Category: Organization+Strategy

When I hold on too tight…

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

I’ve noticed that when I hold on to things, it doesn’t mean that they get better.

When I held on–and I held on so tight! –the writing didn’t get better, the launch of my newsletter didn’t get any better; it got longer. It almost disappeared into the abyss of doubts and worries, of perfections and neuroses; it almost wasn’t. I had to let go, give it up into the universe, frustrated, annoyed that I hadn’t captured it all, worried that I was saying too much; worried that I was saying too little;

And yet–the newsletter will get better, not in its first instance, not by a long shot; but it gets better because I let the first one go,

Let go into your mailboxes, that is,

And then started building the next one.

Create, make, send, ship, iterate, release, rejoice, build, refresh, create.

Puzzle, ponder, worry, fret, hammer, stammer,

pause,
breathe,

release.

It’s never perfect the first time. (It’s never perfect). My work gets better because I make it, and I move it, and I continue to create.

Chris Brogan reminds us: ship, though, but don’t ship shit. But when you’ve got something, and it’s pretty good, and you hold on too tight? That’s not shipping. That’s stalling. That’s waiting.

People have said this before. Ship, says Seth. Iterate. Make your art. (Real Artists Ship: Steve Jobs).  It’s the same thing, learned one dose at a time one body at a time.

Let go.

Stop holding on.

Create, make, refine, release.

Getting things done: how I take notes + snapshots of my moleskine + my nerdy highlighter system

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Lots of folks have emailed me to ask me how I get everything done and what systems I have in place to keep myself motivated, on track, and organized. I love watching how other people work and learning what they do to stay organized–so I thought I’d share a behind-the-scenes peek into some of my systems. Here’s what I do when I start my day.

I have a lot of various systems and half-systems that work perfectly for me; a combination of analog and digital tools and, of course, several notebooks. I almost always start the day with a fresh list (on a real piece of paper) because it’s a way to clear my mind and it’s the habit that gets me into the day. During highly productive consecutive days where I’m focused on just a few things (a 3-day stretch of writing, or a week focused on creating a book), I’ll often use the same list for the whole week.

I’m well versed in David Allen’s Getting Things Done and the Action Method by Scott Belsky, and Stephen Covey’s urgent/important matrix, and I implement a bit of each across various projects (and type of work) that I’m involved in.

Here’s a quick behind-the-scenes look at how I take notes–using a fairly simple analog notebook (a moleskine) and 2-color highlighter system.

Making a list, the old fashioned way:

In the morning, after I wake up and have coffee (and do some reading or stretching), I open a fresh page in my moleskine. Based loosely in categories (such as errands, writer’s workshop, blog posts, guest posts, bills, etc), I’ll list out the things on my mind that I want to work on:

notebook

Step 2: Adding a yellow highlighter (prioritizing).

The next step is pretty simple, but it keeps me focused. I take out my yellow highlighter and look back through the list and highlight the things that are the most important (or urgent) for me. Maybe I’ve got a big deadline, maybe I just got off a plane and I really, really want to clean up and settle back into my home, or maybe I’ve been itching to read a few books that I haven’t made time for lately. Whatever it is that’s the most important, I highlight. It’s a variation on writing a to-do list with only the three most important items, but it’s useful for me to add this level of clarity.

Highliter system--3-spread

Step 3: Highlight what you have done or accomplished in blue (reflection + tracking).

As I work through my ideas, projects, and tasks, I highlight what I did do in blue throughout the day. If something pulls me out or off of this list unexpectedly (an hour long call with my mom, an unexpected visit from the plumber, needing to fix my website if it goes down), I try to make sure to add this on and write it down to account for what I’ve spent time on.

At the end of the day, I can quickly see whether or not I was able to stay focused on the things I felt were most important. A successful day is one in which I can cross off all of those yellow highlights–that’s a slam-dunk day.

I rarely get everything crossed off. (That’s pretty normal).

Some days I’ve spent the entire day working and it feels like I’m making no progress on my goals. When I end the day, I like to recap quickly by looking at my notes and remembering what I did do (or noting if I’ve had a completely off or strange day), and then assess whether or not I made progress on the big things I’ve been wanting to work on.

Throughout the week, this system also serves as useful feedback. If I’ve had an item on the list for five or six days in a row and I’m still not making progress on it, I know that I need to adjust my strategy and spend more time focused on that piece. Maybe something’s holding me back (mentally, emotionally, logistically, structurally), or maybe I need to allocate more time (and energy) to the project than I anticipate.

Other systems I love + making sure it’s not all about “productivity.”

I love lots of systems–from David Allen’s Getting Things Done to Scott Belsky’s Action Method. Yesterday I saw Danielle LaPorte’s Entrepreneurial Time Management post which made me very excited (it’s similar to what I do, but mine isn’t defined as clearly as this–so this makes me want to up my game), and Amber Rae’s post in Fast Company about scheduling your days around your peak energy is GREAT. As always, the insanely organized Jenny Blake has an entire toolkit that I love drooling over and perusing to discover new things.

Lately I’ve been adding a short box to the upper-right corner of my page, asking myself (based on Danielle LaPorte’s Desire Map program) how I want to feel throughout the day. I’ll jot down the notes, something like: “Less stressed out, excited, productive, peaceful.” Writing them down and having them there to look at helps me remember what the point of it all is–not to crank through yet another list, but rather, to work on things (and in ways) that make me feel the way I want to feel.

But what else goes in this notebook?

Ahhh, great question. It’s a catch-all notebook that I use to take notes during meetings, calls, reflection periods, and on books that I am reading (or want to write). I use up 5-15 pages a day between notes and lists, and each notebook can last me for a month or several months, depending on how much writing and sketching I’m doing.

I have a two-color pen system that I (loosely) follow. Black are my ramblings, personal notes and lists; blue are my reading notes or specific program notes. If I’m reading a book and jotting down notes, out comes the blue pen. If I’m on a tele-call or taking a class; again with the blue pen. That way, I go back and can flip through and find my notes fairly easily.

A final note on systems and organization:

Of course, there’s a lot more than just a list and a highlighter–I use calendars, visioning days, big maps, plans, online notes, Evernote, Google Docs, and many other tools. More on that later. For now:

“The only system you need is the system that works” – tweet!

The ultimate metric for me, however, is whether or not I’m getting what I want. “The only system you need is the system that works” is one of my key phrases for evaluating–you don’t need to adopt any new systems or strategies unless you want to make a specific change. You don’t need to fix what’s not broken! If you’re not saving any money and want to save more, change the system (the one you’re using isn’t working). If you like the outcome you’re getting, however, you don’t necessarily need to switch things up, unless you’re up for an experiment.

The only system you need–is the one that works for you.

What other tips and tricks would you like to know about? I’m happy to share tons of my how-to’s and systems, and I hope to share a lot more of these in the near future. What works for you? What do you want to know more about?

 

Do Less Work By Asking For What You Want

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Ever need help with something and don’t know how to ask? Or worse, you think you have to do every step of it yourself?

The other day I was chatting with a good friend of mine. A freelance graphic designer with a decent set of clients, he found himself too busy and overworked–and he began to tinker with the idea of expanding his business. Namely, he wanted to hire someone–a junior designer, or someone to help with some of the sales and management roles in order to help him do more of the creative, expressive work that brought him to the art world in the first place.

