Productivity Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™

April 20, 2015

The Truth About Balance

When I was 23, I learned something about balance that I never forgot.

That was the year I taught 3- and 4-year olds at a nursery school in the Berkeley Hills.

I did not know back then that I was an artist. I did not know I was creative in the least. In fact, I thought I was the must uncreative person on the planet.

I was one of those people who, when talking to a professional creative, would say something like, “Oh, I’m not creative. I can’t even draw a straight line.”

(As if drawing a straight line has anything to do with creativity! WTF??)

But I digress. [Read more…]

July 10, 2014

Lessons from the Dating Queen: Armoring Up Against Squirrel Syndrome

I was so annoyed at Miracle Man when I woke up this morning.

The sound of his shower woke me up at 7:30, and I was just so tired from being up later than I wanted, and I so wanted to blame MM.

To rewind a bit, I knew all yesterday that it was going to be a late night, because I’m performing in an improv “cave match” on July 20th, and my team, All That Jazz, had a rehearsal in San Francisco, which meant I wouldn’t even get home until almost 11:00 pm.

As I drove home from the City, though, I realized that if I set the intention to get straight to my Going To Bed rituals immediately after walking in the door, I had a chance of actually getting to bed by 11:30!

I felt so optimistic and hopeful!

And I was on track, too, already in my pajamas and just about to brush my teeth, when I realized that I’d left my journal on my desk in the studio.

One of my morning rituals is writing a “Morning Pages”-style brain dump, and I like to have my journal on my bedside table when I wake up, so I don’t have to exit the bedroom — and walk into the studio — in order to get it.

See, one of the ways I stay on task with my morning rituals (meditating, writing in my journal), is by staying in the bedroom and out of the studio.

The second I step into the studio, I am in grave danger of being sucked into something besides my morning rituals. There are just too many juicy distractions in my studio! At that moment in time, the studio is Danger Zone.

The studio is also Danger Zone when my goal is to get myself to bed.

Last night, though, my computer was already shut down, so I figured I was safe from being sucked into a black hole of distractions.

Wrong!

Succumbing to Squirrel Syndrome

MM was playing on his computer in there (along with our cat, Nika, who was on lockdown, to give her unobstructed access to the litterbox while we’re dog sitting for my parents’ German Shepherd, Chloe — we’ve learned that not putting her on lockdown in the studio on the nights that Chloe is here can lead to cat pee on the kitchen counters in the morning — Not Good), and when I walked in the door he shared some cute and interesting things he’d found on the internet.

Distraction #1.

Then I noticed the box of new paints that had just arrived in the mail, and it was just too tempting… Just One More Thing Syndrome reared its irresistible head, and before I knew it, I had opened the box, tossed the newspaper padding on the floor, pulled out a newspaper-wrapped jar and unwrapped it.

Distraction #2.

And then it just felt like I might as well unwrap the rest of the jars and see how they fit in my paint drawer…

Extension of Distraction #2.

And then, looking at the pile of crumpled newspaper on the floor, I thought about how nice it would be in the morning to walk in a studio without a big mess to clean up, so why not do that now… Why not do Just One More Thing?

So I flattened out all the newspaper and found a home for it on my packaging materials shelf, so I can reuse it when shipping my artwork.

Distraction #3.

By this point, MM was telling me he thought it was time to go to bed, which irked me to no end, because I had been in the process of doing that before I got distracted!!

I was grumpily aimed toward the door, arms laden with my aforementioned journal and several other items I’d gathered to take into the bedroom, when I mentioned to MM that I’d like to get his help sometime — not necessarily right now, you understand — unscrewing the sole remaining screw keeping the corkboard-that-I-want-to-remove attached to the wall, it being beyond the limits of my own arm strength to do myself.

“Okay, let’s do it!” enthused MM, and though a voice in my head snarled, “Ahem! It is time to go to bed! We can do this later!” I did not heed it. Instead I let Just One More Thing Syndrome carry the day.

So MM unscrewed the screw, while I used my free hand to keep the corkboard from slamming to the ground.

Distraction #4.

