The Importance of You Doing You

By Christine Carron

If you want unstoppable creative flow, you have to put YOU into the equation of how you’re getting your creative work done. 

Traditional productivity approaches bamboozle us into thinking that the context of us is irrelevant to our forward momentum. It’s as if the proponents of these approaches want us to act as if we are widget-producing machines that must churn out creative work 24x7.

Spoiler Celebration Alert: You are not a machine. You are not a conveyor belt. You are not an AI bot. You are a wild, remarkable creative being. So, of course, you require a creative productivity toolkit that unleashes your genius instead of straitjacketing it.

(Heck yeah!)

Do Not Try This at Home

I once worked with a writer who was disappointed with the progress she was making on her first novel. I asked her what was the approach she’d taken to get back into a productive flow. 

Her: “Well, I made this plan. It was way harsh—but I knew I needed to give myself a kick-in-the-a$$ to get going.”

Me: “How did it go?”

Her: “Uh, it lasted about a day. And then I felt worse because I couldn’t even make my plan work let alone actually make progress.”

I was not surprised. I’ve heard many versions of this story. I’ve lived many versions of this story myself. 

Just as this example shows, however, harsh, “must punish myself to make progress” productivity techniques do not work long term, and even in the short term their efficacy is iffy. They also have a tendency to tank motivation and confidence, too, because, as the writer above experienced, they often open the door for an Inner Critic trouncing.  

Getting Real About “Punish for Progress” Approaches 

At their core, these punish-for-progress techniques require us to hold the position that we don’t matter in our creative productivity practices. At all. 

Perhaps you are doing a task for the first time. Perhaps the fiftieth. Logic, and basic human learning realities, would argue that a creative task will take longer the first time you do it versus when you’ve done it many times. 

The Punish for Productivity mindset has a different opinion: Doesn’t matter. This task should take x amount of time every time you do it, even if it is a new skill or task you have never done.

Perhaps you have a mix of creative tasks to get done. Some you love to do, but others on the list scare you a bit—gulp! What does your gut tell you? If I were a betting woman, I’d bet that you would say that the tasks you love are going to be easier to get done.

Not so according to the Punish for Productivity mindset: Doesn’t matter. A unit of work is a unit of work. Loving a task or being anxious about a task–or any emotional response whatsoever to a task–is irrelevant. 

And perhaps you’ve found yourself in a real life intensity surge. Something like the following, which is an actual experience of one of the creatives I coach: Your company just doubled your workload; your spouse just got a new job; you’re finishing up a graduate certificate program; you and your husband are buying a rental property; and your two-year-old is in potty training. 

Would anyone grounded in reality (and basic compassion) tell this woman that nothing should change in her approach to getting her creative work done while this was all going down? 

Yet here’s what that Punish for Productivity voice most of us have inside us might tell us in a similar overload situation: Excuses. Don’t waste my time with excuses. Anything other than your art (i.e., keeping the lights on; relationships; your mental, emotional, physical health, etc.) must not have any bearing on your creative output. If you let it, then I gotta be straight with you: You simply don’t have what it takes. Chop, chop, now.

A Different (and Effective) Productivity Paradigm

That Punish to Productivity mindset looks pretty harsh—and a little heartless—when I put it to paper, right? That’s because it absolutely is both those things. It’s also misguided. The reality is:

You do have to adjust your productivity strategies and tactics if you have never done a task before versus if you can do the task in your sleep with your hands tied behind your back, while belting out O Mio Babbino Caro. 

You do have to adjust your productivity strategies and tactics if you are doing an easy (to you) task versus a task that sends a jolt of DEFCON1 panic through your entire system.

You do have to adjust your productivity strategies and tactics if the rest of your life ratchets up to super sonic, I’m going to lose my marbles intensity.

So, yes, if you want to make it easier to get your creative work done—and have an exponentially more delightful creative adventure along the way—you have to put you back into the equation. You have to decide you matter. And absolutely, you, have to “do you” when it comes to how you get your creative work done. Are you game?

Happy day, happy creating, happy jamming. You’ve got this!