by Naomi | Dec 8, 2016 | Creative Life
If you’re like me, you have more than one priority.
Now, I’ve read Essentialism and The One Thing, and heard many experts discuss why focusing matters. I don’t disagree, but I’m also a creative thinker. When I tell myself to stop exploring options, to stick to what truly matters, my world closes in around me. I wonder: do you feel this way, too? Do you hear people talking about focus, and wonder what’s wrong with you? Have you labeled yourself as undisciplined or unfocused after failing to stick to a short list of priorities?
Let’s take a look at an example.
Which is more important to you: a healthy body or your relationship with your best friend?
There are a lot of books out there that urge you to prioritize your own physical health over your relationship with your best friend. Logically, they’d claim that if you’re not healthy, you can’t be a good friend anyway. However, in a real-world scenario, most of us would choose our best friend over our health. Say our best friend calls us in crisis at the exact moment when we’ve suited up to go for a run. It’s not just any run. We’ve been putting off our exercise for weeks, and we know we need to get ourselves back in motion to get back on track. We’ve finally motivated ourselves to do it … and now our friend is hurting. Even though exercise is important, most likely we’ll delay our run and spend time talking with our friend.
Or consider the end of our lives. When our health is no longer in our control, which will matter to us more: our health or our best friend?
My point is this: your health and your relationship with your best friend are likely both important to you. Forcing yourself to put them in an ordered list creates a false choice. You likely have goals for both of these important areas of life … and those simultaneous goals don’t cancel each other out.
A priority is singular.
The reason people have begun talk about priorities, plural, is because life is complex. We need a word to describe the categories in our lives that don’t get checked off a list by a certain completion date, the way goals do. I’d like to propose a writerly word to fill this gap: theme. A story generally has an overall theme, with related motifs woven into it. I think our lives have a similar structure. Let’s explore a practical application. The overall theme in a life might be connectedness. If so, what actions must I take personally and with others to live into this theme? By considering theme, I avoid forcing myself to make a false choice between my friends and my health.
As we’ve been discussing recently on the Writerly Play blog, the questions that we ask inform the answers we discover. By asking a more expansive question, we avoid losing our way in a question that may be splitting hairs rather than helping us live our most fulfilled lives.
Why does all of this matter?
If you struggle to create an ordered list of priorities, perhaps it might help you to think about your life’s theme. What motifs weave into that theme? Which ones fit now, in this season, and which might fit later? Which are lifelong habits that deserve ongoing attention?
Pursuing your life’s theme is a marathon, but the most effective way to meet goals along the way is to think of them as sprints.
We will never check off a box and no longer need to brush and floss our teeth, to eat healthy food, or spend time with loved ones. Similarly, if we want to play an instrument, participate in a sport, or maintain a creative skill such as drawing, creative writing or improvisation, we need to carve out a certain amount of regular time to practice.
Here’s where the idea of a sprint becomes so useful. Most of these practices can be done in a few minutes a day. However, developing the foundational skills can take many hours. If you set out to learn to draw and do it in five minutes a week, you’re not going to have much fun with your drawing for quite some time. You’re likely to get frustrated and give up, honestly, because your progress will be so slow.
The best way to make true progress on one of these kinds of projects is to set a goal, focus tightly on that goal in a “sprint,” and then once you’ve achieved a certain level of skill, maintain the practice at a more steady pace. It may be that for a week, you set aside all of your practices so you can develop a new skill. But after that week, you can pick them all back up, adding the new one.
You don’t have to give up everything you love in order to try something new.
If you need a kickstart for a project that’s been calling to you, try a sprint. Give yourself room to experiment and find the ways of working, creating and living that work best for you. Your life’s theme is expansive, and will continue to play out in surprising ways. Allow yourself room to grow.
by Naomi | Nov 7, 2016 | Creative Life
How often do you look up from the various fires you’re fighting and wonder: am I doing life right?
With life moving at a million miles an hour, it’s not surprising that we yearn for a different approach. In his book, Procrastinate on Purpose, Rory Vader describes our plight this way: We’re “juggling hamsters, running as fast as we can on our wheels.” We’re moving faster, juggling our priorities faster, but the only way forward is faster, faster, faster … until we crash.
Even though we say we can’t have it all, most of us secretly hope the rules are different for us.
We’re going to find the secret recipe. Eventually, we’ll stumble across the magic wand. This deeply held belief (which we often don’t admit to ourselves) causes us to act in irrational ways. We seek out the stories of others who “made it.” We ask for advice, read self-help books, are addicted to the blog posts that promise Three Simple Steps for … or How You Can “x” in Half the Time.
We spend so much time doubling back, looking for a shortcut, that we never make progress toward our goals. We keep trying new paths rather than moving forward on the path we’re on. Why?
