Speaking Up, Deep Listening and The Art of Real Productivity

A big part of our healing work is to listen, both to the deep inner wisdom of our souls and to those who can inform us and illuminate our blind spots.

These two forms of listening are connected. In order to be able to listen to others, we must first be able to listen to ourselves. This is a personal story about how listening to both can create space for healing. As a bonus, it is also a story that I hope will challenge your notions of what it really means to be productive.

Virtual Co-working

For the past several weeks, I’ve been working in a virtual co-working community. At least once a day, I log into a pre-scheduled Zoom meeting. After saying hello to the assembled group, the host splits us into breakout rooms of two to three people.

Within our breakout rooms, we introduce ourselves, share what we’re working on, and then get to work, with our video on. After a set period of time working (usually a “pomodoro” of 25 minutes), we come up for air, unmute our microphones and take a short break to discuss how it’s going or continue to get to know each other. After two or three cycles of this (depending on the day and total session length), we return to the main room to check in and brag about what we’ve accomplished.

I show up because I find it helpful to work in community. I try to use these sessions to tackle big resistance projects, in small chunks.

I also appreciate the exposure to people and perspectives outside my typical circle.

Friday Deep Work Session

The Friday session is a longer session, split into two 50-minute work sessions with a 10-minute break, to allow for deeper work than the typical cycle of 3 25-minute Pomodoro sessions.

My goal for the 2-hours was to write my daily blog post and perhaps finally send a newsletter. I spent the first session trying to put my thoughts together for my “Feel-Good Friday” blog post.

Earlier in the week, I had bookmarked a video that inspired me. As I sat down to write, it no longer felt resonant. I couldn’t articulate why, but my intuition told me that it wouldn’t land the way I intended. The energy in the collective field has kept my emotions raw and my nervous system on heightened alert, and I spent the first session struggling to create coherent sentences.

At the break, I shared my struggles with my peers. I describing what I had written so far as well as the “inspirational” piece that now felt dissonant.

As I voiced my challenge, I was keenly aware of my inner critic telling me not to share this particular struggle in this particular group. In this group of three, I was the minority. Both of my peers were of mixed heritage: the man was half Japanese, and the woman was half-black.

I heard my inner critic telling me that I shouldn’t even be trying to address what’s happening in America (and the world) right now because “it’s not my place” to bring up issues of racism in America. Surely I would come across as another white woman trying put her own spin on current events.

Another voice from deep within steered me to speak up. This deep wisdom trusted my peers to see my pure intentions — I’m trying to help my community make sense of what is happening now, as I also am trying to make sense of it. I relied on this wisdom and I was rewarded with something far greater than clarity on a blog post.

As it happens, yesterday was the full moon, a time for illumination. This is not a coincidence.

Illumination

Pausing to take a deep inhale, my female colleague gently implored me not to write about the “inspirational” story I had considered sharing. With a voice that was both clear and shaky, she shared her perspective that the story that I had seen as “inspirational” could be viewed by many in the black community as salt in the wound that has been ripped open for healing.

This is obviously not what I intended, and she acknowledged as much.

I listened to what she said with open curiosity. I took it in deeply, and expressed my profound gratitude for her willingness to speak up and call me out.

She could have kept her mouth shut and her head down, and we could have all gone back to work, although I imagine that from her perspective that wasn’t an option.

The Most Productive Hour

We could have ended the conversation there and gone back to work, but we didn’t. Instead, the three of us spent the rest of our break and the next working session discussing these issues, sharing perspectives, and learning from each other.

Although we didn’t turn our attention back to our “real work” or ship anything by the end of our time, I can say unequivocally that this was the most productive hour I’ve spent in months. As I say often, this type of work is the “real work.” Everything else is distraction.

I wish I could have recorded our conversation, because it was a model for what I believe needs to happen everywhere.

My Takeaways

Here are five lessons I’m taking from this experience, and that I hope you will also take away.

(1) We Must Claim Our Ignorance

First, claiming our ignorance or learning about our blind spots should never be a point of shame. We all have a lot of healing work to do here.

I’m willing to claim my own ignorance, not as a form of putting myself down or discounting the work I’ve already done, but as a means of acknowledging that there is always more to do.

We don’t know what we don’t know. Approaching anything from a beginner’s mind is the only way we learn.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few. — Shunryu Suzuki

(2) Healing Happens Through Conversation, Not Isolation

Second, we cannot do this work in isolation; healing happens through conversation. We must be willing to speak up — and even mis-speak — while seeking out perspectives from those who can illuminate for us what we can’t see. In this case, specifically, this means listening to our black brothers and sisters. We can ask them to share their experience and give us guidance in how we can do better.

(3) The Inner Work is Crucial

Third, we each need to do our inner work here. I’m no stranger to doing the deep inner work, and I constantly explore my shadows. I also do the work to heal my own traumas. Healing our own trauma is a crucial part of healing cultural trauma. If we judge or hate ourselves, we cannot bring compassion to others. And I actively work on my deep listening skills. All of these skills are essential skills I use as a coach, but anyone can (and should) learn them.

Because I do my own work and am consistently working on my skills, I was able to take in what my new friend shared without distorting it through filters of my own baggage or biases, and without it becoming a source of shame.

(4) Conversations Over Social Media

Fourth, these conversations need to happen as actual, synchronous conversations, where we can take advantage of the cadence and tone of the human voice. This conversation could have had a much different outcome if it had unfolded on social media, a discussion forum, or in comments to a blog post.

(5) We Must Create Space for Healing

Fifth, the initial feedback that my new friend shared with me wouldn’t have been nearly as impactful without the 60 minute conversation that followed. These conversations require creating sufficient space for empathy, compassion, and deep listening. These qualities do not emerge in tight confines of speed networking or over-packed conference agendas; they require the foundational skill of creating space.

At the core of everything I do is this philosophy of “create space for your best work.” In an hour yesterday, that is what we did, and it was remarkable.

Bonus: It’s Time for A New Paradigm of Productivity

Bonus: It’s time to stop measuring productivity in terms of our “output” — what we ship or produce. What. if we measured productivity by how much love and healing we catalyzed in our day? The world might look a lot different.