#118: Productivity for Creative People

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Thank you for joining me for episode 118 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. My name is Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. Just a quick reminder that you can find detailed show notes of this episode by going to b2b launcher.com Episode 118 first of all, happy New Year. If you're listening to me here in the first week of January or early in January, it's great to be back back in action after some much needed time off. Hope you were able to relax over the holidays and enjoy time with family. Hopefully have a little bit of time to reflect on the year that just wrapped up and plan for 2017. So as this past year came to an end and I was talking with some of my coaching clients about what they wanted to change in 2017, one of the common themes that I heard was productivity. Productivity is obviously a big challenge for many of us who are creative professionals, freelance professionals. Working from home means that you're exposed to a ridiculous number of distractions. And when you're in front of your computer all day long, the temptation to do things like check email, check social media, watch cat videos can be very damaging and obviously paralyzing if you take it to an extreme. Yet if we're ever going to do great work, we have to be productive and we know that, right? This is not a new idea. Intellectually we understand that making it work, however, on a day to day and minute by minute basis is quite challenging. So as we kick off this new year, I wanted to bring in my friend and colleague Mark McGinnis to the show because Mark has been writing about this topic recently and he's got some great ideas. He is a writer, coach and just an all around awesome guy who runs the website Lateral Action. Mark works with creative professionals to help them succeed. However you define success by getting you to realize that busy doesn't necessarily equal productive or innovative. He has a number of, again, very practical, very tactical tips for improving your productivity very quickly. This is not something that's going to take months to really start yielding results and we're going to cover many of those today in this episode. But before we do that, I wanted to share an excerpt from Paige and Mark's website, which is lateralaction.com where Mark explains What that term means lateral action, and what that means to him because it's very relevant to our discussion today. The most important skill for economic survival in the 21st century is creativity. The creative economy is the final frontier. It's the only area that can't be automated or outsourced offshore. At least not yet. But creative thinking is not enough. You've got to actually try novel and unique things and make those valuable mistakes that teach you way more than your successes. It's not enough to be productive if what you produce doesn't make a difference. Those who stay busy with foolish productivity are scurrying around efficiently, avoiding any real innovation one productivity hack at a time. Maybe it's time to stop just getting things done and start focusing on doing things that really matter. That's how creative entrepreneurs operate. That's lateral action. So with that, let's get right to that interview with Mr. Mark McGinnis. Foreign hey Mark, so great to have you on the show again.

Thank you, Ed. It's great to be back.

Well, this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart. I've talked about this in the past, it's been a long, long time. But I'm glad we're addressing it again because I think you have a lot of great ideas and insights to share with us. This issue with productivity, I mean, this is something that we're all facing, we're all having to deal with. And as creative people, I think we have, especially if you work from home, you have some very unique challenges. So this is very timely always. So I'm curious just to kind of get a start is here. I'd like to get your take on what you see happening out there. You know, it's productivity has always been a challenge for creative people. But do you think that we're just busier now because it seems more challenging every year? Are we just busier or is it a function of all the distractions and all the choices that we have out there? What are you seeing out there?

Well, I think that the distractions and choices, I mean, they're wonderful. Let's kind of say that up front there's a load of opportunities that we have as creatives that we never had before. Like for instance, you and I getting to have this conversation across the other side of the world. But like everything else in the universe, it's a two edged sword. So all the wonderful opportunities become distractions. And if we're creatives, then our ability to focus and produce and concentrate is absolutely critical. It's Non negotiable, really. If you're going to do high quality piece of work, say on a, you know, you're writing a whole client's website, that's a big piece of work. You've got to really get to know the business inside a. Inside out and have a kind of sustained concentration in order to really focus on them, their goals, their client, the tone of voice, etc. Etc. Etc. So, you know, in the midst of all of that, and this applies, you know, really across the creative disciplines which I coach people in all different media and it's your ability to focus is one of the most valuable assets you have. So really that was the starting point for writing about this subject, was how can I help people find more focus without having to go and live up the top of a mountain in a monastery in Tibet?

That would be nice. Sometimes I think that's, I feel like I need to get away, like rent a cabin in the mountains for a week.

It's great to do. It's great to do, but it's not necessarily an option. 52 weeks a year. So this was for, you know, the times that you're not in Tibet.

