The process is the result.

I am attempting to write my 10^th article for my newsletter, and I am stuck. I want to write about sticking at anything, but I feel literally stuck – how ironic. I have high hopes for this newsletter and what it might provide in my life, and I am stuck on the TENTH article. The TENTH! This newsletter isn’t even going to get off the ground if I can’t get past 100 articles, let alone 10!

When I wrote that first sentence, I was stuck but I am already feeling a little unstuck. My brain is cranking into gear, and it is grumpily throwing a couple of fully formed sentences my way. Whether any of these sentences are any good will be a question for a later me. The editor me. But right now, I am just getting some words down on the page.

I am trusting the title of this newsletter which I wrote in my Notes app a few weeks ago when I didn’t feel stuck and rewrote at the top of this document when I was stuck.

The advice is this: achieving a goal isn’t the result. It may be part of the result, but it is a miniscule part of the result. The overwhelming majority of the result is the process. And if you can internalise this you will be able to stick at anything.

What this means for me, and my newsletter, is that the high hopes I have for the newsletter shouldn’t be the reason I am writing this newsletter. I am writing a newsletter so that… I am writing a newsletter. It is the doing that I am aiming for, not the achieving.

And this is counter intuitive to everything we have been taught.

We are told explicitly (and implicitly) at school that we are doing because of result. Here are a few examples from my childhood:

You need to revise so that you can pass the exam.

We are training so that we can win the football match.

You need to learn maths, English, and science so that you can go to university so that you can get a degree so that you can get a job so that you can provide for your family so that your kids can go to school to learn maths, English, and science and so on and so on.

I first heard this theory from Alan Watts. ‘It’s all wretch and no vomit’. I loved this video and listened to it several times while at university and thought I had internalised it. 

Only to:

Study hard so that I got the grade.

Complete a graduate scheme at a bank I didn’t enjoy so that it paid me enough to live in London.

Roll off the graduate scheme into a role that was the best of a bad bunch so that I earned the wage I needed to get a mortgage.

I then quit the rat race to finally live out Alan Watts’ advice.

I decided to start a business with my two best friends because hanging out with my best friends was what made me happy. It was an end in and of itself and not a so that.

Only what I did was:

Start a company with a business model I didn’t believe in because it seemed like the fastest and easiest path to money in my bank.

Stop working on that business to start a more ‘traditional’ start up that owned its own IP and raised investment because that is what our peers were doing.

And chose a ‘problem to solve’ because we thought it would lead to a big money exit.

I was continuing to wretch and not vomit but just on a less travelled path.

None of this is to say there isn’t a place for so that. But, doing everything for the sole purpose of achieving leads to a life less well lived. It’s a life lived in the future.

It’s a life filled with attempting to complete something on the promise that something better will come later. It is why productivity tools proliferate and books espousing the newest and shiniest idea on how to improve your life consistently top The Times bestseller lists.

Ironically, our love of and the widespread proliferation of so that is why the brilliant 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman became a bestseller. He proposed the exact opposite of so that.

He writes, “[the modern world] encourages the fantasy that we might one day get everything done, becoming the fully optimised, emotionally invincible masters of our time." But this is a fallacy. When we accept our limitations, we can get busy enjoying the now.

It probably became a bestseller because deep down we all know that constantly living life on the treadmill, chasing a carrot that is always a few feet away, isn’t the life we really want to live.

It certainly isn’t the life I want to live.

And it’s why I am writing a newsletter so that… I am writing a newsletter.

Sure, every additional reader or compliment will bring me joy, we are hardwired to experience this after all, but I really am writing this because I enjoy the process.

I am writing about ideas and topics that I am intrinsically interested in.

And this time, I am not choosing a problem to solve because I believe it’s the problem that will most likely lead to money, or success, or fame.

If I solve any problems for any of you whilst writing this newsletter, it’s because they are problems I find interesting. I write about the solution because in the process of writing about the solution I find joy and meaning.

It is advice I do not believe I have mastered. I have lived most of my life doing so that.

It is a theory and not one I have proven.

I will implement it in my own life and report back on it so that we can learn together if it’s a good one.

And in that vein. My first report on the implementation of it:

I am writing the 1000^th word of an article I was stuck on because I reminded myself that the process is the result. A world-famous newsletter, or even finishing this article wasn’t the aim. The aim was the writing. One word after another. Because in that process there is joy and a life well lived. That has allowed me to ‘stick at it’. And look at that, article number 10 is finished. The irony is that you reach so that by not making it your aim. 

Is there anywhere in your life that you can do for the joy of doing?

If this resonated, let me know how you plan to implement it in your life. I would love to hear from you.