Accomplish more of your creative goals in 2022! (Without The Productivity Hacks.)

Today we are going to be talking about creativity and self discipline. How can you have more of those in 2022? And I know that you want both. And I'm going to be honest, I'm very cautious about talking about productivity because I actually believe a lot of creatives look at productivity or calendar blocking or all these things as the answer. And when they fail at it, it becomes more ammunition against themselves. We're going to talk about some things that will help you be more disciplined and creative, but by actually loosening your grip. We're not going to White Knuckle 2022. We're going to loosen the grip a little bit. The reason I think it's important to loosen the grip is because when we're white knuckling through everything, we're disregarding something very important that comes up, which is our emotions and feelings. So, you know, our feelings are very real, but they're not always accurate. And disregarding them and just pushing them, like pushing through the pain, so to speak, it's going to nearly always cause you to abandon the task at hand for a more comfortable option. So time management is not the answer when it comes to having more productivity and self discipline. Okay, why is that? Because management is the process of dealing with or controlling things or people controlling things. There was a study that was done where they talked about how people that accept their difficult emotions are better off in the long run than those who try to force their way into a better mood. So what does this look like for us? Sometimes we're gonna fail. And when we allow ourselves to see it for what it is, to normalize that, to feel those emotions. And then here's the key. Start over. We're gonna be way more productive. So let's talk about three things that you can do with this all in mind that are gonna help you have more creativity and discipline in the upcoming year. Number one, surround yourself with like minded people. If we are a mix of the five people that we hang out with the most, ask yourself, is the company that you're keeping keeping up with your aspirations? Is the company that you're keeping keeping up with your goals, your aspirations as a creative person, are they trying to make the most from, from their creativity or the things that they're doing right? So if not, that means we need to find some opportunity for new creative spirits, so to speak, in our circle. So practical way to do this, Facebook groups. This is a free way for you to end up finding people that you can hang out with. And you can take those Facebook groups, go in there and just say, hey, I'm looking to put together a creative mastermind. So if you're not familiar with a mastermind, a Mastermind is simply 3, 2, 3, 6 people, usually no more than 5 or 6 people that get together either weekly or monthly to hold each other accountable on something to help each other out, right? So put it out there and say, hey, I want to, to find some people that would like to do some sort of creative mastermind. And then the masterminds that I've been a part of usually meet weekly, about three weeks a month. And when we meet, we set expectations for what we want to accomplish with each meeting. And we have an agenda because the structure and the agenda will help everybody feel more involved in what's happening. So a simple structure might be a quick welcome. You go through and you say, hey, okay, here's what's going to happen. Joe, Sally, Jimmy, Fred, Betty, all of us are going to go through and talk about what we're working on. You're each going to have 15 minutes of time. So tell us what your problem is with your creativity or the things that you're working on creatively and then we'll spend the rest of the 15 minutes giving you feedback, giving you ideas. Think about how powerful that is that you're going to have every week, three to six people breathing life into you and your creativity, giving you new ideas toward your creative business. This is big, big, big stuff, right? Another option is to join my community. I have a program called your first 1000 fans that will be launching again in March. We have artists in there that have done all kinds of amazing stuff. We have a couple who has grown their audience on TikTok to over 35,000 followers and are selling out all of their work. They can't keep up with the demand. We have some that have done animation for Nickelodeon. We have some that have done work for companies like Netflix Family and had write ups in Bored Panda. There's a lot of really strong artists there. So if you're looking to level up, it maybe not. In my community there's also a YouTube channel called the Future. Like finding a community that you may have to pay to be a part of, but what you're paying for there is accessibility to higher level thinkers and people that are more in your wheelhouse. Number two, treat your creativity like it matters, because it does. I get a lot of creatives, a lot of people in, you know, in my circle, what they'll say, like the creativity is the first thing to go because I feel Irresponsible. I know there are other things that I could be doing that would be making me more money, et cetera, et cetera. So just know that by doing what you love, you're actually being responsible, because this is going to improve your mental health, which will increase your capacity for the work that you have to do. And that's really important stuff, right? I often say that people don't have a time management problem. They have an energy management problem. They put everything that feels responsible in front of the thing that will actually move the needle. All of it. Physical, mental health, and then even more so, spending time doing what makes you happy, because that happiness brings you energy and then helps you to push through to the next thing. I have a client that I work with, and she has one thing on her calendar that she won't get rid of, and that's her hair appointments. And I find this really, really funny. But I'm the same way, right? There are certain things in my life that I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not letting that go. But her hair appointments were the one thing. So I said, well, what is it about your hair appointments that you won't get rid of? Like, what makes you say, I'm not getting rid of my hair appointments? And she said, well, you know, I can't reschedule that. Like, the lady that does my. My hair, she's booked out for, like, months. Okay, well. Well, what makes your time or your creativity any less valuable than that woman's time and availability, right? And so I suggested that she try booking all of her creative time as, quote, unquote, hair appointments. And what started to happen? She started to actually do the creative work that she knows she needed to get done. And it was pretty neat to see her.

Start to put that at a precedence, right? So remember, create your version, right? Your version of your hair appointments. If it needs to be a secret to make it exciting, keep it a secret. The third thing here is give yourself grace. Building a habit is not about doing something for 60 or 90 days. Building a habit is really about giving yourself the grace to notice when you miss a day and then being able to start over. Building a habit is really about giving yourself the grace to see yourself mess up, to see yourself, quote, unquote, fail and then be able to start over. So stop telling yourself what you should do and start showing yourself what you've already done. So one of the ways that we do this inside my program is we'll use a habit tracker, but we don't use the habit tracker to keep track of what we've missed. I see a lot of productivity people and they talk about like, you know, never miss two days in a row. That's the goal. I actually think that's, that's fine. But it's almost like saying, okay, if you miss two days in a row, it's, you're, you're no longer worth like celebrating, like you've really screwed something up. Right? Right. So flip the mindset of that, especially if you're learning something new or getting into a new habit, and use it as an opportunity to show the evidence of what you've done. So for instance, when I look at my habit tracker stuff, I'm taking a look at everything. And let's talk about meditation. For instance, when I'm looking at my meditation app and I see that I meditated on Monday, Wednesday and Sunday, okay, that's cool. But what I love about it is not the, is not the short term. Like, here's what I've done in the last five days, which is what we usually get wrapped up in. I like zooming out and saying, okay, I did it three days this week, four days the week before, two days the week before that, and six days the week before that. Now compare that to the month before. Okay, so maybe I did it somewhere around 20 times this month. And the previous month I did it six. Now we're looking at real progress because habits aren't formed just like go get it, gun it out again, white knuckle it. They're forms when we are motivated, when we don't feel obligated but we feel motivated. Obligation is a breeding ground for resentment. I'll say that again. Obligation is a breeding ground for resentment. So if you feel obligated to do something, the odds are very high that you know you're not going to want to continue to do it. Number one, we want to make sure that we surround ourselves with, with like minded people, that we find people on Facebook, groups on the Internet, through paid communities somewhere, develop a mastermind, whatever it is, surround yourself with like minded people and meet with them regularly. Number two, treat your creativity like it matters, because it does. Right? Set it as a high priority because this is the responsible thing to do, especially if you want to be able to make some sort of income or living doing this work. And number three, give yourself grace. Use habit trackers, use things like that, but use it as evidence so that when you mess up, you can go back and say, oh, but I might have messed up here, but there's all this evidence that shows that I was actually doing the work, and that is really, really, really powerful stuff.