The progress that comes from letting go
A tree in winter looks dead — but when spring comes, you’ll see that it is not. (Image by Kerstin Riemer)
Ambitious music students always have a “dream” song that they want to learn to play.
There’s usually a piece of it that the teacher can introduce early on, but mastery is sometimes a long way off. The student could spend the next six months practicing that piece of music every day and working on it at every lesson, and it would still sound awkward and amateurish.
As the teacher in such a situation, I guide the student to spend those six months playing a bunch of other, easier songs. Instead of putting all of our effort into one song that won’t showcase the student’s growing ability very well, we play dozens, refining some to a high level of polish and allowing others to stay works-in-progress.
At the end of the six months, the student has learned many new skills and can confidently perform many songs. And guess what: She can now play that “dream” song with ease, taking only a short time to master it to perfection.
Growth can’t be forced or rushed. A person will learn to walk, talk, potty-train, and read on her own schedule. In the meantime, we can do lots of other things, but pushing to do that one thing will only be counterproductive. We have to be patient. We have to let go of what we think should happen and the timeline we think it should follow.
I had one project related to my business that had been hibernating for over a year. In that time, I made progress on a lot of other projects, but every time I returned to that particular project, there was no movement.
One day, I went out for a walk while listening to a podcast, something I do several times a week. All of a sudden, I had a rush of insight and inspiration. I paused the podcast I was listening to and spent the next half hour speaking into my voice recorder, laying out a clear plan for the project. It was fully formed, like a ripe fruit I had just plucked from a tree. It was perfect.
It took only thirty minutes — and fourteen months. And I believe that it came so easily (when it finally arrived) because I left it alone. I worked on related projects, but I didn’t try to push forward on that one. It was percolating…gestating…something. It was ready when it was ready.
By now, I know and understand that this is my process. I didn’t waste time feeling bad about myself or worrying about the outcome. I just did other stuff. It paid off for me. It always does.
My little nephew has spent the same fourteen months learning to be a person in the world. He’s figured out how to roll over, crawl, and walk. However, he doesn’t see much need for talking — he just likes to point at things for now. But I have no doubt that eventually, he’ll just start talking. Whenever it happens, it will be easy.
Creativity can be cultivated, but we can never fully understand the exact mechanisms by which we experience ideas and solutions to problems. I can sit down to write a song every day, but I might not come up with lyrics or a chorus to this song — instead, something totally new might emerge, leaving the unfinished song still languishing in the queue. I recently finished a song that has been kicking around for nearly a decade. It came together smoothly in an hour — plus ten years.
When my life is over, I will have many unfinished projects. But I’ll also have a whole lot of completed ones to be proud of. And there will have been a minimum of angst over it all. Sometimes, it takes what it takes. I embrace that process. I always have something to look forward to. What will be next to come down the assembly line, ready for its finishing touches? Whenever it’s ready, I’ll be ready.
If you have a tendency to work for long hours with no visible result or put pressure on yourself to make progress on a project that is moving slowly, I encourage you to shift your focus to something else. Let go of the “stuck” project completely. You might find that that’s exactly what’s needed for your brain to do its very best problem-solving. In the meantime, you’ll have the satisfaction of accomplishing another task — or maybe you can just relax and enjoy your day without feeling guilty about not finishing something. Do we feel guilty about not yet finishing next week’s meals or going on next year’s vacations? Of course not.
Our lives are in a perpetual state of unfolding, and so is our work. When we allow our progress to happen on its own timetable, we might find greater ease and a better result. We need not see incomplete projects as a quest to fix what’s broken — instead, we can find pleasure in anticipating what’s next.