Clarity Before Action
"I have the best advice for women in business, get your f**king a** up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days. You have to surround yourself with people that wanna work." - Kim Kardashian
Let’s set aside the privilege in this statement and look at the statements around work.
It was unintentional, but remember how we described “Kim”?
“Kim” was overloaded with tasks, rushing from one to another, always feeling behind. And “Khloe” and “Kourtney” were also struggling with how to move forward.
It’s easy, particularly when you’re unclear about what’s your highest priority or feeling incongruent with your current situation, to load up on tasks and work time. To take on more, to work longer, to turn up the pace. To listen to more noise or sign up for that next class.
Because we’ve been taught that working harder is the answer.
But working HARDER without focus and clarity simply leads to burnout.
What would you be working on? Why are you working on those tasks, to what end?
Clarity Before Action
Common for every one of our situations - needing radical focus, radical clarity, and a radical reclamation - is searching for a direction.
Direction allows for leverage, so we can work on tasks that make everything else easier or unnecessary.
Direction provides alignment, so that the tasks we work on ladder up to a higher purpose.
Direction centers our nervous system with the knowledge that we are headed not just “somewhere” but on a path.
“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.
Alice: ...So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”
We don’t need to have the ultimate direction, the full picture of our dharma. Simply a path of next steps to take to guide us in a path of experimentation.
Action Before Clarity
But in some cases, our direction is simply “to be not here”. We are so much in the fight, flight, or freeze that we simply need to reduce the threat on our system by being overwhelmed and overloaded.
It’s as if we are driving a car and the windshield is so dirty you can’t see out to even know where you are, before knowing where you are going.
So here, we take on small actions to reduce the drainers or threats reducing our capacity and stealing our focus as we start to get clearer on the direction.
Small actions to clean the metaphorical windshield can include:
Collecting and then purging your email, task list, CRM, and/or note-taking system
Unsubscribing from old newsletters (not this one!)
Purging your expenses
Cleaning and de-cluttering your physical environment (including our diets and cleaning products)
Charlotte Resources:
Kenzie at Simply Dare for organizing and purging
Valerie at Ekologicall for zero waste and clean home supplies
The Recipe for “bothering” from last week: active rest, creative practice, new roots practice
Morning Pages or processing with a friend
Regardless of if you choose Clarity Before Action or Action Before Clarity, we want to hold two factors in mind:
Choose with intention. Resting, taking action, decluttering, defining your direction - we want to be intentional with our next steps, even if that next step is time away from your current work.
Don’t stuck in defining the “perfect” north star before you start to move. Each action you take will lead to noticing and learning to lead to the next action. We look for waypoints on our direction where we reset and guide. Taking messy action can often lead to more clarity.