I have had a problem with productivity lately… and if you know me at all, you know this would typically threaten 99% of my identity. I’ve been sharing this problem with my dad regularly, going so far as to pound the keyboard once and demand why I couldn’t work like I used to (all the while apologizing for not living up to the expectations I’m sure he had of me when I was hired into the business).
He finally took a marker, approached the whiteboard in my office, and wrote “EVOLVED”. Beneath it, he wrote “Old Emily = Projects. New Emily = Relationships, Family, Love.” He looked at me. “You’re evolving, Emily. You are becoming who I always wanted you to be.”
It reminded me, oddly, of how my dad talked about my grandmother when she was dying. When he first spoke of it, he never said death. He told me she was decaying. Dad and I try to be observers of process—minimizing process could altogether undermine the nuances of an experience. In our minds, people don’t die, and they don’t change. They decay, and they evolve. Semantics to some, but it’s a kind of philosophy to us, I think.
So people like us tend to sense the thunderstorm when others just think the wind’s kicking up. For me, the wind started kicking up some time in 2007, although I know now that I was late in noticing what it meant… for too long, I have been a creature of creation, happily sacrificing most things (especially relationships) in the name of being productive. By 2007, that productivity had landed me in roles that only demanded more and more production. And while I hadn’t exactly woken up dramatically one morning wondering what happened, I expected it would only be a few more years before I did. Life was my personal pressure cooker—I had never been so uncomfortable in a situation I had so intentionally created.
When I decided to do something about that, it required uprooting myself in my own life as I knew it. It started with going to work for the family business, and once that happened, it unrolled from there. And by April of this year, I found myself in a life I had not planned but felt strangely like what I had always hoped for. A lot of formerly unproductive things—friends, family, and love—not only started making sense, but they started taking precedence.
And that’s when my work “suffered”. I went whole days without being able to produce a single scrap of what I would have formerly considered work. Even as I write this post I’m struggling to conclude it in a way that, in my mind, produces value. As if the process of writing it has not had meaning.
To help wrap my arms around the notion of evolution and the process that I am trying to let myself go through, I began thinking of all this as my “personal evolution project” (which I like because it leads to the acronym “PEP”). As part of my PEP (ha—sounds like a motivational speaking program), I guess I’m learning, or trying to understand, a couple things:
- Personal evolution is a not a productive process, in the way we (I) would normally view productivity. In fact, it sometimes demands less productivity. Personal evolution does not need to be justified with outputs.
- Personal evolution has nothing to do with success as we (I) know it. Some people would argue that this is just because society needs to rework its definition of success… I disagree. For me, success will always be somehow tied to the acknowledgement and perception of others. I believe personal evolution is actually about the pursuit of joy. Joy is a very personal thing, which no one else can acknowledge for you, and no one else can understand quite as you do (if or when you discover it).
I’ve been thinking about these things a lot for a long time, drafting them on paper, debating whether they belong in my journal or posted on this blog (now you know the lapse in posts was out of uncertainty and not out of laziness…). I guess I decided in the end that it’s worth sharing here, in case others are thinking similarly and want to share
{ 1 trackback }
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Emily – Wonderful post – thank you for sharing your process. 20-something isn’t easy and it certainly has it’s ah-ha moments. As a 30-something, let me reassure you that this evolution thing…ticks on for quite a while – and your notion of personal joy is a great one to hone in on. For what makes us joyous, it what gives us purpose. I look forward to future posts….
Anne
Emily, I have discovered that the beauty of evolving is that it never stops. My definition of work, life, success has been different in various seasons of life, never at one point better or less but what it needed to be for that season. I have learned to be in time enjoying, savoring and living rather than rushing through or being aimlessly moved along by it. Life, change and growth are wondrous. Thank you for a wise and beautifully written post.
I know exactly what you mean about reevaluating your definitions of productivity and success. I have been volunteering abroad for the last year. It has been as much an experience to test my limits as a way for forcing me to rethink what I was working for and how I was going to get it.
I find the process can be a little onerous but it’s always a way of finding little surprises and revelations and learning a new way to live your life.
I agree that this evolution requires not only a shift in focus from things likework, sucess, attainable goals and output towards less definable and the less tangible. It is hard to define things like love, joy, passion, and even contentment. You can’t set a goal for how much joy you are going to have and then achieve it. There isn’t such a thing as too much love, or happiness. But there is such a thing as too little. Knowing when you need to slow down and realign in order to be fulfilled in less tangible ways requires that you be more self aware and, in my opinion, have faith.
Thank you for sharing this- not only is it wonderful to be able to see someone you love grow and be so open, but it is food for thought for all of us!
Emily, I just wrote myself about the need to stop setting long, life long, 10-year plan goals for myself. I have learned through watching your experience and through the love I have found in my life, that it isn’t always worth it to have so many projects, and to push myself to strive for something I see myself being in 10 years. I decided to live in the moment and be the good at everything I am doing now, without looking into the future, without trying to be the best. It is going to be a strange couple of months trying to live this way, but it can happen. :)
Wow. Ya know… it’s funny. I’ve just finished up writing a very similar piece about my “evolution”. that’s a really good word for it, by the way. If I ever expand on my piece, I may end up “stealing” that concept. It’s the perfect word.
I think a lot of us have similar experiences in growing up. The interesting bit is that very little thought in this society is put toward people who have a moment where they realize that their focus on “success” (I don’t know a better generic word) is ruining their chances of joy.
We seem to expect successful people to be fulfilled by their success.
Thanks for this. It’s really really good to feel like I’m not alone on this.
Wow everyone, thanks for all the wonderful thoughts… it means so much to not only have readers on my blog but thoughtful conversation! :) I don’t know if it’s disheartening or reassuring that the struggle for joy and personal evolution seems to be such a pervasive one! Maybe it is universal to the human experience–something we’ve always inherently struggled with, not just something that society introduced as it began to move at a quicker pace.
I’m going to keep thinking about everything you shared… because I honestly can’t help but think about all of this a lot these days. :)