedicated to "Promoting Thrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle," and it's a hilarious and illuminating read. Author Amy Dacyczyn has a wry sense of humor and a gift for finding the juice in dry topics like the efficacy of pre-patching kids' jeans before they sprout holes, or the cost savings of using cloth versus paper napkins. 

So I was flipping through this beloved book the other morning and came across an article called "A Proclivity for Productivity," which is about how Amy doesn't understand why people like to lie on beaches doing nothing. To her, doing something is far more enjoyable.  

"Being busy, being productive, doing things that improve your family's long-term prospects should not be seen as drudgery to be endured until you reach the cherished goal of utter inactivity. The happiest and most successful people I know have realized a critical truth: The act of doing things is more fun that doing nothing. If this is not your current attitude, you should work to acquire it."

And, boom. My hair blew back a little at that point -- Amy was COMING FOR ME, because I am what is known in the common parlance as "a lazy whore." As a kid when I'd spend time with my thrifty, hard-working paternal grandparents, my lethargy used to drive them crazy. "HEIGHTH OF AMBITION!" my grand-dad would bellow when he'd see me lying on the couch, watching cartoons hour after hour, eating endless baloney-and-butter sandwiches. 

My tendency has always been toward lying around, consuming media, and partaking in the fanciful delights of the mind, aka daydreaming. I have this part of me that just loves doing nothing so much, omg, it's THE BEST. And, when I'm deciding how to spend my time, "doing fuck-all" is often my top choice. 

Which in some ways is great! Some folks have a really hard time relaxing and I feel super lucky to not have that problem, I guess?

But my proclivity for sloth-like behavior doesn't make me happy when it crowds out too much of the productive stuff I could be doing ... that I actually love to do. 

Because Amy's right -- being productive is pretty fun! A work day when I can get into a flow state and knock out a slew of problems, an afternoon spent painting or writing or cleaning something that was gross when I started -- all that simply feels good, in and of itself. Plus, at the end you have a painting or a song or a clean kitchen to boot -- and there is nothing not to like about that. 

So, the last few days I've been trying to pay more attention to how I choose to spend my time, so that instead of my default choice being "Put your feet up and chill," it's more often "Find something to do and do it!" And it's been good -- especially alongside taking some consciously internet-free time during the day. Bursts of productivity uncoupled from internet distraction -- it's a powerful combination. 

As is my wont, I made a huge list of things that I want and need to do, and when I am looking for something to do, I just pick something and run with it. And it's been working for me! Dishes, paintings, work problems, blog posts -- I've been knocking them all out, and liking not only the results but also the way productivity makes me feel. In a world gone batshit crazy, nothing brings me more joy than to offer a few small contributions to the other side of the scale. 

How about you? Are you like my grandparents, who worked constantly all day and never even sat down outside of mealtimes? Or like me, the heighth of ambition over here eating Lucky Charms in front of the television? Do you feel like you could use a productivity boost, or do you need to cultivate the ability to chill? (I am soooo good at chilling, y'all. Please feel free to request any tips.) Tell me all about it! 

Basic Shit I Should Know By Now: Get Off the Internet Every Now and Then

This is my new series on some really basic shit that I should know by now, and yet somehow I still need to be reminded of. Maybe you do, too? 

Recently, I’ve been a little down-hearted -- and I know I’m not the only one. The world gets more and more bananas every day, and though I’ve been feeling like this off and on since last November, the last few weeks, it’s been mostly on.

Many times per day, I set myself some task or other, and then moments later somehow find myself lying prone on my couch scrolling through the day’s atrocities on my phone, feeling lost and tired and afraid.

Like most people, I’ve had a moderate internet addiction for years, but recent events have definitely made it worse. I keep thinking I’m going to miss something big, important, or extra ridiculously dumb, because big, important, extra ridiculously dumb stuff seems to happen in abundance every damn day.

