The Cleared Deck Fallacy
What to do when the world won't slow down
What do you do when you have more going on than you can handle? Someone asked me this recently. Too many commitments, too many to-dos, too many worries, too many terrible things happening in the world that you have little power to change? How do you prioritize, how do you squeeze water from a dry sponge, how do you get it all done, how do you make the constant influx stop?
It doesn’t stop, I told them. You have to.
There is a book about writing I really like called Write No Matter What by Joli Jensen. It’s written for academics, but there’s a lot in there for non-academics and non-writers too. Once of my favorite chapters is about the tendency writers have to put off their writing and say, I’ll get to it once I’ve cleared the decks. I just need to get through teaching, plan this conference, deal with those meetings, answer these emails, give that seminar, review those articles, grade this papers, etc etc, and then I’ll have time to write.
This is a lovely story to tell oneself: that there is a commitment-free future full of great, big expanses of unpoken-for time waiting for you just around the next bend. All you have to do is hold on tight and you’ll get there.
Is it a true story? You tell me.
What I’ve noticed, both in my own life and in what I’ve observed supporting people through sabbaticals, is that unspoken-for time has a way of disappearing before it arrives. When the calendar is wide open, things fill it in. What seems like a small commitment expands into a week’s worth of work. If you think about a workweek as essentially ten blocks of available time, five morning and five afternoons, it’s really not that much.
Now, before you think I’m getting all productivity-coach on you (which I could do, but I don’t think it’s what you’re here for), let me get to the larger point. The deck is never clear. Even when you’re retired! Even then, there are commitments, appointments, responsibilities. Time is not made. It’s claimed. If you are going to write, or make, or run, or rest, or walk in the woods or plant those seeds or build that shelf or snuggle that child, you just have to do it.
Are there consequences? There can be. You might not get something done that you think you need to get done. Or, you might find that you return to work so energized that what seemed a huge task has magically shrunk into something manageable. Or, you might find that it actually doesn’t need doing, not right now, maybe not at all. Or, you might let someone down, be found less than perfect, not 100% reliable. I’m not convinced this is a bad thing.
And when it comes to the relentlessness of our news cycles, the absolute pummelling of each day’s parade of outrages and horrors, a certain softness is needed. I was going to write a thick skin is needed, or strength, but actually I think it is softness. An ability, like in martial arts, to receive the blow, to soften rather than to tense up, to move with, to maintain balance. And the best way I know to build the kind of flexibility that allows you to roll with the punches is to stop ticking off to-dos and to go do something that brings you ease. Not something you force yourself to do because you think it’s good for you, but something you genuinely enjoy. Do as much of that thing as possible. Do it even when — especially when — it feels impossible.
Friends, the bad-news decks are not going to clear. My fellow Americans, stop hanging on by your fingernails til the mid-terms. Even if there’s the Democratic landslide everyone’s predicting (in spite of the voter intimidation and electoral malfeasance we know are coming), things aren’t going to suddenly be fixed. My fellow Brits, we know that Reform is emboldened daily by the Maga example, that long-simmering ugliness and inequalities persist, that we live with broken institutions. Things will never be perfect. They might not even get much better. The work of a society is to keep moving the needle towards justice.
Which means we can relax a little. Do what we can, not do what we can’t. In the Pirkei Avot, a book of Jewish teachings (Jewish wisdom is full of brilliant teaching that we Jews do a mixed job of following), it says that it is not our duty to complete the task, but neither are we free to desist from it. I have always loved this. The project of the repair of the universe is ongoing. No one person is responsible for every bit of it. Just do your part.
To be human in the early 21st century is to experience relentlessness. Relentless demands, relentless distractions, relentless challenges, relentless change. The small stuff can be as difficult as the big stuff. If I have to sort out one more malfunctioning app that I didn’t want in the first place I think I might scream (in fact, I think I already have). If I have to listen to one more clip of our dictator-in-chief, read one more nauseating Epstein revelation, organise one more complicated after-school logistical situation, fill out one more superfluous form, reschedule one more appointment, prepare for one more half-term. You have your own lists of the unrelenting, I’m sure.
It doesn’t stop.
We do.
Want to talk about some of these things together?
The Hard Prune is one year old tomorrow, and to celebrate I’m launching Hard Prune workshops! If you’d like to get together to talk with other Hard Prune readers about the themes we explore here, then these are for you.
It will take some experimenting to find a day and time that work for people, but I’m going to start with Friday, March 6th at 1:30 pm UK / 8:30 am EST / 5:30 am PST (sorry, left coast friends! I’ll try a later time next time). More details here.
If you’d like to join, please email me for the link. There’s no charge. For now, workshops will be free with donations welcome.
Looking for a new podcast?
I was and I stumbled on Norah Jones Playing Along. She interviews guests and makes music with them. I’m not a huge Norah Jones fan, and she’s not the world’s best interviewer, but I don’t dislike her, she’s talented, and she has some wonderful musicians on the show. The episode with Questlove and Christian McBride is an absolute hoot.
More Liu please
If you were as taken with Alysa Liu as I was, here’s an article to read by the New York Times’s dance critic to keep the love alive. What an inspiration! (I’ve used a gift link so there should be no paywall.)
Postcard from my garden
Donating to The Hard Prune
It’s important to me that The Hard Prune is available to everyone, so I offer it freely with no paywalls. Reader support makes that possible. Some people have asked to be able to make an occasional donation rather than committing to a paid subscription, so I’ve created these links. Donations of any amount are gratefully accepted.
Thank you! I needed this message on this day in particular! It reminds me of my favorite Mary Oliver passage from her book "Upstream":
- It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.
There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”
I will read this to my children next time I miss a sign-up deadline and quote it to border control this summer should I fail to get around to renewing my US passport in time ;-)