creative maverick

So now it’s 2009 have you been writing down your goals and plans for the year? Did you do the same thing last year? How did that turn out? If the result was a sense of failure and despondency, let’s do something different this year.

I tried a couple of times to work through the process in the book Your Best Year Yet but the process of reviewing what worked and what didn’t in the last year, while fascinating, took a long time. My work on it stretched long into January until I began to drown in a sea of reflection and planning and quietly abandoned the process half-finished.

I need something that doesn’t require quite so much thinking and captures my gut instinct on what I want to focus on for the next year. I know that I’ve written truer plans for my life by scribbling on the back of an envelope for 5 minutes than I achieve with overblown planning processes. So with plenty of creative theft from other brainiacs, here is my 3 step guide to “How to plan your year on the back of an envelope“.

Required time: 5-10 minutes to write but allow time to mull this stuff over and review what you’ve written afterwards.

One

Blogger Christine Kane suggests in this post to choose a single word as your focus for the entire year. Something like freedom, health, courage, wealth, love, creativity, or whatever comes to mind for you. My belief is the word should represent something you want to expand over the next year. When you face a decision, use this word to help you make the right choice.

I’ve chosen “Happiness”. Not because I’m particularly unhappy but because I want to make a shift from things I “should” do to things I enjoy doing. This is even more relevant to my business than it is to my personal life. In reconsidering the coaching packages I offer, the question I am asking now is “What would be the stuff that would be most enjoyable for me to do with clients?”.

Two

Goals. Previously I would write 10-20 goals down and achieve few of them (often achieving a whole bunch of other stuff not on the list). In fact it would be difficult for me to even hold the list of goals in my mind so I’d get to the end of the year and be surprised to discover one or more of them that I’d forgotten.

So, from Steve Pavlina’s newsletter, I am taking his tip for setting just 2 goals - one personal and one professional. My professional goal is this: Make a decent amount of money while having fun. (The “decent amount of money” has a specific number attached that I’m not sharing here). This might sound vague (it’s not exactly a SMART goal) but there’s a lot contained in this simple statement. If I can make that amount of money in one year while enjoying myself thoroughly, then that bodes well for greater success (and of course, happiness) in subsequent years. The personal goal is equally simple.

I’ve written about the problems with goals before so if the thing you want doesn’t lend itself to being described as a goal you can tick off, you can think of it as a directive - something  you want to move towards or have more of, rather than a fixed destination. My personal goal is in this category.

Your 2 goals should make your word from step one a reality.

Three

Take your envelope or sheet of paper and stick it up on the wall somewhere you’ll see it every day. This avoids the game of rediscovering your list of goals at the end of the year to realise you haven’t worked on them at all. Simply being reminded of them everyday can have a powerful effect. When I was a student I noticed I had a better year when I had a year-planner stuck on the wall and could see the whole 12 months in one place with all my key events written on it.

How to live your plan…

Ask daily, what can I do today to support these 2 goals and live my chosen word? Because goals that work are about how you live today, not some point in the future. If you want to lose weight for example, schedule in a bit of a walk today, or take time to make something good that you like, tune in as you eat and stop when you’re full. Remember to keep asking “What has previously worked for me in this area?” rather than “What do experts say is supposed to work?”.

What’s your word for the year? What are your 2 goals (if you’re happy to share them)? Do you have a different back of an envelope planning system? Leave a comment and let me know.

Happy New Year!

I want to work a maximum of 4 hours per day (see this earlier post) and I’m guessing this might appeal to a lot of other people too. Given that the average office worker only does 90 minutes of genuinely useful work per day, I reckon I should do just fine on 4 hours of good work.

I’ve identified all the reasons I’m currently working too much (see How I Waste My Time) and I reckon working a shorter day will in itself eradicate many of these time-wasting behaviours.

Having more free time will allow me to meet the needs that I’m currently subconsciously addressing with ineffective behaviours like doing fun stuff when I should be doing something else. This is because I’ll know that once I finish work I’ll still have plenty of time to play around with fun projects that aren’t part of my business.

