I just finished my first month in my new position as tourist guide for the state of West Virginia.* The job is great: I spend my days helping people devise travel itineraries, find unique places to visit, and generally have a memorable trip in the mountain state.

With commute and routine work stuff (lunch packing, clothes pressing, coffee percolating, etc.), I devote about 50 hours a week to my job. While I’m happy to have an enjoyable full-time job (w/ health insurance) in the middle of a recession/depression /reset, I’ve nearly kicked my own ass trying maintain a similar standard of creative output as when I worked freelance + part-time or taught full-time.

To effectively use what creative energy remains to me and to keep producing working, I’ve had to get serious about resting and to make every minute count. Here are 14 strategies I employ to maintain my creative output during a long week. Hopefully you’ll find them as useful as I do.

1. Energy begets energy, so do something physical. While you might be utterly exhausted at the end of the day, doing something engaging (rather than zonking out) will signal your brain and body that there’s still work to do. Even a 20-30 minute walk can help with your energy, focus, and concentration. 
2. Rest your body and mind. Adequate nightly sleep isn’t enough. Short (<30 minute) naps are great; not only do naps restore your energy, they’re also shown to assist in creative thinking and problem-solving. To really maximize napping benefits, try to review your project and any creative problems before you go to sleep.
3. Rest actively. Just like active leisure beats the passive kind with a croquet racket, active resting (like napping, meditating, etc.) is more beneficial for your energy levels than an activity that simply diverts your attention; television, for example, or browsing Reddit. You must be deaf to the siren song of an evening with Netflix and the couch.
4. Find a way to make the commute suck less. I dislike driving, especially when it’s not earning me money, but here in my neck of Yankton it’s a necessary evil. Over an hour in the rolling  death box every day is enough to make a man mad, but a good audiobook makes the time fly by…as well as engages the mind (if you’re interested, I’m listening to George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones [affiliate link]). Since I can’t do anything productive during this time, I can add something to my brain’s compost pile.
5. De-stress. Stress is a vampire that feeds on creative energy. Before you start on your creative work, do something to help you de-stress. My suggestions include journaling, mediation, socializing, reading fiction, hiking, gardening, and (actively) listening to music.
6. Limit the time you’ll spend on your creative work. You might be tempted to spend all evening on your project, but I think this is counter-productive. If you do this and you’re not relaxed and well-rested, you’ll have a hard time staying focused, getting into flow (link), and doing your best work.
7. Say no more often. When you only have a few hours a week, saying yes to too many inconsequential requests will sap your time and energy. Your time and energy are nonrenewable resources. Use your time to make stuff.
8. Use caffeine. Caffeine is a wonderful drug. In moderation, it can provide just enough of a boost to help you get into the zone. Just don’t drink too much.
9. Keep your notebook with you. Just because you’re away from your workspace doesn’t mean you can’t work on your projects. Throughout the day, you’ll find plenty of 5-15 minute opportunities to add to, elaborate on, or do planning for your project. This saves you the trouble of having to rack your brain later in the evening, trying to remember that thing that seemed so important at the time. Use your notebook like a ninja. 
10. Be sure your project materials & equipment are set up and ready to go. Don’t waste your prime creative time doing low-level setup and assembly work. Getting started is often the hardest part of any project, (followed by maintaining your momentum) and you want to reduce or eliminate any physical barriers that stand in your way.
11. Proactive planning makes life easier. When you have only 1-2 dedicated hours a day to work on a high-value project, you don’t want to spend that time deciding what to actions you need to take to move your project forward. Plan before you sit down to work. I usually figure out how I’ll spend my evening either first thing in the morning or during a break at work. And don’t forget about your weekly review.
12. Take a day off, from dusk to dusk, wherein you do absolutely nothing but what you want (this is the day to veg out on the couch with Netflix). No commitments (unless you want). No guilt for not working on your projects. Just sheer, unadulterated laziness.
13. Limit yourself that which is intrinsically rewarding. You may not always feel energetic and excited about your work, but if you’re pursuing projects for the wrong reasons, you will burnout. Let’s face it: some things are just more fun and rewarding than others. Working on them is its own reward, and doing so makes you look forward to more . For example, I look forward to spending my time working on fiction, but even thinking about ghostwriting content articles to earn beer money drains me.
14. Work harder.  Sometimes you’ve just got to push yourself. Nobody said this was easy.

*I  forget the exact wording, but in order to stay on the good side of my employer I’m required to say that anything I say or write here in no way reflects the official position of the government of the State of West Virginia and that all opinions are those of the author. And now that I’ve said it once, I shouldn’t need to say it again.

Share with 4800+ monthly readers (and this curious blogger): How do you keep your creative energy levels high when you’re working long hours?

Photo credit: eyesplash

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Last week I wrote a big-ass post about how creating systems can make your microbusiness rock. However, I failed to mention a few problems and limitations related to systems creation and documentation.

