Tag: writing

The steam is rising

Posted on by philipdodson

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There are times when you go to do something, you’ve cleared a space in the schedule, you’ve summed up the energy to start something, and then……the technology gets in the way of progress.

This a common challenge for the creative type, who is wanting to share their craft with the world. You add the content on your website, in the WordPress back end or on Rainmaker or whatever platform, then you hit preview and the picture you have added to the media gallery has suddenly become rotated 90 degrees, even though it looked perfect on your phone, or the image has suddenly scaled to HUGE, even when you had set the size to meduim 300×300. Or a whole myriad of issues.

Your create an event page, you’re really proud of your work, the content is awesome, the ticketing just right and then you hit that preview button, something goes wrong.

You want to create a table and all the code looks correct, you may have copied it from an existing page that is up and perfect, you change a bit of text, and BAM the columns won’t line up, they drop to the row below or whatever other annoying calamity.

The more you sit there and the more you fiddle around, the more the pressure rises until there is almost quiet literally steam pouring out of your ears.

There are 3 points here:

1. It is always best to simply walk away from it, do not keep trying to fix something that you are not yet skilled to fix. It is a futile exercise, that will often lead to you wasting valuable time, time that you could be creating more fab content, the thing that you are actually good at. So as soon as it doesn’t get fixed after trying a couple of simply changes, then stop.

2. Allowing an often easily resolved challenge to annoy you and potential hijack your day, again is just not worth it. Stepping away, having a walk from your desk, getting a tea or even just starting on a completely different piece of work will diffuse your annoyance, allowing you to still be productive.

Then, if you do return to the challenge, often being refreshed, will allow you to fix what you seemed not able to previously do, as you are calm.

3. Most importantly, either resolve to learn how to fix these annoying challenges, once and for all, as many times it’s a repeat of the same thing, that stumped you the last time you tried that particular thing.

Or, if you are not inclined to learn, collaborate with others, outsource or get help to do this thing. Thus freeing up your time to do what you are truly good at and also saving yourself from blowing a gasket.

I’ve taken my break writing this blog, now I am calm and off to fiddle with my new website.

Keep the momentum going

Posted on by philipdodson

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Once you have overcome that initial inertia, the fear of starting something, the key thing is to keep going.

Most of the effort is at the front end, getting the thing ‘off the ground’. The keeping it up there is just a question of discipline and commitment.

Wow, that was easy to type, if only it was that easy, but remind yourself on the days that you feel the lull, feel like arghhh!!! today I just can’t do it, that you have built all that momentum, you have taken all those steps closer to your goal. Giving up would lead to the brakes going on and the need to start again.

Just look at the journey up to today, all those small steps you have done and repeated day after day, think about where you have come from when you started.

Anybody who has faced starting anything worthwhile, something that will lead to making a difference, knows the monumental effort required to overpower our inner ‘chimps’, the limbic brain that says ‘nah do that latter, have another coffee, you’ve done enough today, tomorrow, tomorrow…’.

Think about the fears we’ve overcome, think about the hard work we put in at the beginning, the tweaking, the testing of ideas until we started to make some breakthroughs.

That doesn’t mean working when you’re just not in the right mood, sure take a break, go for a walk, watch some Netflix or whatever, but keep the faith in your work, keep the momentum going and do the work needed to keep going.

If you set yourself daily small manageable steps, this is so much easier to do. After all success is a series of small steps done well on a daily basis.

Just keep going.