The rules had been constructed long before I was born, and I did not know yet I was allowed to break them or redefine them or ignore them entirely.

— Jami Attenberg, I Came All This Way to Meet You⁴⁰

THANKS TO MY daughter's persistent recommendation of a particular digital art app, I started drawing in early 2021. Visual art has never been an aspiration of mine. My brother is a talented artist, and anything I tried to create paled in comparison to his effortless renderings. And goodness knows I don't like to play second fiddle. But sketching on my iPad while watching YouTube or bingeing old television shows in the evening became a way to calm my mind as I went through a particularly difficult mental health year.

At first, I played with color and textures—nonrepresentational art. Then, I followed step-by-step tutorials to recreate images. Eventually, I gave myself the go-ahead to fly solo. Instead of relying on someone's detailed instructions, I would find an image I liked and break it down into shapes and proportions that I could recreate. It's been slow yet rewarding work. This drawing practice has also been a study in finding satisfaction with imperfection and inadequacy as well as joy in the process rather than in accomplishment. I've probably created a thousand or more images in a thousand or more hours. None of them will make me any money or win me any accolades. Not so long ago, I would not have devoted that much time to something with such middling results. But the results are only middling if the purpose of the time I spend drawing is to achieve a great (or marketable) piece of art. The purpose of this time, though, is not achievement. It's practice—a practice that relieves anxiety, stretches my self-imposed restrictions, and nurtures a deep sense of satisfaction.

For most of my life, I'd avoid anything that didn't come easily to me. If I tried a new activity and didn't get better-than-average results in short order, I simply wouldn't do that activity again. My identity was wrapped up in being a person who is good at things. If I wasn't good at something, I couldn't do it and retain that identity. As I got older, I realized how much I limited myself, how many incredible experiences I denied myself. Because I like to win, I tend to choose activities that give me a greater chance of winning. Because I like for things to come easily to me, I avoid experiences that I might have to work at to enjoy. It's hard to learn new things when you only do things you're already good at, you know?

One thing that I'm really good at, however, is routine. Once I've established a routine, I'm unlikely to deviate from it. It's one of my autistic superpowers. So when I decided to change up things and stretch myself, I knew I needed to establish a routine. I started slowly—setting an alarm instead of waking up on my own, a privilege that I enjoyed ever since I became self-employed. Once up, I powered up the treadmill and took a 10-minute walk. Ten minutes became 15 minutes, 15 minutes became 20 minutes, and the dead of winter became the dawn of spring. With the temperature a bit warmer and my energy a bit higher, I started jogging. I picked up other exercise activities that I was curious about along the way: powerlifting, hiking, bouldering, yoga. It was all new to me. And I wasn't good at any of it to start. In some of these pursuits, I did improve over time, and I certainly trained my body to withstand more demand. But I discovered what I really loved about these new additions to my routine was how they made me feel while I did them. Even when I earned a medal after a race or sent a difficult boulder problem, I found that what was really meaningful to me in the experience was knowing how I'd put in the work. I felt good about what had gotten me to that point of relative excellence, rather than just finding meaning in the outcome of my work.

I'd stumbled on something that Kieran Setiya describes in his book, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide, as the difference between telic and atelic activities. In philosophy, teleology is the pursuit of understanding the goals or purposes of things. Telos is a Greek word that Aristotle uses to describe an entity's full purposes or ultimate end goal. In a metaphysical sense, that might be the greater purpose of one's life or the goal of their belief system. But for our purposes, I want to examine this idea of telos and, as Setiya puts it, telic activities, in a much more mundane way. Let's start with one of the core reasons that our goals make us miserable: the fact that they're designed to end. Setiya states it clearly:

Think of it this way. What gives purpose to your life is having goals. Yet in pursuing them, you either fail (not good) or in succeeding, bring them to a close. If what you care about is achievement—earning a promotion, having a child, writing a book, saving a life—the completion of your project may be of value, but it means that the project can no longer be your guide.⁴¹

So far, I've focused on why the goals we set make us miserable. I've examined the moral systems they derive from and the objectifying forces that compel us to set many of the most common types of goals. I've considered how we seek greater power through our goals and perpetuate systems of harm in the process. But here, we look at goal-setting as a problem in and of itself. Setiya defines telic activities as being those focused on their end goals. A telic activity might be the task of making dinner, accomplishment of completing a work project, or achievement of running a marathon; worthwhile activities, to be sure. But once they end, we're at a loss for what is next, or we realize that we'll just do the same thing tomorrow. When we organize our lives around this relentless cycle of completion, we risk the sort of going-through-the-motion malaise that leads to many career and family crises. Setiya contrasts telic activities with atelic activities—those activities in which value is found through doing them rather than in completing them. Atelic activities might be taking a walk or playing music with friends. It's not that they don't eventually end—it's just that completion isn't the point of the activity.