Systems creation isn’t new. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith talked about the division of labor, specialization, and creating an efficient system for the manufacturing of goods. By giving 20 workers in a pin factory one specific job, the factory owner could make more pins than 20 craftspeople creating pins from beginning to end.

But a microbusiness isn’t a pin factory. We don’t make pins. We make creative content and products. We turn ideas into something tangible. Plus, it’s hard to systematize and document curiosity and synthesis, keys to creativity.

You can document the overall workflow, as in the example of the songwriter, but there are so many other factors that influence the idea generation and execution.

Bethany Dirksen has a system for selling paintings and tracking income/expenses, but I doubt she needs to quantify the overall process that results in her bold, original work.  (Correct me if I’m wrong Bethany!)

Workflow? Sure. Document away. Overall creative process? Difficult bordering on futile.

This isn’t to say that creativity is only some mystical nymph-powered force. Creativity explodes when you’re already in the trenches, doing the work , going nose-to-nose with resistance, and gutting it with your bayonet.

The problem is laziness. What happens if you create a system, decide to slack off, and then let your system dictate not only how you work but what you work on?

You run the risk of getting stuck in a routine and just following a checklist.

Create system. Follow checklist. Repeat. Stop innovating. Die.

Here are some other problems worth mentioning:

• Some things must be done by you the ‘technician,’ the craftsperson. The creator cannot (and should not) remove themselves from the created. Can a writer hire someone else to do their writing?  Unless you’re James Patterson, no.
• Systems creation can lead you to focus only on your tactics, not on your strategy. You can document all the tasks in the world, but if your strategy is crap, your tactics will at best keep you on the treadmill of futility.
• Systems and, especially the models in the E-Myth book, can emphasize quantity of output over quality .
• Factory, production-based work that follows a rigid system will usually result in a race to the bottom that creates cookie-cutter products. We don’t need more of the same-same junk. Competing on price will just give you low-priced Wal-Mart crap.
• Rigid adherence leads to stasis and death. Look at the record companies. They had excellent systems but refused to change them. Now they’re emaciated zombies hell bent on eating the brains of their former customers.
• Franchises are lame. Sometimes they’re good for the franchisee, and many people find comfort in having the same freaking restaurant in every town.  On the intertubes, however, simply following someone else’s instructions without significant innovation or improvements will just give you what amounts to a franchise website.*

*Not saying you should wait until you have a “brilliant flash of insight” to start a site. That comes with effort, research, and courage. Lots of great sites and writers start out doing what are basically summaries of stuff they’ve read. I’m only saying that doing exactly what someone else is doing won’t work for you.

What systems creation isn’t

• A one-sized fits all solution. Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses.
• A rigid set of guidelines. A system should be fluid, changing to the needs of the individual and the (micro)organization.
• A magic solution that can fix all your problems. Those only exist in James Patterson stories.

Am I saying systems creation is a bad idea? Absolutely not. Creating and documenting some the core processes of your microbusiness will be instructive. This should lead to a better workflow, increased overall efficiency, and more time to work on creating amazing things.

Another systems creation example

Even simple jobs are worth documenting. Three months ago I documented the steps for a new WordPress + Thesis install and setup. This documentation included some simple design and formatting info. I had done Thesis setup a couple times before, and I could’ve followed the instructions from memory, but I had intended to sell the site and thought a user’s manual would be a nice selling point.

I haven’t sold the site yet, but my documentation efforts have paid off. Over the past week I’ve been building a Thesis + WordPress site for a client. Here are the benefits I experienced by documenting a simple process.

• Even though I could’ve followed the guidelines in my head, having a checklist is much, much faster. We’re talking Honda Prius vs. Tesla Roadster faster.
• Part of the package for my client includes documentation. Copy+ paste+ fill in the blanks baby!
• If I used subcontractors (I don’t), I could simply hand this job off to them.
• I saw a couple spots in my setup process that could be improved.
• Most of the design/layout tweaks use the same hooks and custom functions. Combining them into one place saves me from having to search.

Over to you

Can you see any other problems with systems thinking?  If you’ve created systems for your microbusiness, have you run into any of these problems?

Photo credit: chainsawpanda

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Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. -Benjamin Disraeli

Nothing can bring you happiness but yourself. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

One trick for increasing your happiness is this:

Take action, even if you don’t see immediate results.

Contrast this with a deterministic approach: no matter what I do, events in my life are determined entirely by circumstances beyond my control, so my decisions and actions don’t matter.

Let’s break this down. First we’re dropped into a totally random life. From our original position, we emerge into this world in a place and milieu we have absolutely no control over. Along the way, we choose what we’ll make out of the life we’re given. Along the way, we’re  sometimes we’re struck by terrible fortune. Other times great things happen for no apparent reason.