One of of the things holding him back, however, was this perceived idea–this expectation–of how long it would take to find this good person.

“I’m just not sure I want to spend another month or two looking for the right person, and then on-boarding them, training them, and developing a working relationship,” he said, frustrated. “That sounds like more time than I’ve got.” Admittedly, his client roster was getting bigger and his time was in more demand–he’d been spending late nights at the computer, drawing and meeting deadlines for his clients.

It was a classic case of “do-it-yourself-iris,” an affliction I’m quite familiar with and still need to take a dose of my own medicine to fix. In this case, there was an ah-ha! moment about how what he thought was holding him back might not be as hard as he was anticipating.

Chances are, five of your friends might know someone–or know someone who knows someone–that can solve your problem.

So I asked him: “Do you think that you know four or five friends that might have already worked with someone who would be good for this job?”

The light went on.

“Well, yes,” he said, “Actually, I’m sure that a few of my friends would know the perfect person.”

Right, I responded. And in fact, even I might even know a few people that would kill for a job like this.

A simple strategy for getting what you want: ask.

I think a lot of us overlook a simple strategy for getting what we want: specifically asking the most influential people around us for help. By “influential,” I don’t mean the most well-connected or well-known; your famous friend or that friend-of-a-friend might not have the bandwidth to answer your message at the moment. Instead, I mean the person or people who can influence you the most. And ideally, the person who knows the person you need.

In just a few minutes, you can email five people and maybe even get what you want within a couple of hours. The work has already been done by someone else: there’s no need to vet a thousand applicants for a graphic design position if three of your good friends can recommend a handful of wonderful people that are actively looking for work.

Entrepreneurs and solo-preneurs often forget that they don’t have to do everything themselves–it’s ironic that what got you here (ie, working incredible hours, figuring it out on your own, teaching yourself the new skills) isn’t what you need to move forward. 

“What got you here / won’t get you there.”  (tweet this)

As your role, life, job, and clients change, so do your strategies for solving them. In many cases, being thrifty and scrappy–and consistently looking for the short-cut that gets you what you want, the fastest–is a great operating play. It’s not cheating to ask for recommendations, it’s efficient. And smart. Because then you can get back to doing the work you want to be doing, quicker. Or finishing your day earlier, so you can have a beer with your friends.

I’ve used this strategy–asking folks in my network for help–in several ways recently:

  • Borrowing a bike for a weekend trip by asking five road biking friends in San Francisco if they had a spare bike. (People who live in San Francisco are often bike enthusiasts).
  • Borrowing a 2009 Mac laptop for some air travel for 4 months because a friend had just purchased a new one and didn’t yet have a plan for the old one (I’ll give it back to him when he sells it or needs it).
  • Finding the best place to get a haircut in San Francisco after going more than a year without getting my hair cut (whoops). No more Yelp. Just ask 3 good folks in they have a recommendation.
  • Asking for advice about how to say “No,” from five of my favorite voices on the internet, including people I’d never met before, by emailing them with a specific client query I kept receiving and asking them if they had a good script for how to say no (and they actually wrote back!).

In each case, I selected people who I thought might know the answer and I asked a few of them directly for help. I was clear about what I wanted, specific in my request, and included a note at the end that gives them permission to decline if they’re too busy.

Do you have a good example of when asking for what you wanted worked out?

Specific email templates for asking:

I’ve been asked to share some of my email templates for asking: here’s one sample email for you to use, borrow, edit and change (and let me know if it works!)

To create a great ask, make sure you include the following information:

  • A specific request for what it is that you want;
  • How long you think the request will take;
  • A chance to opt-out if the person is swamped;
  • Your gratitude and thanks for the help.

For example, here’s a script:

I also included in the message an estimate of how long the request would take:

Dear —-

I’ve got a quick question for you that I think might take you 10 minutes or so to read and respond–my hunch is that you’ve dealt with this before and I’d love your advice (or even a link to someone who has figured this out as well). I’m happy to pay you for your time if this is a longer-answer:

Here’s the situation: I’m looking for a [be specific  about your request] for [this amount of money, time, or energy] and I’m willing to do [list what you can do to make it happen or what you’ve done already].

Personally, I also offer a chance to opt-out, because I like to make sure I’m not imposing by assuming folks will answer my request (you don’t have to do this, but I like to. Here’s that script:

“If you’re too swamped at the moment with your own priorities, feel free to write back “next time!” and delete this email because I know how busy some of you are–no hard feelings. But if this is an easy request that you know how to fill, I’d be darn grateful for a few moments of your time.”  

Remember:

Be clear about what you want.

Be okay with a “no” answer if someone doesn’t have it.

“No” is what you already have, so asking doesn’t put you in a worse position.

You don’t get what you don’t ask for.

Give generously.

Also:

I realize that this is a fortunate vantage point to be in, and isn’t true for everyone around the world, and I want to be clear in recognizing that. For many people, you already know enough people to get what you need. You know far more people than you think. And the world has quite a lot of stuff as it is.

The space between the stuff you want and the people who have it?

Asking for it.

Start where you are.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

IMG_3085

Where are you?

Just a few weeks ago: I’m sitting on the floor of an empty studio, barefoot, with not a piece of furniture in it. Boxes line the hallways and two giant moving trucks are parked out in the street. Every so often our dogs bark, whining about being pent up in the back. I’m helping my Dad move two states away, and the entire house has been up-ended. We’re sleeping on the carpet floor for two nights without beds. I have a radio interview scheduled and I’ve hidden in the bathroom to talk from my laptop to make this happen because their are painters next door.

Right now, we’re in limbo.

I ask if we can not use Skype video–as video is probably not the best medium at the moment, although I’m happy to talk — and right at the beginning, our interview accidentally goes to video. I laugh, and I tell my story: “Well, you caught me! I’m sitting on a floor right now, chatting at you while all the furniture is being taken out of my house … mind if we switch to audio only? Otherwise you’ll have me sitting on a floor in my yoga pants!” 

Right now, right here.

Let’s stop imagining the pretend perfect circumstances that might have maybe led to the possibility of your wildest dreams, and get real about the fact they haven’t happened yet. You are here. You are what you are.

Start where you are. Right here. Right now.

This is where the magic happens.

When you’re tired, worn out, flabbergasted, stressed out. You get up, you park yourself in the corner of the room, you duct-tape fabric ver the window to stop the glare, you polish your lips and you record that video interview anyways, even if you think the whole world behind you is falling apart. Do it in style. Make it happen.

Often all the things that aren’t right aren’t really problems–they are just crutches. “Well, I’ll do it once I have furniture in my house again. I’ll do it when I’m not so tired. I’ll do it when I’m feeling better. I’ll do it …”

Nope, sorry. This is it. Today.

I know very few stories of people who got set up in ideal circumstances and then made the magic happen. Rather, it’s about making the magic happen in any circumstance. (That’s true magic, right there).

Because if you can’t make it happen NOW… when will you?

Start where you are.

sarah signature

Less is more, imperfect is perfect, and done is done: 17 tips, tricks & habits I use for writing, creation + business-building (or any creative pursuit).

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

IMG_2443

What’s better than perfect? Done is better than perfect.

