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

Procrastination, when it passes a certain point, stops feeling like simply putting things off (as crappy as that feels) and starts to feel like creative block. I’ve talked a lot about the idea that procrastination stems from anxiety and feeds anxiety, and this is an extreme example. This game, of trying to create self-generated work, is not a physi

And how do you know what your taste actually is? You have to listen to yourself, pay attention to what excites you (or pisses you off), what you talk about. And then invest in it: Invest your time and your attention.

This is a Focus Session. This is not just having coffee. It’s not “support.” It’s a system for feedback and collaborative improvement. It’s reliable, it’s repeatable. I don’t wait for inspiration or luck. I hate waiting for luck. Luck is always late.

Why can’t you just freaking focus already? Does this mean you’re a lost cause, that you’re not cut out for doing creative work? Absolutely not. It just means you don’t know your next step.

Calendar the small stuff.

Anything that is in both the Must + Now buckets, just do that stuff.

Procrastination is tied to anxiety. It causes anxiety, but it is also caused by anxiety. This anxiety stems from not having thought through the steps, the literal actions, that will get you to your goal.

Building intrinsic motivation is like building a muscle, like working out.

The first step, obviously, is that you have to value the work. It’s your right and responsibility to use your creativity. Stake your claim. You’re doing that. But then treating the work as if it’s something that should just happen because it matters to you is a recipe for failure.