Start Starting Now

I’ve long told people that the best way to get started on something is to start.

Don’t think about the perfect way to do it, don’t plan what angle you’re going to approach it from, just start doing it ugly and you’ll start getting there. 

With creative work it’s especially helpful because in your mind you’re always holding this ideal visual of the end product and the sacred process that gets there. 

But when you’re faced with a blank canvas, or empty Word doc, it can be hard to remember that sometimes you gotta make a lotta ugly before you make pretty.

So if the best way to start is to start, when should I start starting? 

Now? What if I don’t feel like it?

Don’t Trust Your Gut

Your mind is a cruel, two-faced beast that at once enables and hinders your ability to do amazing things. 

My mind can make amazing things - but it can also convince itself not to make anything. Or do it later. Actually, later is perfect, right? C’mon. Let’s do it later.

And it’s not always such a battle between good-conscience and bad-conscience. Sometimes you’ve got such momentum on something else that actually needs doing that it feels justified to put off everything else. 

If you’re a busy, successful creative, it can be assumed that you have multiple things that need doing and they each require focus and commitment - and start times.

So how do you handle all this having to get started all the time?

The Stupidest Hacks That Actually Work

(This is a five-part series. Find the link to parts #1 and #2 below in Further Reading.)

3. Time-Blocking

This technique is offensively simple and I snorted and rolled my eyes the first ten times I read about it. Now I can’t navigate a busy week without it. 

It’s simply scheduling the time in your calendar to work on something. 

• 9:00 - 9:30: Emails and messages

• 9:30 - 10:00: Coffee and meditation

• 10:00 - 11:30: Focus period

• 11:30 - 12:00: Lunch

And so on. 

This seemed insane to me at first but ignore everything in that list except the 90 minute focus period. That’s the key. 

As usual, there’s actual science here and you can look up ultradian cycles and how they fit in your circadian rhythm. 

But look at it this way, 90 minutes gives you just enough time for that ugly start plus enough time to go deep on something with a little extra time for polish.

How to Time-Block

When I’m going to have a busy week and everything on my list is top priority, I do the following:

1. Open the calendar and start scheduling 90 minute focus blocks. 

2. Aim for four per day.

3. Try to keep them at the same times each day (I always have to shift a few to accommodate meetings and appointments that got scheduled the week before).

4. Name them and assign them to projects (ie Focus - Working Creative).

5. Leave gaps between them (if you want, schedule your fun stuff like coffee, etc or leave them blank).

Two important things happen as a result: 

First, it feels amazing to look at a calendar that shows you how and when you’re going to get it all done.

Second, when I start each day, in the back of my mind I’m mentally preparing for those start times. The nagging questions about whether or not it’s the right time to start never materialize. 

There’s a finality to scheduling it that quiets and calms the mind and helps you roll from one thing to the next.

Calm, quiet minds are powerful machines that don’t convince themselves to do it later. They start.

Further Reading

In the past weeks I’ve written about going for walks and making to-do lists. This newsletter was never meant to be the kind of thing that passes around old kitchen soup advice so my angle on these is very specific. There’s a kernel of science in each and a reason why they’re such resilient pieces of advice over the years. My angle is to find your way in that fits with your creative process. There’s no “classic” way to do any of these and the more specific the instructions the more you should stay away.

The One-Question Interview

Working Creative: What’s your trick for getting started when your brain just won’t?

Tom St John: If I am in mind melt mode and need a kick start, I built a ChatGPT agent where I drop in the problem statement I am wanting to consider and it reframes the problem using different language and asks me 5 provoking "How might we" questions. New language sometimes fires up new pathways.

Bonus Question:

Working Creative: What do you imagine/picture/visualize when you hear the words “Working Creative”?

Tom St John: The best office space ever. I love offices. If you have space let me know.

Parting Thought

In the previous issue, I wrote about how To-Do Lists shouldn’t be treated like a contract that cannot be breached. The point of all of these hacks is to limit the stress in your mind and sticking to them to strictly will have the opposite effect. The important part of time-blocking is to allot everything the time it needs and confirm you can do it. It’s up to you if you switch, shift or delete blocks. Even if you can’t hit all the marks you set, you’ll still do a bette job of the ones you do hit - and you’ll do it with much less stress. So don’t be hard on yourself. Take it easy. You’ll get it done. And it will be great. Because you’re great.