The best way I can describe it is a “calling.” I see something—something being done in an inefficient way, a question asked, a powerful tool not being used—and I see possibilities. Ways to combine things, to expand things, or a small bit of connection that would make two things vastly more powerful. It’s a flash of opportunity.

The urge to drop whatever it is that I’m currently doing, and jump on the new opportunity is irresistible. Not quite absolutely irresistible, but it’s close. I don’t get distracted so much by things, but rather by the opportunity for me to take some action to create, integrate, combine, smash and rebuild better, rearrange and permute. Oh yes, it’s a calling. It’s almost an addiction.

Actually, maybe it is an addiction. An addiction to action?

Certainly, I’m biased towards action. That’s a good thing. As an agent—emotional too of course, but as a being who has agency—being biased towards action is a necessary component of being able to consistently affect the world.

However, I’ve come to believe that there’s such a thing as too much action. It’s completely possible, (exhibit ‘A’, me,) to attempt too much action, to do too much, and to lose oneself in a flurry of activity. I’m beginning to suspect that, now that I’m a master of taking action, I need to work on assessing leverage. Feel a calling? How much leverage would that action generate? How much good/benefit/creation/change would that action generate? How, as it were, does it multiply the actions of others?

That might be a theme for 2020: How much does it multiply?

ɕ