By this point I was well and truly irritated, stewing in resentment about how late it had now gotten.

The Slippery Slope Into What the Hell Effect

I had blown it, hijacked by Squirrel Syndrome and Just One More Thing Syndrome. It was now officially Very Late, and all my good intentions for getting to bed by 11:30 had been smashed into a million pieces by a handful of distractions.

So I slipped into that dangerous territory lurking around the corner of every failed goal: the What the Hell Effect.

“What the hell,” that voice in my head said, “I’ve already missed my self-imposed deadline to get to sleep, so I may as well take my time now.”

I dawdled. I read the novel that currently has me booknapped while brushing my teeth. I stretched my quads. And when I finally lay my head on the pillow, I kept reading until long past Reasonable Bedtime.

Cut to 7:30 this morning.

Now I was underslept and annoyed, and it was so much easier to blame MM than to take responsibility!

Lessons from a Former Dating Queen

Thankfully, though, within seconds of waking up resentful I remembered my maxim, developed during my Dating Queen days:

Resentment is anger at oneself, misdirected at someone else, through the lens of victimhood. (Click to tweet!)

In other words, my tiredness this morning was completely and utterly my responsibility.

Ouch…

It would have been so easy to beat myself up, both for allowing distractions to keep me up late, and for wanting to blame MM for it, but I’ve learned from experience (and research has proven) that this is not just not helpful; it’s counterproductive.

Instead, I turned (once again) to my Golden Formula:

Self-awareness + self-compassion = the key to everything good. (Click to tweet!)

I acknowledged my feelings of frustration and sadness.

I reminded myself that I’m only human, and that everyone stumbles, everyone succumbs to Squirrel Syndrome sometimes.

And I picked up my journal and started writing, to help me gain some insight into how I might do a better job at preventing Squirrel Syndrome from hijacking me going forward.

Programming Myself for Success

As my hand moved across the page, it occurred to me that I could carry over another lesson gleaned from my dating days.

Back when I was dating like a full-time job, on the quest to find my life partner, I realized pretty quickly that I would be a much happier camper if I got better at setting limits. (A few too many unwanted good-night kisses will do that to a girl!)

When I was in the company of a real-life, living, breathing human being, it was all-too easy to slip into Pleaser mode. I wanted to be seen as a Nice Person, and somehow this made it really, really hard for me to set a clear boundary in the moment.

Face it, most of the time I couldn’t even tell what my boundary was! A weird sort of disassociated numbness would set in, as if I’d been preprogrammed to leave my body. Then I’d get home and think, “Ick! Why the devil did I let that guy kiss me goodnight??”

I realized that I needed to take charge of my own preprogramming!

So before going on a date, I’d prepare in advance, asking myself questions like:

How far do I want to go with this guy?

Do I want to kiss him goodnight?

What’s my limit? Where am I going to draw the line?

What am I going to say and do in order to communicate that line clearly?

It may sound ridiculous, but it was the only thing that actually worked! I finally learned how to set limits!

And because I knew that no amount of preplanning would ever prepare me for the randomness of real life, I also created a general-purpose mantra to have on hand at all times on any date:

When in doubt, the answer is no.

(Which, by the way, is a great mantra for many aspects of life, not just dating! Though I’m also a big believer in yes, too. The real trick is knowing when to say which.)

Conclusion: Say It Out Loud

As I wrote in my journal this morning, it occurred to me that I can use my Dating Queen strategy to armor myself against potential distractions in the same way that I used to prepare myself for dates,

Last night, for example, before even opening the door to the studio I could have said, out loud, to myself and to MM, “I’m going to bed now. I’m just coming in here to pick up my journal.”

I had formed this intention in my head, but I have a feeling that vocalizing my intention out loud will help to make it more concrete and easier to latch onto. Plus it will make it easier for others in my life to act as my allies!

If I had said to MM something like, “I really want to get to bed, lights out, by 11:30, and I could use your help to not get sucked into distractions,” I bet he would have been happy to help.

So that’s the new tool I’m working on to help armor myself against Squirrel Syndrome and Just One More Thing Syndrome:

Say It Out Loud.

