When Conan O’Brien was working at The Simpsons, one of his dimwitted corporate overlords would become incensed if he didn’t hear the constant drone of keyboards clacking away in the writers’ room. “If these jazz-cigarette smoking, draft-dodging invalids expect to get paid just to sit around picking their noses, they are sorely mistaken,” he huffed and puffed, “these boys don’t know a damn thing about hard work!”
Ok, he never said that.
But if he had, and if I could time travel back to this imaginary moment and respond to this entirely fabricated comment which nonetheless contains a seed of truth, I would retort, “if this buffoon in a fancy suit understood a damn thing about creativity, he would respect the fact that sitting and staring into space like a fool is an integral part of the process!”
The fact is, great ideas don’t require great conscious effort to manifest themselves. The universe is infinitely generous. As that especially creative being named Jesus once said, “ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
Busy work, at its core, is a form of procrastination. It is a safe way for us to feel like we’re pushing the needle without ever having to take a risk. In the matrix of capitalism, it is the means through which we justify our value in the eyes of our employers. Call me conspiratorial, but it is no coincidence that in this system our sense of deservingness is directly tied to the very activities that keep us stuck playing someone else’s game.
Take a look at your to-do list (if you don’t have one, picture your daily schedule). Now, ask yourself seriously: how many of these tasks actually reflect a vision of your own? If the answer is few or none, it’s time to reframe your mentality from that of the menial employee to the visionary CEO.
I know the language I chose here is painfully corporate, but these terms reflect the context we live in. They also contain a more mystical element, if you look closely enough. In fact, I would argue that even the most lizard-like CEOs on the planet have an intimate understanding of mysticism. Read a couple self-help books written by billionaires and you’ll quickly pick up on it. They’re using corporate language to describe it, but there’s no doubt about it: manifestation is their bread and butter.
CEOs are able to ask the universe for what they want because they KNOW what they want. They can see it so clearly that it already exists (time isn’t linear, remember). Employees, on the other hand, spend their lives toiling away in service to someone else’s vision because their aspirations never transcend the vague world of abstract wishes.
Pareto's Law states that 80% of results come from 20% of efforts. In other words, the quality of our efforts is much more important than the quantity. Until you know exactly what you’re working toward, until you humble yourself to a higher power that is more than willing to do the work through you, the boundless generosity of the universe will evade you.
Most CEOs have mastered the art of joining forces with a higher power, but lack the wisdom to recognize that what they truly seek is love. It goes without saying that this is an extremely dangerous combination, and this is all the more reason the world desperately needs more visionaries who recognize that no goal is worth attaining if it isn’t serving the interests of love.
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