Ten Seconds to Feel It

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Earlier today I had lunch with a consciousness researcher who told me about her struggle with perfectionism. She sees the task and knows what needs to be done, but freezes when she tries to start. She can’t let herself finish anything without giving it 110%. I dabble in perfectionism myself. I know well the big aspirations, the vision of how I want things to look, and the realities of trying to achieve aspirations I place upon myself.

Deep down, work is not a rational task. It’s an emotional experience that frequently brings up feelings of inadequacy, doubt, shame, and stress. It can range from “If I do a bad job I’ll be fired and lose my house” to “They’ll know I’m not good enough” to “I’ll never figure this out,” and everything in between. You probably know it more as a reaction than as the feeling itself: that tightness when you face your to-do list, and all of a sudden all you want to do is get up, grab a snack, scroll Instagram, or chase one of a million other serotonin-inducing distractions.

Here’s the thing: the blocker is generally not the task itself. It’s the feeling I don’t want to face. I have the capacity to write the paragraph or send the email, but the activation energy to actually do it lives on the other side of the discomfort.

For the past few months I’ve been experimenting with this. When I hit that sticky moment, I tell myself it’s okay. It’s not that I’m not good enough, or that I can’t do it. It’s a feeling, and I can handle feelings. I sit. I breathe. I go through it, not around it.

This is where I get to draw on my religious studies background. Many of the skills and practices that allow for deep focus have spiritual roots. These are meditations, somatic practices, concentration exercises that historically may have pointed your mind toward a higher power, not an email chain. For me, that’s an exciting place to play. We have methods for sustained concentration and the space to innovate with where we focus that energy.

This past year I co-founded MonasteryX, a residency series blending meditation practice and deep work. We went in with a thesis: that meditating daily would let us work more deeply. It started in that fragmented way, going back and forth between meditation and work sessions. We’d wake for a 7am meditation, spend hours in pomodoro or solo deep work, then end the day with an evening sit. As the month wore on, I realized I didn’t want to keep switching between headspaces when the underlying mechanism was the same in both practices: deep, sustained focus.

So I started applying the meditation techniques directly to my work sessions. Breathe. Notice. Feel the tightening. Let it pass. Don’t judge. Don’t grasp. It’s somatic, physical, emotional. Rarely is it actually about your worth or your ability to complete the task.

This is what’s been alive for me while planning MonX, a six-day residency we’re hosting at the AKERA creative sanctuary this August. Full presence is hard, and we aren’t meant to do it alone, so we’re bringing in a meditation teacher and a deep work facilitator to guide us through merging two places where focus matters most. Imagine a pomodoro session where a meditation teacher invites you to notice what’s coming up. Imagine a meditation that lets you visualize what actually matters to you. It’s a week where you don’t have to associate productivity with the forced, heavy grind.

I don’t know yet what will come up for me in August. Possibly the same tightness I’ve felt at my laptop a hundred times before. But I’d like to find out what happens if, instead of forcing through it or fleeing into my phone, I just stay for the ten seconds it takes to actually feel it. I have a hunch that’s where the real work begins.

If this is calling to you, MonX runs August 2–7 at AKERA in the Catskills. You can read more and apply at meditationartifacts.org/monx.