“Oh yes,” I said. “I love my uke. But I don’t think I’ve made any progress since you last heard me. I just strum some easy chords while I sing, that sort of thing.”

“If you’re still playing, you’ve made progress,” he said firmly. The words startled me and nestled deep, like true + timely words can do.

In some ways, my progress assessment was spot on. Just as I did a few years ago, I struggle with the B minor chord, lose track of complex strumming patterns, and can’t pluck a melody line with any kind of speed. All I really do, still, is play easy chords while I sing.

But you know what? Back when I first picked up the ukelele, my hands used to tremble just knowing someone, anyone, was listening to me play. I practiced even the simplest songs many times in private, starting over whenever I lost my place. I was so busy thinking about my fingers that I couldn’t put much emotion into my voice.

A lot had changed since those early lessons. Now I play my handful of chords with confidence and sing with deep feeling. I’ll cheerfully try out a new song on the spot in front of whoever’s around—so long as the chords are B-minor-free. If I mess up, I keep right on singing, not losing my smile. That bone-deep ease is absolutely a form of progress, the kind of gentle growth that’s hard to see in yourself– unless someone jars you into noticing.

When we grow a little every day, it’s hard to see change. Steve likes to tell his students that even one minute of practice a day will help you get better. He’s a wise man. Also a sneaky one– as he points out, after one minute, most ukulele players are having so much fun they keep right on going.

Showing up matters. It’s also really just the foundation for artistic growth. I work diligently on my writing, taking risks and struggling mightily and building craft and taking classes– always pushing at the ever-moving edge of what I know how to do. My writing practice is mindful and rigorous, though certainly fun as well. I’m always learning and lovingly pushing myself. And there are other areas of my life where I have this kind of joyful striving, where showing up is just the beginning.

But I rarely think about whether I’m getting better at the ukulele. I just pick it up and sing… you know, for fun. And in the act of simply showing up, apparently I still get a bit better: a sweet bonus on top of the joy I take in my music.

So, do you still play? (Or write, or sing, or paint?) Whether you are striving to improve or simply showing up or anywhere in between, I have some good news. The odds are good that you are making progress.

So I treasure…

Open space on my desk. Oh so tempting to set more things upon it, but ideally I keep it clutter-free. Papers and items that don’t belong crowd my thoughts when I try to write. I want to think about blog posts like this one or my space fairy adventures when I sit down to write– not my always-long list of mundane tasks.

Free and clear space on my calendar. This is different from needing time specifically to write (which of course I do). Even when I’m honoring my writing time fully, if I feel frantic and busy overall, if too many chores are falling behind and chaos reigns in my home, then I am too tired and stressed to bring my full self to the page. There is an ebb and flow to this rhythm, and of course I go through busy times like anyone. But I need to circle myself back to a calendar that lets me breathe.

Notebook upon notebook with plenty of empty pages. Often I don’t even fill them up quite all the way, because writing on the last few pages makes me feel claustrophobic, like my ideas might not have enough room to wiggle their toes. I tear off the last few sheets from my steno pads and let my three-year-old color on them.

Space for things to not always work. Grace for things to unfold differently. I need to be okay having boatloads of ideas that won’t ever be written, to ardently give myself over to projects that might turn out meh, to experiment and take risks without knowing the outcome. Without this space, my ideas wither before they have a chance. Seedlings are fragile things.

Space to play. To create bad art purely for fun. To have adventures. To goof off. To soak up life.

Tolerance for blocks and moments of not-yet-knowing. If I feel stumped on something I’m writing, and I stop to think, part of my brain becomes eager to fill that thinking space. With some answer, any answer, because no answer feels like the walls have vanished and, containerless, I’m perhaps not quite safe. My brain wants to dash off and think about something else, anything else, that I could be doing instead… housework, Facebook, a different project, an elaborate review of writing exercises and brainstorming techniques. Sometimes those writing exercises are just the thing. But most of my short pauses are just tiny bubbles that float away if I let them be.

