This week I wanted to tell you about something my wife, Izzy, shared with me. When Izzy was young, her family had a pet guinea pig, who they named Piggy. Piggy was a very cute guinea pig, but not a particularly intelligent one, as evidenced by the a curious phenomenon that I’d like to name Piggy’s Paradox.
Here’s how Piggy’s life would go: Piggy would always want fresh straw/hay in her cage to luxuriate in. Whenever her bedding would be changed, she would be delighted. She’d be super happy, and roll around happily in the clean straw. But then, within minutes of discovering her fresh, clean new sleeping space, Piggy would proceed to urinate and defecate all over it. Piggy had now ruined her clean environment, and would go into the corner of the cage, looking glum that her once-pristine home had now been defiled. This pattern would repeat almost every day, and gives us Piggy’s Paradox.
As soon as Izzy told me this story, I knew there was a metaphor in there somewhere. It didn’t take long to find.
Take my calendar for instance. I spend a lot of time organising my calendar and schedule, deleting and delegating low-leverage things, and making sure I’m able to focus on the truly needle-moving stuff. This generates a lot of blank space in the calendar, which feels glorious and zen. But then, I do a Piggy. I luxuriate in the emptiness of the calendar, and immediately start coming up with new business ventures and plans that use up all the free time slots. I even schedule things a few months out thinking “oh wow the calendar’s so empty in X weeks time! I could totally run another live cohort of our LifeOS course, or maybe do this extra series of events, or maybe sign another book deal!”
Before I know it, my pristine, zen, mindful and demure calendar has become a chaotic mess, and I’m left wondering how it all went wrong. I did a Piggy. I fell prey to Piggy’s Paradox.
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A few years ago, I came across a great journaling prompt. I can’t quite remember where I first encountered it—maybe it was in Keith Cunningham’s The Road Less Stupid or maybe an episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. The question was:
To what extent am I responsible for creating the conditions I say I don’t want?
Piggy doesn’t like her cage being messy, yet she ends up in that situation time and time again. Similarly, I don’t want my calendar to be cluttered, yet I keep filling it up with random crap. I say I value a good night’s sleep, yet I sometimes find myself scrolling through Instagram reels until 1am.
Over time, I’ve gotten better at recognising this pattern within myself. My calendar right now, for example, looks pretty pristine, and I’m going to try my best to keep it that way. I hope what’ll make this easier is that I now have Piggy’s Paradox in my mind as a warning.
So I’d like to end by proposing an official definition, in honour of the late Piggy:
Piggy’s Paradox (or “doing a Piggy”) is our tendency to sabotage our own carefully created environments of peace and order, only to then feel dissatisfied with the chaos we’ve created. It’s the self-defeating cycle of creating ideal conditions, promptly disrupting them, and then lamenting their loss.
If any of this resonated, I’d love to hear from you: what’s an example from your life where you’ve done a Piggy? Where you’ve fallen prey to Piggy’s Paradox?
Have a great week!
Ali xx