Here’s the key to my experiment. It’s all about being very focussed when I am working and the productivity gain that brings should allow me to work for fewer hours. And knowing I don’t have to work for too long should in turn help me focus.

I know this works for me because when I focus properly I can get a surprising amount of important stuff done in a very short period of time. Even 10 minutes can produce impressive results with complete focus. It’s not necessary to try to work harder.

Currently I am not used to being intensely focussed (and chances are neither are you) so I will start with a short block of time - just 30 minutes of focus followed by a break. If you are tackling something you have huge resistance to, consider a very short unit of time like 10-15 minutes.

Here’s how to approach it. This is based on a technique by Time Management guru Mark Forster.

An exercise in focus

1. Get a kitchen timer or similar that counts down (not a stopwatch that counts up).
2. Choose an amount of time you think you can focus for - in my case, 30 minutes - and set the timer
3. Minimise distractions - switch your phone off, take your email offline, close any instant messenger windows or set your status to busy.
4. Be clear what task you are going to do. It should be something that will fit into the amount of time you have set aside for yourself.
5. Write this task down on a piece of paper and place it in front of you.
6. Get ready to work - sit at your desk (or wherever is relevant) with everything you need to begin.
7. Start the timer counting down - it should be visible in front of you.
8. Work! Do the task you wrote down.
9. When the timer goes off, stop. If you haven’t finished, make a note of what needs to be done in your next block of time. Take a break - check your email, get a drink, stretch, or do something fun like surf the web.

How did it go?

I’ve just done this now while writing this post and what I notice is that 30 minutes may be too long for me. At 15 minutes, I felt in need of a mental rest. I stopped and stretched and then carried on. The bulk of this post is done so that’s a good result for 30 minutes.

The next test is to scale this up to 4 hours by doing multiple 30 minute segments with short breaks in between. I’ll be reporting on this when I get back to work in the New Year. In the meantime, leave me a comment to let me know how you get on.

I want to work a 4 hour day as I wrote in the previous post. There’s a snag here. I am currently doing even more than a standard 8 hour working day - sometimes only switching off my computer late at night.

If I want a different result, I will need to change what I’m doing. The first step is to ask what I am doing that gets in the way of my working a shorter day. So I wrote a list. It contains the habits that are elongating my work day and the possible reasons behind them. I’m working on the assumption that each habit is driven by a need to be fulfilled and therefore has some kind of positive motivation underneath.

How many of these are familiar to you?

Ways I reduce my productivity:

1. Not doing the thing I said I would and doing a different task instead. This is often because I feel resistance to doing what I should. A common trigger is feeling overwhelmed by the task because it’s too big or it’s difficult to break down into small chunks. The task I do instead is either easier to tackle (eg doing email) or more fun (eg playing around with some new web technology).
2. Escapism like surfing the web. Often because I didn’t stop when I felt I wanted to, I have used up my convergent thinking capacity, and I am therefore stealing the down-time my brain wants by doing low intensity tasks. I would clearly be better off taking a break.
3. Splitting my attention (eg checking email). Sometimes this is because I should stop work, sometimes it’s a need for contact when working alone, sometimes just a symptom of an over-adrenalised state i.e. I’m used to being interrupted so can’t settle down to being focussed.
4. Spending too long on one task due to perfectionism. An example being the time I spent fiddling with the design of this blog. This time might be better labeled as a fun task and done outside of work hours. Or it may indicate I need to be willing to work more with other people - in this case a designer.
5. Doing too many projects - so all projects proceed slowly and some may lose momentum. Cause: I don’t think about how little time I have spare when I consider starting a new project. I also have a love of new ideas and so enjoy starting new projects. Instead, I need to choose fewer projects but focus on ones which centre on the generation and expression of new ideas (such as writing this blog).
6. Not being there at all! Scheduling other things within the work day like meetings in Central London I have to travel to - massively reducing the working day so there is only space for maintenance tasks (like doing email) left. Caused by need for contact, lack of scheduling forethought (eg several appointments in one week), and desire for time off being out & about in London.

