How are things? Fine. How much longer until you’re finished? I’m almost there.

I tell lies all the time. I don’t usually mean to lie. When I’m busy, and I’m working, a status check can be difficult to provide. I may be busy with other things, so I don’t have that information.

Or, I may be obsessesed with where I think I should be. That mindset is the troubling one. It should only take me an hour. I should have that done in a jiffy. I can do that one ASAP. None of these are healthy relationships with our work.

If I’m supposed to be fast, smart, productive, I can really disconnect from reality.

What works for me is to push small, imperfect things. I’m delivering this draft of this essay, not because it’s as good as I can make it, but it’s all the time I can give this post tonight. A lot of important ideas like impostor syndrome, career development, accountability, anxiety, professionalism, time management skills, project management skills, collaboration with people who can assist me–all of this is being left out. You know I could do a better job. I know I could do a better job. But I’ve delivered a job. And that works.

Another thing that works for me is to keep working on the fundamentals. You may know Edvard Munch from The Scream. If you’d like to really get to know him, play this collection of 1,640 works. Notice how many times he’s painted a pair of horses driving towards the viewer, or his father, or many other subjects. Over and over, he works the fundamentals, works the things that he never finishes. Life can be about curating our obsessions, which is very different than a false relationship with our own work. We see the same things from many perspectives until we start to see the whole.

So I’m delivering this draft. I’m learning to work in an open way. It’s healthy to maintain this in everything I do.