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Should You Quit Your Job?

In Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest For Work You Love, he provides an algorithm to be used in order to find out whether you should quit your job. I’m quoting from memory:

There are three criteria:

  1. You really hate the people you work with.
  2. You feel that the job is not helping people or doing anything good for the world.
  3. There is no room for innovation.

The first criterion is more or less black and white – you either do or you don’t hate the people you work with. The second two are far more subjective. Who’s to say if the world is being made a better place? And as far as innovation goes, are we talking within the confines of the job itself, or innovation outside of the workplace as well?

Most people aren’t interested in the second two criteria. They’re most likely already good at their job, or they don’t have any other source of income on which to fall back. But for those of us who are, it might benefit us to contemplate them if we’re not entirely certain that our current jobs will hold much promise in the long run.

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Reaching A Higher Level: Understand That Life Has “Layers” And “Seasons”

In order to reach a higher level at any Art, skill, Craft, Vision, stage of life, or Way of Being than one is currently at, one must have the discipline to “chunk away” at it, every day, until that higher level is reached.

I have a theory that this discipline doesn’t originate in a vacuum. I believe that it comes from a burning or insatiable desire to continue this process even through times of seeing few to no results. There must be a Light At The End Of The Tunnel, a strong feeling of what it would be like to get there, accompanied by a sense that one must Get There at all costs.

This feeling must be strong enough to last through disappointments, plateaus, and any forms of Resistance. It must represent a pull towards the Higher Level, one that overrides what Stephen Pressfield calls “lower natures”.

Whoever is on this path understands that, to go from the current level to the Higher Level could take an uncomfortably long amount of time. Furthermore, they would have to have the mentality of “chunking away” every single day. This part is especially important – the best way to build momentum when working towards a Higher Level is to take no days off.

None of this is overwhelming to the person truly on the path. He or she knows what she wants, and he or she is okay with never stopping.

Now here comes the “Big But”: but what if this feeling isn’t present? But what if the direction is unclear? But what if the desire is not so fiery?

Well, then, maybe the context needs to be re-examined. If that fire in the belly just isn’t there, if no path is visible, then maybe it makes sense to not be so concerned about that Higher Level.

Yes, human beings are built to evolve, to reach fuller and fuller versions of our potential. But what if this process was not always an active one? What if it unfolded in seasons, and there were seasons when specific action should be taken, and seasons when less action is better?

For anyone thinking about Visions and Higher Levels and evolution, it might seem counterintuitive to consider that to not have a plan could be a feasible way of doing things. But Life, like an onion, is a many-layered thing. Just because action is not being taken within one’s idea of the Art, skill, Craft, or Vision, does not mean action can’t be taken in other areas. There is a time to take action in non-Craft related areas, just as there is a time to focus on the Craft and let everything else fall by the wayside.

Maybe the best time to get down to the nitty gritty stuff that all Artists hate but that we must all face and do at some point is when we are not really feeling the grind. What if the Craft were just one layer in the onion, rather than the onion itself?

Yes, discipline is essential. Yes, it’s important to not skip a day. But what may be even more important is understanding that Life is Life. Sometimes it does make sense to stop, and trust that something will rush in to fill the void – for a season.

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Beware of “Should”

The word “should” is more of a sentiment than a word. A golf ball flubs into the trees. “I should have kept my knees bent on the follow through!” A business investment tanks. “I should have been smarter about where I put my money!” A cheat in a diet. “I should not have eaten those cupcakes!”

The word “should” is a dangerous one because it interrupts our romantic notions about what we feel should actually be happening. We want to make a decision, and never falter. We want to stick with a commitment for life. We want to be braver than we’ve been before. A new day, a fresh start. Before and after. That was then, this is now.

Only catch is, Life doesn’t always work like that. In fact, more often than not, the way things unfold is anything but romantic. At least, not the “cut and dry” romanticism of stories and movies.

In a way, the stumbles and falls that cause us to want to use the word “should” are indicative of a more lovely sloppiness. The way Life actually works turns out to be weirdly more of a “should” than the “should” in our brains. And this, in itself, is kind of romantic.

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Social Media: Tool or Threat?

Cal Newport, author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You, was interviewed by James Altucher on the podcast The James Altucher Show. In the conversation, Newport brings up a concept called “mental residue,” which is the phenomenon that occurs when we glance at our email or our cell phones for just 30 seconds just before we dive into a practice, discipline, or some kind of focus.

He says this “mental residue” stays with us for up to 20 to 30 minutes into our focus time.

I’m sure this could be expanded to include any activity we happen to be doing in real life – from having dinner with a close friend, to performing in the workplace, to writing a poem. If we allow our minds even brief stimulation, it could mean some serious mental costs.

