7 Hacks for Shaking Off the Blahs and Getting Out of ProcrastiNation

We’ve all been residents of ProcrastiNation at one point or another.

You know that place--the comfortable land that assures us it’s better to enjoy a Scandal marathon on Netflix than to prepare for that big presentation we’re giving on Friday or begin working toward that impending deadline.

So how do you snap out of it? Here are a few techniques that I’ve employed to help me get stuff done as a solopreneur.

1. Break big projects up into multiple small projects and assign mini deadlines. A large project becomes much more doable when it’s broken up into chunks.

2. Use the Pomodoro Technique. Set a timer for 25 minutes and work. Don’t check email. Don’t answer a text. Just work for 25 minutes. Then take a 5 minute break. Repeat. I use this technique to make myself focus when it is near impossible. This helps me pump out work for at least 25 minutes. Because I know there is a break in sight I can focus and be productive.

3. Batch similar tasks. I first heard of this technique in The 4-Hour Work Week. Multitasking is a myth. It is difficult for your brain to switch between different tasks so get more done by doing similar tasks at the same time regularly. For example: I do 90% of my social media work for a certain client on Fridays. Every Friday I just knock it out.

4. Color code that calendar. Make deadlines pop. You don’t want to be surprised by a deadline because you overlooked it. I keep my calendar on a 3-week view which is really helpful for knowing what’s coming up beyond the immediate.

5. Get up and move at least once every two hours. Since I work from home I check the mail around noon. Even just this small task lets me change my focus briefly and stretch my legs. When I come back to my desk I have a renewed focus. Plus they say sitting kills you.

6. Meditate and/or pray. One prayer that I review every day is “Lord, help me to wisely use my resources of money, time and hard work.”

7. Exercise regularly (5 days a week is a great goal). I had pretty much fallen off the exercise bandwagon late last year and I came back to it in January with gusto. It has been amazing how many great ideas have come to me when I’m on the treadmill or elliptical machine. I don’t exactly know the science behind it but it really works for me.

What do you do to snap out of procrastination? And how GREAT does it feel when you’ve accomplished something significant?

5 Tips to Maximize the Discipline of Creativity

“The one thing that creative souls around the world have in common is that they all have to practice to maintain their skills. Art is a vast democracy of habit.” -Twyla Tharp

Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit is one of my favorite books. Even in the title, it lets you in on a little secret: creativity does not come in bursts of inspiration, it comes in daily discipline and habits.

Today I want to focus on five tips I learned on the preparation and inspiration of creativity from Tharp’s book.

5 Tips to Maximize the Discipline of Creativity

1. Learn from the greats. 

Mozart said: “People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied through many times.”

Read biographies of people who you'd like emulate. What are they reading? What are the trends in your industry? Pay attention to the work of people you admire.

2. Implement a morning ritual that you can count on to ignite your creativity and focus. 

“Although he was not physically fit, Beethoven would start each day with the same ritual: a morning walk during which he would scribble into a pocket sketchbook the first rough notes of whatever musical idea inevitably entered his head. Having done that, having limbered up his mind and transported himself into his version of a trance zone during the walk, he would return to his room and get to work.”

What do you need to do to maximize your creativity each day? Eat breakfast before you work? Listen to a certain style of music? Take a quick stroll around the block? Determine what you need to do to focus and open your mind to what you need to create today.

3. Keep a notebook with you (or the notes app on your iPhone) to jot down ideas when they come to you.

“I’m often asked, ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ This happens to anyone who is willing to stand in front of an audience and talk about his or her work. The short answer is: everywhere. It’s like asking 'Where do you find the air you breathe?' Ideas are all around you.”

Always be ready for new ideas to come together. And never trust your memory. Write it down, write it down, write it down.

4. Prepare daily. And make peace with your lack of control.

"Habitually creative people are, in E.B. White’s phrase, 'prepared to be lucky.' The keywords here are 'prepared' and 'lucky.' They’re inseparable. You don’t get lucky without preparation, and there’s no sense in being prepared if you’re not open to the possibility of a glorious accident...Some people resent the idea of luck. Accepting the role of chance in our lives suggests that our creations and triumphs are not entirely our own, and that in some way we’re undeserving of our success. I say, Get over it. This is how the world works. In creative endeavors luck is a skill."

Tharp said this on trusting too much in planning every detail:

“There’s an emotional lie to overplanning; it creates a security blanket that lets you assume you have things under control, that you are further along than you really are, that you’re home free when you haven’t even walked out the door yet.”