The problem starts the day after I get back. It's, I would need to book another week. So, yeah, so, yeah, and I feel like you're right that this focus issue is the problem. I have always said, look, you can't really manage time. Time is a constant. You need to be able to manage yourself, to establish more periods of intense focus. Because I know when I'm focused and I'm in the zone, I mean, I'm really doing some amazing work. So it's an issue of focus many times. So let's talk about some of the myths of productivity because a lot of people want these quick fixes. And I hear, well, you know, what apps are you using? A lot of people are looking for these hacks and these tricks and when I hear them, what I'm hearing is you're adding complexity here. You're not really addressing the problem. So as you talk with creative professionals, your coaching clients, what are some of the myths that you continue to hear?

Well, I think everybody, we've all caught the busyness bug and the always on culture, the idea that you're expected to respond to emails, some people's idea of prompt is within a few minutes you layer on top social media, you've got managing various working relationships and so on. And somehow this has all got conflated into an idea that business is being productive. Whereas actually typically it's not typically. It's means your mind is racing, your attention is fragmented. Another coach I know likes to say, Steve Chandler likes to say busyness is laziness. And there's a real challenge in that because if you've really thought about your business and your career, you should know the two or three mission critical tasks that you have each day. It's likely to, I mean, you know, for people listening to this, it's likely to be writing, it's likely to be talking to clients, talking to potential clients. There'll be some kind of marketing tasks as well, I'm sure, if they're following your advice. And a lot of the rest of it is fluff, you know, so if you really focusing on that. So for me, it's writing, it's coaching clients, and it's talking to potential clients. As long as I'm doing those three things, my business is going to thrive. Other stuff can be a distraction from that. So I try and keep it as simple as possible. This feeds into another of the myths that we often hear about, which is multitasking. If you look at the actual neuroscience and what the research tells us, multitasking doesn't exist as a mental level. You know, you can be say, walking the dog and listening to a podcast, or you can be on a treadmill and you can be typing. But what they found is your attention will switch between one task and another. So if something's relatively mindless like walking the dog, then your attention can be somewhere else. But if you're trying to switch between two mental tasks, like for instance, email or Twitter, and this is important sales page that you're writing, what happens is you end up switching from one to the other and you use up a lot of the brain's energy from that. And actually it's even worse than that because when I was, my original training back in the 90s was in hypnotherapy and we were taught if you want to create amnesia in a subject, then one of the easiest ways to do that is to just interrupt them. And you think about the number of times we get interrupted every day. And you probably all had this experience that you're in your inbox, you go in there to write something with intention. Then another email comes in and it's completely different issue. And you're like, oh, right, okay. You focus on that and then that leaves you on somehow, you know, 20 minutes later you find yourself on Facebook. You're going, how did I get here? And then you remember the original email that you were going to write 20 odd minutes ago. So I think multitasking, busyness, all of this stuff, it's, it's part of the cult of looking busy or feeling busy or sounding busy, but actually it's not being particularly productive and let alone creative.

Man, I tell you, the amnesia thing, it's horrible for me. And it's in. I find I wonder if it seeps into your personal life too, because I would. I'll walk down to the kitchen and by the time I get there, I have no idea what I was supposed to do. I really don't. I'm lost.

I find kids and pets are very good at that. You're on the way to doing something and then they interrupt you and you're like, what? How did I get into this room?

Yes, it's quite scary. It's quite scary. So, okay, that makes it. What do you think about the myth of. I don't see this to an extreme degree, but I see different flavors of this mark, which is the, well, I'm a creative, I need to wait until the muse strikes. So I'm on a different timeline here. I can't dictate that I gotta wait for inspiration.

Yeah, tell that to your client. I think, seriously, I think maybe one reason that you don't see it so much, Ed, is that I know you work a lot with commercial creatives and copywriters. And one of the great things about working in that kind of field is it really helps you build that work ethic. When there's a deadline, when there's a client, when there's a lot riding on it, it's amazing how much we can deliver. Now, that's not to say there isn't something to be said for taking time off and allowing the muse to visit. But I think you've got to get the right balance between what you know, incubation, which is the idea that the creative imagination or the muse or the unconscious is working on it out of sight, which is not to be confused with procrastination. And I thought about this and I looked at my own experience of both these things and what I see from clients. And I came to the conclusion it's generally quite simple that incubation tends to happen after a period of intense work. So you get the brief, you go away, you do your research, you start hammering away at the keyboard, you come up with some ideas. It's not quite right, but you've kind of jump started the machine and then you go away and you're walking the dog or you're having A shower, or you're lying on the beach or whatever. And idea comes to you as if from nowhere. But generally that doesn't happen unless you've done the hard work first to set up. Whereas procrastination tends to happen before the period of hard work. You know, when we'll do anything but sit down and start writing. And I think if you bear those two rules in mind. Yeah, it's great if you. You certainly want to harness your unconscious inspiration or your unconscious mind or whatever you like to call it. But it generally needs a bit of priming. And this comes back to one of the things I talk about in the book. Panic early. Don't wait till the last minute. Even if you've got two weeks to get going, you don't need to do anything today. But if you do something today, if you get a start, then that gives you a chance at the very least to revisit the draft and tweak it and make it better. But obviously what you're hoping for is some of that magic to happen. You write a draft, you're going away, you think about it, you get a great idea, you run back to that draft, and you've given yourself time to get the most out of the conscious effort and the unconscious inspiration.

