I Know What I Need to Do — I Just Can’t Make Myself Do It

Here’s an example of the kind of letter I frequently receive from my clients:

I know what I need to do, I just can’t make myself do it. I watch endless YouTube videos, I play computer solitaire, I fool around on Facebook — I even scrub my kitchen floors — all just to avoid the work that I know is my destiny. I get so mad at myself. Am I chasing a shadow goal? What do I do? — Elizabeth

Here’s what I would say to Elizabeth, and to you, since chances are fairly high you are dealing with the same concerns:

Rest easy, honey — you are merely suffering from a biological imperative called “displacement activity.”

Displacement activity is what happens when an animal is in the grip of two conflicting instincts, and so it enacts a third, seemingly inappropriate behavior.

For example, you’ve probably seen a chimpanzee being challenged by another chimpanzee. When the first chimp doesn’t know whether to run away or fight, he might scratch his head. . .yawn. . . look away. . . start grooming himself.

Seems like a very passive response to aggression, but that chimp will do anything to deflect the energy, avoid making a decision, and otherwise make himself as invisible as possible.

When you have the instinct to create and you simultaneously have the instinct not to create, your fear says, “Don’t do it!” And so, confused by these two equally strong instincts, you shut down and get stuck playing an online word game for hours on end.Sometimes years.

It doesn’t mean you have low self-esteem, and it doesn’t mean your dream is impossible, and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re lazy.

So the next time this happens, just recognize the dynamic without yelling at yourself.

“Ah,” you might say instead, “I appear to be having the instinct to create something. And I also find myself feeling afraid of what will happen if I create that thing.

Perfectly natural.

But my fear does not get to make my decisions for me.  So I will now set my kitchen timer for fifteen minutes and just play around with my creative idea in a light, fun, beta-testing sort of a way and then see what happens.”

ACTION STEP
Spend fifteen minutes right now playing around with your favorite project.

Nearly Miraculous Daily Habit

“…Because you told me I was a stuntwoman and I believed you…” Painting by Lesley Perdomo
Allot Fifteen Minutes a Day to Your Project

If I could actually make you do stuff, the first thing I would get you to do is to spend fifteen minutes each and every day working on your project.

As it happens, you are the agent of change in your life, and I can’t really make you do anything.

But I strongly urge you to make this daily commitment to your project.

Do fifteen minutes every morning
— before you check your email, before you check your email, before you check your email…working on your project.

You will need an iron will to resist the siren call of the Internet, but it’s worth it.

Whatever’s out there can wait while you put yourself first for just a few minutes.

So get out your kitchen timer, or use the timer on your cell phone (in which case you can select an alert sound that you particularly enjoy), and even if you just sit still for fifteen minutes, you will profit.

I’ve heard from my students with attention deficit disorders that using a timer is an especially useful focusing ritual.

You will be amazed by how much work you can get done in fifteen minutes. You will be flat-out astonished by how much progress you make by putting in fifteen minutes a day, seven days a week, for a week, for a month, for three months, for a year.

Intellectually, this makes perfect sense. You know that if you practiced guitar every day for fifteen minutes, before long you’d be a better guitar player.

If you spend fifteen minutes a day writing a novel, eventually you will have written a novel.

If you spend fifteen minutes a day working on your abs, pretty soon you’ll have strengthened your core.

But emotionally this strategy doesn’t feel like it will work. It feels too small and too half-baked.

It may also trigger some feelings of rebellion, anger, despair, or fatigue. Sometimes those feelings show up right when you’re on the verge of a breakthrough.

You might want to think of this as your Daily Fifteen Minutes of Fame.
It ’s your chance to treat yourself like a famous artist for fifteen minutes every day.

After all, would a famous artist have any trouble claiming this small amount of time for herself ? Of course not.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Okay, Sam, but how do I go about this fifteen-minute thing?” Here ’s what I recommend:

Your Daily Fifteen Minutes of Fame — the Why

Quickly — without pondering — close your eyes for a moment and ask yourself, “What does this project represent for me? What value of mine does it represent?” and just let the answer bubble up from inside.

Maybe your answer will be “freedom” or “joy” or “self- expression” or “love” or “escape from the cubicle” or “to prove everybody wrong” — whatever word or phrase brings a little smile to your face is the right one.

