Heya Kate,
Ah the intro to your last letter made me laugh. When we embarked on this little letter writing journey we said that we’d post on Wednesdays, though more often than not I’ve posted on a Thursday or Friday. So often, in fact, that I think I’ve internally let go of the deadline. I post my letter on Weds or Thurs, maybe Fri. And once when I was ill I postponed a whole week and still posted on Thursday. I’m not sure anyone noticed. Why would they? This deadline exists primarily for personal accountability. In the grand scheme of the world it is entirely fictional. Which tends to be the way with oh so many deadlines, yet as I write this I feel the ‘good girl’ in me hiding away in shame.
I am not going to write a letter hating on deadlines. I love deadlines. There is real joy in meeting them and without them it would be impossible to run complex projects across teams. I know I’m not alone in feeling that without deadlines I would struggle for motivation. And I’m pretty sure I have minor PTSD around the idea of missing deadlines. To this day if I’m really stressed about something I will have nightmares of sitting a uni exam, realising that I haven’t studied.
It is dawning on me as I write that uni deadlines probably served the lecturers and tutors more than the students. Those marking our papers needed to be able to manage their work schedules. That being said, the initiatory experience of having loads of deadlines, both in my studies and in my working life, is the thing that has helped me to develop my nuance and intuition about what is important and what is not. Kind of like a dense forest of time demands. At first I must pay attention to everything, until I learn to discern what is friend and foe - what is critical, what is important and what is distraction.
As I mentioned last time, we think of time and money in the same way often, yet somehow our perceptions diverge here. If I’ve ended the month with every penny spent that is not ideal. Yet if I’ve ended the month with every minute occupied I feel important. It is hard to feel like you’re ‘being productive’ when you are staring off into space. Planning time to actually stare at the wall just doesn’t happen. Even scheduled downtime often comes with a plan. And yet, how else can I engage in kairos time if not by daydreaming in the times when there is nothing urgent.
I think you are onto something with the ‘right and critical time’. I’m aware that I’ve only started becoming comfortable with the concept in the past couple of years. The urgency of trying to be constantly productive is exactly the opposite of the source of great and creative ideas. Creativity lives in boredom. Sometimes, as a songwriter, I set aside time in which I am not allowed to put down my guitar and force myself to get bored and repetitive, to bring an intention but let go of the need to be productive. When I do this process I feel like I am just waiting for the song to find me. In this TED talk Elizabeth Gilbert talks about it as the daemon or genius - entities outside of herself that come to visit. If I am running around on my own productivity agenda then I wont be still enough - bored enough - to hear the subtle voices of the external entities that WILL ONLY come at the right and critical time.
What if the ‘right and critical time’ for an idea is just not up to us humans. What if the spirit of the moment, the right and critical idea for the moment, is living in the landscape, out there floating through the wild awaiting a host that is receptive?
The more I lean into these ideas myself, the more abundance seems to grow. But it is absolutely counter to everything I was taught about the world. And certainly not aligned with the youthful urgency that helps us to make all the mistakes we need to make to grow.
I can see that all of this is very introspective and applies to me as a freelancer and an artist, but I can’t fathom how to apply this to an organisation. Perhaps you have some thoughts in that regard?
With love,
Lynne