If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series.
There’s a moment in the movie Lost In Translation where Bob (Bill Murray) is explaining to Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) how his relationship with his wife changed after they had children. “The day they arrive,” he says, “your life, as you know it, is gone, never to return.” Whether or not that’s true of life in general, it can sometimes feel as though it applies to your creativity.
The magic ingredients of the creative process are things like focus, concentration and plenty of time to daydream, read books, watch movies, go out to theatres, galleries and other inspiring places. And these are precisely the things that are in short supply the moment you become a parent. Your little bundles of joy become the most important thing in your life, shunting everything else into second place. Once you get on the seemingly endless treadmill of feeding, changing nappies, washing clothes, shopping, school runs, helping with homework and a thousand other things, it can feel like you will never have enough focused time and energy (let alone sleep!) to create outstanding work ever again.
Here’s Shane Arthur’s response to our invitation to tell us about your creative blocks.
I have two kids. I can’t seem to get much work done anymore. I need GTD for kids creative help. Time is my block right now. I need help stealing some back for creative work. I have not done a video tutorial in about a year.
Shane Arthur, Creative Copy Challenge
I know how you feel Shane. Last night we went to bed a couple of hours later than usual (Mad Men on DVD can be pretty addictive) which inevitably meant my kids would wake up and demand their breakfast an hour early this morning. So I’m sitting here minus three hours of sleep, and somehow I need to come up with the goods for you in this article. 🙂
I’m feeling slightly hesitant about writing this piece, as I’ve been a parent for just under a year, and I know you’ve been at it a lot longer than me, so compared to you and many other Lateral Action readers, I’m a mere beginner!
I’m also aware that everyone’s circumstances are different, which makes me wary of generalising from my own limited experience. My wife and I hit the jackpot and had twins last year, which feels like being thrown in at the deep end. But when I consider the challenges faced by the single parents out there, I’m tempted to conclude we have it easy.
However, I have picked up a thing or two in the past year, from my own experience and talking to other parents, so I’ll share what I’ve learned so far with you — and I invite all the parents in our audience to please leave a comment with a tip or piece of advice based on your own experience of juggling childcare and creativity.
Stop Harking Back
Parenthood brings plenty of external obstacles to focused work, but one of the biggest barriers is in your mind. It’s frustrating enough when you can’t devote the entire day to work, but you make it much worse for yourself if you keep comparing life now with the way things used to be.
Another common pitfall is to put too much pressure on yourself to perform to the same standards under radically different conditions. If you’re responsible for childcare, even for part of the day, it’s simply not realistic to expect yourself to churn out the same quantity and quality of work as you used to. So don’t use it as a stick to beat yourself with!
As Bob said, the past is gone, never to return. You can only deal with what’s happening now. So stop comparing and pining for your old routine, and start focusing on what’s realistic and possible for you today.
And go easy on yourself — instead of berating yourself for not achieving as much as you used to, give yourself credit for being a committed parent, and see whatever work you manage to produce as a positive achievement. Paradoxically, your productivity is likely to increase when you stop putting pressure on yourself.
Find the Gaps
A few months ago I was on a panel of writers, and heard an amazing story from one of my fellow panellists, a very successful novelist. She shared her experience of being a single mother to a child with special needs, which meant she only had one hour a day to herself, while her little boy was receiving a one-to-one tutorial. The moment the tutor sat down to work with her son, she dashed upstairs and started typing furiously away at her first novel. It took her many months, but she succeeded in completing the book in an hour a day — and the book’s success launched her career as a writer.
I live just outside London, which isn’t exactly renowned for its transport infrastructure. I know lots of people who complain about commuting into town and the inefficiencies of the tube system. Not me. I hardly ever get on a train without a book or notebook, or a podcast loaded onto my iPhone. To me, travelling time is a little oasis in the day, which I can happily devote to learning or writing. I must be one of the few people in the country who sometimes takes the slow train out of choice!
However constrained your daily routine, look closely and you’ll find pockets of dead time that you can bring to life with bursts of focused work. It’s no substitute for having the whole day to yourself, but it’s amazing how much better it you’ll feel if you spend even a few minutes a day working towards your goals.
Cut the Fluff
All kinds of unnecessary fluff finds its way into our working day — frittering away time on irrelevant websites, checking e-mail, unproductive conversations and pottering about your home or office instead of knuckling down to work. Once you have kids, you realise you just don’t have time for that stuff.
