I Look At The List Instead Of Working

Four times this week.

Monday morning, standing up, with a coffee. Wednesday evening. Friday, twice, once in the car for some reason.

And nothing came off it.

Here is what makes this so hard to see as a problem. Reading the list is not idleness. It takes attention. It produces a clear sense of the state of things, which is genuinely useful information, and it leaves a man with the feeling of having engaged with the situation.

That feeling is the whole difficulty. It is almost exactly the feeling that doing the work produces, and it arrives in ninety seconds rather than in an hour, and no part of a tired man is going to turn that down on a Wednesday evening.

So the list gets read, and the feeling arrives, and the appetite that was going to drive the work has been satisfied by something that cost nothing and changed nothing.

You are a man who has been getting the feeling without the work, and a list read four times has never once been the same as a job started.

Be ye doers of the word

There is an instruction in James about a specific substitution, and the reason it is the right verse is that it names a mechanism rather than a fault.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. (James 1:22, King James Version)

Deceiving your own selves.

That sounds harsh on a first reading and it is not a charge. It is a description of what hearing does, and the thing being described is a mechanical effect rather than a moral one.

Hearing produces something. It produces the internal state of having taken a thing in, which is closely related to the state of having acted on it and is much easier to obtain. And because the two states resemble each other, one gets mistaken for the other, and that is the deception being named.

You have a mechanism named here rather than a fault, and a state that resembles doing has never once been the same as doing. James 1:22 describes what hearing produces, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps that a description rather than an accusation.

And notice what is not being said. Hearing is not condemned. The instruction is not to stop hearing.

It says hearers only. The word only is carrying the whole of it, and it means the trouble is not in the hearing, it is in the hearing standing alone where something else should have followed.

You were never told to stop reading the list, and the word only has never once been a word against the thing it qualifies. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies the doing, and the written word says hearers only rather than saying hearers.

The feeling is real and it is being spent

So here is the practical claim, and it is about a budget of something other than time.

There is a finite amount of willingness in a man on a Wednesday evening. Not time, and not energy exactly. The specific thing that gets a person up out of a chair.

Reading the list spends it. That is the finding. It does not top it up and it does not sharpen the appetite. It satisfies it, partially, and what is left afterward is not enough to get anybody out of a chair.

You have been spending the thing that gets a man up, and ninety seconds of reading has never once been free of the appetite it consumed. James 1:22 names the substitution plainly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man where a resource is actually going.

And here is why that is worth knowing rather than depressing.

The resource is not gone. It has been misdirected, which is a completely different situation from being exhausted, because misdirection can be corrected in one evening and exhaustion cannot.

You were never out of willingness, and something that was spent in the wrong direction has never once been the same as something that ran out. The Spirit of God is the one who redirects rather than replenishes, and James 1:22 sets the doing against the hearing only rather than against a man being tired.

And one more, and it is what makes the assignment possible at all. You do not need the list to work.

You have items in your head right now that came off that page, and a man who has read a list four times has never once needed to read it a fifth to know what is on it. James 1:22 asks for doing rather than for more information, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an unread page enough.

Close it unread, and do the first thing you remember

Here is the assignment and the first instruction is the whole design.

Close the list without reading it.

If it is in a drawer, leave the drawer shut. If it is on a phone, do not open the application. If it is on the wall, walk past it without letting your eyes settle.

You have a page tonight that does not need reading, and a list already read four times has never once had anything new in it. James 1:22 asks for doers rather than for better informed hearers, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing there while a man walks past his own list.

Then go and do the first thing you can remember from it.

Not the most important one. Not the one you would have chosen if you had read it. The first one that comes to mind, which will take about a second and a half to arrive.

And here is why the remembered one is the right one. Remembering it costs nothing. Looking it up costs the ninety seconds and the feeling that comes with them, and the feeling is the thing this evening is protecting.

Do it for twenty minutes. Then stop.

And if it turns out you did the wrong item, that is fine, and it was still an item, and a wrong item done is worth considerably more than a right item read about four times.