Many people feel that they have to “force” themselves to work. Examples include:

• Waiting for deadlines to pressure themselves
• Faking deadlines
• Hoping for a muse or interest to strike before approaching
• Shaming yourself with past failures in hopes you’d feel bad enough to work,
• the ever unreliable “I just need to start!”
• and more…

To break free from a force-based method of work may not be simple, but the start can be. Adjusting a ship’s course by only a few degrees, given time, can lead you to a very different place.

A Visit is probably something you’ve done before without realizing.

It can be very easy to blow off because of how simple it seems. A Visit means:

1. Choose some work or play.
2. Be with it
3. Preferably with distractions set aside
4. For at least a single deep breath of time
5. Optionally, nudge the work forward
6. Optionally, if it’s not done, schedule a next visit

More succinctly, a Visit means:

“Show up, then decide.”

You get to keep your sense of agency, your sense of decision, at all times. You never have to fool or force yourself. The only bind, if you will, is in showing up at all.

It may not seem like much, to show up and do “nothing”. But, every visit you make creates a wave of focus with a beginning, middle, and end, whether its a difficult trudge or smooth sailing.

And each wave is infinitely more than no wave at all.

You don’t have to “feel like it” to be there. “Energy level” doesn’t matter. You tune into the work as you are there. And if you still don’t feel like it, that’s fine.

So long as you were there for a single conscious deep breath of time, you’ve made a Visit.

Imagine being on a boat as you approach a wave.

At some point you reach the wave’s crest, the Edge of Action. Here, it is as easy to say ”no” as it is to say ”yes”, as easy to nudge it forward as it is to walk away.

Sitting there within a single deep breath, you may even discover something in the work in which there’s a little curiosity.  That little, “What if I did this?”

Of course, if you happen to nudge the work forward once or twice, that could be nice. If those nudges turn into a full on work session, hey that’s great.

Once in it, we are in play, in work, in flow. We are creative, discovering, exploring, and engaged.

All the while, you can leave at any time, whenever you feel like it.

If you’re not done or if nothing happens at all, that’s fine, too.

Consider setting up a Visit for tomorrow. You can just keep going, at your pace, tuning in to its pace.

Every visit brings you closer to the resolving a vision of that project, skill, habit, whatever… Every visit creates and builds momentum, a set of larger and larger waves that you can guide over time, from one day to the next.

Gentle waves carve mountains.

– Kourosh