I’ve been using it like a new toy, actually, trying it out in email (“I’m just going to see if that client got back to me about her ketubah proof. I am not going to open any other emails, and I am going to close out my email box as soon as I’ve checked.”) and Facebook (“I’m going to go straight to the doc I want to edit in the Creative Ignition Circle group, and will avert my eyes from everything else and close the tab as soon as I’m done editing.”)

It’s helping. Give it a try yourself and let me know how it works for you!

And don’t forget a liberal dose of my Golden Formula when you invariably stumble. Remember, self-awareness + self-compassion = the key to everything good!

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

September 1, 2013

My Big Secret for Getting Creating (Almost) Every Day

First, a confession: I don’t always manage to get creating in the ways I’d like every single day.

I stumble. All humans do.

Two things about that:

1) Beating myself up never helps.

Instead, I’ve learned from hard-won experience (which has been validated and confirmed by scientific studies) that the best response is self-compassion.

(Think about this: if you know you’re going to get a beating if you stumble, why would you even try?)

My Golden Formula is: “Self-awareness + self-compassion = the key to everything good.” (Click to tweet!)

Here’s how that plays out:

It starts with self-awareness:

Dagnabbit! I didn’t get to my art/writing/music/macaroni necklaces today!

Here’s where the typical response is to pull out the whip and start beating oneself mercilessly. Instead, I recommend taking a slight left-turn and staying in self-awareness for a bit. As in the following…

Hey, I’m noticing that I’m feeling malnourished now. And cranky. Annoyed with myself, yes, and sad. Maybe a little hopeless.

Before I go further down that path, though, I want to notice how this feeling compares to when I do get to my art/writing/music/macaroni necklaces.

When that happens, I feel happy. Well-fed. Free. Hopefully. Enthusiastic about life.

Now is when we pull out the self-compassion component:

Oh, dear self, you are only human. Remember, everyone stumbles. You deserve to be treated with love and kindness, especially when you stumble! So what can we do to have a better day tomorrow?

Which brings me to the second thing I have to say about stumbling:

2) The most important practice is the practice of getting back on the wagon. (Click to tweet!)

This is, of course, ever so much easier when you don’t beat yourself up!

It also helps immensely to make your wagon really short. A “short” wagon (ie, a tiny commitment of, say, ten or fifteen minutes a day) is just a helluva lot easier to climb back on!

In other words, stop expecting perfection — it will only paralyze you. Better to stumble forward than to stay frozen in your tracks! (Click to tweet!)

First Things First

Okay, now that I’ve got that off my chest, I want to share with you the super-simple tactic that, when I implement it, virtually guarantees I’ll get creating:

Do it first thing.

Seriously. That’s it.

My mantra here is:

The thing I do first is the thing that gets done. So schedule it in, baby! (Click to tweet!)

So if I want to make sure I write every day, I write first thing — before checking email, before breakfast, before letting the dog out (on the days when I’m dogsitting for my parents’ German Shepherd, Chloe).

If I want to make sure I make art, I do that first thing.

If I want to make sure I meditate, I do that first thing.

If I want to make sure I play my ukulele, I do that first thing.

Tips for Passion Pluralites

Of course, if you’re a passion pluralite, like me, no doubt you’re asking yourself, “Yeah, but what if I want to do ALL of those things? I can’t do all of them first thing!”

True.

You do have to choose one thing to be first. Until we learn to bend the time-space continuum, it is a law of nature we’re just gonna have to deal with.

However, all is not lost! If you have a flexible schedule, like I do, you may be able to “chain” a number of important-things-you-want-to-do together.

On my best days this is exactly what I’ll do. Maybe I’ll write longhand in my journal for fifteen or twenty minutes, then meditate for ten or fifteen minutes, then paint at my drafting table for fifteen minutes, then strum my ukulele for a few minutes.

Alas, it doesn’t always work so smoothly, which is why I draw on my Stovetop Model.

As a passion pluralite I’ve learned that I do get to do everything, just not all at the same time. So yes, I have to choose. I have to prioritize. There’s simply no getting around that.