Sure, some people really don’t have a choice. Their original position is so difficult, they are powerless to events beyond their control.

However, most of us do have the ability to make choices. Every single day, we choose what they’ll focus on, what we’ll work on, and what we’ll avoid.

No choice is still a choice.

Imagine life as one long, Hobbesian barroom brawl. Your goal is to play the one song on the jukebox that you really want to hear. You have two options:

1. You can wait for a good opening or a lull in the brawl then try to squeeze through OR
2. You can take action, start swinging, and through your efforts make an opening.

Option 1 is far easier because responsibility is external. You can always say “I didn’t have any options, so I didn’t try.”

With option 2, you’ve taken control over the situation. You’re responding to the situation, rather than just reacting. You’ve decided to take action. Even if we never make it to the jukebox, our levels of happiness increase when we leave the deterministic attitude behind and start to take responsibility for and action towards what we want.

But option 2 is much more terrifying, because if you don’t get through, you’ve got no one to blame. You’re responsible for your own failure.

You’re going to get punched either way. You might not even get to hear your song.

But at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you tried.

Photo credit: dankamminga

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Overcoming laziness is nothing more than a series of simple actions repeated over a long period of time. The first part is easy; it’s the work applied over a period of time that gets most people. Lazy people want to change, but after a couple days they lose interest.

I know. I’ve been there.

You want to overcome laziness? Great, but you have to be ready to face up to an uncomfortable truth: laziness is a choice.

Once you recognize this, you’re ready to get started. If you want to continue to blame your laziness on someone or something besides yourself, you should stop reading now.

Because reading this post will take some time. It’s a doozey.

If you’re still with me, here’s the short version of this massive post on overcoming laziness. (I hope this doesn’t make me an enabler). To stop being lazy, you need to:

• Define laziness. Know your enemy
• Recognize Your Good Fortune
• Take Responsibility for Yourself
• Set Standards
• Have Confidence in Your Abilities
• Know What You Want
• Eliminate Choices
• Create a Plan
• Develop Good Habits
• Take Action Now

Let me start by saying that I have nothing against lazy people. I used to be one myself until some events in my life made me realize I was being a dumbass. So I made a decision to work hard at overcoming laziness.

I also want to add one caveat: I am not talking about poverty and being poor, and I’m definitely not saying that poor people are lazy. Poverty is a complex issue. Systematized discrimination, racism, and structuralized income inequality exist. Some people have childhood experiences so brutal that they may never recover.

I’m not making any statement or judgment on people’s socioeconomic status. All I’m trying to do is help people who want to overcome laziness.

I don’t have all the answers. No one does. However, the following steps have all worked for me in one way or another. I sincerely hope that you find something valuable here.

Ready to get started? Good.

Know Your Enemy

Laziness means avoiding action, work, or expenditure of effort.

Laziness is an easy trap to fall into. Procrastination takes over, and the next thing you know, a few years have passed by and you’re no better off. Maybe even worse off. In fact, laziness could be said to be a long-term form of procrastination.

And why do people procrastinate? Because the pain of not doing something is less than the perceived pain of making an effort.

They key word here is perceived. Often, the pain and difficulty we imagine is far worse and far greater than the actual pain of doing.

When you start taking action and responsibility for yourself, you begin to realize that the excuses you had previously made were flimsy and weak. You’ll probably shake your head and wonder what you were waiting for.

Laziness is a habit. A habit of procrastination, of avoidance, of indecision, of passivity, of excuse-making. Habits don’t simply appear one day. Habits have momentum and inertia. They develop over weeks, months, and years.

Laziness is a thief. It sneaks up on you and robs you of your will. It takes and takes but the only thing it gives is grief and empty satisfaction. This thief preys on people who neglect to secure themselves against its machinations.

Laziness is a narcotic. It might feel good in the short term, but long-term leaves you hollow. The more you use it, the more you become dependent on it, the more it sucks your life away.

Laziness is a liar. Laziness tells you that you’ll receive more pleasure by avoiding work and seeking easy pleasure. Aristotle wrote that a life spent in pursuit of only gratification and pleasure is “for grazing animals.”

Laziness tells you that work is something you must avoid, that your efforts should be conserved. Laziness promises you that one day, someone or something will arrive and things will get better, that your ship will come in.

But work, especially work that matters to you, is far more satisfying, rewarding, and challenging than avoidance. Unwanted habits can be broken.

Laziness is the path of least resistance. While this might seem like a comfortable way to live, I believe that this path means surrendering control. Control of our lives, our goals, and our minds. The easiest thing to do is rarely the right thing to do. Ironically, the lazier we are, the more effort we have to expend avoiding work.

Laziness is a choice. Indecision is still a decision. The choice is yours. You can wait for something to happen. Or you can make something happen. Wish in one hand…

Recognize Your Good Fortune

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: if you’re reading this, chances are you live in the developed world.

