How We Do Our Best Work - The Work of Our Lives

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we work. How we do our best work. How we find our way to doing work we love and that makes a profound difference in our own lives and the lives of others. And how we setup our lives to do that kind of work.

(It’s also worth asking how many of us really get to do that work and how does the not doing of that kind of work shape the way we live? And the work we do instead? Something far deeper for another post.)

I continue to be inspired by the painter Hilma af Klint and how she took on a project that she didn’t fully know the contours of because she felt led to do so. That project — that work she took on without knowing what it would be — changed the trajectory of her life in a profound way.

Whenever I’m working on a project that I’m energized by, led to, but don’t quite know the full contours of yet, I think of Hilma. I think of her and I lean all the way into the not knowing until I eventually know.

It requires you to trust yourself during the not-knowing. It requires you to trust that you WILL sort it. You will know. There is no need for force.

All of the work I’m most proud of, the products I feel so good about creating or launching, have come from this process of allowing the not known to reveal itself without forcing it.

The big idea always comes.
The path through always appears.
You must TRUST.

If you ever get stuck while dreaming up something big, observe other people dreaming big. Artists, writers, entrepreneurs, athletes performing at their peak level. Anyone who is trying to do their best work – the work of their lives – can teach you something about what it looks like to be in that moment just before the whole thing snaps into place if you study them.