How to Tame an Overly Inspired Mind and Finish Projects
***This story first appeared in The Writing Cooperative***
I’m sitting in a small Vietnamese coffee shop when I notice another foreigner setting up to work. He pulls out a book and grabs a pen. With the gentle ease of a conductor, he begins to mark the pages. Soon he’s underlined all the sentences spanning two pages. The words are bold but blurred in a mass of extra emphasis. With every sentence underlined their impact diminishes. The line stretches three pages, then four. He alternates hands and shifts the book to smoothly continue the pen’s path — left to right, following page after page.
His enthusiasm catches my eye because it reminds me of the chaos to my creative process. My mind is continuously underlining ideas, drawing new leads to the forefront of my attention, and with vigor, I plunge into the keyboard until the next idea beckons, and I follow.
Unfortunately, this means I’m overwhelmed with new ideas that overshadow the old.
My habit of beginning a dozen projects, to later complete only a few, used to stifle my creative confidence. How could I call myself a writer if I wasn’t finishing anything? The oddity was that I never failed to come up with new material. I was excited by new opportunities, but I stuttered when it came to completion.
To churn new ideas into completed projects, I had to find a balance. By figuring out my focus, pursuing real passion projects, and setting goals with tangible steps, I transformed overstimulation into productivity — a critical skill every creative can master.
Creative Brain Dump
Forcing creativity is like giving blood, a painful and exhausting experience that lacks pleasure. As a writer, I’m always chasing the moments of fluid imagination and free-will-creativity. When inspiration strikes, whether in the shower or driving home from work, I do my best to hold on to the idea until I have the opportunity to write it down. Repeating the thought out loud reinforces the idea in my memory. No matter the level of idea, I unload my brain by getting ideas on to the page. I do this through bullet journaling, doodling, or writing 1,000 words. It’s important to let the ideas breathe on the page. Otherwise, ideas will bounce around forgotten or frustrated and cluttered your path to productivity.
Filter Your Brain Dump
It’s ironic that too many ideas as a professional writer are a problem, but being overstimulated by possibility without focus is a disastrous combination. I allow ideas to surface by piling them in my journal, and later reviewing, filtering and prioritizing what’s important. I am a lush for to-do lists, and I use them as a secondary step to the creative brain dump. The combination of scribbling ideas and to-do lists fuels my habit of generating new ideas but allows me to see the broader scope of my projects. Once I’ve emptied my brain of the morning’s creative overload, I narrow in on what’s relevant to my work at the moment. I also balance my level of interest to stripe away ideas unworthy of my time — projects I’m not interested in and therefore won’t complete. I highlight ideas I feel confident and excited about to then move toward setting realistic goals.
Know Your Interests
I’ve struggled with start-and-stop projects for years, but it wasn’t until I read Phoebe Lovatt’s book, The Working Woman’s Handbook, that I took the time to deconstruct my creative process. Lovatt describes that creativity and success begin with finding your interests. Finding your passion. It’s not easy to confine yourself to the keyboard day after day unless you let passion drive your ambition. Instead of getting buried in the despair of the undone, Lovatt encourages the entrepreneur to focus on the fuel. What inspires you to succeed? My difficulty was not a lack of ideas, but a lack of focusing on my interests as a natural source of ambition. Making a list of personal interests, including what music, television, books, activities, articles, and Google searches you make in your free time will help to identify your interests. From your list, it’s easier to discern passion projects from fleeting ideas you’re unlikely to be motivated to finish.
Know Your Motivation
As an entrepreneur I’m only successful if I can find the motivation. Burdened by too many projects, it’s easy to lose motivation. The key is finding your motivational triggers. Narrow in on what projects bring you the meaning, joy, and stability you want from your work will help outline your incentives. Make a detailed list of five completed projects, and pick apart what worked, why you were motivated to finish, and what the results were. I found that writing projects of “how-tos,” reading and reviewing books quickly, and leading group writing sessions, were my strengths and the topics I was motivated to write about. Understanding what results and rewards motivate you, allows you to focus on the ideas that bubble up in these areas and commit to completion.
A Series of Micro-Wins
How can I read 52 books in a year, but struggle to polish an essay I’ve been working on for months? Because my challenge to read 52 books is bound by step-by-step daily tasks whereas my essays were pieced frantically together when I had time. Instead of plunging into the keys, it’s important to plan for a series of micro-wins, actions, to piece together a completed project. Reading for an hour a day equals a win, a micro-win, on the larger scale of reading 52 books. Feeding off the achievement of one accomplishment despite its size makes the next step even easier. Whether it’s writing an essay, selling your art, freelancing, or drafting a novel, plan for obtainable tasks that will build your confidence and drive your success.
Action Toward Realistic Goals
For an advocate of to-do lists, goal setting is the nicotine to my addiction. However, if they’re never crossed off, goals on a page mean little. The key to setting goals is honesty. Goals are independent promises for success and they should be a reflection of reality. What can I truly accomplish? Being honest about my laziness, I set goals that are a mix of easy daily successes, like writing one haiku a day which easily transitions into writing for 20–30 mins, and more difficult goals like reading a book a week. I know both are possible because of my success in the past and because my interests motivate me. Knowing what I’m passionate about and what gets my butt in the chair to write, I can set realistic goals and aim for success. Be honest about your abilities, be truthful about your dedication to the project, and plan for actionable goals to get uncover the best focus for creative success.
What is Productivity?
I used to think of productivity in terms of mass production, large quantities of accomplishments with hard deadlines. But after the stress of too many uncrossed to-do items, I reshaped my understanding of productivity. I stumbled on the Five Minute Journal, a style of journaling that defines productivity as setting one achievable goal per day, breaking down the steps to completion, and then taking action. I followed the journal style and saw my work blossom. I began to make lists and goals I knew I could viably accomplish steaming from one outlined task a day. Instead of overwhelming my day with dozens of things I would like to complete, I hold myself accountable for a few things I know I can finish. Set yourself up for success. On a daily basis, define one thing you will accomplish and then commit. One achievement will snowball into many creating a clear path for completed projects.
***
Finding a creative process can take years of struggling through forced creativity and drowning in too many ideas. But understanding how to unload new ideas, how to narrow in your focus, how to set realistic goals, how to find motivation, and finally how to take action, will allow you to tame your overly inspired mind and actually get things done.
In the process of productivity, how do you manage? What is your motivation? What ways can you share to encourage others to keep focused and save their creativity?
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