How do you waste your time? Grab a piece of paper and write own your list. No recriminations here. Imagine you are a scientist observing an ant at work and just write down the behaviours as you see them.

Let me know what you find out - is your list similar to mine? What’s the most significant behaviour on your list? What’s the need behind it that isn’t being satisfied? Is there a better way to satisfy it? Leave a comment.

I’ve already realised from writing my list here that there are some important themes for me to address - getting plenty of contact with other people in my working day, continually reorienting my work around the stuff that is most fun for me, and taking more breaks so I can maintain my focus when I am working.

I believe that my new experiment in working a 4 hour work day should address all of the behaviours in my list. Read on to find out how.

Tim Ferriss wrote the wonderful book The 4-Hour Work Week about how to automate your work so you can go live anywhere in the world and do whatever you want to do.

The snag for me right off the bat is that I’m not sure I want a 4 hour work week. I reckon the ideal for me would be a 4 hour work day (at least for a start). Because if the work I am doing is fun and creative I want to do more of it than 4 hours a week. (Tim comes from the assumption that your work and your play are separate.)

There is no doubt though that a full working week does not suit me. No matter what my work is and how enjoyable it is, I want lots of space around it. I want to live an endomorphic life - one with plenty of space for relaxation and mulling things over, interspersed with short bursts of brilliance (hopefully). I know this works for me: if I decide to spend the whole day lying on the sofa watching TV, it isn’t long before I am gripped by some new creative idea (which without the space to relax, I may never have had).

“It’s necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant.”

- James D. Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

Aside from this, my capacity for focussed work and particularly convergent thinking (making decisions, attending to detail) is limited. So after an hour or two of very focussed concentration such as coaching or a sales meeting I know I don’t really want to do anything else for several hours if not the rest of the day!

Back when I had a job as a consultant, I would finish a big client meeting and want at least 2 hours off but I was expected to go back straight back to my desk and do productive work.

So a working day with much more breathing space is now my aim. There will be times of course that extra effort is required - in the start up stages of a project - but as a long term pattern, a full working week doesn’t suit me. How about you?

So this is part of the Creative Maverick one year experiment. Create a working structure that fits you like a glove. For me it’s how to live a 4 hour workday. For you, it might be something different - the 4 hour workweek, working only at night, total flexibility of when you work, total mobility of where you work. What is it? Leave a comment and let me know.

Read on for a post on my approach to creating a 4 hour work day.

Here is the first Creative Maverick daily habit for you to try:

At the beginning of the day when you first wake up, ask these 2 questions:

ONE: “If I was set for life, didn’t need the money and was not already committed, would I choose to do what I am about to do today?”

Write down your response.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers says

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

TWO: “If I had a blank diary today and all the money I could want, what would I choose to do with this day”

Then ask “How can I give myself an experience of this today?” even though you may have commitments.

If the response is that you would actually the take day off and sit on a beach then ask how you can achieve some of that experience - can you take the day off? If not, can you find some space to do nothing? If you’re nowhere near a beach, can you go swimming and then sit by the pool reading a book? Do you need to make time to book your next holiday now?

For me, asking these 2 questions are the best way to achieve my wish to “play all day and get paid”. Because when your day is full of stuff you would do even if you didn’t need the money, then the boundary between work and play all but disappears.

Do this every morning with me. Let me know what you discover.

There’s a problem with this incessant goal-setting that so many coaches are into.

It places a focus on the future and suggests relentless action and compromise in the present to get there. When you achieve that goal, you allow yourself a brief period of rejoicing and then set a new one. Urg, I feel a sense of existential desolation just writing that!

It’s all very mesomorphic, by which I mean action-focussed. What about how you want to be from moment to moment? There’s no goal you can tick off for that one.

My creativity coach Jerry Hyde said it’s not anything in the future that will make you happy but how you do today.

The book The Power of Now is well known for advocating this philosophy and Steve Pavlina wrote a great post on his blog about how the book transformed his life:

The idea of creating freedom and wealth in the future by constraining myself in the present was nothing but a fool’s errand… I adopted the mindset [instead] “If it doesn’t exist in some form right now, it will never exist”.

