Category Archives: Productivity

Meditating to improve productivity: it’s worth the time

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Photo by Natalia Figueredo on Unsplash

Something that helps me get a lot done in a day is meditating three times.

It’s a very effective tool that helps me regain focus once I notice I’m starting to feel frayed, overwhelmed or unclear on what I’m doing. I call this time of day: ‘when my brain starts to overcook’.

I do a simple 6 minute meditation. I find this is a good amount of time to drop into a state of relaxation, clear my mind and refresh myself ready to do more work. If I’m feeling ‘busy’ then 6 minutes is the number that seems manageable and doesn’t have me saying ‘oh, I don’t have time to meditate’. When I first started, I could only spare myself two minutes.

I simply sit in a comfortable position, either on a chair or cross-legged on my couch, I set my phone timer for 6 minutes and then close my eyes and pay attention to my breath. My phone alarm is set to a pleasant tranquil alarm, which guides me out of the meditation in a relaxed way rather than an alarming way. Put your phone on silent and flight mode if you fear coming out of your meditation to a bunch of notifications.

There are many things you can ‘do’ for these 6 minutes to help you receive the benefits of meditation, here are some of my favourites:

  1. Classic meditation: focus on your breath, or one part of your breath and do your best to bring your attention back to your breath everytime you find yourself going back to thinking mode.
  2. Grounding visualisation: focus your attention on your feet on the ground and imagine you are growing roots that extend way down into the centre of the earth. I find this is a good way to ground myself, particularly on days where I may have overdone the caffeine.
  3. Mantra: repeat a calming phrase as you breathe in and out (out loud or internally, as you prefer). For example. Breathing in: ‘calm’ Breathing out: ‘surrender.’
  4. Progressive muscle relaxation: to do this completely often takes more than 6 minutes but in the quick version you may like to focus on scanning through your body, noticing any tension, and focus on relaxing those areas while breathing deeply. My trouble areas are: clenching my jaw, my eyeballs and forehead, shoulders and hips. It’s highly beneficial to do this throughout the day as it reduces work-related injuries.

I find 3 times per day to be the magic number for me. I tend to meditate about 2 hours after I wake up before I get into serious work mode, then in the afternoon either directly after lunch or when I notice my brain is ‘overcooked’ and then at the end of the day as I transition into my evening activities. Of course, it’s very nice to allow yourself longer meditation times but I find the short ones make for excellent maintenance and are easy to stick with on a consistent basis.

Additionally, I find it’s good to do this quick 6 minute refresh when switching between projects. For example, if I’ve worked on my business for 2 hours and then wish to switch to my fiction writing it’s really helpful to set my timer for 6 minutes, do some relaxing breathing and start to visualise myself getting into ‘writer mode’. It helps my mental process greatly.

If you want to get more done in your day I highly recommend you give this a go. It refreshes your mind and your physical body so you have more energy for your day and it’s great to do in between tasks that require different kinds of mental energy.

What about you? Do you have any meditation tips that would be helpful for other artists reading this blog? Please share them below so we can all benefit.

The Excuses You’re Making + The Things You’re Putting Up With

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In a previous post I wrote about how we keep the metaphorical brakes on in our lives in ways that are unhelpful to our self-expression and our full and glorious experience of life.

In this post I will discuss four of the subversive ways those brakes show up in our lives. I’ll focus this article on the things you probably don’t notice in your day to day life. We tend to notice our fears and self-criticisms, so those are for another day. Luckily, taking a look at the following four things will make your life flow much more easily so those fears and doubts become easier to manage.

These four subversive brakes are:

1. Tolerations

2. Disincliners

3. Ego defences

4. Excuses

Let’s take a closer look at each.

Tolerations

Tolerations are all the things in your life that you are currently putting up with that you really don’t need to. They create unnecessary drag in your life and suck your energy and time.

It’s the way you let yourself check Facebook or Instagram or other notifications all the time when you know it doesn’t make you feel good and scatters your focus.

It’s your acceptance of a cluttered kitchen pantry where mismatched Tupperware falls out every time you put something into it.

It’s the leaky tap in your bathroom.

It’s never remembering your passwords or using a password manager and having to spend time reseting them.

It’s a work colleague who makes mean jokes at your expense or who does sloppy work knowing you will fix it for them and not complain.

It’s the friend who calls or meets with you to complain for hours and never does anything to change their situation despite your encouragements.

All these things are sucking your energy, joy and time in very subtle ways.

That is energy and time you could be putting into your art, into your creative work, into spending time with more positive people, into having more enjoyment of your time here on earth.

Fortunately, tolerations are easy to start changing and it can be quite fun to work on getting rid of them.

Step 1. Make a list of all the things in your life that you are currently tolerating.

You may like to divide it into categories for further clarity such as home, finances, work, relationships, personal habits, health, art studio.

Step 2. Start getting rid of or changing those things.

You may like to start with the easiest thing – perhaps there’s an accumulated clump of hair in your hairbrush that’s been subtly annoying you for ages. Taking care of this will give you an instant sense of accomplishment and perhaps relief that you finally took care of something that was ‘itching’ at you.

