Attempt the Impossible!
Productivity isn’t a goal, it is how you go about achieving your goals.
Welcome to “All the Tasks Fit to Print,” my weekly newsletter on all issues productivity related for authors and other solopreneurs!
A friend sent me a link to this Oldster interview with Jerry Saltz and I was really caught by this description of his life when he was 40:
I had been a failed-artist turned long distance truck driver—with no degrees. So, since I have been writing about 35 years, I always seem to see myself as about that old. A beginner, still trying to make my way, learning on the job, stunned at what I don’t know every day.
Failed artist, no degrees, doing something most “educated elite” look down on as lower-class, yet so full of potential. If you don’t know, the spoiler to this story is that he eventually became a lauded art critic who won a Pulitizer Prize for Criticism in 2018.
He got there by way of always seeing himself as a beginner. “Beginner mind” as it is called in mindfulness circles.
What does that have to do with productivity, you ask?
Everything.
Despite how it is talked about in entrepreneurial circles, productivity isn’t a goal, it is how you go about achieving your goals. Too often we confuse productivity with success, and effort with accomplishment. Sad to say, those are not all the same thing! The goal is what you are aiming for, and productivity is a tool in achieving that goal.
We are told over and over to “Do The Thing” as if we can, as if all that is all that matters, as if all the work and effort is worthless if we don't meet the goal itself. Any failure is deemed unacceptable, or worse, a sign that The Thing you are trying to Do is not meant to be. That your productivity is useless.
"Beginner Mind" pushes that all aside and asks you, very simply, to try and do something that cannot be done.
Children learn to walk and talk only because they are willing to “fail” hundreds of times, thousands, at doing a task that is clearly, blatantly, obviously so far above their skillset that it’s almost laughable. They cannot Do The Thing. It is simply impossible for them, for so many reasons, but they try to do it over and over and over and over until, one day, to their own surprise, they DO THE THING.
“Baby, you can’t walk! What are you trying to do? Walk? Don’t be ridiculous! You are a baby!” –– said no one ever.
Their productivity is measured by the number of times they fall down.
Maybe instead of equating your productivity with a successful outcome, you need to match it to your willingness to practice “beginner mind;” that is, your willingness to fail and your willingness to reach for that impossible thing that is far, far away.
Can you walk yet? No? Should you stop trying? Also NO!
Instead of demanding that we Do The Thing and then claim we are failures when we cannot, we should say “Attempt the Impossible!”*
Isn't that what babies do?
Before we learn how to walk successfully, we have to just keep trying to stand up. None of us succeeded at that on the first try, because we couldn't. We did not have the muscles or the skeleton yet to do that. Standing was impossible; walking even more so.
Babies attempt the impossible every day. Despite the fact that there is no guarantee in attempting, and that there is so very much that is impossible, they do it.
And isn't that what Saltz did, after all? He focused his "beginner mind" on doing what he could do at the time, even if it seemed pointless, no matter how many times he failed. He attempted to do something impossible. He went from failed-artist truck driver to Pulitzer Prize winning art critic.
This idea is not easy to implement and I still struggle with it myself, but I had a lesson slapped right in my face this past weekend.
I was looking at lists of “best productivity books” to see if I had read the classics of the literature, and fortunately, I have read most of them (or at least skimmed, ahahah!). What I noticed, though, was that there were almost no women there. If you asked for the top ten personal productivity books of the past 50 years (my lifetime), not one is written by a woman.
I thought: “Why not? …and why not me?”
Immediately I stepped back from that idea. Why me? Who am I, anyway? I'm no world-renown expert. I don't have a popular TED Talk. I haven't been interviewed on all the podcasts. No one knows who I am! Write a popular book on personal productivity? A classic of the field? Ppfffffffft. As if!
Nothing is stopping me from making that a goal, though. Having that as a goal doesn't invalidate all the hard, productive work I put into products like this newsletter and my PPM method. Not having accomplished that goal doesn't mean I won't, or shouldn't try. I can't walk that walk…yet. Right now I'm figuring out how to stand up.
What can I do if I simply attempt the impossible every day? What can you do if you attempt the impossible every day?
We won't know until we try!
*If you think I stole this slogan from the Yunmeng Jiang sect in Mo Dao Zu Shi, then you would be correct!
The MDZS reference brightened my day!
Not a goal, but the path to getting there - such a simple statement, and so very true!