Work at its smartest means doing that work that no one else could do. - Kevin Kelly - Ultramarine: Adventures in Infinite Abundance

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." - Henry David Thoreau

I read this essay by Kevin Kelly a few weeks ago up on Google+, and still find it reverberating today.

It is very tempting to work backwards, and reverse-engineer what I should be doing based on monetary needs.

For instance, say I need to make $50,000 to live in this particular city and not starve. So let's divide $40,000 by 1,000 (my standard consulting hours per year rule-of-thumb when I used to consult) to arrive at $40/hour fee. Then, brainstorm a bit... what can I do, advise, or sell that will bring in $40 per hour? And there's livelihood and abundance all solved at once. Sure I can think that way and have, but I do not wish to any longer.

There comes a point when it's time.... for the spiritual rubber meets the road. (The reason I chose the Thoreau quote is precisely that my own motivations are for truth, in particularly ultimate truth.) The stakes get higher and higher when one is 'knowing' Infinite (or Infinity--I use both terms) yet balking at being that. Sometimes knowing truth is so much its own reward (can be rather peaceful and chill), it doesn't really matter that I'm not functioning according to conventional survival in the world of form.

That's when the stakes rise as homelessness might just get your attention, because it's not enough to know and not embody what you know (that'd be another topic, but it's related to holding onto old conditioning). And for others, it might not, as plenty of sages that have lived in forests or caves. But I'm no hermit, and wouldn't have lasted long at Walden, either.

It's worth reading the essay to make sense of what I'm writing. The keystone sentence below is the sentence, Work at its smartest means doing that work that no one else could do:

". . . . it began to dawn on me that there is yet another stage beyond doing things well and with love. . . Work at its smartest means doing that work that no one else could do." - Kevin Kelly

This rings so true that it can send chills up my spine, and tingles the top of my head.

I just spent a good portion of Monday writing up a post on some pretty edgy ideas around education empowering people to be healthy and learn self-healing rather than rely on external healthcare systems. This is work I can do well and with love.

However... however, it is not work that no one else could do. I am suited to do because of the confluence of my skills and experience. But I am not UNIQUELY suited to do it because of the confluence of my skills and experience. How do I know that? Because there is a long list of people and healing modalities that I list in that post. Dr. Len can teach ho'oponopono pretty kick ass. Almine can teach Belvaspata quite well. Get the picture? Perhaps the only thing I add that is a unique twist is to coalesce them together into a Mind-based training boot camp + wiki or another format of hands-on workshop. But really, there do exist folks I can probably find that could do that far better than I can (as it may additionally require good project management and organizational skills that aren't my forte). Maybe my unique add there was to put the idea out there. The sharing, town-crier type of visionary role; and let someone else run with it.

I can go through in my mind dozens of things I can do well and with love.

These often fall into the coaching, teaching, counseling type of categories. Invariably I find people that can do it better than I, or at least as well as I. Let's say it's spiritual teaching, I'd direct you to my own teachers and mentors in a heartbeat. Let's say it's social media coaching, sure in 2004, I might had had an edge--not anymore.

There are other ideas that I've tossed in my head as possibilities for income, one by one they all come down to things others can do just as well. It's not my gift.

As Kevin Kelly says, "When others are doing something like you are, let that activity go because that means you don’t have to do it!" In spiritual circles, that'd be deemed as faith. In secular terms, only a scarcity and limitation mindset would insist on holding onto an activity (here the ego gets involved since by that time you have a good reputation and maybe attached to that successful identity and the income that has built up with that reputation). But life evolves, and it may not be the way that the Infinite uniquely expresses through you now. There's no need to compete in an Infinite cosmos that is constantly replenishing and creating (and the only reason that it appears so stagnant collectively has to do with holding onto past patterns, rather than surrendering moment by moment to its freshness).

If someone else can do it, I'm moving on.....

