Thing About: Structure - Spontaneity
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Our February Thing About was a wonderfully unstructured discussion of our relationship with structure. Structure can help us become more efficient, engender a sense of accomplishment, push us to do the thing we’d rather put off. It can also be overbearing, create a sense of failure or expectation, or take us out of the present moment.
Coincidentally, Saturday’s NYTimes’ feature by Melissa Kirsch explained the relevant concept of Future Me:
Doing the harder thing now so that you’ll have an easier time later is a fundamental concept in self-improvement communities. In Reddit communities like r/DecidingToBeBetter and r/GetDisciplined, you’ll find people talking about doing favors for their future selves. They might try to think of their future self as a friend or someone they love, on the premise that it can be easier to do something kind for another person than to do it for oneself. [...]
Future Me also hates being tired. But that doesn’t stop me, nearly every night, from partaking in “revenge bedtime procrastination,” staying up late reading and watching true crime documentaries after I’ve gotten into bed, reveling in the agency of “me time,” in which I am answerable to no one but myself. “I stay up late at night ‘cause I’m ‘Night Guy,’” goes an old Jerry Seinfeld bit. “Night Guy wants to stay up late. ‘What about getting up after five hours of sleep?’ Oh, that’s Morning Guy’s problem.’” Night Guy is Present Me, staying up to finish the book even though it’s nearly 2 a.m. Morning Guy is Future Me, in for a rough wake-up.
Lots of people tout rigidity as the only way to be a successful ____. How many (male-authored) productivity/optimization/self-help books insist that if you don’t write/sing/paint/draw/eat 100g of protein a day, you’ll never succeed? A rare counterpoint to these books is The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, whose- yes, structured- 12 week program intends to bring the reader closer to their creative self confidence. This book is worth a try, even if you don’t make it all the way through, especially the week of no media intake which reveals how much influence we’re under from reading and listening to the voices of others all day long.
Our positive societal feelings towards structure are inevitably influenced by our ingrained capitalist values. As New Yorkers, we are an especially self-selected group of ambitious bunnies. Where else would Equinox exist as a status symbol? Structure acts as a tool of capitalism to make us view productivity as “good”. We are good little tools of the rulers if we work hard (harder!) and define ourselves by how productively we use our time. Structure is valuable because it increases productivity and makes us a more predictable population, read: easier to govern and push around. Work is valuable because it busies the masses and increases our saleable output.
However, structure has contexts beyond productivity. Historically, seasons were structures. A menstrual cycle can be a structure. Relationships involve a meeting of viewpoints on structure: what is enough, where is it needed, more or less of it? For those of us who are self-employed or freelance, building structure into our schedule can lead to a sense of satisfaction or help to break down a nebulous amount of work to be done.
Mostly, in relation to work/chores/duties, we agreed that everyone in the room was expecting more from themselves than they would ever ask of others: our structures were overloaded. How do we release ourselves from structures that aren’t serving? One method is to build a structure that encompasses failure. The idea of 100 (or 1,000) rejections makes sure that the aim of the structure is to put yourself out there rather than to gain approval. (We quickly started referring to this as 100 submissions.) One person, rather than creating a linear to-do list of insurmountable New Year’s resolutions, uses a self-designed annual “Bingo card” that includes things like travel goals. Another suggested both accountability buddies and a small, achievable amount of meditation each day for building habits. The following is a list of other resources, discussions, books, tools to further the convo and balance of structure (and spontaneity!) in our lives:
Katie Dalebout: Closeness vs spaciousness - structuring relationships
“I wasn’t willing to trade my preferences for connection—and that’s what relationships are.”
Book refs:
How to Do Nothing byJenny Odell
Building a life with less time/data oriented structure/resisting the attention economy
A Long Game by Elizabeth McCracken
A book for fiction writers, written by a woman
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
The Art of Frugal Hedonism by Annie Raser-Rowland and Adam Grubb
Meditation refs:
June Bobby on Insight timer
Tara Brach (also available on Insight Timer)
Comments