A Return to Work
The Gifts of a Crisis
Happy February everyone, and welcome to new subscribers.
I’m returning to the newsletter after yet another unintended hiatus. This one was precipitated by a significant family crisis, which required me to push off most of my coaching work and my Zen Center responsibilities.
[Some info on this in our GoFundMe, which we are so grateful for and is still open.]
I’m back now with a lot of inspiration to share how the practices and wisdom of Zen can help us in our daily personal and professional lives. With the American workforce being rocked by self-proclaimed “efficiency experts,” it is a good opportunity for all of us to orient our professional lives less around productivity, efficiency and “value-creation” and more around the true elements of good work, which are meaning, freedom and flow. (More on which in the weeks ahead.)
I’ll be appreciating the “wisdom unfolding” from my family crisis for a long time. At this point I want to share a few things that seem relevant to my theme in this newsletter.
Work on What is Most Needed in the Moment
One of the gifts of a crisis is clarity of action. All of the (sometimes subtle) internal questioning about “what I should be focusing on” and “how much time do I spend on this?” and the background thinking around matters that are NOT your immediate focus … all dissolve in the intensity of the moment.
The Zen prescription to pay full attention to what you are doing in the moment actually becomes essential. Coming out of the crisis, I am newly reminded of the power of this laser focus to cut through confusion and initiate rapid response.
This is the true and simple way to optimize our productivity, efficiency and prioritization strategies: understand what situation needs the most attention from you in the moment, discern what you can do to help it, give it your absolute full attention until the immediate gateway (“task”) is passed, then address the next situation.
My lineage teacher Bernie Glassman, who founded many non-profits and international organizations, including Zen Peacemakers International, discussed his “time management” philosophy in his book “Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master's Lessons in Living a Life that Matters.”
At the beginning of each day he would make a general list of the things he felt needed to be worked on, in their rough order of priority as he saw it. Then he would start into the first thing, give it his full attention until he came to a natural stopping point, then move onto the next. He did not know how long each thing would take, and his priority could change at any time, if an urgent matter came up.
You may feel that this approach is simply unfeasible in your work life, with so many scheduled responsibilities. And I confess I have never been able to operate with quite this freedom from my schedule. But I do try to practice the spirit of this method, which is not to get overly attached to my plans or schedule, to be responsive to what most needs my attention, and to give full attention to whatever I’m doing.
Alignment Over “Work-Life Balance”
This phrase “work-life” balance is predicated on such an absurd assumption, it is surprising that it has held currency for so long. The assumption of course being that “work” and “life” are separate and comparatively equal things that can be weighed off against each other and somehow balanced.
The first absurdity is that work is not a part of life. (Obligatory shout out to AppleTV’s “Severance”, which is really very good!)
The second absurdity is maybe more subtle, which is that work and life can be assigned some sort of “weight,” some scalar measure that can be compared one-dimensionally to the “weight” of the other. (The obvious implication is that this scalar is closely related to “time spent.” That’s because the Work cultures where this term is used are obsessed with linear time as a meaningful measure, just behind and closely related to that other imperial scalar, money.)
Longtime readers will know my feeling that the Sacred Contracts model is a deeper and more adaptive way to look at our lives, respecting how our commitments to Self, Others and Work bring alive our dimensions of Being, Relating and Doing. These contracts need to be aligned, with constant adjustments ensuring we do not bypass or overload any of the three.
When my family crisis hit, I was able to shift my work and Zen Center responsibilities instantly because I recognized that my contract with Others (family) took precedence at the time and needed to become the “front wheel” of my tricycle. Having done the discernment work to align these holistic areas of my life, they are always interconnected. I had the intuitive understanding that if I met the family crisis with my greatest presence and Bodhisattva powers, it was going to serve not only my family but my work, others and my own soul.
Image of Pandora’s Box: https://mythologyvault.com/mythologies-by-culture/greek-mythology/pandoras-box-and-its-secrets/