These are my aspirations. I’m not perfect at giving myself space, and I don’t need to be. (Let’s make space for that too.) I just need to remember, to return to the practice, to make having space be the place I come home to.

Space is even more critical to claim during the pandemic, when we might have less space and time to ourselves, or perhaps we have a lot of space but trouble cultivating the energy to make use of it. Then, it matters even more to offer ourselves containers we can fill. To work, at least a little of the time, with clear and deep intention. Not to mention offer ourselves the space to slack off sometimes and simply be.

Do you need space to create? What might it look like to grant yourself more space?

Image by Christina, Creative Commons License.

Years ago, this jumbly phase of utter project chaos always defeated me: when I’d torn text into bits+ deleted huge swathes + wrote + rewrote + arranged + rearranged until finally “AGGGGH! I just can’t!” Once, this was generally when I gave up and put the whole project forever aside. Surely if my work looked this bad now, well, then it was truly bad. Stuff that was actually good started out pretty good and only got better when you edited. Right? This piece had started out okay and was getting worse + worse. So the piece was hopeless, and probably my writing aspirations were hopeless, too. I tossed it away and gave into the chaos.

As a busy mom, I look around me every day and see chaos of another kind: the chores that aren’t yet done, the household projects still on the long list, homeschool curriculum planning that needs my attention. Parenting moments with my kids when I fell short of my ideals flit through my mind too. Do I make the most of my time with them? Do I show up the way I want to show up for them?

As a writer, I think bigger-picture about my creative dreams and wonder, am I showing up for them? Is this messy draft, this chaotic revision process, what I have to show for myself? Is that completed piece I’m querying going to look like a mess to me someday when I read it again years from now?

It all weighs on me sometimes, feels like too much and tempts me to rearrange my time completely just to focus on making things less chaotic. I try to steward my time + energy wisely, with thoughtfulness. But I could toss away my day and completely reprioritize my plans based on this overwhemlingly intense flash of panicky unwillingness to tolerate the mess I see, instead. The pull of letting messes dictate my time is alluring. Can I tolerate this mess and spend my time on other things?

But it’s not really about tolerating the mess itself, whether I’m talking about the mess in my kitchen sink or the mess in my current manuscript.

It’s actually about tolerating my reaction to the mess, my judgments about the mess, my petty freak-outs about the mess, and my ardent yearning to instantly control the mess. I desperately want to do whatever it takes to stop having to look at the mess. Which can mean I dive into fixing things that don’t need fixing just to attain neatness and order again. Or, worse, I can choose to avoid the mess altogether: hello, procrastination.

It took years and lot of reading about other writers’ creative processes to understand that messy phases in written work are normal. Non-linear progress and outright anti-progress during rewriting are normal. Loathing my project sometimes is normal too, and so is questioning my self-worth when I’m in the weeds.

For many of us, these dramatic ups and downs can be part of the process. For those of us who experience this, I think the key thing is to accept that messses abound and keep going anyway. First drafts are allowed to be shitty (thanks, Anne Lamott) and the process of making them less shitty can look like wading through an awful lot of… well, shit. The crap you see on the way tells you nothing about the beauty of what might appear on the other side.

Once I accepted the anxiety and drama that rewriting through chaos brings me, I found that (of course) my intense overwhelm reaction actually lessened immediately. It’s mindfulness, acceptance, being present in a loving way but still moving foward in action. I could see my stressed-out feelings happen and think fondly to myself, “Here I am, overwhelmed by the messy part of rewriting again. Okay. Keep going. This phase doesn’t last forever.”

And it has become okay. When I finally stopped making myself wrong for my range of reactions to messiness– while still not letting myself off the hook about continuing forward– it became easier to just accept my feelings and move on. Then, after awhile, a new kind of joy came into revision for me, a pleasure I never thought was possible. It can outright be fun + freeing to playfully mess around in art like a stompy-booted kid in a puddle, and it’s so rewarding to finally sense something better arising out of hard work. Order comes around again as the cycle moves on. But it takes longer for the magical transformation to happen if I try to rush through the part where I’m stewing in the mess.

