Action Snack:

3 ways to figure out what's important and then make it happen

Photo by Alexander Suhorucov on Pexels

Hey there everyone —

Last time I wrote about how productivity writers tackle the problem of “focus.” They usually talk about two things: distraction and avoidance. What most of these productivity folks assume is that the person already knows what’s important to them, and is then distracted from it, or afraid of doing it. I talked about how systemic oppression can get in the way of a person’s knowing, and how inequality can make even the task of asking what’s important incredibly painful. Then I promised an Action Snack.

Those of you who are familiar with this newsletter have likely picked up that because I’m a systems thinker, every time I try to write a simple fix for a problem, I get uncomfortable. I want to tell you about all the stuff I’m leaving out. In this post, I’m adding on to the context I provided last time. I am not assuming that everyone comes to this Action Snack with the same history, or with the same agency, power, access to resources, and support.

Here, then, are three strategies to help you choose what’s important and then make it happen, so you can bring your heart and brilliance into the world, because we need you. I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s true. 

So cheesy, in fact, that I’m going to justify myself by telling you about my local Winco. For those of you who don’t know what a Winco is: It’s an enormous grocery store, stripped of all the ambiance and wood you find in stores that want you to believe that the expensive broccoli you’re holding in your hand in utter disbelief, trying to figure out how much it weighs and if you can afford it, was plucked just this morning and tenderly carried to you by someone who loves their job so much they never think about what they’re paid.

Winco is massive. It has high ceilings; it’s bathed in blinding fluorescent light; its floors smell of bleach and are perpetually being washed. It’s full of the packaged food everyone says you aren’t supposed to eat, tons of frozen food, and in the back it has an amazing bulk section, where the vegetarians who aren’t seduced by the organic nirvana stores go to load up on beans and rice.

You can’t hurry in Winco. You go, you get your stuff, and then you wait with everyone else in a super long line, because there are never enough open check stands. I was in Winco when the pandemic hit Portland. I found out they closed the schools while I was in line. The line stretched from the front of the store all the way to the back where the dairy coolers are. We wondered together what was coming and laughed about the one scrap of toilet paper clinging to the empty pallet. That’s the vibe: get your stuff, be prepared to wait, don’t bitch about it. 

The point is that people at Winco aren’t hurrying, preoccupied, looking down. They don’t freak out when you make eye contact. Instead, they smile back. I can really look into a stranger’s face and they’ll look right back and we’ll send all these mutual appreciation love beams back and forth. 

I watched a guy put his daughter on his shoulders, and she had this little plastic radio she was playing full blast, wriggling around high in the air, and the other kids were hopping around, bouncing back and forth across the aisle and blocking everybody, and no one got annoyed with them. I go to Winco and I’m like holy shit: everyone is incredible. 

Which makes me wonder—what are all these folks doing with their days? Are they getting the chance to be incredible outside their families? What would we get, all of us, if everyone was able to not only pick what was important to them to create in the world, but actually start doing it? What could we see and know and experience, because of them? What could we receive from you?

Ok. Action Snack for real. Here are three steps to figure out what’s important and bring it to the world. Grief. Ruthlessness. Patience. In that order.

Grief

Stepping into grief is tough. Choosing anything, however, is a grief practice. By choosing, we’re recognizing all the things that aren’t going to happen. We have so little time. There are so many needs. You have to connect with suffering: your own and others. You have to confront how much you don’t know, how much time you’ve spent not doing what’s important to you, and how shitty you’re going to feel if you don’t do it before you die. 

We wonder if we’re up to the task; if we’re smart enough; if we’re going to get humiliated after we’ve put in all this time. We want a million dollars, an assistant, a giant whiteboard, fancy snacks—ok, clearly this is what I want, but you get the drift. All of this is incredibly vulnerable, which is why people skip it. They want to jump into action, start seeing results. 

But this is a  practice of clearing. To grieve is to sit in the muck of all our hopes and losses. We sit and feel and then what is important starts to settle out, like silt.

Ruthlessness

This is the moment when you ask: What am I most pissed about? What do I secretly know I’m good at, and all these other people are doing it and I’m not and that’s fucking ridiculous, because I know how to do it better. Who do I envy? Who do I criticize? What would make me so damn proud of myself I wouldn’t even need to show it on my face, or tell someone else, if I just did it? 

What’s the dream that keeps tugging at me, in that quiet space between being asleep and fully awake? What do I owe the people coming after me? What have I been given, that allows me to tough this one out and give back? The dominant culture wants to seduce you into believing that if a bunch of people watch you doing the thing and cheer you on and give you a lot of money for doing it, that’s what makes it important. Plug your ears. Put your phone in that bowl of rice. This is about you, not us.

Now pick the one thing. That’s the ruthless part. You have to choose.

If you can’t pick go back to step 1.

Patience

Everything takes longer than you imagine. You get interrupted by hunger, tragedy, the cat, the cat box.  

The flush of beginning gives way to the yawning repetition of ordinary work. No one wants to hear you talk about it anymore. Not even you. It’s still not done. You still don’t know if you made the right choice. You fall off existential cliffs, then gaze out at the tree in the yard, sighing. Everyone is at the water park, splashing and laughing. They don’t even miss you.

Keep going. You are keeping the promise you made to yourself. You are building parts of yourself that you’ll need in the future. You want to know what’s going to happen, and you have to stay here and do the work to find out. It’s ok that you don’t know if it’s worth it. 

Set the timer for another thirty minute work block. When you’re doing the work, you’ll forget to ask yourself if it means anything. 

The only way to know if something is important to you is to stick with it, long after you want to be doing it. Long enough to get sick of it and keep doing it, and then find another reason why you want to keep at it, because it lives in you now. Have patience with yourself. Don’t answer the demand from your own mind, or others, to justify what you’re doing. The practice is the answer. Finishing something? That’s rare. It’s an enormous accomplishment. And when you feel despair? Well, there’s always Winco.

Stay safe out there this week.

xo

Rebecca