Part of the beauty of writing, asking, and making projects is actually doing them. The best way out of something is often through it. Getting it done is where the art is. Seth Godin says “ship.” I say “do.” It means the same thing. Make it happen. Get it done.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you create the perfect product, the perfect essay, or the best story in the world; what matters is whether or not you have the nerve to ask and to create.

Sometimes you need to execute more and think less.

Rather than listen to all the voices that say you can’t do it, or why you’ll fail, take a step out and get started. Moving through something (physically, through action) is the best anecdote to stress, fear, and worry. At least this is what I’ve learned so far.

“What’s better than perfect? Done is better than perfect.”  (Tweet this)

Last Friday we wrapped the third week of my private Writer’s Workshop, a small group of writers that signed up on a 3-week journey and exploration in creative writing, narrative formation, storytelling, and persuasion. The class, a 15-module intensive, took us through a whirlwind a writing exercises and outlines frameworks and ideas around storytelling, understanding who you are, and the art (and difficulty) of creating a writing practice. (Side note: I’m so proud of them!!)

Often, as I work with clients and writers and with myself, I find a common middle section of any creative project or endeavor that’s fuzzy, mucky, uncomfortable, and scary. When we start any new practice–any art, any craft, anything that takes time and dedication and involves a bundle of newness–it’s terrifying. It’s that moment when the demons and creatures and critters tumble out of your neatly stacked closets, giggle and jump on your bed, and start a dance party that rattles you enough to make you think that starting was a bad idea.

But all those thoughts, all those jumbles, all that cranky and temperamental and strange stuff that pours out just when you were getting started–that is the good stuff.  That’s what you’re made of. That’s where the weird, wonderful, and zany comes from. It’s right at the beginning and when we get started that e need to set down the judgments and trade them for observations, noting only that we have this smattering of extremely strange and uncomfortable critters setting up a band show across our normally-made bed (Hah! You really think I make my bed? Right. Onwards).

One of my favorite lessons from the three-week class is my lesson on my personal writing and creation mantras: a bundle of tips, tricks, and habits that I keep posted up on my walls and in various locations as reminders and mantras towards my better self.

When I feel like crawling under the bed into the safety of the darkness and I think that the critters inside my mind will break everything in my house just by being them, I look at one of these mantras, breathe in a little bit, and remind myself to keep going.

I can survive a little hair-pulling. I can survive crayons all over the floor. I can survive the messiness. I can survive a massive dance party instigated by imaginary creatures in my mind. I can survive the Wild Things. I CAN SURVIVE THE MESSINESS! Because truly, the messiness is me. And in the exercise, I ask each person to create a list of mantras of their own (or to adopt whichever ones seem to fit from below).

What are your writing mantras? What are your creation mantras? How do you create your best self, and your best work? Here’s my list, to start you off.

17 Tips, Tricks & Habits I Use for Writing, Creation, Building and Motivation (Or Any Other Creative Pursuit).

In whatever your journey, the journey is about you.

Each person has a different dream, and your dream is the one that’s important in this journey (not anyone else’s). Your dream may be to write a book, to author a hundred books, or maybe to write a single essay. Perhaps your calling is to learn how to craft love letters to the important person in your life, or the important person who will be in your life after you write the story of how they get there. Writing might be a tool in your arsenal of visioning and dreaming, or it might be a process of self-discovery. Just like Gretchen Rubin writes “Be Gretchen,” so do I have sticky note on my wall that says: “Be Sarah.” Be you. Only you can be you.

In turn, the more I am me, the more me I become. Writing has been immensely useful in developing my relationship with myself, and seeing who I am and how I’ve grown. The better facility I gain with words, the better I get at processing, feeling, and learning from emotions.

The only system you need is the one that works.

I set up two key writing days for myself, with two optional mornings to write. I make these days priorities where writing is key; on the other days, writing is optional but always a possibility if I make time for it. If I find myself not writing or publishing as much, it’s a key to me to adjust the system—maybe I need to dial back the emphasis on other parts of my life and find another morning or night to dedicate an hour or two to writing. (Tweet this!)

The only system you need is the system that works

Habits are important frameworks.

Every writer I know talks about the importance of ritual and habit—whether it’s a morning pattern or a daily habit. For me, I have a few loose frameworks that guide me towards my larger goals—I try to publish once weekly, at minimum, and I try to write at least three days per week. Some weeks I write every day (I love writing, and I’ve been in the habit for a few years so I’m long familiar with this); and other times I only write once a week or so. When I find myself writing less, there’s inevitably a day or a two that month that the ideas start to come pouring out because I haven’t given them time to breathe.

My weekly structure gives me two mornings and two evenings to focus on writing; while I can break these rules and patterns occasionally (there are always conference calls to China that pop up), I try to keep at least 2 or 3 of the times for myself so that I can write.

Within a given month, I try to make sure at least one weekend is “clean”—in that it doesn’t have travel, events, or anything else scheduled on at least one (if not both) of the days. Often I actually have to go in and preemptively schedule the day out for writing so I don’t muck it all up with too many appointments. I’ll set a date with myself at one of my favorite coffee shops and plan to go, write, and eat for 4-5 hours that day and focus on writing and writing alone.

It takes longer than you think.

Writing is about philosophy, about articulation and detailing ideas and getting clarity around a concept or an idea. The harder the concept or the more challenging the story, the longer it will take you to work through it. It can take me several hours just to piece together a single story framework. If I have less than an hour, I usually can’t get to a depth or a place that I want to get and I become quite frustrated. I try to block out at least an hour, if not two hours, for my morning and evening sessions. Lately I’ve found myself losing track of time – I’ll come home around 7:30 or 8 pm, start writing on a Friday evening, and I’ll look up and the clock will read 12 or 1 AM and I’ve got to put the pen (or computer) down and head to bed so I can make it through the day reasonably the next day.

Deadlines are critical.

I have weekly goals (I call them frameworks) and monthly goals that serve as a baseline for what I want to make in the world. Some months I can’t possibly achieve it, and that’s fine—I try to strike a balance between pushing myself and enjoying myself during the process. If I’m going absolutely nuts and feeling overwhelmed, scared, and exhausted, then that’s not any good. My goal isn’t to make myself miserable! But if I go for more than a month or two without maintaining my baseline and I don’t notice things changing, I step in and re-evaluate what I’m working on and see if there is something I can say no to so that I can make space for more of my writing.

“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein  (Tweet this)

It’s okay to take breaks.

I took an entire quarter off from writing my blog last year by taking a week off of work and writing 8 posts and spacing them out over a couple of months–all so that I could take some much-needed time to rest and rejuvenate my soul. I tend to work on projects in “seasons,” and define goals within each season—and there’s often at least one rest season (read: Winter) during each year so that I can restore myself and think about what to build next. Sometimes during a Spring or Summer season, I’ll focus more on one aspect of a project (like launching a writer’s workshop, or swimming a bunch), and I’ll dial back on my other responsibilities and goals so I can make it happen.

Set parameters and end dates.

Always set end dates. Give yourself permission to finish something. As you think about the next phase of your writing practice, consider what your goals might be. I highly recommend starting with a small framework (of perhaps 3-4 essays) and building a series around one particular topic, and finishing it. It’s imperative to finish a project and have something to point to. Most people don’t need to start an indefinite blog to create work in the world.

