More takeaways from Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work

Opening comment: I hope readers gain even half the value as I do from writing this down freehand and rehashing/posting it.

But feel free to throw money, coffee, good pastries, or an ‘I adopted a shelter pet!’ certificate my way. [I’m a pretty simple guy, really.]

So, more takeaways from one of my daily go-to books for changing/reinforcing my thinking:  Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work:  **

Become a Documentarian of What You Do.  

“Whether you share it or not, documenting and recording
your process as you go alonreading-at-desk-1200g has its own rewards. You’ll start to see the work you’re doing more clearly and feel like you’re making progress.” [It’s what I’m trying to do at jrmays.com.]

 

Be an Amateur  

“Because they have little to lose, amateurs are willing to try anything and share the results. They take chances, experiment, and follow their whims.” [I have a poster on my wall: If not now, when?  Works for me.]

“The world is changing at such a rapid rate, it’s turning us all into amateurs. Even for professionals, the best way to flourish is to retain an amateur’s spirit and embrace uncertainty and the unknown.”

Read Obituaries.

“Reading about people who are dead now and did things with their lives makes me want to get up and do something decent with mine.” [In his case, be a good dad and husband, create, curate, and share art and experience.]

He continues, “Take inspiration from the people who muddled through life before you–they all started out as amateurs, and they got where they were going by making do with what they were given and having the guts to put themselves out there. Follow their example.”

** Not aiming for anything –no commission, no pats on the back, no genuflections–other than to share good work by others.

15-Minute Intervals of Work

Today I’m using the 15-minute work intervals approach.

I’m in the middle of my 15-minute blog posting interval. Kind of obvious, I guess…

  • Posted author comments to jrmays.com .
  • And now this post…I have a minute left. [Confession–I ran overtime on this. Still, it does get me focused to generate and finish.]

juggle-1027147_1280

Other 15-minute work intervals completed today:

  1. Job search cover letter revisions
  2. Review of editor’s comments on a piece of fiction. She and I connected through Reedsy. She’s right on the mark. Money well-spent. I have a lot of work to do on this project.
  3. Check in with authormarketingclub.com [Video on exploding your word count with dictation software]
  4. Generated list of activities for an ebook I’m writing
  5. First 200 words at-a-sitting [turned out to be 280, handwritten]
  6. Read James Altucher’s What to Do When You’re Rejected . Good food for thought.
  7. 200 words at-a-sitting [session 2] on my Chromebook. Turned out to be 550 words. Writing via keyboard never ‘feels’ as good to me as writing in a notebook, but it’s darned sure more productive.

***

My 15-minute email-check interval: Good to impose a limit here.

Listening to Steep Canyon Rangers [a group often often accompanied by banjoist/funny guy Steve Martin]

Bought The Happiness of Pursuit by Chris Guillebeau. Currently $1.99.

A blogger ‘liked’ my post yesterday so I followed a link to that person’s work.

http://bit.ly/2raHB6y  [Gardening4Gains]

Here was my comment to the post:

One resonating line: Do you let life control you or do you take the reins?  Your point about exercise as privilege vs. chore really hit home. I stared at the 10 cubic yards of soil to shovel, wheelbarrow into backyard from front driveway and thought, “yick.” Then I remembered two friends who have had/will have surgery for back and neck stuff and thought, “Geez, T, what a weaselly wimp you are for groaning at the thought of good honest mindless grunt work.”

***

Still with the email session…

–Memorable line from Seth Godin’s daily email:

What if we take the responsibility instead of waiting for it to be offered?

–Unsubscribed from Hilton Honors Club. [Can’t say as I remember signing up for that one. I sure as heck don’t quality as a titanium club member or whatever their special designation is.

Am up to 65 unsubscribes. It feels like there might be 10 more around the corner…

Thanks for reading!

The 15-Minute Experiment…

“I just know an interruption is around that corner…”

boy-peeking-around-corner

So here’s the deal…I have self-diagnosed my problem: Scattered brain.

I’ll stop at self-diagnosis.

Self-medication could get really ugly and involve empty bags of kettle corn strewn throughout the house.

Today, I’m going with 15-minute work segments.

I opened a new tab in Google Chrome and in the web address box [called the Omnibox, by the way…please bear with my occasional geekness.]

I typed ‘set timer to 15 minutes’ and sure enough a clock started counting down. [Been using that for months, but wanted to share that with you.]

So this blog post is my first work segment.

What other ones have I planned for?

  1. Explore a self-publishing resource I signed up for.
  2. Mindmap to flesh out new book ideas.
  3. Type!! I have tons of content in my notebooks and I feel the need to digitize them. I believe in a previous post I shared a photo of a pile of notebooks that have collected dust over the last year. In there lies a trove [not ready to call it a treasure trove] of ideas that need revisiting.
  4. Publish my Writing Warmups book to Kindle.
  5. Stand over the slow bathroom sink drain and ponder what could go wrong if I dive into that project myself.

Challenges to my experiment?

— My pup who is coming off emergency surgery and needs my vigilant eye to ensure he doesn’t undo the post-op stitchery. He is currently in deep REM state and whimper-barking at some dream-state rodent interloper.

— Need for a nap. Been sleeping on the couch for the last ten days to continue the dog-watch…and tending to his 1:00 AM, 3:00 AM, 5:00 AM backyard visits. [Medications mess up his usual sleep through the night routine.]

— The infernal need to check email.


Update: I have two minutes left in this blog post…You can only hope I’ll pare this down, right?

Back to the to-do list…

  1. Most likely revisit the above items for additional quarter-hour stints.
  2. Morning pages.
  3. Reading from Show Your Work, Making Ideas Happen, Unthink, The Report Card, and Using WordPress.
  4. Check in with flippedlifestyle.com.
  5. Add a blog post to  ednotions.wordpress.com .

Okay, the timer went off and I did some polishing of this. Time to publish and move on to morning pages. Though, of course, there’s the dog…

Will let my thousands [dozens?] [pair?] of readers know how this worked out.

An epiphany…

Character Lightbulbs Represents Power Source And Concepts 3d Ren

 

I’m 15 minutes past the 15-minute goal. I’ll take this as a good sign…that I can extend my attention span a little further when I need to. [image from blogpiks.com

For the time being, I prefer to not interpret it as inserting distraction into my workday. ;-]