Course Corrections & Reboots

BUT, I also get to rotate my pots at will! I get to pull out my Golden Formula again and practice self-awareness to help me notice when I’m feeling out of balance. I get to notice when it’s time for a course correction or a total reboot.

I get to take a fresh start, with self-compassion.

For a few months last year I tried riding my exercise bike first thing, while typing on 750words.com. It worked okay, but I noticed (thank you, self-awareness!) that, for me, a brain dump on the computer just doesn’t feed me the way writing longhand in my journal does. And trying to do that brain dump while riding my (uncomfortable, ancient) exercise bike was also kind of frustrating.*

So I tweaked my morning routing and went back to pen and paper, propped up in bed.

Another month, inspired by Will Hewett’s Sing15 practice, I tried out free-singing (vocalizing) for five minutes a day, first thing before meditating. It was a good experiment, but when I noticed that it wasn’t feeding me I gave myself permission to stop and reboot again.

In short, I get to pay attention to my creative hungers and lovingly nourish myself, and so do you. (Click to tweet!)

Sometimes I’m most hungry for music. Other times I’m hungry to make things with my hands. Whatever I’m most hungry for, I set the intention to do that, first thing.

When I succeed at doing it first, even if it’s just for ten or fifteen minutes, the whole rest of my day goes better. And how can that be anything but good?

* I’ve since installed a treadmill desk in my studio, and that’s where I do virtually all my work on the computer, including typing up and editing this blog post, which I drafted in my journal, longhand. More about my adventures with the treadmill desk in a future dispatch…

PS – Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

July 28, 2013

My #1 Technique for Avoiding Email Black Holes (plus Hallelujah Gmail!)

My email inbox is a swamp. A morass. A disaster.

I’ve applied email triage techniques many times, and yes, I’ve succeeded in clearing out the muck and actually even seeing the bottom at times. But just like my home and studio and garden, the weeds keep growing back…

I’ve used all kinds of techniques to try and maintain inbox order, including setting up filters so that newsletters land in an entirely separate folder. In fact, I have a totally separate email address for newsletters, so they can’t leap into my eyeballs, unbidden, whenever I peruse my inbox.

This has been a big help. I subscribe to a gumpzillion newsletters, and when they used to all land in my inbox it was utter chaos.

But the separate newsletter folder creates its own problems. The newsletters in there range from “Gee, I never read this, and really should unsubscribe,” to “Oh, this is fun to look at once in a while,” to “Must! Not! Miss!”

But because they’re all lumped in together, those latter ones often do get missed.

So I’ve allowed a small subset of “must read” newsletters back into my inbox, but that isn’t really optimal, either, because then I all-too-easily find myself sucked into reading newsletters, when that isn’t really how I want to spend my time right now.

My #1 Technique for Avoiding Email Black Holes

The truth is, when I go into my email, I’m most productive when I think ahead about what, specifically, I’m intending to do in there.

Rather than just “checking email,” it helps for me to have a clear plan.

For example:

“I’m going to check if any clients got back to me about their ketubah proofs, so I can respond quickly if necessary, and then I’m going to get out of my inbox and focus back on my writing.”

Or:

“I’m going to take 30 minutes to read and respond to Your Big, Bold, Creative Life Academy forum posts and comments, and then I’m going to get out of my inbox and focus back on my writing.”

Or:

“I’m going to see if my Wonder-Assistant finished that task I set her to, send a quick reminder if she didn’t, and then I’m going to get out of my inbox and focus back on my writing.”

(Note: Sometimes it’s “and then I’m going to get out of my inbox and focus back on making art,” or “focus back on fixing my website,” or “focus back on [something else entirely]” Today’s a big writing day, though, so that’s where my brain is going.)

When I’ve got a clearly focused intention for exactly why I’m diving into my inbox right now, and exactly what I want to accomplish in there, it helps me to avoid getting sucked into the email-internet black hole.

You know, the one that spits you out, dazed, a couple of hours later, wondering where you are, who you are, and what in the heck just happened to you? Yeah, that one.

