Lately I’ve been struggling with the minimal progress I’ve been making on all the goals in my life. I get inspired by some artwork, a novel, an article and I feel ready to take on the world.
“Tonight I’m going to draw something amazing!”
“I’m going to go to gym every second day!”
“When I get home from work, I’m going to work on my portfolio”
But what I’ve been finding is that I’ve been getting home, changing my clothes and then jumping on the computer and playing world of warcraft. Or watching TV. Or picking up another book. Then later I lament.
“I love drawing but I haven’t drawn in ages“
“My portfolio doesn’t portray the kind of work I can do”
“I’m so unfit!”
2 days ago the penny dropped. I was reading this article by Violent Acres(a blog I read religiously). I have said before that my problem is I would like to do more things than what I can humanly do in one life time but I never realised how it was crippling me into not achieving anything.
At my previous job at an advertising company, I had a project manager who handed me my jobs for the day with all the information I needed in order of which job needed completing first. It was great! I dove into my work with enthusiasm and felt accomplished at the end of the day. Now with my current job at any giving stage I am give a new job on top of the 15 or 16 or so that I have and each morning I blanch trying to decide which job is more important to accomplish and I hedge and go get a coffee from across the street or delete some emails I don’t need.
This indecision on which is more important and deserves my time more is what is preventing me from drawing more, from going to the gym more, taking up Taekwondo again, from working on my portfolio.
Not only that but I actually thrive on restrictions. As an amateur illustrator, all my life I’ve had people ask me to ‘draw them a picture’ and I will have absolutely no idea what to draw for them. ‘Can you draw me?’ I find even worse. Much less often I’ve had someone asked me to draw something specific and then watch me go as the red haired female ninja hiding in the night appears in a flash. But without that directive, with an infinite amount of options I hedge and procrastinate until both myself and the person who requested the drawing has forgotten all about it.
In the future I’d like to try and restrict myself to less choices and see if that will improve the accomplishment of my goals
Tags: Art & Illustration, Life, Motivation
February 21, 2008 at 2:28 pm
It really all comes down to deciding what your chief goal in life is…
Sit down and decide what it is you want and when you want it. If you are to become a great artist then that is your plan. Write down your chief goal in life, and when you want to accomplish it. I often work with sales people; so for example – If you want to become a Director of Sales and be earning 100k – You start your Plan with: By January 1 of 2009 I will be the Director of Sales at the XYZ Company – I will be earning 100k a year. In exchange for this I will give my best effort and then some each and every day. Detail out your plan and make a contract with yourself. And each and everyday make sure you do at least ONE thing that furthers your plan along!
The four-step system to getting it all started.
1. Your definitive plan, express by continuous and incessant action.
2. Your definite purpose backed by a burning desire for its attainment.
3. Your mind tightly close to all negative influence. Those negative influences can come from places you least expect; friends, family and acquaintances.
4. Your Master Mind alliance with one or preferably more persons who will encourage and stand by you always helping you to follow your plan and your purpose.
Ben
February 24, 2008 at 6:18 am
I felt exactly the same way when i read that article. When i graduated highschool I was lucky enough to win a full scholarship to a decent school for graphic design, and that immediately shut out all the hundreds of other options that i was thinking about at the time. Unfortunately for all of my friends this never happened, and most of them seem to have simply decided to stay at home with their parents and work shit retail jobs until they can “decide what they want to do”. Now i’m at school it seems like 90% of the time i spend on projects goes into narrowing down what i actually want to do for the project, and I usually just end up spewing out some random crap at the last second (which seems to be working out really nicely for some reason). maybe now that i’m conscious of this phenomenon i can do more to fight it (one of the things i’m trying is writing down what my top 3 goals are for the day and making whetever it is i don’t completecarry over to the next day. It’s working out nicely so far…)