Main section: 1064 words (4-5min read)
Challenges in the time of the virus
Author Joshua Wolf Shenk, writing about Abraham Lincoln, draws on epic imagery in describing three stages of growth (emphasis added):
“In mythical stories, a character undertakes a journey, receiving at every step totems that, at the time, have no clear value but at the end turn out to provide the essential tools for a final struggle. We can see this in Lincoln’s journey. In the first stage, he asked the big questions. ... Without the sense of essential purpose he learned by asking these questions, he may not have had the bedrock vision to governed his great work. In the second stage, he developed diligence and discipline, working for the sake of work, learning how to survive and engage. ... In the third stage, he was...living for a vital purpose.”
I was brought to think about this abruptly over the last few weeks. Stranded at home by Covid-19 shelter-in-place orders, I found myself abruptly stripped of the largely unseen arrangements and systems which had guided much of my adult life.
Far from cruising along in Shenk’s third stage, I suddenly feeling I was falling backwards to the second, or even the first and most basic level. This post is about dealing with that dislocation.
Forced Introspection
The first week or two of staying at home were marvelous. I started sleeping more, got all my runs in on time, and began a new workout program. We had a brand-new dog, so there were opportunities for training. I had books and videos and other light things to fill my days, and felt fortunate indeed.
And yet...there was something that started gnawing at me, at first gradually and then with increasing urgency. It came to me over the course of a week or so that what was bothering me came not from the lock down as such--the company’s pleasant and the days easy--but from the lack of structure.
I didn’t think binge watching the John Wick franchise is going to fix this. What seemed to be needed was a greater sense of order.
Maker vs. Manager vs. None of the Above
For many of us, “structure” means “a calendar” means “scheduling.” I have an uneasy relationship with all of those words. Some structure helps, too much scheduling is soul-destroying. Finding a balance is hard.
I’ve had both a manager’s and a maker’s schedule at various points. The Cliff Notes version is that a manager schedule is largely driven by meetings and obligations, so their calendars tend to be packed. A maker’s schedule has relatively long blocks of unstructured time, permitting longer uninterrupted stretches of work.
In my experience, in manager mode my schedule directed my energy outwards: mostly towards other people in general, and specifically towards meetings. The maker schedule is the opposite, channeling energy inwards, and if I’m really lucky, to a flow state. Both are satisfying in different ways, but importantly, both channel energy.
So what did this have to do with Covid-19? Like probably millions of others, I was suddenly neither a manager nor a maker in the sense I was used to. I was...none of the above. My calendar was suddenly empty. And that energy was just bouncing around. This really threw me for a loop.
Late-Onset Teenage Syndrome?
This sense of being unsettled went much deeper than a depopulated calendar. It reached into Shenk’s first stage of big questions. In contemplating why I was feeling like I was drifting and surly, an idea came: This is like being a teenager again.
Was the sudden lack of structure undermining my sense of being, you know, an actual adult? That’s not good. My adolescence and I had some good times, sure, but we really hadn’t been sorry to see each other go. Revisiting that mind-frame is not on my bucket list.
Seriously, the positive role of having some kind of structure in your life for productivity and a sense of fulfillment is well-established.
There was one problem with the idea that my unstructured slacking off on my responsibilities was eroding my ability to function as an adult: I didn’t have a lot of them. The challenge: populate the calendar first, then follow-up.
Identity = Work?
So part of the solution to this issue was going to be getting myself new responsibilities. That is, finding productive things to commit to doing and building some structure for myself around them. In other words, preparing to move to the second stage.
This led to an insight about just how closely my identity as a person is still tied in to working. By that I mean not a career as such, but having specific things to do at a specific place for specified times. I realized a lot of my sense of self and well-being is deeply tied to working.
Fair enough. I focused on work-like “projects” I could reasonably do in isolation. This blog is one of them. It’s helping me hone--I hope--the ability to weave a story around concepts I love but which are hard to communicate. Running by myself and with the dog was another. An insane 10,000 kettlebell challenge. Helping clean the house for 15 minutes most nights. Looking to getting more coaching knowledge and opportunities.
All of these things serve to provide outlets for all that energy. And, hopefully, they’re training for various parts of my future, for the pivot back to “vital purpose.”
And Back To Adulting, Again
And to tie them together, I’ve gone back to the idea of a schedule. In this case, it’s more of a loose routine than regimented calendar entries.
The goals and priorities I set are:
Priority areas for the week of May 11th:
Daily reaffirmation of values and goals;
60 pushups;
Sweat once (run or workout);
20 minutes of meditation;
Write 1000 words;
Work on material from a free Stoic Mindfulness and Resilience Training course;
General goals:
Keep beer/wine intake to 3-5 servings/week, maximum;
Avoid uncontrolled snacking;
Minimize procrastination.
Other weekly goals as needed.
A rhythm and cadence have started to emerge most days which I find...reassuring. Because I’ve tried to treat my “project work” as responsibilities--that is, things with a future payoff--and not just stuff to fill the day, some sort of accountability is needed.
For that, I’ve turned to a block calendar and the Seinfeld method.
[Edit: 5/21/2020 3:50pm -
The ever-thoughtful Ryan Holiday offers two thoughts, expressed much better than I have, on what I was groping at expressing above:
One is the idea of “Alive Time vs. Dead Time” — a construction he borrowed from author Robert Greene, and which neatly encapsulates what I was striving for here.
Second is a post on the Daily Stoic website titled “Routine Is Everything” which lays out a neat, compact case for the power of building routines.
Please check them out!]
So far, it’s working surprisingly well. What works for you?