Find your niche. Be a generalist.
Steal good ideas. If it imitates someone else’s work, go back to the drawing board.
Spend a week tracking your time. Spend a week not tracking anything.
Learn from your failures. Learn from your successes.
Follow your passion. Your passion follows your work.
Fake it til you make it. You must establish authority.
Remove rewards until the job is done. Reward yourself daily for what you have done.
Just start. Starting is easy, just finish. Start at the end.
Stay focused on the product. Stay focused on the process. Let the process be the product.
Write the book you want to read. Write what you like. Write to a known audience. Write to one person. Write to yourself. Write what you know. Write what you don’t know and wonderful things will happen.
THE ANTIDOTE TO ANXIETY IS ACTIVITY. b e s t i l l .
…but this I know
no matter what advice I take, it will fail me.
and then what?
FROM SELF-HELP to SOUL Care
Soul Care
I am Patti Wheat. I am a self-admitting, self-studying, self-help addict. Give me a book or process or framework or course that promises ‘better’ and I’m going to give it a try. Many ideas work… until they don’t, and then I take on the role of self-defeated, self-deprecating failure. With a soul-crushing blow, one negative thought or comment can render me undone.
And yet…
I’ll admit that such advice, habits and hacks have done me good. It’s my implementation that fails. I turn good advice into law and that law kills the grace of this creative gift that I long to develop to its fullness.
But still I wake each day with the new mercy provided by the morning and start again.
You are invited to read along:
as I sort through a multitude of productivity-increasing, creativity-inspiring advice;
as I balance things I’ve heard said against what I know to be true; and,
as I pledge to remain true to my soul.
“
Our souls are of fundamental importance, truly the only things besides our physical bodies that we are entirely, independently responsible to steward.
”
FROM SELF-HELP to SOUL Care
Why the meerkat?
On the surface, my friend the meerkat is the perfect metaphor for the psyche of creative people: head darting around, monitoring the competition, looking for the attacker, jostling for position, always on guard, always anticipating danger and scanning for the enemy, often staying underground where it’s safe.
Dig deeper and you see a different picture:
Meerkats are extremely social, extroverted and chatty.
They spend a lot of time together playing and grooming to keep the family unit tight.
They work as a team to move sand and excavate the burrows.
They live in groups called mobs or gangs, several families living together in a large community.
They have roles that benefit the gang: serving as lookouts, foraging for food, digging burrows, and babysitting the young while mothers are out working.
They are among the most cooperative mammals on earth.
They start their days with a ritual sunbath to soak away the night’s chill.
And, they are immune to the venom of the scorpion.
