The Kinetic Mirage

For months while building Arete, I encountered a familiar template for my day.

I would be sitting at the computer as the clock crept farther into the night, exhausted and barely able to keep my dry eyes open. Slowly uncrumpling my hunched position, feeling the bones in my neck and back crack and staring blankly at the screen, I’d reflect on another seemingly endless day “at work.”

When I was a teacher, a “productive day” was easy to define. And honestly, the majority of my productivity metrics were predetermined: rehearsal plans, printing music, emails, etc.

But now, when entire days dissolve into seated captivity and the mind numbing cycle of keyboard taps and mouse clicks, there are days when I look blankly at my hands, long after the sun has set, wondering What did I actually accomplish today?

Among the many challenges entrepreneurship presents, defining meaningful waypoints is a particularly tricky skill to master.

Some days you feel like you moved a mountain and others you are convinced you have effectively traded a day of your finite human life for a handful of digital dust.

This experience is not merely an occasional frustration; it is a recurring tax on our creative spirits. It comes from repeatedly sitting down to do work, only to realize that we have mistaken staying busy for true progress.

Recently, I was scrolling through TikTok and came across a creator exploring the thin line between two human behaviors we often unconsciously confuse: taking action and efforting.

Taking action, according to her, is deliberate, calculated behavior that moves you decisively in the direction of your objectives. It is the act of executing the hard, essential task that genuinely advances you—writing the difficult chapter, making the pitch, or building the unglamorous architecture of your enterprise.

“Efforting,” by contrast, is the psychological equivalent of adult industrial busywork, disguised as productivity. When we are efforting, we are tinkering with an inconsequential piece of a project, fidgeting with color palettes, and endlessly tweaking systems that are already perfectly functional.

We do these things because they make us feel good.

They provide a cheap, immediate dopamine hit of false efficacy, assuring us that because our bodies and minds are in constant motion, we must be moving forward.

The more aware I become of my behavior patterns, the more I see these little sprints on the hamster wheel veiled as productivity.

This behavior is a plague I try to be conscious of.

I truly do.

I attempt to maintain a gentle, ongoing internal audit, including asking myself in the middle of a work session: Is this specific task right now truly the most important? 

But focused awareness is an iterative discipline, and I certainly do not get it right every time.

I must constantly resist the temptation to slip into the familiar comfort of pedantic minutiae. After all, it is far easier to spend an afternoon adjusting the formatting of a spreadsheet or refactoring an elegant but non-essential block of code than it is to confront the terrifying blank page.

Efforting can often act as our subconscious buffer against the terror of failure. If we never finish the core task because we are “too busy” perfecting, we never have to face the judgment of the world.

For the perfectionist soul, like me, it can quickly become the ultimate coping mechanism.

One caveat, though, is that practical boundary between “efforting” and “action” is highly subjective. There is genuine cognitive difficulty in prioritizing multi-faceted projects, and a foundation is laid one brick at a time. A special kind of vision is required to see the individual stone as part of a larger picture, but not to get too caught up in the brick itself.

We must also recognize that the effects of action are not immediately visible. This is primarily what is meant by the adage, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” It takes repeated, calculated effort to build a city, but it also requires strategic planning and patience.

Over time, parsing this distinction has forced me to develop an intimate, unblinking familiarity with my own cognitive architecture. Self-discovery is not a passive realization; it is an active, forensic study of one's own habits, focus patterns, and structural rhythms.

One such pattern that I think doesn’t get enough consideration is the fluctuating caliber of mental energy available at any given point in the day. We think that we can just “power through,” relying on sheer force of will and determination. While there is merit to strengthening our mental grit, it must be balanced with the recognition that our cognitive capacity waxes and wanes, peaks and recedes, and varies from day to day and season to season.

If I postpone high-cognitive demands until the fading light of the late afternoon, the experience becomes utterly miserable. I become defensive, sluggish, and easily distracted.

And not to mention cranky.

I do not show up as my highest self.

Conversely, I have discovered that low-energy, highly creative tasks flow beautifully in the evening.

Understanding your internal calendar is a vital element of living an uninterrupted, sincere life. Yet, even with this elaborate map of my internal workflow, the shadow of efforting still falls across my days and it seems as though I spent my finest hours merely shuffling papers.

The consequences of efforting are difficult to spot, at least immediately, and sometimes we don’t know about them until we realize the boat is already half-filled with water.

Through Tampa Bay Tech Week, I got the opportunity to set up an exhibition table to showcase Arete, hand out business cards, and connect directly with the local community.

I had known about this event for months.

Did I, at any point during the sixty-ish days leading up to the event, allocate time to design the banner or my physical marketing materials?

(Chidingly) No.

In all fairness, mismanaged time and priorities were partially to blame, and there is undoubtedly the sympathetic recognition that I am only one person with only 24 hours in a day. But, also in a nonjudgemental acknowledgement, rolled up in there was efforting in the digital backend masquerading as “not enough hours in the day.”

The result was predictable: a chaotic scramble at the absolute last second. I found myself paying an exorbitant $150 in rush-shipping fees just to ensure my materials arrived on time. Worse still, because the banner was thrown together in a frantic panic, the final print quality was sub-optimal.

This was an entirely self-inflicted wound.

Yet, there is a profound liberation in acknowledging this without wrapping it in shame. It is simply an honest observation of a hidden pattern.

To outgrow our self sabotage, we must be willing to acknowledge it.

The trap of efforting thrives because it masterfully conflates two distinct states of being: motion and momentum.

Motion can be completely directionless. It can be erratic, ever-changing, looping back upon itself in a closed circle. Think of a rocking chair: it is in constant motion, consuming kinetic energy, yet it never leaves the porch.