You might even make yourself a little sign with your word or phrase on it and post it on or near your timer. (You could even grab a paint pen and decorate your kitchen timer if you were so inclined — a bit of glitter and glue, anyone?)

Your Daily Fifteen Minutes of Fame — the What

Working swiftly, brainstorm a list of fifteen-minute tasks.

Include a wide variety, since some days you might wake up feeling bold and want to tackle something brave such as “entering poetry contest,” and on others you’ll feel quiet and shy and want to do something simple like doodling or daydreaming. With this list at hand, you can quickly select the task that matches your mood.

For example, if I were writing a play called Romeo and Juliet, my list of fifteen-minute tasks might look something like this:

• Write a quickie character sketch of the nurse.
• Research poisons and sleeping draughts.
• Work on the balcony scene.
• Call agent.
• Brainstorm titles (Capulet vs. Montague, Why Fifteen-Year-Old
Girls Should Not Be Allowed to Go Dancing Unchaperoned )
• Write an author’s bio for the back cover.
• Double-check penalties for dueling.
• Write a blog post about doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
• Research whether a rose by any other name really would
smell as sweet.

Your Daily Fifteen Minutes of Fame — the When

I usually suggest working in the morning, just because getting stuff out of the way first thing seems to work for a lot of people, including myself, but you might find that working after school works well (family homework time?) or just before bedtime.

Some people like to work in the middle of the night. Experiment.

LUNCHTIME PLAYS

My friend Emilie Beck is an award-winning playwright and theater director, and once she wrote a play (two plays, actually) in twenty-minute increments.

She had two small boys at home and a very demanding full-time job, and twenty minutes each day during her lunch hour was truly the only time she had.

It was not her preferred method of working, to be sure, but she made the best of it.

She found not only that she was able to do some great work but also that the action of writing every day helped remind her of her life goals, and kept her in touch with her artist-self, which was, I imagine, in danger of getting temporarily swallowed up by her mommy-self and her executive-self.

LESLEY’S STORY (In her own words)

I will be honest, I didn’t believe you at first. You were so adamant about how only fifteen minutes a day can help you complete a project. “Yeah, right,” kept sounding in my head. It was that same voice that always held me back from starting a project because I never knew where to start.

Whether I was starting a necklace or a painting, I always felt that if I started it, then I would have to finish it right then and there. That is a lot of pressure, so I would sometimes just shrug off some great ideas.

I figured I had nothing to lose by following your advice. I set the timer on my cell phone and started a neck- lace right away. It took me three fifteen-minute sessions to complete one, but by the end of the week, I had three more necklaces than I had anticipated.

I filled in my fifteen minutes with production, and I started to value what fifteen minutes can bring you in a day, a week, and a month! So I decided to transfer this wisdom to my paintings.

Sometimes I would feel inspired to go longer than fifteen minutes. However, if I had only fifteen minutes to give to a project, I was okay with it.

What I am sharing with you today is a painting that I started in February 2011 and finally completed it August 2011. This painting is very meaningful to me and expresses the journey that I have embarked on since starting the fifteen-minutes-a-day process.

The background is a tile collage of different tattoo images that I found in various tattoo magazines (during my fifteen minutes a day I would skim through magazines and cut out my favorite images). Soon I had collected enough to fill up the canvas (again, in different fifteen-minute segments, I glued them to every quadrant of that canvas).

Once the canvas was filled, I started painting the woman. (In those fifteen-minute segments I learned how to get the skin tones I liked, and I played with shadow.)

I will be honest: sometimes during my fifteen-minute segments I would just stare at the canvas and try to figure out what my next move would be. But those fifteen minutes of thought are what helped bring about the spiderweb, the filigree, and the crystals, all of which helped me complete this painting.

I call this painting the Stuntwoman, which is something you once called me. I have found balance in my life, in my career, by just appreciating fifteen minutes every day.

By the way, I gave Lesley the stuntwoman idea because once as she was talking to me about feeling overwhelmed by her schedule, I suggested that she consider the idea of being busy without buying into the story that busy equals being stressed out:

“Think about being busy in the same way that a surgeon is busy during an operation,” I told her. “Be busy like a trapeze artist flying through the air, or like a stuntwoman — just cleanly moving through each task with great clarity, concentration, and grace.”

There’s No Such Thing as a Single-Discipline Creative

I’ve never met a single-discipline creative.