You most likely have clean running water, access to affordable food, and are safe from things like wars and genocide. If you go for a run in the woods, you probably won’t have to worry about stepping on a landmine, being assaulted by bandits, or eaten by a gryphon.

And if you’re able-bodied, if your physical health is good, you are now better off than most people alive today or at any time in the past.

Even those with shitty circumstances have it good. Maybe not great, but far better than billions of people born into hard lives in developing countries.

If you’re reading this, guess what: you can read. That also means you can learn. Between the public library and the internet connection you’re using to read this, you have access to just about all the information a person could needs to learn just about anything.

Take Responsibility For Yourself

Every day, we choose whether or not to be lazy. It’s that simple. You can choose to be active and industrious, or you can choose to lay around and watch television. No one makes this decision but you.

You must become comfortable with managing yourself and deciding how you want to spend your days and your life. Even if you work for someone else to pay the bills, you still have to think of yourself as an entrepreneur. You have to manage yourself and your time. You have to be your own boss. No one else will.

This means you have to stop waiting for something to happen.

Your ship ain’t gonna come in. And if it does, it’s probably going to be crawling with pirates.

Excuses abdicate responsibility.

Once you’re of legal age, there’s no excuse for excuse-making. I’m sorry your childhood sucked, but you’re an adult. You can learn. You can move. You can try.

Environment plays a huge role in shaping us, but none of us are without freewill.

We can choose to do, or not.

Start by looking at the people around you. What are they doing? Are they trying to improve their skills or further their education? Or are they perpetually complaining about how much their life sucks?

Shitty attitudes are infectious. You can allow them to infect you or you can remove yourself from their influence.

Set Your Standards

Only you can recognize when you’re being lazy, and only you can decide what being active and industrious means. Maybe you want to tweak the way you spend your evenings. Maybe you’re interested in making a complete change.

Whatever you choose, you have to set a standard for what you want to do and how active you want to be. Don’t accept anything less from yourself than the standards you set.

At first, I would suggest not setting your standards very high. If you start out with impossibly high standards, then you’re going to face perpetual disappointment. The idea is to set modest standards and then build up gradually.

Build Confidence in Your Abilities

Confidence comes from experience. You gain experience by doing things and by taking action. Experience breeds competence.

Build confidence by celebrating the small victories and successes. Enjoy watching your skills and abilities improve.

Build confidence by taking care of yourself. Dress well, eat well, and don’t beat yourself up (much) when you fail. Everyone fails.

Build confidence by setting and meeting small goals. Set a modest goal and achieve. Start small.

Build confidence by managing your fear of failure. Just know that if you fail, the world will not end. You’ll have tried and you’ll be better off for trying.

A quick note on self-esteem: I believe the idea of telling people they’re great no matter what kind of stupid shit they do is ridiculous and counterproductive. Self-esteem unearned or inflated is like having your own personal yes-man in your head, a weasely sycophant.

Self-confidence is different; hard to earn, easy to lose, but a damn sight more useful than self-esteem. Why? Precisely because it is earned and not given.

Know What You Want

How can you overcome laziness and do good work if you don’t know what you want or you’re doing something you hate? How can you expect to be excited by your work if you don’t know why you’re doing it?

I envy those individuals who know from an early age that they want to become doctors or firefighters. Their career path is laid out before them; they only have to apply themselves.

I believe that one of the hardest things we all face is figuring out what we want to do to earn a living. For some, figuring out what you want to do is a long process.

Common advice says ‘do what you love and the money will follow,’ or ‘do what you think will make you happy.’ This presents two problems.

One: what we love to do doesn’t always pay the bills.

Two: according to researchers, we’re terrible at guessing what will make us happy.

If you don’t know what you want, you have a few options:

• Do something that pays the bills until you figure out what you want to do. You can always build skills in your free time.
• Take a Jung Typology test to get some ideas to see what kind of work you might be suited for.
• Figure out what skills you have that people will pay you for. In the words of Dr. H.S. Thompson, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
• Drop everything in order to learn a skill that you can eventually exchange for money. You could do this at a university or a community college. You could also pursue a course of independent study.
• Try a bunch of different things until you find something you enjoy. You could waste a lot of time, but you could stumble upon something that works for you.
• Choose a career for the money, entry requirements, prestige, and learn to love it. My thoughts are mixed on this, but people find happiness doing things they never thought they would do.

Eliminate Choices

Perhaps your laziness is a result of analysis paralysis, by having too many options. In this case, you need to pare down your options. Eliminate options for yourself. Barry Schwartz wrote in The Paradox of Choice (wikipedia) that a multitude of choices caused anxiety in consumers.

With the exception of Deion Sanders, most people can’t have two high-level, demanding careers at once. You can’t simultaneously be an astronaut and a rock star. Sorry. Both are uber-competitive and require years of hard work and preparation. If you struggle with laziness and are past the age of twenty, you probably can’t be either of them.

