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So it's no secret that I make my living selling spoons, blanks, burnishing tools (although that is much more a service to the community) and teaching spooncarving. This all accounts for a third of what I do. But it's definitely my most public side.
Sales have been good this last week, after a period when sales were slow that had me second-guessing if I was doing something wrong. It's ironic that sales have been so good this week because I feel like my social media engagement is way down, in that I haven't had anything go remotely popular, let alone viral (and if I'm being honest NOTHING I've done has gone viral) in several weeks. I'm not sure to make of that, if I should be worried, or changing what I do, or tweaking things more. Or maybe I've gotten sloppy? Or maybe Instagram is changing? Or maybe the community is changing? For sure everything is shifting, all the time, and it's incumbent on each of us to assess what might be working, make small changes, and try, try try until something starts to stick, and then do more of that thing. On the other hand, that logic is how you get feeds that feel oddly bereft of any person, or that don't give you any sense of a life being lived. It's nice to be reminded, in these moments when social media and self-promotion seems baffling, that sales of what I do are not tied so tightly to how many likes I get. It sure feels like they are, because they are, in a broader sense, connected. Of the 8000 people following me, fully 7500 don't see my stuff or engage or are even using their accounts. So you need to attract the new people, the ones exploring, but you also need to make it worthwhile for people to stick around, too. In the end, however, it is easy to panic when either social media or sales feel off, without recognizing that there is a disconnect between the two. And it is easy to lose sight of what social media can be in the first place, how it can serve and enrich our lives, bringing us opportunities, community, and a way to document things we would like to remember and be known for. I'd like to think if I can remember to do that, then the sales will take care of themselves.
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This morning, I got up with my wife at 5 am. She was heading off to a clinical rotation as part of nursing school; I was heading off to the couch.
My task was to label and stuff copies of Spoonesaurus Magazine, the spooncarving magazine I publish with my partner Matt White (the guy who makes my knives). I had two big boxes of printed magazines, two cases of manila envelopes, and an enormous spaghetti pile of printed label stickers I had printed the night before. I pulled then end of the string of labels over, peeled one, stuck it on an envelope, grabbed a magazine and slid it inside, pulled the cover on the sticky flap and smoothed it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. My earliest job was washing eggs at a local farm. Then it was harvesting strawflowers in bunches to be dried. Later on I helped transplant flowers and harvest squash and mustard at a different farm. Then when I met my wife, we farmed together growing vegetables and helping start a yogurt business, both situations rife with repetitive tasks. My current work at the Christmas tree farm is a minefield of them. Even the spoons and blanks I make repetitive in their way. So I am no stranger to the nuances of how this goes. When you first start a repetitive task, your mind is fresh. Your body doesn't hurt and you are thinking a lot about what you are doing. That lasts for 15-30 minutes. Then you get into a pleasant hum of routine where your mind starts to wander, and sometimes (but not always) you make important creative leaps. That lasts for another indeterminate length of time, depending on how uncomfortable the task is, your state of mind, the quality of the day or your company. Then you hit the wall. As anyone who's ever done much running can relate with, you reach that place where your mind resists continuing doing what you're doing. Sometimes it's because it hurts (transplanting long rows of crops comes to mind) and sometimes it's just because you feel done. But you push past the wall, and coast from then until the end. In this respect, it is helpful if the task doesn't require much alertness (driving a car or operating machinery or power tools, for instance, are not situations where you'd want to push through the wall; stop and take a break). I finished labeling and stuffing all the magazines in about an hour and a half, and I was grateful to be done. We often demonize repetitive tasks, go to great lengths to avoid them, but I think they offer something valuable, particularly in situations where you are deciding for yourself how long you do them, when to stop and take a break or do something else. First of all, we are fooling ourselves if we think that life doesn't require repetitive tasks. If we aren't doing them, someone else is on our behalf. Leaning in to the repetitive tasks in your life is a way of being grateful for all of the work of that sort that others do for us, whether we realize it or not. Leaning in is also good for my mind. I don't meditate, but I am convinced that all the repetitive tasks in my life serve the same purpose. I wouldn't want them to predominate my day (and I know intimately what that's like), but I am glad that I have a hefty dose of them, and I start to feel unmoored when I don't have something like that required of me. The other benefit repetitive tasks (at least real, physical ones, not so much digital tasks) provide is a sense of accomplishment you get from looking back at a greenhouse full of seedlings, or a truck full of harvested produce, or, in my current case, a couch full of magazines ready to be mailed. There is something about the sameness of it that lends to this satisfaction, making it more poignant, perversely, than a more linear task like building something. It is the deep animal part of our brain, I think, pleased to be stockpiling something, anything, against the coming winter. I got asked recently how many irons I had in the fire. I'm used to giving the quick rundown to friends and family of what's going on, but I hadn't sat down to write out a comprehensive anytime soon, if ever.
It was a lot. I'm not going to list them all because that's not the point, but what IS the point is how I went from where I was three, five, ten years ago, a place with many fewer things happening, to right now. It is easy to look at someone doing a lot of things and feel a panic, like they have some insurmountable edge on the rest of the world. How do they do it all? More importantly, how did they get all those things going in the first place? The secret is that a long list of things going on always starts with just one thing. Then you add something. Then another. Then another. You say yes to stuff. You get better, faster, more efficient. You keep the bar as low as is reasonable given circumstances and expectations. You keep kicking the cans down the road, especially once that initial wave of enthusiasm has passed. I cannot stress enough how important it is to just focus on the next thing, and to add just one thing at a time until each is settled in your routine and sense of self. Want to start a podcast? Do it. But wait to do the collaboration with that person you admire until you get the podcast settled. Some people like to do fewer things exceptionally well. If that is you, that's great. It's not me. I like to have lots of eggs, and lots of baskets, and to constantly be establishing more. I figure even if a few break, it's a net gain. (Take that metaphor with as much generosity as you can muster). But you don't make it happen, or lead a happy life, by starting everything at once. At the same time, it's important to recognize that just one angle of attack is less likely to succeed than ten. Particularly since they are not acting separately, each working out or not as it happens, but rather synergistically, where each additional thing I do pulls more energy into the whole conglomeration. So wherever you are on your journey, take stock. What is the obvious next move? What is the next move after that? Map it out. Then go and make it happen. Don't wait to get it perfect before beginning, but just start and adjust and then adjust some more. Experiment. Iterate. Pivot. Explore new things and let others fall away. Keep adding things to the mix. And before you know it, you too will have a lot of irons in the fire. Just what to do with them is another discussion altogether. |
Hi there!My blog has evolved into a series of short essays on the nature of entrepreneurship, craftsmanship, and their overlap. If either of these topics is something you think about, you will probably like this. Archives
November 2020
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