Inspirado

Matt Jones: "Get Excited and Make Things"

Merlin — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:38:06 -0400

Don't keep calm and carry on. by moleitau

Apart from noting that I adore Matt and want to acknowledge his inspiration for this, I have nothing to add.

This, my friends, is the thing.

”Matt Jones: "Get Excited and Make Things"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 18, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Re-Potting with Resources: What Would You Make?

Merlin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 08:30:43 -0500

Leo Interviews Merlin Mann of 43 Folders

The beginning of a blood-curdling recession hardly seems like the time to ruminate about fantasy resources, I'll grant you that. But, I want you to think about something. Really think about it.

If, tomorrow morning, you had 60% of the time and resources you needed to start making anything you wanted, what would it be? And, what would you do first?

Thanks, Leo

To be honest, Zen Habits isn't my favorite site in the universe (oy, always with the "Zen"). But, it turns out its founder, Leo Babauta is a very nice fellow, who also has a new site for his new book. So, he's been interviewing a few people for the site, including yrs truly. Apart from my brief, low-sugar meltdown at the beginning of our talk, I really like how his interview with me turned out. (As I've said before, interviews are one place where I find out what I really think.)

For one, I'm always happy to share how my daughter is constantly (delightfully) blowing up my whole notion of priority. That's huge.

But, I also like that this interview is the first place that people who don't know me personally will hear me ask that question above -- about what you'd want to make (I turn the tables and ask it to Leo toward the end of his interview, around 19:20).

Never See it Coming

It's a wildly disarming question, especially when you don't know it's coming. Because it makes you realize how much you may view life as a slog toward a tomorrow that's pretty much identical to today and yesterday and the week before. And, certainly, there's nothing wrong with security, dependability, and providing continuity to yourself and your family. It's what adults need.

But, as most of us discover -- especially at the beginning of that blood-curdling recession -- security is an illusion. It's a heuristic we draw from observing the coincidence of things not going badly for a while at a stretch. And, that's great. While it lasts. But, it's definitely an illusion.

Thing is, if I think about all the events in my life that led to a really big, (eventually positive) change, they all started as something awful. A death, a layoff, a divorce. Anything that forced me to "re-pot myself" at a time that seemed sad, inconvenient, and horribly timed. At the time, each seemed like "the end" -- something I couldn't possibly recover from.

But, that's life. It's a huge dick about both your plans and your desire to avoid inconvenience.

Humor Me

So. What if, just for the sake of argument, we embraced the thinking of the fat man, and accepted that we have no real idea what's going to happen tomorrow. Because, let's be honest, we don't. You or I might get seriously re-potted tomorrow morning, and wouldn't it be splendid if we had something besides our incredulity and angst to comfort us?

So, I ask that question. What would you make? What would you start?

Change is a wave you can ride or drown under, but you can't just sit on the beach, eating Dippin' Dots and listening to Skynyrd. That's not how it works. So, even if you're mostly secure right now, and even if you're mostly doing what you like, just think about what a big change would mean and how you'd ride it.

But, Why the Free Stuff?

The reason I throw in that "60% of what you need," is that it's just enough to make the question interesting and ambitious. Give someone no resources, and they have no imagination. Give them all the resources and they break ground on a Hooters in their garage. But, give someone most of the resources they need, and you have a delightful real-world challenge to the creative imagination.

And, finally, if you're feeling really ambitious, imagine you have most of what you need today. Because, here's the O. Henry ending: you probably already have at least part of what you need to get started. On a novel. On a one-person business. On your first gallery show. Maybe it's only 40% or 25% or .001%. But, it's something. And something is all any project needs to get started. Don't believe me? Try it.

Imagine you have almost what you need. Then, just start something.

”Re-Potting with Resources: What Would You Make?” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 12, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Driving Around the Buffalo

Merlin — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:46:36 -0500

It's purely coincidental that today is my 42nd birthday, right? Eh. Maybe.

Still, seems like as good a day as any to tell you what I've been thinking about, so, here's a little present to myself.

My uncommonly smart psychiatrist (hereafter, "The Shrink") informs me that, in addition to suffering from a modest and manageable case of ADD (ICD-9-CM Diagnosis 314.00), I also have a less well-defined condition that he has called, "an artistic temperament."

I wanted him to laugh along when I said that sounded like some serious Theodoric of York shit -- possibly involving humors and stomach trolls. But, he just smiled in that way that he does when I'm trying way too hard to be amusing. I get that smile a lot.