I’ve created many small projects based on sub-topics (as an example, I wrote a 20-essay blog strictly on my experience of the environment in San Francisco with details of the fog, homeless, and urban lifestyle; I started the project knowing that I wanted to spend a summer ‘collecting observations’ about the city I loved, and that the project would wrap by the end of the summer). The writing was fun to do, I got to tell stories in a way that was different than I’d been doing before, and I now have a collection of essays that I can use as writing samples, that I can pull from in future stories, and that I could eventually turn into a bigger project if I felt the itch to do that. (As I’m always saying: get started and do something, and learn from it!)

If it’s too big to do, make it smaller.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by an aspect of your project, get way smaller. Just do a tiny bit of it. We work in fragments of time that add up, slowly. Today is just a day. Carve an hour, do a small bit.

“If it’s too big to do, make it smaller.”  (Tweet this)

The BEST way to reduce stress is to do work on the project, not avoid it.

Want to feel better? Get started. That’s it. That’s my secret. Everything is part of a larger conversation. You’re just starting with a piece of it, and giving that nuance.

Read well. If you can’t read well, you can’t write well.

Get rid of the trash. Unsubscribe from blogs and news that aren’t helpful. Unfollow people that don’t fill your feed with good stuff. Fill your brain. Push it. Challenge it. The most important thing you can do to be a better writer is read. I recently listed a years’ worth of my favorite books, and I’m already embedded in at least half a dozen new novels, historical accounts, and business books this month alone. Immersing yourself in good quality writing is the best teacher. Seek out people who push you and challenge you and feel free to say no to the rest.

There is no good writing, there is only good re-writing.

When I work with new writers, I often tell them to expect the first page to be “full of shit, with a few gems hidden in there somewhere.” It takes time, patience, and a whole bunch of red-lines to work with words on a page. It also takes the courage to put words down on paper without initial judgment or concern. Just do it, and let yourself write. Don’t let your judgment of yourself preclude you from starting in the first place. Trust that it can continue to get better with editing, time, and practice.

The goal is not complex words and simple ideas, but simple words and complex ideas.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. Writing does not need to be complicated, pretentious, confusing, or full of jargon. To me, writing is a process for building understanding for yourself, and others. For myself, I often copy notes, explore ideas, and re-work words on a page just to tango with an idea until it makes sense in my mind. If I can’t explain it to people, then I’m not well-versed enough in the concept. Writing is a tool for communication (externally) as well as understanding (internally). Often, much of my writing is just about my words, rants, ideas, and explorations–before any of it gets shared with anyone else.

Let your voice develop.

Every writer has a different personality and voice, and learning what yours is takes time and practice. I’m often influenced by my favorite writers—leaning more towards a New York Times persona when I spend a Sunday reading the opinion pages, and oscillating back towards a bossy voice when I spend too much time listening to lectures. In between all of this input, I need to carve out time to develop my own voice and persona; this is a craft that takes many iterations. Start practicing!

What you take out is just as important as what you leave in.

Getting to a clear, simple essay or point is not straightforward. Often, I have to write 5-6 pages just to get to a distillation of one great paragraph. It’s part of the process.

IMG_2797

Capture your ideas however you can.

I love keeping a notebook and jotting down my ideas. Inspiration can show up during your routine, and it can show up at any time. I keep a pocket recorder on my phone and I talk stories to myself while walking through the city or driving in a car (why is it that driving triggers so many new ideas!?). I keep the recordings as well as my digital notes and I send them to myself via email to a folder called “notes.” When I get back to my computer, if I don’t have any ideas that are pressing, I go back through and read my short notes and scratching from the recordings, notes, and my notebooks, and find something that catches my attention. Then I begin with that.

Take the time to build your space and your project.

The world needs to hear what you have to say. “The world” might just be your son, daughter, or significant other, but they still need to hear it. An audience of a handful of people is still an audience. (For more on this, read my thoughts on building your voice on the internet and why I think you should join in). It’s time. Say what needs to be said.

Know what you want and what you value.

This is an easy phrase to say and can take years of work. Learn what’s important to you. Get to know yourself. Write because it teaches you, not just because you have something to say. Write because it will make you a better person, and write because it helps us become more of ourselves.

Done is done.

Sign it. Seal it. Deliver it. A dream unfinished is not reality. It’s your job to create it. Make it happen. Done is done, nothing else.

“DONE is done. Nothing else.”  (Tweet this)

What about you? What creates your best self and your best work?

In the comments below, let me know: what are your writing mantras? What are your creation mantras? How do you create your best self, and your best work? 
sarah signature

 

Building a Space and a Voice on the Internet: Is It Time For You to Join In?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

To Be A Person Is To Have A Story To Tell
Where are you telling your stories?

This past Monday we kicked off the first Writer’s Workshop with a group of 22 participants from more than a dozen states and countries around the world. I’m so impressed and inspired by the talent and hard work coming from the group already—and we’re just in week one! Writing is a journey into yourself, your ideas, and your memories—and taking the time to create something in words is a beautiful (albeit intensely personal) exercise. Several people have emailed me to ask if I’ll be teaching the course again and the answer right now is more than likely yes! I’ll be teaching the class as a summer session in mid-July, with details for signing up coming in mid-June. Sign up to get notified via weekly blog updates or send me an email if you’d like to join. Speaking of creating… is this something you’re dreaming of doing more of? Keep reading…

Building your voice on the internet: is it time for you to join in?

Have you been thinking about joining the online conversation? Have you been dreaming of starting a blog, website, or writing more?

By far, the most frequent thing I hear in my coaching and teaching is a remark that seems on everyone’s mind:

“I want to start a blog, but I’m not sure where to start.”

“I have an idea, but I’m not sure anyone wants to read it.”

“I have too many ideas, so I end up never writing them down!”

The internet can be an intimidating place—we see people who seem to write effortlessly, and publish often; they have crowds of people gathering and listening, and it seems like that’s something you’ll never get to—so why bother? Should you join in at all?

These are my arguments for why YOU should speak up.

The goal isn’t to have the loudest voice on the internet. It’s to have a voice. Your voice. The internet is a gold-rush right now, as people create content and the connections and communities born are exploding and multiplying faster than Google’s Spiders can crawl them. Should you join the conversation? There’s already enough noise and buzz anyway. What would you have to offer?

The point of writing isn’t that it’s for anyone else, at least not at first. (If your goal is to attract fame and fortune immediately, examine that desire and assumption. What is the deeper root? What are you hoping for?)

Writing and storytelling are about developing a relationship with your voice and ideas; it’s about finding (and practicing) ways of expressing them to yourself and others.

Carve out a home on the internet.

If and when you DO want to connect with others, however, it’s important to carve out your own “home” on the internet. In the world of Google-ability, we are quickly researching each other in order to learn about their skills and talents.

What do people find when they put your name into the Google machine?

The good news is that you can own this answer pretty quickly. If you want to craft three articles on a particular topic that’s interesting or a hobby to you (ideally something you’d like to be known for), you can start a Tumblr, Weebly or a WordPress domain for free or almost free (less than $50, max, if you want to own a domain name and buy a theme) and post three articles under a header with your name and contact information on it. This can be done in as little as four weeks. All of a sudden, when someone types in your name, or better yet—the topics you’ve written about—you can now be found. Your ideas can be known.

