the same tweet can be inspirational or anxiety-inducing depending on how we choose to interpret it
if you’re following someone that inspires you, but their constant stream of “just made X sales today!” stresses you out, feel free to mute em for a bit! do what you need to do
Conversation
lately i’ve found that i get caught up in having too many convos *talking* about the big thing i wanna do, instead of just *doing* it
ultimately, ppl can encourage you but you need to do it yourself. learning self reliance is probably the hardest part of creativity
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i’ll underscore all of this with a reminder that many of us have still not reset our “productivity expectations” to account for the pandemic
yes, maybe it seems like everyone else is just as productive as before. they’re not. that is just a story your Ego is telling you
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it’s okay to slow down, take a break, be useless, have fun, and meander your way towards whatever goal you had
get lost along the way, skip and frolic, visit a friend, take the scenic route
the playful path is never a straight line
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“Art reminds us that we’re not just here to pay bills and die... We’re also here to get *excited*, and feel *wonder* and *awe*.” —Liz Gilbert
when it becomes particularly hard staying focused, try and recall the things that keep you excited about the project
rediscover the fun
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Perhaps next time I’m super tempted to try something new, I can tell myself “Sure! As soon as you finish an existing milestone”
Subtle but it reframes it from shaming my curiosity into encouraging completion, and still giving me something to look forward to
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I think I need to build a very simple project view
In the past I’ve gone really overboard with lists of lists etc... basically I think all I need now is something that does the following:
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it should be highly visible to me every single day, like i see it every single day. a whiteboard seems good for this, esp now that i’m always home
2. ongoing / perpetual projects
3. milestone-based projects (maybe their status)
4. potential explorations (curiosity column)
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the rules are simply that i cannot do anything in #4 unless i finish something from #3, or decide to retire something from #2
i could set a cadence to review these weekly, but i feel like it’s important that i remind myself of the “current weight” i’m carrying at all times
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this is reminding me of the app i wanted to build to help me see my current books & select my next book to read
not to mention the dashboard i wanted to measure my newsletter interactions
so many ideas, so little time 😭
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I want to build myself a “personal dashboard” where I track outputs of my writing that really matter to me:
- replies to newsletter
- making new friends
- reconnecting w old friends
- new ideas
Hard to track, but imagine looking at these every wk instead of subscriber counts...
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I've been using an actual whiteboard for precisely this reason. Was thinking of getting some mylar sheeting for it to avoid using up actual whiteboard space.
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Nice! There are so many perks to a solution like that — the biggest one IMO is I don’t have to open my laptop and launch anything to see it. It’s always there as a constant reminder. Sometimes offline solutions are the best ones
Time to go pull my whiteboard out of the garage!
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