As a culture, we obsess on telic activities. We believe that, each time we accomplish a task, we climb that old familiar ladder. When really, we're just putting miles on the treadmill (shout out to the runners who enjoy the treadmill, I am not one of those people). We set goals, create plans, and we strive toward their completion—in lock step with a whole industry that promotes this as the key to living a good life. Setiya argues that, while there is value in planning projects or working toward particular outcomes, our over-reliance on telic activities and end goals keeps us fixated on the future, ignoring the meaning of the present moment.

For me, and for Setiya, telic and atelic activities can have considerable overlap. And switching one's orientation from future outcomes to present mindfulness can have a huge impact on overall satisfaction (a concept I'll explore soon). It's here that I want to abandon this philosophical jargon—as fun for me as it might be—to offer up two more familiar terms to describe what Setiya is getting at: achievement and practice.

I prefer these terms because they help to describe how an outcome-oriented activity can be recast as a process with value in and of itself. For instance, I'm writing this chapter on New Year's Eve—the day before many people will attempt to “get healthy” and take up running. I'll see them out on the trail tomorrow, huffing and puffing. And good for them! But here's the thing, for many, they'll define get healthy as losing some weight. For them, running is a means to an end—it isn't a meaningful activity in and of itself. Others might set the goal of running a springtime 5K or half-marathon. Once the race is over, will they stick with running? Some will, but many will not. Running might accomplish the “achievement” of losing those pesky 10 pounds or completing the race, but it won't become a part of daily life for many of the people who decide to take it up tomorrow. At the risk of sounding self-congratulatory, the reason I've been able to stick with exercising every morning for five years is because I've embraced the practice. I find value in the time I spend pounding the pavement or on the yoga mat.

This shift doesn't only apply to exercise, of course. Cleaning the house might feel like a chore that has value only once it's finished. What would it take to turn cleaning into a process that provides value in doing it? For me, the answer is extra time to listen to podcasts. Completing a report at work might feel like busywork—something that only seems to have value because someone has required you to do it. What would it take to turn the process of completing that report into a satisfying process? Maybe you make a habit of hitting play on a favorite album each time you do that report. Or maybe you use the report as an opportunity to thank each member of your team for their particular contribution to the work that week. There will always be tasks or required outcomes that can't be turned into a satisfying process. And certainly, privilege is a big component into how successfully you convert chores into satisfying activities. But reconceiving much of how you spend your time into practice is absolutely possible.

What Is Practice?

Okay, so what do I mean by practice? First, I absolutely, positively do not mean “practice makes perfect.” The purpose of practice is not perfection, or even improvement. The purpose of practice is presence, groundedness, and perspective. Practice can be extremely simple—no equipment or software needed—and transform basic activities into something nourishing or satisfying.

As I mentioned earlier, routines are one of my autistic superpowers. Autistic people often develop routines that help them navigate the world and their emotions. My routines are extremely important to me. I don't do them compulsively, but I do feel off when I haven't gone through an important routine. For example, my morning routine consists of a cup of Aeropress coffee, a big bowl of nondairy Greek yogurt with fruit and cereal, time with whatever book I'm reading, and then my workout for the day, which ideally ends with a long walk listening to one of my favorite podcasts. I wake up between 5:00 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. every weekday morning in order to move through that three-hour routine before I start work, and I've been doing it for well over three years. When we visit my husband's family in Montana, I don't have access to all the same “ingredients” of my routine. But I recreate it as best as I can. I brew my coffee in the Keurig, eat a different brand of nondairy yogurt, and read my book. Then I drive myself somewhere I can get in a good long walk and listen to a podcast. The same thing goes if I'm traveling for work or on vacation. I know it probably sounds like a burden, but it's grounding.