As for the chaos of ordinary life, I still have yet to find pleasure in doing the dishes and reorganizing the cluttery disaster that the entryway devolves into every day. But that’s okay. I clean and organize anyway, more than I enjoy and less than I feel I “should.” My house is clean enough, though not perfect. I can tolerate what mess there is, and I can tolerate my dislike of that mess, too.

The mess is not the meaning. It’s just there. My reaction to the mess need not be the driver of my decisions. It’s just a set of thoughts, feelings and judgments. I still get to choose.

When that chrysalis full of post-caterpillar ooze is a steeping stewy alchemical mess, the blueprint for gold is right there in the mess itself, guiding the evolving process cell by cell when it looks like nothing is happening. Shifting towards color and flight and breaking out of the cold container to head into clear skies.

Soak in the chaos and keep going and trust that shape will return anew. Somewhere inside your mess might be a glorious new thing you can find only by stumbling around in the dark a whole lot, trying to find the right words.

Aside from all the interruptions from our children, the home itself is full of mental interruption for some of us. As Emma’s brilliant comic about the mental load borne largely by women shows, the very act of moving through physical space can set off a cascade of associations: tasks to do on the spot or remember for later.

Walking through the house lights up my brain with all the implied tasks embedded in the objects around me. It’s immensely distracting, a mental stream that washes away all memory of whatever else I might have been focused on. In an ideal world these things might all be tracked in a productivity system, and I love productivity systems, but I also think they are bad at managing the web of household tasks women often carry in their minds.

Parenting and household work aren’t the only interruption culprits, either, though they’re the categories that are top of mind for me. Social media updates and calendar reminders and texts ping at us from our phones. And of course workplaces are full of interruptions, too.

Obviously, the external interruptions that come with being a parent, an employee, or just a person moving through a high-tech world, can be exhausting and derailing. However, most of us can carve out a least a little uninterrupted time when we truly feel it’s important. We find time while the kids are sleeping, during lunch time at work, tag team with a spouse or friend, or get a sitter. We turn off the notifications on our phone and shut the door. It’s not easy, but it can usually be done– if not always as often as we’d wish. External interruptions can be paused.

Sadly, though, the challenge of the interrupted life isn’t limited to carving out space for interruption-free time. The greatest challenge is that we habituate our internal rhythms to interruption. Rapid serial focus shifts become the norm. Without external interruptions, we find our attention wanders, so we switch tasks. Basically, we start interrupting ourselves to fill the interruption gap. It feels familiar. It feels safe.

It’s as though our attention span has gotten out of shape because we spend so much time unable to use it. We’ve become not only used to interruption, but comfortable with it. Which can make the lack of interruption feel uncomfortable— and often unconsciously, we return to what is comfortable: switching rapidly between tasks. In other words, self-interruption.

To write, or do anything else creative, I need to push past the self-interruption chatter to really dive deep into my work or play. As an introvert, flow time fills me up and allows my creativity to fully emerge. It means I get my work done. That just doesn’t happen if I’m messing around on Facebook or turning the laundry every time I feel slightly unsure of what’s next in my work. I have to push through that temptation to distract myself and gently return to what I want to be doing. (Some days I’m good at this… other days, not so much.)

If I truly need a break, real breaks can be rejuvenating– but constantly hopping around from one thing to another looking for shiny brain-candy doesn’t satiate me, help me overcome a stuck creative spot, or do anything but suck away precious time + energy.

And so each time I sit down in a quiet place with a chunk of more than 5-10 minutes to work, I set down a fresh mug of coffee. I tidy up my desk– because clutter is a huge source of distraction for me. I light a candle. And I consciously switch gears, inviting an inner state of focus and flow.

