Goodwork Almanac

Tag: motivation

  • Three Lessons from Poor Richard’s Almanack

    Disclaimer: Although I am working toward it, I am currently a professional in nothing and an amateur in many things. At the end of the day, I am simply someone who likes to write and to garden. Always do your own research or seek out guidance from professionals doing goodwork in their field.

    As a younger man just getting my start in the world of work, I found myself wanting more structure and consistency than I was used to having. I had just finished a modified trade school experience amid the covid lockdowns and there was still a lot of uncertainty – there would be a lingering sense of it for quite some time. Not knowing what to do with my undeveloped welding skills, I got the first decent job I could find in manufacturing.

    At the time, I was living in the basement room of a house I shared with two roommates. I desperately wanted better but was happy to have my basic needs met. Each day, I went into work to spool cables and solder connector pins.  It was not glamorous, but it wasn’t the horrific stress and strain I thought manufacturing would be, either. There were many nice people and even some friends to be had there. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was wasting my time. I was impatient for a better life in which I had the resources I needed to enjoy myself, to pursue meaningful goals, to create projects and art, to travel and meet people, to provide opportunities for others and to help them when I could. But I felt stuck, dragging myself into work each morning to continue the same drudgery as the day before. It never let up and it never meant anything more. I wondered how to get out.

    I started to listen to the sayings and proverbs of Poor Richard’s Almanac, written by Ben Franklin, while I worked on my cables. Maybe it was the sayings themselves or the soothing voice reading them but for whatever reason, they brought me great comfort. They would talk about work, money, time, or virtue and I was slowly convinced that these messages represented the way forward. I wanted structure and consistency and here were these proverbs preaching just that. I wanted a plan to move forward, to get out, and these one-or-two-line sayings helped me take the first steps. Below are some of the lessons I learned from the sayings of Ben Franklin, collected from Poor Richard’s Almanac.

    Lesson One: Don’t Waste Your Time.

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    “Do you love life? then don’t squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”

    Poor Richard’s sayings about time are geared toward encouraging productive activity. It is painfully true that we only have a limited time allotted to each of us. He encourages us, “To be up and be doing and doing to the purpose.” The idea is to find your purpose and to use your time as efficiently and as wisely as you can. I wanted that daily trip into work to mean something, I wanted those forty hours of work to work for me. I realized that how I spent my time would deeply affect the trajectory of my life. The paycheck I got every two weeks represented eighty hours of my life that I had exchanged and I wasn’t going to let it be for nothing.

    This may be more relevant than ever with the tools we have at our disposal to waste our time in ever more ingenious ways. With our wasted time, could we learn an instrument, a second language? Could we write a book, play a sport, connect with community? There is always a minute here or there that will be wasted or lost to distractions, but the point is to find your focus again and to take up the responsibility of using your time productively –whatever that means for you and your specific purpose.

    It is at this point we must understand a kind of paradox. We want to live today because tomorrow is not promised to us, but we must act as if tomorrow is promised if we are to make the best decisions today.

    Every day I went into that dead-end job, I felt I was wasting my time. I wanted to live now. What if all the time I had left was wasted going to work, doing these pointless things? But I also realized that in order to build a life that included all the wonderful things I wanted – travel, connection, creativity – I had to believe in the future first and begin to build a life that looked nothing like my dream in order to eventually attain it. In short, I began to believe in effort, patience, and productivity. Though I still struggle with these things, I have made them a practice of my daily work.

    Lesson Two: Work can be a wonderful – and helpful – part of your life.

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    “Industry need not wish.”

    Poor Richard’s admonitions usually include some mention of industry or hard work. He constantly reassures us of the ability of our work to sustain our lives — “Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee.”

    Our relationship to work can become somewhat murky and impersonal. Work can also be an integral part of life, meaning it is integrated into your life, rather than kept at arm’s length. In the past, a craft was so deeply personal that someone’s surname was their profession, and they taught their children and their children’s children their craft, weaving it into the identity of generations.

