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I aspire to be one of those people who leave this planet without a stone left unturned. No, I have no desire to live a painfully long life nor do I dream of immortality. What I really want is to reach the end, completely done, at ease with the fact that I reached my full potential. I think deep down that’s true for a lot of us; especially those of us who intentionally try to make our lives more productive. I’m a card carrying member of that club; the further I go into this journey, the more I learn.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the kinds of activities involved in accomplishing anything. I was aware of it in the context of proffesional work but eventually I started seeing it everywhere: business, hobbies, relationships running, pretty much any meaningful activity. Each of them involves two kinds of activities: Core work and glue work.
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Think of core work as the center piece, the verb that describes the activity. The actual act of writing, surfing, playing an instrument, [insert your hobby]. It is typically performed solo, with some intensity and in short intervals. From the outset, it appears deceivingly easy. Anyone can do the thing, or try at least once; but that’s not enough to make one a doer of the thing. Writing a paragraph, is crucial to becoming a writer, in fact writers simply write several multiples of those paragraphs. Stopping at one paragraph accomplishes nothing more than just that, writing one paragraph. To be a writer, you’d need to write a lot more. Ideally it is possible to simply do core work, but in practice you need another dimension: glue work.
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Glue work is like the hero’s sidekick. Without it the hero would fail miserably, but they hardly come to mind when you recall the movie. As the name suggests glue work is the background work, the context, the ether around the core work. It likely involves planning, communicating, connecting and coordinating with other people. Sometimes it can be more time consuming than the core thing itself. Rock climbing illustrates this best. I haven’t done a ton of climbing but I made notes from the few times I did. I learnt that a 2 hour gym session might amount to 20 minutes or less of actual climbing. The rest of the time is all glue: belaying, resting, observing, connecting. Am not even accounting for the activities that happened before the session: cordinating, keeping up with news and everything that goes into maintaining the identity of a climber. One might argue that its all unnecessary but I disagree. Glue provides direction, accountability and connection and that is what turns a casual hobby into a sustained practice.
Some things are heavy on core, some are mostly glue and the rest are somewhat balanced. This has a lot to do with the the nature of activity as well as the mode of operation. For instance photography as a hobby is mostly core work but starting a photography involves a lot more glue work to acquire and retain customers. Exercising for personal health is a lot less glue work than using exercise to build community. Glue work is expansive, it can stretch out to however much time you have available. For this reason, it is important to reserve it for a few things, ideally these are things we want to be known for and the reward is proportional.
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This framework has helped me figure out the right mode of operation for the things that fill my cup. For instance, I’m in hobby mode when it comes to running, I neither track nor share it nor talk about it unprompted, I’m fulfilled just doing the core work. I’m freeing up glue time for relationships and business. Framing it this way helps define my identity and align my actions accordingly. I hope it helps you find fulfillment, or at least understand yourself better.