Hey Artist,
This is a middle of the night post so please forgive any typos. I wanted to get this out.
I always vacillate between overwork and laziness. I try to find ways to work around this but it’s much like driving a car missing second gear: It’s possible, but tricky and damaging.
I had a thought about this. The problem in the overwork is that much of the time is taken up with less than perfect work in an effort to get to the ONE great scene or moment of inspiration. You spend six hours to get 10 minutes of brilliance. This is hard to maintain long term without a ton of caffeine and nootropics (and Eventually even these stop working).
This is why I am always looking for a better way. Tony Robbins has a saying along the lines of :If your strategy isn’t working, change your approach.
But what if it’s KIND OF working? Well maybe there is a single piece you can change to make it work better.
I find that I battle myself between my creative self and my ambitions self. The work gets exhausting because neither side is in control.
Now I can over schedule myself and force the work, but it’s not my best and I feel like I’m exploiting myself. But, letting completely go can easily lead to not doing the work or getting sidetracked or starting a new project that seem more interesting at the moment.
So tomorrow, I have a plan. I will spend the first fire minutes letting my ambitious self figure out what needs to get done (with moderation 3 tasks max) meditate for a few minutes and then do my best to let that part go.
Studies have shown that people do their best work when they are relaxed. So I am going to relax my way through tomorrow. I will have my scheduled tasks and I will do them but I won’t THINK about them.
If this does work, I know that the temptation will be to add more and more tasks. This can not happen. Forcing yourself to be “in flow“ while giving yourself too much to do is asking for disaster.
Here goes nothing.