The Invisible Hand of Competence and the Theater of Action

Squatting on the linoleum, I am currently scraping a thin, stubborn layer of adhesive residue from the floorboards behind the refrigerator. It is a slow, rhythmic task, the kind that allows the mind to wander into the darker corners of one's own domestic frustrations. I've spent the last 43 minutes doing this, and honestly, the physical labor is a relief. Earlier this morning, I found myself alphabetizing my spice rack-Cumin, Coriander, Dill-as if organizing the seasoning of my life could somehow compensate for the structural failures of my living space. It's a common pathology, I suppose. When the big things feel unfixable, we curate the small things with a ferocity that borders on the manic.

The Love for the Process

Victor C.M. understands this better than most. As a grief counselor who has spent 13 years navigating the messy, non-linear aftermath of loss, he's accustomed to people performing the 'work' of healing without actually moving an inch. He tells me often that people love the ritual of the therapy session-the sitting, the nodding, the soft lighting-more than they love the terrifying silence of a problem finally solved. We are a species that finds comfort in the noise of the process. If we can see the wheels turning, we tell ourselves we are moving, even if we are stuck in a ditch.

" People love the ritual of the therapy session-the sitting, the nodding, the soft lighting-more than they love the terrifying silence of a problem finally solved. "

Visible Diligence vs. Invisible Repair

My landlord is a high priest of this particular religion. Last week, when I pointed out the fresh scratching sounds emanating from the wall cavity, he smiled with the practiced serenity of a man who has a contract for everything and a solution for nothing. 'Don't worry,' he said, checking his watch. 'The pest control guy comes every month. It's a 33-point inspection. We've got a gold-standard service agreement.' He said this while pointing at a pristine black plastic bait box in the corner of the pantry. He saw it as a badge of honor, a visible proof of his diligence. I saw it as a gravestone for a battle he had already lost.

There is a profound disconnect in our modern world between the performance of action and the quietude of actual competence. We have been conditioned to believe that a recurring service is the same thing as a permanent resolution. In the realm of property management, this manifests as a 'monthly visit.' The technician arrives, spends 23 minutes walking through the rooms, replaces a few blocks of blue wax, signs a digital sheet, and disappears. The landlord pays his 103 pounds, feels a surge of virtuousness, and goes back to sleep. Meanwhile, the mice are simply learning to navigate around the new plastic furniture. The problem isn't being solved; it is being managed into a state of permanent, low-grade existence.

Productivity Theater

This is Productivity Theater. It is the art of looking busy to avoid the inconvenient finality of being done. If the problem were actually solved, the theater would have to close. The technician would lose his monthly fee, the landlord would lose his excuse for the rent hike, and the 'management' would lose its visible metric of success. True competence, you see, is often completely invisible. It is the silence of a house that doesn't creak, the lack of droppings in the cutlery drawer, and the absence of a recurring bill. But because we cannot 'see' the absence of a problem, we struggle to value it. We would rather pay for the monthly performance than the one-time fix.

Victor once told me about a client who came to him for 63 sessions to talk about a divorce that hadn't even happened yet. The client was in love with the 'process' of grieving, using the sessions as a way to avoid making the hard decision to either leave or stay. It was an emotional maintenance contract. My apartment is the physical manifestation of that same stagnation. We have turned the management of vermin into a hobby rather than a task. We have invited the intruder to stay, provided we can watch someone pretend to hunt him once every 33 days.

The Engineering of Absence

I find myself thinking about the holes. The 13 small gaps where the copper piping meets the plaster, the gaps under the kickplates, the fissures in the brickwork that have existed since the house was built 73 years ago. The monthly technician never touches these. He isn't paid to touch them. He is paid to bait. To bait is to acknowledge the presence of the guest; to proof is to revoke the invitation. One is a performance; the other is engineering.

