Flow v. Grind, A few thoughts and confessions
I work in life insurance sales. I think philosophically about the work that I do. There is a lot of volatility and stress involved in the average day here. Mentality is everything in sales, so I have been examining the factors that contribute to successful and unsuccessful outlooks. It is not so simple as a positive or negative mindset; many factors create a mindset. There is not even a successful mindset, no one true way, because with each situation and objective the optimal approach is unique.
But who has fucking time to consider every possible situation? I'm going to grossly oversimplify for the sake of your precious time and my dwindling resolve to keep writing after a long day. I came up with two primary modalities of working. I call them grind and flow.
Grind refers to the painfully conscious and deliberate focus over a period of time. I think of it as rigid and resolved to complete a task with brute force. Practice is an example of a grind. I think of learning a musical instrument, repeating the same line or series of notes again and again, slightly more efficient each time, in graduating levels of accuracy and speed. Every time you mess up, you go back and play it perfectly, until eventually you can play without error. It takes effort and is draining. I think of grind as fire.
Flow refers to effortless movement toward an objective. I think of it as adaptable yet directed. It is soft, focusing on embrace of what is. Flow is the zen side of things and being lost in process, it is the light touch. I think of it as performing a musical instrument, when you fuck up, you just glide over and adapt without fixating on any errors. It is continuous forward movement. It is effortless and restorative. I think of it as water.
While our lives are constantly an entwined mix of both of these totally arbitrary categories, I see this in sales more distinctly. When you are preparing and practicing, you should be grinding meticulously to perfect your work. A psychotic mania for getting better and better can be helpful, but it's important to limit how much you grind. Grinding too much burns you the fuck down. This is the land of stress ulcers and middle aged heart attacks. Visit often, but don't buy a home. It is crucial to be able to leave and rest or your life is literally going to become hell. I personally experienced this as a younger person, I worked eighty or more hours each week and barely took days off. It wasn't long before I was severely depressed and my cheeks were literally gaunt. I was hardly able to keep going. So I quit a great job and spent the summer longboarding and playing ukulele. I had burned myself down and I needed to heal.
On the flip side, too much flow is insidious to your well being. I ended up running out of money and moving back home to be depressed for a while. What I ultimately came to, dur dur dah dur, was balance. I had to find a balance between flowing through life and grinding toward my goals. I realized sales was bifurcated between practice and performance. So I applied the concepts of grinding to my daily practice and I applied the concept of flow to my presentations. I plan the day rigorously, but when things change I don't cling to the plan. I adapt, flow bitch.
So I think success comes down to looking at the need of each situation and then searching yourself for a way of being that is both relevant to the situation and true to your own self. I imagine a ven diagram, one circle being self and the other being situation. We have to find the overlap and move to that place. I guess I'm just learning to let go without falling to pieces. It's pretty scary, I'm used to oscillating wildly between putting out fires and drowning. So to consistently stand in that middle place is new for me. But I think there's hope, and if there is hope for me, then there is hope for you. I guess I'm just hoping to encourage you a bit.
Viktor Frankl said, "That which is to give light must endure burning." I'm burning either way, so I'd like to give some light.
Sincerely,
Jonathan