The power of Passive Engagement

Aligning you current interest with your current focus

I have a daybed in my studio.

It’s a four panel foldable thing from ikea, mostly grey with yellow and orange trimmings. Using an oversized stuffed basketball cushion as a pillow I started my studio time with a 3 hour nap. Then I wrote morning pages, read a chapter of ‘Mastermind: how to think like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konikova’ and sat down to write a newsletter.

I like starting the newsletter writing by hand, and the first words I wrote today were; why do I sometimes find it such a drag to write a newsletter?

Aligning you current interest with your current focus

Old Frame: Disengaged Actively, going through a checklist of todos, hyper focused on the outcome, disregarding the proses, the purpose and the moment.

New Frame: Engage Passively, Present and focused broadly in the current moment and task with interest and curiosity.

Naming Resistance

I listed 5 points to answer my question about why I found writing newsletters a drag.

Usually writing newsletter’s is actually on of my favourite activity. But sometimes there is this collective resistance that comes against the work, and indeed all creative work.One way to weaken resistance is to name them, my list of resistance to day comprised of:

Distraction, Lack of Direction, Comparison and two portions of fear.

A Particular Distraction - Disengaged Actively

This was a particular type of distraction, and I often face it, so I thought this would be a good subject for today’s newsletter.

I’m distracted because I have a deadline on Monday. So it’s like my attention and interest is on that, but my current task is the newsletter, this split interest, saps so much or my energy that it’s hard do overcome the critical mass needed to overcome writing a newsletter.

I may be active doing newsletter things, but I’m disengaged.

Maybe you feel this too, I’m writing this 50 days before the 2024 US election, we’re doing things while wondering how the debate went, and who the celebrities are endorsing and what the opinion people are saying… at the meaning we’re actively disengaged with daily life and future goals.

At best producing mediocre work, that it hard to be proud of when you don’t even remember doing the work!

Focused Engagement, is not the solution either, sometimes you try to block everything out and just focus on the task at hand, but creative work is about making connections. And while you might be able to focus on ‘typing’ a newsletter, it’s something else altogether to ‘write a newsletter’.

You need an open mind to make connections and be creative, you need to be Passively Engaged

How to be Passively Engaged

1. Be freed of distraction - I do this be clearing out a single surface, creating an environment for this passive engagement, I also give my self a time block to work on the current task and ignore everything else. I call this Bubble time.

2. Enjoy the process - I use tools that gravely increase the enjoyment of my writing process, my pocket notebook, index cards, yellow notepad and favourite pens and pencils help me get into the project. Mentally I focus on the intrinsic enjoyment of writing things down, expanding some ideas discarding others and forming sentences.

3. Be interested - my key goal of parenting my toddler is providing challenges for her that are just the right size to keep her interested. For professionals this is called scoping, by framing the challenge either by breaking it down or reframing it I am able to design the right challenge to be interested and curious in.

Do you resonate with this concept of Passive Engagement as a virtue? What are techniques you might use to cultivate passive engagement?

Invitation: Use Analog Tools to Enjoy the Process

Gather some of your favorite analog writing or drawing tools - a nice pen, a sketchbook, index cards, etc. Spend time simply enjoying the act of putting pen to paper, without worrying about the outcome. Notice how the physical experience changes your mindset.

PS:

I’ve moved drawing prompts out of the newsletter instead they will be in my daily blog called Ugly Work. Get them there, along with instructions on how to get them in your email or a link to bookmark to get them daily.

Also I’m working on gifts for all subscribers.