Every creative person I know says things like, “Well, I’m a writer. But I also sing in a choir and play bass guitar and drums and embroider and do needlepoint, but I don’t do counted cross-stitch anymore, and of course everyone in my family loves to cook, and did I mention that I also clog dance?”

Like I said, you’re good at a lot of things.

And then there’s the artistry that you bring to your everyday life.

Take a look at the list of creative activities below. This list was created and then added to over the years by hundreds of students and clients. As you’ll see, some of the activities on the list are a bit outside-the-box.

Maybe you, too, have some skills that you never thought of as creative, or dare I say… artistic?

The A-B-C’s of Creative Endeavors

Acro-Yoga, Acting, Acupuncture
ADR (Additional DialogueSplitShire_TORINO_1377
Recording)
Agenda Planning, All Things Mac, Alphabetizing, Animal Husbandry
Animation, Assembling Things, Awesome Salad Making

Baking, Bargain Hunting, Beadwork, Bear Hugging
Big-Picture Thinking, Biking, Bodhran (Irish Drum) Playing
Bomb-Diggity Smoothie Making, Boot Camp Sergeanting
Building Junk, Buying Presents

Cake Decorating, Calculated Risk Taking, Calligraphy
Camerawork, Caregiving, Cartooning
Chameleon-like Ability to Blend In, Choreography
Clothing Design, Coffee Making, Complimenting Others
Creative Listening, Creative Space-Making (for Others’ Art)

Dancing: Ballet, Dancing: Boogie-Oogie-Oogie, Dancing: Modern
Decoupage, Detail Designing (the devil is in the details), Doll Making, Doodling
Dream-Board Making.Driving in Los Angeles, Drumming

Editing, Emoting. Empathizing, Encouraging
Entrepreneurship, Event Planning, Expressing Myself Honestly without Being Cruel

Facebook, Fashionistaing, Faux Painting, Film Critiquing
Filmmaking, Finding Order in Chaos, Fixing Things
Flute Playing, Foley Working, Footwear Design, Furniture Making

Gardening, Gift Wrapping, Going to the Mat, Grant Writing
Graphic Design, Guitar Playing: Electric, Guitar Playing: Folk/Acoustic
Gunsmithing

Handmade Card Making, for Prisoners, Home Cooking, Home Decorating
Honesty about Self (with Wit, Sometimes), Horseback Riding

Idea Formation, Improvising, Information Sharing
Interior Design, Internet Marketing, Invoking

Jewelry Making, Joke Writing, Juggling

Kissing, Kite Making

Life Coaching, Lighting Design, Listening and Giving Advice
Logistics, Long Car Trips, Lovemaking, Lucid Dreaming

Makeup application, Making Others Comfortable with Themselves, Making Fairy Houses Marketing, Massage, Mediating, Mind-Body-Soul Coaching Motivational Speaking, Music Producing:Stage and Studio

Needlework: Crocheting, Needlework: Embroidering, Needlework: Hand Sewing, Needlework: Knitting, Needlework: needlepoint, Networking, Nursing

Ocarina Playing, Organizing Painting

Painting by Number, Party Throwing, Personal Training, Philosophy, Photography, Piano: Rudimentary, Playwriting,
Poetry: Limericks, Poetry of the Obscene,Poetry: Romantic Poetry: Memorizing
Poster making, Producing, Public Speaking
Pulling Business Concepts out of My Butt (a.k.a.Entrepreneurship?)

Quad Riding

Raw Food Juicing, Reading, Reading Aloud, Reading to Oneself, Reciting
Recorder Playing, Recovery (12-Stepping), Rollerblading, Roller-Skating

Sales, Saying No, Scabbard Making, Scenic Design, Scrapbooking, Screenwriting, Script Coverage, Sculpey-Clay Bead-Making, Set Designing,Sewing, Shopping, Show Producing: Multiple Genres, Shrinky-Dink Making, Silk Screening, Singing, Singing: Classical Music, Singing: Gospel, Snowboarding, Soap Making, Social Media, Software Design, Spiritual Leadership, Stand-Up Comedy, Staying in Touch, Studying/Being a Student, Stunt Fighting/Stage Combat Stunts

T-Shirt Design, Talking to Animals, Teaching, Technological Geekery
Theater: Avant-Garde, Theater: Classical, Theater: Clowning,Theater:Directing
Theater: Improvisation, Theater: Industrial/Business, Theater: Mime,Theater: Musical Comedy
Theater: Shakespeare Theater: Sketch Comedy, Throwing Theme Parties, Tomboyishness
Toy Making, Traveling, Tree Hugging, Tweeting

Urban Living

Vegan Baking, Video Blogging, Video Gaming

Exercise: How Many Kinds of Artist Are You?