Remember the novelist dashing upstairs and typing furiously the moment she got the laptop booted. I’m not quite that quick off the mark, but my morning ‘warm-up routine’ — coffee, Google reader, checking in on Twitter and my web stats — has got considerably shorter since I’ve been responsible for getting the kids up and making their breakfast before work.
Have a good look at your working day, and see how many minutes you can shave off by giving up a few digital distractions and cutting down on ‘busywork’.
Get Help
You’re probably doing this already, but I want to emphasise the point, particularly for the new parents out there. Unless you’re superhuman, you’re not going to be able to do all of this yourself. Swallow your pride and accept any offer of help you can get! And don’t be afraid to ask either.
My wife and I have established a daily childcare routine, so I know the times when I’m ‘on duty’, and can therefore focus on work the rest of the time. None of our parents live nearby, but we’ve been very grateful when they’ve come to stay for ‘working holidays’, helping out with the kids and household to give us some time off. And friends who offer to babysit are instantly canonised. 🙂
Another more subtle form of help comes from spending time with others in a similar situation. I’ll never forget going to a first birthday party a few months after our children were born. After a few months of feeling pretty isolated in our flat with the children, it made a huge difference to talk to other parents in the same boat. And the forums of the Twins and Multiple Births Association are a fantastic source of twins-related information!
Spend time with other parents, to share experiences and solutions, and offer mutual support and encouragement. Even better if you can find parents in the same line of work as you. And complement real-life meet ups with online parenting communities.
Savour Your Work
I have a friend who is a single parent working in a high-powered job. He tells me it feels like light relief to go to work on a Monday morning. I know how he feels. I love spending time with my kids and I certainly don’t have my challenges to seek at work. But it always feels like a relief — even a treat — when I close my office door, or take the stage in front of an audience, and start work.
Make the most of whatever time you get to spend on your work. And if you do find yourself harking back to the past, maybe you could remind yourself of the times you used to procrastinate, complain or waste time during your working day. Compare that to now, when you see how precious your work is. Enjoy it!
Learn from Your Kids
Children are exciting, unpredictable, full of energy, frustrating, contradictory, hilarious, fascinating, perplexing, mysterious and utterly priceless.
Does that remind you of anything?
Surely we could easily replace the words “children are” with “creativity is” and that sentence would ring just as true?
No wonder the Romantic poets believed children were the embodiment of the imagination. Maybe we should take a leaf out of the Romantics’ book and welcome the disruptive, unsettling and unforgettable intrusion of children into our neatly ordered lives, and learn to be grateful for the creative chaos and disruption they bring?
Well, I hope that’s been some help. You might also like to revisit an earlier article from the creative blocks series, How to Find Time for Creative Work, and a piece I wrote last summer called 9 Productivity Lessons from the First 2 Months of Parenthood.
And Tony Clark of the Lateral Action team has a lot more experience of parenting than I do, so I can highly recommend you check out two of his articles, Balancing Work and Family as a Home-Based Entrepreneur and The Myth of the Sleeping Baby and other Fallacies for the Work at Home Parent.
Let’s Hear from the Parents!
This is a huge challenge with no simple solutions. So if you’re a parent who has never left a comment on Lateral Action before, I’d suggest today is the perfect time for you to step out of the shadows and share some of your hard earned wisdom about getting creative things done in the midst of looking after the kids.
How do you find time for creative work as well as looking after the kids?
What creative lessons have you learned from your children?
About the Author: Mark McGuinness is a creative coach with over 15 years’ experience of helping people get past their creative blocks and into the creative zone.
View Comments (47)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next »As a parent of four, I can completely relate to your post. And don't ever let anyone tell you that "once you've got two, one more doesn't make a difference." I love each and every one of my kids and wouldn't trade a one of them for the world. But the birth or adoption of each child definitely changes the family dynamics.
That has meant that I, as a work-at-home parent, have needed to make adjustments with each child. And, you're right. There's no use pining away for the way it used to be. You've got a new reality! Just keep moving forward.
At one point, what really worked for me, was to get up an hour before everyone else and work. Since I'm a morning person, this was great. I got a lot done in those 60 minutes, because I knew that I had too. The only downfall is if you stay up too late the night before. LOL A lesson that I've had to learn too many times.
