projects and projecting

During this month MV and I have decided to embark on a particular project: “benchuary.” Each weekday in February there is a workout posted that we will need to complete. The ultimate aim, as the name implies, is to improve our bench press. I’ll admit: this is far and away the ‘bro-iest’ (jock-iest?) venture I’ve ever undertaken.

The idea of training towards a goal, or projecting, isn’t new to me. However, a book I recently read by the philosopher Kieran Setiya has cast the projecting process in a helpful alternative light. In Midlife: A Philosophical Guide, Setiya distinguishes ‘telic’ from ‘atelic’ activity. Telic activities are aimed at terminal states, at which they are finished and thus exhausted. Others are atelic, they are activities that do not aim at a point of termination or exhaustion, a final state in which they have been achieved. An example of the former is walking to the store. And an example of the latter is simply going for a walk. Unlike walking to the store, going for a walk doesn’t aim at its own completion. The pleasure is in walking, itself.

He continues,

If your sources of meaning are overwhelmingly telic then whatever their value … they are schemes for which success can only mean cessation. It is as if you are striving to eradicate meaning from your life, saved only by the fact that there is too much of it or that you keep on finding more.

This, in his view, is the problem with being consumed by plans and being obsessed with getting things done. Setiya describes himself as trying to respond to the self-subversion that is part and parcel of the “project-driven life.”

The problem is not the risk of running out [of projects.] It is that your engagement with value is self-destructive. The way in which you relate to the activities that matter most to you is by trying to complete them and so expel them from your life. Your days are devoted to ending, one by one, the activities that give them meaning (133).

As a consequence, ambitious people will misattribute the source of their unhappiness:

It is easy to blame your choices: the wrong relationship, the wrong profession. And so you leave your partner and change careers. There may be good reasons for doing those things, but this is not one of them. It is a confused response to a midlife crisis. Sensing a flaw in your projects, you blame their particular goals, not the fact that you are goal-fixated, and attempt to start over. So long as starting over means adopting new goals, it will at most distract you from the structural defect in your life. Keeping busy is a great diversion; but it treats the symptom not the cause.

From fitness, to writing, to relationships, I hope to invest more fully in the resource-rich atelic activities in my life and not get lost in the emptiness of a ‘next project’ mindset. While it may sound like a cheap motivational slogan, it’s helpful to remind myself that what’s enjoyable about activities like benchuary is the process — the challenge, the novelty, sharing the experience with a good friend — and not simply upping my 1 rep max.