If we were doing a geometry proof around accomplishing a big goal, the assumptions at the top of our page would be:
ASSUMPTIONS
- I need to build a routine.
- I need to keep doing it.
The fundamental question, though, is how. How do we not quit? How do we keep going? How do we push through when it’s so tempting to stop, to give up, to give in?
Those “how” questions all have answers. But before we can get there, we first have to ask another, more important question: Why?
Why shouldn’t you quit? Why should you keep going? Why should you push through when it’s so tempting to stop, to give up, to give in?
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Traditionally, we think the answers to the big Why questions come from the finish line — from the thing we’re trying to accomplish. These come in the form of IF/ THEN statements.
IF I had that house, THEN I’d be happy.
IF I had that spouse, THEN I wouldn’t be lonely.
IF I can get these emails sent, THEN I can rest.
But inevitably, we’re not any happier when we get the house, the spouse, or the empty inbox. We aren’t happier when we can bench-press 200 pounds or when we finish the thesis or when we learn how conditional formatting works in Excel. We aren’t happier if we win the lottery or an Oscar or become CEO.
Or if we make it to the NBA.
At first, that seems downright depressing. Like, there isn’t an answer to my problems? There isn’t a finish line? I can’t achieve my way out of my own suffering?
Then we see that there is an answer, a finish line, a way out. And that it’s right in front of us.
Our “why” has to come from the doing.
We have to enjoy the work itself.
We have to turn our process into our product.
The psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi popularized the term “flow” in a book of the same name. Here’s how Mihaly (whose last name shall not be attempted again) explains it:
We’ve all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that this happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like.
This state of flow goes by other names. We might call it Zen. Nirvana. Presence. Mindfulness. Bliss. Being in the zone. It’s a sense of being connected with, of being engaged in, of participating in our lives. It’s the feeling I got on the basketball court when I was a kid. It’s the feeling you get when you’re fully engaged with your job. It might be the feeling you get when you’re doing a good puzzle, because it doesn’t matter if it’s basketball or music or our day jobs or writing or cooking or studying for the MCAT or searching for a new job or getting in shape or sending emails or the conversations we have with our friends and lovers or doing a good puzzle.
We just want to be in it, where we’re reacting, behaving without knowing why we’re doing so. Where we lose track of time. Where we forget where we are. Where we are fully and completely present.
If we can access this feeling over and over, the magic begins to reveal itself. As we take the steps to reach the goal we set (the product) we see that the goal matters less and less all the time. We love the steps themselves; we love the act of doing; we love — you’ve got it! — the process.
This is when another magical thing happens: we get better at taking the steps — at participating in our process. This doesn’t happen just because I said so. Physiology is at work. As Daniel Coyle writes in his book The Talent Code:
Every human skill, whether it’s playing baseball or playing Bach, is created by chains of nerve fibers carrying a tiny electrical impulse — basically, a signal travelling through a circuit. Myelin’s vital role is to wrap those nerve fibers the same way that rubber insulation wraps a copper wire, making the signal stronger and faster by preventing the electrical impulses from leaking out. When we fire our circuits in the right way — when we practice swinging that bat or playing that note — our myelin responds by wrapping layers of insulation around that neural circuit, each new layer adding a bit more skill and speed. The thicker the myelin gets, the better it insulates, and the faster and more accurate our movements and thoughts become.
In other words: we’re not just wired to love flow states, we’re wired to improve our capacity for reaching flow states. It feels good, so we keep doing it. Doing it makes us better at it. And getting better at it makes us feel even better. Myelination is our body’s way of training us for mastery.
This raises an important question: if we’re built this way, why is it so hard to do the things we know are good for us?
The answer lies in the same realm. “Bad” processes are addictive, too. We can wrap those synapses in myelin just as easily, whether through a routine of collapsing on our couches to watch three hours of TV or a habit of smoking cigarettes anytime we drink.
This is why behavior change can feel so difficult. Like a toddler learning to walk, our synapses lurch from couch to coffee table, reaching out for the support that will one day be provided by those thick layers of myelin. That’s why we have to be so rigid when we’re building new processes.
