Molly Gordon’s blog post yesterday, entitled “Wild Abandon, Perfectionism, and the Dance of Business,” brings up a very interesting distinction I’d never considered before.

In it, she quotes a colleague of hers named Alice Brock (who is apparently working on her web presence—Molly promises to pass along a link to her when it’s time). Alice says that many people “suffer from something that appears to be perfectionism. However, often it is not perfectionism, but ‘visionism’ that they suffer from.”

Perfectionism or visionism?

So what’s the difference between the two? I encourage you to click on the link above and read Molly’s entire post, but in a nutshell, she says that they are “different frames for the experience or fear of falling short.”

Perfectionism has a feeling of tightness and anxiety about it. You rush or procrastinate or otherwise agonize over getting a task or project 100% right because your very identity is at stake here! (Okay, slight exaggeration there. Maybe.)

Visionism, on the other hand, creates a sense of frustration because you’re not able to translate the faultless pictures in your head into the physical world without some sort of compromise.

Plans, meet reality. Sorry, but it’s never going to be as perfect as you imagined it.

Or if you’re a Star Trek fan, you could say it’s like having a faulty holodeck.

It can be a subtle distinction.

I used the fine arts as a metaphor in a recent blog post, so let’s extend that . . . only this time let’s use music. (Don’t you agree that music is one of the finest arts there is?)

Okay, let’s say you can envision . . . umm, enhearen? . . . a piece of music in your mind. There’s a clear melody line, and maybe some harmonies, and a strong rhythm holding it all together. It’s all there in your head—it’s perfect! All you know how to do, though, musically speaking, is plunk out “Chopsticks” on the piano.

But this music is so compelling that you feel driven to externalize and share it. So you take up an instrument and start practicing, and you assemble whatever group of musicians you need to play the other parts. But you can’t translate the fullness and precision of what you hear internally to the external world.

Maybe it’s because it’s just not humanly possible to play a guitar solo as fast as you imagine it. Maybe you’re trying to explain the mood of the piece to the other members of your string quartet, but they’re just not getting the feeling right. Maybe you just don’t know how to write out musical notation. Whatever it is, you’re frustrated.

Ask yourself who and what you’re blaming.

If your internal voice is directing anger and blame at yourself, it’s probably perfectionism doing the talking. “Who was I to think I could learn to write music? I’ll never be good enough to explain or play what I hear in my head!”

If your inner dialogue sounds more wistful, or angry about external things, it’s likely to be visionism’s voice. “No, that’s just not right somehow!” Or, “I need another whole octave on the keyboard!” Or, “If only I could just think into a machine and have it reproduce the sounds . . .”

Perfectionism and visionism can overlap. You can be feeling both simultaneously. But I think it’s still a useful distinction to make, because then you can pick apart the threads in any given situation and figure out what’s happening.

So what’s the takeaway?

This whole concept is about three hours old for me, so I’m only just starting to think about it. But it seems to me that in perfectionism, you judge and blame yourself. In visionism, you’re frustrated about what gets lost (or might get lost) in translation.

There are many ways of dealing with perfectionism, but for me they all come down to a certain kind of self-talk in which you remind yourself, “I’m only human.”

Visionism, it seems, requires the kind of self-talk in which you remind yourself the world is (*cough*) only human.

At least until they fix our holodecks.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may have noticed that I’m kind of into National Novel Writing Month.

It’s going on right now, and this is the fifth year I’m participating. But…

It’s looking like I won’t finish my novel this year.

Rather than being depressed about it, though, I’m taking it as a sign of progress. Because in the past, I would have gotten all control-freaky about it.

Well…to be honest, I kind of started out that way this year, too. You see, this Sunday I’m going to NaNoWriMo’s annual fundraising write-a-thon, The Night of Writing Dangerously. At this event, there is much frivolity. There are noir-ish costumes which would inspire even Dashiell Hammett. There is dinner. There is a candy buffet the likes of which causes even the strongest of constitution to swoon. There are pep talks and raffle prizes.

But mostly there is writing.

And if a rampantly noveling author actually manages to finish his or her 50,000 words not by the deadline of midnight on November 30, but at the write-a-thon itself, much glory accrues to said author. Who is cheered roundly by all assembled, gets to wear a large crown for the rest of the evening, and is generally made much of.

So of course I decided that I wanted to finish my novel at the write-a-thon.

Ah, the authorial hubris.

I’d clearly bitten off more than I could chew. A lot more.