I began focusing more of my energy on improving the quality of my present reality instead of projecting all those improvements into the realm of someday… I started asking questions like “How can I experience more joy in this very moment?”

In the past I would set goals because I believed that achieving those goals would increase my happiness. But now the flow goes in reverse. Today I set goals to increase my expression of the happiness I’m already enjoying.

I’ve actually created the very situation I was hoping money would someday grant me.  I imagined what I would do if I was already rich beyond my wildest dreams… But instead of waiting to become rich first, I decided to find a way to make it happen right now, even if I’d only be doing it for free in my spare time.

This line of thinking produced some amazing results for me. Today I’m so happy it’s almost ridiculous. Even though I don’t have millions of dollars in the bank, I feel like I’m already living the way I would live if I were financially set for life.  If I won $100 million in the lottery, I’d keep doing what I’m doing right now.  The money would simply expand my capacity but not the essence of what I’m doing.

What would you do if you were already set for life?  Figure out what that is, and find a way to begin doing it on some level right now.

This is not how I have lived my life in the past but I believe it is essential to adopt in order to be truly successful,  healthy and happy. So one of the tenets of the one year Creative Maverick experiment is to create the life I want in the present. I’ll be reporting how this turns out.

If you want to try this for yourself, read the first Creative Maverick daily habit to start this process right away.

So does the previous post (There is no plan) mean we should go do whatever we feel like doing? Is it true that you can “do what you love and the money will follow”?

There is a second point from Daniel Pink’s “Last career guide you’ll ever need” that’s important to introduce here.

The main character Johnny Bunko has just heard he should be using his strengths (and not focussing too much on his weaknesses). When he gets his big creative break at work he decides to spend his time doing what’s most fun for him - sketching comics. His new supernatural careers guru Diana tells him off, revealing the third career secret “It’s not about you”.

Read my lips; It’s not about you. It’s about your customer, it’s about your client.

Use your strengths, yes, but remember…

You’re here to serve not self-actualise.

The most successful people improve their own lives by improving others’ lives.

So focus your creative talents, energy and time on creating something of value to others. As self-help guru Zig ziglar says “You can get everything you want in life if you will just help enough other people to get what they want”.

Here’s what I took in summary from Johnny Bunko: use your strengths to do stuff you love doing and that adds value to other people’s lives - and there will usually be some way of monetising it.

This actually makes life simpler. There are an infinite number of creative projects you might feel like doing. But if you want to make a living, ask what does the world need from you now the most?

Daniel Pink is definitely a Creative Maverick. His new book “The adventures of Johnny Bunko (the last career guide you’ll ever need)” is a careers book in the form of a Manga (Japanese comic) novel.

In it, he covers “6 career secrets no one ever told you”. A couple of these really struck me. The first is “There is no plan”.

He explains that there’s no point picking some goal in the distance and planning your way there - because life never turns out the way you expect it to anyway. And yet you don’t want to wander aimlessly. So what do you do?

Here’s the explanation as given in the book by a magical pixie called Diana (as I say, it’s not your average careers book):

“You can make career decisions for two different types of reasons. You can do something for instrumental reasons - because you think it’s going to lead to something else, regardless of whether you enjoy it or it’s worthwhile…

OR you can do something for fundamental reasons - because you think it’s inherently valuable, regardless of what it may or may not lead to.

The dirty little secret is that instrumental reasons usually don’t work… you end up stuck.

The most successful people - not all of the time but most of the time - make decisions for fundamental reasons. They take a job or join a company because it will let them do interesting work in a cool place - even if they don’t know exactly where it will lead.

They’re not fools [they don't just follow any whim], they’re enlightened pragmatists.”

The disctinction here is between picking a point in the distance and plotting the most sensible way to get there, and just choosing the next project because you really want to pursue it for its own merits - even if you can’t see how it might fit with your “career” or how it will lead to great riches.

