This is the review of the book 'Manage your day-to-day - Build your routine, find your focus and sharpen your creative mind'.
It is a challenge to maintain and improve your creative potential in a world of incessant information availability. This book is a curated collection of articles linked around four themes - building a solid daily routine, finding focus in a distracted world, taming the tools and sharpening your creative mind.
The book provides a complete set of practical insights delivered by an eclectic group of expert minds. The contributors include Seth Godin, Steven Pressfield, Gretchen Rubin, Leo Babauta and others.
Truly creative achievements require thousands of hours of work. This cannot be accomplished without a daily routine. Routines set availability expectations and align our workflow with energy levels and get our minds into a creative rhythm. The articles in Chapter 1: Building a rock solid routine, help set a framework to create the routine.
The key change to your work habits is to prioritize creative work over reactive work. You have to allocate a large chunk of time for creative work. You have to dedicate time for your creative work when you have the most energy. Having set the rhythm, use creative triggers like sticking to same time, tools and surroundings to enable your mind to move quickly into the creative mood. In addition, you have to restrict your to-do list (which contain reactive work) and should have a system to capture every commitment so that you can deal with them in a batch later. Set a start and finish time to your workday, creativity works best under deadlines.
To be a creative person, you have to learn to harness the power of frequency. We tend to overestimate what we can do over a short term and underestimate what we can do over long term. The advantages
of showing up for work at a regular frequency are that it makes getting started easier, keeps ideas fresh, keeps off the creative pressure, sparks creativity, nurtures frequency and fosters productivity. Frequency is a realistic approach and ties with the creative rhythm that we discussed earlier.
As per Seth Godin, talented people are not succeeding because they do not have a practice. To have a practice is to regularly and reliably do the work in a habitual way. You have to do the work even (especially) when you don't like doing it. In addition to having a practice, creative people should learn the art of selling their work. Talented people have trouble with practice in the long run because they are afraid of projecting their expertise.
A key factor that helps consistency is to build renewal into the schedule. Our bodies follow ultradian rhythm, ninety minutes periods at the end of which we reach the limits of mental capacity. Schedule breaks in work to re-energize. It is very important to find solitude and do meditation during the workday. Meditation will strengthen the skill of focus.
The key message from this chapter is 'Don't wait for inspiration, just show up to work'.
How do you find focus in a distracted world? This topic is covered in Chapter 2. In this age of information, attention is the greatest casualty. The chapter covers various techniques to improve the attention span. One such method is the 'Focus block method' in which you block off chunks of time on your calendar to do deep work. Once you have this focus block, ensure zero distraction during the time period. To make the best use of this block of time, you should consider dedicating it to a specified project. You can also consider a different location for this project.
Multitasking is a major creativity killer. People often confuse 'Task switching' with Multitasking. The problem is that task switching breaks the creative flow. Also with task switching the previous unfinished task leaves an 'attention residue' in your mind that impedes performance of the subsequent task. A better strategy is to finish a task with single minded focus rather than spreading your attention over multiple unfinished tasks.
This is the age of calendar. The problem with calendar is that it gives preference for short term tasks (meetings, emails etc) which give you quick wins at the cost of important creative tasks that will take a long time to complete. In addition we are not clearly aware of the opportunity cost of time. When you spent time in one task you have an opportunity cost of not doing another important task. Progression markers help manage time better. However, in some tasks progress is not linear. In such cases one should devise one's own progression marker to remind us of the effort already consumed.
You can't wish away distraction in this world of chaos. You can handle this by creating 'positive distractions' like racing against a preset timer. You will need self control to overcome distractions. One strategy to develop self control is to develop an unrelated habit like saying 'yes' instead of 'yeah' or daily flossing. Developing self control in one area of life strengthens self control in other areas of life. Mixing mindful work with mindless work is a very powerful approach especially if mindful work is done when you are at peak energy levels.