Resumes are static, and we’re searching for ideas through our web-maze of online information. Make yourself “findable.” Put your information onto the web so that search engines–and people, and serendipity–can stumble across it. Without putting yourself out there, it’s a lot harder to be found.

I get so many emails from people that say, “I was looking for an article about how to improve my writing, or how to write a thank you note, and I started reading your blog and sat down with you for an hour lastnight. It was so fun to read your thinking. Thank You.” 

By putting my words and ideas into a space where other people can find them–I’ve let myself be found. I can become known for my ideas. If you have an idea and it’s stuck in your head, there isn’t an easy way for anyone to know that you have it. Serendipity comes through connection and collision, and when people can find you and your ideas, possibility sparks.

Now – these interactions didn’t happen right away – I definitely blogged for at least six months with only my mother commenting, gently correcting most of my typos and spelling or grammar errors. My sister discovered Grammar Girl and gleefully pointed out my mistakes as well, which, as a younger sister, I’m sure delighted her. (I then hired her as my editor for my print projects, which probably made her happy as a clam–she got paid to point out all of my mistakes. Oh, life).

Starting small: creating a project, not a life (for now).

The other thing to remember is that some of my favorite websites aren’t by people who show up every week. You might not have the stamina (or the resources) to enter into a writing relationship that’s indefinite in its time frame or scope. In fact, I think that’s a terrible way to start. For people starting a blog, I recommend thinking of it as a “Project” and not a “Indefinite Relationship.” When you commit to a blog and say to yourself that you’re going to write every week for the next two years, the minute you mess up or miss a week, you’ve essentially failed the project. Who wants to be disappointed that they tried something?

The alternative is to create a project that you can do well at, by changing the parameters. Instead of promising an indefinite relationship, drastically reduce it in scope and start with a reasonable project that has a defined ending from the beginning. When you can close a project successfully and complete it, you’re much more likely to continue on to a phase two or phase three of a project, rather than let it taper off into the land of incomplete projects. You also change the feeling relationship you have with yourself—instead of creating an inevitable failure-situation, with resulting disappointments and twangs, putting pressure to show up in a way that might not be reasonable for you because of all of your various commitments–you’re creating a success situation, where you can end the project within a concrete time frame and still be very happy that you did it at all.

I recommend creating a project that says, “I’d like to talk about _[topic]_ in 4 posts, within the next two months.” Give yourself a start time, and end time, and a quantity. Specify a topic. Perhaps you want to blog about four fabulous meals that you cooked and created. Maybe you want to chronicle your science journey behind the lens of a microscope. Maybe you want to document your notes on a new class you’re taking. You could start a Tumblr with your favorite photos of doorways in your quirky city. The possibilities are endless, but you must pick one small one (and only one).

Don’t believe me? Blake Master’s compilations of Peter Thiel’s lectures is one of my favorite sites to read and there’s a fixed (static) amount of content – 13 lectures – accessible indefinitely for those that want to self-teach and read the series. He’s not adding more content. He’s creating great content and sticking it up in a place for people to find it.

What I find with myself–and others–is that if we start too big, we actually fail to start at all. When we dream the big dream of master projects and hundreds of photographs and best-selling books, many people fail to start because the dream is too big. I’m all for big dreams and goals–and relish in them, dance in them, and visualize them–but when it comes to the implementation, start with something small enough to do in a day or a week. Want to write a best-selling book or post? Start by researching your ideas, one at a time, in short posts. You can collect them later. In fact, the short pieces will serve as your building blocks for the bigger pieces.

Almost everyone I know that’s created something big started one, small, tiny step at at time.

Bottom line recommendation? Create a fixed, small project that’s do-able within a time frame of less than 3 months.

What about creating a community? How do you get people to read your stuff?

What is a community, anyways? Traffic is a collection of people “listening” or knowing how to find you and your new internet home. Traffic is built by pointing people, one by one, to the content you’ve created. Without arrows pointing in your direction (and that comes from giving people a way to find you in the form of an email, tweet, verbal share, facebook post, or link from another site as some examples), you won’t have very many people who accidentally stumble across your site. If the content is good, each person that sees it might share it with a few more people, and the site will grow slowly over time.

While I believe you should begin by sharing directly with your immediate colleagues and friends–emailing them to tell them you’ve written something; the absolute best way to grow traffic to a website is to write a guest post or article for a website that already has a built-in community or audience. It’s far easier than trying to coax one person at a time to your site. Scavenge the web for places that accept guest posts in your topic or area of interest, and spend time writing 2-3 posts that could be submitted at these places.

How big should your desired community be? Does it need to be a big community?

Before you jump into needing more traffic, however, I have many thoughts on how big a community needs to be.

The simple truth is that your story is important even if only one person hears it. Even if you’re the one who needed to write the story in the first place. We tell stories and share information to connect with other people, and your experience may mean the world to someone else, even if there are only a handful of people reading the site. Maybe the one person who reads your story desperately needs to hear that there’s someone else in the world like them, and you’re that person. Never underestimate the power of a small audience.

The best way to share your stuff is to think honestly and authentically about the work you’re creating and who you’d like to read it. Then, select a couple of friends and colleagues and send them an email that says, “I just wrote an essay about my experience with ____, and I thought you might find it useful or enjoy reading the story. I’m building my writing craft, and I’d love it if you would take the time to tell me what you think or if you thought the story resonated with you.”

Why traffic is not the same as community.

There’s a bit of pressure to garner a lot of attention and traffic to a website, and I think that only looking at the raw numbers misses the bigger picture. A lot of people get frustrated when their traffic count doesn’t seem as high as they’d like to be. While more can sometimes be better, it’s not (to me at least) about creating a site or a post that millions of people see. It’s about creating a post that resonates with a group of people that want to see what you’re writing about.

When you think about traffic, I believe that you first need to start by understanding your own personal goals. What do you want to achieve? Why is traffic important? What are your aims?

Why are you building your site, and your community? Is it documentation, analysis, understanding, connection? Who do you want to connect with? What are you hoping to achieve?

Does it matter if 20,000 people visit your site or that 2 people “convert”? Conversion is a term that indicates when someone has behaved in a way that you want them to–often measured in sign-ups or purchases. In the case of Landscape Architecture, where I work on projects that have 10-, 20-, or 30-year time frames, many developers and architects are clients that work with us on projects over many years. What this means is that we don’t need hundreds of thousands of people visiting our site (although that’s fine that they do)–our desired conversion (our want, our outcome), is getting the people who visit the site to connect with us and hire us to do incredible urban design projects around the world. If only ten people visited our website–but ten of our right people, developers or architects who want to hire us for multi-million dollar city-design projects or urban landscapes, that would be 100% a win.

For me, on this website, I am intentionally creating a space where first and foremost I get to learn and practice the craft of writing out loud. I simply LOVE storytelling and describing things to people. I enjoy it immensely when people enjoy what I have to say and engage in conversation about ideas or questions that I’ve presented.

I have grown this site by developing relationships with people one by one, and I’ve tried to take the time to answer almost every email that comes my way via this blog. Sometimes it takes me a week or two, and some weeks I have to shutter down and I miss a few – but for the most part, I cherish the interactions that have come from two years of blogging and getting to know people around the world who are interested in similar ideas. I believe strongly (and think we should all remember) that everyone on the other end of these fiber-optic cables is a human person and should be treated as such. Even in my writing, it’s not “my readers,” but lots of individual people forming a relationship with me (or my writing). A relationship involves two people! The more you can connect on a human level, the more you resonate—as a friend, as an author, as a creator, as a business person, as a marketer.

