The motivational value of giving up

So many gurus tell you to persevere, to stay positive, to go-go-go. But is that always the best way? Barbara Ehrenreich has talked excellently about the toxic nature of over-positivity, so I’m not going to reiterate that here. I’m going to talk about the very concrete way negativity and giving up can be good, even productive.

Last week, our house was invaded by carpenters and electricians on a mission to make us a flight of stairs. We’d hired them, so this part wasn’t a surprise – but the suddenness with which they turned up was. When the weekend came and we were not only exhausted but fully booked with social engagements, we also had the added task of painting a whole room – because come Monday, the floor would be, well, gone, and so would our chance to make the walls of the stairwell less hideous.

So when we’d done everything else we had scheduled, and rested enough to not get dizzy and fall off the stepladder, we got to work. The mood soon became a bit heated, because let’s face it: paint a room in five hours, with only two small buckets of paint and two okayish brushes (shops were closed), and the paint was of the slow-drying kind. Ten hours to be exact. And we needed at least three layers of paint to cover the horrid wallpaper underneath.

So we basically had to paint at supersonic speed and add new layers some nine hours before the bucket said we could. Late at night. With bad lighting. On stepladders.

Yup, we yelled at each other for a bit.

And then suddenly, M said, “Look, this is impossible.”

I paused and looked at the uneven, runny colour that had dripped onto the floor and spattered on the ceiling because we were so stressed-out, and I agreed. It was impossible. We were killing ourselves over a task that couldn’t be finished both on time and well done.

So we gave up.

And from then on, there was no yelling. We just worked in silence, calmly, knowing in our hearts that the room would end up looking like shit. Which meant that the semi-shit we managed actually looked a lot better than the nightmare we’d imagined.

Moral of the story: when we turn ourselves inside out to manage the impossible, it can have a negative effect on the result. Sometimes the best thing is to just settle for less. Because even if you’re superwoman, you can’t make paint dry quicker.

(Well, maybe you can, if you really are superwoman, but you know…)

And yet again and again, we fall into the trap of thinking that we can, because our circumstances aren’t always as tangible as the instructions on that bucket. Sometimes we can convince ourselves that if we were only better, stronger or faster, we could do the thing perfectly. Even when it’s impossible.

So give up. Just try it. What if it works? It was when I gave up on the PhD that I found the resolve to finish it. It was when I dragged a whole novel to the rubbish bin that I realised that I hadn’t tried that one thing that saved the whole plot. When you let go of your perfect vision, it can have a chance of becoming, if not what you dreamed of, at least… something.

The hole[image error]