5. Put in the work every day.

“80% of success in show business is showing up.” -Woody Allen

The same is true in all creative fields. Put the time in. Do your due diligence. Wrack up your 10,000 hours. Be consistent and the reward will come.

Have you received any advice on creativity and work that has stuck with you? Share it in the comments.

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10 Tips to Boost Creativity the Einstein Way

Ever since I was tagged a “creative” person as a kid, I’ve been drawn to the concept and study of creativity. Twyla Tharp’s the Creative Habit is one of my favorite books. I even put it in the name of my company. I recently read an article about Einstein’s perspective on creativity. He called it combinatory play.

Maria Popova phrases Einstein’s perspective like this:

“Creativity is combinatorial: Alive and awake to the world, we amass a collection of cross-disciplinary building blocks — knowledge, memories, bits of information, sparks of inspiration, and other existing ideas — that we then combine and recombine, mostly unconsciously, into something ‘new.’ From this vast and cross-disciplinary mental pool of resources beckons the infrastructure of what we call our ‘own’ ‘original’ ideas.”

It hit me like a ton of bricks that no great idea comes out of thin air. None of us can really take full credit for anything! Great ideas come from putting pieces together. Someone else’s comment here, someone else’s example there, and voila a new idea is formed that seems obvious based on putting the other two ideas together.

HSL Creative was founded after putting several ideas together. To me, it seemed like an obvious next step.

Yesterday I toured Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. The tour guide explained that while people think of Jefferson as an inventor he was really an innovator. He took other inventions and improved them. Combinatory play at it’s finest.

Here are 10 tips to incite more combinatory play in your life. I dare you to try at least 3 this week:

1. Explore an aisle of the bookstore that you don’t usually frequent.

2. Try out a new recipe with ingredients you've never used.

3. Make plans for lunch or coffee with someone who is not in your regular circles.

4. Subscribe to BrainPickings.

5. Sit in on your library’s book club meeting.

6. Listen to a public lecture at a local college.

7.  Ask this question at the dinner table: If you didn’t have to worry about money, what would you do with your life?

8. Watch a TedTalk.

9. Read a biography of someone that interests you who you've not previously studied.

10. Post a question on your Facebook status.

I encourage you to carry a notebook (or just your notes app in your iPhone) with you throughout the week and jot down ideas that come to you. When you’re open to connecting new dots, you are likely to do just that.

A Huge Lesson Broadway Taught Me About My Clients

The Bridges of Madison County ad in the New York Times

Last weekend I got the chance to visit my favorite escape: New York.

While I was there I took a stroll through the theatre district. It’s an interesting area. The theaters that line the street are both places filled with nostalgia and detached buildings that are constantly experiencing the loss of one show and the gain of another. That’s the exciting thing about theatre--it’s live and current and you can’t save it for later like media. It’s now or never, which well, isn’t that a bit like life?

Back to the lesson...

While in the theatre district I saw new signs on a marquis for a new show: The Bridges of Madison County, which I guess was originally a book and then a film. Neither the book or the film mean anything to me but there are two names attached that do mean something to me: Kelli O’Hara and Jason Robert Brown.

Kelli O’Hara is one of my favorite Broadway actresses. She is one of the best actors that sings and one of the best singers that acts. She is class personified and I LOVE watching her perform. Jason Robert Brown is one of the most celebrated composers alive today.  I’ve sung his beautiful music from Songs for a New World, Parade and the Last Five Years. His iconic sound is unmistakeable.

When I saw their names on the marquis that made up my mind for me. Take two artists I love, give them a musical and BAM, you’ve just sold me a ticket.

Perhaps my clients aren’t so different than me.

Maybe as an entrepreneur I can make the sale by offering my clients just two things that excite them. Two things that they need. One thing they need will attract them, but if I give them two, well, it’s a done deal. That’s a better offer than just one thing the competition is offering them.

Social Media Savvy + Experience in Arts Marketing Millennial Perspective + Killer Writing Skills Commitment to Flooring My Client’s Expectations + Journalism Experience

Whatever the combination, I’m convinced: two desirable qualities can nail the sale. 

Price, within reason, becomes a non-issue when you are meeting customer needs and delighting them.

Kelli + JRB = 1 ticket sold.

And I don’t even know the plot.

Don’t need to.

What are the two components you’re selling that will guarantee your sale? 

Last week I wrote about why I feel ok not living in a major city. It seemed to resonate with people.