{"id":2957,"date":"2014-09-11T07:58:13","date_gmt":"2014-09-11T12:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/?p=2957"},"modified":"2014-09-09T22:52:03","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T03:52:03","slug":"living-essentially","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/2014\/09\/11\/living-essentially\/","title":{"rendered":"Living essentially"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat do I feel deeply inspired by?\u201d and \u201cWhat am I particularly talented at?\u201d and \u201cWhat meets a significant need in the world?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2015\u00a0<\/span>Greg McKeown,\u00a0<\/span>Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So I’m reading this book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less<\/a> and it’s not really that great a\u00a0book (in fact, I nearly shut\u00a0the book after the first unrealistic “case study”), but it’s gotten me thinking a lot about what I spend my time on. Here’s a description of the book:<\/p>\n

The Way of the Essentialist isn\u2019t about getting more done in less time. It\u2019s not about getting less done. It\u2019s about getting only the right things done. It\u2019s about challenging the core assumption of \u2018we can have it all\u2019 and \u2018I have to do everything\u2019 and replacing it with the pursuit of \u2018the right thing, in the right way, at the right time\u2019. It\u2019s about regaining control of our own choices about where to spend our time and energies instead of giving others implicit permission to choose for us.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For me, two ideas from this book stood out to me: 1) that in spreading ourselves too thin, we do justice to nothing and no one, and 2) that it is so\u00a0easy it is to lose sight of what\u00a0we should really be focusing on.<\/p>\n

One simple fact of life is that we can’t do ALL THE THINGS. Or, more accurately, we can try to do them and do nothing particularly well. Having my son forced me to recalibrate my life, because I never wanted to miss out on fun times with him because of work stuff. I don’t always meet that goal, but I come close. Time with my son is more fun than any<\/em> possible professional project.<\/p>\n

I feel like I’m actually doing a pretty decent job with this aspect of essentialism, because I made the\u00a0decision a while back\u00a0that I would not take on more than I can handle. While this seems obvious, we too often ignore that gauge telling us we’re at our limit. Have you missed a project deadline? Have you had to ignore one time-sensitive project because of another? Then you’re doing too much!\u00a0I know people\u00a0who are stretched way thinner than I am, and, yes, they do a lot, but they don’t do justice to any of their projects. They don’t meet their commitments. They frustrate\u00a0their project collaborators. And, in the end, is it a satisfying way to live your life?<\/p>\n

The author writes\u00a0\u201conly once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.\u201d I know a lot of librarians who need this message.\u00a0I’d rather dedicate\u00a0myself to just a couple of things I’m really passionate about (and do them well) than to give a tiny bit of myself to a whole lot of things that interest me (and not do justice to any of them).<\/span><\/p>\n

When I look back at\u00a0the things I’ve done professionally, the\u00a0thread that runs\u00a0through everything I’ve been\u00a0passionate about is enabling knowledge-sharing. The blog. The wikis. Five Weeks to a Social Library. The unconferences. The OLA Mentoring Program. Open sourcing Library DIY. I hate, hate, hate<\/em> the idea of hoarding knowledge and reinventing the wheel.\u00a0I want to find ways to let knowledge and expertise\u00a0flow from people who have it into those who don’t without those who don’t having to pay a fortune for it. It just seems silly for me to know something that might be useful to others and not share it.<\/p>\n

I started out just doing things I was passionate about, before I’d even found my first professional job. Over time,\u00a0I started getting asked to do things, which is incredibly flattering and seductive. Some were right in line with my interests\u00a0and some weren’t. For example, in 2009, I was asked to give a workshop on mobile tech in libraries. It’s not something I knew a ton about, so I learned more about mobile tech in libraries. This wasn’t my passion, but I did it because I was asked and it seemed like a good opportunity.\u00a0Then I got asked to give\u00a0more presentations\u00a0on the topic because of the first talk. Then I was asked to write a book chapter on it. It’s a slippery slope, and one that makes it easy to lose sight of what you\u00a0really should be doing.<\/p>\n

By the time I was on the tenure track, I don’t think I could tell if I was doing things\u00a0because\u00a0I was truly passionate about them\u00a0or\u00a0because they seemed like things I should be doing. It’s easy to get bogged down\u00a0in the\u00a0shoulds<\/em> when you’re on the tenure track; playing that guessing game about what the P&T committee will value most.\u00a0But even before I was\u00a0on the tenure track, I found myself saying yes to things that weren’t really my passion; that just seemed like things I should<\/em> be saying yes to because I’d be an idiot not to. But the more you do things that don’t speak to\u00a0your passion, the\u00a0further removed you are\u00a0from a meaningful life.<\/p>\n

This book has gotten me thinking again about the things I do that really aren’t essential to who I am.\u00a0Given all of the transitions in my life this year (new job, son starting kindergarten, etc.) it’s a good time to\u00a0take a hard look at my professional activities.\u00a0I’m going to pursue just a few things that I’m passionate about and extricate myself from those that I’m not. The first move in this direction (other than taking the job at Portland Community College, which is a biggie) was to resign from the Library Hi Tech<\/em> editorial board. While I have nothing but the most positive regard for the journal and those on the Board, I don’t feel right about giving my time and effort to a non-open access publication. It seems like a contradiction for a person whose blog is called Information Wants to be Free<\/em> to be on the editorial board of a journal where the information isn’t. I also vow\u00a0not to publish anything that is not open access. I know I’ll give up on some good opportunities because of it, but we’re in an era now where it is quite possible to only publish OA.<\/p>\n

I’m also getting more involved in the Oregon Library Association this year. Last year, Emily Papagni, Shirley Sullivan and I launched our labor of love, the OLA Mentoring Program<\/a> for early-career librarians. Now, I’m chairing the Membership Committee (under which this service falls) and am really excited to\u00a0work with other committed Oregon librarians to make our professional organization even better.<\/p>\n

Do you feel like you’re burning the candle at both ends? Not doing justice to all of the activities to which you’ve committed? What are you doing that you should give up? What’s stopping you? And if you’re looking for ways to focus on the right things for you, here are Five Ways to Say No<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Photo credit:\u00a0Burn by Patrick Feller on Flickr<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat do I feel deeply inspired by?\u201d and \u201cWhat am I particularly talented at?\u201d and \u201cWhat meets a significant need in the world?\u201d \u2015\u00a0Greg McKeown,\u00a0Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-work-life-balance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2957"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2985,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions\/2985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}