The Plan and Execution of Joy

There's a very popular quote from Ira Glass, the prodigious storyteller and producer of This American Life, that talks about The Gap. While the original quote is from an interview in 2009, it became extremely popular through a typographic video by artist Daniel Sax.

Nobody tells people who are beginners…and I really wish someone had told this to me, is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there's a gap. For the first couple of years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good, okay? It's not that great. It's trying to be good, it has the potential to be good but it's not that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer! And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean?

A lot of people never get past that phase, a lot of people quit. And the thing that I would just say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste, and they could tell what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. It didn't have that special thing that we wanted it to have. And the thing that I would say to you is - everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you're going through it right now, if you're just getting out of that phase, you gotta know it's totally normal.

The most important possible thing you could do is do a lot of work, do a huge volume of it. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you're going to finish one story. Because it's only actually going through a volume of work that you're going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you're making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while, it's gonna take you a while, it's normal to take a while and you just have to fight your way through that. Okay?

But what if it's not The Gap that makes people quit? What if it's something else?

—

I discovered this quote from Ira when I was in my junior year of college. YouTube's algorithm, stellar even 13 years ago, showed me the original interview at a time when I was impostor syndrom-ing through my Computer Science degree. I didn't think I could make it through the next couple years or ever get a half decent job (and I'd have wasted my parents' fortune and I'd be a disgrace to the family). Fortunately none of that happened.

As much as the quote is about creativity, it really underscores the truth of sticking through the messy middle of anything you pursue. It served me when I discovered storytelling (and the required courage to get on stage). But it also served me when I seriously got into running and then into squash.

When I ran my first mile in 2016, I did it for the purpose of tiring out my newly adopted dog, Oreo. Through the joy of running with Oreo, I accidentally discovered the joy in running itself. Each additional mile ran made me want to push the distance further - from a 5k to 5 miles to a 10k to a half marathon. While the distances increased, the goal remained the same - enjoy the run, don't worry about the pace. Then as the distances became easier and I started to prepare for my first marathon, the pace, the heart rate, the VO2 Max, the Personal Record (PR), they all started to take a lot more center stage.

On my Zone 2 training runs, simply looking at my watch and noticing I was in Zone 3 would push my heart rate higher. Heart rate up, mental spiral down.

On race day itself, even though I'd never run 26.2 miles before, meeting my smartwatch's projected time became more important than soaking in the love from the crowds - the thing that made me want to run the New York City Marathon in the first place!

The body bonked at mile 16. I wanted to take an Uber home at mile 18. At mile 19 I gave up the idea of any kind of PR and went back to the original motivation - enjoy the run, don't worry about the pace. Those last 7 miles are still the most painful yet memorable miles I've ever run (and the people of New York on race day make it the greatest city ever)!

After I ran my second marathon the following year, I was burnt out. I hit pause on running till I found joy in wanting to do it again.

—

During my sabbatical last year, I picked squash back up - another game I fell in love with over 16 years ago! Squash and I had an on-again, off-again relationship in that period, very much like the Before Trilogy by Richard Linklater. But this time was different. I noticed squash brought me the same joy that running brought me all those years ago. I wanted to play because it felt good! And that feeling of goodness made me want to be better at that game.

As I played more consistently and played more competitively, my rating started to go up. The further up I went in my boxes, the more I'd obsess over every aspect of my game - “I didn't volley enough”, “I didn't drive the ball back”, “I missed too many serves”, or “I didn't finish the point when I could”. The analysis helped, the game got better. I started to keep a squash journal. Before I walked onto the court I would write a "Plan" in my journal; then after every session I'd update it with my "Execution." Reflecting helped me see patterns, helped me prepare for future games.

Then 3 weeks ago, at my highest squash rating in my life, I went on my worst losing streak so far. Each loss made me obsess over the Plan more. Every time I entered the court, the weight of the previous loss compounded the pressure of the match ahead of me. Heart rate up, mental spiral down. Pressure led to mistakes, mistakes led to loss.

But I noticed that after the match when I played just to play, the game would come back, almost like magic. What was going on?

—

If you watch the original Ira Glass interview, there's one small thing Ira says that often gets cut from the edited version. He shares this small example to drive the point home on what he means by "taste". He says,

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. You wanna make TV because you LOVE TV. You know what I mean? Because it's stuff you just like, LOVE! So you get into this thing and I don't even know how to describe it but there's like a gap….

The LOVE of the thing, whatever it may be. The love of it. He drives the point home a couple of times.

You get into this thing - running, squash - because you love it! It brings you some kind of joy, despite your ability not matching up to your taste. But the joy gets corrupted by the pressure to be good, the pressure to close The Gap. You lose the essence of why you got in the game!

—

Before my next squash match, I wrote out my Plan again. This time, it only said two words:

Have Fun.

I played my match. It was close, but I lost again. However, when I reflected on my Execution I wrote:

Had Fun.

Tomorrow I hope to go on my first run in over a year.