Feb 5, 2020
Welcome to the new podcast!
This episode is about the very thing that kept me from making
the podcast for nearly three years. Prerequisite
procrastination. What a pain.
I put my finger on what to call this particular subspecies of
procrastination during a video conversation with members of our
online community (we do things like talk about the specific ways we
procrastinate; you should get in on
this).
Listen for what this wee beast is, and what we can do to defeat
it so we start making things we really want to make (like, as I
said, this podcast).
Show Notes
- Each episode this season begins with a short clip of a
maker or artist talking about a recent project they were obsessed
with. I recorded all of these in April of 2019 at Camp
Thundercraft, a retreat for creative businesspeople held each
spring and hosted by the folks behind Urban Craft
Uprising. I'm very excited to be going back to teach two classes at the 2020 retreat coming up.
- Kicking things off is a clip of ceramicist Sean Forest
Roberts of Forest Ceramic
Co. talking about some incredibly intricate mugs he
makes out of dozens of layers of colour. You have to see
it to really get it. Since I met him and learned of his work, I
have been desperately coveting a Galaxy mug 😍.
- Here are some of my favourite things to do when I'm
stuck in a procrastination rut:
- Set a timer. I can do anything for 20
minutes, and often all I need to get out of my head and into making
something is decide to just do it for a few minutes. Doing it a
little bit is far better than not doing it at all.
- Along similar lines, this tired cliche: Done is better
than perfect. It is so tired. And it is so true.
- (You will notice that the sound quality of the Camp
Thundercraft clips this season are not the best. I considered the
task of cleaning up the audio one of the prerequisites that kept me
from making this podcast for ten months. I have cleaned
them up, believe it or not, but really, I just needed to stop
worrying about it and just make the episodes.)
- Consider whether I really want to do the thing I'm
putting off. There's a section in Make It Mighty
Ugly where I write about gut feelings. Sometimes we need
to do something that makes us uncomfortable, because we grow from
it. Sometimes, though, we feel uncomfortable because it's a
terrible idea. We do ourselves a great service when we get to know
the difference.
- Throwing my first try under the bus.
Sometimes, I procrastinate because I'm so excited about the
idea of making something that I become terrified that the
thing I make will be awful. So I make my first attempt an effort at
making it terrible – doing it too fast, or not reading the
instructions closely, or using crap materials, or whatever. This
way I can't be disappointed, and I will at least be making
something. After this first terrible attempt, there's nowhere to go
but up.
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