Still, it made sense in context. Especially since I'd just spent the previous 30 minutes rambling about the terrible time I'd been having with this first-world problem of getting back into the swing of making things.

I explained how, not long after making a big show of my interest in changing the direction of the web site that theoretically constituted my "job," I'd unexpectedly been conscripted into a half-dozen of those all-consuming personal and business projects in which a man of my advancing years so often finds himself.

And, I told him how, even as I started to pull myself out of seven emotionally exhausting weeks, I discovered that my ideas and my words weren't returning with the clarity and cut to which I'd grown accustomed. I told him how my mood during this weirdly dark brown study had been sickeningly reminiscent of the months I'd spent not writing a book. I told him how unusual it was for me to ever feel anything approaching the D word for more than a few contiguous minutes. And, I told him that I'd felt scared.

Author's Note

At this juncture, your narrator will remind you that he is a grown and college-educated man who had boisterously announced an intention to write about the habits that enable admirable persons to have long-lived and successful careers in which the “work” focus of their “creative work” ensures that they (almost) never succumb to bush-league problems like “writer’s block,” serial procrastination, or an inability to generate and execute new ideas in a timely, polished fashion.

[You did get all that, right? The part where I was having trouble writing about how real artists never have the problem that I was having of being suddenly unable to think cogently about a problem that people shouldn’t be having? Good. Just wanted to make sure we’re shuffling through the same asylum here. Back to The Shrink’s office…]

So, then, I told The Shrink about how I'd finally figured out that my hang-up had involved a surpassingly stupid instance of what Stephen Covey has called putting your ladder against the wrong wall. Or something like that. I never finished the book (four times).

I told The Shrink how, even when the time to make had been restored, I kept hanging up on a huge expectation I'd made for myself -- a buffalo-sized corpse in the road that was preventing me from moving forward, let alone getting into a groove. That dead buffalo turned out to be the content well of the American website you're reading right now. See? Buffalo.

I hate that it took me several fractal weeks to realize the irony of feeling bad about my site that's meant to help people feel less bad about themselves. So, here's what I think right now.

Thinking about the work and habits that help industrious people repeatedly create things they love still obsesses me in the best way. And, I still want to contribute whatever I can to helping other people identify and remove the barriers to doing their best work. Obviously, to a certain point, this helps me very much, too.

But, I also need to chug giant glasses of my own medicine by practicing these ideas every day — not just burning cycles on retyping them for a fucking web site. At a time when I didn't totally have the ears to hear it, advice arrived in an email from a wonderful friend. I might have it framed:

If I may offer something that might appear as criticism, but really isn't meant that way: the Internet's meta-content is fattening my eyelids like nothing else these days...

Commentary is always a few frustrating notches below creation. There's a quote from Darwin on why he spent years researching barnacles, and it goes something like, "one should not write about species who hasn't studied many."

Anybody can have a blog and post observations about things other people said first. I did it just now, and I want to do it again. Maybe, at some point, I can even manage to do it without all this self-referential belly-aching.

But, I'm also going to take my friend's advice and quit acting like the world of ideas will wither if I'm not there to rephrase it in a slightly fancier way for my blog. I'm gonna post stuff here, but I'm also not going to sweat it or let it define me. I want to do that with other stuff that you can evaluate on its own terms.

So, my birthday gift to myself today is an unlimited mulligan whenever I play the links here at 43 Folders. From now on, the expectation I'm setting for myself is to go out and spend the next year, first and foremost, making things that delight me and that, from time to time, may even delight some of you. I'll put stuff here when it suits me. Like today.

But, even as I strive (and often fail) to do better work across the board, I really need to approach that with the knowledge that nothing is allowed to get bottlenecked behind a self-generated anxiety about updating a blog. That's mental.

So, anyhow, I told The Shrink how I was feeling so much better about everything now that I'd given myself permission to drive around the buffalo. And that, in the insanely dumb way that only my mind could operate, I felt energized. Not just with a renewed brio to go make some videos and learn photography and maybe even play around with fiction and verse and vest-pocket entrepreneurship. But, that I was excited about 43f again. To maybe start returning to the original idea of sharing my trail of inspirado with the folks who might enjoy it here; without worrying whether I do it in a way that makes me look enough like a thought leader.

But, still. Focusing on the good stuff and trying mightily not to waste anyone's time (or inflate traffic). More as a way to own the ineffable process by which almost anything we encounter can eventually turn into something good -- even when it starts as something weird that you don't really understand. But maybe it turns into something. If you work really hard, manage expectations, and give yourself unlimited permission to try things, fuck up, and start over, again and again and again.

