Working Daily for Creatives – Part 2 – The Science of Daily Appointments

(From the blog) www.thestuckcreative.comIt is extremely important to work everyday….even for 10 to 20 minutes. Getting this to be a habit is not easy but P…

Underwood_no5This is a Talking Typewriter Production – Which means this blog post has also been turned into a video. So…you can read this post below or you may watch the video version at YouTube, above. It’s the same stuff. It’s your choice.

Welcome to part two of Working Daily for Creatives. Again if you were in part one, or if this is your first stop here on this whole idea of working daily, believe me I know what you’re thinking and you’re feeling. There is no way I can work daily. Well, there are ways to do that and you can.

For simplicity sake I call this whole thing about consistent daily work, I call it the daily appointment. Fortunately, there has been research around how do people follow through on their intentions. They have something that they want to do, what separates one group of people, the ones can actually get it done versus another group. It seems to boil down to this, the successful group came up with a simple checklist, they make decisions around that checklist, once they’ve formed it they just follow it on a daily basis.

The unsuccessful group doesn’t really specify where, or how, or what, or when they want to follow through so everything just slides, it doesn’t get done.

The Steps to Building Your Appointment

Let’s go through the steps of what you need to know to make one of these checklists, to help you get to your daily appointment, and get through your daily appointment.

Step #1: Figure out your When
The first item on the checklist is, when are you going to have your daily appointment. We talked about working short, but specify during your day the best day or best times to work that short time period, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five minutes. Think that through, when’s the best time for you. Probably come up with a plan B if the first time doesn’t work you know what the fallback position is. That’s item number one on your checklist for the daily appointment.

Step #2: Figure out your Where
Item number two for your checklist is where. We talked about having a lot of flexibility about being able to work in different locations. Go ahead and pre-specify where you’ll likely be doing your work, and again come up with a plan B. Where will you be when you have that appointment at your specified time. It’s okay to visualize again a plan B of where you will be when that time comes around.

Step #3: Figure out your General What
The third item on the checklist is going to vary from day to day, is what will you be doing at that time and in that location. Now you can start off first specifying it in a general sense what sort of work. I’ll turn to writers, it would be maybe a certain level of productivity say shooting for one hundred words during that work session. It would be about a particular topic, but as you get into that work you will be able to specify a day or two ahead of where you need to be and what you need to do that next day, or the day after then. Get that clear in your mind so you know when you sit down in that location at that time you’ll know the subject matter, but what specifically are you going to be tackling during that work session.

That’s it for Part 2 of Working Daily for Creatives.  See you at Part 3, Cautions and Success Hacks.

Subcribe today_yellow