Don’t Force It, Flow With It
I don’t usually work on weekends. I much prefer to spend my weekends engaged in household and family activities; meals together, laundry, groceries, family games and movies, my son’s hockey games, my daughter’s dance classes, church — clearly there’s more than enough to fill my weekends without throwing work in there. That being said, last night was an exception. I needed and wanted to spend some time tweaking the content for the first recording session of my upcoming radio show. The show itself airs this coming Sunday for the first time, and recording is today. While the content was essentially done, there were tweaks I wanted to make, to ensure that I am comfortable with this experience.
While sitting and playing away (it felt like playing for the most part), the creative juices just weren’t flowing. And I found myself in the very real dilemma of knowing that the task needed to be done, but feeling like I was beating my head against a wall. Slowly — very slowly — I managed to craft and tweak for a time, and then I realized that the effort wasn’t resulting in equal output; I was putting in a lot of effort for poor quality results. I realized I was trying to force something that just wasn’t happening. So I decided to let it go — for then.
In doing so, I released my brain from the need to create something that just wasn’t coming together. And I realized my mental energy, allowing myself to just settle into a state of relaxation. The result? This morning when I revisited the task, I was able to accomplish in 60 minutes twice as much as was possible in 2 1/2 hours last night. Why I didn’t stop sooner is beyond me. No it’s not; the reason I didn’t stop sooner was because I allowed myself to buy into a mental story that said I HAD to get it done NOW. Which was silly — the essence was there, and the finer points were better tweaked when I was in the mental space for it. When I could flow with the ideas, rather than force the concept.
As leaders, there’s a lot of pressure to get things done now. Sometimes the pressure is to get things done yesterday. And while deadlines are very real and usually need to be honoured, working under the pressure may serve sometimes; and sometimes it gets in the way. The trick is knowing when pressure’s working for you, and when it’s forcing you to try and fit a square peg in a round hole. When it comes right down to it, it’s always better to flow with the process, rather than force it.