We also have to be dedicated to this task. Our lives rarely get less complicated. Just when we begin to think we have a handle on our day-to-day, something changes. We get hurt or fired or we have to move to California and our lives get flipped, turned upside down, and the habits and routines that worked in one stage of our lives might not work any longer.
Our lives, then, are like the second law of thermodynamics, which states that in any irreversible physical process, the combined entropy of the system and the environment must increase.
We’re born. We die. And in between: increased entropy. We get to know more people. We take on new jobs. We develop new habits and patterns and ways of thinking, some of them helpful and some of them not so helpful. And whether this is good or bad, it is inevitable that we’re adding more entropy to our lives.
Another word for entropy is chaos, which I bring up because of a symbol you’ve seen a thousand times: the yin-yang symbol from the Tao tradition. The dark side is chaos. The light side is order. There’s also a little chaos in order. And a little order in chaos. The circle itself represents the totality of life. And, as psychologist Jordan Peterson writes in 12 Rules for Life:
We eternally inhabit order, surrounded by chaos. We eternally occupy known territory, surrounded by the unknown. We experience meaningful engagement when we mediate appropriately between them.
Generally, we think of chaos as scary — the domain of hurricanes, earthquakes, and temperamental bosses and toddlers. We forget that chaos is also where creativity comes from because chaos is also the domain of possibility, potential, and hope. This friendly sort of chaos is where we are when we’re in a state of flow, when we’ve let go of rational thought and have allowed ourselves to be gripped by the prospect of creation. This happens whether we’re creating a new recipe, a new song, or a new move on the dance floor. It’s what happened to me when I was at my best on a basketball court — existing in that moment, without concern for what was happening outside that moment.
A patient goes in for open-heart surgery. The scary kind of chaos reigns over this procedure like the Eye of Sauron: complications, infections, even the schedules of the doctors, the nurses, and the patient himself. But the nurses arrive early. The orderly sterilizes the tools. An alarm clock gets the surgeon up on time. Order has been brought to bear on chaos. But then, the surgery itself: chaos again, but the friendly kind — the creativity and mastery required to fix the person. (We hope.)
Consider a baseball game. Chaos is presented in the form of the logistics. Where will it happen? When? And who will participate? We bring order to the game when we put lines on a field, when we schedule a start time, when we give some dudes some uniforms.
Then chaos strikes again: the first pitch, which might be a blazing strike and might plunk the batter in the head.
Order is the barrel. Chaos is the bullet. And to be effective, we cannot have one without the other. This is our job as creators, as workers, as humans: to use our cognitive abilities to set up constraints so we can dip in and out of flow states — to use order to harness chaos.
Creation isn’t about waiting for inspiration. In fact, inspiration is a misleading term. It implies that our creative abilities exist outside us when, in fact, those abilities are inside us. They’re available whenever we’re ready. Like gardeners, it’s our job to cultivate the conditions that allow them to bloom.
There’s one more question we have to answer. If we’re so happy in flow states — being present, existing in the zone, working deeply — then why do we so often screw up and start thinking about finish lines? Why do we forget to turn our process into our product?
The answer: because we are fallible beings who get distracted, confused, and tempted by fame, fortune, and — perhaps most important — ease. We start to think in terms of those IF/THEN statements from before, assuming that IF we work hard THEN we will be rich or famous or the kind of successful that our parents or teachers or society tell us we want to be and that we will get to rest.
And here’s the funny part: we might arrive at that kind of success. But we will only get there if we first achieve the success of the day-to-day; if we connect to the physiological high that comes from reaching flow states, day after day after day.
The beautiful thing about this is that we can control this kind of success — this sense of satisfaction that the person who loves their job has found.
The other kind of success — the kind of success we were taught matters when we were young — only happens because of luck and timing and happenstance.
We cannot control the external results of the work we do. All we can control is whether we get up and do that work, making that work its own reward, falling in love with that work — turning our process into our product.
To read more about how to turn your process into your product, buy The Process is the Product.
