Lifescale

Chapter 14Dive

Wading through the Shallows to Dive into Deep Creativity

“You don't get results by focusing on results. You get results by focusing on the actions that produce results.”

– Mike Hawkins

Okay, you've got your action plan worked out. Now it's time to apply your renewed ability to focus, your positive thinking and motivational visualization, and your passionate sense of purpose to creative productivity. That requires carving out time for deep dives into creative work. Instead of always treading water in a desperate effort to keep up with the relentless onslaught of distractions, you allow yourself to plunge into the projects that are the most important, and the most meaningful, to you.

For so many of us, when we do give ourselves time for creative work, we don't take the deep plunge. It's like we're snorkeling rather than scuba diving. We just don't think we can afford to take the time to really go deep. That's in part because we don't realize how productive we can be during creative work sessions if we are truly, utterly focused.

We tend to think that creative output requires a large time commitment. And we're concerned that if we fail to answer all, or at least most, of our emails, take phone calls when we get them, and process through all of the flotsam and jetsam of bureaucratic paperwork (so much of which is online now), we'll find ourselves drowning.

The truth is that most of us do have to keep up with a large volume of basic work tasks and we do have ...