Maybe it's not really a coincidence that today's my birthday. Or that my shrink, and my ladder, and my buffalo, and my goddamned website about whatever-the-hell-it's-about-today all make so much more sense when I stop thinking about thinking, and start doing things. It's a lesson I'm prepared to learn and re-learn for God knows how many more times. But, anyhow, today, I'm 42, and I'm in the mood to forgive myself. So suck on it, buffalo.

End of throat-clearing. For today. (I'm also done with predicting the future for a while.)

The next voice you hear will belong to Twyla Tharp, and it will come out of a video that I posted recently on another site (which had turned into my secret hidey-hole for stuff I thought was too "trivial" to put here). Tharp is a woman whose book so utterly inspired me this summer -- well, I guess I'm embarrassed to admit how transparently I'll be lifting and rephrasing her ideas here. Not sure anybody needs this site when such a wonderful book already has all the best stuff.

So, happy birthday to me. And, just for the hell of it, let's give this another spin. And, God bless the "artistic temperament" in all of us. Without it, I might still be idling behind an unseemly line of buffalo.

”Driving Around the Buffalo” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 26, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

How to Use 43 Folders

Merlin — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:20:05 -0400

A very simple guide to leaving here quickly so you can get back to making something awesome.

Ask yourself…

Why am I here right now instead of making something cool on my own? What’s the barrier to me starting that right now?

This is not an insult or put-down. It’s a useful question. Please, think about it, then search the site to see if we have anything that might inspire you to make something awesome today.

What Sucks?

Looking for specific answers to what sucks for you today?

“My email sucks.”
“My attention management sucks.”
“My compulsive web browsing sucks.”
“My lack of resolve to put my art first sucks.”
“My procrastination sucks.”
“No, seriously. My procrastination really sucks.”
“My fiddling with ‘productivity systems’ sucks.”
“My to-do list sucks.”
“My blog sucks.”
“My band’s stupid website sucks.”
“My meetings suck.”
“My PowerPoint presentation sucks.”
“I suck.”

More ideas

Still sucking? No problem. Here’s more places to scratch around.

Popular now — Here are the hottest articles on our site (right this minute).

Title	Recent
Getting started with "Getting Things Done"	266
Introducing the Hipster PDA	188
Cranking	110
Hack your way out of writer's block	104
Procrastination hack: '(10+2)*5'	85

Our Most Popular Posts — Okay, technically, it’s the most popular from January 2007 til now. But, you know. You get the gist.

Title	All-time
Getting started with "Getting Things Done"	2047624
"Perfect" iTunes equalizer setting	1634061
Introducing the Hipster PDA	1494979
Writing sensible email messages	547147
Building a Smarter To-Do List, Part I	521538

Still Lost?

Try a mental sweep, do a shitty first draft, or consider a modest change.

Maybe just get away from the computer for a while by taking a nice walk. Without your phone. We’ll still be here when you come back. Promise.

How to Know When You’re Done Here

You’re done here whenever you’ve found just enough information to get you back on track for today. If we don’t have the right fit for you, we sincerely hope it won’t take you half a day of surfing to figure that out.

We love having you visit with us here, and we hope you’ll return many times — whenever you think we might have something that might help you get over the hump. But.

The Only “Productivity” That Matters

The best advice we can offer is to just put your head down, push yourself harder, and try to figure out what you need to change today to get a little better.

“Productivity” isn’t about about making more widgets per hour or being efficient and organized for its own anal-retentive sake. Real productivity means getting faster at moving the crap off your desk so you can have room to focus on the creative work that only you can do.

Figure out how to do that every morning, and you’ll be ready to go pro.

”How to Use 43 Folders” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 05, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Whining, Blue Smoke & the Mechanics of Getting Unstuck

Merlin — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:40:00 -0400

I've been working on a bunch of (non-43 Folders-related) stuff lately, but I started feeling that hankering to come back and write something new here. To get the engine started, I went through some old posts and turned up a few (oddly self-inspiring) ideas that I want to re-share. The topic? "Getting unstuck."