Several days later, as I sat staring at my bedroom wall in an almost catatonic stupor, I mustered the energy for a single thought. “Where on earth did this crippling depression come from all of a sudden?”

Thankfully, because of all the attention I’ve paid to my perfectionism patterns over the last several years, I’ve become very, very good at spotting them in action. So I was able to understand almost immediately that I’d set myself up for an effort that wasn’t very good for me at all.

Sure, I could have pushed myself. Lost sleep, gone into an utter writing frenzy. But for what? Out of the four times I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo in the past, I’ve won (i.e., completed over 50,000 words during the month) three of those times.

I realized I no longer need to prove to myself that I can do this.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Literally. Not to mention the coffee mug.

Nope—this year, what I need to prove to myself is that I have the ability to let go of this really, really fun but still arbitrarily chosen goal. To understand that the world will continue spinning on its axis even if I log less words than originally planned.

But also, to keep on writing anyway.

It would be just another manifestation of all-or-nothing thinking if I were to simply quit. It feels important to me to keep going even in the knowledge that my word-count bar on the NaNoWriMo website will almost certainly stay blue and incomplete rather than brilliant, glowing purple and adorned with a “Winner!” graphic.

I think that if I “lose” this year, it will be a significant win for me, because it will show me how far I’ve come in my battle against struggle with personal exploration of my own perfectionism.

So even though I probably won’t officially finish my 50,000 words this year…

This may be my most important NaNoWriMo year ever.

And it will be nice to close the book (heh) on such a significant lesson learned.

You know how sometimes you can be in love with the idea of something but not take any action on it?

That’s how I’ve been about gardening for a long time.

I live in a rental property, so outdoor gardening isn’t permitted. I could do it indoors except that we’re not allowed to drill holes for things like shelves or hanging planters, and the two cats pretty much prohibit having plant life any lower than head height.

But last month I heard about San Francisco ’s Kitchen Garden Project, which inspired me to rethink things. I realized that I could set up a free-standing shelf unit on our minuscule front porch. So I did that, and then I went to Hayes Valley Farm on 10/10/10 (the day of the initiative) to pick up my free seedlings and mulch.

One month later, here’s some of what’s growing so far!

I’m hoping, in particular, that the broccoli and the carrots make it to their full growth. The broc because it’s my favorite vegetable (well, okay, other than potatoes—preferably in chip form), and the carrots because they’re a tiny, round variety and I’m really curious to see what they look like! I promise I’ll post pictures of whatever grows.

Have you ever heard of Kickstarter? It’s an awesome website through which people and organizations can raise funds for their creative initiatives—they set a goal and write a web page about it, and then try to get enough pledges to fund the project. If they don’t make their goal, no money changes hands, but if they do, they can make some amazing things happen.

Yesterday I found out that Hayes Valley Farm, the volunteer-operated community farm where I got my free garden starter kit (and which, incidentally, is located on top of a closed freeway on/off ramp—the ultimate in recycling, how cool is that?) has only until Sunday to raise the money it needs to fund its continuing projects. As of this writing, they’re almost there!

If you’d like to check it out and maybe even pitch in a bit (if they go overtheir requested amount they get to keep that, too), here’s a link to their Kickstarter page. And here’s one to the farm itself. Where it’s highly likely I’ll be going back to volunteer and learn some more.

Meanwhile, I’m proud of myself. In years past, I would have felt the need to check out at least 3-4 books from the library on home gardening, study up on our local soil and weather patterns, do complex calculus to determine what pot size I’d need for each vegetable, create a detailed shopping list for the plants and supplies, etc., etc. before feeling confident enough to begin.

I love the fact that I was able to let go of the need to be “perfectly” informed and ready, and just wing it. It’s a liberating feeling, even for so small a project.

I don’t know what will finally emerge from all my pots, but it feels great—empowering yet tender at the same time—to nurture along some green, growing things. And if I’m lucky, I’ll get to eat at least some of them. When they hopefully will be tender.

Turns out it really is possible to do things and have them work out (well, at least so far) without having a grand plan!

(image courtesy of ex novo)

I’ve been meaning to follow up with the next post in this series for months now. There have been two so far, by the way, so if you missed them you can check them out here:

To-Do List Series #1 – Why You Need an Outboard Brain

To-Do List Series #2 – Category Creation

I think I’ve avoided it because while I’m still a productivity geek, I’ve been playing with letting that part of me slide into a little more chaos than I’m comfortable with. Because I’m getting really interested in the benefits of learning to embrace life’s messiness. But I also feel compelled to finish this series now that I’ve started it, so here it is in case you’ve been waiting with bated breath.