The transition can feel rocky, as the chatter in my monkey mind sounds even louder when surrounded by stillness instead of chaos. Worries and doubts come flooding into the space I’ve opened up in my mind. I strive to let them flow by, or jot them down on a notepad if I think of something I want to come back to later. I try to return my focus, again and again, to the page before me and the keyboard beneath my fingertips. It’s almost a form of mindfulness meditation.

I’m not always successful, because self-interruption is a deep and alluring habit. However, I’m getting better. And I consider the effort worthwhile because seriously good stuff comes out of that more focused, deep-level concentration.

Then my workday ends or naptime’s over. The kiddos come home and though there are certainly lots of deeply focused loving moments to share, I also resume my wild juggling dance of managed chaos, rapid task-switching and exuberant and irritating interruptions coming at me thick and fast. The multi-tasking mode has a beauty of its own and it’s tremendously efficient at certain kinds of things. I spend a lot of my life in that mode, and I wouldn’t change it.

But I don’t want to start thinking of it as my only norm. Because when it’s time to turn off the pings and arrows of the interrupting world, I want to make sure I still remember that focus feels good. And focus gets my creative work done. The last thing I want to do, when I finally have time away from interruption, is interrupt myself.

That’s the line I often think to myself when something breaks, someone has a fever, something was forgotten, someone makes a huge mess, someone turns a series of should-be-fast tasks into an eternity of kiddo-dawdling when I really need to get everyone out the damn door. Arrrrgh! It’s one thing after another. Can’t I have one day– just one day!– where things go right? PLEASE?

Note: I’m not talking about the big stuff here. When the huge hard things happen, we meet that as we must. Sometimes we need to drop everything and massively shift priorities. We do what we must to get through the big challenges in life.

What I am talking about now is how I can get thrown off by the ubiquitous small-to-medium things going wrong. The flocks of tiny daily derailments, and the medium-sized jolts that still happen with depressing frequency.

These things can really get me off kilter when I seduce myself into planning with a sweet bubbly mix of optimism, expectations and lofty goals, expecting smooth sailing as the default– only to have messy real life, the actual default, show up instead. (Again. Like usual. Because, well… real life is real life.)

When bumps hit, we must absorb their impact somewhere. And real life tries day after day to bump my creative work right off my plate into a splatty mess on the floor, right next to my toddler’s breakfast food that I haven’t had time to wipe up.

Letting my writing time go to handle a minor bump or two? Or writing through it but letting my sleep and basic self-care go instead? No big deal if it happens once in a while. But doing it all the time leads to a pattern in which certain work simply does not get done. Because slightly bumpy days? Are actually most days, and if I don’t make my writing happen most days, well… I’m sure you can see where that leads. (Hint: not much of anywhere.)

My number one strategic bump absorption technique involves putting two kinds of time chunks on my calendar. The first is dedicated core time for my writing + coaching. The second, equally important chunks are open, empty space.

That overflow space can be filled up with handling minor crises if things go amiss, or it can also be filled with extra creative work or other things I’d like to get done if things go well. Having that space for potential bump management means that I can safeguard my creative work and keep showing up for that.

I can’t plan for the individual bumps, as I never know when they’ll happen or what form they’ll take. I have to plan for bumpiness in general. Holding space and building buffers is how I do it. There are surely other ways, too. What matters is noticing if the entropy of bumpiness has made a pattern of siphoning off the time + energy your creative work is calling for… and finding a way to create new patterns instead.

It doesn’t always work. Some days are easier, and some days are harder. Our ability to adroitly deal with bumpiness will, of course, be bumpy too. There are certainly days where dropping some creative work time ends up being the best choice out of an array of not-great choices. And that’s okay.

Perfection’s not the goal– the goal is overall consistency in a way that’s compatible with real life, not idealized life. Some derailment is normal, but if you create conditions that allow you to show up more than you don’t show up, you’ll make progress.