This brings to attention the danger of Social Media. While some aspects of the “online presence” can be useful, every Impresario walks the line between falling prey to the focus deficit it can cause, and only using it strategically, to reach folks in ways that doing so in person could not.

Cal Newport argues that Social Media is not really useful or needed at all because it causes people to waste attention and therefore does more harm than good. I am inclined to agree with him, because at the end of the day, it’s the Craft, the Vision, that truly matters.

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Getting Better Means Never Stopping

Somewhere in Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code, he reveals that all it would take to get less good at something would be no more than thirty days, or just around a month’s time. Even the world’s most adept masters, according to Coyle, are not exempt from this rule. For Yo-yo Ma to start to get worse, he would just have to not practice for thirty days.

Well, before he got worse, he would probably plateau – but in Coyle’s terms, that’s essentially the same thing. In other words, if you’re not actively getting better, you’re actually getting worse.

Along the way, putting aside certain skill sets in favor of new ones might make sense. Time, changing circumstances, personal growth, and practical considerations are all factors which help to determine which skill sets we might put aside for a time, or, abandon altogether.

If we don’t keep up with any skill set for an extended period of time, then it will be that much more difficult to come back to. For example, if you’re a personal development guru and you took a month off from public speaking, you’d really have to kick your butt to get back in the groove. And the time and effort it would take to do so would hopefully warrant that such a lengthy vacation wouldn’t happen again. But if Tony Robbins decided to take a month off from, say, eating red meat, or even decide to become a vegan, his business probably wouldn’t take nearly as much of a fall. (This is strictly a made-up example – I have no idea about Mr. Robbin’s dietary preferences.)

Now let’s say Mr. Robbins liked to play basketball. Basketball, most would agree, is a wholesome and beneficial activity. But if Mr. Robbins decided to drop this activity, and not play basketball for a month, that too would not harm or really effect his primary calling, life coaching, in any way.

It’s up to us how we’d like to manage our skill sets. Some may go by the wayside, others might become more important as we decide that it makes sense to focus on them in order to achieve a new goal or Vision. This is all okay, just so long as we understand that there is always give and take, push and pull. More focus in one area might mean less attention on another, and vice versa. And if we decide to come back to something we’ve let go for thirty days or more, we’ll be that much more hard pressed to get back up to speed.

Balance doesn’t look like two weights at either end of the scale perfectly level, hovering, still. Balance is a constant, adaptive process – up and down, up and down. Balance is motion, and stagnation is stasis. Balance is never really completely achieved – it’s an ideal, just like everything worth shooting for.

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“Creative Altruism”: The Missing Link

I was just on the phone with a friend. The conversation seemed to hover around the merits of letting ourselves have our moments of glory, our “day under the sun,” versus being more concerned with doing our part to somehow raise the quality of the lives of others. My friend suddenly recalled an incredible quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism, or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

I was thrown for a loop, for it immediately occurred to me that much of my life up until now had not been on the side of creative altruism. As we talked, I slowly realized: isn’t that the whole essence of this thing called the Impresario?

I’ve been writing about the Impresario now every day for about a month, and for some reason I never really delved into the most important aspect. The Impresario seeks out collaborators for his vision, not out of some sense of self-importance, but because he knows that it’s not about him. The Impresario is nothing more than an Altruist.

The great thing about “creative altruism” is that any field can be a vessel for it. Even a job. My job, for example, as an Entertainer, could be performed in such a way as to make every member of my audience feel special. Already, I am practicing “creative altruism.”

Creative Altruism must be the missing link from any activity that does not feel imbued with significance. If we are feeling lost or misguided in our lives, it must be because we are concentrating too much on serving ourselves and not enough on serving others. If we are disillusioned or full of malaise, it must be because we have forgotten how to make someone else feel driven or motivated.

The concept that “it’s not all about you” may seem like a rebuke from our childhood days, but it is actually a philosophy encompassing a way of life. It’s the secret of what Karl Jung calls “integration,” and integration is exactly what the Impresario wants to do – to become a member of society whose contributions improve society, and the world, at an exponential rate.

King quoted by Johnny Fritts.

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The Causative Nature of “Interest”

Every Process eventually reaches an impasse where the values, goals, and visions get reexamined. At this point, the person or group behind the Process can decide which of these to keep, which to modify, which to throw away, and ultimately, whether to continue to engage (stick) or whether to hang it up.

Even if a company is doing well, the owner can decide to sell it if it is no longer in his interest to oversee it. By contrast, if the same company is suffering, the owner might decide to invest some more time and money and really do all that he can to pull it through. What he does depends first and foremost on his interest.

There are a lot of factors that may go into the decision of whether to stick or to get out. A financial concern will have a much different kind of effect than a personal one. But in the end, the decision will be made based on what the business venture, the relationship, the creative process, means to whomever is facing the fork in the road. Emotional investment outplays all. That’s what I mean by “interest.”

