Input Focus
For a few months now, this has been my analogy for my life: a giant contraption with a huge funnel at one end, where I can toss in various practices and activities and a chute at the other end, where outcomes emerge, after a mysterious trip through the unknowable innards of the machine.
Initially, I thought that my job was to twist and turn levers and knobs to try to get something to pop out of the “outcome” side. That was me. Twisting. Turning. Tampering. Fiddling with dials. Then running to the outcome chute, peering inside to see if anything was happening already.
It took the havoc wreaked by the pandemic to get my head out of the outcome chute. The virus, and the pandemic it caused, has swept away the curtain and exposed so many untenable realities that range from the deeply personal to the global. In my own life, it laid bare my misguided sense of control. All the fiddling, fussing and manipulating in the world can’t change the fact that I’m not in charge of outcomes. There are simply too many mechanisms at play at any given time—the vast majority of which, I have nothing to do with.
Once I let go of the illusion of control I’ve fostered for years, I found only a small handful of things that I have actual control over. My actions (within the constraints of the possible actions I have). My reactions. My attitudes. These are things I can control. But, there’s not much else.
By focusing on the place where I have actual control, I can let go of the frustration of pretended control. Ultimately, I decided, if an infinitesimally small virus has so much more control over outcomes than I do, maybe I should stop worrying about that end of the machine at all.
So, I’ve happily relocated my efforts. These days, you’ll find me at the input funnel, heaping in all the rich, nurturing things I want in my life. Instead of a fascination with outcomes, I am thinking long and hard about what inputs I’m willing to include.
I don’t mean to imply that an input focus has delivered me into a halcyon utopia. There are still lots of ways I can get tripped up.
Too Much of a Good Thing
There are so many good things that I could be doing, I can quickly become overwhelmed. I have to make a distinction between those things that are an absolute daily personal mandate and those things that are good to dip into from time to time.
That requires discernment. And constraint. For example, garlic is an important ingredient that I use regularly. But, I don’t feel that my cinnamon rolls are incomplete because they don’t have garlic in them. Knowing when and where to use the various ingredients is just as important as identifying the ingredients I want in my kitchen in the first place.
The Lure of Productivity
Even when I’m focusing on inputs, it’s still really easy to fall into the productivity trap. All those inputs lined up neatly on a shelf can quickly be mistaken for items on a list to be checked off. If I’m not watching, they can become nothing more than balls to be kept in the air, as opposed to tools to be used toward a purpose.
Machine Maintenance
Even with my focus on the input funnel, I’ve found that there is inevitably still some tinkering involved. Some days all the pressure gauges are going berserk and I have to figure out which valve to release. I have to check for leaks and ensure that all the seams are well sealed. I have to monitor which inputs I’m including, and how much of each. It’s not an exact recipe. But, it can definitely get out of whack.
The key difference from before is that this tinkering isn’t about trying to force anything to appear from the outcome chute. It’s simply about keeping the system working, so I can continue blissfully tossing in more inputs.
Because this is where my control lies: in my choices of what I want entering that big, mysterious machine. This shift of focus has brought a new sense of peace, calm and purpose.