Running Down a Dream: Your Road Map to Winning Creative Battles

Constantly trimming away inefficiencies in the way you work is a powerful tool. What’s even more powerful is that very few people have the discipline to do it.

I built up a good toolbox of options to use whenever fear started holding me back. 1. I focused on creating for one person. 2. I promised myself to keep it a secret. 3. I wrote affirmations to combat specific fears about my character 4. I always kept my worry list close by.

I thought about that movie with Jack Nicholson where he plays an obsessive-compulsive novelist who, through a long series of events, ends up back at his therapist’s office. After an unsuccessful interaction on the couch, he walks out into the waiting room, looks around, and then delivers the line that gave the movie its name. “What if this is as go

Whether it’s needing to pay your taxes, washing the dishes, or a marriage that is on the rocks. List it all out. The list must be exhaustive. If something pops in your head, put it down. There is no filter here. Second, write at the bottom of the sheet of paper, “All of these things are important and I promise to concern, worry, and fear over them

I needed a handful of people who knew me, knew what I was trying to accomplish, and were willing to tell me the bare, unvarnished truth. I decided early on I’d rather hear how bad my book was from friends, privately, before it was published. That way I could fix it rather than hear from strangers, publicly, after it was published.

got a piece of paper and a pen and I wrote down everything I did in a day. Everything. All the tiny minutia like going to the bathroom, driving to work, and making lunch. I included eating dinner with the family, making client calls, and watching TV before bed. It all went down in one giant list. Then I went straight down the page and started cross

In my consulting, I was so used to cutting ideas off at the knees before they even got started that I never thought to consider what would happen if everything went right…what it would be like to focus on realizing the big goal instead of worrying about the little bugs that would come up as I was moving toward it.

Finally, she stopped and asked that question. “What do you want?” This stopped me short. She was obviously asking a bigger question than just “pay off my taxes” or “make more money.” She wanted to know what about this situation was really making me so angry. I took a deep breath. “I’m just ready for this to be easy.” At first Candace didn’t really

“Then why isn’t it done already?” I paused again, weighing how honest I wanted to be with her, but I figured she’d gone this far with me so I might as well just lay it out. “What if it still sucks? What if I have to rewrite half of it again? Or, what if I publish it and it’s still a disaster?” “Do you really think I’d let you do that, Tim? You thin