Growing Gills: How to Find Creative Focus When You’re Drowning in Your Daily Life

success markers do not always have to yield a new physical object, so long as there is an identifiable outcome.

This is where things get really tough because it is probably where your dream project is sitting, and I know: It makes you feel like a loser not to put it on the schedule right now, today. I’m telling you: You can do the big dream project, you can make it happen.

My point is not to talk you out of doing work that isn’t going to make you a bunch of money. I sincerely want you to make whatever work you want to make. My point is to help you get clear about your larger goals, and then figure out if and how the work you have in front of you builds toward those goals. It gives me immense satisfaction to help crea

This is meant to be your ideal week, based on how you would like to be working in your present-day reality. In other words, for the purposes of this exercise, you don’t get to imagine how great it would be to not have a day job if you have one. Whatever is currently nonnegotiable on your real calendar stays nonnegotiable. There’s no point in imagin

This is the most important part of what Chuck Close advises: “You sign on to a process.” Yes, you need a regular creative practice. But there’s more: How do you build that practice? By having a system for working, a specific way in which you go about doing things day in and day out, so you never have to start from scratch. You establish a routine.

Development markers are the small actions you perform on a daily and weekly basis that move you along the track toward those desired concrete results (or success markers).

underlying the practical question of what idea or project to focus on creatively is the much bigger question of how to weave creative work into all the other things you do and want to do. In other words, how to build a sustainable system for your life.

How can I weave my creative work into my day-to-day life in such a way that I’m fully engaged with it, so that I neither get scattered and lose

But stopping before “you’ve written yourself out” will absolutely get your subconscious engaged in working through the problem at hand.