I find that my list of creative projects
that I want to get to is ever-increasing. And yet the pile of projects that I actually
complete is ever-dwindling. Now this is incredibly frustrating to me, even more
so because I dedicated this year to being more productive and accomplishing a
lot more. I have been researching ways to harness technology and psychology to
getting more done.
Despite this, I find some weeks are a struggle just to get the urgent tasks
done, and I can't seem to make time for my larger creative projects.
I feel incredibly guilty about this -
partly because I don’t currently have a day job, I undertake projects and can
in theory, get the work I need done. And yet entire days go by without my being
able to make any headway on my current book project, which is already long overdue.
Partly this is because I took on some research projects, and have been finishing
up work that is due to collaborators for projects begun some time ago.
Usually the reason for not accomplishing
tasks is squandering time on wasteful activities like social networking sites
or just putzing about on the net. That wasn’t the problem for me, as I keep a
log of the work I do on projects, and have an idea of where my time was being
spent. The main problem is that I knew where my day was going, and thought I didn’t
have any control over it. I had a number of non-work, but important,
obligations come up over the space of a few days. An acquaintance of mine was
having an impromptu party to celebrate an important life milestone, so I needed
to buy a gift. I agreed to make a presentation for a voluntary organisation I am
involved in, for a semi-formal occasion, and had to get my speech approved. I
had to attend a number of social functions, which took up two weekends
consecutively. All of this meant a lot of extra prep work - either in writing
multiple versions of the speech, or in buying and wrapping gifts for the
various social gatherings. Additionally, almost all of this was completely
outside my comfort zone (I never know what to buy as gifts for babies, and I hate
public speaking).
I spent a lot of time simply agonising over
the logistics, and how much I had to do. Also, the various obligations spread
out over two weeks meant I had to try and get my work done in the spaces
between - which is really not something I'm good at. Much of my work requires
research, analysis and writing, and I need a few hours at a time to really get
into it.
The result of all this activity - my projects
took a backseat and I got stressed over all the work I wasn’t doing. It’s easy
to conclude that I should have turned some things down, and cut down on my
obligations. However, it occurred to me after the fact that a large amount of
the time I spent was a result of creating unreasonably high expectations from
myself - the speech had to be just right (and since I didn’t know what that
was, I kept putting off writing it, but suffered from stress all the same), I had
to buy just the right gifts, I had to be right on time and perfectly attired. All
of this raised the stakes much too high, and prevented me from using the
slivers of time I did manage to find, because I simply can't do any deep work
when I'm stressed and anxious.
Yes, I had a lot of external obligations
taking up time. But I also made it worse for myself by procrastinating,
insisting that everything be perfect, and wasting time and energy trying to
make that happen.
Often when people ask us to do something,
we are unable to say no, for some reason or the other. But this we then tack on
expectations and ‘shoulds’ to this obligation, increasing its potential to
disrupt our routine further.
By contrast, my mum told me about how she recently
learnt the lesson of being more relaxed and getting things done without stress.
She lives alone, and has patchy domestic help, which makes entertaining more
than a few people difficult. She recently had to host a meeting for a voluntary
organisation at home, for which she needed to provide refreshments. Usually she
gets panicky and stresses about how much there is to do, and she realised this
was because she compared to how others had hosted similar meetings previously,
and felt she had to keep up. This time she ditched the comparison, and provided
refreshments that were easy for her to buy or put together, and kept them
easily accessible so everyone could help themselves. She reported having a much
more relaxed time, being able to really engage with everyone and not feeling stressed
or tired.
What I learnt from my mum was the crucial
point of not comparing to what you think
others will do. My stress about the speech was mainly that I must be as
good, if not better than the others also speaking. Regarding the social functions,
I was worried about not being upstaged by others. It’s natural, even essential,
to make an effort, to look as good as you can, or give a nice gift that will be
appreciated. But it really isn’t necessary to compare oneself to others, and
try to show them up, or to stress out about being the best.
This made me think - where else am I creating
unnecessary tension for myself? Where else could I do something well and yet
quickly enough to devote more time to what matters? I am still finding answers
to this for myself.
Where
can you free up more time and head space by letting go of outcomes?
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