Enter Gmail’s New Tabs…

Even with a clearly focused intention, though, an inbox with all kinds of messages, with all kinds of purposes, from all different kinds of senders, is still a sticky wicket.

That’s why I broke out into a chorus of Glory, Glory, Hallelujah when I saw the new Gmail tabbed email layout.

Finally! The jumble of important notes from clients and personal contacts, promotional messages, forum updates, and social network updates, has been untangled!

Now, simply by clicking on a tab, I can move from category to category, as if I’m moving from room to room. It makes my email black hole avoidance technique above ever so much easier!

I feel like I can breathe again.

I know a lot of internet businesses got their panties in a twist over this new Gmail roll-out. Their newsletters, which may have previously landed in your inbox along with every other non-filtered message, suddenly got diverted to the Promotions tab.

You’d have thought the sky was falling.

I also haven’t felt so ordered about since Miss Uchida’s 4th grade class. Newsletter after newsletter directed me to “drag this email over into your Primary tab right now!”

It kinda ticked me off, actually.

I will drag, or not drag, your email to whatever-the-hell tab I want, thank you very much.

And no matter what you think you want me to do with your newsletter, I guarantee you that if I move it over to the Primary tab, it will end up either A) getting dragged right back to Promotions, or B) getting deleted, or B) getting totally unsubscribed from. None of which are, I think, what you are aiming for.

You may want the newsletters you subscribe to in your Primary tab, and that’s totally fine. I don’t.

And that doesn’t mean I don’t want your promotions!

I subscribed to your newsletter for a reason: I want to receive it. But I want to read it on my terms, when I want to read it. Not when I’m popping in to check and see if my client finally got back to me.

And now that Gmail has blessedly moved your newsletter out of my inbox, when I do want to read it, I know just where to find it!

[Pause while I break into another chorus of Hallelujah.]

Yep, I know a lot of newsletter senders are scared about their newsletter being labeled a “promotion,” but it is a promotion. Mine is too. I run a business here. Commerce is involved. It’s cool. I write newsletters to promote it. Hopefully my readers get value from what I write, and hopefully none of this is news.

Promotions aren’t bad. I don’t want to unsubscribe from my gumpzillions of email newsletters. I just want to find them when I want to find them, and read then on my terms.

(All this is to say, if you also use Gmail, and you’re one of my Insiders, you won’t hear me telling you where to drag my dispatches. I trust you to put it wherever it works best for you.)

And now I’m going to check my inbox for pre-homework replies from my Your Big, Bold, Creative Life Academy members, and then I’m getting out of my inbox and focus back on writing.

PS – Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

April 16, 2013

Endings, Exits, Edges and Buttered Sourdough Toast

When I was a kid, one of the best parts of the weekend was my dad’s sourdough.

Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, we were lucky to share our home with microorganisms that make the best sourdough on the planet, and my dad had it down to an art form. On Friday or Saturday night he’d pull out the ceramic container that lived in the fridge, mix the weird-smelling sponginess inside together with flour and water, cover the bowl with a dish towel and put it up on the top of the cupboard, near the ceiling, where the sourdough-making beasties were most likely to hang out and add their magic to the mix.

The next morning we’d be treated to a super-sour batch of pancakes (my favorite) or waffles (my brother’s favorite), or sometimes biscuits (okay, I lied — these were definitely my favorite).

Weekend brunches were the best at my house!

In addition to the quickbreads above, there were a couple of years there when Pop also made killer sourdough bread once or twice a week. He even bought a special set of Pyrex™ baking tubes, which made eerily perfect cylindrical loaves, which we in turn sliced into perfect rounds of bread.

Sourdough bread is definitely best toasted, and the toaster in our house got a lot of use.

Which meant, of course, that we got very practiced at buttering said toast.

My dad was the pro — his toast was always impeccably buttered, with an even layer of melted butter (or more likely in our house, margarine) from edge to edge. Mom’s technique was more slapdash, resulting in a big lump of butter (margarine) in the center, with the toast getting progressively drier and more butter-poor the closer you got to the crust.

