Taking deliberate action: slowing down to speed things up
I have a client navigating some health challenges and so one of the things we’re working on is doing fewer things better. We’re creating more lead time so she has room to maneuver around flairs, low energy days, and other surprises. And generally building in more buffer and proactive rest days.
In some ways this looks like working slower. But what it really means is working more deliberately.
Working deliberately carries its own kind of speed.
This is one of the most counterintuitive things that I keep needing to relearn in new ways.
Staying within my capacity expands my capacity faster than pushing outside of it. Deliberately slowing down each step speeds up the whole process.
It’s frustrating.
And it’s one of those things that requires repetition after repetition after repetition to learn.
But it works. As counterintuitive as that is.
I suspect the magic comes down to smoothness and getting things right the first time.
Rushing and pushing almost inevitably leads to mistakes. In the rare instances it doesn’t, success comes down to luck, not skill.
Troubleshooting and back tracking and fixing and getting back to where you were are time consuming. And no one knows exactly how time consuming and frustrating it’ll be until it’s done.
Going slowly, staying within your capacity, and doing the very next right thing means you can focus enough to do this step right and plan the next one. You aren’t jumping from the past to the future to the present. You aren’t zooming between the granular details and the big picture and the in between all within the next five minutes.
Slowing each step down means you can stay in one time at one level of detail until your task is completed or road blocked.
I see this happening in…
Movement – slowing down a lift to make the same weight more challenging, a controlled approach the edges of your flexibility expanding your flexibility.
Making – late night knitting makes for early morning ripping, rushed sewing means more time with the seam ripper, hasty measurements means your cutting is probably going to be wrong.
Business – doing the very next most obvious step is typically better for growth than flailing around, deliberately laying the groundwork means growth is typically easier to manage, and taking the time to build a coherent strategy means you’re less likely to get distracted by something new and shiny.
Style – hasty shopping makes a mess of a closet while deciding on your style cues ahead of time gives your shopping a personalized filter, and taking the time to practice your style makes iterating clear.
Recovery – recovering before you’re depleted means you’re not trying to fill an empty cup because the cup was never empty in the first place. (Leave some energy in there, it’s like seeding the tip jar of your energy banks.)
I know deliberate action is difficult in the short term, while overworking seems easier. Taking steps slowly seems slow, while speeding up seems fast.
It helps to remember that the tortoise won the race against the hare.
Of course this does require belief that the race you’re running is one worth winning.
But that’s a topic for another time.
That’s all for now.
As always, if you’d like to work together on your business, your style, or your creative life, schedule a call and we’ll get the process started.
This post was originally emailed as part of July’s newsletter. Sign up to receive next month’s email.
On enough, vision, and gathering
I’ve been thinking a lot about enough, vision, and gathering recently.
Gathering and community and connection has been a running theme I’ve been hearing among conversations with clients, friends, and acquaintances.
Another theme I’ve been noticing from both clients, and non-clients has been “I suspect something needs to change, but I’m not sure what, or how, or when I’ll know the change is complete, or even if I actually need to change or just give it more time to work.”
I find neither of these themes surprising given [the state of things].
Let’s consider the second theme first. I’ve been thinking about this as the “what’s enough?” theme.
Is staying the current course good enough? Should I add another product / revenue stream / platform / system / market / event? Should I post more? Should I email more? Should I spend more? Should I try more? What’s enough? These questions are coming from all across the effort and capacity spectrum.
This theme boils down to: whatever “enough” is, no one thinks they’re doing it.
The other theme I’ve been noticing is the theme of gatherings.
I started my career in theater – an art form built around gathering.
Theater is by definition communal. It is people in a room together having a group experience. The trappings of scenery, and costumes, and lights, and such, set the stage for the experience, but the experience doesn’t happen until people are there to co-create it.
In some ways the show is an excuse to get together.
And that is the heart of the theme I’ve been hearing in conversations of community: what is the excuse to get together?