OR

You may like to start with the biggest things that will have the most positive impact such as finding a new job where your boss doesn’t treat you like rubbish or switching to part time.

Taking massive action is energising and exciting!

As always, I suggest you prioritise your creative work first and then sort out your tolerations. Not the other way around. At minimum, do 10 minutes of your creative work and then spend 10 minutes freeing your life of distractions knowing that by doing so you are freeing up more time and energy for yourself.

Further Reading: The Portable Coach by Thomas Leonard (tolerations chapter)

Disincliners

Disincliners are the little things that aren’t dramatic inhibitors but make you subtly less likely to get to your work. They are the things that make you disinclined to sit down and do the work itself. They are the things that encourage you to choose comfort over growth.

The difference between a toleration and a disincliner is that a disincliner directly gets in the way of your creative work whereas a toleration is a more subtle life energy suck.

Examples:

Your materials aren’t well organised, need cleaning or sorting before you can start. This includes your computer files.

Your housemate/lover/child is doing something ‘more interesting’ like watching Netflix and wants you to join and you’d told yourself you’d have your studio/writing hours at that time.

You feel you can’t start until the house is clean / the finances are sorted / you’ve done X

You know it takes you a few uncomfortable minutes to get settled into your work and you feel disinclined to go through the discomfort of the messy stage of creating and seeing your own inadequacies and failings laid out before your eyes. [This is a big one!]

Disincliners are easy to overcome simply by noticing them and then choosing not to let them come between you and the passionate relationship you have, or are cultivating, with your creative work. Fix the things that can be fixed and don’t let the rest stop you.

Further Reading: Become a Creativity Coach Now: Eric Maisel 

Ego-defences

Ego defences are the things you say to yourself or others that protect yourself from potential pain. Often you are not conscious that you’re doing it.

Example thoughts and statements:

“Oh I didn’t really want to do that [insert creative project here] anyway”

“I will get around to it… one day”

“It doesn’t really matter”

“I’m far too busy doing important things for other people to pay attention to my own dreams”

“People need me”

“I need to do XX before I can do XX {what I really want to do}”

“I’m working in the industry, that’s close enough to living the dream right?”

“I don’t have the talent that XX does”

“I would do it (and I’m sure I’d be successful at it)… but I don’t want to deal with Instagram/ don’t have the time/ am too busy with this thing / don’t have an MFA…”

“I’m sure if I’d tried harder I would have succeeded but I never had the commitment”

“I’m sure I could succeed if I actually tried, I just don’t care enough (I’m too busy being cool)”

How to know if this is affecting you: Pay close attention to the words you say and how you feel when you think or talk about your creative work. If you’ve let go of dreams you had when you are younger, notice if you use any of the above statements or similar. Notice if there is any emotional resistance, resentment or subtle feelings of disappointment that you’ve been covering up with busy-ness or other activities.

Dreams do change and evolve as we grow and learn what suits us better and what more is possible. However, if you have a nagging sense of discontentment or malaise that life hasn’t lived up to your expectations then you might like to shake things up a bit and bravely uncover some dreams.

It can be particularly helpful to notice how you relate to others who are successful in a field of your interest or who are trying to be. Do you get jealous? Do you discredit their successes or put it down to luck/money/circumstance? Do you discourage those who try? Do you start ranting about the economy?

How to overcome it: Awareness is the first step. Then, start taking very small steps to change your self-talk and try some small creative activities.

Ultimately: Drop the ego and be humble. You’ll get more done.

Excuses

Excuses are the things that you secretly, deep down know aren’t really inhibiters to your creative work but you conveniently let them stop you because facing your creative work makes you nervous or brings up fear.

It’s quite likely that you would get angry if somebody called you on your excuses.

Nobody likes to hear that they’ve been making excuses so let’s take a look at it from a loving perspective. Your excuses have been there to protect you from potential pain and fear. They have been serving a useful purpose. Affirm to yourself that you are now ready to take a look at your excuses, thank them for their help in taking care of you and affirm that you are now ready to let them go so that you can allow more greatness and joy into your life.

Start to notice when you are blaming external things for your lack of creative fulfilment and ask yourself, is it really true that this is getting in my way? Is there something I could do so this problem was no longer in my way? Usually, the answer is yes and you simply need to do those things in order to solve the problem. If the answer is no and the problem is real (such as chronic health problems, which really suck), how can you work around it? Is there a compromise you can make such as working with watercolours instead of large scale sculptures? It is better to create something rather than not to create at all.

Check yourself for excuse-making in the following areas:

Lack of time

Family / Partner / Friends

Fears / lack of confidence / anxiety

Health / physical limitations / energy

I’m missing this thing / studio / skill / PhD

Other people need me…

I have FOMO…

I can’t make a decision…

My job…

My money situation…

My existential crises…

The internet is full of free answers to all of these challenges, or a trip to a coach/therapist/advisor/wise friend can give you a quick shortcut.

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Once you become aware of and start to change these four things you’ll free up more energy and time for what you really want.

Finally, be courageous in the pursuit of your creative visions! It’s worth it and it’s a fun way to live life. Overcoming your limitations is an exciting part of the journey!

What will you change today? Tell us in the comments below for extra commitment and accountability!

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