Bumps aren’t the exception– they’re the norm, as our creative work must also be our norm. Don’t wait for smoothness; you’ll have a long wait coming. To make creative work happen, we’ve got to find ways to show up on bumpy days.

That said, I also adore having creative hobbies that I am terrible at. Being a haphazard experimental beginner over + over again, immersed in neck-deep newness and floundering around trying to make something. Picking up an instrument I haven’t touched for months and playing badly on it for fun. Being an artistic dilettante who jumps impulsively from one hobby to the next.

I’m not actually inherently terrible at these pursuits. I’m not saying I have hidden genius-level aptitude, but I could certainly achieve respectable levels of skill at any of them if I truly put in the work. I’ve picked up the beginning or early intermediate level skills of so very many creative pursuits… calligraphy, painting, pottery, bellydance, bookbinding, drumming, knitting and all the ones I’m leaving off the list because the full list would make this blog post way too long.

I used to think less of myself for my fickle artistic ways, but over time I just decided to enjoy it: I flit from hobby to hobby like a happy little bee gathering nectar and turning it into creative honey. I began to see that having these creative hobbies I can take so lightly is a boon to the forms of creative work I know I cannot ever leave.

So here’s what I love about having hobbies I’m bad at– and why I think having no-pressure hobbies makes me better at my core creative work:

I relax. Noodling around with something that doesn’t ever, ever have to be good is peaceful + freeing. And that sense of creating without pressure on my level of craft, or any focus on results, carries over into my writing. I remember that I can experiment and that it’s okay sometimes to just mess around in a process-oriented way, like my toddler does. This sense of freedom + experiment allows for greater creativity when I sit down to write.

Everything looks new again. Every time I learn a new craft, I gain an entire new lens with which to view the world, an entire new set of data through which I can evolve new interconnections + insights. I get lots of new ideas. And since I have made a hobby of enjoying new hobbies and letting some of the older ones ebb + flow or drop off my plate, I can add new ones as often as I like. (Though I do sometimes make myself some rules about using up my art supplies before buying a new genre’s version!)

I reconnect to wonder. Being a beginner at something again reminds me of the fresh joy of discovery, a sense of play, and a sense of simple childlike accomplishment: “Look, I made a thing!” I pull that sense of wonder + accomplishment into the rest of my work.

I practice looking foolish. When I learn new skills in group environments, I unfailingly feel clumsy. As I fumble around, I feel the spectator effect, as if everyone is far more aware of + interested in my errors than is actually the case. Being used to experiencing this awkward stage again + again makes me more tolerant of risk-taking in other endeavors. And for me, being used to overcoming my fear of looking ridiculous makes it easier for me to do all the risky things that can help me level up in my core creative work: submit the manuscript, try out the new skill, write something in a new genre, and so on.

I get to follow the fun. Sometimes when I write, I get quite focused on writing through resistance + finishing my projects. This kind of persistence is important, but it’s also important to remember how to simply seek out pleasure and write the good stuff that makes my heart glow. Picking up, playing with and dropping creative hobbies on a whim all help me to remember just what it feels like to deeply trust my creative urges.

I fill myself up with extra energy. When I get fired up about some fascinating new endeavor, that inspiration and high level of creative energy carries over into everything else I do. So becoming obsessed with mangling some new ukulele strumming techniques can carry over into how I feel when my butt hits the chair and I’m getting words onto the screen– I can have more days where that feels like a sexy joyful communion and fewer days when I’m typing through molasses because sometimes that’s what a writer needs to do.

Sometimes something more awaits. I’m always exuberantly excited by new hobbies when I begin them, yet most of them pass in + out of my life over time. Some, like my ukulele, become something else… a magical transformative ongoing creative habit that remains purely process-oriented. I’ll never be a performer and I don’t want to be. I just love playing and singing– it completes something for me. (And actually, playing a song on the uke is my favorite way of kicking writer’s block to the curb.) I’m not sure I would’ve picked up my uke in the first place if I weren’t so used to trying on new creative hobbies for fun.