It’s not like I’m a recluse drooling on the keyboard all day -- I mean, I have a husband, a job, friends, places to go and shit to do. But I’m definitely on the internet more than what feels healthy. It feels like this low level thrum of fuckedness rumbling through my gut all the time now. Somehow, checking my phone turns it down for a minute, but also makes it much worse in the long term.

The addiction has recently ramped up to the point where I often pick up my phone and start cycling through my favorite apps and online places without even realizing it, mesmerized and unfocused, my consciousness dissolved into the device in my hand.

But to be constantly neck-deep in this river of fucked-up news makes me feel physically ill. The world in the phone is such a shitshow, and we need to keep our eyes on it for sure, and stay involved and engaged … it doesn’t have to be every moment of every day, though, does it? I mean, it can’t be every moment of every day. It just ... can't.

So last Sunday when I woke up and found myself scrolling and feeling gross before I’d even made it out of bed, I realized I needed to switch this habit up, and I made a decision -- I was going to stay off the internet all day long. No Facebook, no Instagram, no podcasts, no videos -- just me and some books and paints and stuff to do around the house.

And, oh, it was marvelous! I did so many chores! I washed dishes, scrubbed the range, swept up all the nasty crumbs that gather under the kitchen cabinets, took down some rather impressive spider webs, and vacuumed AND steam cleaned the carpet.

Then I read a book -- a paper book! -- and painted a girl and hung out with my husband and drank tea in the backyard and sang my favorite parts of Moana while I worked. And I wrote for a while with a turquoise fountain pen in a journal with fantastic paper, and I stared at the trees and let some lovely ideas slowly unfurl in me.

By the end of this day of doing only 3D activities in the 3D world, I was surprised to notice that I felt brand new. My mind unclenched and lost itself in the moment, watching ants marching around the patio and birds zipping through the sky. My brain felt like it'd had a nice glass of wine in the bath, followed by a relaxing nap on clean sheets.

Do you also feel like maybe you’ve been plugged in too long and too hard? Like it’s time to disconnect from the Borgian reality that is the internet for a minute? Like your brain could use a bath and a nap, too? If any part of you is saying “Yes,” then you should take a day off! It’s easier and more luxurious than you think. Here’s how:

1. Put your devices elsewhere. If my phone is sitting next to me, I know that I will definitely pick it up and start dicking around before I even realize what I’m doing. To break that habit was so simple though -- I just put my phone and my iPad away in my bedside table where I couldn’t unconsciously pick them up. So easy.

2. If you have a random question you feel the urge to look up, write it down. Since the advent of the internet, my tolerance for sitting with an unanswered question has gone way down, but it’s not like I actually NEED TO KNOW the name of the actor who played Walder Frey and Argus Filch RIGHT NOW. So I jotted these random questions down to look up later. Interesting fact: by the next day I had lost interest in them.

3. Make a list of activities that sound fun or productive to you. Go for a bike ride, clean your closet, visit your mom, hit up the library, work in the garden, day drink and write poetry, go to the shelter and play with homeless dogs -- whatever you want.

4. Do the stuff on your list all day long. When you are done with one item, move on to another. Go ahead -- live a little!

5. Go to bed without checking your phone. Congratulations -- you did it! You successfully remembered what it was like to be alive before 2007! Go you!

Is it ridiculous that something as simple as getting the hell off the internet requires tips? Sure it is. And maybe you don’t need help with this particular issue. Maybe you already have extremely healthy boundaries with your phone -- if so, mazel tov.

But if you are a craven half-cyborg like me who finds yourself melting into your device more often than you would like, and it makes you feel shitty, then maybe give the day-long fast a try. My guess is that you will feel more like a real human person by the end of the day.

Crazy Compared to What?

Short answer: Compared to how you want to feel.

Long answer: This is all subjective. One person's mildly crazy is another person's normal and yet another person's completely out of control. So I'm not here to judge.