However, that’s not to say you can’t make a career in music or aerospace engineering. But even the most ambitious and hard-working person probably couldn’t do both.

Eliminating choices allows you to focus your energies on what you can realistically achieve. By letting go of things that will never happen, you’ll not have to worry about not achieving them.

Focus on things that are doable.

Create a Plan

“He who fails to plan is planning to fail” – Winston Churchill

A map is a plan, and most people wouldn’t take off on a long trip without one. Why, then, would you go through life without a plan?

Your plan can be anything from a simple list of daily tasks to a multi-page to-do list, compiled and updated every week. You can also include long-term goals for what you want. These goals can help you stay focused, even when your motivation flags.

Begin by deciding on one or two things you want to incorporate into your routine. Include one or two things you’ve been putting off. You want tasks that you can complete and mark off your list. Don’t just make ‘overcoming laziness’ a part of your plan.

Use language that is positive, action-oriented. Even better if you have a quantifiable goal. For example, ‘read 10 pages in xx book.’ Or ‘walk for 15 minutes.’

When you make your plan, decide where you want to be at one month, three months, six months, and a year.

Once your plan is in place, do everything you can to stick to it but don’t treat it as a series of commandments. Modify it as necessary, but never abandon it.

As long as you have some kind of long-term plan in place, you’ll be better off than you were before.

Develop Good Habits

You can develop good habits the same way you developed your lazy habits: by doing the same thing over and over for a long period of time.

When you’re establishing habits, consistency is key.

A good daily habit can be anything from walking, journaling, to following a schedule and calling up an old friend.

In my opinion, 15 minutes of walking every day is the best first habit to establish. Why? Even mild physical exercise creates more energy, and more energy is necessary to overcome laziness. This is especially true for people who are otherwise sedentary.

Depending on whom you ask, habits take between 21 and 90 days to establish. From there, three months to a year is the time required to firmly establish that habit.

That seems like a lot of time, but developing a habit is just a matter of repeating an action every day until it becomes second nature.

I know, easier said than done.

Don’t think too far ahead. Choose one habit and build it one day at a time. Once you’re well on your way with the first, add another.

Take Action Now

Overcoming laziness is a battle won in tiny increments. A little bit of progress everyday will take you far farther than making progress in fits and starts, once or twice a month.

It’s easy to imagine that things will change on their own, that in the future you’ll magically become less lazy. This is only another lie told by laziness. Without taking action, nothing will change.

Change takes work. It’s not easy, but people do it all the time. You’re no exception.

Overcoming laziness is work. All work is accomplished by completing one action at a time.

Every day is a fresh start, a new chance.

You have nothing to lose…and everything to gain.

The choice is yours.

Related Reading

The following are some of the books and bloggers that I found particularly helpful in overcoming laziness. [The books are affiliate links].

Getting Things Done
by David Allen. This is the book on personal productivity. Read this book, apply techniques, and you’ll become a master list-maker.

The 4-Hour Workweek
by Tim Ferriss. Over-hyped it may be, but Ferriss’ book will change the way you look at jobs, entrepreneurship, and work-life balance.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow is the experience of intense concentration, deep enjoyment, and absolute absorption.

The Art of Non-Conformity
Chris Gullibeau’s is one of my favorite bloggers. He’s on a mission to visit every country in the world while simultaneously battling conventional beliefs and helping people meet important personal goals. He recently released a his book, The Art of Non-Conformity.

Zen Habits
There’s a reason this is one of the top 25 blogs in the world. Leo Babauta’s focus on simplicity, frugality, happiness and goals has improved the lives of (tens of) thousands of people.

Pick the Brain
A solid source for hundreds of articles on personal development and motivation.

Over To You

• Have you battled laziness?
• If so, what did you do to overcome it?

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to Happenchance.

Photo credits: gviciano and sindykids provided the wonderful Danbo pictures.

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This month I’m planning a few posts on time management, motivation, and entrepreneurship. To kick these off, I’m going to get a bit personal and talk about why I stopped being lazy. If you just want the quick and dirty on how to stop being lazy, check back out the Happenchance Guide to Overcoming Laziness.

“A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.” -Benjamin Franklin

“Wish in one hand. Shit in the other. See which one fills up first.” -Grandpa Baker

Why I Was Lazy

I’m sad to admit that I used to be lazy, though not lazy in the ‘unemployed and living in mother’s basement and playing warcraft’ sense of the word.

I’ve always paid my bills, saved money, and avoided debt like a recovering alcoholic avoids wine tastings. I  managed to finish university. I became a pretty solid bass player. I earned decent money at my low-skill, high-risk job. Sometimes I worked pretty hard, but only so I could earn travel money.

