The first rule of doing work that matters

December 23rd, 2010 by Kris

From Seth’s Blog on Tuesday, sage advice for the new year:

“Go to work on a regular basis.

Art is hard. Selling is hard. Writing is hard. Making a difference is hard.

When you’re doing hard work, getting rejected, failing, working it out–this is a dumb time to make a situational decision about whether it’s time for a nap or a day off or a coffee break.

Zig taught me this twenty years ago. Make your schedule before you start. Don’t allow setbacks or blocks or anxiety to push you to say, “hey, maybe I should check my email for a while, or you know, I could use a nap.” If you do that, the lizard brain is quickly trained to use that escape hatch again and again.

Isaac Asimov wrote and published 400 (!) books using this technique.

The first five years of my solo business, when the struggle seemed neverending, I never missed a day, never took a nap. (I also committed to ending the day at a certain time and not working on the weekends. It cuts both ways.)

In short: show up.”

Thanks Seth!

End of Year Groanings

December 14th, 2010 by Kris

There’s that time of year where we are either dead in the water or slammed and wondering if there will be one full night’s sleep this week. Yes, I’m talking about the holidays. Between personal commitments, parties, socials, and the such, we’ve got our usual work load and oh yeah, the people who are trying to squeeze one more project out the door before the year ends.

Now like many of you I fall victim to this same old year end race to the finish. Tradeshows aside, we all know that 80% of this work we do in December will not be dropped into layouts till after the first and ad spots will not be purchased most times until, in some cases February when ad budgets for the year are refreshed. Why do we kill ourselves to get it out the door? I’ve got my reasons, what are yours?