As my friend Mark said when he caught me reading a careers books “Why do you bother? Don’t worry about a ‘career’, just pick an interesting project and go do it. And when you’ve done that one, see where it’s landed you and pick the next one”. This process has led to him becoming an expert in his field (teaching English as a foreign language) and travelling all over the world with his work. He’s currently in Vietnam setting up his own English school.

Two of my best career moves were for fundamental reasons and turned out very well. I joined a tiny software startup of 3 people who went on to become one of the best known names in broadcast technology, installing systems all over the world to control entire TV stations.

Then I moved to a small startup in London making special effects software. The week I joined they were bought by Avid Technology, also one of the biggest names in the industry. This led to me having an extremely impressive CV (résumé) entirely by accident.

So was I just lucky? Perhaps not. Even if I couldn’t describe my criteria at the time, I was joining early stage companies with smart people doing very original work. And smart people doing very original work often go on to become industry-leading companies.

When later I joined a “Big 5″ consultancy because it seemed a good career move, I gained an impressive name on my CV but I was miserable.

The Creative Maverick experiment is to make career choices for fundamental reasons - and see if this leads to better results, greater success and greater financial riches than plotting for some far-off end goal and making compromising ‘good career moves’ along the way.

Keep reading for more on how to choose the right next move…

Many years back when I had my last job as a computer programmer, I knew I wanted something else but couldn’t work out what it was.

I realised the only way I was really going to work out what I wanted to do was to imagine that I could have anything I wanted in the world of work.

And what I wanted was not to work.

I didn’t want to sit on the sofa all day doing nothing, I wanted to play - to do whatever creative, fun stuff I love doing. And still get paid. So my new career goal became “To play all day and get paid”.

Of course this is impossible right? But it wasn’t long after this realisation that I got exactly what I wanted. The company announced a chance for voluntary redundancies and I jumped at it. I got paid several months of wages - to do whatever I liked. Some other staff bought sports cars. I didn’t. I played.

I created music, did some writing and made an exhibit of myself in a museum. And I started on my first forays into the world of self-employment. This time of play led me into the most exciting and fun job in my career. But it was still a job.

When I later got into stand up comedy, I put this into my routine:

I worry I’m in the wrong job, in fact I worry I don’t suit jobs. The money’s OK, it’s the working I have a problem with.

And sometimes I think my life is just too full to fit a job in. I’m too busy doing stuff that’s actually fun and that work thing just gets in the way.

My career goal is to be paid for just being me, living my life; I’m very busy, I’m putting in the hours, I should get compensated.

“Name of role… being John Williams”. I’d wake up in the morning and my boss would come in and go ‘well done John, another great week, here’s your wage packet’.

In reality this is exactly what I want; to be able to do whatever I want to do. To play all day and get paid. To get paid to be me.

This blog is my attempt to see if I can do it.

Would you like to join me?

How would you like to take a year off? Let’s say the whole of 2009.

Sound appealing?

OK, I hereby give you my permission. Done.

Now, what is it you’re going to do in this precious year of total freedom?
Spend a year sitting on the beach, doing nothing? Or do you know that after the first couple of weeks, you’d be itching to do something else? If so, what? What exactly will you do for the other 11 months?

Maybe you’ll do some stuff you’ve been wanting to do for a long time: Write a book, record an album, start your own business, write a blog, travel the world, do something radical to your house, take your photography really seriously, have your own exhibition, become a public speaker, get into TV, go work alongside a hero of yours, or change some piece of the world for the better.

Or maybe you’ll just get fit & healthy, start eating right, cure that rumbling medical gripe, or work out how to make yourself genuinely happy. Or will you focus on finding a partner, creating a great relationship, trying for a baby, or healing a rift in your family. Perhaps you’ll just spend the time working out what it is you really want out of life, why you’re here, and start your journey to do it.

So choose.

Because 2009 is around the corner. Maybe you can’t take the whole year off work in reality, but you can join me in a one year experiment to put what’s really important first and create something unique to you that really matters.

Join me and become a Creative Maverick.