The System is Collapsing But Yes, I'm Filling Out Your Doodle Poll

On outputs, outcomes, and the unglamorous work of making change

Right now everything feels like it’s on fire. Our systems are being dismantled, the stakes are high, and the question that haunts so many of us working in policy, advocacy, and organizing is: Am I doing enough? Am I doing it right? Is this even making a difference?

There’s a kind of tired that isn’t about rest but instead about friction. It’s not the tired that sleep can fix, but the bone-deep fatigue of pushing against systems that feel designed to resist your effort.

Some days, the work feels like it’s moving through molasses. Other days, I am the molasses. Either way, progress has been sticky lately and what follows is as much a reminder to myself as anyone else because when things stall, doubt seeps in.

Sometimes it feels like you’re supposed to solve climate change between Zoom meetings, or like the house is on fire and you’re armed with a spray bottle and a to-do list. Other times, you find yourself questioning your life choices as you enter day two of an increasingly unhinged Google Doc debate about whether you’re “urging” or “calling on” the governor to act, wondering if this really is what democracy looks like. Whether this is the change you came here to make.

I find myself in those frustrating spirals sometimes when the work gets repetitive or bleak. But part of surviving this work, especially in this moment, is learning to name what’s yours to carry and what isn’t. Learning to draw the line between your labor and your expectations, and between what you can change and what you must navigate, not fix.

And that means avoiding the most demoralizing, subconscious bait-and-switch in all of social change work: Outputs vs. Outcomes.

Outputs are the things you do—the tangible, trackable verbs: I drafted the memo; I organized the rally; I held the meeting.

Outcomes are the big things you want to happen—the dream results: poverty was reduced; the system changed; oppression ended.

And herein lies the rub: we dream of outcomes. We came into this work because of outcomes, we stay in this work in search of outcomes, and we sometimes measure ourselves against outcomes.

But we can only produce outputs.

There’s an old productivity blog post I can’t track down, but the idea stuck with me: no one builds a house. They pour concrete, install plumbing, and raise walls. The outcome looks like a house; the outputs look like labor.

And that’s why it’s important to remind ourselves that we build better worlds the same way we build houses: piece by piece, layer by layer, often while covered in dust wondering if anything is taking shape. Wondering if this thing will ever be done.

But the work is real, even when it’s invisible. It just doesn’t always feel that way because from childhood, we’re taught that history happens in sweeping, pivotal moments. Like change is supposed to feel like change all the time. But in reality, it feels like scheduling and meetings and drafts and memos and all of the tedious tasks that get summed up later with words like organizing, lobbying, movement-building, or if we’re lucky, victory.

Outcomes give us something to build around, but they’re not always evidence that the work is—or is not—working.

So when the doubt creeps in and you’re questioning how your work fits in to The Work™, or why it sometimes still feels like you’re not doing enough, just remember:

Outputs are the atoms of change; outcomes are the horizon; progress is the slog between them.

Outcomes are powerful for orientation, visioning, and movement-building. But as a routine metric of labor or self worth? Brutal. They invite martyrdom, self-erasure, and a lifetime of unpaid emotional labor. As a measure of personal contribution they can make it feel like you’re running in place, even when you’re doing everything you can—and probably more than you should.

So if you’ve been quietly carrying that gap between what you hoped to fix and what you actually have power to change, I see you. You’re not failing to fix the system. You’ve just been trying to patch your particular corner of a much larger collapse with conviction and duct tape. You’ve been trying to carry the weight of something that was never yours alone to hold.

You don’t need to carry the house, you just need to help hold the beam.