It’s osrt of Just For Fun, but sort of Something to Think About…

Which version feels like you?

Which version feels “right”?

How can you create the version that’s Real?

Most of the time people use this phrase to taking tiny, tiny little steps.

That’s probably a good and useful image when we imagine it from the adult perspective of walking beside a baby.

And it can be useful when we are wishing the dissertation would complete itself overnight or when we feel like we’re just not Making Progress.

But, as dissertations go, we’re not the adult who knows how to walk and take giant leaps whenever necessary.

We’re the baby….

How To Generate Overwhelm:

In your head, make a big pile of vitally important stuff to do.

Identify with the belief that it must be done,
sooner than possible.

Put all your attention into imagining the future.

Focus on what you don’t yet know how to do,
keeping in mind that it is essential to know
what you don’t know.

- Jude Spacks, in Creativity Insightments newsletter, August 2009

I suspect you can see why I’m thinking dissertation here…the very opposite of the Growth Mindset, UnDissertation approach…

Feel like sharing how you control the Overwhelm Monster? (Note that it’s not a “taming” — you need to keep applying your strategies or it breaks out all over again — sneaky beast.)

Half-marathons are difficult and worthwhile. Product launches are difficult and worthwhile. Getting to Nepal takes time, but I’m glad to do it. And so on. Note that not each step along the way is enjoyable. The half-marathon, for example, went like this:

Miles 1-3: cautious, warming up
Miles 4-6: feeling better
Miles 7-9: initial onset of fatigue, but also growing confidence that I would finish the race well
Miles 10-12: this is so hard
Miles 12-13.1: ommmmmmm one foot in front of the other

I don’t know about you, but I’m hearing “Doing a Dissertation” here. ;-)

What mile are you in? Isn’t it refreshing to know that the harder it feels, the closer you are to Done? 8^)

Several writers share their favourite procrastination techniques.

But I’m not sharing so you can get a whole new set of techniques for delay!!

I thought it might be instructive to hear that even people who intend to be writing for a living have those moments where it’s Very Very Hard.

So don’t beat yourself up for it.

And there’s a lovely little lesson embedded in those struggles. Not only that, but you may not be surprised to know that it’s all wrapped up with mindset and Play. ;-)

Let’s think about it for a minute…

Is that what you carry around in your head?

That could be a problem…

…”work that is devoid of play is either boring or a grind. We can get pretty far through sheer will-power, and some people have prodigious powers of perfectionism, self-denial, and suffering. Ultimately, though, people cannot succeed in rising to the highest levels of their field if they don’t enjoy what they are doing, if they don’t make time for play. Having a fierce

dedication to grinding out the work is often not enough. Without some sense of fun or play, people usually can’t make themselves stick to any discipline long enough to master it.”

— Stuart Brown, Play

So how does one re-learn how to play?

Have you heard yourself saying that several days in a row?

What would happen if you had a “Real Job”, a job for which someone paid you to show up and do a role in their company or if you had clients expecting you to show up? Would it be any different to say, “I don’t have time”….?

If this is ever something you find yourself saying, do I have a challenge for you!….

Instead of saying “I don’t have the time to do that”,say instead “it’s not a priority for me right now”.

Why? what difference might this make?

I’m betting that if you have to say out loud to yourself: “My dissertation isn’t a priority right now”, it will at least make you stop and think about that.

Sometimes kids and meals and a flooding basement really are higher priorities than the dissertation.

Temporarily.

But if you’re saying this day after day for any number of events coming up, well, we at least wnat you to recognize the choices you are making.

What are your priorities today?

Isn’t this where we seem to get stuck all too often?…

“I don’t feel like it.”

“I’m so frustrated!”

“I’m bored with this.”

“I’m too worried to focus”

What if there were ways to shift this energy into a place that works better for us?

Well, good news! There are actually several ways and today we’ll look at a couple.

“Divide your life into 10-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.”

- Ingvar Kamprad

I just love this quote! (Although I of course prefer 15-minute units… ;-)

I love that it makes living a meaningful and productive life so….well….manageable!

All I have to do is decide - intentionally, on purpose decide — what to do with the next 10 (or 15!) minutes and do that. Repeat.

Even if I “mess up”, it’s only for 10/15 minutes at a time, then I re-decide.

Yet another reason to be using that timer — kind of a wake-up call to decide on the next time period.

“What was I just doing?”

“Is that what I meant to be doing?”

“What do I want to be doing next?”

What do you think? Helpful? Too simple?

The best way to have a good idea

is to have lots of ideas

— Linus Pauling, two time Nobel Prize Winner

Following up on the Procrastination theme from yesterday, I wanted to share this quote.

Too often (if you’re anything like me), we tend to think we can’t write something down until we’ve “figured it out”. We convince ourselves that we either can’t write until it’s clear in our mind or that it will be embarassing gobblety-goop if we were to just write whatever is cooking in our minds and we’d make a fool of ourselves by saying it “out loud”.

However, the truth is that most writers and many thinkers in other fields actually do the working out of ideas best on paper when they don’t yet know what they want to say. By “talking to ourselves”, we can start to gather relevant bits, discard less important bits, see patterns emerging — actually shape our thoughts more clearly as we go - instead of expecting it to be all right there right now.

Is it painful for those of us raised in the Fixed Mindset of “get it right, get it right quickly, don’t need to work at getting it right quickly”? You betcha.

Is the pain useful to tolerate and move through? Absolutely.

So here’s my challenge to you today - and I’ll share it with you:

I have a report I’m writing on a very tight deadline. I’m not sure what patterns I see in my data yet, so I haven’t been writing “The Next Section”. I’m going to follow my own advice and just write — think “out loud” — about what I’m seeing, what I’m not seeing, and what it might mean in the way of patterns and see where I get.

Your challenge? … What could you “think out loud” about? No editing, no worrying about the clarity of the word choices or other distracting editorial activities. Just writing and writing as you think.

Feel free to share your thoughts, your challenge outcome, whatever you have to say.

Get as many ideas down as you can as often as you can —