What do you love being bad at, or perhaps just okay at?

Does having a no-pressure creative outlet help you with your other creative work? I’d love to hear from others who dip their toes into new hobbies to feed their core creative work. Maybe you’d like to join me when I finally decide which beginner’s class I should take this spring: precious metal clay fabrication, beading or mosaic-making.

When I had one kid and worked from home, I had the privilege of building my schedule around his nap and childcare hours. I knew I was very lucky. It was far from easy, and it had its share of interrupts and disconnects and dilemmas. But looking back on it now, I sigh for how much easier it was. Because now I have two children, and I’ve had to level up.

My husband and I are juggling two sets of schedules + routines + needs plus our own. These routines rarely line up well organically. We line them up artificially with considerable amounts of planning, pushing and a dash of luck. By my estimates, managing two children’s schedules instead of one actually makes me about four times less efficient: an exponential rather than linear change.

Perhaps I could better optimize all this somehow if I were the one who got to make up the schedules. But while I have influence and a lot of flexibility in some areas, school start times and traffic levels and especially my childrens’ bio-rhythms are not fully under my direct control.

It’s guaranteed that assorted drop-offs and pick-ups don’t harmonize the way I wish, and that naptime conflicts with everything no matter what. I have more strange bits of time that are not optimally sized for me to work in. More times when I must hurry one child along, or wake them before they are ready, or occupy them while they wait for the other one.

Twice as many opportunities for someone to get sick when I was expecting they could go to daycare or school that day. Twice as many opportunities for someone small to have a bad day that radiates through everyone elses’ moods. Twice as many chances for someone to go through a growth spurt, cognitive leap or other challenging phase. And of course, I’m going through my second round of kiddo-induced sleep deprivation. I keep waiting for that stage to end, and it keeps on going.

Worst of all, some kind of magical alchemy makes getting into or out of the door a dreadful ordeal. Those threshold transitions sap out some ridiculous amount of my life force each day. It has something to do with how terrible it is to deal with shoes + our front steps, I know that much. Those moments are like my larger schedule challenges written in miniature: each child’s moments of struggle + tantrum + efficiency are always out of sync, each child needing my attention at just the wrong time while the other one then gets distracted + loses momentum. I switch kiddo-focus and the cycle begins anew. The minutes feel like hours. I’m rarely late as I’ve budgeted a lot of time for this, but I always worry I will be late on any given day. I hate being late.

When we finally reach the bottom of the steps, or the living room when we are coming back in, or the end of the week, or the final moments of the bedtime dance, or whatever gauntlet I feel like I’ve just run… I always hear the voice of Count Rugen from The Princess Bride in my head. “I’ve just sucked one year of your life away… How do you feel?”

It feels petty to even write about this, the trickiness of two. It is not a major problem compared to, well, major problems. And I feel like I should end this with some words of wisdom, but I don’t really have any. We organize the best we can. We walk, trudge, flail or dance through the day as best we can. We drink our coffee or tea or coconut water. We take deep breaths. We try not to sweat the small stuff.

We show up for our work + our art + our family + ourselves. We make it through. Despite my complaints, I honestly feel like I’m doing a fine job.

And it should go without saying that there are obviously amazing parts to having two children which I am not mostly writing about here. Of course there are. I do love it.

The privilege of getting to nurture + know + talk with not one but two growing human beings. Feeling like I know what I am doing once in a while. Watching the two play together or love on each other. Sharing magical moments of profound learning and laughter. A periodic upwelling of rightness and fulfillment… a clear sense that yes, this is hard. And yes, this is right where I’m supposed to be. It’s all worth it and so on.

But that doesn’t take away the hard. Some days, it is indeed very hard. Gratitude, I wrote recently online, is an “and” thing rather than a “but” thing. I am grateful, and frustrated. I cherish my kids, and caring for them is hard. I love every moment I spend with them, except for the moments in which I still love them and hate the damn moment we’re all in.