My morning routine is a practice. It's something I come to every day to find presence and perspective. When I don't want to get out of bed, I think about how good I'll feel eating my yogurt and drinking my coffee. When I know I have a busy day full of difficult tasks, I linger in that routine to saturate myself with everything it has to offer me. Practice shows up in my life in plenty of other ways, too. Writing is practice; baking is practice; podcasting is practice; reading is practice. They are activities that remind me where I am and offer me space for observing my own thoughts and feelings, even though each of these activities result in tangible outcome. The essay, loaf of bread, episode, or completed book aren't the point of these activities. They're the byproduct of time spent mindfully.

The way I engage practice is no doubt privileged. But there are so many ways to incorporate practice into daily life, small ways to turn the mundane into the satisfying. Maybe you take the bus to work, and you find that walking to the bus stop shifts your mood when you listen to music—that's practice. Maybe you feed your cats, as I do, at the same time every evening, and you use that small amount of time to watch how their little bodies move eagerly while they wait—that's practice.

My guess is that I'm not telling you something you don't already know. #savorthemoment, amirite? Yet, when we make practice intentional and conscious, we shift our relationships to systems of power. These systems would rather keep us rushing around, constantly consuming, and producing more and more with our time. Practice is resistance. It reduces urgency, creates satisfaction, and reminds you that there is more to life than being productive. I don't think it's going too far to say that practice is a good way to “stick it to the man.”

Thinking Interdependently

Let's set aside systems of power for a bit and examine systems thinking. Systems thinking is also practice. When we think in systems, we prioritize the interconnection of inputs and outputs—all the components that make up a beautifully messy system. Often, when we set a goal or make a plan, we focus on a particular outcome. We treat the goal as if it can be met by checking items off a list. But this thinking blurs the fact that to achieve or create anything, we come into contact with other processes and lists. Systems thinking reminds us that everything is connected. Sharon Salzberg writes about this in her book Real Change: “A change to one element affects the entire system. From this vantage point, interdependence is seen as the very fabric of every experience. A systems approach tends to focus on the relationships, structures, and feedback loops that make up the whole. That way we are constantly learning, seeing the problem as an ever-changing process.”⁴² Salzberg's thinking about systems echoes the work of Donella Meadows, a leading environmental and systems thinker of the 20th century. Meadows describes the world as “nonlinear, turbulent, and chaotic.” Embracing systems thinking, she argues, is to work with that turbulence rather than against it.⁴³ The dynamism that surrounds us creates an incredible learning opportunity. But if we're constantly struggling to make the world—or at least our tiny corner of it—more static by squeezing it into our specific goals and linear plans, we end up frustrated, miserable, and often without the satisfaction of experiencing something new.

At least in the Western world, we're taught to organize our lives around achievement. Not necessarily the merit badge or trophy kind of achievement. It might be the achievement of getting dinner on the table in 30 minutes or less or making sure to file all the correct reports each week. It is this kind of achievement that breeds the sort of anxiety and angst that builds over the course of an adult life. We are instructed to “stick with” our goals, our plans, our resolutions. And we relentlessly evaluate ourselves to figure out how to do better. Yet, there seems to be no end to this struggle. Sure, I've gotten dinner on the table again, against all odds, but I just have to do it again tomorrow. I've filed all the correct reports this week, but I'll just have to do it again next week. There is a relatively satisfying practice to be found in each activity, yet our planners and to-do lists are all configured to the completion of the task rather than the doing of the task. We can even see this achievement-oriented, anxiety-inducing treadmill in our productivity advice: how to get more done in less time. It seems that we exist to complete tasks rather than to experience our connection to the wider world.

Salzberg, describing meditation practice, explains that practice allows us to rediscover our agency, our full range of options for action, and our values. And it's from this position that I've reclaimed my own connection to the world around me, unimpeded by the isolation of never-ending to-do lists or the seeming inevitability of the next “right” action. Every activity that I practice—writing, reading, walking, running, baking, grocery shopping—brings me back into the present. Practice creates an anchor in the chaotic world that Meadows describes.

My husband is one of the most practice-oriented people I've ever met. First, he's a knitter and revels in the work of a major project, especially repetitive patterns that become a meditation for his fingers. He has absolutely no problem pulling out many rows of work to fix a mistake he made an hour before. While I would (still) have a crisis at the thought of an hour of work “wasted” or a delay in finishing the project, he's satisfied in calmly repeating the work. Similar to my experiences with exercise, he's found joy in the practice of knitting rather than the achievement of a particular project. That's not to say that he isn't proud of a completed piece, just that he also enjoyed every knit or purl.

