Stay alit with good ideas.
Stay alit with kind thoughts.
Stay alit with amusement.
Stay alit with compassion.
Stay alit by thinking of the children you cherish.
Stay alit by remembering the ones you love who’ve gone on.
Stay alit by humming a little tuneless tune to yourself.
Stay alit by questioning your assumptions.
Stay alit by exploring.
Stay alit, alive and beautiful by spending 15 minutes today on the project that means the most to you.
Here’s Reason #5 in the “Why Procrastination Is Genius In Disguise” series:
So far we’ve covered:
1) Procrastination is Genius because underneath the pain of it (the hunger pain), it reminds you of your true desire.
2) The nonstop nagging isn’t working (never does).
3) You haven’t moved forward yet because – for whatever reason – it just hasn’t been the right time. And maybe you’ve been a bit scared, which is OK, but we’re not going to let our fear make our decisions for us.
4) You need to get unstuck from the past, bless it correct, forgive yourself (easier said than done, I know) move on in the only way we can: from right here, right now.
Now that you are feeling clear about your desire and unstuck from the past, it’s time to implement some strategies to move forward on your project.
First of all, let me remind you that there are no rules.
Life is not school. There are no rules, no grades and no way to screw this up. This is your life: you are the expert on you, and you’ll do what’s best and what’s right for you.
That being said, I’ve been doing this a long time, and I can tell you a few tips that could help you out. And you might want to try them, if only to help you figure out what doesn’t work for you.
If I had the power actually make you do stuff, this is the number one thing I would enforce. I strongly urge you to set aside 15 minutes per day for your project.
It’s amazing how much work you can get done in 15 minutes, and it’s amazing how much progress you can make if you put in 15 minutes a day, seven days a week.
Try it. You’ll see.
How you spend this 15 minutes is entirely up to you, of course. I might recommend that you make a list of possible 15 minute tasks:
With a pre-made list like that at hand, you can select a 15-minute action for each day that suits your mood.
Finally, I strongly recommend that you allot these 15 minutes in the morning, before you check your email or go online at all. It takes an iron will to resist the siren call of the Internet, but it’s worth it.
Whatever’s out there can wait for you to put yourself first for just these few minutes.
Plunging into your day knowing that you’ve already made even a little bit of progress on the work that is dearest to your heart will improve your whole world.
You are a genius and you are having a lot of really good ideas every day.
But chances are, you’re not writing them down.
And the half-life of an unrecorded idea is…well, it’s pretty short. So find a system that works for you (I like index cards, but other people like notebooks, Blackberries, calling their own phone and leaving a message, Post-Its, etc.) and use it every day.
Then create a file, folder or envelope and label it “Genius” and at the end of each day, put your ideas in there. They will nest and grow and turn into something fabulous.
Paying attention to your creativity causes increased creativity.
That’s right – I want you to do some simple, repetitive motion for 15 minutes per day, every day. But it’s not to get fit or to lose weight or to lower your blood pressure – it’s to enhance your creativity. So find some simple, repetitive exercise that you don’t hate (walking, running, swimming, calisthenics, dancing, jump rope; if your range of motion is impaired, you can knit, toss cards into a hat, chop vegetables, fold laundry, sort paper…even going for a drive is good) and find time for it every single day.
Any repetitive task tends to occupy the left (logical) brain just enough for the right (creative) brain to flower. That’s why you always have such great ideas while you are in the shower, or while you’re out walking the dog.
So I’d like us to cultivate the habit of repetitive tasks in order to give our creativity and intuition a daily opportunity to speak to us.
And I think it’s important to make the “every day” commitment in order to automate your decision-making and free yourself up from the internal debate that sounds like, “Should I walk today? I walked yesterday. But I might not walk tomorrow. Plus, it might rain. I’m sort of tired…blah blah blah” which is just mentally running around in circles and can be a serious drain on your energy.
Tell yourself you’re going to do it every day (and you don’t have to do it well – feel free to make a somewhat half-hearted effort) and then do it. No excuses.
And let me reiterate: this is NOT for your health. It is for your creativity and your creativity alone.
A body in motion puts the mind in motion.
I know a person is not really supposed to try and sell things on their blog, but I happen to know that this class really works for people, so my final suggestion is – and this will surprise exactly no one – sign yourself up for The Get It Done Workshop that starts THIS THURSDAY!
Get It Done is a 6-week project-based workshop designed to help you move forward on the projects that are important to you.
Your project can be anything:
Whatever it is, this workshop – and it’s a weekly teleclass, just like a big conference call – will give you some structure and some accountability to Get It Done.
If you want to look at more info online, go to www.GetItDoneTeleclass.com/fall and there’s also some more information at http://sambennett.wpengine.com/workshops/get-it-done-workshop/
We meet for six Thursdays starting next Thursday Oct. 14 at this same time – 9:45am-11am Pacific Time – and the class costs $365.
And I would love to see you make that commitment to yourself.