What does success mean for this blog? I started it as a space where I could think (through writing) about particular ideas I love–philosophy, psychology, motivation, storytelling, entrepreneurship and innovation, strategy. It became a place where I could connect (via ideas) to souls around the world who found resonance in what I was saying (and vice versa). I’ve met thousands of people through this blog, taught workshops across the country, found homes to stay in while traveling abroad, and had morning after morning of delightful coffee conversations with hundreds of people who reached out just to say hello.

I’ve built a small side business around this internet home, specifically by teaching writing courses both online and in person, coaching and consulting with people looking for someone to reflect and analyze their ideas or projects, and doing high-intensity work with folks who sign up for the Start Something Project that I built last year. One of the things people ask me for the most is to be their buddy while they build a project, and coach them along the way as they build their first project–I get it. It’s helpful to have someone there who can show you some of the ropes while you figure out what you’re doing. (Don’t worry–I take the training wheels off pretty quickly after one or two calls). But to be fair: I think you can do this all on your own.

Knowing your “right size.”

Interacting one on one, for me, also gives me huge value: I learn what people are working on, I develop new ideas for posts, I have “ah-ha!” moments where I understand how to describe something, and I get better at crafting things that are actually helpful. This post, in fact, is largely born out of a long conversation I had with a recent client developing her own blog and writing practice (thank you, for inspiring this post!).

One of the reasons I’ve been trying to “grow slowly” on the internet is because I want to develop real relationships with people, give myself space to breathe, learn and mess up, and also because it’s not about mass quantity. Do I want to be on the New York Times within the next few years? You bet. Would I like to write stories for the New Yorker? Absolutely. I also know that the best way to get there is not through a magic wand or sudden change, but through showing up, practicing, and moving forward on a consistent basis.

The other fallacy is that you need to have an audience of tens of thousands to make a viable business work. The reality is that the business you’re running might only need a handful of clients or customers. In fact, I might argue that having 10,000 people look at your stuff and only 10 people “convert” is poor efficiency.

To make a business work, you need to offer something of value to people who are interested, want, or need what you’re selling. I believe in business relationships that are highly satisfying to all parties involved—you learn, you grow, you get attention, mentoring, ideas, strategy, advice, review—and I also learn, grow, and cherish the working relationship and enjoy the service that I’m giving. To do my client work, I only work with two or three people a month as my “side hustle,” that is second to my full-time day job. In my recent writing course that I built, I’m not looking for 500 people; I’m looking for a small community of 20-30 writers interested in learning and writing in community.

How many people do you need to reach to make this business work? You don’t need 10,000 readers, you need the right amount of the right people–the ones who find high value in what you’re offering. To develop a community, you need to build the right audience for the product or service that you’re creating.

Perhaps there’s something to developing medium-sized communities or “tribes,” as other people call them. I love and cherish the people that I’m getting to know—and I’m constantly in awe of the talent, ideas, and personalities that cross my radar just because I happen to write stuff on the internet. I thank you.

As You Grow

Things change. As you build a space for yourself on the internet, everything will change, as things tend to do. I’ve always said that the first 1000 people will get a response, and as the community and shape of my work changes, I’ll shift my strategy to create a strategy that’s satisfying and pleasing in service of my best work for the most people that I can reach.

But before “growth” in the numbers or traffic sense comes growth as a person, and growth in your skill sets. Just as I’m trying as a novice in dance class each week, a tall gangly female of all legs who keeps moving in the wrong direction, building a writing practice and a craft takes practice. It’s okay to start small, and it’s okay to have just one essay at a time. Start with the right sized audience and a single essay, and go from there.

Resources I love:

There’s a whole world of amazing people and products on the internet, and you don’t have to start from scratch if you don’t want to. For an investment of $100 to $2000, you can find someone (or a couple of great lessons) to show you what steps to take and how to move forward. $2000 may feel like a lot, but most people who went to college spent about $5000 per class, as a point of reference. I’ve taken probably thirty-odd classes from $25 to several hundred dollars in order to learn more about all of these. (You get to keep the skills you learn, by the way.) Here are some of my favorites:

Enjoy:

  • Jenny Blake’s May Mastermind For Side Hustlers and Solopreneurs–If you’re curious what a mastermind is or how it works, her May “sampler” is a month-long mastermind group that focuses on creating optimized schedules, financial roadmaps, finding your ideal client, and building an action plan for your business. Priced at the ridiculously low $75, she said she’s offering this alternative class as a way for more people to access her programs (and to make it “impossible not to sign up”). Speaking of amazing content, Jenny’s Behind-The-Business blog updates are one of my FAVORITE things to read. She shares her process for building, creating, and all of the nitty details you wish someone would talk about, but rarely do. Not publicized as a blog, it’s probably better than most blog posts.
  • Think Traffic, by Corbett Barr, a website with tricks and tips and ways to build a blog (with traffic–if that’s your goal!). His product, Start A Blog That Matters, has been well-received and I’ve heard rave reviews.
  • Fizzle, another product by Corbett Barr, Caleb Wojcik, and Chase Reeves is an online community of business training and video training for $35 a month ($315 for the year).
  • Anything Danielle LaPorte, but mostly her latest, The Desire Map, as a way to discover your true desired feelings and help create a new way to think about goals and desires.
  • Tara Gentile’s MasterMind Group, 10 Thousand Feet–a coaching and mastermind group to “pull you out of the trenches and give you the big-picture view on your business.” Creator of the ‘New/You Economy’ movement, Tara gives wonderful no-nonsense business advice and I’ve treasured her speaking events and engagements. This one clocks in at her early-bird $1800 price, and it’s a 3-month intensive for people with new/early businesses who want a summer of focused, personalized work to build their work to the next level. Most small-group masterminds are at least $2000 or more, so this one’s a great value for those initiating businesses or in the earlier years.
  • The Live Well Space, by Suzannah Scully–I met Suzannah via Twitter (after a very public swim) and we realized that we were walking down the same street(s) in San Francisco. We both had heard of each other and wanted to know more. After a long and lovely morning laughing with tears streaming down our cheeks, we convened a fast and cherished friendship. Her blog channels yoga + philosophy + movement + strategic wisdom, and the focus of her work is on living, working, and loving well. Her coaching work builds 3-month relationships with clients to unpack and restructure your life’s focus towards greater clarity and happiness.
  • New Minimalism by Cary Fortin–another soul sister whose creation rocks my socks off — Cary’s work looks at how less clutter and fewer things can bring more freedom and happiness to our lives, but takes the edge off of the extreme nature of many minimalist movements that trends towards absolute nothing. Believing that enjoyment and luxury can also be a part of simplicity and specificity, her new blog is a delicious discovery.
  • Hannah Marcotti’s Community Grace–I’m a few days late in sharing this, but Hannah’s lovely, raw, real community for women has periodic 30-day group sessions for a $49 registration fee to join in learning about blogging, growth, and community-building. I love and admire her work, and think you’ll love her blog if you haven’t seen it already.

My takeaways for you? Build yourself an “internet home,” even if it’s only to enjoy making something by yourself.

