Angie Clever

Ok, maybe that’s taking it a little literally, but don’t you wish you got more done in the day?  I caught myself the other day when a friend told me I should learn to multitask- the first thing out of my mouth was “I can’t while I’m busy”.  Ironic much?  I thought so too.  It really made me think though.  How much more multitasking could I do if I wasn’t too busy to think about the most efficient way to get things done.  When I put my finger on the problem, it was easy to see that everyone I knew was caught up in the cycle.  The thing that made the biggest impression was looking around to see so many stressed out people with ambitions and dreams that were always a day away.

After several frustrating years in the 9-5 scene, paying back student loans, gaining my first mortgage, car payments, credit cards, and a stream of bills, I finally decided to make something happen.  It’s not that I have any more time than I did before, nor do I have any more money or any less bills.  The only thing that changed is my attitude, and decided to work more efficiently.

The first trick to working efficiently is balancing “work work” and “play work”.  When taking on a new project, for most people it means adding to a busy schedule.  Unless you have savings to dig into, or are lucky enough to be supported by your family or spouse, you are probably going to be stuck working a day job, tending to your daily responsibilities, and trying to get your project going.  Most projects die right here.  What you need to do is make sure that you choose the right side project for you.

I spent a summer in college sewing alterations.  About three months, 7am to 6pm, I spent hemming hundreds of men’s pants, taking in the waist, hemming the skirt—you name a monotonous clothing alteration, and I’ve done thousands.  That summer I designed and sewed some of the best costumes that I ever made.  Everyone’s first question was “How can you sew all day and come home and still feel like sewing?”  It was easy though, because the two were very different.  While the manual action (“sewing “ in my case) was the same, the difference was that my job was a manual, tedious skill that involved no creative license whatsoever.  And like many jobs of the sort, it polished my basic skills (“sewing”) and made me a great craftsman.   The down side is that it left me totally dissatisfied, needing—desperately—a creative outlet.  Designing costumes  leveraged the skills I already had from work.  I was already great at sewing, with near perfect accuracy.   Instead of starting something new from ground zero (I mean, I could have come home and said I’m going to weld statues for a project—instead I picked something that I had some background in), I let someone else pay me to get all the skills that I needed to get going and apply my creativity.

It is not necessary to have “play work” that is totally different from work.  What is important is differentiating “work work” from “play work” in your daily routine.  Say to yourself that your 9 to 5 is your craft.  Focus on working to the best of your abilities and when occasions arise to boost your skill level, take them.  Say you want to start a writing project, and someone at work has to write the text for a big proposal.  No, you don’t want to write the proposal.  It’s not all fun and games, but suddenly you have the chance to—on company time—boost your skills and basically warm up for applying that side of your creativity to your own projects. Take advantage of anything your can find that puts you on the write track.

It takes the average person fifteen minutes to focus on a project.  That is, if you are going to write, the first fifteen minutes will be slower than the second because your mind has to switch modes.  Don’t you notice how you start to get involved when you work continuously without interruptions?  That’s because the human brain stays on one track by its nature, that’s how it functions best .  To get more out of your time, don’t fight this, work with it.  Take a chance at work to write that boring  proposal to get into writing mode. 

Now that you’re in the mode, make a U-turn.  If you were writing boring proposals at work, come home and pick a totally different topic.  Pick something that you are interested in that has nothing to do with work.  Make sure its topic that relaxes you, something that you could do for hours and still be wishing you had more time to work on it.  Now let your eyes and hands and mind go through the same mechanical process of writing, but kick the creative side of your brain into gear.  I think about is like dye dropped into water, at first your creative juice is just one drop, but given some time it spreads out and infects the whole glass of water.  Suddenly, you wouldn’t even know that the colored liquid came from the source as the plain glass next to it.  Just a drop of creative juice changed what was physically there all together, thought he same ingredients and motions created it.  It’s the same with your work.

Writing is only one example.  If you build houses for a living, then use those skills (maybe model, carve, do drawings of homes, build furniture).  If you deliver pizzas then use your skills (if you pay attention to cars do a project on cars, write about people, make illustrated maps with caricatures of the city buildings).  No matter how boring your job is, remember that you have thousands of experiences every day.  Ask yourself what you would do with those experiences if you were able to do anything you wanted.  How can you put a creative spin on your experiences to create something of value for other people and yourself?

Today I went to Raleigh to give a presentation proposing a web redesign to a big wig agency.  I have to admit, getting the gig would be a huge feather in my cap.  It would also be a great reference to help me get more websites (yum, yum web design) on board.  I took the opportunity to practice something that I call the art of zen driving.  It was about a two hour drive.

Zen driving is really a very simple concept.  In the car, particularly on long interstate trips that take me out of stop and go traffic, I am at one with the universe.  (I am now making my guru face) Wow, how can that be, you ask? Because I’m not there yet.  But I’m also not still here.  When I make long drives I’m in a state of limbo in my life.  All the worries fade away because I realize that I have absolutely no ability to fix any of the problems or embrace any of the fuzzy feeling good times… in fact, until I get there… I can’t really do anything about anything in life.  It’s liberating to be free of the pressures of life, even if it is only temporary.  I let my mind wander and I idly sing along with songs I’ve heard a million times.

Most of us won’t squeeze in an hour a day in for meditation, but we all drive.  I say that this is another form of multitasking—you’re doing nothing more than usual, but you get more out of it.  Treat your time in the car as a blessed interval during which you are free from the “here” pressures and free from the “there” pressures.  Take it as a special “me”-time.  If you do, you’ll find yourself feeling more energetic, and you’ll have a lot more enthusiasm to get going on the things that matter to you instead of sitting on the couch having crash-time.

To give you the gist of it, don’t be too busy to multitask.  Don’t work harder, work more efficiently.  Apply what you know best to your creative abilities and you’ll have a great project.  Let the tedious parts of life sharpen the skills you need to accomplish something personally meaningful, and prioritize doing what’s meaningful high on your list.  Stop waiting until the bills get paid off, until the kids grow up, until the job slows down, until you get settled in from the move, and do it today.  Every day you wake up, it still going to be today.  Unless you win the multi-million dollar lottery (and the most I’ve ever won is two dollars) you’re still going to have stresses hanging over your head.  Make time to apply your creativity and you will find that you are accomplishing more in less time.