On being done before you've started

Are you playing to win, or playing to play?

I often want to be done with things before I’ve started, even when I’m enjoying them. It’s my least attractive quality. I go from ‘I’ve had an idea’ to ‘why haven’t I nailed this yet?!" in rapid succession.

This dilemma has reared its ugly head over the last few weeks, as I’ve started writing a novel, and attended workshops to help with my writing. It’s the first time I’ve ever written fiction, and everything about it is new to me - form, process, quality, the lot. It’s an exciting creative project, with no deadline, no impetus other than my own creativity - and my first instinct is still to be frustrated at a ‘lack of progress.’ I want to be done before I’m started.

Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t allow much space for satisfaction. Every time I achieve a goal that I think will change my life - or perhaps more appropriately, me - for ever, I am disappointed to discover I remain the same, and there’s still something else to do. The mythical finish line wasn’t here after all.

I thought about this self-defeating tendency again this weekend, watching my partner play football. What’s the point of playing sport? I mused. Every game is a new mission, where you start all over again. You can never finish it, never clock it, never be done with it. But, of course, the players don’t want to be done with it. They’re not playing to be done, they’re playing to play.

Ah.

My neurosis is very productive. It looks, and usually feels, like total confidence in my abilities - of course I can do this, and do it well! But it’s a trick. Self-doubt, masquerading as assuredness. I’ve been driven by discipline for so long, that on my worst days, I worry there’s nothing underneath it - talent, value, passion, or joy. What if, I worry, I cut myself some slack, and everything is ruined? What if, underneath all the drive, I’m not very good? Worse, what if I’m actually lazy? What if I indulge my need for rest, or trust my instinct for play and creativity, and discover a sloth-monster of massive proportions, perhaps one who could never be put back in their box?!

Now, this is obviously not true. I love my work, I love my creative projects, and there are many, many days where I’m grateful for the opportunity to shape my own life and work. More days than not. But the fear of being uniquely shameful, problematic and lazy is often sitting quietly in the shadows, waiting for the chance to say it’s piece.

If these battles - the fear of letting go, taking your foot off the gas, finding out what lies underneath - are familiar to you, take heed. Even if your very worst fears were true once upon a time, and you had to work hard to cover up a lack of something else (talent, skill, esteem), the work you’ve done in the meantime will have taken care of those deficiencies. You’ve worked hard, you’ve learned a lot, and, as I tell my Not An MBA students: there’s nothing left to prove. You’re valuable, you’re employable, and you don’t need to worry about losing it all, not anymore.

When you take the fear of failure off the table, you’re left with much more interesting (and terrifying!) questions like: what do you love? What kind of life do you want? What activities do you enjoy the process of, and what would you be thrilled to fill your day with, regardless of the outcome? Focus on those, and it’s hard to go wrong. At that point, the only thing that’s really in your way is you. It’s a bit like Mario Kart, except you’re the one throwing obstacles into your path.

This is the attitude I’m trying to bring a lot more of to my novel, my work, and my life from here on in: playing simply to play. Doing for the joy of doing, not trying to be done. Because until we’re dead, there is no done. If we can’t enjoy the process, it’s going to be a slog of a life.

With all of that in mind, I’m going to recline here on this beach, in beautiful Rarotonga, and enjoy a cocktail. I might even nap, discipline be damned. When I get back to my desk next week, I won’t need self-flagellation to ‘make up’ the time. I’ll be able to depend on my commitment and enthusiasm for helping my clients and students, and the creative joy of making new things and putting them out into the world.

I hope you can find some of the same.

Til next week,

A