When you think about your body as a whole, your pinky toes might not immediately feature as major players.
Of course, they spend most of their time covered up under shoes and socks, not to mention they’re wayyyyyy down about as far away from our eyes as can be while still being part of our body. But it’s more than the distance and the generally obscured nature of their existence that keeps them from our minds.
Unlike our hands and fingers which are so obviously useful, pinky toes feel like they’re just kinda there. We can’t peel bananas or hang from branches with them like chimp cousins (lucky bastards). In fact, they’re so seemingly useless that we might go weeks, maybe even months without ever thinking of them specifically at all. Maybe this moment is the first time you’ve ever given them any proper thought. If so, don’t worry, it’ll be worth it.
The obvious exceptions to our otherwise general disregard for pinky toes, is when we’re breaking in new shoes that are just a little too tight, or when we have the misfortune of ramming one of them into the foot of the couch while euphorically running at full speed to meet the pizza delivery guy who’s just showed up outside the door.
Which is exactly what happened to me on Thursday.
The good news is that the pizza was still delicious, maybe even more so than it would have otherwise been.
The bad news was that by Friday morning, the toe was heavily swollen and had been engulfed in blueish-blackish bruising which had wrapped its way around the entire toe…
As you might imagine, I’ve spent the past few days making up for lost time, and thinking a lot about pinky toes, both my injured specimen, but also the group of them as a whole. Yes, that means yours as well.
In thinking about these toes, it strikes me that there’s a corollary between these often-ignored, under-appreciated digits and certain aspects of the foundation of our creative work, which we might also ignore until they’re inflamed.
Adaptation Isn’t Always Positive
When healthy and functioning properly, pinky toes are easily taken for granted. As soon as one of them is injured, however, it becomes immediately apparent just how important they are, not only to the foot to which they’re attached but the rest of our body as a whole.
Despite having plenty of backup in our four other toes, when we’re unable to put pressure on that one, tiny toe, our entire mechanism of movement is disrupted.
If we can walk at all, it’s with a slow, shaky, tender hobble, rather than our typical strong, confident stride. When we’re forced to adjust our gait, stress is induced on other parts of our body such as our knees, ankles, and backs which must now adapt and work in ways for which they weren’t designed. This might cause subsequent pain in those areas, which, left unchecked may cause us to contort ourselves further still in an attempt to adapt to this new discomfort.
While we can still get around with a broken or malfunctioning toe, we have little hope of moving quickly. We can’t pick up the pace and jog, let alone sprint. We find it difficult to react on the fly, to dodge, or to pivot. And it’s all but impossible to make the plant, push, and landing that’s required when making a big leap.
The disruption extends further, however, beyond simply our ability to move.
Stealing Resources From Elsewhere
Without a useable pinky toe, it becomes difficult to balance, and we might be forced to call on external support. The most intuitive choice for this balance support might be to use our hands to steady ourselves. This approach works, but makes our hands unavailable for the more tasks that only they can perform–peeling bananas and swinging from branches for example.
Still, the disruption caused by a teeny, tiny broken pinky toe extends further, beyond the mechanical effects on our anatomy, and to our mind. Seeking to protect the toe from further harm, we find ourselves distracted, our gaze pulled down to our feet, looking out for the smallest of hazards, instead of upward on the horizon, charting our course and on the lookout for new opportunities.
A Little Leverage In The Right Place
Measured roughly by weight, the few grams of each pinky toe contributes only about 0.001% of our total body mass. And yet, as we can see, their impact on the other 99.999% is significant.
Of course, the impact of this tiny appendage is exaggerated by its position as a part of the foundation upon which the rest of our body relies. But this is exactly the point. While we often think of foundations as big and heavy and solid, they often contain small, seemingly insignificant elements that, when misaligned or broken can cause cascading repercussions that ripple out across the structure as a whole.
The experience with my toe has me wondering what other elements of my foundation I might be disregarding, seeing as nonessential or even entirely useless when in fact they’re causing problems to manifest themselves elsewhere.
Symptoms & Causes
In our bodies, our nervous system does a fantastic job of helping us locate the source of the pain. In our work, lives, and businesses, the source is harder to determine.
Instead of an ache, shooting, or a dull throb, we may experience pain as an inability to maintain a full client pipeline, to gain traction with an audience, or to maintain consistent quality of work. And while these may be frustrating, and even painful experiences, without a central nervous system directing us to the source of the pain, we’re in danger of misattributing it.
We end up chalking the ache in our lower back up to stress and overuse, missing the fact that the backache is caused by the way we’ve altered our gait in order to favour our injured toe, which also happens to be the source of the shooting pains we’re experiencing in our knee.
No matter how many Icy-Hot back patches we apply, or how much Tiger Balm we slather on, the ache in our back persists until the root of the issue is addressed.
In my case, I’m fairly confident that the toe is not broken, and will heal on its own within a week or two. Our bodies have a fantastic way of doing that.
Our work and the rest of our lives, however, do not.
Breaks and misalignments in those systems rarely work themselves out. In fact, they’re more likely to compound with use and time.
Identifying The Source Of The Breakdown
I can’t give any prescriptive advice on how to find and diagnose the breakdowns and misalignments in your own foundation. Each of our foundations is unique after all.
But the starting point, I think, is to re-examine the aches and pains you’re currently experiencing in your life and work and ask yourself, “What if this isn’t an isolated problem? What if this is a symptom of a breakdown elsewhere? What are the parts of my foundation, even the teeniest, tiniest ones that I’m neglecting?”
Because as surely as that 0.001% can disrupt the entire system to which it is connected if misaligned or broken, so too can it streamline, ease, and optimize the system when put back in place.
Give me a shout on Twitter @iamjeremyenns and let me know if you’ve had a similar experience of a tiny part of a system causing massive problems elsewhere. I’d love to connect.
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This article originally appeared in my weekly Listen Up Newsletter. Each issue is the product of a week of work, and contains something not available for sale.
Fresh perspective, a shot of encouragement when you need it most, and maybe even some genuine wisdom from time to time.
Each week, we explore a different facet of the question “How do we navigate the wilderness of creating work that matters?”
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to share it with you.
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