Those first two posts outline a way to do a “brain dump” so that all of your things to do are written in one place, and to start sorting them all into meaningful categories.

But unless your life is extremely simple and uncluttered, that probably won’t be enough for you. You need a way to maintain all those to-do items in a single system which you can refer to daily, weekly, monthly, and annually so that nothing falls through the cracks on you.

This isn’t necessarily easy, and generally needs a lot of tweaking until you figure out what works best for you. But if you can get to that point, the relief of getting it all out of your head so that you don’t have to worry about remembering it all frees up tremendous energy for the doing of it all.

Basically, what you want in your system is a safe place to store and manage your lists by category, and some sort of calendar to keep track of the specific times (meetings, doctor appointments, special events, etc.) when you need to be somewhere.

Calendar preferences are very individual, and there are hundreds if not thousands of options, so I won’t even go there.

For lists, written and electronic formats both work, but each type has its pros and cons.

Written Lists

Pros: They’re tangible. Somehow, manually writing or typing a to-do list and then holding it in paper format helps reinforce your awareness of the items on it. The process of writing engages the brain and inspires creativity. Also, if aesthetics are important to you (and don’t knock this, because enjoying the look and feel of your system can inspire you to actually use it), you can choose something that embodies your personality and preferences.

Cons: It’s difficult to keep “clean” lists—if they start getting too crossed out and messy, you have to re-write the whole thing. Also, there’s no way to “back up” a paper system in case of loss or damage other than scanning (which is digital) or photocopying. Or, God forbid, writing it all twice.

Electronic Lists

Pros: PDAs, smart phones, netbooks, etc. are durable, lightweight, and extremely portable. The key advantage, though, is that you can edit your lists on the fly and they’ll always be current and neat. Also, they are easily backed up.

Cons: Dependence on yet more technical gadgetry. To some, high-tech gadgetry feels emotionally “cold.” You might also find yourself in an environment where you can’t “plug in” or get access to your data.

Hybrid Lists

The debate still rages in productivity circles, but some people have found it helpful to combine the two. Check out the quote by Glen Stansberry featured here.

Yet this struck me: If there are pieces of each  [method] that are better than the other, why can’t we use both?

Indeed. Hybrid lists combine the best of both worlds. I am an inveterate low-tech, analog, hold-it-in-your-hands person, but I (reluctantly) switched to a hybrid-style system when using my beloved paper planner exclusively started creating unnecessary work for me. And so far it’s working well.

There are as many ways to set up a system as there are people who use them, so I’m going to briefly outline my own system and show you the software I now use.

I still use my beloved planner, but I keep my to-do list in one place using Priacta’s TRO software. (Please note that that’s an affiliate link.*) This allows me to categorize, edit and cross off items quickly and easily, and always have an up-to-date list. Their “TROG Bar” even has a feature that will generate a manageable list of things to “Do Today” based on the priorities and due dates (if any) that you’ve assigned. Very cool.

*An affiliate link, for those who don’t know, means that if you decide you like the product and buy it by clicking through my link above, you will pay the exact same price, but I’ll get a portion of it as a referral fee.

Every morning I just transfer the “Do Today” list in my paper planner. It gives me all the advantages of handwriting, and having to fit it into the planner ensures the list is short and doable. My planner is almost always with me, so I can look at the list all day long and track my progress.

I also keep a separate, teeny notebook where I quickly scrawl anything that comes up during the day related to anything I have to do, keep, or know. Every few days I add these items to TRO, process them, and they then turn up neatly in their appointed places on the appropriate list at the appropriate time.

Whether you use this system or any other, to make it effective you will need to:

• Have categories that are appropriate to your life. (See some common categories in post #2 of this series.
• Carry something to capture information on the fly for processing into the system later.
• Periodically review the items on the list so that things happen when they need to (a system will store your information, but sadly won’t do the work for you).

Have a system that’s convenient and portable enough that you will actually use it.

It’s too easy to overcomplicate things, so I’ll leave it there for now.

And there you have it, your Outboard Brain. A trusty companion by your side to help you navigate the shoals, sandbars, and deep waters of your time and tasks.

If you’ve implemented any of the suggestions in this series, I’d love to know!

