It is almost always easier to work.
Even when work is stressful, it’s an environment that has a beginning and end, with tasks associated with workflow that equal some-kind-of-something in the end. We generally know what our contribution amounts to, how our presence impacts the whole. There’s a certain metric that we innately understand when it comes to work — less gray area, more punctuation.
Consider the discipline it takes to meditate, workout, sit down and read with your child or play Legos — even to go on vacation. These are all beautiful, fulfilling, healthy activities once you do them, but so often, work swallows anything deemed “extra” because it’s, A. Culturally justifiable and B. Infinitely easier to be productive when it’s obvious. I think most of us would agree that there are days and weeks that with all our “busy-ness” we weren’t actually that impactful toward something we really care about, that we really want to happen, that would really make a difference.
So as we go into this holiday period, one of my “rest” goals is to think bigger and upward, rather than in bits and pieces moving forward. I want to try to stay in the idea stratosphere — rather than the production one. We don’t get that luxury too much because we have jobs to do, people to pay (and get paid from), and missions to make real. This “blue sky” level of creative thinking (or blue ocean as a friend of mine insists), is a unique muscle that “works” without being at a desk, “produces” without typing a single Google search, and “grows” without a marketing strategy.
With that, I wish you a very happy holiday — and hope this gentle push gives you added permission go higher and deeper into something good. For me, it will only qualify if I can do it and have nothing to show for it –except a renewed energy (and potentially an idea worth executing) by January 1st.
