Growing Gills: How to Find Creative Focus When You’re Drowning in Your Daily Life

Go from overwhelmed, anxious, and stuck, to consistent, clear, and in control of your creative life. If you feel like you’re floundering in the deep end (Not waving, drowning!), and anxiety over the complexity and enormousness of your creative projects overwhelms you, stop scrambling to fit everything in and feeling stretched thin. DIVE DEEP AND SWIM Sustain the energy you feel when thinking of how awesome your projects could be. Value your own creative work as highly as work you do for other people. Build a reusable structure and process that will consistently get you to the finish line. Blast through your stuck-ness. Focus. Finish. Move on to the next project. You’re a creative person. Even if you have a hard time calling yourself a “writer” or an “artist” in public, making your creative work is core to who you are and how you see the world. You may be harboring a big, ambitious idea for a project. Possibly a lot of them. And it’s killing you. You lie awake thinking about it...and hating yourself for not doing more to make it real. And then in the morning you’re exhausted, and you can’t believe you “wasted” more time on this stupid idea. Who ever told you you were creative anyway? You try to shove your idea away, to forget it. But your creative work is what keeps you sane. You can’t not do this. So you live with guilt and anxiety all the time. You’ve tried to carve out the time and attention you need to devote to your creative work. You’ve made ambitious goals, you’ve written lists, you’ve scheduled calendars...you’ve installed shackles on your desk chair. But chaining yourself to your work only seems to make you more distractible and more miserable. (And those unsightly leg sores!) Maybe you've even tried to borrow time-management tips from the business world. Get things done! Build seven habits! Eat that frog! But following business-minded productivity systems just doesn’t work for you. The issue isn’t simply getting “things” done, it’s allowing yourself to devote precious time and attention to the vital, self-generated creative work that builds toward your vision for the future. The problem is, the life you’re living is already full. You’ve made a lot of promises, to yourself, your family, your friends, and your community, that you’ll be there for them. You probably have a job; you may have kids. You may well have many competing ideas for your creative work. Where, exactly, can you find that mythical Creative Focus Unicorn? In Growing Gills, you’ll discover that the power is already within you to make your work. The biggest obstacles to your getting your important creative work done lie in the unknowns you’re facing. Growing Gills takes you step by step through the process of pinning down exactly what’s stopping you from finishing your beautiful, inventive, and potentially game-changing projects. Using the power of conscious decision, you’ll build your own unique system for fitting creative work into your existing life, taking into consideration how you work best. Like a custom-designed, powered exoskeleton, your personal system will bolster and support your creative practice day in and day out, so that you can grow up and grow old while continuing to make your creative work...without chucking out all the other connections to your family and the world that make your life rich and worth living. GROWING GILLS: Breathe in the deep end. With your purchase of the ebook or print edition, you’ll also get: The Growing Gills Workbook for free A checklist to identify what specifically stands in your way An invitation to a 5-day free minicourse! Introduction It’s Not Unusual Activity: Time-tracking Part 1: So, What’s Stopping You? Chapter 1 Facing Your Dilemmas How to uncover the specific obstacles that stand in the way of your achieving your creative goals Activity: The Five Whys Chapter 2 Drowning in Idea Debt How and why we hold on to too many creative ideas, and how that can stop you from finishing any of them Activity: Idea Debt Inventory Chapter 3 Open Loops Identifying and gaining control over the many commitments you’ve made to yourself and others Activity: The Stuff Audit Chapter 4 Self-Forgiveness as a Productivity Tool Embracing self-compassion instead of self-blame Activity: Outing your Should Monster Chapter 5 Authenticity is What You Actually Do Every Day Acknowledging and gaining strength from what it is that you truly care about Activity: What other people really think Part 2: Build Your Custom Powered Exoskeleton Chapter 6 Prioritize: One Goal To Rule Them All How to grapple with your many creative ideas and priorities Chapter 7 Saying No Coming to terms with the necessity of knowing what your highest priorities are—across all areas of your life—and aligning what you actually choose to do with those priorities Activity: Time-pricing Chapter 8 Saying YES Choosing your highest creative priority, and saying yes to finishing Activity: Choose one goal Activity: Choose your tool Chapter 9 The Black Box Breaking down giant, scary projects into small, achievable steps Activity: Break down a project into actions, Part 1: Ask all the questions Activity: Breaking down a project into actions, Part 2: The forest and the trees Chapter 10 Your Ideal Week, Next Week Creating a responsive and effective schedule based around your real daily life Activity: Your Ideal Week Part 3:Aligning your Today with your Tomorrow Chapter 11 There Is No Finish Line How to look at your creative practice as a part of your overall life rhythms in a sustainable way over the long term Activity: The Creative Marathon Activity: Setting up an accountability group Chapter 12 The Big Creative Rhythms Being a Parent, Being a Partner, Being a Child Chapter 13 The Value of Routine Embracing creative routines as the source of inspiration and joy in the work Activity: Set the table Activity: Breaking down your own resistance Chapter 14 The Key is the Trust Creating a robust review process that will keep your creative work on track long term Activity: Using development markers to chart progress and tweak processes Activity: Design and test-drive a daily and weekly review Chapter 15 Planning Backward Developing a working plan for a creative project with a deadline Activity: Six-week goal tracking Chapter 16 The Long View Finding the long-term vision for your creative life Activity: Vision Quest Part 4:Falling Down & Getting Up Chapter 17 The Dark Forest Why and how we go through creative crisis in the midst of big projects, and some ways to escape it Activity: Focus Session Chapter 18 The Resistance (Not the Good Kind) Facing and overcoming your own resistance to making your work Activity: Resistance analyzer Chapter 19 Restart Getting back on track when you’ve gotten derailed Activity: Restart Conclusion Designing a sustaining creative practice takes time, so go easy on yourself