The incredible power of immediate feedback
Or why being clear about what you’re doing matters now, now and now.
Often, when people talk about ‘purpose’ and things like that, it feels like a far-off, distant thing. “Get clear on your purpose” is what you do when you have a week-long retreat and are all set to plan the next twenty years. Or when you leave your job and need to have a long, hard think about where you’re going next.
But, in my mind, being clear on your purpose means exactly the same thing as knowing what you are doing. And that’s not a far-off distant thing. That’s right now. And now. And now.
And when I ask myself ‘What is the purpose of what I am doing right now?’, what I’m really asking is ‘Do I need to be doing this thing?’ And the answer to that question is really, really important.
Often, when people talk about ‘purpose’, it also feels like a kind of optional extra. Like, a luxury upgrade for those who can afford it. Like, the natural order of things is to do work that is either unsatisfying or occasionally satisfying or, if you’re very lucky, frequently satisfying. Because that’s just the way things are. And, sure, in an ideal world, maybe one day you would work in a way that was deeply fulfilling and so on…
But, I believe that, if you think it’s OK for work to be generally dissatisfying, then it may be that you don’t understand how work works. And, to be honest, it’s only really this week that it properly hit me just how vital it is to be doing exactly the right thing in every moment.
When I take people through the Clear Ideas process, I ask them about what they need. When they have managed to articulate exactly what they need in a single line, then they have successfully crafted ‘a very clear idea’.
And the way I’ll explain it to them is this. When you are doing a piece of work, you have to contend with every bloody thing in the world. All the challenges and constraints of trying to get a thing done whilst navigating the endless and unpredictable conditions of the world we live in. When you’re doing a piece of work, there are innumerable opportunities to go astray. To lose the thread. To start unknowingly doing the wrong thing. So, before you start doing a piece of work, you have an opportunity at least to get the idea straight in your head. If you’ve got the wrong idea about what you need to do, then you’ve gone off course before you even start to face the unavoidable challenges of being alive and trying to get things done.
So — being clear matters. And the clearer idea you have at the beginning, the more likely you are to stay on track as you set about doing the actual work. The clear idea is like a kind of secret weapon. A compass. A very good map. A reliable reference point.
And, sure, the cost and benefit of being unclear or clear about what you’re doing is pretty obvious. If you’re not clear, you do the wrong thing and even if you work really hard, you won’t end up where you wanted to get to. If you are clear, then you have a much better chance of doing the right thing and arriving somewhere satisfying.
But, this week, I really started to appreciate exactly how important it is to be clear and to stay on track. Not because of where you end up at the end. But because of what it means now. And now. And now.
Here’s the thing. An idea by itself is worth nothing at all.
One of the beautiful things about an idea is that, by themselves, they have no consequences whatsoever. You can dream up your ideal home — but it doesn’t change where you’ll sleep tonight. You can imagine your dream job — but you still have to go to work in the morning.
An idea by itself doesn’t get anything done. It tells you what to do. What gets things done is committing to getting them done and doing the things you need to do. So, that might mean phoning up that guy about the job. It might mean looking in estate agent windows. Sometimes it might mean sitting quietly and being patient and letting things unfold. But the point is: if you know what you need to do and then you do it, then you will have done what you need to do. (And I know this most likely sounds so obvious it is barely worth saying…but go with it.)
Satisfaction doesn’t come from working hard. Satisfaction comes from doing what is needed. It’s getting fed when you’re hungry. Getting rest when you’re tired. Getting inspiration when you’re uninspired. Getting the shopping when you need to get the shopping. You do the work and you get what you need. You’re well-fed and well-rested and inspired and so on. That’s the point of work. Doing what needs to be done means we are well-resourced. Which means we can do the next thing that needs to be done. If we don’t do what needs to be done, then we are not well-resourced. Which makes it harder to do what we need to do next. Which means we will end up even less resourced. And before you know it you spiral into being less and less able to focus on what needs to be done or to carry it out and you go further and further off-course until you burn-out and can’t do anything at all.
And this isn’t a long-term thing. This is about now and now and now. If I spend the next five minutes doing something that feels like it’s kind of half-right, sort of what I’m meant to be doing, then in five minutes time I’ll feel that dissatisfaction of not having got where I needed to get to. I’ll feel the pain of wasted effort. I’ll feel the dissatisfaction of a goal not met. And I’ll suffer with not actually having what I need. The need from five minutes ago will still be there, still asking for attention. And I might want to start doing the next thing, but I’ll be dragging that unmet need behind me. And think of a whole day of that? Of going off-course, of not doing what’s needed, of doing five minutes of the wrong thing? And another five minutes and another five minutes? Unmet need piling up on top of unmet need? It’s bad work. It’s not effective. It’s unsatisfying and it’s really, really hard to keep doing.
But when we’re clear, when we are doing what we need to, it’s like being plugged into a renewable energy source. You do a piece of work and it is what you needed to do and, five minutes later, your need is met and you get to feel the delight of getting what you need. And that is an inspiring thing. And it means you are well-resourced — you have what you need — and you are ready to do the next thing.
It’s kind of like the difference between being a dolphin — totally streamlined, slipping through the day, carrying nothing, doing what’s needed and carrying on — or being a crazy hoarder trapped under an ever-growing pile of cardboard boxes full of yesterday’s newspapers and yoghurt pots. Hoarding unmet needs as you tell yourself that working harder will make everything ok.
But working harder doesn’t make everything ok. Because satisfaction doesn’t come from working harder — it comes from doing what’s needed. And doing what’s needed depends on clarity. You need to be clear about what you are doing in the work you are doing. In your life, yes. This year, yes. But also now, now and now.
Happily, all of us basically come with clarity built in. We might not pay attention to it, we might actively ignore it, but deep-down all of us always know what we’re doing. All of us know what we need to do next. The challenge is knowing how to listen to what we already know. The challenge is actually remembering to bother to listen.
Actually remembering to bother to listen depends on genuinely spending some time noticing the cost of doing the wrong work. The dissatisfaction of working your arse off to get to the wrong place. The exhaustion of investing all you have and not getting what you need. And remembering to bother to listen depends on genuinely spending some time noticing the benefits of doing the right work. The incredible power of immediate feedback. Feeling you are on the right track. Feeling yourself resourced and resourced and resourced as moment-by-moment you keep staying true to what you need to do.
The other part — knowing how to listen to what we already know — is the point of everything I write here. And it’s the point of the clear ideas process. And it’s the point of every clarity session I deliver. But, fundamentally, all of us already know how to do it. Because, when we need something, it hurts. And, if we go the right way and do the things that we need to do, then it hurts less. If we ignore what we need and do things we don’t need to do, then it hurts more.
The point of work is to do what is needed. And, really, it comes naturally for us to work that way. But, I know I at least learned how to work by going to school and being told what to do and ignoring what I needed and getting it done. And that sort of works. For a while. But it’s like switching off the most powerful resource we have for doing very good work. We are designed for seeing what we need, feeling whether we’re on the right track, taking the steps we need to and getting to where we need to get to. And doing that depends on listening — now and now and now — not to what we are told, but to what we need.
If you think your work or your workplace could benefit from more clarity, you can find out more at www.howtobeclear.com.
