A Mason's Work

In this episode, we explore the vital shift from being outcome-driven to process-focused. We often think of work as a series of tasks to be checked off, but meaningful work only truly emerges when we intentionally create the right mental and emotional space for it.
We dive into why "setting up a space" is about much more than just blocking your calendar or laying out materials. It’s about a mindset shift that embraces work as a form of play—a discovery process fueled by curiosity rather than the pressure of standardized results.
Whether you’re performing a long-practiced ritual or tackling a new project, learn how loosening your grip on the final product can lead to the "best work of your life" and the effortless experience of flow.
Key Takeaways
  • The Power of Space: Work isn't just something you do; it’s something that emerges when you provide the environment, mindset, and emotional readiness for it.
  • Play vs. Outcome: When we are too attached to a specific outcome, we often get stuck in ambiguity. Shifting to a "play" mindset allows for discovery, joy, and the ability to see new perspectives in familiar tasks.
  • The Lesson of Ritual: True transformation doesn't come from rote memorization or repetition; it happens when we move past the mechanics and engage deeply with the "transmission" of the work.
  • Finding Your Flow: Flow is an intentional yet effortless state where the ego drops away and time disappears. Recognizing what triggers—or interrupts—this state is key to maintaining it.
Episode Timestamps
  • [00:00] Focusing on process over outcomes.
  • [00:33] Why work emerges from the space you create.
  • [01:01] What "creating space" actually means (and what it isn't).
  • [01:49] Embracing work as a form of play.
  • [02:40] Using curiosity to surface new insights from old tasks.
  • [03:40] Lessons from the lodge: Why rote memorization isn't enough.
  • [04:44] How to make the "flow" experience intentional and repeatable.
  • [05:24] A challenge to find your personal flow state.
Resources & Links
Reflection Challenge: Think back to the last time work felt effortless for you. What were you doing, and what was the specific headspace that made it work?

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  • Tim Dedman
  • Jorge

Creators and Guests

Host
Brian Mattocks
Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

TRANSCRIPT: 2026-03-01 21-20-15.wav
DATE: 2026-03-02
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[00:00] So over the past couple of weeks, we've talked a lot about how you want to focus on process
[00:05] over outcomes.
[00:07] And one of the ways you're going to get there is by moving your mindset.
[00:12] Mindset is super important in the entirety of this conversation around how do you change
[00:18] from outcomes driven to process focused.
[00:23] So before we dig deep into the mindset conversation, let's talk about work in general, either work
[00:31] with groups or work by yourself.
[00:33] It's important to understand that work emerges when you create a space for it.
[00:39] Work is not just something you do.
[00:42] It happens in relation to the space you're in.
[00:47] And when you create space for work, like mental space or things like that, you really are
[00:55] setting up an environment for the work to emerge.
[00:58] So what does it mean to set up a space?
[01:01] Creating a space is not.
[01:02] So it's easy to start with.
[01:03] It's not.
[01:04] It's not blocking your calendar.
[01:05] It's not laying out materials.
[01:07] It's not sitting in front of your to do list and just kind of waiting for things to happen.
[01:10] Those things are fine.
[01:12] But that's not really what we're talking about.
[01:13] Creating a space for meaningful work is a combination of mindset, environment and kind
[01:19] of emotional readiness.
[01:21] And the best place to start, like I said, is mindset.
[01:24] So the shift we're after is this.
[01:26] When you're focused on the outcome, you're busy kind of getting attached to what it should
[01:31] be.
[01:32] And in places where that doesn't work, where you don't really have a concrete understanding
[01:37] of what the final answer is going to be or the final product of your work is going
[01:41] to be, you get stuck and it tends to create ambiguity and the problem, the process just
[01:47] kind of stalls.
[01:49] So what we're looking for is moving in that process orientation from embracing those outcomes
[01:57] to embracing the work itself as a form of play.
[02:01] I know it doesn't sound serious.
[02:04] It doesn't sound like it's going to solve the problem.
[02:05] And we're conditioned in a lot of ways to think about work in this very sort of certain
[02:11] intense outcome focused way.
[02:14] But there's a version that's kind of much more useful and it helps a lot of us get from
[02:21] this kind of blocked state to the best work of our lives.
[02:27] And that's what play is.
[02:30] Play is a discovery process where you get to not measure yourself against yesterday.
[02:35] You're not comparing your output to your neighbors.
[02:37] You're in the joy of the experience itself.
[02:40] This discovery process where you're putting kind of new perspectives on the same experience
[02:46] or you're noticing you're moving deeply into the work that you're used to doing, noticing
[02:53] that there's still more to surface, more that it can teach you.
[02:56] Bringing a kind of curiosity to something that you may have done a lot of times before.
[03:02] That's where play really starts to kind of make sense.
[03:06] Now, this moves beyond being kind of just doing the easy stuff and being bored because
[03:11] you've done it a billion times and you just can't put your mind in it anymore.
[03:14] It's more like moving past a standardization of the outcomes to noticing the differences.
[03:21] It's loosening the grip on what it needs to be and allowing the work itself to change and
[03:30] evolve to create new and different outcomes that are maybe slightly divergent.
[03:35] Maybe they're better and maybe they're worse, but it's that exploration that really creates
[03:39] a lot of value.
[03:40] In the lodge experience, we understand this intuitively.
[03:43] A man who enters from a ritual for like the hundreds of time with the same sort of rote
[03:48] memorization that he brought the first time has never actually learned the work.
[03:52] It doesn't create the space for transformation.
[03:54] It's only when the sort of memorization activity stops and the engagement of the transmission
[04:01] portion of the conversation and the ritual really starts to deliver on the outcome.
[04:06] And that's what we're building towards over the course of this week and the series overall.
[04:12] You may have felt it before, at least briefly, when the work is going, when you can drop
[04:19] your ego for a little bit, the work just kind of moves.
[04:22] Time disappears.
[04:23] That experience you had maybe when you were a kid where the days seem to last forever and
[04:28] you only come up for air once a no-no amount of time has passed, once the needs of your physiology
[04:37] have just kind of been neglected for so long that they can't be ignored anymore because you're
[04:42] so enriched and entrenched in the work.
[04:44] This kind of experience is available to you and it is through this creating space, this
[04:50] conscious understanding of the mindset you have to bring to the table to make this work.
[04:54] It can be maintained.
[04:56] It can be created.
[04:57] And it can be intentional.
[04:58] So as we work through this, as you work to understand what this means and try and do it for yourself
[05:04] on a regular basis, the challenge here is to think about the last time maybe in your life
[05:10] that the work felt effortless.
[05:12] It felt special and intentional without being intentional and special.
[05:21] It may have taken on a character of flow.
[05:24] And when we talk about flow, we're really talking about this, this kind of place where you're not
[05:30] trying to do stuff.
[05:33] Uh, it's just happening and you're kind of along for the ride.
[05:38] Think back at the last time that that happened, try and figure out what was going on.
[05:43] What are you doing at the time?
[05:45] What made it work?
[05:47] And what knocks you off of that kind of, uh, headspace or out of that heart space?
[05:52] Uh, we'll build on this over the course of the week.
[05:54] Uh, see you next time.
[05:55] Thank you.