Are you solving the right problem? | #10

channeling your inner Abraham Lincoln

In this 10th issue of The Pole:

• The voice of the inner critic

• Chopping down the tree vs sharpening the axe

• What does too much chopping look like?

• What does too much sharpening look like?

• Alternate between chopping and sharpening (you’ll thank yourself later)

The voice of the inner critic

After a flurry of vacations, sicknesses, and other derailments, I'm back home in Austin, TX.

Now that my schedule is consistent for the next few months, I'm asking myself what the plan is. What are my goals? What am I doing to advance towards them?

Enter: anxiety

I can feel the pressure flooding in from my chest cavity, radiating towards my limbs.

Questions that I've had trouble answering for years start resurfacing in my conscious:

• What do you actually want to do right now?

• Is that what you should be doing?

• What do you actually want to do with your life?

• Is that lucrative? If not, shouldn't you be doing something lucrative?

• No really, how are you going to handle the money thing?

• Okay, that sounds like a good path. How are you going to make sure you stick to it?

• What's your plan, dude?

• But also, you have to do what makes you happy otherwise you'll burn out. Will this make you happy?

• Am I happy doing this? How do I know? Is it an IYKYK thing?

• Is it normal to have to make yourself do things? Do happy people still have to make themselves do things?

• Does it even matter? You have bills to pay, dude. You'll be unhappy if you're homeless, for sure.

• OK so I gotta do something. I need to be productive. What's the plan?

If you got anxiety reading that, sorry. To be clear, I'm not sorry that I wrote it. It was therapeutic for me. But I do regret summoning those negative feelings for you.

Maybe there's some consolation in knowing that you're not alone in feeling that way?

Anyway. Enough doom and gloom. I don't like to bring problems to the table without bringing solutions.

To be clear, I do not have a button you can press that will make it all go away, yet.

But I've wrestled with these thoughts for years and have ways to dampen them.

In fact, I'm the poster child for the men will do X instead of going to therapy meme.

At least, I was, until I started going to therapy. But I still believe in doing X as a form of therapy as well.

Chopping down the tree vs sharpening the axe

Have you ever heard that one Abraham Lincoln quote about chopping down trees?

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

I love that quote, but there’s a balance. In fact, I believe in tackling the problem at many levels at once. I prefer to cut down the tree (do X) and sharpen the axe (go to therapy) at the same time.

They're synergistic.

When I spend some time chopping down the tree, it makes me feel productive. It silences that voice that tells me I should be more productive.

It's also a guide. It gives me an instinct for what problems are worth solving. It's protection against wasting my time solving the wrong problems.

When I spend time sharpening the axe, it helps me synthesize what I learned while chopping down the tree. It helps me see the forest. It takes me out of the weeds so I can identify the big problems instead of getting caught up in the small problems.

Too much time spent in either direction (doing X vs going to therapy, chopping down the tree vs sharpening the axe) is Bad.

I've made both mistakes, so I'll tell you what they each look like.

What does too much chopping look like?

When you spend too much time chopping down the tree, you won't feel it until later.

In the moment, it feels indulgent. You don't want to context switch. You're in a particular zone, and you want to leverage the existing context as much as you can.

You did what you set out to do, but there’s so much temptation to stick around here. With a little extra effort, you could do EVEN BETTER. Over-engineering stuff is so satisfying.

You know, intellectually, that there are better uses of your time.

But

• you're in the zone

• context switching sounds like a pain

• there are so many low hanging fruits here, and, most importantly,

• if you leave the zone, you'll have to start all over.

If you start all over, you will no longer be in the zone. You'll wrestle with getting the ball rolling again, which means:

Your inner critic will pop up again!

Many times I've opted to stay in the zone solving unimportant problems to avoid listening to my inner critic. I regret it every time.

But I regret making the second mistake (spending too much time sharpening the axe) far more.

What does too much sharpening look like?

When you spend too much time sharpening the axe, it's the opposite of too much time chopping the tree.

When you spend too much time chopping the tree, you know it, but you don't feel it.

When you spend too much time sharpening the axe, you feel it but you don't know it.

Here's a personal example. I'm working on launching a YouTube channel where I make animated explainer videos.

There's a lot of stuff I've had to learn. Some examples:

• how to make your voice sound good (microphones, audio software..)

• how to edit videos (storyboarding, Adobe Premiere Pro..)

• how to make good graphics (color theory, typography..)

There are infinite ways to improve a video. It's easy to get overwhelmed.

Thus, it's easy to conclude the following:

There's so many ways I can improve. I feel like I make so little progress when I alternate between making videos and learning new things. I know I have so many things to learn, why not just drop the whole making videos part for now?

Maybe it's a better use of my time to

1. pause making videos,

2. dive into each of these adjacent domains,

3. learn what I need to from each domain, one-by-one, and then

4. resume making videos.

Intellectually, that sounds like a good idea. I'm sacrificing short-term progress (making bad videos now) for long-term gains (making great videos later).

Yet, when I look at the photoshop course I bought on udemy.com and entertain the idea of starting, I feel a block.

To be clear, it's not that I don't want to do it. Learning photoshop does sound interesting. I do want to do it.

But at the same time, it doesn't feel like the path I should take. Despite the logic I laid out for myself, it still feels like a waste of time.

Huh?? Why do I feel that way?

I'll tell you, dear reader, why I feel that way.

I've been down this road. I've overruled my feelings and marched onward anyway. Here's what happens:

I jump in. I start learning stuff. It's cool. It's fun. But the nagging feeling persists.

After a few days of learning, I revisit my original goal, hoping to leverage what I learned.

It is at that moment that I discover: most of what I learned is irrelevant to the goal.

Why? Because problems have finger prints. They’re all unique with their own individual contours. Which means that their corresponding solutions are as individualized as they are. Details often make the difference between solving the problem and not solving it at all.

When I stepped away from the problem, my memory of its details subtly slipped away. The less specific the problem in my mind, the harder it became to filter out tasks that were a waste of time.

Before I knew it, I was bike-shedding.

Alternate between chopping and sharpening (you’ll thank yourself later)

Some might argue that anything you enjoy doing isn't a waste of time. Maybe that's true in the abstract.

But, at least for me, if I have a goal and I do things that don't end up progressing me towards that goal, I feel bad.

In order to give myself the space to enjoy something for the sake of the thing itself, I have to take care of my goals first.

If I spend too much time sharpening the axe, I lose touch of the original problem: chopping down the tree.

But, if I spend too much time chopping down the tree, I lose touch of the big picture. I step over dollars to pick up pennies.

It's easy to make either mistake, though. It's comfortable to put your head in the sand and keep chopping. It sounds like a good idea to sharpen as much as possible.

But switching back and forth, even though

• it can feel unsatisfying in the moment,

• it's uncomfortable,

• it can feel overwhelming,

…is The Way. At least in my experience.

When you're in the weeds chopping the trees, listen to your head.

When you're up in the clouds sharpening your axe, listen to your feelings.