You Can Do More Than You Think

If I ask someone how they’re doing, they most often tell me they’re busy. Of all the words to define and summarize their life, “busy” apparently does it best. Dig a little, and they’ll explain that their duties with work, family, school, etc. are piling up, and they feel like there’s never enough time for everything that needs to be done.

I’ve sometimes felt the same way. In college, it overwhelmed me how much schoolwork my professors expected of me. “They act like I don’t have five other classes to prepare for!” I would say. While pursuing an M.A. in Systematic Theology, my peers warned me that graduate work is far more demanding than undergraduate, and they were right. Between the new baby, my duties as a campus minister, and graduate-level courses, I thought I must be setting the world record for busyness.

Only, then it got worse. In law school, my workload dwarfed anything from before, and I worked 12 or more hours a day only to find that I still wasn’t keeping up. Two more children were born, and in my second year I worked two jobs in addition to my schoolwork, one as a research assistant and one as a law clerk. It was too much for me—or so I thought.

Stuck between what I saw as a choice between a spectacular crash and burn or finding a manageable path forward, I read piles of literature on productivity and, combined with my own experience, developed the following “rules” concerning work.

Purpose fuels progress

I first encountered this concept in Mark Divine’s The Way of the Seal. To be clear, “Seal” refers to that famously tough branch of the U.S. Navy’s special forces, and I read the book in search of what you might expect: mental toughness. The most useful principle I found in Divine’s work was that a person’s mental toughness breaks down under pressure if they don’t have a solid reason for moving forward. Many, for instance, like the idea of being a Navy Seal because they have this exciting mental image of being tough and admired, just as many like the idea of becoming medical doctors for images of wealth and prestige, and others pursue language learning driven by images of international travel and people fawning over them: “You can speak multiple languages? Amazing!”

The problem is, becoming a Seal or medical doctor or polyglot requires strenuous effort, and in pursuit of such goals, there will come a time that the exciting image of victory isn’t enough to sustain the effort. When you’re stripped down to a simple, brutal question—do I take the next excruciating step forward, or do I quit?—the ones who keep going are the ones who have a solid reason to. There’s no such thing as taking that step for the fun of it. By that point, all the fun has burned up. You’re miserable, and you don’t want to continue. If you do, it will be because you thought the misery was worth it.

The question you therefore have to ask is, Worth what? What is gained by this effort? What is lost by giving up? For most, sustaining any long-term effort takes more than mere dreams of perceived toughness, prestige, or pats on the back.

After reading Divine’s book, I drafted a “mission” document that I’ve reviewed and revised at least once per month over the past decade. It includes my overall mission, what I’ve accomplished to date, what I hope to accomplish, and what tools and methods I’m using to get there. At my best, there’s not a minute of any day that doesn’t serve this overall mission; and when I do go adrift, revisiting this document helps me correct course.

It does make sense that purpose fuels progress. After all, you’re less likely to reach your destination if you don’t know where it is. To be a Seal or doctor or polyglot might be a step in some direction, but they can’t be the final destination, or else once you’ve reached those goals, you will have expended your entire life’s purpose, which can be very uncomfortable. If you’re wondering just how uncomfortable, observe all those who believe wealth and fame are their purpose; observe how miserable they are once they have it.

Conversely, with worthy goals that serve a worthy purpose, you will find yourself willing to take the next step forward, even when that step is painful; and each step will bring a contented sense of progress.

Focus is powerful

One of the most distinctive features of our modern culture is distractedness. The internet, with all its quick entertainment, sits ready at hand. It’s on our phones, TVs, and laptops, and billions of dollars go into what they call the “attention economy,” in which those who win are those who get us to look at their stuff. Indeed, the colossal machinery of the economy has shifted much of its resources to a simple goal: pull people’s attention toward whatever videos, games, products, etc. we want them to see. Wherever there is mass attention, cash floods in. As a result, all those devices in our hands and houses have been used to effectively hack our brains and train us to look where they want us to. They know with chilling accuracy exactly what grabs our attention, and with this knowledge they keep us scrolling and tapping and clicking, trained like circus elephants, though perhaps not with such good memories. After all, “elephants never forget,” but distracted people forget all sorts of things.

The thesis of Cal Newport’s most popular book, Deep Work, coincides with the research from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s monumental work, Flow, and Daniel Goleman’s Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence. Really, there’s lots of work on the subject, and when you put it all together, here’s the picture that emerges: deep focus is both highly effective and increasingly rare. In one hour of focused work, a person will accomplish more than during four hours of semi-distracted work; so, as the world continues drifting toward distraction, focus has become something of a modern superpower.

