Alexandersmap

    Tag: Julia Cameron

    • Getting to Deeper Work

      “In an age of network tools… knowledge workers increasingly replace deep work with the shallow alternative—constantly sending and receiving e-mail messages like human network routers, with frequent breaks for quick hits of distraction. Larger efforts that would be well served by deep thinking, such as forming a new business strategy or writing an important grant application, get fragmented into distracted dashes that produce muted quality…. Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work.” – Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

      I think the reason I get up early is to think, uninterrupted. And when I am interrupted, by other early risers or by something as simple as the cat meowing for food my own deep thinking is disrupted, often to a point where I have to put away the work and find a way to reset myself. The beautiful thing about posting a blog every day is I’m forced to find a way through the shallow pool I find myself swimming in back to deeper waters, distractions be damned. But the work never feels the same.

      Noise-cancelling headphones help a lot. When I go deep I’ll play the same song on repeat until I’m done with whatever project I’m committed to finishing. For me, two songs work particularly well for this, Mark Knopfler’s Wild Theme (no surprise if you know what my favorite movie is) and Claude Debussy’s Clair de lune because they both quietly soar and have no lyrics to draw me out of my focused state. After years of this trick, playing one of these songs becomes Pavlovian in snapping my mind to attention.

      Long walks in nature help reset the mind when you find yourself in frenetic shallowness, and I have my go-to spots for this too. Walking helps you sort out the puzzle pieces in your subconscious mind, putting all the pieces on the table and shuffling them one step at a time. If the walk goes well you sort things out just enough. But sometimes I find myself dwelling on another puzzle altogether, and realize the distraction wasn’t swimming shallow at all but this elephant in the room that you’ve got to remove before you can properly focus on the original project. Long walks help sift the pieces enough for you to see what you’ve been staring at all along.

      Another trick of the trade that countless brilliant minds subscribe to is strict daily application of Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages. Write whatever comes out of your mind onto the page for three pages in a gushing stream of consciousness until you’ve gotten all the noise out of yourself, and then shift to creative output. I’ve tried this a few times but find myself frustrated by the time spent on Morning Pages that I could be spending on the work itself. The fault isn’t in the process but in my commitment to it. Enough people swear by it that it must work, and to go deeper I might have to recommit to this process myself.

      “The way to live is to create.
      Die Empty.
      Get every idea out of your head and into reality.”
      – Derek Sivers,       How to Live

      Whatever gets you there, deeper work is where we mine the very best of ourselves. Eliminate as many distractions as possible, retreat to your proverbial cabin in the woods and do the work. While there’s still time.

    • The What and How of Boldly Leaping

      “I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow.” – Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

      The hard part about writing every day wasn’t starting, it was mentioning to people that I was writing every day. Writing has always been part of my identity, it was just expressed in other ways for a couple of decades while I busied myself with other things. People tend to assume those other things are who you are. But we know better don’t we? The quiet conspiracy of expressing your identity stays with you always. One day I just started writing again, and remarkable things have followed. And really, I’ve only just dipped a toe in the waters. There’s so much farther yet to go.

      “I have seldom conceived a delicious plan without being given the means to accomplish it. Understand that the what must come before the how. First choose what you would do. The how usually falls into place of itself.” – Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

      We all have bold plans. Some are fully realized, some fall aside in the grind of commitments and pandemics and other things. The world is fascinated with the characters who follow through on their boldness. Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey followed through on the schemes and dreams and truly audacious whimsies that most of us would gently set aside. First they chose what they would do, and the how fell into place.

      I’m watching the kids I watched grow up wade deeper into adulthood. Their own identities are emerging, different from what we might have assumed; thinking them a basketball or soccer player, or perhaps the noisy kids giggling in the basement over a Disney movie they’ve watched a hundred times. If I’ve learned anything on my own wading into the waters, it would be to offer encouragement and support the audacious without being an overprotective “adult”. Maybe offer some ideas about the “how“. Or who they might talk to about the “how“. And then get out of the way.

      So the question is, do we do that with ourselves? Do we fully support our own boldness or brush it aside as just so much nonsense? Do we focus on the “how” or the “why we shouldn’t“?

      Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt... The how usually falls into place of itself.

      Don’t just dip a toe or gently wade in the shallow waters. Figure out the hows: how deep is the water? How well can I swim in this? What do I need to know to stay afloat? (all of these questions limit your downside) And then quickly leap. And see how big a splash you can make.

      Ready?

    • Life As You See It

      “Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.” – Henry Miller

      “The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.” – Julia Cameron

      Paying attention is a gift, and writing about it sharpens the focus. I believe that blogging has done more to wake me up to the wonders of my immediate world than anything save the birth of my children. Having children developed my habit of capturing moments in pictures, but the years my kids were growing up were also years the writing quietly lay dormant, biding time. You don’t have much quiet time when the mad dash from diapers to packing school lunches to soccer and dance recitals to driving to away games to picking colleges is happening. And yet I wish I’d written it all down anyway.

      Now, after the mad dash, the writing stirred awake from its slumber. I look around at all there is to see in this world. All there is to learn about the world. All there is to read and taste and see and most importantly, to do. Faraway places will have to wait once again, but there’s so much to see right outside.

      Read a Mary Oliver poem and you see that you’ve been blind the entire time. Chastened yet challenged, you look more deeply at the world in front of you and deeper into the soul. And you write.

    • Move Out on Faith

      “Stay away from people who are world-weary and belittle your ambitions. Unfortunately, this is most of the world. But they hold on to the past, and you want to live in the future.” – Sam Altman, Idea Generation

      Sam Altman is an entrepreneur and 35 years old at the time I write this, so I understand his spin on living in the future. A creative mind must indeed live with an eye on the future, for that is where hope and possibility lie just out of reach. To get anything done in this world we must bridge that gap with work today.

      Avoiding the world-weary seems like a great idea. but there’s just so many of them. Some of my favorite people have a world-weariness about them. Its hard not to get a little worn down by 2020 and some of the maddening missteps of humanity over the last few decades, but even in these strange times there’s always something positive out there if you look for it.

      The larger point, of course, is to avoid those who would undermine your dreams in active or subtle ways because they’ve given up on their own. A voice of reason is often a disguise for a “poisonous playmate” who would kill your dream that you might not rise beyond their own lowly ambitions. Quotations are for a term borrowed from Julia Cameron, who has a few things to say about the creative spirit inside us.

      “It is my experience both as an artist and as a teacher that when we move out on faith into the act of creation, the universe is able to advance.” – Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

      When I started writing this blog I did it quietly, just writing in Blogger most days, but with breaks in between. I wasn’t fully invested in myself as a writer yet, but there was a tangible shift when I switched to WordPress. Now I write every day and link to it in Twitter for anyone invested in finding my thoughts. Some people find my blog and support it, while others ignore it completely. I try not to let either dictate my writing or the directions the Muse takes me. Keeping eyes on the task at hand and casting votes in the form of daily blog posts.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      Last night a thick fog swallowed up Buzzards Bay whole. “There will be no sunset tonight, I believe“, I announced to my daughter. And upped the ante by saying I’d give her a dollar if there was. Sure enough, the clouds parted, the fog thinned and we had an epic sunset with dancing fog glimmering in bright orange hues. I gave her a five: a dollar for being right and four for her optimism. Maybe that entire scene foreshadows a brighter future. Wouldn’t that be welcomed?