Tag: pushing through

  • Pushing Forward and Through

    Big Mud

    If you’ve visited Western and Central Europe you know it can be a wet, nasty place. As you drive around, especially in non-summer months, you’ll get acquainted with the mud. The touristy places are gorgeous and attract thousands for a reason– because non-gorgeous places aren’t worth visiting.

    Reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms acquaints you with the dreaded reality found in the mud. Months and months of cold, wet weather wore soldiers down. Visiting famous battle sites all over Europe helps you imagine the misery soldiers felt over the centuries.

    Their leaders brought them out into a field where they sank in the mud, got covered in it from head to toe, slept in it, and then were told to fight. They had to think… why here? What are we doing? Can’t we just go home?

    You can’t see the fields of France, Germany, and Belgium and not think about the military leaders. It had  to take serious leadership to keep men motivated to fight in that.

    Leading in the Mud

    The last 24 hours have been an exercise of pushing forward and through some mud.

    My definition of leadership is taking people where they would otherwise not go on their own.

    Leadership is an action of the collective will.

    • We will go there
    • We must go there
    • We will go even if its difficult to get there

    Right now, I’m leading forward on some things which are facing some forms of resistance.

    The details of what I’m pushing through aren’t even relevant to the larger point. Instead, I’m pushing through because the only way to move forward is to push forward and through some stuff. 

    O, The Stuff

    In the past several years I’ve noticed that others tend to get hung up on the stuff and less convicted by the need to push through the stuff.

    What’s the stuff? Distractions. Frustrations. Anxiety. Complications. Family life factors. Physical limitations. You know… stuff. Stuff is real. But it stands between where you are and where you need to go... so it’s just stuff to push through, right? 

    All too often I talk to people who know where they need to go– are truly convicted that they need to press on towards the prize– but they’ve fallen into a fatalistic, over-spiritualization of the stuff.

    Too many times we look at the stuff and read into it that since its difficult that God might not want us to push through the stuff. We start off on a journey towards something but as soon as stuff gets difficult we start mislabeling difficulties. (see Myth: God Opens and Closes Doors)

    Relentlessly Pushing Forward

    When I think of my last 24 hours and some of the stuff… really, it’s “just” stuff to push forward through. (“Just” meaning it’s stuff I can push through, not that the “just” part of it somehow means that its unimportant.) Some of the things were beyond my control, so you roll with them. Other things were things I didn’t know, so you have to make good decisions in the moment about it and press onward. Other things were situations faced because my skill level was too low, so you learn quickly and figure out what to do. Still other stuff is self-inflicted, so you correct that too.

    The point of leading somewhere isn’t the stuff you have to overcome to get there. It’s that you overcome the stuff to get where you need to go. 

  • How to Push Through a Creative Drought

    I don’t know if it’s the workload or the time of year or just fatigue. But I’ve had a hard time being especially creative lately.

    That’s bad news for a person who runs a company called McLane Creative. My projects and my deadlines could care less how I’m feeling or if I’m inspired. There are people depending on my creative, timely solutions and that’s that.

    I have to push through. And I do push through. Getting stuff done is the bottom line.

    How I Push Through Creative Droughts and Get Stuff Done

    1. Rest – It might seem counter-productive when you have a deadline and are staring at a blank canvas or a mounting todo list, but the most obvious cause of a creative drought is a lack of rest and play. So take a nap in the middle of the day. Give yourself two hours to read a book and dose in the park. Take Saturday off. You are not a machine, you cannot produce 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. This isn’t a reality show. Making time to rest is the most productive thing you can do.
    2. Exercise – When I hit a creative wall during my day I take a walk. Pushing my son in the stroller or riding my bike for errands instead of driving or even doing jumping jacks in my office helps. I like to think of ideas as a heavy substance inside my body. When I get the blood pumping fast the ideas are able to get pumped up closer to my heart.
    3. Discipline – Sometimes I’m hitting the creative wall because I’ve procrastinated. But most often it’s because a project I finished in the past comes back for immediate changes and edits. That little bit of chaos throws me off. Instinct lies to me, building a desire to both finish my current project and go back and make some quick changes on the existing work. Being disciplined means pushing through what I’m currently working on and making late-breaking changes work with my schedule.
    4. Momentum – As creative people we know that productivity is the result of keeping the fly wheel going. So when I have something flowing I know I need to keep going, even if that means working until 1 AM. I’ve found that when I am in a drought I can’t build or sustain momentum. So set-up your work time or todo list in a way that builds momentum instead of starting and stopping all day.
    5. Change Mediums – Just about everything project I do will end up in a digital format. But when I’m not feeling it I’m quick to try another medium. I am not a great artist, but I use paper and colored pencils. Sometimes I go take photos of architectural elements for a project or shoot some video just to try to sparks something I wouldn’t have seen if I’d just sat down in front of my computer with Photoshop or Illustrator.
    6. Documentation – When things are really, really bad I spend 20 minutes taking all of my tasks for a project and adding them to a Google Docs spreadsheet. This turns my project into a series of small tasks that I can easily do without needing much creativity.
    7. Suspend reality – I have two offices. One in my home and one in shared, rented space downtown San Diego. (Little Italy) That helps me have fresh space in which to work. But sometimes I need to do even more than that in order to manufacture some creativity. Sometimes I work in a favorite coffee shop, sometimes  I book time to work for a day at a friends office, and sometimes I sneak a half day or whole day onto the end of a work trip just so I can work somewhere else. Suspending reality also means shutting down all of the distractions which pull you away from your creative space. (Shutting down chat software, putting your phone on silent and not returning text messages, logging out of Facebook and Twitter, etc.)
    8. Finish something – Perhaps my biggest droughts come when I have lots and lots of projects going and none of them finishing. I’ve found that finishing a project helps me be more creative on my others. It’s as if I can put that project behind me and that gives me more energy/space to think about the others. So finish something! (Or suspend another project to get it off your shoulders!)
    Photo credit: Dust Bowl 1936 by erjkprunczyk via Flickr (Creative Commons)