FRONTAL LOBES, BRAIN – Intracellular police apprehended several fleeing epinephrine molecules after a high-speed chase through the sympathetic nervous system yesterday, sources say. Pursuit began in the adrenal glands, where the molecules were surprised during an attempt to induce breath and heart rate acceleration, and continued up the spinal cord to the brain, where they surrendered to frontal lobe authorities.

The apprehended molecules are part of a band of roving hormones know as the Adrenalinos. Upon questioning, they divulged the existence of a much larger underlying conspiracy, which includes a plot to lure humans into overwhelm mode by providing them with a never-ending stream of self-improvement tasks to perform.

Complicit in this plot is Magic Bullet, a wanted criminal known for his aggressive attempts to coerce people into the serial use and subsequent disposal of various systems, products, methods and concepts to solve their (often deliberately blown out of proportion) problems.

Bullet, who has been operating in the neuronal shadows for many decades, has proven elusive. This is largely due to his strategy of masterminding and directing groups of independent operatives such as the Adrenalinos. He is particularly adept at working with the mass media, which regularly launch highly effective advertising campaigns for the aforementioned products and systems.

Apparently Bullet believes in his own innocence, as evidenced by a synaptic tape recently delivered to frontal lobe headquarters. Its contents reveal that he views his work as beneficial. “Because of what I do, people are always primed and ready for action,” the tape states. “I also provide a constant supply of new hope.”

But such hope is false and detrimental, claims noted habits researcher Dr. Y.U. Doothings. “Humans lose the vital component of self-trust,” he states. “They pursue a Magic Bullet item or agenda, but when it doesn’t deliver the promised results quickly and painlessly, they drop it—and then blame themselves for their inability to follow through. Self-esteem tends to sink lower and lower with every repetition of this cycle. The resulting cost to each individual organism, as well as to society, is high.”

“The best way to escape the influence of Magic Bullet is simple avoidance,” counsels Chief of Police Otto Nomic. “But that’s almost impossible in modern society. Therefore, citizens should be remain alert and aware when venturing into common problem areas, such as health and body image, personal finance, and relationship issues.

“However, false Magic Bullet claims can be found almost anywhere,” he concludes. “Remember the old saying—‘If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.’”

Meanwhile, the captured Adrenalinos have been taken into custody for an as-yet undetermined period. A formal hearing before the Superior Vena Cava is scheduled for this Thursday. Should the epinephrine molecules be willing to undertake public service activities such as parasympathetic nervous system activation or vagus nerve functional upgrades, their incarceration time could be shortened considerably.

—special report filed by Medulla Oblongata, A.P. Nervewire

My butt hurts.

Okay, metaphorically. But it still got a pretty good kick.

If you’re a writer, an artist, a person with creative goals of any kind, or an aspiring any-one-of-those, read on. I won’t kick you, promise.

But this other author might.

I’ve finished Steven Pressfield’s phenomenal book The War of Art, and the most difficult part of writing about it will be to NOT quote most of the book. It’s that good.

It’s also intense. Scary intense. Hardcore in the way that taking a good honest look at yourself—and then doing something real about it—is hardcore. This isn’t feel-good self-help, folks. This is gut-wrenchingly honest stuff. And that’s why it’s so fantastic.

The title is a clever reversal of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, the classic military treatise. The book itself is about the enemy every creative person (which, yes, really means every person) faces on the battlefield of life—resistance. Pressfield considers it important enough to capitalize.

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Have you ever brought home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? Ever quit a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? . . . Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.

Got your number there? Mine, too.

I will now give you a micro-synopsis of the book, which, if you are human and breathing and have aspirations toward a better life in any way at all, I urge you to read as soon as possible. It’s fairly short and (hallelujah!) well-designed, but every page is pithy. Many statements are epigrammatic enough to crochet into samplers or emblazon across shields.

Book One defines Resistance, and discusses its many manifestations. (You’ll recognize most if not all of them.) Book Two talks about “turning pro”—the conscious, willful decision to give something your all regardless of the outcome. Book Three discusses the muse, life and death, the ego and the larger self, and other equally daunting yet relevant subjects.

The novel for which Steven Pressfield is probably best known (yep, because of the movie) is The Legend of Bagger Vance, which is a modern reimagining of the Hindu Bhagavad Gita. There are many parallels between those and The War of Art as well, but this post is long enough already. More on that if you want it . . . let me know in the comments!

I came away from The War of Art inspired—and also scared. Pressfield says this is good.

