Doin’ too Much Bro

According to Urban Dictionary “Doing too much” is the act of over achieving without any results or purpose.

I discovered this, not because I am up to date with the cool kids, but because my husband is addicted to Tik Tok.

One Tik Tok series shows a guy parodying his own teenager. When an off-camera voice asks him to stop playing video games for a moment and help out around the house, the teenager replies by pacing wildly and saying “you’re doin’ too much, bro.”

And this got me thinking. Every time I’m talking with friends, and we exchange pleasantries, it goes something like this:

“So, how are you and your family doing? What are you guys up to?”

“Oh, well, we’re all over the place. My husband is working out of town, my job needs me to do extra and the kids go to twenty different sports and therapy. We’re really super busy”

Things are busy. For me. For them. For everyone.

And I’m starting to wonder if we’re all doin’ too much, bro.  

You know who’s not doin’ too much? Navy SEALs. Contrary to popular belief, one of the tests they have to pass to become a SEAL relies on their being able to do as little as possible.

Don’t get me wrong, Navy SEAL training is brutal. Test after difficult test is thrown at the most qualified candidates. There are tests of strength, mental toughness and endurance. They stretch the toughest men to their breaking point and then ask them to keep going.

But this one test is just a little different. It’s called “drownproofing”. And for the record, you should definitely not try it at home.

With hands and feet bound, Navy SEAL hopefuls are put into a deep pool and must get through a series of challenges. The first challenge is to simply bob up and down twenty times. Which seems fairly simple.  But that’s the trick.

The more people tried to bob up and down, the more they tired out. But, if they let themselves sink to the bottom of the pool, then push up from the bottom, they could bob to the top easily, get another breath and start the process over again.

The less they did, the more effective they could be.

This idea stuck with me. What If I was more effective the less I tried to do?

For example, I like to write. It’s been a long time since I was super consistent at it, which is part of the reason I started a blog. Not only do I want accountability, but also, a reason to improve my skills. Given the pressure I put on myself to improve, when I initially started, I would spend all day at my computer.

But I realized I was tiring myself out. My ideas weren’t flowing. Everything felt more forced.

I came to realize that many very successful and prolific writers don’t spend all day writing. In fact, they were writing about four hours per day at most.

Same with artists. They were the most productive for only a short period of time on average. 

When I realized this, I immediately cut down my writing process to two hours a day. That left me two hours for visual arts as well.

It also left me more time for reading and reflection. Not to mention getting out of the house. I could relax, sink down to the bottom of the pool and push up for a breath of air without trying quite so hard.

It forced me to clarify my thoughts quickly and to move on from ideas that weren’t working. Often, when I came back to them, I was more effective.

The point is, I was doin’ too much. Way too much. And the results I was getting weren’t really that great.

Of course, there are times when I can sit down and enter into a “flow” state, where things come very easily and I completely lose track of time. On the rare occasion when this happens, I go with it. Productivity seems effortless here and hours pass by without my noticing.

In contrast, the more I try to force something, the less productive I am. On those days, I have to jot out notes, or make crappy sketches. I do my best for a time and then clear my head with a walk.

Balance between forcing and flowing is difficult to strike.

When I made the decision to begin writing again, the most difficult thing for me to do was to show up every day.  For so many years, I had been living in a state of Resistance, I had been doing anything and everything to avoid writing. I told myself I was probably no good, so I shouldn’t bother. I kept myself busy with other things that left me with no time to engage with writing.

When I finally sat down to write, I thought I had to be perfect. I bought a lot of books about writing that I never read.  I listened to podcasts about writing. But I still wasn’t writing much. I was fighting a deeply held belief around the act of creating something new-that I simply wasn’t good enough.

My “need” for perfection was doin’ too much…to derail my creative efforts.

But slowly I began. I knew that I had to just type something. I would write, then the next day, throw everything away. Then I would begin again. It took me all day to write a page or two. But it started getting easier.

The first time I experienced the flow state, I realized it was because something had shifted inside of me. I had let go. I stopped trying to do too much and had gotten this idea of perfection out of the way. And yes, it still took me a long time to write, but I found it a more natural activity.

And, as I mentioned above, I more recently cut back on the time that I actually write.

Of course I want to do good work. But I also realize that part of the point of doing this type of work is to find joy and meaning. Which, I’d like to note, is difficult to do when you’re doin’ too much.  The whole point of achieving a financial place where I could leave work and do the things that interested me was definitely not to create an alternate form of drudgery.

But doin’ too much can make drudgery out of just about anything.

Getting relaxed and being in a state of allowing can even make Navy SEAL training easier.

Of course, anything worth doing will always be accompanied by Resistance. And sometimes getting over that hump does feel like a lot of work. But after you are on a roll, after finding your groove, there is something magical about letting the flow happen. There is something paradoxically productive about not trying quite so hard.

And so, before I go doin’ too much in this very article, I’m closing my laptop for the day.