Work On Your Thing

I think it's a fundamental good for people to work on their own thing.

To compose a song. Write a short story. Craft a table. Plant and tend to a garden. Sew a dress, or bag, or shirt. 

To build software. Start a business. Film and publish videos. Record a podcast. 

To start a community. Host events. Speak at events. 

It doesn't matter where you start or end up; what matters is that it's your own thing.

It doesn't particularly matter how many hours you work on it, either. That is, it's far more important to go from 0 -> 1 hour working on it than from 10 to 20. It only takes an hour or so per week to reach some new mental threshold where you walk around and truly feel in your bones, 'I have this thing I'm working on, and I can't wait to get back to it.'

You can hold onto that thought in almost any circumstance. While you go about your day at work. While walking and exercising. While with friends or family. While eating, cooking, cleaning, bathing. A little secret you hold onto and draw energy from; as is often the case, probably best captured by a meme:

This could, of course, all just be my own experience and non-transferable. But I doubt it. Anyone I've spoken to who has something they're working on has, at least, told me they share this sense of walking around with a delightful secret. 

So, I guess the question is, 'Why is it so important?'. What makes us the kind of creature that draws energy from not just creative expression, but the possibility of it?

I think a good place to start is what happens in its absence. Why, on the other hand, do people without a ‘thing they’re working on’ so often feel stifled and disillusioned with their day to day.

Again, this may just be my experience. Plenty will be lost in translation, and I'm sure I'll fumble to get my point across in ways that offend someone or other; but the gist of it is something along these lines. Why does just a small injection of self-expression and 'working on your own thing' do us so much good?

I used to think about this from an evolutionary psychology standpoint. Something along the lines of autonomy is a pattern in the brain that is recognizing and rewarding optionality. It feels good to be in control of and have options over our environment because this optionality was, historically, essential to our survival. 

But this way of thinking creates a lot of noise in my head. Many new interesting and complex tangents pop up which I don't have the stamina or intelligence to follow up on, and so I now think about it in different terms.

It comes back to a question I recently read posed by Haruki Murakami as, 'What do you do when you're not seeking anything at all?'. When you're at rest. Content. Not needing to find ways to pay the bills. Not strategizing about how to get ahead; not provisioning for the future; not assessing the past. Just sitting still, alone with your thoughts and finally alive and able to do precisely as you please with your time here. 

What do you do?

I think whatever the answer to that question happens to be is what it means to work on your own thing. It's your own thing when it fills the still moments, without force or from some urge to 'be productive', but comes as the natural thing you'd like to spend your limited time preoccupied with.

Maybe those truly enlightened monks, sitting cross-legged halfway up some mountain in Nepal, don't need to 'preoccupy themselves', and have found a way to sit in peace with the universe as is. 

But for the rest of us, the next best thing is to keep our hands busy on something that feels authentic and rewarding and true to our experience, while alive. It is, in fact, often the thing that makes us feel most alive. 

As a simple test to find out if something you're working on is 'your thing' or not, sit idly for an hour. Don't read. Don't scroll. Don't walk. Don't eat. Just sit and be at rest, and listen for where your mind drifts to.

It's not a perfect test. Some days you will be too drained and exhausted to 'want' to work on your thing.

But if more often than not, you feel restless and pulled back to something you feel simply must be explored further; then please, as much as you can afford, carve out the time to work on that thing.

It’s very likely, your thing. 

Gerrard