What is my typical work process? How can I perceive it accurately? How can I improve it? Why don’t I attend to this meta-process with more love and care?
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(started 2025jul11, updated 2025jul30) when i sit down at my computer to ‘do some work’, there are a few options at hand, and because I was just playing some chess earlier, I find myself thinking of them as different kinds of ‘openings’. I could…
- try to write something ‘new’ from scratch. it might not necessarily be something i’ve never written about before, but it would be fresh-in-the-moment, compared to (2)…
- try to edit and update a pre-existing piece that’s already been written. here I could further subdivide this into…
- drafts: ‘pieces that seem to be clearly-defined’ – in this case, the task is primarily editing. First, evaluate whether the draft ‘holds together’ properly. Is there something to it? Is it fundamentally ‘good’, or is it mistaken? If it isn’t, then it may need to be discarded, or cannibalized for parts, or interrogated until it yields something actually promising.
- sketches: ‘snippets and sketches with no clear structure’. With the latter, most of the work is about consolidation
- just click around my notes and make tiny little updates. the latest thing i was doing the last couple of days in my iOS notes app was to try and improve the titles of every vague note. That felt very fruitful, because I could then see more clearly at a glance what was going on, which opens up new opportunities and possibilities for remixing.
- go through my open tabs and close them… this doesn’t quite feel like obvious work, it’s more like meta-work, ie improving my workspace so i can work. I often put off this work because it seems unimportant, but if it’s a bottleneck that’s jamming up my work, then it technically becomes the most important work. Sadly, I still haven’t quite internalized this. At this point I always have to wonder, am I subjecting myself to unrealistically high standards? In this case, that would be expecting to notice a logjam as soon as it happens, or maybe even before it happens. I don’t know if it’s possible to get so prescient. Maybe the ‘operational cost’ to achieve such a high standard is simply too high to be worth it. But I think… where I’m at right now, simply noticing when I’m jammed would go a long way. And I have been emotionally blocked from recognizing when I’m jammed– which jams me up further. It’s a funny (sad) twisted little knot. And I think the solution necessarily must involve an honest acknowledgement of the situation, an honest audits of the emotions involved. This takes courage!
to be updated…
(2025jul30) I’m revisiting this post while ‘going through my blog’, cleaning up while clicking around – an example of #3 from the previous list. Currently this is the most recent post published on my blog. I find myself thinking it feels a little sparse, and wishing it were more substantial. I updated the above section with more elaboration, which feels good. But it still feels like it’s missing something. When I create a post titled something like /blog/work/, I want it tohelp me with my work. What would help? Lately I’ve been feeling that a lot of it really is quite simply a matter of courage. The courage to notice when I’m feeling overwhelmed, or lost, or confused, and to sit with that feeling– not to wallow in it, but to get to know it better, to feel safe and heard…