Sometimes it can be hard to see what the right move to make is. Maybe a change of direction is needed, but there is a lack of certainty as to how or where. Perhaps the Vision doesn’t need to be replaced, but massaged a bit. And maybe it was just a routine checkup, and everything can continue more or less as before. The outcome, however, will always be directly connected to the same phenomenon that got the whole thing started – a conviction, a sentiment, a feeling.

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Gravity

The sort of individuals who have had the biggest effect on me have been the kind of people who were the least concerned with having an effect. Their presence was big, through no effort on their part. If they were musicians, people listened, if they were artists, people looked. If they were teachers, people learned.

In Nashville, Tennessee, I ran into a couple of musicians who I perceived to have a big effect on not just me, but other folks as well, and who did so through a medium that was bigger than their music. Maybe “medium” is the wrong word. I like to think of it as “Gravity.”

This “Gravity” seemed to be magnetic, in a way. If I was to say where it came from, I could only use metaphysical terms like “well-grounded” or “character,”  but that wouldn’t paint the whole picture. But whatever it was, I could tell these men stood for something.

The thing that struck me the most was that they attracted people. If you were lucky enough to introduce yourself or be introduced, you felt as though they were somehow calling you to be more. When they played their songs, you were listening to them, not so much the song.

“Gravity” is earned through being a certain kind of person, not necessarily from obsession with technique or virtuosity – or any kind of isolation. You can’t separate the Music, or the Art, from the Man. But the Man is still there when the song ends.

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How To Engage

A couple of blog posts ago, I defined the Impresario as someone who engages with life. It can really be anyone, regardless of whether that person identifies with herself as an “Artist” or not. If she is truly engaging, she is an Impresario.

OK, what does it mean to “engage with life”?

Everyone is at whatever stage they’re at. Built into our human neurology is a drive to become better – to get from where we’re at to another, higher level. I touched a bit on this on the last post with the idea of evolution.

I suppose to “engage with life” would mean to consciously be doing the actions needed to get to this next level of consciousness. This could be interpreted in a variety of different ways, but I think generally could boil down to the following:

1) Noticing.

2) Acting.

3) Sharing.

The Impresario knows where she’s at. She knows where she’s ahead of the game, and which areas could stand a little more attention. She then decides to Act – to design her life in such a way that allows for her personal and creative growth, whatever that looks like to her. Finally, she shares this with the outside world.

It’s this last bit that I am most interested in, because it’s how an Impresario shares her work that truly defines her. The true Impresario takes advantage of every outlet possible, from physical venues to social media networks. This means that there are now hundreds, or thousands, of ways to Share.

It makes sense to the Impresario that to have the greatest effect on the world, she should reach as many people as possible. And all Impresarios want to have a big effect on the world. We’ve all heard pocketbook sayings like “A journey starts with a single step,” or “Change yourself, change your world”. But these sentiments aren’t enough anymore. Not for the Impresario.

The Impresario of course wants to change herself. She wants to change the world. But, above all, she wants to share this change with others. She wants to give, she wants to inspire, she wants to tell her story. And when she does this, when she engages with the people in her world, that’s when she can truly change everything.

 

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The Secret to Life

Here’s the secret to life: become world class at everything you do.

I big problem I’ve faced in the past is being overwhelmed: looking around at everything I not only need to do, but want to do for myself, and noticing that it’s just too damn much. I don’t know where to start, so I don’t start anywhere.

Well, that’s a mistake. I’ve wasted months of my life not acting out of fear – simply because I didn’t get, on a deep, practical level – that all I had to do was pick something. But, as it turns out, picking something is actually the hardest part.

Going back to a couple of blog posts ago, where I brought up the first stage where the resistance is the most powerful (remember the “rocket ship” analogy?), the hardest part about any activity is the first part. Stephen Pressfield calls it “sitting down to work.” I’m sure there’s a thousand gurus out there who have their own distinct names for it.

But let’s face it: there are only twenty-four hours in a day. And of those hours, we do need to find time for the basics (sleep, diet, and exercise), and, whatever other pressing matters needing attention. Those come first, and whatever’s left, that’s where the real Work can happen.

Once we pick a few things, we’ve committed. We have to follow through until they’ve been mastered, or, at least, seen out to a degree we feel adequate. Since there is limited time for this process of mastery, we can develop systems with which to address each thing, and how often we’d like to address it. We can be as organized or as non-organized as we like – whatever works.

Once we stick with each Thing, something magical starts to happen – we begin to take on an intimacy with it, and a feeling that we are tackling it. Some things might take longer to tackle than others, but it’s the process that’s key.

It seems to me that’s what it means to be “world class” – you’re committed to a process. Not so concerned about the actual tackling. The tackling will happen if I stick with the Thing over a period of time. I’m not trying to rush it. I’m just interested in what I have to do today.