Firstly, for those of you who aren’t Morcheeba fans, you can listen to the song of the same title here and thank me later. Secondly, this post is mostly reflection on what it takes to get results or make progress towards your goals. Mine this year are about consistency, which is why I wanted to post here everyday. Covid has thrown me off for a few days, but I am sitting typing this in bed in a bid to try and keep that on track as best I can.
2.5 years ago I was invited to speak at an event. It was separate to the work I was doing for my company at the time and involved creating completely new content. I had some research data to work with but no brand guidelines, no templates, no rules, no boundaries. Liberating you might say. Well, yes to an extent, but also, challenging! When you can do whatever you like, sometimes it can be very hard to zero in on what you really want.
So I made a start, crunched the data and found some threads of narrative around what I wanted to say. All good. Then I decided on a look and feel for the slides and that helped a LOT. I don’t care what anyone says, I think *some* boundaries are good when it comes to the creative process. They can help, rather than hinder when you are trying to focus on the content.
And then.
A very dear friend and mentor checked in with me to see how the prep was going a couple of days before the event. It was great timing as I was finding it hard going but my toxic trait is not asking for help when I need it (something I am working on!) but in that moment, I would never have phoned someone to run through it all. However, the fact they rang me really helped. And something they said on that call is really the punchline of this post.
I told them how cross I was with myself for “dicking around for days” with the presentation deck. And they laughed and said “but the dicking about is all part of the process”. It made me laugh too but it’s a very serious point. The first draft or iteration of any piece of work is never going to be the one – not for me anyway. Not many people write or create perfectly first time around. Honing, tweaking, editing and improving are fundamental parts of any work. In fact, it oftentimes IS the work. And I don’t think until that moment I ever fully realised that. I would beat myself up for taking a long time to finish something or faffing about with it too much. But that process is part of the same whole as writing the first draft.
As a result, I now I view my process through a different lens. I have to chip away at big pieces of research or writing. Persist with them, revisit them, revise them and improve them until they get to a point where you just know it is singing. And it feels like the consistency with which I tackle that plays into the same area as my goals for the year. Author James Clear (if you haven’t read Atomic Habits then I can’t recommend it enough) talks about falling in love with the process. For me, that means embracing the honing, the faffing and the editing. For you it might look completely different, but all your little foibles and ‘ways’ will contribute to the end result. We just have to be aware of them – and manage them!
This blog is a piece of work that I am going to need to chip away at, get better at and hone as time goes on. Which I’m really excited about. In some ways I’ve made a rod for my own back saying I am going to try and post every day. But in others, I know I am giving myself an area of discipline that will help my practice across other areas of my work and professional life.
So, remember next time you’re tackling a big project and keep tidying your desk, or making endless cups of tea, or messing about with fonts and colours, or rewriting the same sentence 10 times (can’t just be me?!) it’s not “dicking about” at all. It’s part of the process. You just need to build it into your system.
Learning as I go... 