Category: True Life Adventures
Creative Mondays #028 – Distractions.
Distractions. They are everywhere and they are a major threat to you an your creative goals. If you want to have hope of creating your dreams, you need to learn how to tune them out, turn them off and just plain ignore them.
Distractions often sink my creative plans for the day. Even just sitting down to write this post has been filled with distractions. Just while coming up with that first paragraph alone I have prepared a CD to ship off to CDBaby as a restock and looked into Apple Computer’s Compressor software to see if it would solve a problem I’m working on in trying to get my video podcasts down to a smaller file size.
Yes, I did all that in between writing sentences for that opening paragraph. I have a problem in that I’ll sit down to do one thing and then as I’m doing that one thing a million other ideas pop into my head and suddenly I feel that I have to get those things done right now. This is a huge hurdle to us creative types. Projects take way longer than they should because of the tiny little things that get in the way.
And I’m not just talking about email, texts or even the sudden excursions down the Wikipedia rabbit hole. You know, where you look up one thing that pertains to your project and then thirty minutes later, you are on a page that has nothing to do with what you looked up in the first place. There is another time of distraction I call the I Can’t Until… distraction.
It goes like this, you sit down to write but your laptop isn’t charged, so you get up and go get the charger and plug it in. Once your laptop is open, you pop open your word processor of choice and see there is an update available to your software so you click to have it update. Once it’s updated you sit to start to write, but the scrap of paper you wrote your idea on is in the other room so you have to get up and go get it. It’s now been 15 minutes and you haven’t written anything. This is my story, for you it may be different, but this is what happens.
SO, what do we do? Well, the only thing we can do…DON’T GET DISTRACTED. It’s hard, but it’s the only way to get through it.
In the situation above where I spoke about trying to sit down and write, the easy solution would be to get out pen and paper and just start writing. Let the computer update, but get the butt in the chair and start writing. But then of course, you have to find the paper. And this pen is out of ink…..
Turn off your phone. Turn off wifi on your laptop. Close the door to the room you are in. Tell your family that you aren’t to be disturbed. Try your best to minimize the distractions. And before you start, make sure that you have everything you need to begin. Laptop charged, software updated. Pen and paper. Then get going.
Again, the only solution is to fight through it and get the work done. If you had an office job, you’d be in trouble if you were constantly getting distracted and not doing your work. Creative work is work and if you let your creative work falter because of distractions you’ll get in trouble too. Not by a boss, but by yourself because your creative goals won’t be met.
So don’t get distracted.
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How do you deal with distractions? Let us know in the comments below (especially if you have a really good trick). Have a great week!
40.1
I thought I would do a brief check in on my weight loss goals for those who are interested. Back at the end of April, I kind of set up a goal for myself of losing 10 pounds by my birthday on May 20th.
Well, that didn’t happen. Oh, I tried…several times…to make it happen but if just wouldn’t stick. I’d celebrate eating great for one day, then the next morning go pig out on barbecue or some other gluttonous feast. Once or twice I strung together two days of really good eating and I always fell right back into the food trough and it all went out the window.
It wasn’t until June 11th that that all changed. There’s nothing special about that day other than that’s the day I really committed and, I’m proud to say four weeks later, it seems to have stuck.
In the weeks before June 11th, I’d make excuses for eating poorly. You see, when I lost all my weight on weight watchers before, I had chosen Wednesday as my ‘weigh in’ day. That’s the day you track your progress and all your points reset. I chose Wednesday because I tend to eat a little more on the weekend and so I wanted those days closer to the middle of the week, as sort of something to look forward to. So, before June 11th, I’d start eating well and then Tuesday would roll around and I’d think, “I’m gonna eat like crazy today and then start fresh on the program tomorrow.” Then I’d eat well on Wednesday, maybe part of Thursday, but then it was the weekend and the feedings began. Besides, there’s always next Wednesday. Right?
Well, for some reason, on June 11th, that all changed. I made the decision and stuck to it. I can’t say what it was, maybe I saw the way I looked in the mirror. Maybe it was the way my clothes were fitting. Maybe I wanted one solid thing I could control in my life. Things have been pretty chaotic (which doesn’t help the eating at all) so may, deep down, I thought that at least this would be one thing I could control. Whatever the reason, something happened on June 11th to made me really decide to commit to doing this and it has, knock on wood, stuck for the past 4 weeks.
On that day I also made a commitment to really follow the Weight Watchers program too. Before Toronto, when I lost 10 pounds, I was eating way under the amount of allotted points per day. So, yes, I did lose 10 pounds in 20 days, but I didn’t really do it the coreect way. For this go around, I decided to do it right. Follow the plan and stick to the rules. I did commit to adding more exercise to my routine, however. So instead of only doing afternoon runs, I now do 30 minutes of different exercises in the morning. That has helped a lot. The first week, I was straining through the 6 push-up and side planks I do as part of the routine. Now, 4 weeks later, I only struggle through the last one. And that one is getting easier.
The real reward though was stepping on the scale today and discovering that, even though I was only down 1.2 pounds for the week, I was down 11 punds since June 11th. I started at 193.4 pounds, todays I was 182.4 pounds. I’m well on my way. My goal is to lose another 24 to put me at 158 pounds. 158 is actually above where all those charts say a person my age, height, eye color, etc., should be, but that’s a comfortable weight and that’s what I want to get to.
If it takes another 8 weeks, so be it. I’m fine with that. This time, I’m doing my damnedest to make it work.