The problem was that I just didn’t try very hard. I knew I could do better, but I just didn’t. For the most part, I didn’t work on things that really mattered to me.

In short, I did as little as possible to get by. I was bumbling along, waiting for my ship to come in.

Part of this I attribute to my environment: here in Appalachia, ambition is viewed by many with suspicion. Personal development means buying a better scope for your deer rifle. Entrepreneurship means supplementing your SSI/disability by selling your prescription drugs. Like going to the proctologist, work is something you have to do.

I can’t place all the blame on Appalachia. I take full responsibility for my lazy ways. But it’s still worth mentioning, because our environment influences our perceptions and attitudes.

We can’t choose where we come from, but we can choose where we’re going.

What Changed

As adults, we sometimes manage gain a new perspective on the core beliefs we learned in childhood. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to come to this new perspective gradually. Other times our world is shaken by a series of external events. For me, it was the latter.

First, my family and friends lost too many loved ones in too short a time. Some of these losses were tragic and random, things that should never have happened…but did anyway. These people may be gone, but they still touch my life everyday.

Second, while delivering a pizza, I broke my foot by stepping on a curb. Fractured my fifth metatarsal and spent a few months hobbling around on crutches. During this time, I gained a deep respect for the disabled and a new appreciation for elevators.

From these events, I finally realized

• Only by happenchance was I granted opportunities forever denied to others.
• My time and energy was finite.
• No job was worth ruining my health for.

Sure, I had dreams and things I wanted to accomplish, but up to this point, they were just that: dreams. Things I would do someday. These events conspired to make me realize that, in the words of John Fogerty, someday never comes.

I came to understand that without putting in some serious work and effort, I’d spend the rest of my life in low-skill, high-risk jobs, forever wishing for and waiting on things that would never happen. Unless I wanted to end up with handfuls of shit, I had to change my wishes into plans. If not for me, then for my wife, and for the memory of the people we lost.

I realized that my ship wouldn’t come in unless I gathered the materials and built it myself.

If the hillbillies think I’m some kind of freak, let them gossip while they pass around the copperheads and strychnine.

For me, laziness is an insult to the dead.

For me, working on things that matter is an act of defiance…and an affirmation of life.

If you enjoyed this, be sure to check out the Happenchance Guide to Overcoming Laziness. Even better, subscribe to this fine site.

Photo credit: luchilu, National Archives photo 541335

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Nanowrimo: a crazy event for crazy people.

Writers, are you ready? Nanowrimo begins soon.

If  you don’t know, Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) is a free, unpretentious marathon writing session  The goal is to write 50,000 words of a novel in–you guessed it–one month.

Participants spend a couple hours every day working on something that will most likely remain on their hard drive. A majority of people who join this event drop out by December 1st. Many report they quit because their head exploded.

Those who continue don’t care that they’re not producing great art. They’re happy to be at least producing something…and lots of it. Improved writing habits are a side benefit.

I suspect that, for those who finish, pre-writing is key. Gallons of coffee and the work habits of a demented grad student also help.

Here the Nanowrimo people tell FAQ-readers why they should participate:

The reasons [to participate] are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

Besides helping people write better, Nanowrimo brings together a great community. People on the forums are usually willing to provide input on ways to bring realism to your novel. For example, on the Reference Desk,  forum participants give input on topics like ‘bizarre roadside attractions,’ ‘home cooked dishes from around the world,’ and ‘stabbing someone from behind.’

Though I’m sitting out this year, I’ve done and won Nanowrimo the past two Novembers. The results weren’t pretty, but both years I learned priceless lessons. I’m not saying Nanowrimo made me a great writer (long way to go there), but it definitely made me a better writer.

Nanowrimo is a crazy event, but don’t underestimate it: Nanowrimo is damned hard work!

I wrote about Nanowrimo last year. To read more, check out Temporary Insanity: 10 Lessons Learned from Nanowrimo.

Over to You:

• Have you ever participated in Nanowrimo? Do you want to talk about it? (Nanowrimo can be rough)
• Ever done something for 30 days just for the sake of improving? If you finished, how awesome were your results?

Photo credit: Nina Matthews Photography

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This is the last post in Better Writing Month. Please don’t remind me it’s no longer April

Writing skills are funny. You could spend years studying ‘important’ literary works, deconstructing obscure texts, and writing post-colonial analyses of Salman Rushdie books…but still be a mediocre writer.

I speak from experience.

One English degree earned, hundred of books read, thousands of pages written…and I still can’t spell onomatopoeia without a spell checker.

However, over the past two years, I have become a much better writer. I’m no Joyce Carol Oates, but compared to where I was when I finished university, the difference is like comparing Spam burgers to Kobe steaks.

Did I climb a mountain, talk to an oracle, and receive sage advice? No. Did I deconstruct even more texts? No. Did I go back to university for more education? Hell no. I’ve had enough post-colonial/post-structuralist/marxist/feminist/post-deconstructionist theory for one thousand lifetimes.

