The 3 Types of Work
Here are the 3 types of work: Healing, Simmering, and Executing.
Healing
If you are below baseline, you have one job: to feel better.
When you are tired, sick, or burnt out, you need to restore yourself first. That is the very real work you need to do.
If an athlete has a broken leg, what do they need to do? Keep training and power through the pain? No! They need to put their leg in a cast and their butt on the couch!
Not because they’re lazy but because their body needs to go to work healing their leg.
Same thing goes for you.
Simmering
When the final destination or the path to it isn’t clear, you need to feel around, gather data, and make creative connections.
This is not work for your deliberate brain, which operates in step-by-step, linear, predictable logic.
This is work for your automatic brain, which operates in associative leaps, sudden crystallizations, and lateral connections.
This is musing, reflecting, and walking around, absorbed in your thoughts.
It’s hearing a song in the morning, a sentence on a podcast in the afternoon, and a scene on a TV show three days later — and suddenly something clicks and the answer flashes in front of you.
Simmering does not have a timeline.
Simmering is a way of interacting with your mind and the world, where you are disciplined about doing only this: following your nose, doing exactly what feels interesting, good, and right in the moment, and trusting the process.
Executing
When you are well rested and fully restored…
And when the destination you’re aiming for and the path toward it are clear…
Then you execute.
You may feel discomfort but you go through it willingly, knowing that it’s the currency you’re paying in exchange for your dreams.
This is scheduling a meeting with an investor and pitching your startup idea for the first time.
It’s showing up to the gym even when you’d rather order pizza because you know exercise will make you feel better.
It’s going to five meetups even though they feel awkward because you’re determined to make more friends in your area.
It’s applying to the role you’re afraid you’re not qualified for because you want to take the next step forward in your career.
How do you know which one you’re doing?
Here’s how you CAN’T tell whether someone is healing, simmering, or executing: by looking at what they’re DOING.
Someone could be relaxing in a bubble bath…while thinking about everything on their to do list, stressing themselves out, and getting no rest at all.
Someone could be preparing for a meeting…and letting their mind wander, playing around with different ideas, and busily simmering away.
Someone could be knocking out emails one by one…while listening to music with a glass of wine, and it’s the most relaxing part of their day.
You can only tell what kind of work you’re doing by looking at what you’re THINKING and FEELING while you’re doing it.
As I write this newsletter right now, I’m actually in Healing mode. I’m in the middle of a mild but tiring pain flare-up. I canceled my calls for the day and took a nap in the afternoon.
And after waking up and having a snack, I thought “You know what might be fun? To flesh out this ‘types of work’ idea a bit while I sit on the couch. This doesn’t even have to be a good, well-explained article. Let’s lower the bar and just have some fun.”
I’m not powering through my pain. If I want, I can stop right now, turn on the TV, and not send a newsletter at all.
I just thought this would be fun. So I’m doing it as a low-key, no-pressure activity while my body rests.
I could have MADE this non-restful. I could have thought, “You need to send a newsletter today. Get your shit together. You’re so behind.” and driven my writing from a feeling of stress and inadequacy.
And that would have MADE this into an “executing when I really need to heal / running on a broken leg” moment.
But I decided not to. I decided to heal first, and this just happened to be a fun way to do it.
You don’t have to go on vacation to heal. You don’t have to go on long walks to simmer. You don’t have to be sitting at your laptop to execute.
You can enter the exact work mode you want to be in, exactly where you are right now, by changing the thoughts and feelings driving your actions.
And if you’re not 100% sure how to do that, consistently and effectively…
Come talk to me and let me show you how.
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