There are times in the human experience, of course, where motion is exactly what we need. We need to be pliable, flexible, and receptive to the shifting currents of life. This is where our emotions live—fluid, fleeting, and intensely responsive to our environment. The word emotion itself shares its linguistic root with motion, representing the internal weather pattern of the soul, requiring a certain degree of…non-linear pliability. Put more simply, allowing ourselves to “go with the flow.”

Momentum, however, is an entirely different creature. Momentum requires a vector; a single, unwavering direction. It is mass in motion, carrying us in a specific trajectory toward a defined destination. Not all motion creates momentum, but momentum can never be birthed without motion.

A truncated version of Newton’s First Law of Motion reads, “objects in motion will stay in motion, at a constant speed and in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force.” This is equally applicable to physical objects as it is as a philosophical metaphor. If we wish to change the trajectory of our lives, we must alter the internal vector.

On the underbelly of this distinction between motion and momentum, efforting and action, is the underlying importance of the unquantifiable spaces where we find true creativity and open ourselves to accidental discovery. We are often pushed this narrative that productivity is clearly defined, has measurable outcomes, and that productivity always leads to progress.

While we must not completely forgo the productive action that moves the needle, we must also leave room for sincerity and play. It is a balance like anything else, and to help find this balance we must be willing to accept the invitation of meandering motion.

Why do we fall into the trap of efforting so readily?

Why do we crave the busywork?

I think the answer lies, at least in part, in our deep, systemic addiction to the concept of the blueprint—the desperate, comforting need for a "how-to."

I confess that I struggle deeply with this desire.

I am someone who inherently craves a manual. I want the step-by-step instructions; I want the absolute reassurance of a proven methodology. It is natural to seek the safety in guarantees, but to desire to autopilot our entire lives is quite the slippery slope.

It is deeply frustrating to realize that in the realm of true personal excellence and spiritual maturity (and in entrepreneurship) there is no universal how-to.

There is no pre-packaged blueprint waiting to be discovered in the bookstore or on YouTube.

And this truth is a rude awakening for anyone who has faced it.

We spend our formative years being handed the ultimate automated blueprint by society.

We are given an incredibly seductive, sequential script: graduate high school, secure a college degree, obtain a predictable job, find a partner, buy a house, raise children, and diligently deposit a fixed percentage of your income into a retirement account for 30-40 years.

If you follow these instructions, you are promised a happy, stable existence. And, one day, if you play by the rules, you will finally “earn” the freedom to do the things you actually enjoy.

We fall into this institutional script because it allows us to completely automate our existence, sparing us the terrifying burden of asking the grand, existential questions of our lives, like who would you be, uninterrupted?

We do not have to design a strategic long game or evaluate our unique place in the universe because someone else has already drawn the lines for us to color inside.

The path to achieving an authentic, unrepeatable level of personal excellence requires us to fully relinquish this addiction to external validation and prescriptive formulas.

Which, I have found, is a difficult truth to confront.

The personal development industry—the very market in which I operate—is largely propped up by selling the illusion of the universal how-to.

From the micro-influencer to Tony Robbins, there is a sea of self-help sharks eager to prey on our desire to find a magic formula.

COVID, for better or for worse, brought about the rise of the digital creator; the courses and coaching, and “sell what you know.” Join my masterclass to learn exactly how I built my business; follow my ninety-day affirmation journal; adopt my specific diet and workout regime. 

This is not to diminish the genuine value of mentorship, credibility, or structured coaching. These programs are often born from beautiful intentions, created by individuals who I believe sincerely wish to offer their lived experiences as an act of service to the world.

Furthermore, I continue to benefit from the experiences of others, and actively seek guidance and mentorship from those who have been through similar fires and are eager to offer their wisdom.

But the paradox is that their how-to cannot be my how-to.

We must always pair practical advice with personal application. When we mindlessly buy into these prescriptive plans, expecting identical outcomes and short cuts, we are feeding a profound delusion.

The unsettling, liberating truth is that there is no how-to other than you.

There is no singular way to be an artist, an entrepreneur, a writer, or even an exceptional customer service agent. There is only your way of navigating the terrain. Tethering yourself to someone else's blueprint only makes you perpetually anticipatory for a clarity that will never arrive from the outside.

Another’s experience can certainly help us avoid legitimate pitfalls, stumps and bumps in the road, and mitigate real-world realities. And these institutional scripts can preserve our cognitive capital. The undercurrent, though, is our own discovery of our unique way forward.

My best friend and I have had an ongoing joke for years. Every few weeks, one of us will inevitably send a text or say over a phone call, "I just need to get my life together this weekend," or, "Let me get my life together, and then I'll get back to you." 

We laugh about it because it is a playful, universal human concession.

But beneath the humor lies a quieter, more stubborn truth. We have been repeating this refrain for years, yet the same structural challenges keep resurfacing.

It turns out that life is an exceptionally patient and persistent teacher. It will continue to present you with the exact same lesson, wrapped in different circumstances, until you finally learn it.

If you find yourself standing in the exact same emotional or professional clearing year after year, lamenting the same lack of progress, and assuming you want to get out of that loop, one avenue of escape may be found in examining your efforting.

Where are you potentially mistaking the meandering for true action?

Breaking this cycle requires us to move away from searching for a comfortable step-by-step guide and instead learning to cultivate a profound trust in our own intuition.

So we ask a more nuanced question: How can I know, in the absence of an external map, that the step I am taking right now is aligned with the identity I am trying to build? 

This alignment does not come from a magical foresight that reveals the entire road ahead. It comes from the quiet, internal resonance that occurs when you finally stop hiding behind the illusion of preparation and step boldly into the work.

Your job is not to find the right path; it is to realize that the path is created entirely by the print of your own foot.

Until next time, live uninterrupted.
~Coleman