Hack your way out of writer's block - "Literally. Put five completley random words on a piece of paper. Write five more words. Try a sentence. Could be about anything. A block ends when you start making words on a page."
Solve problems by writing a note to yourself - "Seriously, open up your email program, type in your own email address, then choose a brilliant subject line that perfectly encapsulates your particular problem."
Do a fast "mind-sweep" - "And as long as you let that stuff accumulate as chunky deposits on the edges of your perception, it’s very unlikely it’ll get done since — well — they won’t get done until they’re been captured and properly started, right?"
Cringe-Busting your TODO list - "Per cringe item, think honestly about why you’re freaked out about it. Seriously. What’s the hang-up? (Fear of failure? Dreading bad news? Angry you’re already way overdue?)"
Patching your personal suck - "Every patch that fails teaches you a little something that might come in handy some day. Mistakes, as they say, can be a buddhist gift."

I guess all I'd add -- since it's on my mind today -- is that I'm learning how much it pays to listen whenever you hear yourself mentally whining.

First off, even when it's yourself, nobody likes a whiner. So it's worthwhile to be mindful about the extent to which your internal monologue is becoming personally insufferable. As with B.O. and a lack of flossing, the chances are good that others have already noticed things about you before you have, so -- you know -- congratulations on making it to the party.

But, second, and perhaps more importantly, that whining should be telling you something. Whining is the ~~white~~ blue smoke in your tailpipe that lets you know you're burning mental oil. It means you're unconsciously devoting cycles to something that you can't, won't, or shouldn't be spending time thinking about. Otherwise, why would it be bothering you, right? You'd be either extricated or done with it.

Once you pinpoint where that whine's coming from, that's the perfect opportunity to decide what the hell the hang-up is. Because if it's worth whining and fussing about, it's worth deciding what obstacle (obstruction?) in either the Real World or your own mind is keeping something from happening.

And once that obstacle is identified and out there, ample methods exist for helping you execute in a way that's sane and sensible. But you can't complete a task you don't understand, so grant yourself the personal luxury of unpacking the problem behind the problem.

Put automotively? Obsessively adding a new quart of oil every day not only doesn't fix your smoke problem: it feeds it. Instead, just use the smoke as a warning that it's nigh time to trace the cracks in your engine.

As for me? Yeah. Now I'm feeling unstuck and a little less whiny. So, thanks. Onward.

Edit 2008-04-12 11:07:28 - Reader wemerson was kind enough to correct me on my metaphor in this post. Turns out that my use of "white smoke" was inaccurate; the smoke would be blue. Many thanks -- and I made the correction. Learn more about smoke...

”Whining, Blue Smoke & the Mechanics of Getting Unstuck” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 10, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Creative Constraints: Going to Jail to Get Free

Merlin — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:46:02 -0400

A Brief Message: No Resistance Is Futile

Paul Ford has been posting six-word Twitter updates for a few weeks, and now he's also created the magnum opus of six-word criticism: sexological reviews of the 763 mp3s in this year's SxSW torrent.

Writing on (the 200-words-or-less site) A Brief Message, Paul talks about how the constraint changed his approach and his thinking:

Now when I face a new writing project, I open a spreadsheet. I want a grid to keep track of sources and dates, or to make certain that the timeline of a story makes sense. The grid imposes brevity. Relationships between sentences are exposed. Editing becomes a more explicit act of sorting, shuffling, balancing paragraphs. In this spirit, I'm rewriting some blog software to read directly from Excel. We'll see how that goes.

Yes. Constraints. As Paul shows, constraints get you thinking about the creative process in a whole new way.

Me? I ♥ constraints. 30 seconds. 5 things. Less than 140 characters.

In fact:

Twitter's making me a stronger writer. I think harder about how to say more using fewer and shorter words. Nothing beats hitting the Twoosh. (140 chars)

Let's close with a favorite quote on creative constraint from Anne Lamott's wonderful Bird by Bird. She explains that she keeps a one-inch-square picture frame on her desk to remind her of "short assignments:"

It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being.

Well put. (And only 17 characters north of the Twoosh.)

The Question to You

Got a good example of a creative constraint at work?

”Creative Constraints: Going to Jail to Get Free” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 24, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Motivate yourself with "loss aversion"

Merlin — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:28:11 -0500

NPR: Put Your Money Where Your Girth Is

I really enjoyed this Morning Edition story on "Prospect Theory," or the idea that loss aversion can be an effective motivator in goals related to health improvement like weight loss and smoking cessation:

"What we know about incentives is that people work a lot harder to avoid losing $10 than they will work to gain $10," explains Ayres. "So something that's framed as a loss is really effective at changing behavior."