Oh, and last week, on Monday, I went and had barbecue, and I was still down 2 pounds on Wednesday. That’s how you make it work!
I shall keep you posted!
Creative Mondays #027 – Nervous? Just do it.
Recently I received a scheduling for a puppet audition through The Jim Henson Company. When I was first called about it, I was initially pretty confident I could go in there and nail it. Then, I received the script and all the information about the audition and I was even MORE confident I could go in their an nail it. The character was something I could hit out of the part really easily, the script was funny (something I usually find is quite rare in these situations) and it would just be a tremendously fun project to work on.
Then, just a few days before the audition, I found out something that rattled my confidence completely. Just completely dashed that sense of ‘I got this” completely. The good old Negative Brain took full control. In one instant, I went from confident to a complete mess. “I got this” became, “Not in a million years.” In fact, my negative brain, as if does, started telling me, “Just don’t even do it. That way you won’t be disappointed when you don’t get it.”
Now, my negative brain is not strong enough for me to make majorly stupid mistakes. I completely understand the consequences of not showing up to an audition that The Jim Henson Company has scheduled you for. So, there was no way I was going to NOT go to the audition.
I began thinking about being nervous about something big in your creative career and how it can completely play with your mind. In situations like that you have two choices. Don’t do it, as your negative brain would have you and play it safe. Or, as the old Nike ad says, “just do it.” And really, there is no choice. Just do it.
Nerves are nothing. They are just a holdover from that primitive brain we’ve talked about before on here. They are there to keep you safe. But when you think about things logically you’ll see that nerves can sometimes misguide you.
Being nervous while swimming in shark infested waters is probably a good idea. You could die.
Being nervous when going into an audition, or unveiling your recent painting, or stepping out on stage to play a new song, recite a new poem, read a new story, etc., those things re not likely to kill you. You’ll be just fine. Sure, you may blow the audition, receive criticism, get booed, but is it going to kill you? Probably not. And in the unlikely event that those things happen (how many people really get booed anymore?) they will all be incredible learning experiences of what to do or not do the next time you are in one of those situations.
So, when it came to this audition of mine, there really was only one choice, do it. I studied the script harder than anything I had recently. I worked on my puppetry even more to be spot on when I went in. Part of the audition would be riffing/improv so I thought of things I may say in different situations that may pop up. I made myself completely ready for this audition.
Was I still nervous? Yes.
Was I going to let that nervousness stop me? No way.
Will I get the part? Who knows? But I’m more likely to get it now that I didn’t chicken out and not go to the audition.
If you are nervous about something, just do it.
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How do you deal with being nervous about big events in your creative life? Has the nervousness ever won out? Or did you battle is successfully?
Creative Mondays #026 – Creative Goals
If you’re anything like me, always busy, you can gain a lot by setting creative goals. I’m not speaking of big lofty goals like: get a book published or have a gallery opening or have my play produced on the stage. These are big creative goals. I’m not saying those aren’t good goals to have, those are great goals to have. I’m talking about smaller creative goals that will lead you to those bigger creative goals.
I am a big proponent of working day by day, bit by bit on achieving those big creative goals. Those big goals don’t just happen overnight. In order to get a play produced, you have to write it. In order to have a gallery opening, you need to paint enough pieces to put into a gallery. So you need to look at those goals and see what goals you can set right now to achieve those bigger goals you have in mind.
Recently, I’ve started planning things out for the week every Sunday evening. I look at the week ahead and I jot down a list of things I want to accomplish by this time the following Sunday night. I break down all the current projects I’m working on and then come up with some things I can, conceivably, get done during the week to get closer to accomplishing those goals.
For example, I’m currently working on a podcast called The Tales of Deputy Guppy. Over the past few weeks I have the voice over artists come in and record their lines for the fourteen episodes of the season. So right now, I have fourteen episodes worth of audio that ready to be edited and produced into final shows. Now, I would love to be able to make one of my goals:
Edit the fourteen episodes of Deputy Guppy.
That, however, is a pretty big task and I have a ton of other things going on during the week, so it’s not going to get done no matter how much I want it to get done. So, I break down the goal into something more manageable:
Edit one episode of Deputy Guppy.
That is doable. In fact, I know I can do a little bit more so my goals then become:
Edit one episode of Deputy Guppy.
Choose the ‘selects’ for the next episode. (Selects are the takes by each voice actor that I really like and want to use in the final show.)
By doing this I have taken a near impossible task and broken it down into two little tasks that get me a step closer to achieving that big task.
Doing this also helps your brain wrap itself around completing that big task. Telling myself I have to edit fourteen episodes in one week basically makes my brain shut down because it knows that that is a LONG boring week of being glued to a chair editing. However, by breaking it down, my brain goes, “Oh I can do that and do that pretty quickly.”
And I’m not afraid of breaking down things even further. If it’s going to be a super busy week, I’ll make fewer goals. I will, however, do SOMETHING that gets me just a little bit closer to completing that big goal.
So why not try it this week? Take one of your creative goals and break it down into smaller pieces. Pieces big enough to be accomplished in a week’s time with the time you have available to put towards that goal. Then focus on getting those small things done this week. Then, at the end of the week, take the next little piece of that big goal and plan on getting that done the following week. If you can do this, put your mind to it and really do it, you’ll see that your big goal gets completed in no time.
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What goal are you working towards right now. How are you going to break it down into pieces you can tackle this week. Let us know in the comments below!