for all the self-help rejects
marie Kondo says to tri-fold your underwear. The admiral swears
making your bed will change your life. Rachel Hollis thinks the key to success is washing your face and believing in yourself. Capsule
wardrobes! Rainbow-colored organization! Bullet journals! How many of these have we tried? How many did we stick with? If you’re like me, the answer is probably none.
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Why is it we rarely stick with them?
I’ve already talked about the role of shame in first motivating, then ultimately demotivating us. But there’s more.
- Any task or habit requiring extreme force of will depletes your ability to exert that type of energy over time. The truth is that human beings can only exert high effort for short periods. As someone in the addiction recovery world, I often think of a
phrase we use when someone is attempting to maintain sobriety through sheer force of will. We call it white-knuckling sobriety because it brings to mind a person whose only
solution for restraining themselves from drinking is to grip the edge of their chair so tightly their knuckles turn white. And
those of us who have been around awhile know no one stays sober long that way. In addiction recovery, as in most of life, success depends not on having strong willpower, but in
developing mental and emotional tools to help you experience the world differently.
- Many self-help gurus overattribute their success to their own hard work without any regard to the physical, mental, or
economic privileges they hold. You can see this when a twenty- year-old fitness influencer says, “We all have the same twenty- four hours!” to a single mom of three. The fitness influencer only needed to add effort to see drastic changes in her health and so assumes that’s all anyone is missing. The single mom of three, however, is experiencing very different demands and limitations on her time. For her, she needs not only effort but also childcare, money for exercise classes, and extra time and energy at the end of a day when she has worked nine hours and then spent an additional five caring for kids and cleaning house. You can see this when a thin, white, rich self-help
influencer posts “Choose Joy” on her Instagram with a caption that tells us all that joy is a choice. Her belief that the decision to be a positive person was the key to her joyful life reveals she really does not grasp just how much of her success is due to privileges beyond her control. Someone who is affected by serious mental illness or systemic oppression has a lot more
standing in the way of a happy life than a simple attitude adjustment.
- Different people struggle differently—and privilege isn’t the only difference. Someone might find a way to meal plan, or exercise, or organize their pantry that revolutionizes their life. But the solutions that work for them are highly dependent on not only
their unique barriers but also their strengths, personality, and interests.
For example, when it comes to my home, I have never been able to just “clean as you go.” When I try to, I find myself stressed,
overwhelmed, and unable to be present with my family. Instead, I rely on dozens of systems I’ve created that help me keep my home functional (and I still usually have dishes in the sink and clutter on
the floor). However, when I sit down to write or to work on my business, everything flows naturally. Sometimes I have to push myself slightly to get over a hurdle, but the hurdles always feel
surmountable. I actually have to set a timer to remind me to look at
the clock because I will get carried away and lose track of time. I feel creative, energized, and rewarded at the end of the day.
I have a dear friend who runs a similar business, and we often use each other as a sounding board and support each other. She often calls feeling stuck because she knows what she needs to do to grow her business but struggles to get it done. “It seems like you can
crank out seven videos for your social media in the time it takes me to do one. It takes me so long to figure out what to say and to get over my self-consciousness.”
She also keeps the cleanest house I’ve ever seen.
One day she said to me, “You know, KC, the way you feel about your business is the way I feel about my home. I can virtually float
through my home tidying here, putting something away there, doing a little housework as I see it, all while enjoying my life and keeping a very clean home. It feels natural and takes only a bit of effort. But when I sit down to run my business, certain aspects of what need to be done make me feel paralyzed, unmotivated, and overwhelmed. It takes extreme effort for me to power through, and I usually have to set up lots of external systems and accountability to get it done.”
My friend and I are simply strength-oriented and stuck in
different ways, with no discernable reason to which we can point.
Because of this, my advice for getting things done at work won’t help her at all, mostly because it amounts to “Drink a big coffee and just make yourself do it. Then wait around to be inspired about what to do next.” And her advice for getting things done around the house is useless to me. (She once told me, “I just light a candle and think
about how good it will feel to get some things done around the house.” Lol what?)
I suspect that many people doling out productivity advice focus on areas where they’re naturally gifted—areas where all they needed was a little push or a couple of tips to get themselves unstuck.
Unlike coffee and candles and believing in yourself, the principles in this book can be customized to your unique barriers, strengths, and interests.
