Second grade me proudly welcomed my parents to back to school night in Mrs Gatley's room. My desk was situated on the right side of the room, in a group of 4. I remember Suzie, Traci, and maybe Russ? I showed my parents my neatly written name plate, my beautiful fall leaf tissue paper art, and my flexed my expert tour guide skills at the wall of books. Then I opened my desk with great hesitation. It was a little messy and absolutely full. Books on the left. Pencils and erasers in the front. On the right, a full stack of unfinished worksheets. 

It turns out Mrs. Gatley had already spoken to my parents about my unfinished work. Having teachers for parents I would learn can be endlessly frustrating. I was about to be referred for testing to see if there were any delays or disabilities that might explain the complete dearth of finished classwork that crossed my teacher's desk. My readers might not be surprised to learn that testing did reveal I really was an outlier – an outlier who was sent to the Talented and Gifted program.

My dad lifted the stack and shuffled through the papers instructing me to match phonemes and pictures, to circle words, to color by number. "Why didn't you finish these? You got a good start." He asked.

"They are boring. I was reading." I responded, feeling like that would clearly explain the situation and everyone could just move on. Who could possibly argue with that logic? I had already discovered chapter books. Matching letters to sounds on a worksheet was the stupidest thing I'd seen. I would color them sometimes if I felt the art was worth it (and if I had finished my book) but I simply couldn't see the point.

That was the year I learned that it doesn't matter if I saw the point. In order to be a good student, I had to turn in work. Ergo, that's also the year I learned handwriting that is good enough is really freaking fast and then you can get the worksheet done and get back to your book. Everyone wins, except my abysmal handwriting.

When you learn the lesson of "perform the work to make the grownups happy" as the child of teachers, you forget to go back and question it. This was my parent's entire world – fellow teachers, education, school standing, grades. It was the Most Important Thing. In order to be a member of the Betts family, I had to perform for the audience by completing all my work well, and on time. With each new school year and new teacher, I figured out what "good" looked like, what it took to get an A, and I did exactly that. No more, no less. And since I was very smart, well-read, and good at reading people, it worked fabulously. It worked in high school. It worked in college. It worked amazingly well in the workplace. I became an excellent worksheet completer.

But it was always a performance. At no point did I ever stop and ask "what does Sarah think is good work?" or "What does Sarah want to learn about?" I got A's, got a paycheck, and got promotions based on figuring out what others needed and doing that. No more. No less.

That began to change when I started caring about the definition of good. I started managing other people and was responsible for defining success on my teams. In order to do that, I had to analyze up the ladder to figure out what I could do to make a company more successful and translate that into goals for my team. I started to care a lot about quality work, about amazing customer experiences, about smoothly running operations. I found ways to make work full of rich and engaging chapter books instead of boring worksheets and I loved it.

Then, a few years ago I started reviewing my sewing hobby. I realized I was always sewing things that were just good enough. They looked good on me and I got tons of compliments and "you made that?" comments, but I was unhappy with the sloppy seams, the shortcuts, and the speed-sewing corner-cutting. So I bought a quilt kit to learn to slow down and pay attention to tiny details like matching corners, cutting perfectly accurate squares and triangles, and pressing seams in optimal directions. In hindsight, it was a type of worksheet that I chose. Perhaps my first ever. I never finished the quilt (sorry Mrs Gatley!) but it did teach me how to slow down and notice details. And not just notice, but make decisions about which details really mattered in the final outcome. 

It turns out when you take a few steps back, the details that really matter in the end aren't always the ones that seem meaningful up close. The problem was, I didn't see others backing up to look down the road and make predictions about what was going to matter later. They only cared about this week, this quarter, this project. The saying goes, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." It turns out you can talk about the system, but you can't make others see it. They crave a worksheet with clear instructions and nice line art. Another saying goes "you can't unsee it." Once you see the impact of decisions and details on the long term, or the way the system influences the choices you have, you can't narrow your vision again. You can't unsee it. Once you read a great novel (or even better – learn directly from a passionate expert!), you find worksheets bland, uninspiring, and frustrating.

In every meeting, in every project, in every election, in every upheaval, you see the short-term choices and where they connect to the wider web of existence. It starts to become physically painful to agree to tradeoffs that damage next year, next decade, next generation. That becomes stress you hold in your body and it builds. And since bodies exist at home, at work, at school, in social groups, in associations, and in cities, counties, states, and countries, that stress compounds. It grows, and expands, and forms its own tides, until at last it drowns you. The stack of stupid worksheets that you know are stupid and meaningless grows until your desk is bursting at the seams. 

When you finally tap out, the people around you accuse you either of doing too much – collecting too many worksheets, or not enough – of not turning in the worksheets. It seems so obvious to them that if you just filled out the worksheet, you wouldn't be having this problem, duh. Meanwhile, you're left wondering who decided it had to be worksheets? Pulling the worksheets out of the desk and tossing them in the recycling is as refreshing as a spring cleaning. Knowing when to use a worksheet to build a new skill, and when to dive into real world practice to refine it is power. It is the power to work with the world to develop real knowledge in your being – not as a rote checklist, but a relationship with the world. It's the difference between copying a piece of writing, writing something bland, and writing something that captures a reader and sticks with them. It is being able to walk into an organization and feel where the gaps in processes are.

The most frustrating part of telling people I was burned out was everyone assuming I was working too hard. As if working too hard is something beyond me or is taxing. The fact is, I love working hard as long as that work makes sense and moves me towards a goal. I've manually moved 3 pallets of concrete blocks to build garden beds and loved it. Ask me to move 3 pallets of concrete blocks just because and I'll probably throw one at your head. I will happily work 12 hour days to build more efficient processes, talk people through their projects, take extended calls with frustrated customers, and make pages of documentation. But if leadership doesn't know where they are going and why — with real focus, and can't articulate that to their teams, I cannot be bothered. 

Work for the sake of work means reallocating energy and time away from things like building a garden, being present with my family, and improving my relationship with the world around me. Life isn't a worksheet, it's a constantly evolving and emerging communion with the world that requires presence. Beautiful, full, engaging presence. Nothing less.