Dance With Your Inner Slacker

When you read about the journeys people make from not doing something to doing it successfully, you rarely read about the slack days - those days when the soon to be successful person just can't get motivated. I'd like to read a whole book devoted to this subject, if only so I don't feel so bad about my own slow times. For me this usually comes right after some big push involving a lot of brain-work and preparation. This week, that was preparing for the Soiree and today is my unnerving day of foggy wandering, without a clear destination in my sights. So I figured I would share here some of the techniques I use to get myself in gear when I have no time to slow down, but my body and most of my mind are not fully aware of this. Most of these techniques are not my own invention, but I've long since forgotten where I sourced them. I've read hundreds of productivity and organizational books as a young artist trying to get a handle on the chaos; life from the perspective of many artists seems to be one chaotic event after another and to move to actually completing what you want to offer the world, you have to learn some new methods.

One thing that helps me to get back on track quickly is that I've already simplified my life dramatically (and continue to do so more and more) - my belongings no longer fight for my attention and so my mind has more peace and is able to concentrate better because my visual perception isn't clotted with distraction. So I'm clearer than I was, even on days like this, when it is not working at peak performance. Second, I give myself a little slack. I already know it's not going to be a high productivity day and so I won't fight against it too hard. In a strange way, this makes it more productive because whatever intuitive part of my mind is now in control breathes a little sigh of relief for not having to fight a war for a little down time. I'll take a little extra time with my coffee this morning, read a few more articles on the web and generally lazy about a little longer than usual.

But then, I'll periodically get up and putter. I use the fifteen minute rule - I choose a project - any project I see that needs doing on days like this - and I set a timer for fifteen minutes and just work on it that long. This often (but not always) leads to me just working through the fifteen minutes and finishing the project. If it doesn't, I stop and switch to something else. Another thing I do on days like today is something I first learned from Leo Babauta from Zen Habits http://zenhabits.net/ - I go through my to do list and choose just the three most important things that need to be done today. I tell myself that all I need to do are these three important tasks. I will, of course, end up doing more. But on these days, I lie to my own mind and it believes me every time.

I have all my current projects in one of three places - I have an idea file for things that haven't really begun to look do-able to me yet, and a project folder - for things that don't have a lot of steps or reference material associated with them, and then project boxes (everything from shoe-box to bank box or more) in which I keep those projects that have lots of stuff I need to reference. I keep these all together so that I can just grab the appropriate item and not have to think too much about the steps. When I get an idea for one of the projects, I put it in the appropriate box. The individual boxes are a swirl of chaos if you dare to look inside,  but knowing that all the chaos associated with that one project lives in that box is a lifeline on days like this when I may only be using one percent of my brain power.

I think the thing to remember is to not be too obsessive about anything. If there's a down day, even when it's imperative that the work be done, not pushing too hard seems to have an overall better effect than our often touted high-productivity work-ethic. Down time likely has an unknown necessity just like sleep. So cheers to you reading this during my sleepwalking day. May all yours be mildly productive and satisfying in some deeper mysterious way on your path to your own dreams.