At work
You closed the biggest project of the year on a Thursday. On Friday morning you opened the next one. Someone arranged a lunch to mark it, and you went, and looked at your email twice during the meal. At half past ten that night you were still answering messages. When something goes well I don't kick back and enjoy it. I'm already on to what's next.
At work the Output rule often looks like never being done, where each finished thing is replaced by the next before it can count. Long hours have plenty of ordinary explanations, and yours may be one of those.
What you do at work
The lunch is one small case of something that may run through the whole week.
You count a day by what came out of it. A day of meetings with nothing made can feel like a day you didn't work. When someone praises a result, you thank them and go straight to what is still open.
You take the harder assignment when it is offered, and sometimes when it isn't. Time off comes with the laptop. There was a stretch when I couldn't switch off at night unless work was going well.
Much of this gets rewarded, and fairly. The work is good, and people can see that it is.
What it costs
One cost may be that finishing stops delivering anything. You get to the mark, and the mark has already moved. On paper I've done plenty. Inside, it never registers as enough.
Another may be rest. With nothing due, time off can feel less like a break and more like exposure.
And the cost may not stay with you. A pace one person keeps without complaint can turn into the pace the others think is expected of them.
As a parent
Saturday held two practices, a birthday present to buy, three loads of laundry, and a form due Monday. You got through all of it. Somewhere in the afternoon your child asked you to come and look at something, and you said in a minute. At bedtime the list was finished, and you could not remember one conversation from the day. I can't sit down and enjoy anything until every last chore is finished.
In parenting the Output rule often looks like running the family as a list to get through, and measuring yourself by how much of it got done. This page is about what the list may be doing for you. It gives no advice about children.
What you do as a parent
A Saturday like that one may be how most days go.
You parent by getting things done. Meals, rides, forms, appointments, the calendar on the fridge. You are good at it, and the household runs because of it.
The other part is harder. Sitting on the floor with nothing to accomplish can make you restless within minutes. A slow afternoon can leave you with the sense of having nothing to show for the day. You may also find yourself counting your child's results as your own: the grade, the team, the recital.
I went straight from one responsibility to the next. I never had a stretch of just figuring out who I was.
What it costs
This section is about what it may cost the parent.
The days can go by as tasks. You may look back on a year and remember what you organized better than what you saw. I worked a lot, and I think about what I wasn't around for.
Rest may stop being available at home at all, since home is where the list is.
The other adults in the house may come into it too. A co-parent who gets through the list more slowly may start to look, to you, like someone not doing their share.
In the body
The contract was signed at four. By five you felt nothing much. On Saturday nothing was due, and by ten in the morning you were walking around the kitchen looking for something to do. I did everything I set out to do. It worked out, and somehow it also didn't.
Under the Output rule the signs tend to be restlessness, a low dread when things go still, and a flat feeling right after a win. This page describes sensations that tend to go with the rule. It does not explain them. What a body is doing, and why, is a question for a clinical source, and a physical complaint that persists belongs with a doctor.
When it shows up
It tends to come when the producing stops.
Finishing something. Time with no structure. A weekend with nothing due. And sometimes at the sight of someone else's achievement, when you had been fine a minute before.
On a full day you may feel none of it. That is part of why it can be hard to place.
What sets it apart
It may stand out in two ways.
The first is the flatness after a win. You would expect to feel good, and for a moment you may. Then it goes flat, sometimes within the hour. Whatever I manage to pull off, the next thought is why wasn't it more, why wasn't it quicker.
The second is that stillness itself is the hard part. The restlessness and the low dread tend to come with free time, and they may ease once you start on something. If I'm just sitting with nothing to do I get fidgety. It drives me crazy.
Look-alikes
- Ahead (fear of being caught behind rather than of being worthless)
- Approval (worth tied to one person rather than to output itself)
Output often runs alongside Ahead or Approval. Most people are running more than one rule. Subtraction does not force a single root when the evidence shows two.
Questions to observe
- What was the exact moment it fired? Not the topic, the second.
- What did your body do first?
- What did the moment seem to mean about you?
- What did you immediately want to do, and what were you protecting against?
- Would this rule explain your last three moments like this, across different parts of life? If not, which ones does it fail on?
How subtraction tests it
In subtraction, Output is one of several hypotheses tested against your evidence: moments from work, relationships, conflict, success, failure. If it accounts for what keeps repeating without forcing the evidence to fit, it survives. If it only explains some of the moments, it goes, or it gets paired with whatever explains the rest. How subtraction works.