Is this tension serving me?

If you’re just reacting to whatever life throws at you, then any armchair philosophizing about life’s purpose or finding your Life’s Work is, frankly, pointless. I’m not criticizing going through life in reacting mode; if one is crushed by situation or station, then you necessarily have your work cut out for you. 

But if you have some slack—and let’s be honest, you do, you’re on the Internet—then the question is…

Most people have been in some version of this mental stress state so consistently, for so long, that they don’t even know they’re in it. Like gravity, it’s ever present — so much so that those who experience it usually aren’t even aware of the pressure. The only time most of them will realize how much tension they’ve been under is when they get rid of it and notice how different they feel. It’s like the constant buzzing noise in a room you didn’t know was there until it stops.

~ David Allen from, Getting Things Done

The key insight for me was realizing there are two “directions” to my thinking: I was always good at vertical thinking, going down thru a project (big or small), planning, organizing and doing. Unfortunately, I often got stuck when my brain started doing horizontal thinking. My mind raced from thing to thing, around and around, across all the open loops, with the same things coming up over and over and over.

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

~ Viktor Frankl

The exact methods one uses do not matter. It only matters that you trust your system. Only when you truly trust your system will your subconscious close all those open loops. These days, having solid capture and review habits enables me to close those mental loops. I can focus without my mind once interrupting me with some random, “I need to do this,” or “I need to remember that,” thought.

Despite all this seeming weight, a certain part of ourselves remains unmoored. We don’t lack for tasks, but we do lack meaningful ones. We haven’t made any goals since college. We don’t experience the tension that emerges in “the gap between what one is and what one should become,” because the gap simply doesn’t exist – at a certain point we stopped aiming for anything above paying the bills and checking off to-dos.

We think we want rest and relaxation – the absence of all labor and responsibility – but what we really crave is the presence of meaningful work and interests. We don’t want a complete lack of tension, but a different variety of it.

We don’t need less stress, but more of the right kind.

~ Brett Mckay, from More Load on the Arch

That piece is a clear manifesto that coincides with my efforts over the years.

Remember how long you’ve been putting this off, how many extensions have been given you, and you didn’t use them. At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.

~ Marcus Aurelius

Aurelius reliably adds clarifying tension. While I’m glad for added clarity, I try not to blindly swallow added tension.

Information competes for our conscious attention: the web of thoughts with the greatest activation is usually the one where we direct our attention. The calmer our mind, the fewer thoughts we generate in response to what happens in the world—and the greater the odds that intuition will speak to us.

~ Chris Bailey from, The science of how to get intuition to speak to you

While one part of my mind wants to be touring the facility and taking up slack, my inner, petulant child is not to be taken on by main force. When it’s in the mood, the child part can be a source of great power and inspiration (see, genius.) The inner-child mind has its own agenda and demands its outlets too.

Self-possession implies the capacity for self-restraint, self-compulsion and self-direction; and he who has these, if he live long enough, can have any other possession that he wants.

~ William Hanna Thompson

Thompson’s veering towards hyperbole, but it’s another clarifying point. Again, I welcome the clarity.

But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn’t mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.

~ Paul Graham from, How to Do What You Love

There have been just a few bits about this topic arranged on the Internet. I’ve written several myself, and linked to many things like this one from Graham. The ultimate point that I’d like to make is simply that the necessary part of solving the problem for yourself is to ask yourself such questions.

What questions are you asking yourself?

Until next time, thanks for reading.

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