As a society, it seems that we’re re-evaluating work, energy, and time. Two years into a pandemic that has upturned patterns and/or systems we interact with on a daily basis, we’re questioning things we possibly hadn’t ever before—or at least not quite like this.

Collectively, we’re finding ourselves emboldened to have more of a say in what our days look like—and how we feel moving through them.

So what might it look like to make sustainability a priority in a world driven by productivity? 

An age-old question, with emerging relevance.

We posed the question below to the Lightward team and they weighed in with some practical, insightful, and refreshingly-provocative responses—maybe even sparks for your own reimagining.

What’s a practice/rhythm/mindset/mantra of yours that might feel counterintuitive to productivity, but is inherent to the sustainability of what you do here at Lightward?

Erica

For me, it's finding time during the day to express myself creatively. Sometimes that means morning and midday dance parties, which gets my body moving. Other times I sit down to doodle or work on creating music with samples and loops. Taking a pause from problem-solving in this way resets my brain. Sometimes it provides me with a new vantage point to solve something or a new perspective on how I can show up for the next present moment.

Tristan

Seek your own ignorance to explore what you don’t understand, and use fear as an indicator.

I hold everything I think I know in a hierarchy of uncertainty. Some things have more certainty than others, some things have a tighter relationship to others, and some are more dependent on other things being “true”. In this model nothing is static, and almost certainly everything I think I know to be true, isn’t. This Model is just an evolving collaborative approximation of what we think we know so far, and how I’m interacting with that.

More practically this allows me to ask better questions and to be more aware of the framework I’m using to understand something. Check your assumptions—something might fit the model, but the model is always wrong. It makes it easier to see or accept when you’re wrong and to recognize contradictions. Fear, discomfort, and feeling stupid are usually an indicator of something important—often that you’re about to learn something.

This is useful day-to-day, as everything is a best effort. There’s room to be wrong, which allows space for something closer to being accurate to be seen. Finding the places you are wrong, or think something to be true, but isn’t, is some of the most valuable information to have. This can guide you to better understanding.

This can all be really unproductive, like throwing the shutter wide open and exposing for all the light—you end up with so much information, the image is just white. That’s why it’s useful to focus on something and then follow clues— to be an explorer and to remember this is fun. It hurts to try and look at everything at once, but there’s joy in finding a thing to focus on, and to start moving. If there are connections there you’ll find them, and it’s so satisfying doing that. The result might be a clearer picture of the world you’re moving through—and probably many more questions.

Be the light in the dark, and always be exploring, because it’s fun.

Ian

When striving for perfection in life, embrace imperfection. You can’t find or label perfect without first seeing imperfect. We can’t solve equations without knowing or running into the “wrong” answer.

Abe

I pay for convenience —I don't like doing some things, so I outsource it to gain my time and energy back. Even if it's like $10 for valet parking at the mall, I pay for it. It's easy, convenient, and I'd probably spend that on another thing that was also a desire like a drink at a coffee shop or a drink at a restaurant. I like to not think about things that aren't important to me and focus on the things that are!

Ken

I just want to leave a note here that I didn’t ignore this. I didn’t, and don’t, have any useful words to add. Sometimes there aren’t any, and that’s okay in my book. 

A conversation with Isaac caused us to realize that this is, unexpectedly, an answer to the prompt.

Rebekah

I take an hour in the middle of the workday for movement. Whether it's yoga, a run, or The Class —I find that changing up what my body's doing in the middle of the day helps me move new energy, new ideas through. Rather than staying glued to my chair, I find that my mind likes to find and gather new ideas, solutions, and angles via moving my body around.

Isaac

I don’t do deadlines, and I don’t promise people delivery/completion times. And I don’t generally have goals, or a roadmap—just a sense of what might be coming down the line. There are occasional exceptions to this stuff, but they are rare.

I’ve learned for myself that all of those things feel too much like killing off the future—and killing myself in the now, in a sense. A core aspect of aliveness for me is its emergent nature—surprising things coming forth all the time, going in all different directions. Aliveness tends to have a discernible path, when looking back on where it’s been, but to fix that path in place ahead of time feels like trading away the magic in exchange for…nothing I want. 

On the flip side, if I am indeed free and am inhabiting that freedom, the work that results feels organic and integrated. I end up making spaces that I enjoy being in, in my current form. And I’m prolific as hell when I’m in a space that I enjoy. 

I find myself vastly more productive when I feel fully free of any prior decisions re: what the future ought to look like. I move quickly, and I move well, and the way I do that best is with absolutely zero roadmap.

All of this applies solely to me and how I operate as an individual. The way it applies to the exterior world (including my collaborators) varies, case by case—except that I am sharply mindful to not over-promise others in a way that would leave me unhelpfully tethered. Some tethers are good and important, and I am very careful to distinguish between helpful and unhelpful as I go.

Alicia

I am very prone to anxiety around choice/option/big life shifts. I started last year saying I wanted to try and live a year where I made every choice out of hope, not fear.

It's been one of the most simple and clarifying shifts—though sometimes this mantra or stance is more of an invitation to a deep dive. Sometimes it's as simple as engaging my gut-sense and looking through the lens of where is the energy around this choice flowing from? And if I find myself making a choice out of scarcity or shame because “there may not be something better,” then I commit to not making that choice and to wait for the thing that creates a sense of abundance. I'm not perfect with it, but I've moved from wanting that for a year to wanting that kind of life!

Jed

I find that staying active is something that affects a lot of other areas of my life related to mental and physical well-being. It's pretty priceless having the ability to pause work at any time and go to the gym, or take a walk or go on a little hike, etc. and not have it only limited to a rushed lunch hour, knowing that you all don't have specific expectations as for when I'll be online.

Matt

One: Spending time working out and focusing on health during the day instead of sitting at my desk the entire time makes me more productive.

Two: Making decisions today that will lead to sustainable growth. Sometimes that means not taking the path that will generate the most revenue in this moment, sometimes that means only providing a level of support that is sustainable and being honest with the customer about the fact that we can only do what is sustainable. Sometimes that means relying on freelancers and developers to meet the needs of our merchants instead of keeping it all in house, sometimes that means saying we'll pass on an opportunity. Sometimes that means making decisions to ensure we are going to love the jobs we are building based on the decisions we make today.