On the practical level, building focus is like building a muscle. If you’ve let your focus muscles shrivel by endless internet scrolling and TV binges, it will be hard at first to shut out all the noise and focus deeply. You’ve been hacked, and your focus muscles can lift only so much. Even so, if you’ve found your reason to keep going, then do it. Keep going. Those muscles will grow.

Be aware, too, that the “flow” or “deep work” state can be not merely powerful but also pleasant, if not exhilarating. You see what needs to be done, you engage a challenging project, and you witness yourself expand into greater skill or knowledge. Time seems to disappear altogether, and for a time, there’s only the task in front of you. Ironically, the very part of our brains that “rewards” us for all the scrolling and clicking is the same part of the brain that rewards us for deep focus. The difference, however, is that one involves people essentially tricking us into viewing cheap content, and when the dopamine rush is finished, we discover that we’re tired, anxious, and unfulfilled; whereas the other involves pursuing a goal of our choosing, and when the dopamine rush is finished, we find that we’ve done something we’re proud of and that aligns with our values. Which version of tiredness would you rather have?

Great work comes out of great rest

Deep focus isn’t easy, and like building any muscle, it must be supported by regular periods of rest. But not all rest is equally restful. It may seem perfectly restful, for instance, to lounge around watching movies all day. I’ve certainly had my fair share of such days, and they are restful—to a degree. Far better is the deep rest that comes from praying, meditating, reading, or hiking.

“But those activities are the opposite of restful!” you protest, to which I reply, “That depends on what you mean by ‘rest.’” I, for instance, practice law, which involves a lot of sitting, writing, and talking on the phone. I’m not physically exhausted by my work, and a hike is therefore a shift from one form of exertion to another, from mental to physical. The science on the subject is clear: physical exertion, not to mention time in nature, strengthens and refreshes the mind. Even a lunchtime walk around the block goes a long way. A Saturday hike is even better. This distinction illustrates a straightforward axiom: Some forms of exertion bolster others.

“Fine,” you say, “but how can praying, meditating, or reading be restful? Those involve mental exertion.” It’s true. How can I, for instance, call something like reading restful when my job involves so much reading? Won’t more reading further exhaust me in precisely the way I’m already exhausted? Not at all, for there’s a serious difference between reading case law and reading, say, War and Peace or Mere Christianity. Thus, not only is not all effort the same, but not even all mental effort is the same. In a similar pattern to what we’ve already seen, some forms of mental exertion can bolster others. A ten-minute chess game between tasks, for instance, is drastically more energizing than a ten-minute social media scroll, even though time-pressured chess is far more mentally taxing than laughing at memes.

That said, it is in prayer and meditation that I find the deepest, most energizing rest of all; and here, we proceed into an aspect of rest that cannot, for me, be distinguished from my life in Christ. There is a certain stillness of spirit that requires great mental effort and feels very unnatural, yet staggering mental energy comes in the wake of it. My prayers, for instance, are not requests to God nearly so often as they are simply quieting myself before God and offering my frail body and mind to Him. Without fail, He shows up, and I see myself for what I am—a tiny droplet from His ocean of wisdom and power. In the presence of that ocean, I am deeply fortified.

Similarly, meditation for me is to contemplate what is good and true and beautiful—above all, it is to contemplate God himself. As the Psalmist says, the one “who meditates on God’s law day and night is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.” Though effortful, such meditations indeed leave me with a sort of tranquil purposefulness that is not easily uprooted. Isaiah predicted some 700 years before Jesus walked the Earth that after Jesus came, His followers would “be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.”

The overarching point here is that the quality of your rest affects the quality of your work. Great rest breeds great work.

You can do more than you think

One time in college, I overslept and made our entire track team late for an out-of-state meet. My coach instructed me quite sternly on the way that if I didn’t run my best time yet, he would make me—a sprinter, mind you—run with our world-class marathoners for a week. Unsurprisingly, I ran my best time yet. I knew marathoning would be the end of me. Afterward, my coach, grinning from ear to ear, slapped me on the back and said, “See? It’s all mental.”

