Sex, Bacon, and Prioritization
If there’s a prime suspect for things that get in the way of joy and satisfaction at work, it’s probably having more things calling for our time and attention than we have to give them.
The message of last week’s post was: Beware of the shoulds—i.e., most of the advice that’s around us. It's probably obvious, but it’s worth saying that there’s still some value in the shoulds. Tossing away the accumulated wisdom of the elders is its own kind of mistake.
I say that because the main shoulds to solve the overload challenge—“just prioritize” or “pick the best option”—are spot on. In fact, I’ve never seen an alternative suggestion in the productivity literature.
But that advice is also trite.
The impediment isn’t the knowledge that we should prioritize–it’s the angst that comes with making those decisions. We’re wired to avoid others’ discomfort, causing social friction, and the risk of being expelled from the tribe.
Hence, the solution space must be centered on what it takes to feel good about the decisions we make, despite the fact that they close off options and disappoint others. The only way I’ve seen this work out is by having an authentic view of what we’re trying to achieve.
In my coaching, when someone is treading water in making a decision, I often ask, What do you want?
You’d be surprised how often even very accomplished people don’t have a good answer to that question. People often answer with what’s best for the organization. They state what their boss wants. They tell me what everyone else on their team wants. They describe how it might impact their family.
I typically have to repeat the question. Yes, but what do YOU want?
People are often stumped.
But without a good answer to that question, it’s hard to see how we can feel good about the prioritization decisions we need to make to improve our lives.
Without that clarity, It’s also hard to see how we can avoid choices that are “advancements” in other peoples’ eyes, but that don’t actually improve our professional experience.
The second ingredient to feeling good about one’s prioritization choices, it seems to me, is conviction. And the productivity literature has very little to say on this.
It strikes me as a question of faith—faith that we’ll get to a good outcome, even though there are real near-term tradeoffs. And that brings me to sex and bacon.
Our prioritization dilemmas are similar to the choices to give up sex, bacon, alcohol, gambling, or any number of awesome experiences our faith traditions restrict. We don’t know for sure whether our choices will work out, but we move forward with faith that a little less enjoyment today will manifest in a much greater outcome tomorrow.
Importantly, we get the conviction to make those choices from constant affirmation. This must be why the enduring faith traditions encourage regular prayer and attending service every week (or more!).
As David Whyte writes in The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, “If we make our life vows consciously, we must speak them again and again in order not to forget.”