Mom loves butter (margarine too, actually), and would be happy to eat it straight out of the carton, so her technique worked great for her needs. When you’re sprinkling your cinnamon sugar, however, and you want it to cling consistently to every millimeter of your toast round, a mostly-dry piece of toast with a chunk of partially-melted butter (or margarine) in the center just doesn’t cut it.

I was determined to learn to butter toast like my dad did. What was Pop’s secret?

Edges.

Pop learned a saying from someone else (his own father, perhaps?), which stuck with me:

“Butter around the outside, and the inside will take care of itself.”

Or, to be a little clearer:

“Butter along the edges, and the middle will take care of itself.”

In other words, start spreading your butter not in the middle, but along the outer edges, by the crust. As you circle around your slice of toast, keep spreading the butter at the outer edge of the still-dry part of the toast. You’ll end up buttering in an ever tightening spiral, until at last you reach the center.

It’s a thing of beauty.

What does this have to do with living a creative life?

I will explain, dear reader.

Several months back I had a half-day studio session with Cairene.

(Brief interruption to say: Run, do not walk, to work with this woman! And no, that is not an affiliate link. Virtual hugs to the wonderful Laureen for pointing me in Cairene’s direction. And yes, it’s a random coincidence that their names sort of rhyme.)

When the student is ready, the teacher appears, they say. I was oh-so ready for Cairene, who pointed out (among many other things) the importance of giving attention to the edges of your work: exits, endings, transitions from one “container” to the next.

Exits, Endings, and Transitions

The time I spend writing this post, for example, is a container. At some point I’ll need to shift my attention away from writing a blog post and toward the next thing.

Picking my sweetie up at the airport, say. That’s another container, and something else I have to do today (in about twenty minutes, as it happens).

If I’m going to get to the airport in a timely fashion, so my sweetie doesn’t have to wait out on the curb for a ridiculous amount of time, I need to plan ahead not just for the time it will take me to drive to the airport, but for the time it will take me to transition out of writing a blog post and into the next thing.

What do I need to do to wrap up my writing session? Save the blog post, or if it’s done, schedule it for publication. Bring my attention out of my computer and onto what I need to get myself safely to the airport.

But I actually need to do a lot more than that.

In this case, I need to put on some real clothes (unless I want to drive to the airport in my pajamas), feed the cat — and, oh, yeah, since I’m dog-sitting for my parents’ German Shepherd, Chloe, I also need to let the dog out and feed her, too.

So it’s not really just a matter of stopping writing and *bam!* instantaneously driving to the airport. There is a whole slew of “transition stuff” that needs to be taken into consideration if the rest of my morning is to go smoothly. And just like the buttered sourdough toast, if I pay attention to those edges, I’ll have a much more pleasant experience.

When I get back from the airport, what needs to happen in order for me to turn my attention back to writing, or to whatever container is next?

If I think about these things in advance, it’s truly amazing how much difference it makes!

My Usual M.O.

What I typically tend to do is forget about things like the fact that I have to feed the critters before I can hop in the car, so I extend my writing container for longer than I really have time for. Then I end up scrambling like a madwoman, cursing a lot, and being embarrassingly late for things like picking my sweetie up from the airport.

What I typically tend to do is not think about endings, edges, and transitions, and that means great stretches of otherwise productive time gets lost in a void of never-ending-transition.

My day is in constant danger of becoming a black-hole of spinning my wheels. Or to stick with my toast metaphor, a piece of mostly-dry sourdough toast with a clump of mostly unmelted butter in the middle.

But now, thanks to Cairene, my usual M.O. is changing. Instead of just focusing on what I have to do, I’m learning to shift my focus just an inch to the left and right of that, to how I’m going to end a given container, transition out of it, and transition into the next thing.

Butter around the edges and the middle will take care of itself.

Focus on the edges, endings, and transitions of the tasks, activities, and “containers” of my day, and the whole day flows ever so much more smoothly.

Now I’m going to get dressed, feed some hungry critters, and make myself some cinnamon toast before heading off to the airport to pick up MB.