You Have Plenty of Time

"freedom watch," part 6

I chose a guiding word for 2024—the word freedom. I’m reflecting on the word freedom regularly in the Blue Room, to see how it’s guiding and challenging my life, with hope that these explorations will guide you into greater freedom as well! 

Part 1: freedom means accepting difficulty but reducing misery
Part 2: freedom means doing nothing extra
Part 3: freedom means not fighting with reality
Part 4: freedom means less preparation, more presence
Part 5: freedom comes from singing your heart out 

This month I’m back to the work of adrienne maree brown. I wrote about her in part 4 (see above) and her idea of less prep, more presence.

This month I’m leaning hard into another of her principles of Emergent Strategy: There is always enough time for the right work.

What does this mean? For me, this principle is rooted in abundance, or at least sufficiency, rather than scarcity. Scarcity keeps our nervous systems activated and our psyches flooded with anxiety and guilt. Late-stage capitalism is fueled by this mentality. There’s always stuff we should be working on; the things we leave undone are of vital importance; our own needs come last in favor of doing All the Things. Abundance, on the other hand, engenders trust that we have adequate time, energy, and resources for that which is most important and needful—that we serve the world best with a clear purpose and a full cup.

The purpose part is tricky though. The key to There’s always enough time for the right work is the word “right.” What is the right work? A simple but not easy question, and probably one that should be asked each day rather than resolved once for all time. Or perhaps we do both. If I ask myself, what’s the right work for today, the answer will be sharper and more specific than discerning my right work for a lifetime. 

In any case, brown’s wisdom is helping me move forward with this book I’m writing. The other day I was telling someone about it and she said “Whew! That’s a big topic.” It really is. I’m feeling that especially acutely right now, as I start round three of book drafting. Draft one was basically assembling research and ideas into piles. Draft two amounted to a robust outline: paragraphs mingled with sentence fragments, a detailed accounting of everything I intend to say. Draft three is where I say it. No more yada-yadaing the complicated bits I’ll get to later. Later has arrived. Draft three is always when I worry I won’t get the project done by the deadline. So I’ve got brown’s quote displayed in my two primary writing spaces as a touchstone. I have audacious hopes for this to be a world-changing book, but I also have to write the book that I’m capable of writing, and there’s great freedom in believing there’s plenty of time for that.

Unboxing Day in 2022… holding onto the belief that I *will* get to this point again with book 4

Someone asked me recently how I do all the various things I do. When do you sleep? Actually, sleep is something I refuse to sacrifice. It’s too important for mental and physical health. I also say no to a lot of stuff. I have to. There are entire worlds of pop culture and non-pop culture that I know nothing about, not because it’s “beneath me” but because something has to give. I don’t watch sports at all. I don’t follow music; though of course I listen to it, my tastes are mostly lodged in the decades when I was first discovering music (with thanks to friends and the Spotify algorithm for expanding my palate). Have I watched XYZ television show? The answer is no.  

But I’m also very organized. Even if my daily agenda gets disrupted by 9:15, a thoughtful plan gets me going in the right direction. However, having a to-do list I interact with regularly makes me painfully aware of how many items have been on it for literally months, or even years. That random checking account we had before we switched banks remains unclosed, for example. Yes, it would feel good to have that little detail resolved, but it hasn’t risen to the top, and I can feel OK about it (mostly?) because it’s not been the right work. I mean, they make you go all the way down there! (Fans of Friends know what I’m talking about.) 

Here’s the secret behind “there’s always enough time for the right work”: it might be straight-up wrong. Every person in my life deserves at least slightly more time or attention than I’m currently giving them. And who doesn’t have a few work or personal projects that are humming along fine, but with a huge sacrifice of time and energy, could be GREAT? When is good enough good enough?

Zooming out further, we face big problems that we don’t have all the time in the world to solve. Climate change is a ticking clock; at certain levels of warming, feedback loops will kick in that feed on themselves and accelerate the problem. And as we approach yet another consequential presidential election, I’ve heard more than one citizen-activist say “I don’t want to wake up on Wednesday November 6 to the feeling that I could have done more.” We bump up against finitude all the time as human beings. 

Still, I’m clinging to enough time for the right work, because what’s the alternative? It’s what philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah might call a “useful fiction”: an idea that’s true enough to give us some light and guidance in a complex world. And perhaps, it’s an idea that becomes true as we live toward it. And for me, that idea is very, very freeing.

Happy writing to me, and happy right-work to us all.

Your Turn

• What is your “right work” right now?

• What would it mean for you to believe that there’s enough time for it? Where do you feel resistance to this idea? I read yesterday that when we feel reactive to something, we should get curious, because it’s probably a wound announcing its need for healing. 

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What I’m Up To

We had a small but lively book talk on Monday… the recording is up now for supporting subscribers, and you can join their ranks for around 50 cents per post! Members and friends of Trinity Presbyterian Church, Herndon are eligible for complimentary gift subscriptions; just ask. 

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Link Love

A friend sent this and it strikes me as a good companion to “enough time for the right work”: Howard Thurman’s sound of the genuine, in you and in me.

Steady on.