If you find yourself asking yourself (or your friends), “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

The book feels like a clarion call to me—a clear ringing of trumpets urging me to rise to my highest potential. Very compelling.

But that’s what scares me. I recognize those trumpets. They tend to bring on countless iterations of the “passionately inspired – giving 110% – burning out” cycle, and now that I’ve become aware of my perfectionistic tendencies, I’m careful about anything that might send me spiraling recklessly down that path again.

So I skimmed through the book once more. And I found this:

Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book. It uses his own enthusiasm against him. Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion.

(Sound familiar, anyone?)

The professional, on the other hand, understands delayed gratification. He . . . steels himself at the start of a project, reminding himself he is in the Iditarod, not the sixty-yard dash. He conserves his energy. He prepares his mind for the long haul. He sustains himself with the knowledge that if he can just keep those huskies mushing, sooner or later the sled will pull into Nome.

From one perspective, how depressing! I want to read that success is possible by this time next month, dammit! Don’t talk to me about the long slog through the ice and snow. I’ve been slogging long enough already.

But there it is again. Wanting the magic bullet, the quick fix. Often combined with clever marketers trying to sell me on the latest weight-dropping, muscle-toning, productivity-boosting, time-managing, power-focusing product, service, or package, which is “the last thing you’ll ever need to buy to solve this problem!!!” until the next one comes along to weight down my bookshelf, clutter up my living room, or fill up my hard drive.

But.

There’s another perspective we can take.

What if we all simply started implementing the knowledge and systems we already have? What if we quietly, steadily, without fanfare, just started doing The Work (whatever that means for each of us)?

Difficult, yes. Every day we will face our own stuckness. But Pressfield (rightly, I think) tells us that

Resistance will unfailingly point to true North—meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. . . . We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others.

If we can calmly face down Resistance every day (or at least keep showing up and giving it our best), how freeing! To not have to care about how good something is . . . to let it just pour out of us, trusting that it will gradually, naturally perfect itself over time?

That’s a mighty soft pillow for a sore butt to rest on.

I had it all planned out. It was going to be so much fun.

It really was a great idea, if I do say so myself. My blog is about overcoming the kind of perfectionism that gets in our way by telling us that what we’re doing isn’t good enough. National Novel Writing Month (which I’ve written about before), is a month of hands-on practice in blasting straight through that mindset with wild writerly abandon.

So I was going to blog my entire NaNo novel publicly, right here, during the month of November.

Practice Makes Imperfect and NaNoWriMo—what a natural combination!

I got in touch with the organizers, and they were going to feature me in one of their daily Q&A spots. I would get to publicly practice what I preach in a very visible way, and maybe turn some people on to this annual event that I love so much in the process. We could cheer each other on, inspire each other, and keep that flow of raw, gloriously unedited words gushing.

Except then I heard an inner warning siren go off. It was followed by a voice:

“Wait, you’re the person who says she’s finally coming to grips with the fact that she can’t do it all, no matter how much she wants to. Who says she’s tired of trying to be superhuman. And who is already having enough trouble handling all the things on her plate now. And you’re thinking that you can manage to write 50,000 words next month on top of all that?”

Damn.

The disturbing truth is that once you embark on the path of self-awareness, it gets harder and harder to be in denial. Even when you really, really want to be.

So today I’m here to tell you that I will not be doing National Novel Writing Month this year.

And that makes me incredibly sad.

It would have been so joyous! Not to mention good for web traffic! I would have gotten exposure to many thousands of people around the world who do NaNoWriMo and visit its website, and who might have seen my Q&A feature and checked out my blog! I could have possibly been inspirational to people who were thinking about trying NaNo this year, or who were doing it but flagging in their enthusiasm, just by writing my novel publicly! And maybe some of them would have become regular readers or subscribers here at Practice Makes Imperfect! So many exclamation points that I will now miss out on!

Not to mention that I simply adore doing NaNo each November.

It is actually harder for me to not do it than to do it and drive myself into the ground. The latter has been (until recently) my modus operandi. I know very well how to pummel myself into submission over a goal that I’ve arbitrarily decided I have to achieve.

It’s much harder to admit that the world will keep on turning and that I will keep on breathing without my writing a novel next month. It’s so difficult to allow myself to just drop something that would prevent me from the self-care that I need to focus on right now.

Which is why I’m letting NaNo go this year. I need the practice in saying no to things I want so that I can say yes to things I want even more. Like health. And sanity.

