Don't force it, mostly
A letter on effort, uncertainty, and letting life unfold
Dear Gup and Dabbles,
At this moment, I am “unemployed.” The contract I was working on was unceremoniously terminated which means I’m no longer going into the office five days a week.
As someone who has had experience with being unemployed, I wanted to share some ideas that may help you if you ever find yourself unemployed or in a situation where you’re anxious or uncertain about your future.
Don’t force it
As a kid, my dad used to make me help him with small projects around the house, like putting together cheap furniture.
That typically involved screwing or bolting two pieces together or, if we made a mistake, unscrewing or unbolting two pieces.
If the screw or bolt got stuck or we felt an unusual amount of resistance, he’d say “don’t force it.”
Most of the time, the action should be smooth, so if you were getting stuck, that was a clue you were doing something incorrectly and needed to take a step back to assess. If you tried to force it, you would probably strip the threads and mess up the screw, giving you a potentially unstable or lopsided coffee bookshelf.
This is good cheap furniture assembly advice, but it’s also good life advice. If you’re feeling like you’re forcing something, stop and take a step back.
What forcing it looks ands feels likes
It’s not always obvious when you’re forcing it.
In unemployment, “forcing it” looks and feels like frantic motion and emotion. It’s a form of self-soothing in the short term, but does very little to actually move the needle.
Here are some examples:
Sending out lots of cold job applications, for jobs you don’t actually want
Tweaking your resume endlessly
Networking with people you don’t actually care about hoping they’ll just give you a job
Feeling like you’re not doing enough
Catastrophizing; thinking you’ll become homeless
Worrying about being good enough as a person
Feeling embarrassed about not having a job
As perverse as it is, moving frantically and letting yourself get anxious is a way of feeling like you have more control than you actually have.
But this doesn’t change the fact that this will have very little impact on the results you get. Most things that are forced end up having very little impact relative to your effort and a surprisingly high emotional cost.
You can’t force it, but you can’t do nothing
This idea is uncomfortable because there is a core tension. You can’t force things to happen, but you can’t just do nothing. If you do nothing, nothing about your situation will change.
We’re naturally drawn to stories of grit and perseverance. We love underdogs that make it against the odds by performing heroic efforts to achieve their goals.
Grit and perseverance have their place. I think those are great attributes to have because that’s what meaningful goals sometimes require.
So when it comes down to choosing action that you know, deep down, is a waste of time, versus feeling like you’re not doing enough, you are likely to choose the former, lest you think of yourself as a lazy person who just can’t get it together.
Let Things Unfold
But, taking action and not doing anything at all is a false choice. There is a way to do things without forcing it.
Imagine dropping some leaves into a river. They’ll all flow generally in the same direction, but they may end up in different spots. Some will get caught on a rock, others nested in the bank, others may make it to the ocean.
Your efforts should be like those leaves. You try things and, without psychological attachment let them go where they naturally want to go. It’s effort plus openness.
You don’t try to force a leaf to move upstream. It’s pointless. If you’re encountering so much resistance, that’s a sign you’re trying to move upstream.
The metaphor is limited, but here’s what not forcing it may look like in a job-hunting situation:
Having lots of conversations with people and sharing your situation (a more honest version of networking) but also sharing your natural interests
Working on an interesting side project that may have professional applications
Taking some part time or gig work to pay the bills while you keep your eyes out for opportunities
Finding companies you’re actually excited about and pitching them ideas on how to help them
This should all feel, if not effortless, at least not like you’re swimming upstream, it should generate a curious and hopeful feeling, like “I wonder where I’ll land.”
You won’t beat yourself up for not doing everything humanly possible with every spare minute you have to get a job.
How I’m applying it today
I’ve been dissatisfied for a long time about my work in government contracting. But whenever I was in between projects, I’d run back to it, instead of branching out. I’d make some token efforts to look at non-government corporate jobs, but I felt repulsed by them. So then I’d go back to the only industry I felt comfortable in. The longer I went in between projects, the more anxious I felt about money, the more embarrassed I felt about not working, and the worse I felt about myself. I’d retreat into myself.
This time I’m dropping a few more leaves into the river, reaching out to others and being open to different paths and outcomes. I’m learning to accept that anxiety is part of it which, helpfully, lessens it.
Accept Being Lost
I felt perpetually lost and dissatisfied in my twenties (and to a lesser extent, my thirties). This wasn’t a bad thing per se. It forced me to take action. I read lots of books, started a few businesses and writing projects, and made some good relationships along the way.
The mistake I made was to think that being lost and dissatisfied was something to be resolved, that the feelings themselves required drastic action and that the measure of success was to feel like I found “the” path and perpetually satisfied.
But there’s nothing you can change about your external situation to make it feel like you’ve solved your existential crisis once and for all.
When you embrace that, you can move through your lives with greater freedom and love. Freedom because you’ve loosened the grip of endless expectations, love because you accept your life as an unearned gift.
—-
As your dad, it’s a real joy to witness your lives unfold, particularly as this very cute stage of your childhoods. I can’t force anything to happen (despite my efforts to get you dressed and out the door), so instead I get the luxury of watching you both become yourselves (unless we’re running late).
If and when you have your own kids, you’ll understand the feeling, but before then, I hope you can learn to take joy in witnessing your lives unfold, even when it feels like things aren’t going your way or aren’t progressing as quickly as you like.
Instead of forcing your life to happen, just watch your leaves of effort float down the river and land where they naturally want to go.
Love,
Dad