Achievement-Orientation Is Learned

Browse the self-help or planner shelves at any Barnes & Noble or the Amazon bestseller list and our obsession with achievement-orientation is clear. There is a huge market for advice on “how to get what you want” and “how to achieve your goals.” And while there is certainly a market for advice on mindfulness and living in the present, the books and programs marketed along those lines are quite often also about using mindfulness and presence to achieve your goals or boost your productivity. Having picked up this book, I'm sure you're no stranger to these items or marketing messages.

I cracked open a few bestsellers to see exactly how achievement-orientation and overcoming was being sold to us. In the aptly named book The Achievement Habit, by Bernard Roth, we learn: “Many reasons are simply excuses to hide the fact that we are not willing to give something a high enough priority in our lives.” I've heard this one weaponized and used by life coaches, marketers, and pseudo-spiritual gurus plenty of times to shame people into taking harmful action. Roth goes on to cite an example of a student being late to class because she got a flat tire on her bicycle. Roth claims that if getting to class on time was a high-enough priority, she would have found a way to get there on time. He goes so far as to suggest that if expulsion was the consequence for being late, she'd be early every time.⁴⁴ Roth doesn't entertain the idea that her bicycle might be her only mode of transportation, that she doesn't have a friend to call for a ride because they're all at work, or that hitch-hiking isn't safe for a young woman on her own.

We get a similar message in Rachel Hollis's bestseller Girl, Wash Your Face. She writes, “When you really want something, you will find a way. When you don't really want something, you'll find an excuse.” Getting what you want is your responsibility, which means not getting what you want is your fault.⁴⁵ This kind of achievement-orientation assumes a level playing field, equal access to the tools of success. This line of thought led to Hollis unleashing a social media firestorm in 2021 when she posted a video to Instagram where she compared herself to Harriet Tubman and Malala Yousafzai, saying she was proud to be “unrelatable.” She claimed that she works hard enough to have a woman who comes to “clean the toilets” twice a week. Hollis doesn't seem to consider that her housekeeper likely works just as hard with far fewer resources. She doesn't consider that her housekeeper's life is likely not full of excuses, but full of structural barriers to upward mobility.⁴⁶

And in Brian Tracy's book Goals! we learn that we can erase negative emotions by taking responsibility for every situation we find ourselves in. He exclaims, “Just imagine! You can free yourself from negative emotions and begin taking control of your life by simply saying, ‘I am responsible!’ whenever you start to feel angry or upset for any reason.”⁴⁷ I won't deny the power of a mindset shift. But the idea that anger or sadness has no place in life because we are responsible for our circumstances is ludicrous. Tracy doesn't entertain the idea that there are circumstances that deserve to be met with anger or that, as Rebecca Traister has powerfully argued in Good and Mad, anger can be a galvanizing force for change.⁴⁸

I Can't Get No…

Maybe another way to say that we're trained to be achievement-oriented is that we're also trained to be hungry. A consumer economy is built on our desire for more. And because “more” is expensive, we're always on the lookout for the next promotion, side gig, or get-rich-quick scheme. Further, research has shown that our happiness (not the same thing as satisfaction, but certainly related) is relative. While we might take pride in an individual achievement, we look to whether we're better off than others in our reference group (e.g., co-workers, family, social group, graduating class) to account for our overall level of happiness.⁴⁹ In a 2016 paper for Social Forces, Arthur S. Alderson and Tally Katz-Gerro conclude: “Without adjustment by other factors associated with happiness, the more highly people rate their income relative to a reference group or relative to all others that they know, the happier they are, and the relative income effect dominates the absolute income effect.” In addition, those who regularly compare their own income achievement to others' report lower happiness overall. Alderson and Katz-Gerro also note that other markers of social status follow a similar pattern to that of income.⁵⁰ If you think you take better vacations, live in a nicer house, or drive a more luxurious car than others around you, you will report a higher level of happiness overall. This effect, then, seems to feed our hunger for greater and greater achievement, while it also subverts our agency and values. In other words, driving a more luxurious car might not be something you actually want to do, but if you perceive that car increasing your relative status, you'll believe it will make you happier, too. That happiness, though, is fleeting—a phenomenon that has been called the “hedonic treadmill.”