Just know that you are not alone if the minor frustrations of parenting, coming one after another in their relentless + unceasing stream, wear you out some days. I’m going to keep showing up for myself, my work, my creativity and my kiddos. And I know you will too.

And for now, this sweet zone of focused productivity– tagged as #naptimeisforwriting on my Facebook page— has come to an end. I’m going to go wake up the toddler from her nap before she’s ready and then go pick up the 1st grader from school at the inconvenient hour that has been decreed. Because some days, that’s what you gotta do.

I know that after we’re home and we make it in from the front porch, everything will get easier.

Perhaps it goes like this: You have an hour to get something done that really means a lot to you. You start gathering your supplies, get yourself a cup of coffee to have at hand, clear some clutter away from your work area, look up some instructions you need on the internet, and maybe spend 15 minutes on Facebook in the process (oops).

Suddenly, you’ve used up 40 of those 60 minutes and feel like you haven’t gotten anything actually done. Perhaps you then leverage those 20 remaining minutes to get started (finally) on your intended task but feel sad that you didn’t get to sink into the full hour of time you’d hoped for. Perhaps you give up and go back to Facebook, start re-organizing one of the closets that tripped you up, or yield up those 20 minutes to the laundry that’s waiting for folding.

That’s a lot of getting ready, and little to no work.

This time-waste dynamic can be a form of avoidance if we are reluctant to engage in the task we claim we’re going to do. However, it can also simply be from fuzzy boundaries between time we spend doing and time we spend getting ready to do. We haven’t thought through what we will need in order to carry out out intentions, so nothing is at hand. Time + energy dissipate as we traipse about gathering and regathering and noticing another thing we need to work.

In my Tiny Pockets of Time workbook, I spend an entire section discussing how to set the stage for easy entry for yourself. One key aspect of easy entry is getting everything you will need for your pocket of time prepared ahead of time. When your work or play time starts, all that you need is at hand. You can start right away.

At its essence, dividing up the getting ready from the doing itself means distinguishing the core thing that you want to accomplish from the preparation tasks that are vital only because they clear the way to that essential task. You can start instead of prepare to start.

This distinction is especially critical if you are a busy parent because uninterrupted large chunks of time are particularly hard to come by. Best to save those large time chunks for the creative, flow-state Doing or whatever you’ve called out as most important for which only your full presence will do. Then, you can work to fit the preparations for that time into smaller or lower-quality time windows that are hopefully more prevalent.

Getting ready is necessary + important. But if you want to be effective, you can’t let it get in the way of the Doing itself, or masquerade as the Doing itself.

When you do sit down at the computer or the journal or the zabuton or the canvas or whatever the tools of your work or play might be… you can jump straight into Doing. No more getting ready to do.

And if jumping straight into truly Doing brings up intense feelings of resistance? Then you can start working to figure out what’s actually getting in your way, instead of using getting ready as a way to hide or self-soothe.

And if, preparations having been lovingly pre-handled by your past self, you find that you really can usually dive straight into Doing? Then you’re giving yourself the gift of using your time + energy with your whole heart and bringing your dreams into the world.

Is there somewhere in your life that needs more Doing and less getting ready?

You are allowed to dedicate time to your own budding business and fold that laundry later.

You are allowed to do important research before you process your email inbox.

You are allowed to go for a run or take a bath, and leave the toys scattered on the floor, without an ounce of guilt.

Housework, or whatever busywork tends to grab your time + attention hardest, is not a prerequisite for access to the rest of your life. No one passed a law that you have to be “caught up” before you are allowed to do other (generally more meaningful) work… or to relax, play and enjoy yourself.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I like my own house to be (reasonably) clean. Super-cluttered or dirty spaces stress me out, make the kiddos less self-sufficient and make other tasks take longer. I don’t love cleaning + organizing, and sometimes I outright begrudge the time + energy it takes to do my share. Yet I am so very much happier when the family space we share is well-tended. I totally get that you need to find a way to make chores happen, too.