I too breathe a sigh of relief when the little angels go off to school everyday. I often feel like I've put in a full day before they even get out the door! But now they're going to be home with me for the remainder of the summer, and I'll be working a lot at night. Maybe I should report back later, how this most recent change goes. ;-)
Finally, though, what's most important is to enjoy them and spend time with them everyday. They grow up way too fast. I know because my oldest is 19 and it hardly seems like it's possible. Always remember what matters most.
Julie
My son had colic and slept less than 40 minutes at a time for the first 18 months - then went on to not sleeping through the night until he was 5yrs old and becoming a sole parent. Both he and I were sleep deprived, he thrived and I didn't!
But I still took time to lock myself away in the bathroom for 10 minutes every day to write and this was my only sanity in the early days!
Years later I read Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK) on micromovements and realised I was already highly proficient at this style of getting work done.
It did get easier as he got older. I wrote my first book while I took him to Dragonball Z competitions across the city.
And it helped enormously when I banned TV for him for a year because his grades were not good enough when he was 15 - instead I took him to guitar lessons and soccer and wrote while he was training! Many glorious hours there - Thank you God!
It does get better as the years pass and I consider myself very fortunate I have a wonderful son and have learned to not be precious about my creativity - if I have an idea I'll find anywhere to write and am able to get the idea down quickly.
These concentrated mini spurts seems to work for me and I find that even though I have more time now I still seem to do the creative process in this manner. It is the editing part of my work that I will give a longer time to.
So my tips are:
Take your time where you can get it.
Be willing to change how you do things.
Make the best of what you can do when you can do it.
Don't beat yourself up or feel envious of others - it's wasting precious time!
Enjoy being a creative parent - your in for a great ride and children do improve our ability to be creativity by engaging with what they see and understand in the world - their viewpoint counts.
And sometimes you jus thave to sleep and dream instead!
Thank you for this article and I would love to hear more suggestions from parents who have (and haven't yet) made their peace with the fact that life is different when you have kids.
I have an almost 4 year old autistic daughter. Love my little girl dearly, but sometimes I feel guilty because I want to spend time with my computer, curled up in a corner of my bedroom, all alone writing. Then when I spend time with her, I feel guilty because I'm not writing. My time management skills are sorely lacking and any suggestions or ideas that you might have... please share! :)
Great Article.
I was up all night working. After I put the kids to bed I saw that I had a little emergency from one of my clients. So today I have only slept a few hours and have to get back at it. For me what is really good to know is that I am not the only person who does this every once and a while.
But I have never allowed my kids to get in the way of being creative and I have a few tricks.
1) Show them what you do. It's amazing to them and they will become fans as soon as they are able to grasp the tiniest part of your work.
2) Don't clean the house as soon as they go to bed. Give it at least 2 hours. Then only clean that which may be to difficult a problem in the morning.
3) Play with your kids like crazy. We have approximately 3 or 4 hours a day where we can truly dedicate to the family. If I spend those hours focused on them the majority of the time they will forgive me the odd time I have to go focus on something else. You can also feel guilt free about doing your own thing if you family has hung out or even better the energy boost is great too.
4) Get rid of cable. Your kids don't need it. They need you. I have a 5 year old who hangs out with me. Not the TV. So now my biggest fan hangs out with me, is learning to do what I do, and gives me a big hug every night before I head off to get more done.
If having kids spells the end, one wasn't really creative in the first place --- one was simply productive.
Children are springboards or fodder. In the end, it's your own discipline that makes or breaks what you do.
Love the musings in the article. The only thing constant in parenting is change. Children are physically demanding when they are young, yet psychologically demanding as they grow older. Both ends keep you on your toes!
Great great article! It's like story of my life. I have learned to group similar tasks and get them done in small blocks of time. In the end, I feel like I do accomplish more, even with the added kids-related responsibilities.
I agree with another commenter about cable TV, I feel like I can get so much more done without the temptation of worthless reality shows, your kids don't need it and neither do you!
I don't know how old Shane's kids are, but I think he may be using them as an excuse. Hasn't done a video tutorial in a year because of the kids? Really? Have you watched tv in that year? Read a book? Done any hobbies? I know I'm being harsh here - and I suspect Shane's problem is overwhelm and disorganisation more than anything - but if something is important then you'll find a way to do it.
