Why create at all
Lately I’ve been wondering if it even makes sense for me to create during this gap period of my career. This isn’t my first time being laid off but it is the first time I’ve decided to stay unemployed for an extended period of time.
Part of my time off will be spent exploring the east coast in the US before heading off to another part of the world. Currently leaning towards Thailand as it seems friendly to someone like me who has only done a handful of out of country trips.
Since I’ll be traveling it seems a bit counterintuitive to try to do any building, studying, or writing since it may hamper my recovery from the burnout I’m experiencing. But as I experiment with making new things I’ve realized that making things may be the key to curing my burnout.
I’ve read so many articles, books, and comments about burnout and realized it is sort of like a boggart. It can take on different shapes. For this chapter of my life it has manifested into a lack of confidence in the skills essential to my trade. For this I think the best remedy is to keep creating but using systems that keep my tasks small and achievable. Slowly building up my confidence and relearning fundamentals fallen to the wayside as my expertise became more niche for the jobs I was doing.
Divide by two
When struggling with habits and tasks in the past I always tried to employ the divide by two rule. If you have a task and you find yourself not doing it then divide it by two until it becomes laughably easy. For example going to the gym for an hour becomes 30 minutes but that still sounds like too much. Can you do 15 minutes? No? Okay let’s cut it down to 7 minutes. Still no? Okay then let’s just go for 3 minutes if you think you can do that. Of course you can go for 3 minutes that’s just a warmup!
It doesn’t matter if you go for 3 minutes and leave, or you get into the groove after 3 minutes and stay for an hour. Either way you are doing more than you would’ve at home. The hope is that more likely than not once you realize you can do the easy amount you keep going and find yourself finishing the original task.
I’ve been using this technique for blogging. I break my writing down to the point where the writing could be a tweet. I start writing about that tweet length topic and realize I have more to say. Then I connect it to another topic and bam I’m making even more. This very article was supposed to be about creating in public but now I’m having even more fun just talking about my burnout. In fact I think I’ll pivot it and save the publishing stuff for another time!
Even better is with editing which for me always feels a bit tedious. I start with just reading a sentence and seeing if it reads back to me as well as it did when I wrote it. Then I change a few words. Soon enough I’m reading the whole paragraph and making changes.
Building evidence for a different you
Working on things that feel foreign to your identity is how you grow that identity. I think there’s a quote from Alex Hormozi that goes something like “The way you become a patient person is by consistently doing what a patient person does.” If you continually write, you’re a writer. If you build projects,you’re a builder. If you constantly make art, then you’re an artist. Find what you need to consistently do to be the person you want to be, and do it.
It’s important to work on shifting your identity so that you see yourself in this new light, and this new identity. But you need to back up that new vision of yourself with evidence supporting it. You aren’t going to become a writer by just telling everyone you are a writer.
With most of our decisions in life we make small choices. Choices to move towards a different version of ourselves. If you wake up and decide to journal you are moving towards the version of you that constantly journal and probably also thinks more clearly. If you don’t then you move away from the journal version of you. Then that decision to not journal may come with other baggage like reinforcing the belief that you’re not the type of person who follows through on commitments.
Tackling what I know
When doing these small tasks make sure to divvy up the work needed to avoid overwhelming yourself. Many of us fall victim to shiny object syndrome which leads to nothing getting done. It’s important to not get caught up in new things and instead focus on the things that you know are going to be important in the long run.
I love to experiment with new languages, frameworks, and paradigms when I have free time. The issue there is that if I already feel like I can’t get things done I’m gonna feel even worse if I am trying to tackle a new project in a language I don’t know.
Instead I plan to focus on small but exciting projects in languages I do know. I can always carve out time for something like a tic tac toe solver to learn LISP later but for now I think I just need to work on building something new in a language I’m comfortable in.
You can always capture shiny objects via bookmarks, sticky notes, or scheduled reminders. For me I try to keep my focused work to the mornings and anything shiny that pops up during my work is delayed until late in the day when I’ve already used my creative energy up. I find this helps keep a more critical eye on these things. By the time evening rolls around, I can evaluate whether that shiny idea is worth pursuing or just another rabbit hole.