Is stopping failure, or wisdom?

A friend once said, “Life is full of compromises which you cannot avoid. So don’t compromise with yourself.”

But if aspiring was our true fulcrum, you’d be on your throne already. Here’s the truth: It’s not the heights we aspire to but the FLOOR WE PUT UP WITH that determines our place.

~ Bryan Ward from, Stop Aspiring

Both of those ideas have been very useful. They help me keep my standards up. Not just the “get things done” and “get a lot done” standards, but also the “stop while things are going well” (before I mess up the quality) and “don’t piss everyone off” (by being a maniac who gives 110% and then burns out.)

Stop drifting. You’re not going to re-read your Brief Comments, your Deeds of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, the commonplace books you saved for your old age. Sprint for the finish. Write off your hopes, and if your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can.

~ Marcus Aurelius

Aurelius was writing for himself; this is the emperor of the Roman Empire practicing self-improvement. Fortunately, his writing survived because it’s a lesson I too need to hear. Most of what I write here (and on my blog) is for my own edification, but I’m delighted if you find my musings interesting. And I’d be ecstatic if any of my questions help you change course.

[Don’t you need a certain kind of passion during those dry spells, to keep going?] Not at all. What keeps you going is stubbornness, economic necessity, or simply endurance. Passion will, at most, lead to frustration, but not to perseverance. For that, you don’t need passion, you need persistence.

~ Christoph Waltz, from Christoph Waltz – The Talks

It takes effort to stop when you’re passionate, and it takes effort to continue when you’re being persistent. That makes a huge difference in how it feels when you’re considering stopping. In passion, stopping feels like quitting—you want to go on. In persistence, it feels like relief—let me out!

If you have decided that you can’t do art until you quiet the voice of resistance, you will never do art. Art is the act of doing work that matters while dancing with the voice in your head that screams for you to stop. We can befriend the lizard, lull it into stupor, or merely face it down, but it’s there, always. As soon as you embrace the lizard (not merely tolerate it but engage it as a partner in your art), then you are free.

~ Seth Godin

I think that lizard wakes up when you go from passion to persistence.

Exasperated, the therapist finally suggests that she could stop writing. “Stop?” says the writer, blinking in surprise.

~ Mandy Brown, from A battle with the gods

Over and over I realize that my mistake is thinking the hard part is the problem. Of course it’s not easy—that’s what makes it worthwhile. I need to stop judging the effort in the worthwhile part, by the fun I was having in the passionate part.

If you want to be a clever person, you have to learn how to ask cleverly, how to listen attentively, how to respond quietly, and how to stop talking when there is nothing more to say.

~ Leo Tolstoy

That applies to any effort: Stop when there’s nothing more to do—not before and certainly not after.

What you realise, the moment you ask “what would it mean to be done for the day?”, is that the answer can’t possibly involve doing all the things that need doing – even though that’s the subconscious goal with which many of us approach life, driving ourselves crazy in the process. If there are a thousand things that need doing, you’re going to need to arrive at some definition of “finished” that doesn’t encompass them all.

~ Oliver Burkeman, from What would it mean to be done for the day?

Defining “done” for today is only the first step. How can I be done at the end of this week, or the end of this month? I need to zoom out. I need to imagine: How do I ever stop?

Until next time, thanks for reading.

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