The question here is not whether kids spell the end to your creativity as much as it is about a different kind of time management and organisation.
Kids bring a huge change to anyone's life and very few people are prepared for it. When you work for yourself the impact is even greater. It's so easy to be caught up in sleep deprivation and feeling like you're constantly behind and running in circles.
Everyone else here has made some great suggestions for finding time and working around kids. All I'm going to add is that you chose to have kids. You love them. Be careful of your attitude here, don't resent them for the disruption they cause by simply being here. They're the reason you do what you do.
And remember, no matter what, kids get older and life gets a LOT easier!
Wow, thanks everyone, a wealth of great advice here. I can see this is one piece I'm going to have to bookmark myself. :-)
And interesting to see so many of us going through a stage of resisting/resenting/complaining and coming through in to acceptance (at least some of the time!).
@ mckra1g - I misread your comments at first and though you said "painting is drudgery" instead of "parenting is drudgery". Maybe a Freudian slip that reveals another link between the two! ;-)
@ James - Sounds like perfectionism is the enemy of parents as well as writers. ;-) Great tips for keeping it at arm's length.
@ Shane - Particularly glad you like it. And I can definitely relate to "learning how to get work done when I’m exhausted"!
@ Karl - Thanks for the recommendation.
@ Orna - Love the poem! (And I'm very particular about poems, as I'm sure you know.) Look forward to meeting you at the workshop on Wednesday.
@ Janey - Very good point. We want the best for our kids, and it often reminds us of what's best for us too.
@ iordace - Sounds like one of those cases where you don't know what you're capable of until you have to do it...
@ Mary - I'm definitely going to remember that cure for boredom. ;-)
@ keif - You hit the nail on the head with "creative ways to continue with your creativity" - lots of parenting creativity in evidence in all these comments.
@ Julie - Well I've got two, and the thought of one more sounds like a BIG difference! And people keep telling me how quickly they grow up so I'm focused on making the most of it while I can.
@ Melody - Seriously impressed with your approach to sleep deprivation. And good point about not being precious about our own creativity, not always easy to practice!
@ Michael - Great tips. Re point 1, my son is already fascinated by the computer, not sure he's ready to be let loose on it yet...
@ Kari - I wrote a whole e-book on Time Management for Creative People which you can download for free, although I should make the disclaimer that I wrote it before I had kids!
@ Glenda - Yes, that's made me realise it's easy to use kids as an excuse for not working, a form of Resistance.
@ Shirley - I guess there's some truth in the saying 'if you want something done, give it to a busy person'. Having kids forces you to become more organised and productive, so maybe we can indeed achieve more.
@ Melinda - It's funny I just wrote my response to Glenda re Resistance, then refreshed the page and saw your comment. You're right that we really treat something as important then we'll find a way to do it.
Re attitude and resentment - I think it's great that many of us have been honest about the feelings of resistance/resentment that inevitably come up at the sharp end of dealing with kids; but my impression reading through the comments is that we all recognise that it's 'our stuff', something for us to work through, without letting go of the fact that - as you say - we chose them and are lucky to have them in our lives.
This post is an excellent reminder that we are not our work. I agree that rising earlier than the rest of the household makes for a quieter studio. When my little girl was two, I would include her scribbles in my collage pieces and I had forgotten that over the last few years; I will resume that practice, although she no longer scribbles.
Terrific article, Mark, and many great comments.
My kids have given me more creativity and opened so many more doors for me than I've lost in productive time. Museums, books, TV programs that we shared. That's not to say I haven't been a sleep-deprived, all or nothing, world class whinger and complainer about what I can and can't get done. I even got on my own nerves.
Best website and online help I ever found - life changing for me, in fact, - was http://www.flylady.net Great way of learning that 15 mins can make a difference and reconciling the things we love to do with the things we need to do to keep hearth, home and sanity intact. Also fantastic for helping children buzz around and learn some very useful stuff as they get older - all done with a great deal of joy, fun, individuality and creativity. And free!
Mick and Keith said it best - 'you can't always get what you want... but you get what you need.'
What took me by surprise is that going from one child to two children in the house took as much adjustment as going from none to one! (Wonder what none to two in one step feels like, Mark?)