Related to that question I was asked at Macworld: I wonder if a gym membership might be even more motivating if you received a daily email updating you on the wasted dollars you'd spent by not working out in the last n days.

When I started paying most of my own college tuition, I remember realizing that every class I skipped was equivalent to throwing away about a day and a half of the money I'd earned from waiting on tables. It was very motivating for me, and I started missing a lot fewer classes as a result.

”Motivate yourself with "loss aversion"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 06, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

More from Peter Walsh on clutter, quality of life

Merlin — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:26:32 -0500

Oprah's Clutter Man: "It's Never About the Stuff"

Clean Sweep's Peter Walsh (previously) has a new book out, and Mediabistro had the chance to chat with him while he was out promoting it.

While I wish Peter had held out for a more cromulent title ("Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?" Ouch.), I so admire this guy's grip on what clutter does to your mind. Or at least what it does to mine.

Typically swell quote:

Our show was never about the stuff. I told the producers early on that you can only organize so many closets and garages before people lose their minds... We all have stuff. What we had to do was tell people's stories through their stuff, and see them realizing what their relationship to the stuff had become.

and, later:

What is your vision for the life you want to live, and do your life choices reflect that vision? Specifically: Is your home a space for the life you want?

Ours is a culture based on the idea that whenever you run out of space, you should just pull up stakes and move five miles west. Then you can be happy. Is it any wonder that we seek organization rather than deletion as the solution to an overwhelming problem? Yeah, I think this goes well beyond not being able to find a business card in your junk drawer.

Capacity is only worth building when it'll be used in the service of stuff you really want. Whether that's calendar events, your Fabergé eggs, or those crusty Lean Cuisine plates from last summer, the quality of matter that you allow to stay anywhere in your life eventually starts rubbing off on everything it touches.

”More from Peter Walsh on clutter, quality of life” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 19, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Snow Day Hobbies

wood.tang — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:16:27 -0500

It snowed almost a foot here in Chicago last night, and looking at all that white stuff made me think about junior high, when my school was out an entire week for snow. I built most of the eastern seaboard in SimCity 2000 that week, on a 33 MHz PC no less. I was a nerd. It was awesome.

I thought about how fun that sounded today after I finished shoveling, and considered digging around for an updated copy of SimCity online. Then I reminded myself that the last thing I need is another hobby involving the computer. I use a computer for work. When I'm finished working, I screw around on the internet. When I'm tired of that, I read books, which isn't a whole lot different, if a little easier on the eyes and attention span.

Pardon me while I get out the nostalgia hankie, but I miss the days when my hobbies had nothing to do with staring at a glowing screen. When I was a kid, I could sit down in my room over an unopened wax box of Topps baseball cards and completely tune out the outside world until four hours later, when my mom called me to dinner, handed me a napkin, and told me to wipe the drool from chewing 36 sticks of gum off my chin.

Earlier this winter, I took my son to a model train show. The convention center was filled with little boys, their parents, and retired men wearing pinstriped overalls. As I watched those old boys hunched over their hand-painted landscapes, tinkering with a broken crossing gate or resetting an errant boxcar on the tracks, I envied them. They had that thing I used to have with my baseball cards, a hobby that completely absorbs their attention for hours at a time, something wholly disconnected from work and daily hassles, a place where they could go and forget about everything for at least a little while.

I need that again. Model trains won't do; as much fun as those old coots looked like they were having, the last thing I need in my house is more toy trains. And baseball cards won't cut it either. Since I stopped collecting, they've taken on too much stink of commercialism, ruined by glossy UV coatings, foil stamping, and limited editions. Besides, I need something that's less about acquisition and more about simple escape.

I'm sure I'll find it if I keep trying, whether it's drawing, or cooking, or simply going to the gym more often. The point of my whole weepy ramble here is that we need to have hobbies that can completely whisk us away from the grind for a few hours, preferably something that involves working with our hands and doesn't result in credit card debt or physical addiction. If you find it, it'll be like having a snow day all over again.

”Snow Day Hobbies” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 01, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

The Economy of the Heart

Joel Johnson — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 08:01:24 -0500

I’m not a Christian anymore. Perhaps I got a raw deal when God was passing out churches—mine was shaken apart in my late teens by a pastor who got busted for sneaking a few hundred thousand out of the offering plate to buy Nazi war memorabilia, not to mention banging a few dozen women who came to him for marriage counseling—but I’ve made my peace with the Prince of it.

