Minimum Viable Effort

Or, Attaining Maximum Chill

A few months ago, I made an annoying discovery: I was clenching my jaw while I made my morning smoothie. 

I wasn’t sure why. I’ve made the same smoothie hundreds of times. The steps and ingredients are all familiar to me. Yet, my body still tensed. My jaw tightened. My breathing constricted. My tongue pressed against the roof of my mouth. 

Once I noticed this, I realized I’m doing it pretty much all the time. Washing dishes. Meditating. Working. Writing these words. It’s like my personal somatic signature for exerting effort. It’s often subtle. But the more demanding the activity, the greater the tension that’s created.

I’m pretty sure I’ve always done this and just never noticed it before. 

I share this because I’ve found this subtle-contraction-thing to be a shitty default way of interacting with the world. It’s a gripping sensation, like my body is clenching into a fist around whatever I’m doing. It produces a feeling of inwardness, like gravity is pulling my eardrums together, which feels like the opposite of expansive states, like ease, playfulness, and joy.  

There are moments of reprieve, like hanging out with friends or taking a bath, but even in those moments, I notice the tension unwinds slowly, as if needing reassurance that another task isn’t lurking just around the corner. It only disappears completely during periods of prolonged relaxation or non-doing, like several days into a vacation or meditation retreat. These are usually among my happiest days or weeks. Certainly the most peaceful.

Do you do this subtle tensing thing too?

You can play with this right now if you want to. As you read these words, notice if you’re unnecessarily contracting or clenching anywhere. It may be between your eyes, or in your jaw, or your upper back. There may be ambient tension in the small muscles around your nose, cheeks, or ears. Then, consciously relax these areas if you can. You can even play with this visually. Rather than restricting your focus to just these words, try expanding your focus to also include everything around the screen. And then just rest for a moment, take a breath, and see what that feels like.

It will likely be a pleasant change. Perhaps there is a certain softness to it. You’re no longer subtly trying to control experience, but just effortlessly inhabiting it. 

It’s a nice reminder that relaxed alertness is our natural state, prior to the addition of tension and stress.

Of course, the goal here is not to never exert effort. Important things often require effort. 

Instead, the goal is to not exert unnecessary effort constantly. Instead of getting “stuck” in the efforting state, which in my experience is tied to a bunch of fun things like ambient anxiety and psychosomatic pain, relaxation can become our default posture, and we can learn to summon the right amount of effort based on whatever the current moment demands. We can learn to titrate between effort and ease.

The hard part is making a habit of remembering to relax. The tension usually comes back almost immediately, so there’s lots of opportunity for practice. Is the tension you just released back already? 

This exercise may seem tedious. But I think the reward will be worth it. Perhaps, eventually, we’ll convince our deep unconscious that life is not something we need to be constantly bearing down on.