For the past month, I’ve been navigating a knee issue that has literally constrained my mobility.
With my leg in a brace that restricts my knee from bending, my cardio options were limited. I had to make friends with the ski erg, typically not my favorite machine in the gym.
I was traditionally slow on the ski erg, with my 500-meter pace typically over 3 minutes.
So I resolved to improve.
The Two Sides of My Workout
My workout currently has two parts to it, which are very different in energy.
Ski Erg Sprints
Every day, I do a series of ski erg sprints. Some days it’s 100 meter sprints, other times 250 meters. Once a week I do longer sprints.
After a few days, I quickly developed some benchmarks of what times I was aiming for for each sprint length.
Each sprint is a game where I try to beat my benchmark.
Even when I don’t hit my personal best time — even when I don’t come close to it — I end each cardio session feeling fulfilled and accomplished.
The sprints are short enough that I can sustain my focus and maximum effort during each one.
The little monitor on the ski erg gives me real-time feedback on my process.
I can see in the moment whether I’m on pace to hit my target time, so I can adjust. The adjustments don’t always get me back on track, but it still helps me see where I need to push more.
When I experiment with different techniques, I can see — in real time — whether they are effective.
Each sprint is a rush of trying to beat my best time, or go as fast as possible, producing a dopamine surge. If I hit my target, I want to do it again. And if I don’t, I want to do it again to see if I can hit it.
Rehab Exercises
My rehab exercises to strengthen my hips, calves, and feet — to prep for improving my quad strength and regaining knee mobility — are a completely different experience.
The exercises are slow and painstaking.
It’s impossible to tell on my own, in the middle of a movement, whether I’m in proper alignment. Without a person standing next to me to give me verbal corrections or adjust my body position, I don’t know if I need to correct my stance or my mechanics.
Sometimes I don’t feel the target muscle activating, but I know that doesn’t mean it’s not activating.
I’m in the dark about whether my actions will lead to the results I want.
It’s easy to for my attention to drift. I often start experimenting with other movements, hoping to find one that will give me some indication of whether I’m on track.
There’s no dopamine hit of instant feedback.
The Pattern of Work Distractions
This dichotomy between my ski erg sprints and my rehab exercises is a pattern that I notice in work habits — both in myself and my clients.
Many of my clients tell me that they are averse to traditional productivity culture. They want to get out of the hustle and grind. They want a slower pace, with more control. Less rushing.
I have personally been after this for over a decade.
And yet we often find ourselves gravitating toward the work that puts us on a clock, that infuses us with a sense of urgency, and that puts the focus on results and metrics.
It’s easy to understand why.
The Dopamine Effect
The sense of urgency, the race to beat the clock, and the ability to see in the moment how you’re doing all create a surge of dopamine in the brain.
Dopamine helps hone our focus and fuel our motivation. Metrics and benchmarks can ignite our competitive fire and fuel motivation.
It becomes a game.
On the other hand, the deeper creative work — creating websites, writing newsletters and blog posts, crafting curriculum, developing strategies — is filled with ambivalence and mystery.
You don’t know if what you’re doing will work. You have no guarantees that you’re even doing the right thing.
It’s hard to know if you’re on the right track.
The desire for dopamine is what keeps pulling us into the hustle, even when we say we don’t want it.
The Art of the Process
Just as with a workout, it can help to have a person by your side when you engage in creative work: someone to help you come up with the best strategy, and to help you stay aligned and focused while you implement it.
But here’s the thing: in both the body and in our work, sometimes even outside experts don’t always know for sure whether the plan will work. As much as movement is a science, it is also an art. A lot of non-bio-mechanical factors impact movement.
The same is true for your work. Creative thought work is art, not science. It’s going to be ambiguous and uncertain. That’s part of what makes it so hard.
3 Solutions to the Challenge of Ambivalence in Work
I’ve found three solutions to the challenge of ambivalence, both in my workouts and my creative work.
(1) Focus on Techniques and Skills
First is to focus on techniques.
In the body, having objective ways to assess my form in the moment, and focusing on what my body is doing, helps me stay in the moment.
The same is true in your work: focusing on techniques and skills can help you stay on track when we can’t see instant results.
(2) Trust the Process
Second is to trust the process. Results often take much longer than you think they will.
Once you set yourself up well, and once you know what techniques you’re working on, you must allow yourself a period of time to work on the techniques without looking for results.
Accept that the timeline is longer than a sprint.
(3) Infuse Your Work With Sprints
Being in constant urgency isn’t healthy for the nervous system, but neither is being in no urgency.
While you’re in the ambivalence of the creative process, it helps to infuse your work with some measurable sprints, to give yourself the dopamine rush where you can.
Adding some sprints to your work will nurture your natural competitive nature and desire for instant measurable results. This will fuel your motivation for the more challenging ambivalent work that takes time to yield results.
Love it? Hate it? What do you think? Don't hold back...