I’m biased–I think we should all participate in this new form of community space, this digital world where we can place our creations. If you’re wavering about creating something, let me be clear: I think it’s time for you to join in.

To make it easy on yourself, start small. Pick one topic or project that you’re interested in, and make a small commitment to create a collection of pieces–drawings, ideas, words, notes, stories, essays, paintings, photos, or other–around this topic.

Give yourself a deadline of 3 months or less (ideally one month). And finish it.

What happens? It gives you something to point to. It’s a reference point for the future. It’s a means towards executing your projects. It’s a way to start a conversation. And it’s a way to do the things you’ve been talking (or thinking) about doing.

And best-case scenario? You get to meet a few people along the way who like talking about what you’re doing.

It’s an incredible place. I hope you’ll join in.sarah signature

Show up.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Show up.

Every day, or as often as needs to be done.

Figure out the schedule. Perhaps it’s once a week.

It’s not about extremes. It’s not about doing a magnanimous or extraordinary thing on one singular day, or in one moment.

It’s the accumulation of micro-actions.

It’s about consistency.

It’s about showing up, even when things aren’t perfect, even when you’re not sure, even when you’re scared.

Show up.

It’s doing something, even a little bit at a time. Maybe a 10-minute walk during lunch, or a 30-minute light walk, rather than a run. But you’re doing it. You’re doing something, not nothing.

Today.

Show up.

Invisible systems.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

I’m staring at the giant salad box in front of me on the airplane, munching down on another pile of cheese and ham, trying to figure out if I’m even hungry. There’s still piles of salad left, and I’m cramped in between the person next to me and the window, navigating my book and my salad in my small allotment of plane space.

I stopped for a second, looking at the box. It was another example of the problem I kept seeing over and over again: 

Invisible systems that control your behavior.

Here’s the thing: you don’t have to eat what’s on the plate. You don’t have to eat any or all of it. But once it’s in front of you, your mind switches to auto-pilot and, for most of us, we consume everything in front of us until it’s gone. The salads I buy from the store come in a box with a fixed amount of ingredients. The size is set: “box” size. It’s the average size and portion determined by someone else to be suitable for every individual, everywhere. The best optimal price point for the business to create a product and move that product off the shelves.

Guess what? You don’t have to eat all the salad in the box.

It’s something small, inconsequential, but it’s huge. Your behavior is being guided by what Ramit Sethi calls an invisible script; the parameters are set forth, and then you operate within them.

Although my mother would kill me for telling you this, you don’t have to finish what’s on your plate, you don’t have to eat the whole hamburger, and you can eat three, ten, or seventy French fries if that’s what you want and how hungry you are. I’ve done all of the above. Sometimes I order an entire order of fries just to eat three of them and throw the rest of them away. I only wanted three–then the salt was too much.

But this post isn’t really about food. So much of what we do is dictated by the invisible systems all around us:

Finish what’s on your plate.
Eat everything in the bag.
Work only during certain hours.
Sleep only during certain hours, only for 8 hours. Less if you want to fit in. Brag about how little sleep you get.
Running involves hard work, sweating, and discomfort.
Work takes a set amount of time.
“They” won’t let me.
Corporate is evil.
I need to quit my job to be happy.
Once I’m an adult, I won’t skip, laugh, jump or play anymore.

Wait, what? 

What systems and thoughts guide your behavior? Are they true? What are the invisible systems that guide your actions? Mindless Eating is a brilliant book that looks at eating with relation to our habits and external cues. While the topic is about food, the subject unravels far more than what we put in our mouths: it’s about the psychology of why we consistently overeat, and what cues (from the size of a plate, to an experiment with a never-ending bowl of soup that caused subjects to eat FOUR TIMES as much as they would have if the bowl emptied normally) confuse and guide us so that we don’t actually have to think about what we’re doing.

When you become aware of these cues, these systems at play, you realize: you don’t have to do what they suggest.

And it’s not about willpower or fighting against yourself. It’s setting up the system in advance–and understand what actually affects your behavior–so that you can encourage the behaviors that you want. Don’t want to eat as much food? The best change you can make is to buy smaller plates. 

It takes a lot of listening, fine-tuning, and habit disruption, but you can condition yourself to see the invisible systems. To challenge what they are asking you to do.

What are the invisible systems that guide your behavior? Do you have to do what they suggest?

Better yet: can you change them?

 

Boldness is Genius. Do it. Decide.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.”

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”

– J. W. von Goethe

Decisions are hard. Very hard.

The word “decision” is based on the Latin “decisio,” which means a cutting off. The verb is decidere, to cut off, (“de” is off; “caedere” is to cut). You can see the root repeated in other familiar words: scissors, incision, caesarean section.  Michael Ellsberg, in his book, The Education of Millionaires, recounts the work of Randy Komisar and his thoughts on playing it safe versus taking risks.

“The words “decision,” and “decide” stem from the roots “cise” and “cide,” to cut off and to kill, also the roots of manhy other words related to cutting and killing.”

“People feel like, unless they’re affirmatively making a decision, they’re not making a decision.”

We think that we’re safer, less risky, when we don’t cut off any possibilities. And so many of us sit, waifish, reluctant to decide because we are afraid of killing one of our options. We are afraid of the bloody battle that making a decision requires. We think that the alternative–not deciding–is safer, more secure. If we don’t decide to quit, to act, to disagree with someone, then we’ll be happier, somehow.

Yet there is a huge risk in not deciding:

Not making a decision is making a decision. 

As time winds its way past you, your indecisiveness kills both of the options you once had, leaving you sitting on the site of the path, empty-handed. Not deciding is deciding. Not deciding is the death of both options. It’s not saving the life of both options.

Sure, there are risks of taking action. But there are also huge risks of inaction. To quote Ellsberg, these risks include:

“The risk of working with people you don’t respect; the risk of working for a company whose values are incosistent with your own; the risk of compromising what’s important; the risk of doing something that fails to express-or even contradicts–who you are. And then there is the most dangerous risk of all–the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet that you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”

It’s not easy. You need to cut off part of yourself, close doors, and eliminate options. It’s painful. It’s hard. It’s why so many people opt to avoid making decisions. It’s why, when we’re presented with an incredible number of options, we’ll often choose to leave and “come back later,” because we don’t want to make the wrong decision. It’s why marketers and salespeople are realizing the genius of offering fewer options.

Because people are terrible at making decisions. 

What are you risking by being afraid of not deciding?

We stand there, wistfully, at the fork in the path and dwell on the option we’re leaving behind, the places and spaces that could have been. But unless we decide to act, to make a decision, to cut one path and choose the other, then we’re not gaining from either option in front of us. No: we’re just sitting there, hands tied in the grassy meadow, staring at unfinished possibilities.

Deciding is powerful. It is terrifying. It is beautiful. Kill something today. Cut it out. Drop it. Remove it. Make clarity in choosing, by saying No to the part you don’t want.  Say Yes to the things you want to keep. Do something.

“Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” 

“Begin now.”

With love,

 

The 9-to-5 Doesn’t Always Make Sense. How I Work: Discipline. Differences. Structures. Boundaries. Freedom.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Sometimes my Grandpa says I work too hard. I try to tell him that my work is not the same as work used to be. I work late. I work early. I take breaks in the middle of the day.

He points to the clock. It’s 6’o’clock, he says, wobbling over his cane and tapping on the table where I’ve got my laptop opened. It’s time to stop working, he commands.