How did I become a better writer?

The answer will shock you. Hold your breath…

I developed the habit of writing. Every. Damn. Day.

While doing research for Better Writing Month, I became sucked into a swirling red vortex of articles on writing. Most of  these articles say write everyday. Thanks for the letter postmarked Obvious City. But how does one develop the habit of writing every day?

Developing the daily writing habit is the hard part.

But once you have it, writing everyday is easy, natural, and as necessary as breathing.

Before I developed the daily writing habit, I wrote about 2,000 words per month…even though I wanted to write more. I simply couldn’t do it. After I developed the habit, I started writing over 2,000 every day (without writer’s block, excessive procrastination, etc.) Again, the difference is like spam and kobe.

Like curling, kayaking, and fly herding, writing is a mental game. Developing the discipline to practice is difficult. Writing without an audience (or without the immediate feedback of academia) is difficult. But when you write every day, the effect is like compound interest; your skills build and multiply over time. You do become a better writer. Plus you’ll learn the secret of creative inspiration.

Please don’t think I’m bragging. I’m still a 3rd-rate hack with ambition. And please don’t think I’m saying the development of the daily writing habit is the only way to become a better writer. Reading one book a week, taking writing classes, getting feedback and critiques, reading books on writing, all these will help (some more than others). And of course, everybody’s different; what works for me mayn’t work for for you.

How did I develop the daily writing habit?

Well, I met this guy in a graffiti-covered alley. He wears a hoodie, his eyes are always bloodshot, and he carries little glass vials

If you want to develop the habit of daily writing, you need a routine or a system that makes you write everyday. You need to be writing with some purpose or goal. Just saying you want to write every day doesn’t work. At least it never worked for me. I tried for years. Finally I tried something a little more regimented and structured…and it worked.

I found structure and regimentation in two different ways:

• Nanowrimo (past two years): Write 1,667 words a day for a month. Easy, but damn hard. The end product is unpublishable drivel, but that’s not the point. The real payoff is a the discipline you learn and the skills you pick up along the way. Check out 10 Lessons Learned from Nanowrimo.
• Before I started blogging, I set up a thirty day challenge to write a 1,000 word article every day. By the time I hit thirty articles, I could write faster and better than before.

I know I dramatically improved my writing because, at the end of each project, I wrote and revised test pieces and compared the results. For Nanowrimo, the before-and-after was a chase scene. If the before wasn’t so pitiful I’d post a before-and-after sample. Same for the articles. Spam and kobe.

For me, hitting daily word counts for a minimum of thirty days burned the daily writing habit into my brain like a branding iron on a cow’s flank. Thirty days is kind of an arbitrary number to establish a new habit, but it seems effective. Some people claim a new habit is established in as little as twenty-one days. Here’s an interesting Google answers entry on this topic.

If you want to develop the daily writing habit…

• Set a daily word count goal or target.
• Create a visual way to measure your progress (calendars, spreadsheets, % complete bars).
• Hit your wordcount goal every day for 30 days.
• Write for an audience (even if it’s in your head).

That’s it. Soon you’ll develop a routine and experience positive creative inertia. That’s all you need to do to begin to develop the daily writing habit.

Set a goal. Write towards that goal.

Every. Damn. Day.

If you enjoyed this fine post, join Happenchance on Facebook, subscribe to Happenchance for more creative techniques, or hit one of the fancy social media buttons below to share it with your friends. You know they’ll appreciate it.

Photo credit: Robert S. Donovan

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What is Songkran?

The Songkran festival celebrates the start of the traditional Thai New Year. Originally, people sprinkled water over those they respected in order to help wash away the bad deeds of the previous year. Festivals evolve, of course, and Songkran is no different.

Today, during the Songkran festival in Chiang Mai, Thailand, people pelt each other with buckets of water. A moat runs around the old city, providing celebrants with thousands of gallons of ammunition. The streets run deep with (admittedly nasty) water from the Chiang Mai moat.

Everyone in the city, young and old, Thai people and foreigners, carries water guns and buckets. People stand on sidewalks or ride around on the backs of trucks and toss water on each other. Many of the truck people use big blocks of ice to cool their barrels of water; even though the outside temperature is around 38C/100F degrees, that cold water hurts!

Even though the festival has changed, the original idea remains the same: when you hit people with water, you’re doing them a favor; it’s a sign of respect. All this is done without malice. In fact, I was amazed to see that Thai people would often thank the person who dumped 100 liters of brownish moat water down their back.

If you leave your house during Songkran, you will be pelted with water. It’s part of the fun. So you have a simple choice: you either stay home and stay dry, or you go outside and risk getting drenched.

Once you’re outside, you have another choice: you can simply be drenched or you can get a bucket of your own and drench those around you (and be thanked for doing so).