Take a sheet of paper and divide it into two columns.

In the first column, write down any of the skills or talents from the list above that you possess. Add to the list any additional skills you have mastered that you might think of as an art.

Gift giving? Coffee brewing? Comforting people when they’re upset? Daydreaming?

In the second column, make a note about how that talent might help you to solve a current issue in your life in a unique way.

For example, remembering how good you are at throwing parties might inspire you to make your next boring meeting more festive.

Calling to mind your puzzle-solving genius might suggest a fun, new way to approach your blog.

It drives me crazy when I hear an artist say, “Oh, I could never get a real job because I’m only good at one thing.”

Nonsense.

Spending a lifetime in the arts helps you develop all kinds of valuable skill sets: listening, reading body language, using your keen intuition; a love of history; good rhythm; the ability to present in front of a group; a sense of shape, color, and design; the ability to accept criticism; a knack for collaboration and teamwork (we usually call it “ensemble”); and most of all, the ability to think of a new idea and work hard until it’s done.

I’m not saying that you have to get a real job if you don’t want one.

I just want you to notice how many skills and art forms you bring into every room you grace.

Vocals
Water Skiing
Web Design
Whitewater River Guiding
Woodcut-Print Making
Woodworking
Wrapping Presents
Writing
Writing Love Notes
Writing Meditations
Yoga
YouTube

Once you are done noticing your own unusual art forms, you might want to take a moment to notice someone else’s.

People feel very seen and cared about when you take the time to praise the way they walk in the world.

A heartfelt compliment such as “I notice that you are always very considerate in your remarks when we have
these meetings — thank you for that” can do a lot for a strained work environment.

And I will tell you from experience that writing a kindly, observant thank-you note can win you a friend for life.

Select three of your special talents, and make a note about how these gifts might be useful to you in moving your project forward.

Would love to know what you came up with, leave a comment below if you feel like sharing.

Unusual Marketing for Creative People

Your work is you.

Your creative work is an expression of your soul, of your perspective, of your innermost self. It’s completely unique to you.

So there is no “template” you can follow, because no one has ever done what you’re doing before.

And any time you start to try to adopt someone else’s “six-figure” system, or try to abide by “conventional wisdom” you get all itchy.

And then you procrastinate and you tell yourself all kinds of stories about how no one would ever pay you to do this and how there’s no market for it and how you’re probably not that good at it anyway and how the technology sort of freaks you out and what if you succeed and someone steals your idea or what if someone calls you a fraud and then you start criticizing yourself about your low self-esteem and how you never finish anything and maybe you should just forget this crazy dream of making money from your creativity once and for all.

Right.

Like that’s gonna happen.

You can’t give up on your dreams because your dreams never give up on you.

They keep haunting you.
Pulling at your sleeve.

And then you see some no-talent-hack succeed and you think, “I could do that!”

You’re right.

You can.

And maybe this is your year to try.

Dusting The Baseboards In The Ballroom

Dusting The Baseboards In The Ballroom

Sometimes you get all involved in the little things that are wrong, bad or need fixing.  You obsess.  You are blind to what’s good, what’s working, what’s excellent, even, and all you see are the little broken pieces and the long list of things that should have been done today, should have been done yesterday, should have been done three years ago…

That’s what we call Dusting the Baseboards in the Ballroom: you are bent over, completely oblivious to the glorious ballroom that is your life, thwacking away at invisible particles. Worse yet, when you look at other people’s lives, all you see is their ballroom. And you make comparisons. You do not come out well in these comparisons.

This is upsetting for a person.

And it’s not even the worst part. The worst part is when other people see YOUR ballroom and they start to praise its grace, its beauty, its excellence and you can’t even hear them because you are still dwelling on the dusty baseboards. You even feel sort of lonely and misunderstood – doesn’t anybody understand how hard you are working? Doesn’t anybody get how much still needs to be done?

No. They don’t.

So settle down for a moment and look around at your ballroom. Pretend it isn’t yours for a minute. See how lovely it is? Inspiring, even.

