I’m a logical kind of person. If someone tells me something, I am not likely to believe it by default. I will be skeptical. I want to have data, evidence, and logic supporting everything I do.
That said, I have had to come to terms with the fact that not everything is logical. Sometimes, you have to go with your gut. Your feelings sometimes lie, but sometimes they don’t.
And, sometimes you just have to trick yourself. A practical example for me is the blog I am writing to you. Logic, reason, and data suggests this should be a 2,000+ word blog post around some highly-researched search term that makes it more likely you’ll show up.
But I am not doing the logical thing right now.
Instead, I am doing the thing that feels right. It feels right to share my thoughts with you, regardless of what I think you want to read. It feels right to voice my opinion. It just feels right to write what I am thinking instead of trying to constantly strategize about it.
Even now, I am tempted to click the button in the top right of my text editor and check the word count. Why? Because I’m logical. I know that if this post is not at least 300 words long, Google won’t care very much about it.
But who am I trying to please? Google? You? Maybe I should just write what I feel should be said—no more, no less—word count notwithstanding.
A second lesson from this post, then, is to be wary of artificial effort. If you are constantly making decisions based on external input alone, or based on logic alone, maybe that’s why you are rarely happy and trying to do work that is unsustainable.
The “logical” choice isn’t always the right one. The sustainable choice might be the right one. The emotionally-charged choice might be the right one. The one that goes against the grain might be the right one.
Don’t be afraid to make the choice that feels right. That feeling is rarely wrong.