We think someone else has the answer.
Is it possible for someone else to know how to be YOU better than you do? Sure, coaches and mentors are essential to our growth. Exploring opportunities, investing in development and being teachable are all important. However, in the end, the person who knows the right next step for you to take is … you’ve got it. You.
You are the singular mix of your innate gifts, your developed skills and your life experience. There is literally no one else like you. So, why do we try to force our lives into a pattern that is uniquely suited to someone else? Because … we think someone else has the answer.
If YOU have the answers, and yet you’re still confused, what should you do? Let’s say you are someone’s mentor. Your mentee sits down across from you to explain their current situation and their goals. What would you do?
Probably you would:
- Listen carefully.
- Reflect what they’ve said back to them, clarifying until you’re both sure that you’ve boiled the situation and goal down into a clear statement.
- Ask questions about what’s working now and what’s not.
- Consider your own life experience and share perspective that might shed light.
- Provide resources if you have them, or research new resources if you don’t.
- With clarity, perspective, and new information, you and your mentee would create an action plan.
When you move into the action plan part of the process, it is the mentor’s job to listen, to provide feedback, and ultimately, to leave the decision making in the hands of the mentee. If you have a mentor who takes the opposite stance, shoving their plan onto you, I’d highly recommend that you fire that mentor.
If you don’t have a mentor right now, though, take a look at those six steps again.
What if you gave yourself permission to be your own mentor?
What if you:
- Journaled or talked the problem out into an audio file, and then re-read or listened.
- Pulled out the key points and clarified the situation and goal into a clear statement.
- Brainstormed what’s working now and what’s not.
- Considered your life experience with YOU. When have you had success? What might you do that’s similar in this situation?
- Sought resources to fill your knowledge gaps.
- With clarity, perspective, and new information, created an action plan.
Doable, no?
Even if you do have a mentor, (and I strongly believe everyone should have at least one mentor) the key here is understanding where responsibility lies. Your mentor is there to advise you. You are the one who is responsible for the choices. That’s important, so it bears repeating.
You are responsible for your choices.
When you are ready to start making true progress, you must make this small but essential mental shift. You’re seeking out guidance not because of your weakness, but because of your strength. You are not the intern in your life. You are the CEO. Both the CEO and the intern have advisors, but interns and CEO’s relate and react to their advisors in significantly different ways.
Give yourself permission to be the leader in your own life. Be a strong leader, the kind of leader who listens to guidance, considers the options, confidently makes the best decision she can, and then takes responsibility for the results. Be the kind of leader who learns from the outcome, be it joyful or disappointing, and who adds that life experience to her expertise.
In what areas of your life have you accepted your CEO role? Where are you stubbornly clinging to your intern status? This mindset shift is simply a decision. You don’t need three steps to make it. You can make it, actually, before you close this window and move on with your day. In fact, this mindset shift might actually be that magic wand you’ve been looking for all along.
Choose boldly. I’ll be here, cheering you on.
by Naomi | Jan 19, 2016 | Creative Life
Yesterday, I finished a draft of a book. The project had a tight deadline and required my full concentration. Finishing was a big deal––a cause for true celebration. So, what happened the minute I reached my goal? My mind leapt to all the other things, you know, all those things I hadn’t been doing because I’d been concentrating on the book.
Fortunately, I caught myself in the middle of my “yes, but” thinking, and I remembered to stop, to celebrate what I HAD done, rather than focusing on all that I hadn’t finished. I don’t always catch myself, though.
In fact, I do this kind of bait and switch thing all the time. Here’s how it goes.
- I set a goal for my day.
- Sometimes, the goal is reasonable and I reach it.
- If I do reach my goal, total amnesia sets in about the agreement I made with myself.
- As I close my eyes to go to sleep, I scold myself for the laundry list of other things that are still undone.
Sound familiar?
The trouble is there are ALWAYS more things to do. Emails are always arriving in your inbox. Your laundry is being worn and becoming dirty. Your body is burning up the calories from your last meal and soon it will be time to shop for groceries and cook again. Don’t get me started on the dishes. Your dog is splashing around in mud puddles and tracking dirt into the house and your cat is shedding. Dust-bunnies are gathering. One assignment is done, and the next shows up.
It’s kind of funny––the way we demand the impossible of ourselves––but it’s also not funny at all. Because what’s really going on here is that we’re breaking trust with ourselves. We’re wearing down that strong inner muscle that allows us to achieve goals in the first place. Think about how it would work with a child. We ask the child to make their bed, and then when they proudly present their neatly-made bed, we point out their mid-process art project strewn across the desk. “Why didn’t you clean those up?” Because they were busy making the bed!
How motivated is that child going to be next time we ask them to make their bed?
We break trust with ourselves when we set one goal and score ourselves on another.