BUT . . .

If you have ever wanted to write a novel, I cannot recommend NaNoWriMo highly enough. Here’s an excerpt from (again) my own previous blog post about it:

What makes the program so effective? It allows you to barrel right past your critical mind. You have to write so much so fast that quality concerns fly out the window—you just don’t have time for them. “I can edit later” becomes your mantra. And the amazing thing is that once you push past your initial resistance, get into the flow, and establish a daily writing routine, you realize it’s completely feasible to write 50,000 words or more in a month if you just keep writing and don’t overthink it.

It’s fun, it’s intense, and it’s probably the best training program for recovering perfectionists I’ve ever found.

If there is ANY part of you that is saying (perhaps very quietly) “yes!” right now, then I heartily endorse NaNoWriMo and suggest that you check out their website right away. Because this year’s novel-writing adventure begins at midnight this Saturday night.

If you decide to do it, I’d love to know so that I can holler and whoop and cheer you on!

Warning: The following article describes a brutal act of clutter-clearing in which a number of inanimate objects are heartlessly disposed of. It may not be suitable for sensitive readers. Proceed at your own risk.

I’ve never been a packrat. By most people’s standards, I live quite simply and don’t have a lot of “stuff.” I have learned, though, that a lot of the material I do accumulate is like sea wrack, washed up against the shores of my living space by the waves of projects I’ve started and not completed.

Oh, I’ve tried to complete them—most of them, anyway. Usually by organizing the heck out of them first. I’ve kept lists of projects. I’ve whittled those projects down to bite-sized tasks, devised methods to streamline and schedule those tasks, and created whole systems to track my progress so that I could have the joy of crossing things off my to-do list. I’ve spent hours, days and weeks blasting through those to-do lists like dynamite in an all-out effort to finish as many projects and tasks as quickly I could, so that I could have the simple, uncluttered life I crave.

It never, ever occurred to me that I could simplify my life by eliminating things without finishing them.

In late 2001 I fulfilled a long-held dream and began to learn to play the Indian tabla drums. I took lessons for five years from one of the world’s acknowledged best tabla players, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri. I adored the classes, and Swapanji is a wonderful, patient and gently humorous teacher whom I miss deeply . . . because I haven’t taken lessons now for over two years.

It broke my heart, but I had to stop for my own benefit. I took the classes far too seriously, and I felt such a sense of obligation that the lessons became more of a chore than anything else. I was feeling enormous stress over the fact that I couldn’t practice as much as I wanted to, and I thought I wasn’t doing justice to either the money I was spending on the classes or, even more important to me, the beautiful musical tradition of the tablas.

At the end of it all (and I still choke up just writing that), I was left with five years’ worth of cassette tapes. Tapes? Yes, because we learned so much so quickly each week that Swapanji allowed us to record the classes. I would come home from class, play through the tape, write down the new composition we’d learned, and refer to it as I practiced throughout the week or refreshed my memory of it later.

These tapes held pure gold. They contained the teachings of a living legend, instructing very small groups of students in a tiny room. Swapanji played each new composition for us. He gave us individual attention and advice. He gave encouragement, sometimes talked about the history of the tablas, and often told funny stories.

But 90% of the tapes were filled with us students, ineptly tapping and pounding away as we attempted to stuff each new kaida, rela, tukra and chakradhar into our short-term memories. This was nothing I would ever want to listen to again.

Once I’d finish transcribing each week’s tape into my permanent notes, I’d save it with the intention of extracting the 10% of the material with real value for future reference. So when I stopped taking classes, I had a gigantic box filled with five years’ worth of cassettes. I consoled myself with the thought that since I was (*sniffle*) no longer learning anything new, I would finally have time to deal with them all.

It was an Enormous Project. Just getting the (sometimes undated) tapes into chronological order took me a long time. The next step was to listen to roughly 200-250 hours of class tapes through an analog-to-digital converter, and sift through the dirt of the vast, useless majority of the recordings to find the tiny nuggets of gold where Swapanji was actually talking and teaching. I would then need to save those smaller files, date-label them, catalog their contents, and burn them to CD for safekeeping.

I really thought I could do it. In my spare time, outside of my full-time job and my many other projects and commitments. I expected myself to. This unfinished project weighed on my consciousness for two full years. All unfinished things have an oppressive weight to them, but this one was extra-heavy. After all, those tapes were priceless! They deserved to be saved, if not for me, then for posterity!