Sure, I might see patterns in how people are behaving, and I might talk about those patterns, but it is clearly not my role to call anyone anything. It's more like, I'm here, and I've been on the planet for a while now and have struggled with many situations where I felt out of control and cloudy and like I couldn't understand myself ... like

• when I've gotten stuck in a fat shame spiral trying to get dressed in the morning and feeling 100% like Jabba the Hutt
• when I've obsessed about someone hardcore for months on end, fully believing I could force love to bloom through blunt psychic force
• when I've lusted about buying more eyeshadow I don't need and ultimately can't resist buying more eyeshadow I don't need and I'm forced to question whether there really is a any concept of free will in the universe.

Over the years, I have found a few things that have helped me reframe these situations, let go of them, and move on to different and slightly more interesting problems (although, yes, I admit it, I still buy excessive amounts of eyeshadow ).

It starts with taking a good hard look at what we've been taught, recognizing much of it for the bullshit it is, and making the choice to leave it behind. No longer burdened, we can then connect more easily with the most rational and relaxed part of ourselves, and bring forth our personal forms of genius.

I know that reading and writing about these ideas helps me -- it helps me remember what is important and what is not. (Not important: the person in front of me going 5 mph below the speed limit. Important: Making some time to write, stretch, and dream every day.) Sometimes in reading I come across a turn of phrase that retunes my thinking in a useful way. And other times I feel certain that spouting off about how to keep my mindgrapes in good nick actually helps keep my mindgrapes in good nick.

So my goal here is to do a couple of things. First, it's just to ask -- how are your mindgrapes? Are you happy with the way you're thinking about your life? Is it serving you? Or do you need to shift some stuff around?

If you do feel like you might want to shift some stuff around, then I hope I can provide some turns of phrase and maybe some new perspectives that will help you retune your brain.

All of this is so that you can spend LESS time feeling bad about your chubby legs or withering away in a relationship that isn't serving you or spending all your money on shit you don't need in a desperate attempt to fill the void ... and MORE time playing with the makeup you already have and hanging out with people who love you properly and making significant contributions to the small and big circles of your life.

Because here's the thing -- all the self-limiting rubbish that's blowing around our heads? It's not even special. As Liz Gilbert says, "Your fears are just regular old mass-produced, made-in-China, sold-at-Walmart fears. Nothing fine or precious or artisanal about them."

Our super-fragmented, always-online culture encourages us to curate ourselves, to treasure our eccentricities and cultivate our tastes with pinpoint precision ... and I think sometimes in the course of doing that, it's easy to end up kind of fetishizing our own weaknesses and fears, to spend precious time tending our garden of craziness, contemplating each flower and leaf, thinking that the complexity of our pain is what makes us special.

But it's not. It so really is not. The thing that makes a person special is what you do after the fear, what happens beyond the pain.

So that's the goal here -- to identify our Walmart fears and set them down, thus leaving our hands free for more interesting work.

You in?

photo by Kazuhiro Tsugita // cc

Getting Ready To Get Ready

Getting ready to get ready is that thing people sometimes do, when we really want to do X, but we build it up in our heads that before we can begin, we must first do A through W.

Usually when I find myself getting ready to get ready, it’s because X is something big and important and daunting. So I make plans to do X, I try to figure out a really good methodology for accomplishing X, I even buy some X-related things … all of which are pretty good delay tactics for never actually doing X.

X might be a lot of different things. It might be exercising, in which case you might read a lot about different exercise regimens and maybe even buy some equipment … without ever exercising. Or it might be meditating, in which case you might read a lot about meditating and buy a nice cushion and a shawl and some guided meditation CDs … again without any meditation taking place.

In my case, I’ve been getting ready to get ready to write my next book for more than a year now. My first book, Be Less Crazy About Your Body, was honestly pretty easy to write, because I knew what I wanted to say: we've been conditioned to be obsessed with how we look, to actually hate our bodies, and there’s no rational reason for it, and it’s hurting us so badly … so here are some things we do to shift the pattern.

