Be prolific
Today is only the 4th of October and yet already the benefits of my quest to share an essay every day this month is paying dividends. At the beginning I was worried I would run out of things to say, and yet the pressure to ensure I have enough topics to fill the month has meant that my awareness of potential topics has massively sharpened. With 27 essays to go, I now have a note in Evernote with the genesis of 35 different essays scribbled down.
If I fail to complete the quest, lack of ideas won’t be the issue! In fact, just as I found when I was writing Tribe of Learning earlier this year, writing seems to be a source of abundance for me. The more I write, the more I can write. Writing one essay creates the inspiration to write two more.
The second thing I’ve noticed is that people seem to be responding more than they usually do, which is utterly wonderful.
One person I’ve heard from is my incredibly inspiring friend Julia Steel (who created the wildly successful VID19 virtual conference this year), who said "There's a discipline to knowing who you are and what you're good at. It's your discipline as opposed to discipline,” and I totally agree. The word discipline has an incredible breadth of meaning; in its most positive connotation I think it evokes mindful commitment, the most negative has a sort of self-flagellating quality to it.
It’s discipline of the kind that diminishes energy that I’m railing against. There are periods of my life where my pursuit of discipline has been accompanied by a steep reduction in the amount of joy, energy, and enthusiasm I have for the project at hand. This kind of discipline has exactly the opposite of the desired effect—it’s caused me to get less done, not more.
I think the productivity gurus that espouse the sole and universal value of discipline to the cause of human progress have a narrow or perhaps myopic view of the process of success. What they’re saying is that discipline is the tool you should use to pursue a quantity of output. And as my deep-thinking and insightful friend Dr Richard Huysmans said in response to yesterday’s essay about Peter Cook’s discipline and my enthusiasm, “both discipline and enthusiasm lead to prolific something. As in your first post in this series quantity is what matters – not quality.”
This is the gold nugget I’ve been trying to uncover.
I think the productivity gurus who’ve found success through discipline need to broaden their perspective and see that it’s not discipline specifically and universally that drives prolific output, but instead that each individual needs to find their path to action in prolific abundance.
My personal experience is that a conscious focus on discipline (at least the way I interpret the word) actually reduces my output. Giving myself permission to focus on character traits other than discipline has had resounding positive impacts in my work and my life.
If you had to pick a word to describe the character trait most likely to drive you to a prolific abundance of energy and activity, what would it be?
Photo by Akira Hojo on Unsplash