Creativity becomes blunt over a period of time. So it is important to regularly sharpen it. Chapter 4 discusses the topic of 'How to sharpen the creative mind. One of the ways is to indulge in 'Unnecessary creation' where you devote serious time and energy on personal projects which are close to your heart. In addition to stimulating your creative mood, these projects will give ideas that can be commercialised later. Unnecessary creation grants you space to explore your unique aptitudes and passion through a process of trial, error and play.
Another concept is that of 'morning pages', writing three pages of free flowing thought that you write first thing in the morning. This helps explore latent ideas and get the creative juices flowing.
Creativity is at its lowest when things become predictable. For some people, disengaging and wandering around reignites creativity. For others, external constraints imposed by the customer may spur creativity. Exercise, sleep and meditation are some of the well known creativity catalysts.
Calendar is the main weapon in your armoury for spurring creativity. You start with scheduling time
for the most important activities / projects. Scheduling
time in the calendar is like filling a jar with stones. The big stones are your
creative projects, the pebbles and sand are the less important reactive work. If
you fill jar with pebbles and sand you will not have space for big stones. Soon
you will see time being eaten away in tasks like attending to emails etc
leaving you dissatisfied.
As a recovering perfectionist, I could identify with article on 'letting go of perfectionism'. Perfectionism demands a lot from you. It makes you doubt your capabilities and prevent you from starting any new project until you have all pieces in place. It makes you judgemental of the output of others. The article talks about two different personality types, the 'creative perfectionist ' and the 'creative pragmatist'. It lucidly explains how these two personality types will handle different phases of a creative project. You can read details here.
As a creative person, you are bound to get stuck at any phase of the process. There are six sources of creative block. These are Inspiration drought, Emotional barriers, Mixed motivation,
Poverty, Personal problems and Presentation challenges. The best way to handle inspiration drought is to take a break and allow your subconscious to find a solution. Emotional barriers are created when you are worried about the public exposure to your creative output. For example you might wonder how your friends and family will respond to your nude self portrait. Give yourself permission to express your thought in private without exposing them to public. Privacy will make it easier to complete the draft version. Mixed motivation occurs when the motivation to produce your initial output is different from that required to produce the subsequent outputs (inspired work versus commercial output). The way to handle this is to bring the initial enthusiasm and motivation to your subsequent work as well. Personal problems often cause creative block. Overcome this by treating your work as a refuge - an oasis of creative satisfaction that diverts you from your personal problems. Poverty as a creative block can be handled by making a virtue out of necessity, by creating within the constraints of available resources. Sometime you will face creative block because you are worried about marketing to potential customers. Only way out is to put yourself out there and learn as you go.
Transitioning from amateur to professional is a big step. The last section defines a professional and discusses the different stages to becoming a pro. A professional is someone who can work at high level of effort and ethics no matter what is going on around or inside him. The transition takes place over stages. The first stage is to be able to sit down and work if only for a single hour. Many people can't do even this. In the next stage your are able to repeat that over days. In these initial stages you are not thinking about quality. You are simply showing up. At this stage you are learning to manage your emotions, control your impulses to self sabotage and keep working.
In stage 3, you are able to cross the finish line. You reach a pre-determined end point. You have something to deliver. A this stage, you are still a beginner. You are acquiring craft, experience and skill.
Fourth stage is being able to repeat the process. Having delivered one output, can you deliver the next one? If you manage that transition, you have arrived as a professional.
This completes my review. My objective was to cover as many salient points as possible so that you can get a gist of the book and decide if you want to purchase it and read more.
You will see that I have not discussed on Chapter 3. That is because it deals with how to handle various tools like Calendars, emails and task lists. It did not add any value to me since in my opinion the approach to handling such tools is individual / organization specific. One shoe will not fit all in this case.
My recommendation? Please buy it. This book is a sine qua non for any aspiring professional
Buy the book 'Manage your day to day' @Amazon
Buy the book 'Manage your day to day' @Amazon
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