I agree, and I also completely disagree. I’ve just finished taking a half hour break to chat with friends and colleagues online–spirited discussions and meeting new people and reading and networking like a champ–and now I’ve got to get back into my grind and focus on the production, the creation that I do every day.

I live in a new world, perhaps, at least to my parents and grandparents. I work in bursts of creation, usually 90 minutes to 3 hours in length, inset by pauses for lengthy conversations, connectivity, explorations, learning, and movement. My days–my sometimes 16-hour days–begin with walks, meander through coffee with great thinkers, are sometimes propelled by spurs of insane connectivity in the middle of the day, outreaching and coordinating with editors and speakers and writers and clients–and then in between it all I nestle down for sessions of quiet solitude filled with reading, writing, creation, drawing. I shutter down each day from the internet, often hours at a time (forgive me, twitter, but I schedule you out at times to play along, but I’m a ghost; not really there as much as it might appear). During these shutter hours I focus, focus, driven by purpose and deadline, and mostly, discipline.

These structure and boundaries give parameters for freedom; space to think within the allotted lines, which inevitably bend and give way once I gallop and leap beyond them. Loose, dashed lines of constraints provide the discipline required for invincible creativity, and I thrive in the flexibility and structure provided by these bare-bone parameters. As Jonah Lehrer has written, one of the paradoxes of the human condition is that we are more creative with boundaries; our freedoms and productions tend to increase within constraints, to a certain degree.

The simple recipe of 9 to 5 has no resonance with me; many suggest that the 9 to 5 is antiquated, a thing of the past. I can neither sit still nor think for eight hours, let alone be in one place or with one task. Everything about that schedule is arbitrary–the start time, the end time, the things that we must produce within that set amount of time.  The only thing left is an antiquated system that we perpetuate because we don’t have the courage to think differently.

We have moved quickly, cleanly beyond an industrial age where outputs were set (“build 18 shoes, please, and send them down the conveyor belt”) a time when we knew exactly when our works’ work was done; beyond the infrastructure of the giant corporation, the relic of the 1950’s-2000’s, to today: today, we live in a world where information is ubiquitous and overwhelming, and being ‘done’ with work is never truly over. A world where information threatens to take over globally, yet somehow this collection of voices creates so much noise that it pulls us locally again, towards communities and coffee shops, to social circles that we can trust instead of constantly test (for being on top of information at all times takes far too much energy for the individual).  In all of this, creative and intellectual pursuits require exceptional discipline, or else these individuals can become swallowed by the banal of chasing information and products that yield no results.

The 9 to 5 schedule, too, strikes at the wrong hours of the day for my scheduling. For me, 9 am falls in the middle of my best hours, and 5 pm at the middle of my worst hours. In any given day, I probably only have 5 hours of ‘great’ work time, time when I’m focused on writing and complex problem solving; I regard these hours as fundamentally precious and push everything to the wayside during these times. I have time for lower-level thinking tasks (batch email sending, task responses, errands, etc) – and if I don’t match my energy levels to the projects’ needs, I’ll end the day frustrated, discouraged, and unsatisfied. Trying to write during the slump of a post-lunch warm afternoon is what I call awful.

And so, I have both a peculiar and wonderful schedule. I wake up early, sometimes really early. I write in the lonely morning hours, silent and still, peaking by 10am and entering the flurry of the working world–and my job–turning onto the networks for a while, answering calls as they come in. On a lucky day, I’ll close the office door, turn off the phones, and continue to write until 11 or noon. On a bad busy day, I’ll have meetings all morning, eroding the precious hours of productivity with talking. (I’ll amend that: the busy, coordination days are not my favorite, but they are what set the stage for later days of productivity and creation. It’s more likely than not that I need a balance of both, that one doesn’t exist without the other). Still, I take steps to arrange meetings only during times when my energy levels match the needs of collaborating with others. Knowing that I only have a few “good” hours each day makes me carve out time differently.

I am a fastidious multi-tasker; in that I do many tasks throughout the day and let some percolate in the back of my mind while focusing most of my energy on the job at present. (This is distinctly different from trying to do things at the same time. Rather, this form of “multi-tasking” is akin to multiple burners, one on high, several on simmer. I think you’ll burn the food if you try to cook it all on high at the same time; but you can have ideas brewing on the back burner, certainly). Through it all I follow my energy flows closely, watching when my exhaustion peaks, when my lethargy sits, when my vivaciousness is at a high; and I match the tasks at hand to the problems I need to solve.

When I switch from writing to design, the office changes again, transforming into a new space to produce: I design best to pulsating music, so my office–or my coffee shop, wherever I am working–turns into a pseudo-dance party, techno beats and rhythms coloring the flurry of my designs. Most days involve dancing, thinking, and dancing again.

Throughout it all, I set targets and goals and deadlines, knowing the importance of self-discipline above all else–and in the mornings, I write out fresh post-it notes with clear, tangible goals and deadlines. With each, I strive to hit the 4 pm or 5 pm mark, a practice I’ve honed over years of incremental steps. My habits are reinforced daily: I know now that the projects have to be finished; to me, it makes sense to then try to do everything I can to finish them early.  Deadlines are arbitrary; work expands to fill the space you give it. The sooner I get done with a design puzzle or a press release or a meeting, the sooner I can get back to precious creation. No sense in wasting time.

And then, to dream, to kick on my dreamers’ hat again, and to watch the world, grasping the importance of being and the inspiration that’s required for any good work, I walk. And I walk a lot, exploring and moving frequently. Usually at least once between 3 pm and 7 pm–these are the times when during a puzzlement of problems, or of mounting frustration, I’ll push back my chair, stand up, spritz sunscreen on, grab my hat and keys, and wander. I leave the closed, strange office environment and sometimes I break into a run or a sprint, and I run, work pants rolled up, shoes exchanged for sneakers hidden underneath my desk, blouse replaced by a long-sleeved shirt. And I’ll run until I’m out of breath, looking out on the Sausalito waters, shaking my brain’s thoughts around until they settle like loose chips in a bucket, falling individually into place. Within a half an hour, I’m back at work, back at the desk, and without fail, the brain is working again–

–and it’s like morning, when I get back from a walk, and I’m ready. I eat, and I sit, and I take the next chunk of time, usually 2 hours, and I figure stuff out and get it done. In a precious day, sometimes up to 3 days per week, I’ll hit a second stride and find a creative flow to work for 3-4 hours. And I’ll chase it, producing quietly and steadily, building a stream of writing and coloring my desk with designs and drawings, and I’ll sigh at the end, satisfied, full, and tired.

Each day is different. The days the focus stays, I’ll finish a project with a 4-hour stint, coming home late to a glass of wine and a quiet yoga session. Other days my brain is clouded and maxed and I leave early, taking the afternoon to rest and recover and interact and play.

And that, that’s what I can’t say with my eyes when I look at my Grandpa. It’s just one thing that’s different in the world from when he used to work and the way that I work. His calculus, diff-e-q, tangential brain sits me down and marks up notes on electrical circuitry and my infantile, kinesthetic self squirms at being forced to sit; I feel my skin itch and crawl with the inability to roam free; and I know that it’s not just the generational differences that are at play. I must be free. Free to create. And you? You, do what works for you.