Fifty years from now the details that are worrying you now will not matter one whit. But the art you create, the novel you write, the doll you sew, the dance you perform – that will still be making a difference in the world. Yes, the dishes need to get done, but the world needs your art, so spend 15 minutes on your art first, OK? Art before housework.

And if you invite people in to your ballroom and allow the music to begin to play… if you light enough candles and remember to let a smile come to your lips… even you might lose sight of the dusty bits as you waltz through your glorious, glorious life.

Are You Juggling Boulders?

Here’s an email I got recently that I thought might speak to you:

Hello Dear Samantha,

I listened to the recording of the Procrastination tele-seminar last night, woke up this morning and walked straight to the bathroom to pee, but before I brushed my teeth or put clothes on or anything, I went to the cold downstairs and worked on my original music for 15 minutes and really got something good accomplished! (run-on sentence intended)

Here’s my question – I actually have not just original music, but also music for hire, taxes, and de-cluttering all weighing on me.

The idea of spending 15 minutes on each shuts me down. How do I choose what to do? How do I juggle these different boulders? The music for hire is what I need to LIVE off of so I can do my original music, and I haven’t done it since June, when I got the project. Now my head is spinning.

Do you have an idea?

I love your attitude and perspective,

Nedi
NEDIsings.com.

And here’s what I wrote back:

Hi Nedi –

Hooray! Hooray for you! Great work jumping into your original music – fuzzy teeth and all 🙂 Feels so good, doesn’t it?

I can think of a number of suggestions for you –

1) Just stick with working on your original music every day for a month or two until you reach a natural stopping point, then transition to another “daily” project.

2) Make a few lists of a bunch of different 15-minute tasks for each of your projects and each morning just pick one task that feels good (it’s crazy how much progress you can make with this technique).

3) Assign each project a day: Monday for original music, Tuesday for taxes, Wednesday can be a “free choice” day, then Thursday for music for hire, etc.

Experiment until you find a system that really works for you – remember, there’s no right way to succeed, there’s just YOUR way. You’ve got some great momentum going, so stick with it, OK? And don’t forget to reward yourself for doing such good work.

And please let me know how it goes.

Yours,
Sam.

The Get It Done Teleclass
(it’s like a big weekly conference call and it’s recorded so you can listen anytime) starts this Thursday, Jan. 27th and if you want to:

– finish your project
– use your deep creativity
– share and get support from a like-minded community and ME!

Then go here to learn more about The Get It Done Teleclass
: www.GetItDoneTeleclass.com/winter

By the way — The free Procrastination Is Genius In Disguise call was so much fun for me and the demand for this material has been so great that I’m offering it AGAIN on Wed. 1/26 at 9:45am (PT). You can register for the free call here: www.GetItDoneTeleclass.com – Tell your friends!

P.S. The Get It Done Teleclass comes with a money-back guarantee: if you don’t love it, I’ll cheerfully give you 100% of your money back, no questions asked. So if you’re thinking about it, go ahead and DO it! You know I’d love to work with you. Learn more here: www.GetItDoneTeleclass.com/winter xoxoxo SSB.

You’re Just Spending Your Time On Something Else

You do have time to work on your projects. You’re just spending it on something else.

Which is fine.

Be aware that you are making the choice and be clear about your decision. No one is victimizing you. No one else is in charge of your time.

“But I have a boss! And kids! And a spouse!” I know. Me, too. And there’s the animals and the paperwork and the garden and the basement and the church and the family and the car repair and the dinner party and the charity event and the choir concert and the business to run. And that’s just this weekend.

But still – there are snatches of time that are your own. You can wake up 15 minutes earlier. You can ask someone else in the house to prepare supper so you might work for 15 minutes. You can turn off the TV for one sitcom. Even grabbing five-minute increments at work is better than nothing.

I know it’s not easy to ask other people to change their routine to accommodate your need to be an artist. But it is worth the discomfort.

And if you feel that you truly can’t, then you can’t, so quit giving yourself such a hard time about it.

Admit to yourself with a full and humble heart that now is not a good time for you to be working on your project. Mentally set your project in a file folder labeled, “Next Summer” or “After the First of the Year” or whatever and seal it with a kiss.

You are doing an excellent job of living your life. No one could possibly do a better job.

Be proud of your decisions.