How to Create Enough Space to Find Your "Life's Task"
This is Part 2 of a series I’m calling “Headspace and Habits”. The first part is about giving yourself some grace, especially about things you’ve been shamed for online, i.e. your “productivity porn”. Feel free to go back and read that now.
Back in high school I had a favorite song, “Wasting Time” by Animal Liberation Orchestra (“ALO” for short). The song has stuck with me over the years, and its meaning has evolved as I have.
I never learn but I don' mind, I'm just wastin' time.
It’s a beautiful melody, and an anthem for those enthusiastic about doing exactly nothing. The song talks about playing music and surfing, skipping rocks and smoking weed. For the entire second half of the song, the vocalist repeats that one line in bits and pieces while the instruments strum along.
I never learn……...just wastin’....just wastin’ time….
The song is literally “wasting time”.
When I think back on what the song meant to me at the time, it was my way of rebelling against the expectation to take advantage of my, well, advantages. I’m a white male born to a middle-class family. We weren’t wealthy, but I was never wanting (at least, not for the essentials...and not for a lot of the nonessentials, either). I was a smart kid, did well in school, and was talented athletically.
I kind of always thought money and success would follow me around, without too much effort. It was a privileged stance, even if it wasn't without basis. I didn't have to try too hard at school, and it never felt like my athletic pursuits were all that taxing either. I won spelling bees and free-throw shooting competitions, and I lined one of my bedroom walls with trophy-filled shelves.
Where was my need to strive? When was I expected to learn hard work if everything I cared about came so easily?
. . .
In my last post, I talked about “productivity porn”, and why it can feel like wasting time by consuming so much of it. Your version of this might be related to productivity, as in my example of watching too many to-do list app tutorials or researching frameworks for work efficiency, but guilty pleasures change with each person, and I like to think about all of it the same way. It’s “productivity porn” if the activity is stealing from our conscious motivations. It’s something we don’t want to be doing, but can’t really help. It’s the half-step before the full-measure we say we’ll take, but never quite do.
The problem I had for years was that I was identifying what I was doing “wrong”, but I was unable to home in on why I felt that way. I would hear advice from someone I admired or wanted to emulate, and I caught a case of the “shoulds”. For years it stuck to me like a fungus, growing as I fed it. The fuel? Listening and “learning”, and applying advice aimlessly.
I didn’t know what I wanted - I just knew what I should or shouldn’t be doing, because I heard it or read it or saw it somewhere.
Meditation became a crutch. Journaling wouldn’t cure my anxiety. I couldn’t actually quit my job just because I didn’t like it.
I was falling victim to talismans, as Tyler Cowen puts it. Everything I was doing, I was doing for some abstract reason. I didn’t need meditation because I didn't even know why I was meditating. Journaling didn’t work because I was writing about what I thought I was supposed to. I didn’t have guidance. I didn’t have direction. Nothing I told myself I should be doing was internally or intrinsically motivated.
And yet, during this time, I explained every new concept to every person I met, like a braggart unable to help himself. I was much kinder to my audience, excitedly explaining the new idea with the supporting research I’d come across, but delivering it in a way that didn't require adherence. I wouldn’t shame you for not listening, not like I would shame myself.
For all the excitement, I felt equally helpless. For the first time, I had to face the fact that my life wasn’t going to look like the professional athlete’s as I expected. It felt increasingly like “a way out” (of my job, living paycheck to paycheck, scrapping for success) was feeling more and more hopeless.
But I kept reading. I went to therapy. I continued with meditation and I tried different journaling techniques. I started playing sports again. I was grasping at straws, and finding some success.
But I was still stumped by this one simple question: “What do you want?”
I don’t know.
. . .
Nir Eyal says in his book Indistractable that “You can't call something a distraction unless you know what it's distracting you from.”
It still isn’t easy, knowing what I want. But I now know how to get closer to it, to make progress on it. It’s all about headspace.
I’m not talking about the meditation app, Headspace, that some of you may know (although I use this daily, and it’s the best in class, in my opinion).
Having headspace is simply the ability to process thoughts efficiently, with or without purpose. What this entails is adjusting the ratio of input to output, which means giving yourself enough time to digest your inputs, and have the right mediums and volume for output.