    It is more common nowadays to have an ambivalent or even negative relationship towards one’s work. For many now, work is just some place they go to in order to pay the bills. Resentment can build toward work when you have no intentional relationship with it.

    I would say it is a rare case that someone will find their most meaningful work right off the bat. For many of us, we will have to wade through several years of dead-end or pointless jobs to make ends meet before we find a mission or calling that inspires us to pursue something greater. I started working in a movie theater at sixteen. I have been a painter, a plumber, a grocery clerk, a nomad farmer. I have worked in manufacturing for several years. It has all continued to develop the skills I need to do the work I really want to do. The moment where everything clicks still eludes me, but I work toward that every day.

    Even after this click occurs, it can be quite some time before you feel effective and competent enough in your work for it to be truly rewarding. But the point is to seek this out. I have known many who wallow in their pointless jobs until they retire. They make sure to remind you that they are not where they want to be. But they also don’t do anything to work toward a more purposeful calling. Their association with work is that it is terrible, something to avoid, and they never pursue a work that can help them fulfill their potential while also providing meaning and order for others. “The trade must be worked at and the calling well-followed,” Poor Richard says.

    As I mentioned, I wanted work to mean something and that means coming away from it having gained more than I’ve lost. I had lost time and energy that I would have rather put towards other things but that meant I wasn’t going to let my gain be for nothing. At times, I denied the things I wanted briefly in order to work towards the things I wanted the most. I followed Poor Richard’s wisdom, “It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.” No small contribution to my eventual success was going to be scoffed at, or, as Poor Richard says, “Many a little makes a nickel.”

    The path is not straightforward or easy but with consistency, we can begin to make our moves.

    Lesson Three: Consistency will take you where heroic effort can’t.

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    “Little strokes fell great oaks.”

    Huge undertakings and overnight successes can be enticing concepts to those who have much ambition and not enough patience. You want to work eighty hour weeks, make a massive return on a penny stock, win the lottery, strike it rich. The consistency and patience of daily work can hardly be made to be romantic compared with the richness and aesthetic of the overnight success. But the possibilities of consistency are always far greater than the short-lived win. They are certainly greater than waiting for luck to come save us.

    Once again, Poor Richard’s world involved plain, regular people making a life for themselves and for others. Many of his sayings preach patience, contentment, and consistency as the means to attain the good life.

    It is part of the Goodwork philosophy that we must find work that appeals to our nature and our purpose in order to live a fulfilled life. In this philosophy, work is not merely a means to an end, it is not something you use just to get enough money in order to do what you really want. Work should be a purposeful and meaningful act which allows you to express something deeply personal about yourself and your relationship to the world. And when that is not available, we should be steadily working to get to that point.

    I knew if I quit that awful job, I would find myself in another one not long after. As long as I refused to engage with the inconvenience of work I did not like, I would never have the resources or skills to find the work that was meant for me. I looked to the summit of the mountain, but I had no respect for the first steps, so I never moved. I wanted to fall into my ideal rather than work up to it. Having found respect for the process, one can begin to move within its channels. But we must be content to be beginners, humbled by new experiences every day, in order to attain to the level of masters.

    I am a huge fan of any philosophy that includes some element of continual improvement. Why? Because goals, aspirations, and ambition that swell beyond actionable steps can actually demotivate you and cause you to disengage from the work that could be accomplished now. This initial work is inevitably linked to the end goal, a goal which may be massive, and they are connected by a thread called continual improvement. We have to learn to be okay with being beginners. We have to believe that any progress is good progress. We have to believe that we have a hand in our future, that we have the power to continually improve our circumstances so that we may do the most meaningful work we can. For ourselves as well as for others, we make the slow trudge of consistent effort. Or, as Poor Richard says, “Vessels large may venture more but little boats should stick near shore.”

    Poor Richard sends a message throughout his collection of wisdom to be steady, settled, and careful in your daily business. This involves attention to detail and diligence in attending matters that we sometimes have impatience or disdain for. For it is true, “a small leak will sink a great ship.”

