Things on input and output years

Embracing the ebb and flow

“Last year I abstained
this year I devour
without guilt
which is also an art”

― Margaret Atwood

A friend tells me she is feeling kind of empty and directionless after a big year. She admits she is the kind of person to always have a goal and work steadily towards that goal, and last year, in an impressive feat, she managed to reach many of them.

I point out that after a big output year—be it in our work or personal lives—it’s expected that an input year will follow.

An output year might look focused, busy and full, sometimes with our own goals, but sometimes on account of the unexpected things life throws in.

An input year, by contrast, can look more scattered, quiet and empty. It’s a time to fill back up, take it slow and consider the next step without rushing through things.

I’ve had my own input years. After my first book came out, marking the end of an almost decade-long project, I flitted about. I floundered. I didn’t really do much of anything in the realm of moving my life along. For a year or two, I didn’t actively pursue things. I reduced my living expenses. Friends around me had babies, bought houses, got promotions, all while I ate cheese in a tiny village in France.

But we can’t compare our input years to other people’s output years—or days, or seasons, or even decades.

I wasn’t inching forward with big life goals during my input years—I didn’t even know what they were—but I was filling back up. In other words, I devoured, without guilt.

In my book, I liken this oscillation we find in ourselves to a sponge: there is the absorbing and the squeezing. Sometimes you need to do nothing except absorb inspiration, knowledge or find rest. This is an input phase.

But the thing is, if you sit and absorb too long, you can become oversaturated and succumb to inertia (i.e. soggy!) So, like a sponge, you also need the squeeze—the doing, the action, the outpouring of ideas.

I return to this analogy again and again because I think it can buoy us during quieter periods in our life—the input years—encouraging us to remember our need to refill. Likewise, during times of busyness—our output years—it may motivate us because we know rest will eventually follow.

In a society that expects us to be always working on a goal, knowing what’s next, and doing, we can overlook the value of the input phases. But what I try to remember is that you need to have absorbed something in the first instance in order to have something to squeeze.

Equally, the squeeze—the radiant action and the times we are in flow—gives what we have absorbed its meaning. It’s where we put what we’ve learned into action, where we turn thinking into writing, study into knowledge, fresh produce into recipes, and solitude into a deeper connection to ourselves and to others.

I’ve also found that from day to day there can be a pattern of absorbing and squeezing. Some days it feels like I’m firing on all cylinders and a long stretch of work feels effortless, but the next day my engine is sputtering. I’m learning that’s part of the process: while some people are more inclined to plod along, my focus is usually not evenly distributed across my days.

Sometimes we can become stuck in one phase. Perhaps it’s our default setting, or we’ve become too comfortable in the refilling, or conversely, addicted to busyness.  

Other times, external circumstances might determine whether we are in an absorb or squeeze phase. We might spend years in the absorb phase, or find ourselves in the squeeze for longer than we’d like out of necessity.

That’s when it’s important to remember life happens in cycles. Nature assures us that there will be ebb and flow—the winter fallow time, the blossoming of the spring.

Reminders of such rhythms seem to be everywhere. And yet we can so easily judge either side—we aren’t doing enough, we are doing too much. What we overlook is that seasons are happening within us, no matter the phase we perceive ourselves to be in.

As Kahlil Gibran wrote in The Prophet, “In every winter’s heart there is a quivering spring, and behind the veil of each night there is a smiling dawn.”

Be it an input or output year, absorbing or squeezing, a winter or a spring, this oscillation is really another frame for change.

Some things can change in an instant, but more commonly they change slowly within us, as we are breathing in and breathing out. I enjoy an observation from Björk, “We go through changes roughly every three years, sometimes seven, where our colour palette changes and how we feel changes…the aroma or the textures…the lightness or darkness around us shifts.”

Things shift around us, and we shift within them.

It’s only really in recent months that I’ve found myself moving into an output year. I started my new podcast, I’m finding myself taking things seriously. I’ve made a commitment to abstinence. But all of that comes from a period of devouring things, being curious, and allowing things to take the time they take.

I needed the input year—or years in my case—to get here.

As I told my friend, maybe some times in our life are just about filling back up, and learning to relish just that.

---

Embracing the ebb and flow is a theme I find myself coming back to again and again, but it’s also at the heart of my book I Didn’t Do The Thing Today, which is now available in Spanish!

Find your copy of I Didn’t Do The Thing Today in all good bookstores — and now in Spanish here!