There is an absurd amount of information that exists in the world, and we’re becoming more conditioned to thinking we need something, some more information or some additional skill, in order to fill a gap in our lives. In many cases, it’s the exact opposite.
Let trying come before thinking. Let action displace calculation. If you’re stuck, focus on enabling the mind by forcing the body.
Make your fingers type on a keyboard to get a feel for what the actions of a writer encompass. If you wear shorts to bed, make them your athletic shorts, so you can wake up one step closer to working out.
I don’t think anyone should stop reading, or learning by any medium for that matter. Social media and the “information elite” want to shame you for not being your best, or else they want to prop you up with cheap aphorisms that last an instant and then fly away for good.
It’s never been my way of doing things, acting without thinking. I’ll never dispose of reading in search of the right information or the right motivation. In fact, in some ways I think it’s a necessary step in the process of figuring out your “Life’s Task”.
None of it means anything, though, if you aren't paying attention. And for that, headspace is critical. It’s hard to notice something if you’re too wrapped up in the opinions of others, if you’re too absorbed in shoulds or fleeting joys, or if you simply don’t have enough time to digest the information you’ve been binging.
The same is true of information as it is of food. Not everyone needs the same amount of time to digest, nor do we all have the same processing techniques, but every one of us requires sufficient space to think for ourselves. There are so many ways to accomplish this, and things like meditation and journaling and therapy all help to increase awareness of what you need. Books like Indistractable or Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism provide examples and methods to make sense of what you’re getting from your technology, so that it’s your tool and you’re not its.
But the irony is that if we’re trying to really “escape” the grip our technology holds us in, reading a book is a tall order.
The process I went through was anything but simple, and not at all straightforward, but I learned that what created the requisite headspace for me can be boiled down to a few key recommendations:
Meditate if you’re having trouble focusing, or having too many thoughts and can’t seem to identify your emotions.
Go to therapy if you are aware of difficult events from your past, if you notice abrupt emotional shifts that can be difficult to rein in, or if you find that you work through issues by talking out loud.
Aggressively work to find a job that reduces worry outside of work or kowtowing to a boss or authority figure in your office.
Decrease your inputs by deleting social media apps on your phone and turning off the news that isn’t relevant to your daily work.
This entire “stack” is what it took for me to expand my capacity to deal with my past traumas and present obstacles. These actions shifted my perception of myself, and while my journey to headspace has been a very bumpy ride (and one I’m still on), I feel very confident now that I can (do anything).
. . .
Now that I find myself with enough headspace to resolve my daily challenges, it’s time to really pay attention, to begin attempting to answer the difficult questions. It’s time to finally hypothesize on the question of what I want, and to test it out, mind after body.
Whatever your version of “productivity porn” is, it probably tells you something. It could be as simple as appreciating the craft of the producer, but regardless you know, somewhere inside, why you’re really “wasting time” in this particular way.
The most powerful (and simplest) lesson I’ve learned to answer this existential question: whenever something piques your interest, write it down.
That’s it.
The act of writing brings mindfulness to the moment. It alerts you to your changing emotional state, and it forces awareness of the time and mental energy being spent.
In practice it’s simple. When you come across a post of some friends on a boat trip, and it looks like fun, take a note: “boat trip”; when you read a great article about the Woolly Mammoth’s potential return and you take a moment to consider the coolness, jot it down: “woolly mammoth.” I use a pen and notebook for this, but you don’t have to.
I’ve been taking these kinds of notes for literally decades now, inspired by books, TV shows, documentaries, podcasts, talks with friends, even internal chatter in the shower.
Through this practice, I was able to open my eyes after years of shirking my potential to write, to tell a story, to create. And now, I write.
Clarity comes when headspace and mindful attention come together.
When I don’t know what to do with my notes or how to make sense of them, I take a breath, and I tell myself that something will come of all this effort, sometime - I’m getting somewhere.
I still occasionally think about what it means to waste time, and I smile. I know when I’m wasting time now that I’m happy to, because I know what I’m diverting my attention from. As I continue my search, my Life’s Task is becoming clearer. I feel a stronger pull toward it with the more headspace I create. If any of my time is being wasted now, it’s intentional, and that’s a good thing.
Thanks for Reading!
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