    Work hard, don’t spend more than you make, and use your time wisely. As you can see, these lessons are the same basic lessons we have always known and the same lessons we have always had to relearn as time goes on. While today we may have several schemes or hacks for going about these goals, Ben Franklin through his pseudonym Poor Richard, preached virtues like diligence, frugality, and industry as intentional, daily practices that would do more for people than their short-lived schemes. While I was certainly impatient when I was younger, I realize now that the best accomplishments come from the long game, the committed endurance of an entire life.

    For those who are interested, all of Poor Richard’s sayings have been collected in a work called ‘The Way to Wealth’ by Benjamin Franklin. I will include a link here.

    Thanks for reading!

  • Midsummer

    Growth is not the Goal

    We have arrived at the longest day of the year once again. With this and other astronomical events, I have always enjoyed a meditative pause on the passage of time, the slow evolution of the season, and the deepest expressions of nature that pour out of every corner of the landscape and become like recognizable features of a close friend. You can get to know them and see their moods and traits returning each year and you can celebrate them and love them. This year is no different. We celebrate the longest day, bask in the generous helping of summer light that we are given, and meditate on what this means in itself as well as what it means for the months to follow.

    As I look around the landscape, it is overflowing with lush, green foliage that felt almost impossible just four months ago. The longer days give themselves to an abundance of activity and you can see it in the faces of the people you pass in the street. We are all going somewhere, doing more and planning more, overwhelmed with the possibility a day holds which in winter was only a hope. Getting off of work in the dark does not really add to one’s motivation but when the sun is out until nearly nine o’clock, suddenly the day takes on so much added possibility, you are inclined to take advantage of the extra time. We may never think of it consciously but our internal clock, the wisdom of our bodies, remembers the cold and dark nights that last so long in December and January. It is urging us to explode with as much life as the landscape in which we find ourselves.

    It is important to stop and note this longest day, as it will soon recede into late summer evenings, and then the crisp days of fall and finally, like a rising tide, the winter will come again. On some level, we must remember how constraining the winter can be so that we can more fully enjoy this summer season. Here we stand on the precipice and then we begin our descent again. It is a time filled with meaning and passion, here for us to act upon if we wish.

    Nature provides us with many relevant metaphors for the living of our own lives and this season is no different. I looked around the garden the other day and realized an important truth about gardening and life in the midst of June: everything is overgrown and almost heavy with life and yet this pinnacle of light, the solstice, cannot be considered the end goal of all this abundant growth. It is almost as if this outpouring of growth is the construction of an intricate background which will decorate the stage on which the real activity will begin to play itself out. Growth is not the goal. Growth alone cannot be called fulfillment or purpose. Growth plays toward the fulfillment of some purpose outside of itself.

    Imagine a fruit tree which becomes dense with new branches and leaves in the spring and is thickly covered over with this life in midsummer. How ridiculous it would be to assume that this was the endgame of all its efforts. Of course, we can say, this is only really the beginning of its effort to set flower and fruit, to become full and heavy by late summer and fall, to strive toward that all-out expression called the harvest. The attainment of perfect expression for a flower is its open blossom, not the thicket of greenery it produces in late spring. All of its effort in unfurling its leaves is effort towards attainment beyond itself.

    Growth is not fulfillment. There is a distinct difference between growth in certain areas of your life and finding purpose and fruition in these areas. The difference can be seen in the separation of quantitative measures of success and qualitative measures of success. You may have a lot of money – this is quantitative success. But what are you able to do with it? This would be a qualitative answer. You find yourself overwhelmed with activity and surrounded by relationships but what meaning do they create, where are they going? You build muscle in the gym, maybe lose a certain amount of weight, you can lift XYZ number of pounds in deadlift or squat. But what do you do with your bodily strength and energy? Perhaps you build strength for its own sake but the purpose of strength can be found in some applied good, some purpose outside of itself.