“Let’s hang out” is easy to brush off or reschedule when things get busy (and when aren’t things busy?). But an event with a reason + a date + a time, that’s harder to brush off.
A reason + date + time gives the connection a container.
If the heart of this theme is more connection, more conversations, more emergent insights, then the container needs an excuse that stands up to the encroachment of modern life, but does not quash the flow of connecting.
Which rather ties neatly back into our “what’s enough?” theme.
What’s enough to generate connection without creating another calendar burden? What’s enough of a reason to make the time?
What’s enough to be the nucleus of a salon until the salon becomes the place to be?
I don’t exactly know. But what I do know is that enough is often decided not found, and what different people get from the same event is often different but can still be exactly what they need.
Deciding on enough starts with a clear vision. And so does putting on a good show.
This post was originally emailed as part of June’s newsletter. Sign up to receive next month’s email.
Using Your Next Creative Projects as Bait
How to finish your current project when the new one is so much more exciting
Listen to this voice note here. Or read the cleaned up transcript below.
Hey, I’m Holly Chayes, this is Poetry and Practicalities, and today I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about that spark of exciting new creative projects, how it can make your current project in process look a little dull and boring and something that isn’t worth finishing and isn’t worth doing.
Normally I type out these types of essays and articles, but I wanted to try something a little different and new today. So we’re doing it as a voice note!
I was talking with a couple other creative business owners the other day and this topic of that creative spark making your current projects look dull and boring and like you didn’t want to finish it came up.
We were talking about how we deal with this and they asked me a little bit about what other people do because I work with creative businesses on their systems and operations and marketing. One of the problems with a creative business is as much as that new spark is amazing and exciting, you do need to finish things so that you can put them out into the world and get things done and run a business. And that’s one of the kind of inherent tensions of how do you follow that creative spark, but also complete enough things to keep your business moving forward?
I’ve done a lot of stuff over the years, but one of the things that I have found most useful, most invigorating, and the best way to balance this creative push-pull of starting new exciting things and finishing enough stuff so that you can share it is: using your new creative project as bait to finish your old one.
I often get this creative sparks like, halfway to two-thirds to 90% of the way through a creative project and I want to start the new thing. I’m bored of the old thing. It has hit whatever hard part comes about, it’s hit that like 50% boring, hard, difficult, slogging mark. There’s not that fresh excitement anymore. But it’s not close enough to like be done and like you can just muscle through it.
So I often use whatever new sparkly, exciting idea is still in its new, exciting phase. I use it as creative bait to get me to finish the old project and get me to keep working on it.
Sometimes that looks like working a certain amount of time on the old project and then working a little bit of time on the new project.
Sometimes it looks like completing certain milestones in the old project and then working on the new project a little bit.
And sometimes it looks like just… head down, finish the old project, get it out, get it good, get it done. And then dive fully into the new one.
I have found this works because the new project is often at a different… I mean, it’s obviously at a different stage, it’s a new project. It can’t be 50% of the way done if it’s brand new. But it’s it’s using a different part of my brain. There’s more blank space. I don’t need to solve problems that came out of decisions I’ve already made. I’m not locked into a structure yet, or I can choose a new medium or message, or whatever I want.
I often find that the old project I need to find creative solutions to questions that I’ve kind of already committed to, or I need to do some very deep structural work. And so that requires a different kind of thinking and creativity than a new project does.
Working on the two at the same time, I get to bounce between the states of problem-solving new problems and problem-solving old problems that I kind of wish I hadn’t brought upon myself already.
I think this works for a lot of other creatives too. I think we love the newness.
One of the beautiful things about creatives is that we can always come up with a new idea.
Giving ourselves time to honor that idea is still really important while also balancing the need to complete what we said we’d complete – even if the only person we told we’d complete it is is ourselves.
So those are my thoughts on new creative projects and old creative projects and how to get things done and using your new idea as a bait to finish your old one and get it out into the world.
I hope you enjoy it. That’s all for now. Talk soon. Bye.
