If you lament the shortage of time spent doing the very thing that drew you to your solo business, or you continually get to the end of the day with a sense of under-achievement, it may be time to stop tolerating and start liberating.
Your business or, perhaps more importantly, your creative soul deserve better treatment.
Andy Law, author of Creative Company --the story of London's hugely innovative agency, St. Luke's--talks in his book of the need to give things up if change is to be fully realised. Failure to do so, he warns, results in you being "forever in the control of the things you can't give up."
Admittedly he's talking about big picture behavioural change, the breaking of patterns that do not serve you well; but how do you follow a path forwards when youšre buried in the day-to-day drudgery of normal life?
The answer is to clear junk, create space and get re-acquainted with the creative genius within.
To move forward you're going to have to face one important fact:
There are enough hours in the day; you're just not using them effectively.
That's about to change. Liberation Day is upon you. It's time to take some responsibility for the way things are.
Herešs the theory:
Everything you are tolerating - putting up with - is taking up your personal bandwidth and slowing you down, destroying your creativity, draining you.
Did you read that? Good, now read it again. The really important bit is everything you are tolerating.
Before you start going off about workloads, deadlines, demanding clients, mortgages, families etc., consider this:
How freely would your creative mind spin if it were free of junk? How fast are you going now?
Here are some examples of things you may be tolerating, but that you may not think of as a problem:
- Your car is in bad need of a repair.
- You need a haircut/image makeover.
- Your business card is so outdated it's embarrassing to hand out.
- Your basic office hardware is outmoded and incomplete.
- Your desk is piled high with papers; 'post-its' abound.
- Your control of spam is...well, out of control.
- There's never anything to eat at home.
- Every cupboard around you is full to bursting.
- Your computer may look like a candy bar, but still crashes every time there's a deadline.
- The piles of unread books around your bed resemble a city skyline.
Get the idea? Take some time now and write down 10 things you're tolerating at home and 10 things your tolerating at the office; ponder for a moment a life free of these tolerations.
Good, now let's take some active steps toward liberation.
Step 1: Prepare yourself and, while you're about it, your nearest and dearest
There's about to be a change, a big change. Change can be painful, people may get hurt. You are about to let go of things. One or two comfort blankets may have to be dragged from your clenched little fists; be brave.
Itšs a good idea to alert those around you to the fact that you'll be behaving strangely for a while, but that the old you will be back soon.
You may start cleaning windows, tidying desks, buying food. You may send friends curt e-mails requesting they stop sending silly stories about the Dalai Lama, or that one with a totem pole that looks nothing like a totem pole.
Things are going to be different; start believing it; start behaving it.
Step 2: Get visual/set goals/delegate
Write your Top 10 Tolerations down in nice big letters for all to see and put a time and date for liberation alongside each. That's one list for home, one for work.
If your action involves others, put their names down. Make sure they know what's expected of them and by when.
Step 3: Set yourself a toleration-free deadline.
Set a time by which you'll be liberated Liberation Day - start to imagine life in this new space.
Step 4: Reward yourself
As you work through your list give yourself rewards - even minor celebration helps acknowledge and reinforce change.
For example:
- Schedule a couple of hours with nothing to do (what part of nothing don't you understand?)
- Renew contact with someone from your past
- Leave the office early (yes you can)
Step 5: Don't kid yourself
This work requires constant monitoring. Look for signs of recurrence and eradicate anything that may later become a toleration.
In extreme cases it helps to establish written procedures, or introduce new systems or policies. If you find a common theme within the things you're tolerating, look for ways of fixing them permanently.
Good luck with your actions. May this process herald the beginning of an existence free of life's annoying minutiae don't sweat the small stuff, drag it to the trash.