But slowly I realized that posterity didn’t much care. That other people took these classes, too. That I wasn’t personally responsible for being the caretaker of the material I’d learned. That Swapanji had been recorded—professionally—hundreds of times over the decades.

That I really, truly didn’t have to do this project at all. Ever.

So . . . I threw away the box.

Then I cried.

And then I was swept with the most profound feeling of relief I’d felt in years.

How odd that my biggest lesson came when I stopped taking classes.

I have a lot of wonderful friends who are dealing with a huge sense of overwhelm right now. Many of them are in business for themselves, which means they’re pretty much trying to do all the events of an Olympic decathlon simultaneously without dropping any balls…erm, batons. Others are just (“just”!!!) dealing with all the demands of an overly hectic life, both online and offline.

This post is for them, and others like them (you, maybe?). Because the technology we’ve developed over the past handful of decades has evolved so much faster than our nervous systems that we can’t keep up with our own devices and systems anymore. Yet we’re taught to think we should. And if we don’t, we’re to blame. Personally.

So let’s forget about the fact that most if not all of my friends have so many “to dos” on their lists that the weight of them would give a rhino’s knees arthritis. Let’s not even talk about how many of those tasks and projects are required by others, self-imposed, or some combination of the two.

Let’s look for a moment at the experience of overwhelm.

The time management and productivity experts like to talk about things like quadrants, mind maps, next tasks, lifehacks, and trusted systems. And I’m not knocking them—those concepts and tools are all important and very, very helpful. But I’d like to add one more concept to the list.

Closure.

The experts give us all kinds of ways to achieve closure on tasks and projects, but in my experience, few of them talk in depth about what that feels like. They (correctly) make the assumption that a sense of closure is what we want, and then mostly just dive right into showing us how to get it.

But closure is worth some solid discussion, because it’s really the big “why” lurking behind all those schedules, planners, checklists, and nifty filing methods. Because let’s face it, people—no matter how you do it and what tools you use, nothing feels quite so good as getting stuck into a task, finishing it, and crossing it off your list.

That’s worth saying again.

When you’re overwhelmed, nothing feels quite so good as finishing something. Or better yet, a few somethings.

Only you know how you work best. Some people (like me, for instance) hate the feeling of clutter, and would rather clear the decks of as much of the little stuff as possible before tackling the bigger tasks and projects. Other people crave the relief of knowing that their One Big Thing is out of the way so that they can focus on the smaller tasks.

Whichever way you operate, when things in your life are not done or not finished, it bothers you, either consciously or unconsciously. And this doesn’t just relate to your to-do lists. Often people are surprised when they do some purging of their physical possessions and experience a sense of relief that feels entirely out of proportion to the material they got rid of. This is usually because all that physical stuff represented unresolved mental and emotional stuff in one way or another.

This is not to say that we should all become Zen-like ascetics and eliminate all material possessions from our lives and all time commitments from our schedules. But maybe you can (gently, compassionately, and only if it truly feels okay) admit to yourself that you haven’t really looked at any of those dozens of your first love’s notes and letters in more than 25 years, and you won’t suffer if you don’t keep them anymore. Or that the chances of you actually reading all those books stacked on the corner table (or chair!) are minimal at best, and that you’d feel more relief from donating them somewhere and knowing you no longer “had” to read them than you’d feel guilt over not having read them.

When you eliminate enough things from your list(s) and space(s), the feeling of overwhelm starts to dissipate. Your headspace feels clearer. And that feels wonderful. There are two basic ways to get that deliciously liberating feeling:

1. Finish things.
2. Discard things.

It’s extremely important to be gentle with yourself in the process of doing both. That’s hard for perfectionistics, I know. I know. And we’ll talk about some ways to do that. But for today, if you’re feeling up to it, I’d like you to try a little experiment.

First, finish just one thing that’s on your to-do list, no matter how small. Go and get that spare copy of the house key made. Return those library books. Answer that one e-mail that’s been nagging at your mind. Whatever.

Next, get rid of just one thing that you think you have to do, but probably don’t. Will your job really be in jeopardy if you don’t attend this week’s staff meeting? Will your house really flood if you don’t clean the leaves out of the gutters this year? Do you honestly need to read every issue of Widgets Monthly to keep up with the developments in your field? If you skip this month’s, will you be okay? Try it, just this once.

And revel in the tiny but very real feeling of relief it provides.

More later.