Your Creative Intentions: The Monday Post ~ November 11, 2013
Commit to a regular creativity practice. Regularity — a daily practice, if possible — is key to staying in touch with how you make meaning.
What are your plans for creative practice this week? Given the specifics of your schedule, decide on a realistic intention or practice plan — and ink that time in your calendar. The scheduling part is important, because as you know, if you try to “fit it in” around the edges, it generally won’t happen. An intention as simple as “I will write for 20 minutes every morning after breakfast” or “I will sketch a new still life on Wednesday evening” is what it’s all about. If appropriate, use time estimates to containerize your task, which can make a daunting project feel more accessible.
Share your intentions or goals as a comment to this post, and let us know how things went with your creative plans for last week, if you posted to last week’s Monday Post. We use a broad brush in defining creativity, so don’t be shy. We also often include well-being practices that support creativity, such as exercise and journaling.
Putting your intentions on “paper” helps you get clear on what you want to do — and sharing those intentions with this community leverages the motivation of an accountability group. Join us!
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Studio Mothers: Life & Art 
What happens when I get smug about how my whole-foods, vegan, gluten-free diet keeps me so healthy? I get sick, natch. Just the universe keepin’ it real…a congestion/coughing thing with some general malaise — not enough to send me to bed, but enough to make me feel sorry for myself.
Despite this impediment, I managed to reinstate my daily 500 words (the streak is at 7 days) and spent most of Saturday doing some heavy lifting with my WIP. Then I spent a lot of time yesterday migrating all kinds of notes and bookmarks to Evernote, my most recent crush.
I’ve been reading a ton — just finished “S.” (highly recommended) and haven’t missed a day of morning pages and intention journaling in more than three weeks, so I’m feeling good on those counts. Everything feels better when my day is bookeneded by journaling in the morning and hours of reading at night.
As for exercise….don’t even ask.
Last week’s creative/well-being intentions:
* Daily morning centering practice w/Morning Pages & intention journaling [yes]
* Daily reading [yes]
* Continue working on next section of WIP for November’s writers’ group [yes]
* Continue improvements in workday focus and output [yes]
This week’s creative/well-being intentions:
* Daily morning centering practice w/Morning Pages & intention journaling
* Daily reading
* Finish and send selection from WIP for November’s writers’ group [Mon]
* Continue improvements in workday focus and output
What is “Daily morning centering practice”?
What is WIP? 🙂 hehe
Hi! “WIP” stands for “work in progress” (the current manuscript). Check out this post for the morning centering practice! https://studiomothers.com/2012/04/12/the-morning-centering-practice/
Here’s my tried and true best practice EVER. I work much better under pressure so I do my more unpleasant tasks “under pressure”. For me, I set a timer for 15 minutes and work really hard and fast at some unpleasant task. I usually deep clean a room in the house once a week. I never finish the whole room but will tackle things like clean out drawers, deep dust blinds, deep clean a toilet. (ugh!) Due to an awful schedule and family time (always a priority) I didn’t do it for 4 days last week so I owe one full hour of this to the house and I’ll do that today as I have a much lighter schedule this week. For the routines I set that timer for 15 minutes again. I find myself trying to beat that timer and get as much done as possible. It’s for everything, even going through and filing mail. After about an hour of these 15 minute intervals, I bestow upon myself like 30 minutes to an hour of creative practice. Then I work, work, work again really hard and fast at the unpleasant stuff, and ahhhh bestow upon myself another block of time, and do I ever take my time during that 30 minute or sometimes one hour block of time! I feel I have earned it. It’s like “self-pay”! Last week I took out the big camera equipment and went out on my four-wheeler and took tons of beautiful photos in the back field, as instead of all the little iphone photos.
Just saying, this practice works great for me, as I need a LOT of flexibility, since I don’t run on a Mon-Fri schedule. Even if interrupted I can always squeeze in those 15 minutes for upleasantries!
Wonderful, SimplySage! This is essentially the pomodoro technique, which I too rely on — particularly during my work day when I’m not feeling motivated. Amen to the timer!
Oh dear, very inspiring creative weeks for you guys..I need to put things straight and be direct with everyhing I do. I feel like I’m way far behind your practices.
Not at all! Wherever you are, you’re in exactly the right place. It’s great to have you here!
Thanks for that!!! 🙂