So with this. I love this idea of panicking early, you're saying that instead of what many of us do, which we start panicking one or two days before it's due, just have that. I don't want to call it anxiety, but that sense of urgency as early as possible.

That's right. And this is one big thing I noticed about really productive creatives versus sporadically productive creatives. Is that the latter category? They're the ones who wait for the deadline and they do it at the last minute in a frenzy of caffeine and Red Bull and, you know, the proverbial all nighter. But, you know, I do worry about these people a bit because, you know, certainly the older you get, in my experience, the harder it is to kind of reconcile that with having a decent levels of energy and sleep and meeting family responsibilities and so on. But what I noticed that the ones who are really consistently productive, they look ahead and they think, well, okay, there's two weeks. But actually, I've got this meeting and I've got that client and this project as well, if you really think about it. Maybe I've got three mornings to work on this project, so I need to panic now. I need to get started now.

I love that. Now that you say that, I think I've gotten pretty good at that. And I used to be embarrassed about it that I would get started early. But I found that once I won the project, I would give myself about a day to just rejoice. Yeah. And then I would get started the next day. I, I didn't want to. I wanted to kind of let it seep in and just, just enjoy the win. But then I wanted to get started right away on the next day. Just because I've spent so many years procrastinating that I, I knew, I knew what the, the price is, is not a price I want to pay.

Right. This comes back to another principle I think is really important, that the point of getting organized is to support your creativity. It's to be more creative. We have this romantic idea that the creative just lives in a constant state of improvisation and chaos. And some people do, and some people manage fine like that. But I think if you've got a business and you've got responsibilities, but also in my experience, if you really want to have more time when you are just focused on that flow state that we all get into when we're really in the zone as writers, then the more organized you are, the more time you can create for that. Like this morning, I spent my time doing my current favorite project, which is translating a long medieval poem from Middle English into modern English. Now, in order to get that on my schedule first thing on a Tuesday morning, I kind of need to be organized about the other stuff. You know, I need to make sure all my, my marketing and my client, you know, that's all taken care of. Otherwise, you know, I'm going to be sitting there feeling anxious, thinking, well, I haven't got time to do this. How can, you know, how can I focus on this when there's all the other stuff to be done? But if anybody's listening to this, thinking about, don't think about organization as something that you should do because it's best practice and because somebody told you about it in a book or on a podcast or whatever. Think about it. The more organized you are, the less time you have to think about all that stuff. If you've got systems that take care of it, then you don't have to have it in your short term memory. So it just frees up your bandwidth to focus on the thing you love most, which presumably is going to be writing.

Yeah. So it's not a chore. It's something that's going to enable you to spend more time doing what you love in the way you love to do it.

Yes, exactly.

I love that. Because what I hear often is, Ed, I get it, but that's not how I work, or that's not my personality, or that's not my process. And I get that. But I'm also seeing a lot of anxiety and. And I'm wondering, gosh, you know, if you. If he did some of these things we're talking about here today, I wonder how much more time you'd be able to spend doing the creative work that, you know, you can do best. I think this whole crutch of the, oh, it's not my style or my personality or the way I've done it before, man, I don't know. I think that's. You're doing yourself a disservice, actually.

I think if we go with this idea for a minute, I think there is something important here, which is, and I say this in the book, I'm not advocating any kind of productivity system. There are productivity systems out there and they're very successful, and maybe they're more appropriate for people in the corporate world. But for me, you should start from what is your ideal creative process? If you had nothing else to do except write today, how would you spend your day? You know, and it involves looking at the rhythms of energy and alertness and dips in that throughout the day. So most people tend to be more awake in the mornings than they are in the afternoons, and then they'll have another lift of energy in the evenings. There's a few people who are afternoon people, but so personally, I'm a morning person, so that's when I put my writing on the schedule. And I don't have meetings at that time. I don't do email. I don't do social media, I don't do admin. All I'm allowed to do in that time. The rules of my game are, is write and drink coffee. Of course, it's very important. And.