One Thought

I’ve already written about how to discover what you want.  The basic idea: Try as many things as possible and see what sticks; project yourself into the future and imagine how you’ll feel there.  My advice in that article was mostly philosophical.  This time I’m going to get specific and practical.

Let’s assume the following scenario:  Your life now is okay.  Your basic needs are met and you’re not miserable, but you’re also not satisfied.  You feel something is missing.  You’d rather experience life fully than as a lackluster succession of years leading to death.  You’d rather live with purpose.  The problem is, you don’t know what you want.  Because you don’t, it’s hard to motivate action.  You feel stuck.

So what do you do if you don’t know what you want?  Here’s one solution: Wait.  Keep doing what you’re doing.  Hope inspiration comes suddenly and unexpectedly.  This could work: people have found what they want through luck and happenstance.  But is it likely to work?  I doubt it.  To find what you want, you need to shake things up.  You can’t keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results.  A laissez-faire approach won’t cut it.  

Take Consistent Action

The key to finding what you want is consistent action.  If you’re not trying new things and gaining experience, you’re not making progress, and if you’re not doing so consistently, you’re not using your time efficiently.

But how do you motivate consistent action if you don’t know what you want?  This is a major problem, and it’s what keeps most people from discovering what they want.  If you don’t know what you want, it’s hard to put in consistent effort.  Self-doubt creeps in, and laziness takes hold.  On any day it’s easiest to do things that won’t challenge you — it’s easier to watch TV, surf the internet, and hang out with friends than it is to press yourself to do something new.  There’s nothing wrong with these activities, but they don’t help you find what you want.

If you don’t know what you want, you may feel blocked by indecision.  Many options will seem appealing, but none will stand out.  It’s easy to get stuck in the big-picture mindset.   In it, you spend lots of time thinking about all the things you could be doing but little or no time actually doing them.  This mindset is attractive: It lets you keep your options open.  It lets you fantasize about all the paths you could take.  It lets you be lazy.  But it’s anathema to discovering what you want.  The big-picture mindset discourages action and encourages equivocation.

To act consistently you need to commit to something.  This is the only way to escape the big-picture mindset.  If you don’t commit yourself, you’ll forever question your motivations.  You’ll undermine your attempts at action.  Self-doubt and laziness will control you.

But how can you decide what to commit to?  Isn’t this decision really important?  Shouldn’t you make sure you get it right?  NO! – if you make sure you get this decision right, you’ll get it neither right nor wrong.  You’ll never make it at all.  A decision to commit yourself to something doesn’t bind you for the rest of your life.  It’s meant to motivate consistent short-term action, not to trap you.  You need only commit yourself for the short-term — at least two months or so.  You can revisit your commitment after this time passed, but before that you need to do what you’ve committed to doing.

Make a Plan and Stick to It

Of course, short-term commitments aren’t easy to fulfill.  They can be quite difficult, in fact — it’s hard to pursue a short-term goal without a long-term picture.  That’s why it’s important to make a plan and stick to it.  This plan specifies what you’re going to do and how long you’re going to do it.  It doesn’t have to be totally rigid, but it should change only with good reason.  Feeling tired, bored, and uninspired aren’t good reasons — you will sometimes feel these ways.  Some days are worse than others.  Remember that your commitment is only short-term, not binding for life.  If you’re bored most of the time, you can decide not to continue when you finish.

Why force yourself to do something when you’re tired, bored, and uninspired?  Because feelings like these aren’t reliable indicators.  Especially when you’re first starting out, they can stem from insecurity and unfamiliarity.  Doing something hard or new makes you feel uncomfortable, and this discomfort manifests itself as fatigue or boredom.  You may feel you don’t like what you’re doing when in reality you just don’t like the discomfort it makes you feel.  That’s why it’s important to commit yourself.  Only by committing to do something for a while can you obtain a realistic assessment of how well it works.

Self-discipline is easiest when only a little of it is necessary.  To ensure you take consistent action, I recommend making and following a schedule.  Schedules aren’t necessary for everyone — in particular, people who know exactly what they want may not need them.  But you, I’m assuming, do not — that’s what you’re trying to find out.  A schedule can be quite helpful when you don’t know what you want.

Isn’t a schedule the type of thing that takes the passion out of your work and makes it feel like a chore?  From my experience, no — I feel plenty inspired and creative while working under one.  A schedule takes some getting used to, but it’s not hard to keep once you fall into the groove.  The self-discipline benefits of a schedule are many: You don’t need to psych yourself up to get started every day.  You don’t worry about how much you’ll get done tomorrow or next week because you know exactly how much time you’ve decided to commit.  You don’t need to “find time” to do things because the time is already there.  (In fact, I’ve noticed that the vast majority of prolific writers, artists, and entrepreneurs I’ve seen interviewed have said they employ some kind of schedule.  Even when you do know what you want, a schedule is still useful.)

I recommend using your schedule to accomplish short-term goals.  Long-term goals are hard to formulate when you don’t know what you want, but short-term ones are much easier.  For example, I don’t know what I want to do with music in a big-picture sense, but I do know that I’d love to produce an album of my own music.  One of my short-term goals is therefore to do just that.  Good short-term goals are ones that strongly motivate you.  They make self-discipline easier.

Wrapping Up

So remember: if you want to find what you want, you must commit yourself and then make a plan and stick to it.  Consistent action is the goal.

I’ll make one last point.  When you’re trying to discover what you want, it’s easy to think only about the future and what’s happening next and to ignore the present.  Don’t do that.  Think about the future periodically, but focus on the here and now.  Life happens in the present only.  Enjoy what you’re doing, and change course (in due time) if you aren’t.  Put your full energy into what you’re doing today.  Pay attention to the details even when they seem inconsequential.  Just as life is a collection of present moments, great work is a collection of small details.  Focus loving attention on every one of them.