Schedule, Shush, and Just Show Up

I have learned one thing. As Woody says, ‘Showing up is 80 percent of life.’ Sometimes it’s easier to hide home in bed. I’ve done both.

~Marshall Brickman co-writer of the 1977 Oscar-winning screenplay Annie Hall, attributing the quote to Woody Allen.¹

This quote is better than 80% of all the self-help and guru advice out there…and I’ve read a lot. Perhaps too much.

With a myriad of tips and tricks to achieve what we want, many of them wonderful, I know it can be overwhelming to keep them all in our heads.

Some people think elaborate systems need to be in place to achieve a goal. Otherwise, why would it be so difficult to practice what we dream of doing?

Perhaps within that question is the issue. We want our dream to remain a fantasy. Perhaps it is easier to merely think and live in the temporary happiness than finding both the joy and struggle of practicing it–especially when it is inconvenient for us or others.

As a result, we barely venture into the space of working on it.

I’m not a productivity junkie by any means, but I do want to find myself in that space where I can say I am doing what I want to being doing everyday. Why not claim a small part of everyday until we become proficient and, perhaps, financially sustainable enough to choose to do it all day?

Here are simple ideas that encourage me to begin each morning on the creative track resulting in making this writer happy for the rest day.

Schedule with fun in mind.
Shush the mind and breathe.
Just show up.

Schedule with fun in mind

The idea of scheduling seems to carry some emotional baggage for me. Sometimes I schedule webinars, but never show up because of other obligations. That’s okay, because that means it was really not important in the first place for me.

But when I don’t schedule a creative activity, or keep to a particular creative routine, or even worse, schedule it only to push it aside because of some other task, that sends a message deep into my soul that perhaps my creativity and therefore my mental health is not at all that important to me. Yikes.

No, scheduling my mental health and creative time is important. Without it, I am 5% less happy throughout the day. That may not seem like much, but over several days of not writing or drawing, I can feel my enthusiasm for whatever I do is diminished.

Now, perhaps our daily creative time may not occur everyday, yes there are times when I have to skip it. But, scheduling it in allows me to look forward to something – a relationship with our creativity and ourselves.

One last note, when we schedule, it often feels like I am delaying something fun for myself. In that sense, sometimes I feel regretful, even if it’s an activity that I want to do. It’s totally irrational.

Instead, as we schedule, even though there is a slight feeling of regret or worry or upset in delaying some other imaginary “better” activity, we can reframe that moment by conjuring a time when you had fun with our practice.

By doing this, we be able to “Show Up” with more energy and attention than otherwise.

Now, I’ll let in on a confession. I don’t schedule my morning routine anymore. At this point, I have a trigger in the morning, an embarrassing one, that sets the wheels in motion on my creative track. At roughly 5 AM, I have to go to the bathroom. I crawl out of bed, do my business and instead of heading back into bed, I walk to the kitchen to turn on the hot tea, and then relax on my couch with my laptop near me or turn on the light at my desk and display my artwork.

Yep, the trigger is one that happens everyday, and with that I can attach my routine.

Still, for this practice to happen I initally set up a personal schedule for myself to do follow through. Once I got into the habit, it became easier for my mind and body to head towards the living room and inch towards making that first mark or type those first words of the day.

Shush the mind and breathe.

Once I lay down with my laptop or sit at the table with my artwork, I take a deep breathe and calm whatever nerves or fears or anxieties I may have.

The “Resistor” in me is ever present and it will prevent me from making my first marks on the page. It “knows” that once I start, I can build momentum.

I may be look calm on the outside, but I can tell you that I have a pretty noisy mind thanks to this Resistor.

And just like a resistor on a circuit, it dampens the energy that flows through the wire. Resistors are great in electronics as it prevents the energy from blowing a fuse or LED light. But the energy we want to feel as humans should provide all the momentum we can muster to find that flow in our creative work.

The “Resistor” in me shows up and says “It’s too cold to work. Go back to bed. You didn’t sleep your eight hours.” The logic of all that the “I” says is so, so persuasive. Even my body agrees. It stiffens up on any slight chill and wants to curl back into bed. It’s a battle that feels like it’s more than the body and mind working against me, but rather the entire world.

What can one do?

Here’s where I don’t directly contradict the mind, but do a transitional action.

After I rise from my bed to make a brief pit stop to the bathroom, and plop myself on the couch with a sleep bag. I DO curl up and warm up quickly, lay there for a bit, stretch, and even as the Resistor in me begins to chatter, my body begins to warm up.

What I’m doing is cajoling my body to my side. With the body warm, and slowly wakening, my mind, the Resistor begins to chatter.

Instead, I do what Productivity Game writer, Nathan Lozeron, does before he does a task or begins his morning.

He breathes.

Specifically, he takes four (4) breathes in, and eight (8) breathes out. Do this enough times, and the chatter or the Resistor, the whiner, diminishes.

That’s when we begin to organize the papers, find the next step in the story, and make our first mark with a pen on white paper.

Or if it’s on my laptop, get comfy on my couch and begin typing the next step in my story or personal theory.

By “Shushing” my resistant mind and even my resistant body, I can ease myself into doing the main act of the “Just Showing Up:”

Making that first mark.

Just show up

When we set our initial schedule to encourage a time, a quiet time, to do our creative work, and when we create a routine to creep up to that moment of making our first mark, or even act of reviewing our previous work, we have a higher chance of producing something interesting.

Like an actor going to an audition, we have to sometimes prep days before hand. And even once the audition is over, we may or may not get the job. That’s fine. Each audition should be seen as an opportunity to showcase your skills and serves as practice with our craft.

Actors like writers are practicing on their own, playing with their techniques, honing their skills in the meantime. As writers, artists, and even entrepreneurs, we must do the same. Day in, day out, we need to reserve our “Sacred time” to write and draw and build because whether we are paid in money or not, that is “Just what we do.”

By showing up to our desk, our couch, our blank sheets of paper, our blank screens, and making our first marks, we can slowly, sanely, begin to live in the dream, the fantasy, that we’ve always wanted. Ultimately, perhaps one day, we can share that dream, that creativity, with others and encourage them to do the same.

Notes:

1977 August 21, New York Times, Section 2: Arts and Leisure, He’s Woody Allen’s Not-So-Silent Partner by Susan Braudy, Page 11 (ProQuest Page 83), New York. (ProQuest)
Website: Quote Investigator, Article title: ”Showing Up Is 80 Percent of Life.” Date on website: June 10, 2013,