Kevin Kelly goes on and I love this paragraph: "This is scary because you are giving up things you do well, and you might think that after surrendering all the good stuff, there won’t be anything excellent left for you. Trust me, there is more to you than that."

Trust me, there is more to you than that. Yep, infinite is infinite.

Life supports those who evolve life by shining through their most brilliant expression. By raising the bar, they inspire others into greater expression too. - Almine

I have found what is uniquely mine, it's just that I don't 100% trust it yet to yield any income. It's not a known quantity where making a living from it is a tried and true business model like opening a dry cleaners or selling insurance. But so be it.

Here's the essay. Enjoy:

WHAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO

When you start your first job, all your attention is focused on not screwing up. Your chief goal as a newbie is to simply do a good job. Working smart means doing what is required.

As you gain confidence in your ability to complete a job, your task is to learn new things, to take on additional chores. At this stage, working smart meant doing more than is required.

The next level is exploration. The greater number of additional tasks you try, the faster you begin to see what you are better at. Working smart means trying as many roles as you can in order to discover what you are smart at.

As you educate yourself about your own talent and ambitions, you graduate from doing a task right to doing the right task. It takes some experience to realize that a lot of work is better left undone. It might be busy work that is performed out of habit, or it may work heading in the wrong direction. Working smart means making sure you are spending your time on jobs that are effective or that need to be done at all.

But the smart journey doesn’t end there. If you really pay attention to the feedback of those around you, and constantly strive to improve, you may eventually be able to discover your own best talents. At this stage you can begin to do only jobs (that really need to be done) that you are good at doing. And what a joy that is! For many years I thought this was the pinnacle of working wisdom. What could be more heavenly than to spend your energies only on those tasks you were both good at AND loved?

But recently it began to dawn on me that there is yet another stage beyond doing things well and with love.

It began with my experience as an editor of magazines. A large part of the editor’s job is getting other people to complete stories based on ideas the editor (me) had. So I got used to handing over good ideas. But while I could assign most good ideas, every once in a while I’d get a great idea that I simply could not sell. So I’d let it die. But a few of those left to die would resurrect themselves so I would try again to give it away. Some got picked up but a few would simply get no assignment and retreat. A number of these ideas might go through this cycle a dozen times, until at the end I would face it: Here was an idea so good that I could not kill it, yet no one else wanted it.

It took me several times to realize that this was a signal. It said, “This is the one you have to do.” These stories woud become the best ones I ever wrote.

That’s because they were the stories no one else could write. What I had been inadvertently doing was weeding out good ideas that I could do (but others could do as well) from those few great ideas that only I could do. I had discovered that it was not enough to be able to do something well, and want to do it, and to get paid for doing it. Work at its smartest means doing that work that no one else could do.

That’s a pretty high bar. Becoming aware of what one can do well that others cannot is an immense challenge. In most cases, it takes our whole lives to discover this. This awareness arrives only through deliberate practice and with the help of others, but the payoff is equally immense. When you are doing something well that others want, and you are the only one who can do it, you will be uncommonly rewarded.

This is true of the famously successful, but also of small-scale success as well. You can do bookkeeping, pizza delivery, pet grooming, goat dairy farming, chemistry research, and high school teaching with unique excellence. And yes, there is plenty of room in the world for everyone’s job to be a little different. The hardest part of this discovery is steering yourself away from imitating those who have already succeeded, in order to discover what your own excellence.

I think my experience may offer one useful tip in this process. When others are doing something like you are, let that activity go because that means you don’t have to do it! If they are stealing your ideas, ripping off your moves, knocking off your style, and they are doing it well, thank them. You’ve just learned that that assignment is something you don’t need to do because someone else can do it. This is scary because you are giving up things you do well, and you might think that after surrendering all the good stuff, there won’t be anything excellent left for you. Trust me, there is more to you than that.

But it will take all you life to find it. All, as in all your days. And all, as in all your ceasless effort. Your greatest job is shedding what you don’t have to do.

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This is the essay I wrote for the book End Malaria