Researchers are always quick to point out that studying happiness is a tough task. Happiness means different things to different people, and there is no quantitative way to measure it. Plus, since our perception of happiness does seem to be relativistic in key ways, evaluating our own overall happiness is a challenge, too. Personally, I'm less interested in evaluating my overall happiness and more interested in cultivating daily satisfaction. The exploration of satisfaction belongs with our exploration of practice and achievement because “being satisfied” is a good way to describe the opportunity that comes from practice, rather than achievement. We use the idea of satisfaction to describe the feeling that comes from sating an appetite—whether for food, sex, learning, or any other hunger. Practice brings on satiety. Sometimes practice feels like the enjoyment of an expensive and artfully prepared meal, and sometimes practice feels like the relief that comes from inhaling a protein bar at the end of a long hike. In my humble opinion, neither is a better experience—they're both extremely satisfying in their own way. Satisfaction is not the end goal, the telos, of practice. Rather, it is the state of mind we inhabit when we shift into practice-orientation.

Achievement-orientation—and all of those self-help books about goal-setting and productivity—starts with the assumption that satisfaction is what happens when the goal is achieved or the to-do list is vanquished. But practice-orientation helps us access a state of satisfaction in the pursuit or process. Take writing this book, for instance. Many might assume that the satisfaction is in completing the book. And I'm sure that's true for many people. But I really enjoy writing—it's part of how I process ideas, it allows me to formulate thoughts in a way my autistic brain doesn't like to do in speech. It feels good and satisfying to me to write. So writing this book isn't a singular project-based activity. It's part of a larger writing practice that creates a great deal of satisfaction in my life.

Now, that's not to say that everything we do as practice is going to be enjoyable or pleasurable. But I do believe that we can find a sense of satisfaction in everything from cleaning to filling out spreadsheets to mowing the lawn. Not just in having done it, but in doing it. At the least, there can be satisfaction in the affirmative choice to do a chore or work on a mundane project. Above all, even the tasks that we don't particularly like doing don't need to be a source of misery that only abates when complete. We can find satisfaction in things that are tedious, banal, or obligatory when we make practice our orientation. Writer and activist adrienne maree brown puts it this way in a keynote speech she gave in 2019:

…we must build a felt sense in ourselves of authentic satisfaction. and remember that pleasure is not a frivolous spoil of luxury, but a measure of aliveness, the life force that has been whittled away, stolen away, by oppression and colonization and capitalism. we must break with the assumption of misery that does not serve us.⁵¹

That last sentence is fascinating to me. At first I read it as, “we must break with the assumption that misery does not serve us.” But that's not what brown says. She's speaking of an assumption of misery, that misery is just part of life, of change, of communities. It echoes what Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill⁵² describe as “normalizing the struggle” that is a core message of the cult of confidence. They point to influencers like Rachel Hollis and former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg who further inculcate the story of sacrifice and hard work to achieve success. We assume we have to break our bodies and minds—sometimes our families, too—to get ahead and achieve our goals. At the very least, the merit badges and trophies, the accolades and promotions, give us some reward for withstanding the misery, right? Further, the goals we set also work to prevent imagined future misery. We work hard for that promotion because we're afraid of the misery of life lived at our present level of comfort (or discomfort). We lose more weight because we're afraid of the misery of stigma. We push ourselves to recreate the Pinterest-perfect birthday party because we're afraid of the misery of being judged a less-than-stellar parent. We live in a “no pain, no gain” kind of world. Misery is built in, and our fear of it keeps us from realizing that satisfaction is available to us, and so too, brown would argue, is pleasure.

I know that all sounds frighteningly bleak. And you probably don't think about a fear of misery on a regular basis. But again, if you live in the capitalist West, you've been conditioned to hunger for more while denying yourself satisfaction because misery—or pain, or discomfort—must come first. Misery is valorized as a tool for achieving satisfaction. It's the subtext written into every page of the self-help palimpsests that crowd the bestseller charts. If you choose the misery that comes with the pursuit of success, you'll be rewarded handsomely. If that were true, though, I think we'd all be a lot happier, more satisfied with our lives. But it seems that misery is only a tool for achieving more misery. Practice, and the satisfaction that comes with it, is a tool for growth and change that operates outside of the achievement-oriented, misery-inducing system. I don't deny that practice can be challenging—and that satisfaction is not a given, especially for those in truly difficult circumstances. But I think it's a far better alternative to a gospel of misery.

Reflection:

• What practices have you already established for yourself? How do you experience satisfaction through them?
• Where did you learn your own achievement-orientation? How has it benefitted you? When has it led you astray?
• Do you assume misery (or at least, discomfort) is a prerequisite for satisfaction? Why or why not?