Housework needs to get done, but not always first and not always to some arbitrary high standard. The problem arises when these activities fill up whatever space is available, leaving you only crumbs of time for other things. The problem arises when you feel like housework is holding you hostage: like it always must be done first, before you give yourself permission to do other stuff that actually matters a hell of a lot more.

And I’m not talking about quality time with your kids. You already know that matters, and I know you already prioritize that over housework, often. But do you also prioritize the other things that matter to you most, outside of your role as a parent?

This isn’t only about housework, either. Any other kind of never-ending busywork can pull your focus into an eternal fight to stay caught up to an arbitrary standard– to the detriment of other things you value.

If you allow a sense of beholdenness to busywork to dictate your access to your deeper work + play, your house (or whatever) might be cleaner but your heart + mind might become emptier. And the world will miss you. The work or play that makes your heart sing? The world needs it.

What is it, outside of family time, that matters most to you? I dare you to do it first next time. Before you work on more routine + basic chores. Maybe right now.

Free yourself. Make stuff happen. Create. Play. Launch. Screw the laundry. The dishes can wait. Because, yeah, they’ll still be there. And someone, maybe you, will still need to do them… eventually. In the meantime, what project or pursuit is truly calling out to your heart?

I dare you to do it first.

What will you do first?

As someone fascinated by productivity and self-improvement, I have access to a ridiculous number of productivity systems and hacks in my brain– even more if I look them up online or dig into the productivity bookshelf in my office. So sometimes my initial instinct when I sense a nagging issue is to start tweaking.

Make it more streamlined, more efficient. Be more disciplined. Come up with a better system. There’s always a better system, a smarter routine, right? Tweak, tweak, tweak.

For some problems, a tweak or a better system is just what’s needed. Sometimes starting small or changing tactics can produce enormous change or clarity. I’m actually a huge fan of this approach and often it’s perfect… when you point it at the right problem. But it’s vital to practice discernment and notice when being more efficient is not enough to create the change you seek.

The best tactics won’t help you if you lack sufficient resources or the big-picture strategy is flawed. Avoidance efficiently masquerades as action sometimes. You feel like you’re doing something because you’re working so hard, but it’s not effective. It’s fidgeting in place, lots of movement but no momentum.

Do you have a problem that’s calling to you for bigger change? Here’s where to start when small is not enough, and it’s time to go bigger.

1. Ask yourself: What is the BIGGER decision I’m avoiding with small fixes? Make a clear choice. Act on it.

2. Invest a much BIGGER influx of resources into the challenge—usually time, energy or money. Often, this means you need to drop or drastically change other commitments or patterns. Or, it could mean asking others for help. (Even if the asking is hard.)

3. What is the BIGGEST change you can imagine making to address your challenge? Consider that change… seriously. You certainly don’t have to actually make the change– it might not be the right thing at all– but allow yourself to truly think as big as possible about what could change. Then think about some choices that might fall in between your tweaking approaches and the biggest possible changes. Perhaps your path lies somewhere in that middle ground.

4. Or, paradoxically, take a BIG step back from changing anything and completely let go all of those tweaks and hacks. What happens when you stop trying to make things happen? What happens if you merely let yourself see where you are with clear eyes and make the most of that, instead? Going with the flow for a time frees up resources that you were spending trying to change. This fallow interlude can help you decide whether you actually, truly, want to do what it takes to create change. Perhaps you realize from this experiment that you don’t want any change right now, and that’s okay. Or perhaps you become clearer that you truly are ready to take bigger action.

5. Get quiet and still. Ask the part of you that’s wisest, deepest, truest, most loving and completely beyond fear – is this a time for big or small or in between or even nothing at all? What does the truest part of you already know about this challenge? How can you apply that insight to make a big difference?

Do you have a challenge that is calling you to think bigger and step outside your standard problem-solving modes? What will change your game?