    This midsummer, I wanted to meditate on the idea of measuring success qualitatively. We may be used to ascribing a numerical value to our successes because this is the easiest way to measure progress but our progress can also come in how we feel in our daily lives. We can progress in how much we believe in the effectiveness of our effort, how much we believe in our internal locus of control, essentially. The timid and unsure novice attains experience, mistakes, and finally the proof of their success. The evidence of their success may be quantitative but the fact that they proved to themselves that they were capable is a qualitative measure. We could measure our success by the level of independence we have created – perhaps we no longer rely on the day job and we can do more of the things we are truly passionate about.

    A huge achievement for many would be creating a life you do not want to escape from. This cannot easily be measured quantitatively, it is a quality of life we must find for ourselves. Doing the same things with much less fear and anxiety is a massive success but a success which is not as easily measured as money in the bank. Some people work tirelessly for tangible wealth while others work to be free from the people their circumstance has forced them to be around. Being able to live your life around the people you most want to spend your time with is a win. It means bliss and success.

    Often, we get entranced by convincing others we are doing well rather than pursuing the goal of actually doing well. Proving our success often inherently comes with quantitative measures, as that is the easiest thing for others to see and measure in someone else’s life. How many houses and cars do you own, how many vacations do you take, the list goes on. But the qualitative measures are personal, refined, and difficult to express to someone other than ourselves. Contentment, fulfillment, purpose, a commitment to life, a meaningful connection to others. These can be difficult to measure and difficult to display for others but if you have a trained eye you can recognize it right off.

    When you see someone truly living in their purpose, there is a hint of it in every move they make and every word they speak. They live comfortably in the world and in their skin without being affected by others or by circumstance. Their preternatural calm is infectious, their faith in themselves and their abilities dyes every moment with confidence. If you are attuned to this reality, you can see it. If you are not, you will be looking for some sign or quantity with which to measure their success and you will lose yourself to irrelevant calculations.

    This is not meant to discard quantitative measures entirely. This is not meant to dismiss growth in all areas of your life as unimportant. Because growth, in us as in the natural world, must precede the deeper expressions we can make of ourselves. As I mentioned earlier, the massive undertaking of growth in spring, at its height in midsummer, sets the stage for the fruition that takes place later. Wealth, strength, influence, connection – growth in these areas is an important prerequisite for qualitative success in other areas. Having resources means having more options, which means having the responsibility of impactful decisions. Having strength and energy means having the ability to do more for others and for yourself, it means developing a larger bandwidth for life, to show up for your relationships and community in ways you would not be able to if you had not developed such a capacity.

    The key is not to get caught up in quantitative measures for themselves. This is where shallow obsession with cash comes from. This is where the hyperfixation on GDP and economic growth comes from, separated from wellbeing and standard of living. Steroid abuse, diet trends, quick fix drugs, destructive mentalities tied to impersonal measures of success. The capacity for growth, turned back on itself rather than aimed at a higher purpose, becomes malignant and inhuman. The human world has gotten caught up in the sterile and numerical measures of life and, as such, no qualitative success can develop from it.

    On its surface, this may appear to be a strange lesson to learn from the longest day of the year. It feels necessary and relevant. Though we may not consider it, we are still deeply embedded in the ebb and flow of the seasons and the solar year, the movements of nature and its deepest lessons. It still informs our lives though we think we are separate, above it. Looking back to the shortest day, looking ahead to the dwindling light of fall and winter, we find ourselves on the precipice, bathed in light and potential. We take the time and the growth for granted, but we do not have to.

    Meditations and Practice

    Where in your life have you done well quantitatively? Net worth, athletic achievements, awards and accolades, number of projects completed? Now, what measures of qualitative success can you find? Which seem the most important to you and which would you like to cultivate over the next year, from this longest day to the next? How would you like to feel in the next year and what would you like your life, relationships, and work to look like?

    Practice the balance between quantity and quality. Try to make the same or more money (quantity) doing more meaningful work (quality). Try to spend more time (quantity) pursuing goals of connection, awareness, and authenticity (quality). Incorporate more projects or activities in your life which do not have a clear return or measure and see what qualities you can find in them or in yourself which you had not experienced before.

    Thanks for reading!