Quentin – Why not follow Churchill’s example and treat yourself to a weak whisky and soda as you browse the procrastinators?

David – Great Flaubert quotation, I used it a while back when I wrote about Why You Need to Be Organised to Be Creative.

Modern Painter – I like your bridge metaphor. I’m not so sure I can go along with ‘No rules. No Schedule. Just genius.’ – I’m a bit sceptical about the idea of genius. Would be interested in your take on this post.

So, I’ve trained myself to get up earlier, do 15 minutes of meditation, shower, coffee (set to start by itself so I don’t waste time making it) and then write as much as I can till he wakes up.

And then sometimes, to set the mood, or if I’m planning to hunker down in front of the screen for awhile… I light some nag champa incense.

No rules. No Schedule. Just genius.
Humanity is bound by empty rules.
You must spend a great deal of time alone with no distraction and learn that meditation is the path to the divine.
Bend time and space to your will.

http://www.Twitter.com/ModernPainter

Chaotic types (like me!) might like to hear of a book by Barbara Sher now called “Refuse to choose!” (but used to be called: “What to do when you want to do everything”).

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Refuse-Choose-Interests-Passions-Hobbies/dp/B001810ZFA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234992837&sr=1-2

http://www.barbarasher.com/

Her point is that some very creative people have so many things that they want to investigate that they feel unfulfilled when they find later that they have nothing to point to as even a single achievement. They often get very excited at the outset, but then lose interest when they’ve “learned enough”.

She gives such people the label “scanners” and some creative types have burst into tears after reading this book having realised that they were not alone, and had many feelings of apparent failure in common.

The simplest method to help many of these people is to suggest that they get, say, 20 ring binders, and as they suddenly get interested in a new thing they grab an empty one and write the subject of their new interest on the cover, and then fill the interior with what they learn.

Then as their focus of interest shifts throughout the day from one passion to another, they can put back the current folder and grab the one relating to their latest interest.

Some people are “cyclical scanners” who come to find that they have a prescribed set of interests and lose interest in one of them and then come back later to continue on their investigations later.

Some are “plate spinners” who attempt to keep multiple projects on the go at once.

In terms of getting rich, one very successful entrepreneur found he could infect other more sedate types with a passion for one of his current interests, and then leaves them to continue on with the project to completion, but himself never ever “finishes” anything himself.

Her key message is “don’t beat yourself up – accept that this is the way you are – and other, more pedestrian people may look down on you and laugh at the fact that you never seem to complete anything”. Indeed, you prove that you have actually made progress, although admittedly without reaching completion, by pointing to your pile of ring binders.

And in terms of this particular posting, she also gives good advice on building timetables (cf. “daily routines”) that allow you to accommodate your multiple interests at various set times throughout the day, possibly also with a 15 month planner too to give you some kind of evidence that you are on a particular path, and somewhere to mark when you may have hit some milestones along the way.

I too was relieved that my “problem” had been diagnosed, but the failure to nail anything down and take it to completion does still irk me. But the book was a revelation, and the techniques struck me immediately as clearly helpful.