Be More Productive By Accepting Your Limitations
Well hello! How is your year shaping up so far? I am trying my best over here, and generally feeling pretty good about things. I have a lot of projects underway and one of the projects I have been working on is my blog. Every time I start writing again I feel inspired and excited. Then, at some point, I get busy, distracted, feel like I have nothing more to say, lose momentum, and inevitably stop. Though I ultimately accept my choice, there are always some feelings of “I’m not enough or I’m not doing enough” that tug at me in the weeks and months afterward.
The thing is, I like writing! I like letting you know what I am thinking about and working on, while also hopefully adding some value to your life. Every year around this time I tend to get inspired to write. I map out a writing schedule, create the framework for a dozen pieces over the course of a few weeks, then schedule them for release over the next few months. I typically edit or totally rewrite several articles prior to release, but it’s the initial push that sets everything up.
What happens after I have sent out all of those blog posts? Well, the intention is to use the momentum to continue writing and posting, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be what happens. About the time that I need to start writing to keep up with the schedule I have established, I find that I have already embarked on what will be a longer-than-ideal break until I feel the writing itch again, and it all repeats.
This year, I am trying something different. I have already planned and written the framework for a bunch of articles, and, instead of publishing one each week or every other week, I will now be publishing one per month. What a novel idea!?! Instead of imposing a schedule on myself that has shown not to work (for me), I am instead committing to a consistency that feels more manageable. The plan being that by the time these run out I will have already hit my next creative writing phase and churned out a whole new batch of outlines.
We shall see how it turns out! Some people can pick something up and stick to it from day one. But far more people, like myself, pick it up, put it down, let it sit, dust it off, pick it up, put it down, and so on until it finally sticks. If you are also one of “those” people, then it’s important that you and I stay open to playing with different versions of the habit, as well as different ways to incorporate it into our lives. Once we find something we can consistently adhere to, even if initially less impressive than we might like, we can build on it.
This approach also allows us to release some of those nagging feelings of “not-enoughness,” which are perhaps the heaviest weights we carry with us on our paths forward.
Also published on Thrive Global, ANewsCafe.com, and Selfscription.com!
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