“I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.”
~ Pearl S. Buck
Watching this morning’s sunrise, I felt totally at peace. A rain shower, slowly drifted left to right, until this spectacular sunburst appeared in the clouds through the mist. It was hard to chose a favorite snapshot of this morning’s stillness, but this final photo left me feeling inspired, hopeful, so I chose it ….
As I continue to jot down my notes from the book “Manage Your Day-to-Day” for the creative mind, the first chapter discusses the necessity to build a Rock Solid Routine ….
Mark McGuinness writes: “If you want to create something worthwhile with your life, you need to draw a line between the world’s demands and your own ambitions. Yes, we all have bills to pay and obligations to satisfy. But for most of us, there’s a wide gray area between the have-tos and the want-tos. If we aren’t careful, that area will fill up with email, meetings and requests of others, leaving no room for the real work that’s important to us.”
It’s tempting to “clear the deck” before starting your own work. The trouble with this approach is this means spending part (or often most) of the day on other people’s priorities. By the time you settle down to your own work, it can be mid afternoon and your energy dips …. Maybe tomorrow you say …”
The single most important change we can make in our work habits is to switch to creative work first, reactive work second.
It’s said that “A small daily task, if it be REALLY daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules”
JUST SHOW UP. Frequency makes starting easier. Frequency keeps ideas fresh. Frequency takes the pressure off. Frequency sparks creativity and fosters productivity. And frequency nurtures more frequency!
Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project writes: “What I do every day matters more than what I do once in a while”.
Creative triggers are crucial (ie. my cup of coffee, my camera, my mantras, a clean desk). Seth Godin writes: “The notion that I do my work here, now, like this, even when I do not feel like it, and especially when I do not feel like it, is very important. Because lots and lots of people are creative when they feel like it, but you are only going to become a professional if you do it when you don’t feel like it. And that emotional waiver is why this is your work and not your hobby.”
Equally important: We must begin to understand and manage our creative energy. The demands in our lives tend to exceed our capacity. Tony Schwartz of The Energy Project writes: “Unlike computers, human beings aren’t meant to operate continuously, at high speeds, for long periods of time. Rather, we’re designed to move rhythmically between spending and renewing our energies. But for most of us, we live linearly, progressively burning down our energy reservoirs … with the equivalent of withdrawing funds from a bank account without ever making a deposit, to the point of bankruptcy.” We don’t allow for the natural law of dormancy to occur.
On a daily basis, Tony believes that the two most important things we can do: 1) Get 8 hours of sleep, as only 2.5% of the population can function on less than that, and 2) Understand that we work best at 90 minute increments, and that we need full-fledged breaks in-between these bursts of creative outflowing.
Leo Babauta of Zen Habits believes making room for solitude is key. “Practice meditation. You’ll learn to watch your thoughts and not be controlled by them. You’ll learn a key skill for focus: How to notice the urge to switch tasks and not act on that urge, but just return your attention to the task at hand.”
As I read through these thoughts on creating a rock-solid routine for our creativity, a few things came to mind. When I stopped writing this blog last year, another reason was that I hoped to instead use my morning block of creative time to pull together a book: A collection of my spiritual writings or a cookbook. That never happened. The time, instead, went to checking email first thing, and my afternoons became no more productive creatively. Or worse yet, I simply began to sleep in, getting up and getting started whenever I felt like it.
I’m struggling to create a separate routine, with triggers, for a ONE bigger project, prior to beginning my “reactive” work. I love sharing with you my daily “stream of conscious writing” post sunrise. But re-reading all of my work, categorizing it, and creating some type of an index to begin a book … Not so easy. I love “veganizing”, creating and cooking recipes. But taking all of my recipe binders with handwritten scribble and formally writing up the instructions ….. Boring!! And I don’t know which ONE to choose: Narrowing all of my recipes down into a collection of favorites isn’t such an easy task! And who am I doing this for anyways? Myself or others? When I begin to think of what others might think or want, confusion ensues. Who would buy that, I ask? Probably no-one, so why bother? Have you heard yourself say this before …?
So these are my struggles. How about you? Are you ready to commit to a rock solid creative routine today? Do you have the discipline to keep it going? And most importantly, do you believe in yourself and your dreams?
I’d love to see some YESs to being ready in the comments 🙂