One particularly Christian principle has apparently stuck with me over the years. It wasn’t until recently that I rediscovered it. (Not animal sacrifice, which I never abandoned.) And whether Jesus of Nazareth existed as a real meat person or was the product of a coterie of desert sci-fi novelists, one thing he taught has been helping me a lot lately.

It’s awfully nice to forgive.

“Forgiveness is the economy of the heart…forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.”
— Hannah More

Even better, I think forgiveness has made me a more productive person. Or at the least, one able to more fully enjoy the process of production. And since I produce words for a living, that’s a wonderful thing.

I didn’t used to think much of forgiveness. I’d harbor a years-long grudge against anyone for the slightest accidental scuff of my ego, adding my jealousy and indigence to a cauldron of molten spite that I’d tip out every time I needed to get something done. I’d throw in my festering self-loathing for good measure. I’d work not for the joy of it, but to show those fuckers what’s up. It was about as causticly effective as starting an engine by splashing it with battery acid.

Okay, that’s a bad analogy. It did work for a while.

But I didn’t enjoy it. I was all ate up inside. And outside for that matter, too disgusted with my body to take care of it. So like a mistreated engine, I had myself a nice little breakdown right in the middle of the road. And by “the road” I mean “my career.” (Breathe, analogy. Live, damn you!)

Now I’m better. Not totally, amazingly perfect or anything. Better, though, for sure. Happier and healthier! Maybe more productive, even, but that’s not the point.

At least not my point. I’ve forgotten my audience, haven’t I? Just hang with me. I’m almost done.

See, I get this sort of panic attacks here and there, except unlike a typical panic attack which comes on strong and dunks your balls in ice water right after you call your best friend’s fiance “bomb shelter doable”—I get those, too—these are in slow motion. They might take a few days to crest, which is horrible, because I often don’t feel them coming on. I’ll just be standing out on the porch looking at the backs of my neighbors' houses, realizing I haven’t done much work in the last few days, and realize I feel awful.

Then I’ll remember, Hey, I didn’t used to hate myself! Why just last week I thought I was fucking awesome. But instead of trying to browbeat myself back to productivity—You’re so far behind that you must do double the work!—I just let go.

I’m not talking about realizing I’m in the dumps and pulling myself up by the bootstraps. Because, you know, I’m in a dump, remember? I don’t want to do anything now. I just want to pull the hood of an old Ford truck off the pile, crawl under, and die with my bootstraps on.

So I do.

You have failed again, my friend, I say. (I don’t always say my “friend,” but the longer I live in Brooklyn the longer my inner voice sounds like my local bodega’s owner.) And that’s okay. You will fail again. You are forgiven.

That’s it. Profound, right?

Okay, look. I know. It’s not a good tactic for wresting yourself out of a doldrum and sailing around the Cape of Todo. But whatever! It’s okay to go off course sometimes. We are imperfect. And loathing yourself or bemoaning your lack of work ethic isn’t actually doing anything, either. It’s just another way to do what you really want to do, which is obviously to do nothing.

Give up for a while, I say. Take a break. Take a nap. Take the rest of the day off. Audibly tell yourself “It’s okay.” Throw away all the yardsticks you’ve created to track your growth and spend a little time with your inner emancipator. The world’s softest grandmother is giving you a floury hug.

Forgive yourself for losing focus. Then forgive yourself for worrying about losing your focus.

Forgive yourself for making unrealistic goals. Forgive yourself for making goals that aren’t big enough to keep you interested. Forgive yourself for doing work that’s not your best. Forgive yourself for comparing your work to the work of others. Forgive yourself for thinking something other than your work might be fun. Forgive yourself for any single thing you find yourself feeling guilty about.

Then forgive your enemies. Forgive that asshole who showed you up with better work. Forgive the people who have treated you like dirt. (Feel free to forgive yourself for feeling like you don’t want them in your life anymore, because there’s nothing wrong with forgiving but not forgetting. Some people are too screwed up to keep close enough to hurt you again.)

It’s a concept that has faded into the background static for many of us. It smacks of hippie shmaltz. (Hippie Shmaltz Smacks are my favorite breakfast.)

Just try it on for size. Even if you don’t believe in any god, the notion still has value, I think. I mean, is there something religious about being okay with yourself? God forbid, loving yourself? If you take ten seconds right now to cut yourself some slack—to create that space of calm in which thoughtful next actions can be taken—and you don’t find yourself just a little bit happier about what you’re choosing to do (or not do), well, then, you know.

Forgive me?

”The Economy of the Heart” was written by Joel Johnson for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 28, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"