Darrell Vesterfelt and Tim StoddartA look into why it’s so hard to move forward with creative work
This week I was so pleased to be able to connect with Jessica Abel, author of Growing Gills: How to Find Creative Focus When You’re Drowning in Your Daily Life.
In this 34-minute episode, Jessica and I talk about:
- Business (especially digital and content-driven business) as creative work
- How to move forward on that really big project (the one you care about so much it’s scary)
- Idea debt: What it is, why it messes us up, how to deal with it
- The distinction between creative process and creative projects, and why that matters
- The four criteria to look at when you’re deciding on a big creative goal
Listen to Copyblogger FM: Content Marketing, Copywriting, Freelance Writing, and Social Media Marketing below ...
Getting Your Big, Scary Projects Finished: A Conversation about Growing GillsSonia Simone
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The Show Notes
- Jessica’s got a free course that will help you start making progress — more info on that here: Find Your Creative Compass
- My earlier podcast about Growing Gills: Two Powerful Resources for Life-Changing Growth
- Jessica’s post on One Goal to Rule them All (there’s also a worksheet here you can download with your opt-in)
- More about the Growing Gills book
- Jessica’s book on investigative storytelling, Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio
- The Out on the Wire podcast episode where Jessica discusses Idea Debt with Kazu Kibuishi
- Jessica’s Creative Focus workshop (closed at the moment, but you can opt in for notification on when it re-opens)
- I’m always happy to see your questions or thoughts on Twitter @soniasimone — or right here in the comments 🙂
Here is my biggest challenge, and one I find with many of my peers–we’re working for companies as content creators or paying bills with freelancing, and then our personal creative work gets pushed to the back burner because of time and energy constraints. It can also appear that everyone else is successful at their ‘side hustle’ and I wonder why I’m struggling. My pet peeve is content that’s a mile wide and an inch deep, but marketed well. I don’t want to be that person. Feeling scattered amongst the projects I want to accomplish, I love the simple tip of putting focus on one area at a time and finishing it already. I find it takes me so long to get my personal writing out (whether it’s blogging, a new article, or download) because I’m pursuing perfection and am afraid to pull the trigger on ‘good enough’ when I just need to finish a thing, call it good, and move on to the next. This episode was so timely for me, and I’m definitely getting her book. Thank you!
Hey Sonia!
Great episode.
This is one of the most common problems with working for yourself (being your own boss). You tend to procrastinate more and not get much done. And the crazy thing is that most of the time we know we are procrastinating yet do nothing about it. Right!
What has helped me increase my productivity is the 5-Second Rule by Mel Robbins. This simple little trick for the brain works wonders. I highly recommend to look this up and learn from her.
Thank you for a nice podcast show ladies!
Best regards! 😀