The intro for that book basically sprang complete from my head one afternoon, and though I did put a lot of effort into writing the book, it was mostly about shaping, editing, and adding more 30 Rock references. Challenging, but fast, and also super fun.

This next book, though -- Be Less Crazy About Love? Well, it takes a bit more ‘splainin. My goal is to help women understand how we have been brainwashed into being obsessed with love and thinking that our lives are incomplete and we are worthless without it. Which leads us to settle for pale imitations of love, spin our wheels in terrible relationships, and tap-dance our asses off trying to make bad things workable. All of which is painful as hell and also a colossal waste of our time, talent, and energy.

And, like being obsessed how we look, it’s just not necessary at this point in human history. We can make love a force for good in our lives just by changing the way we think about it, de-prioritizing it a tiny bit, learning to see it as a part of life, not the point of life.

This message is a harder sell. Everyone can get behind the idea that hating your body is irrational, hurtful, and self-limiting … but there are a number of people who can’t or maybe don’t want to see how being hyper-focused on romantic love is just as bad an idea. Even just sharing my thoughts on this with a few of my friends, I’ve encountered some surprisingly strong resistance.

But it’s also not like love is always terrible and useless, the way that body-based self-hatred is. Sometimes our beliefs about love and the way we participate in it come together in a way that royally fucks us, but sometimes it's truly wonderful, too. So it’s not like the answer is just to shut off the love valve. It’s like the difference between alcoholism and compulsive overeating. Both are complex, but you can give up alcohol entirely, while you are gonna always hafta eat. Having a shitty body image is painful and unnecessary, full stop. But not so love. You have to sift through it with a finer comb.

Anyway … yeah. It’s complicated. And I’m spending a lot of time not really making progress on any writing that will end up in the book, but more just trying to figure out what to say and in what order. It’s hard in a way that writing has rarely ever been for me. Hence: procrastination. Distraction. Getting ready to get ready.

What does that look like for me? It’s kind of funny …

• I make a lot of Platonic Ideal Schedules where I’m meant to get up at 5 am, meditate and yogafy myself till 6, then write until it’s time to go to work. This, of course, sets me up so that if I don’t get up at 5 am any particular day, I’m screwed. Also, if I’d have executed this plan half as many times as I wrote it down in my journal, I might be on book three by now.
• I spend a lot of time thinking about whether I should write on the computer or freehand. Google Drive or Scrivener? In my regular journal or in a dedicated notebook? Outlines? Mind maps? Index cards? I can spend a hilarious amount of time debating this methodological approach stuff with myself.
• I moan to my friends about how impossible it is to get into a good routine when I’m traveling a bunch for work, or when work is really busy, or around the holidays, or when it’s cold outside, or when I’m premenstrual, or or or.
• I debate whether I need to figure out a way to get a month off so I can go back to Costa Rica and have a big chunk of time to focus on writing this book and nothing else. This is typically followed by daydreams about swaying gently in my hammock on a deserted beach and how amazing it is to snorkel over a giant coral reef and the magical quality of the Costa Rican butterfly population.

So … I’ve set it up in my head that unless I get up before dawn and have a perfect routine and an optimal technical setup and at least an entire month to focus, I’m never going to be able to write this book.

And it’s so, so stupid … because obviously there will never be a routine that I can hold to perfectly. There will always be busy times at work and business trips and shiny new notebooks and software and workflows to try. But all of that is 100% tangential to the basic task I need to achieve which is just fucking sit down and write this book that my heart tells me is important to write. Even if it’s painful, even I’m not perfectly ready. Because, really, there’s no such thing, right?

So, instead of trying to figure out when I can write, I'm going to just write whenever I can. On airplanes, in hotels, first thing in the morning instead of cuddling up with the internet. Not everything I come up with will be decent or useful, but some of it is bound to be, right? Law of averages.

And how about you? Are you getting ready to get ready to do something important? What would a real step forward look like? Can you take it today? Do tell!