I learned one very important lesson that day: set multiple alarms. An even greater lesson was what Mark Divine calls the 20X Factor, this realization that we can do a lot more than we think we can, that we are limiting ourselves from the inside far more often than any external limitation is the culprit. We are so quick to say, “If only I had this one thing, then I would be able to accomplish more.” Almost invariably, we’re lying to ourselves. As often as we get that “one thing”—more money, more time, a home gym, whatever—we learn that our own self-control was always the real holdup. It’s just easier to blame external limitations than to admit the internal ones.

Earlier this week, I read an article about John Owen, a theologian who deeply influenced some of the thinkers who’ve shaped me, and came across a staggering paragraph:

In spite of all that pressure in those nine years, with a child dying every third year, he wrote 22 books. He was staying up too late and getting too little sleep, which he did regret in his latter days of suffering, that he had treated his body so poorly. But you know, when I hear men of this caliber, this quantity of output, and this depth of output, begrudge the labor because of its later effects, I take it with a grain of salt. Because I, frankly, am deeply, deeply thankful that, in spite of losing children, the pressures of a deanship and of being a preacher, he stayed up late for me and for you.

Apparently, one of those 22 books was over 650 pages long, and these aren’t your cheap erotica novels we’re talking about. They were immensely deep and thoughtful—thoughtful enough to influence some of the most brilliant thinkers I’ve read. How did he do it?

Reading that section had a similar effect on me as reading Edmund Morris’s The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt—namely, to think, “Come on, Kory! What are you doing with your time? Not nearly enough; that’s for sure.”

It’s been in vogue among my Christian friends for the past few years to take aim at Philippians 4:13, where Paul writes, “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.” My friends want to be careful not to promote a “health and wealth Gospel” interpretation that makes a person think they can start a successful business through Christ who strengthens them, or win a football game through Christ who strengthens them, or pass an exam they didn’t study for through Christ who strengthens them. That’s not what the verse is about, they insist.

And I agree, but only to a point. Taken in context, Philippians 4:13 would indeed be more accurately stated, “I can endure all things through Christ who strengthens me.” That said, there are plenty of other passages that say essentially what has been popularly misinterpreted from Philippians 4:13. How about Psalm 18:28-29? “For by my God I can run against a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall.” Or how about Jesus’ words in John 14:14? “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” Anything? Well, that’s what He said. Or rather, anything in His name. And this is the same Jesus who said, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Nothing? Well, yet again, that’s what He said—that is, assuming you have a teensy bit of faith.

I’ve never seen anyone Mario-leap over a battlement or toss a mountain, and I know lots of faithful Christians. Must I therefore take these passages to be false? Not any more than my wife should take it as false when I say I would retrieve the moon for her. She knows what I’m really saying is that I would go to extraordinary lengths to make her happy. She also knows the moon isn’t going anywhere, even if she asks for it. And even if I had the power to bring her the moon, I don’t think she would appreciate the gesture if I handed it to her. Sometimes, the worst thing you can do to a person is give them what they asked for.

So, just as faith cannot be measured in ounces, thus rendering “faith the size of a mustard seed” logically impossible, there is little reason to think any Christian would have reason to ask Jesus to throw mountains around. The metaphor survives nonetheless. While He may not toss you over a wall—which would be about as useful to you as the moon would be to my wife—He might just enable a man like John Owen to endure hardships and busyness that puts us all to shame yet still churn out earth-shattering books at a rate of more than two per year. Of course, I don’t mean his books literally broke the Earth into pieces, but perhaps my point is coming through.

At any rate, what an incredible feat by John Owen. To me, as a writer, it in fact looks about as superhuman as leaping over a battlement. Whatever source of strength and wisdom he tapped into must have been truly extraordinary. Had you asked him, he would have told you it was extraordinary indeed: an ocean of which he was only a droplet.

***

It is tragically ironic how “busy” and yet unfocused so many of us have become. In the same breath as I’m informed of someone’s busyness, they tell me they binged the entirety of some TV show over the weekend, and the irony appears totally lost on them. That’s the world we live in—with access to more luxuries and conveniences than the vast bulk of historical kings, yet feeling busier than we’ve ever felt.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is an older, calmer, sturdier way. Consider Jeremiah 6:16:

This is what the Lord says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”

How fascinating to see talk of “ancient paths” in a book written in the seventh century B.C. Some, in fact, even fault the Bible for its oldness, which I find about as rational as faulting water for its oldness. People have always needed water; they always will. And when people have walked the “ancient paths” described in Jeremiah, they have always thrived. Often, along the way, they’ve found themselves accomplishing more than anyone thought possible.

So can you.