Whether you spend a dollar a day on this workshop with me or on something else entirely, I want you to commit a dollar a day to moving forward on this work that you love and that you know will make a difference in your life.
I don’t offer any discounts, but if you want to pay me over time, that’s fine. You can pay me $36.50/month for the next ten months if you want. I don’t care. I just want you to do it if you want to do it. And if you try it and it’s not for you, then I’ll refund your money, no problem. Satisfaction guaranteed or your money cheerfully refunded. That’s my policy and I mean it.
Great. I want you to take a moment to breathe and to make whatever notes you’d like to about what you notice about what we’ve discussed so far, and then, if it feels right, think seriously about joining us for The Get It Done Teleclass (www.GetItDoneTeleclass.com/fall and there’s also some more information at http://sambennett.wpengine.com/workshops/get-it-done-workshop/)
MORE TOMORROW….(tomorrow I’ll be sharing one of the craziest, wacka-doodle, creative, intuitive and FUN exercises I’ve ever invented! This will slay your procrastination dragon forever – YEE-HA!)
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“Your tele-seminar was awesome from start to finish — and you’ve motivated and encouraged me greatly just in this one session! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! Life has been very challenging, and you’ve given me practical, creative ways to fit working on my own dreams/goals into each day. I appreciate the time you gave us, sharing your expertise and gift of encouragement through your caring heart. I will put into practice what you’ve offered/shared… to realize that the world needs what I have to offer, because I’m the only one who can do what I do — that we’re all unique with unique gifts and ways of expressing those gifts. THANK YOU, SAMANTHA!!!!!!!!!”
– Sandra H., actress
“Thanks for offering such an insightful teleconference on procrastination. You really delivered lots of practical information, exercises and tips. The exercises are straightforward, easy to use and yield “can do” action steps. Very impressive! So many of these “free” calls are mostly fluff and advertising!
I appreciate the insight that the brains of creative people get overloaded and shut down because of too many variables and unknowns. That right there explains a lot!”
Elizabeth Hyland, M. Div.
Author of Surviving The Unemployment Roller Coaster: From Stress To Success
www.UnemploymentRollerCoaster.com
“I loved this morning’s call and I got a LOT from it that I’m sure I’ll use. I love your energy and the way you cut through resistance quickly in simple ways … so I’d love to work with you because I’m sure your ideas will be helpful.”
Virginia Ellenson
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While a lot of the coaching and free-advice giving I do is about making sure that you spend at least 15 minutes per day on the creative work that makes you happy, this bit is about attending to all those dumb, pesky details that can make your world feel like a dumb, pesky place to be.
For example, let’s take my client, Kevin. Kevin is a an actor – one of those good-looking-California-surfer types. He’s a hard-working member of a Los Angeles theatre company, and he occasionally books television and film work, usually playing a good-looking-California-surfer type.
Here’s Kevin’s list of dumb, pesky things:
Get the car washed
Clear off desk
Take “Opening Night” outfit to the dry cleaners
Clear out the nightstand drawer
Scrub the tile grout in the tub
Call Angela – her birthday was ages ago!
Check DWP website about drip irrigation program
Put scuba gear in garage – get it out of the bedroom
Throw out holey underwear
Wipe down patio furniture
Now, how long do you suppose these items had been on Kevin’s list?
Here’s Kevin’s embarrassing secret: nothing on that list was less than three months old, and some of them (nightstand drawer) had been on his to-do list for over five years. We can all point and snicker and laugh, but be honest, how many days or weeks or months have your to-do items been hanging around?
Now part of me wants to say to Kevin, “Look, clearly you don’t really give two hoots about getting your car washed, so why not just cross it off your list entirely and move on to a more interesting problem?”
But the fact is, it bothers him.
None of it bothers him very much, but all of them bother him a little.
So every morning Kevin wakes up, looks at his overflowing nightstand drawer and thinks that he should have cleaned that out already. Then he goes to the shower and cringes at the sight of his grubby tile grout. Then he gets dressed, rooting around for intact underwear, trips over the scuba gear, walks past his messy desk on which, somewhere, is his friend Angela’s phone number and he walks past the suit that’s waiting to go to the dry cleaners and he exits his home and notices the dried-out lawn and the grimy patio furniture and he gets in his dirty car and drives to work.
The poor man hasn’t been awake for 45 minutes and he’s already feeling terrible about himself.
That’s why I want you to take care of these niggling things. Not because anyone cares if your car is dirty, but because it’s affecting your self-esteem, and it’s affecting your ability to believe in yourself. “How can I start the project of my dreams when I can’t even find matching socks!” Well, perhaps you can’t.
So make a list of ten little things that:
You must keep this list to truly “little” things. Things that cost
less than $50. Things that take less than one hour to complete.
Things that might even be considered “errands.”
Now, schedule some time to complete these tasks. Might be 15 minutes a day, might be one whole day devoted to the whole list, might be delegating these tasks (yes! delegate!)
Let me know how it feels.
I’d love to hear what niggling little thing you’ve been putting off, and how it felt to finally get it done.