We live in an economy of plausible deniability. As long as the landlord can produce a receipt for a service, he is legally and morally 'doing his part.' It doesn't matter if the mice are currently hosting a gala in the insulation of the oven. The receipt is the shield. This is the danger of equating activity with progress. We see it in corporate offices where 43 emails are exchanged to schedule a meeting that could have been a sentence. We see it in 'wellness' apps that track our stress levels instead of helping us remove the stressors. We are obsessed with the dashboard, ignoring the fact that the car is headed for a cliff.

I remember a specific afternoon when the 'regular' guy came round. He was a pleasant man, worked for one of the big national chains. He didn't even carry a torch. He just knew where the boxes were. It was a choreographed dance. He replaced the bait that hadn't been touched, ignored the bait that had been eaten-claiming it was 'old activity'-and was out the door in 13 minutes. It cost the building 53 pounds for that visit. Total time spent investigating the source? Zero seconds.

Contrast this with the rare breed of professional who arrives and spends the first 3 hours not touching a chemical, but instead, crawling through the dust with a headlamp to find the exact point of ingress. This is the difference between a band-aid and a bone-set, a distinction that Inoculand Pest Control makes clear by prioritizing the sealing of access points over the mere distribution of toxins. When you actually seal a building, the 'theater' ends. There is no more need for the monthly van, no more need for the signed digital reports, and no more need for the comforting ritual of the bait box. But for many landlords, that's the scary part. If the problem is gone, they have to face the next thing. They lose the 'visible activity' that justifies their role.

The Maintenance Trap

I've realized that I do this with my own life. I've spent 23 days 'managing' my anxiety about a project by reorganizing my desktop icons and, yes, alphabetizing the spices. I am performing the role of a productive person while avoiding the singular, difficult action that would actually complete the work. I am my own landlord, hiring myself to perform a monthly inspection of my neuroses instead of doing the structural proofing required to keep the intrusive thoughts out.

Victor C.M. calls this 'The Maintenance Trap.' We become so proficient at maintaining our dysfunctions that we forget they were ever meant to be temporary. We build entire identities around the 'monthly visit' to our traumas. We talk about 'managing' our grief, 'managing' our stress, 'managing' our weight. But what if the goal wasn't management? What if the goal was a quiet, empty room?

Closing the Hole

The resistance to competence is, at its heart, a fear of the void. If the mice are gone, the pantry is just a pantry. It's no longer a site of conflict or a reason to call the landlord. The silence that follows a problem being solved is heavy. It requires us to find something else to occupy our attention. For the landlord, it means he has to actually maintain the boiler. For me, it means I have to actually write the thing I've been avoiding.

I found a hole today. It was tucked behind the waste pipe of the sink, a jagged 3-inch gap that smelled of damp earth and old brick. I didn't put bait near it. I didn't call the monthly service guy to come and look at it and write it down in his logbook. I went to the hardware store, bought a roll of wire mesh and some industrial sealant, and I closed it. It wasn't a performance. No one saw me do it. There is no receipt to show the estate agent. But tonight, for the first time in 23 days, the kitchen is silent.

Rewarding the Conclusion

We must stop rewarding the theater. We must stop being impressed by the frequency of a service and start being obsessed with its conclusion. A professional who has to come back every month for a year hasn't provided a service; they have sold a subscription to a failure. The highest form of expertise is the one that makes itself redundant. It is the surgeon who doesn't need to see you again. It is the grief counselor who helps you find the door. It is the proofing that makes the bait box a relic of a noisier, less effective time.

I'm looking at my spices now. They are perfectly aligned. A-Z. It looks beautiful. It looks like I have my life under control. But it's a lie. The real control was in that 13 minutes I spent under the sink, covered in grey dust and sealant, doing the one thing that didn't look like much, but changed everything. I think I'll stop alphabetizing things for a while. I think I'll just look for the holes. Because once you stop performing the solution, you might actually have enough energy left to implement it.

There are exactly 3 ways this ends. You keep paying for the performance, you move out and let someone else watch the play, or you finally decide that the quiet of competence is worth more than the noise of action. I choose the quiet. I choose the empty bait box. I choose the house that doesn't need a witness to prove it's standing.