Too much broken trust, and I feel lackluster, ho-hum, meh. I can’t drum up the energy to reach for another goal. Of course I can’t. I’ve taught myself there will be no joy in the achieving of that goal. All there will be is more work. To me, that sounds like a recipe for a meaningless trudge through life.
So, today, I’m thinking about my trust-muscle, and how to develop it. How can I celebrate what has been done? How can I learn with my heart (not just my head) that when I’m doing one thing, that means I’m not doing any of the others? And how can I create systems that help me adjust and rebalance quickly after I’ve blocked out the world to reach for a really important goal?
One way I do this is to think about the six main areas of my life: core, commitment, creativity, connection, cultivation and casting dreams. I wrote about them a while back, and will probably write about them more soon. For now, maybe I’ll figure out a way to celebrate by investing time and attention in one or two of the areas that hasn’t been tended for a while. Maybe I can spend some time with a friend (connection) and make something just for the fun of it (creativity). Yep, that sounds like an excellent way to celebrate.
How about you? Have you baited and switched on yourself recently? What might you do to re-build some inner trust?
by Naomi | Nov 10, 2015 | Tools & Apps
Object: Taking Care of the Essentials First with Habit List
What Didn’t Work: Judging my day by an always-moving measuring stick. Running my moment-to-moment work based on whatever happened to be in my inbox in the morning. Making progress on projects that could be finished in a sprint but losing track of the small, daily actions that add up to something.
My Aha! Moment: I realized that while my to-do list was great for many things, it wasn’t the right place for those daily tasks that needed tending daily. Repeating tasks would show up in the midst of everything else (the urgent and not-so urgent) until I was numb to it all.
- I assign tasks to the days they need doing. I order the tasks in the order they need to be done.
- I use the feature that allows me to schedule certain tasks for once a week or once a month, so that they show up on whatever schedule applies.
- I use the list first thing in the morning to tick through the essentials, before digging into email and the many variables of the day.
- Make sure not to include negotiable items in your Habit List. The list needs firm edges. Either it must happen before going on to the next item on the list, or it doesn’t need to. I use another app for those tasks about which I can be more flexible.
- That said, I don’t just have chores on my Habit List. If I did, I’d completely resist the list. Items that I feel are important to my creative health or interpersonal relationships are on the list alongside items such as “floss.”
Take it to the Next Level:
- Treat the Habit List as a process in revision. It’s important to review and see what’s on the list and isn’t getting done. The app tracks how long you’ve missed a task based on your proposed schedule. When something falls behind, ask yourself: Is this not a key activity for this season? Do I need to change something to make it more possible to complete this action?
- Remember that habits can take 30, 60 or even more days to establish. Let yourself be in process, despite of the firm edges of your list. You will learn what’s actually essential, what can be dropped off the list, what obstacles are in your way, and how to be more successful as you go along. Schedule a monthly review to examine whether you need to make changes and to assess your progress.
NOTE: Habit List is the app I use, but there are a lot of similar apps on the market. Choose the one that works best and is most visually appealing to you. The more you like to interact with this app, the more likely you are to use it on a daily basis.
by Naomi | Jul 26, 2012 | Creative Life
Give me a “30 days to (fill in the blank)” program and I’m in. There’s something about committing fiercely and the progress that comes along with the commitment that makes me feel as though I’m achieving success. In my mind, I call this “getting somewhere.” That’s very telling. Not “getting (fill in the blank with a specific location)” but “getting somewhere.”
Where am I going? What’s the rush?
Don’t get me wrong. Tracking movement in my life and making commitments has served me well. It’s just that I’m realizing the guilt that goes along with these commitments might be stifling the creative winds that flow through my life.
I’m starting to think I should start in a different place. The truth is, anything worth learning to do isn’t done in chunks of 30 days anyway. Instead of committing to cram new information into my head, what if my goal were more authentic, less achievement-oriented? Isn’t my goal actually to live a more creative life, to let myself explore and learn something new? And if exploration is my goal, maybe I need to work on a couple 30 day programs at once, and *gasp* perhaps not complete them in 30 days. Or maybe I need to toss all the 30 day programs out the window and trek out into totally uncharted territory.
Maybe.
To tell the truth, I think we all need both: commitments to ourselves, commitments we strive to achieve, and also flexibility to go with the flow. I’ve started a new habit, one I think might just work for me. Many nights (see I didn’t say “every night…”) I take a few moments to jot some notes down about the day. Did I invest in creative exploration today? Did I invest in friends and family? Did I learn anything new? What am I grateful for today? Over time, I’m starting to see that my impulse isn’t actually to achieve some far-fetched goal, but instead to honor each day–to value my minutes and hours–by being intentional.
Do you track movement in your life in any particular way? I’d love to know.