During this festival, I realized writing, or any act of creative production, is the same way.

Why Songkran is like writing (or any other creative act)

When you write, you step outside of your comfortable house.  You run the risk of being doused, of having some kind of feedback being dumped over your head, whether its criticism, indifference, scrutiny, or praise.

During the first day of Songkran, I felt like I was constantly under attack, like being doused with water was an act of aggression. (Some cultural baggage is hard to shake). But as the festival went on, I realized it’s all in good fun. No one is out to harm anyone else.

Getting feedback and criticism is the same; you might feel like you’re being ruthlessly attacked, but it really is for your own good. The people who take the time to give you a serious critical response, they’re doing so out of a desire to help. Instead of washing away bad deeds, they’re trying to wash away what they see as mistakes, things that could be improved upon.

Of course you’ll sometimes have sadistic critics who put rocks in their buckets and offer only scathing attacks without any positive suggestions. Fortunately, they tend to pass by pretty quickly.

At the same time, putting your work out there is like taking your own bucket, filling it with moat water, and throwing it onto the crowd. Sometimes you hit your target, sometimes you don’t. Most people don’t care one way or another if you hit them, but sometimes you’ll really make a splash (pardon the pun) and you’ll be thanked for your efforts.

But if you want to hit anyone, you have to go outside. You have to participate. And when you participate, you run the risk of getting drenched. It’s worth remembering that no matter how wet you get, you’ll dry out eventually.

The question, then, is this: will you go out and participate in the fun? Will you run the risk that you might not hit anyone? Will you risk being hit with rocky water? Or will you stay in your house, stay safe and dry, and miss out on all the fun?

As for me and my bucket, we’re going outside. There’s still water in the moat.

Photo credit: apes_abroad

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Korean students are smart. They consistently rank among the top performing students in the world, especially in math, but it’s no surprise, given their study habits and sheer relentlessness.

A majority of my students tell me they like math.

The goal for many of these students is to either study at one of the SKY universities or to study abroad. Korea sends more students to study abroad than any other country, about 350,000 total. According to the NY Times, South Koreans are the largest group of international students in the U.S.

The following is my attempt to describe a typical day in the life of a fictional Korean middle school student. This comes from what students have told me while using their second language (English is fiendishly difficult for Korean kids, but even the younger students can make themselves understood).

Keep in mind that I’m talking about hagwon students. Even though private hagwons are affordable for middle class families, not all Korean students are able to attend. In other words, these kids are born with an initial advantage over their non-hagown peers (See also Accidents of Birth).

That said, let’s have a look at the typical day in the the life of a fictional Korean middle school student.

My School Day, by Park Hyeun Jung.

Monday to Saturday, I wake up around 6:30 to 7:00. Eat a quick breakfast of rice and seaweed soup,  put on my uniform, and walk to school. Some of my friends have to take the city bus, but I’m lucky.

My classes are math, science, Korean language and literature, morality, social studies, English, physical education, music and art. Math is my favorite, though I like social studies, too. I do a couple hours of self-study in the morning. During this time I usually work on assignments from my afternoon classes.

At lunch, I get to talk to my friends.

I finish around three. When I leave, I’m pretty hungry. If I have any pocket money, I’ll buy some food from the old lady’s snack cart. I don’t get to eat until I get home.

After School

From three until five, I do self-study at the library. I try to finish up my hagwon homework. Some of it is pretty hard, but it’s helping me become a better student. Besides, if I don’t finish, the teachers will call my mother. That’s never fun.

I go to hagwons for math, science, and English, one each. Some of my friends go to two different hagwons for each subject.

Three days a week, I have English and math. Two days a week, science and Korean hagwon.  I spend a couple hours at each one. In math, we’ve been working on geometry, and that’s pretty fun. English hagwon is okay, though the foreigner teachers smell funny. At least they don’t give too much homework. I think they’re lazy but I get to talk a little bit. For my Korean teachers, we mostly memorize vocabulary and translate articles.

After Hagwon(s)

I get home from the hagwons at about 10pm. I used to stay later, but the government recently passed a law that says all hagwons have to close by 10pm. At home, I’ll eat a little dinner with my family. Dad is usually home to eat with us, but sometimes he has to work late and I don’t even see him; he leaves before I’m awake and gets home after I’m in bed.

After dinner, I study and do homework. We recently moved to a bigger apartment so my sister and I could have a room just for studying. Tonight, she’s working on English homework; she has to translate four pages before class tomorrow.

I’ve got to get ready for a math test at the end of the week, so I’ll probably study until about one or two. I’m so tired, and all I want to do is sleep, but I’ve got to finish. My future will be ruined if I don’t.

Good Night

What Can We Learn

As a westerner, it’s easy to say these kids are being worked too hard, that they don’t have any free time to play or to develop their own interests.

Yet, it’s not my culture and I’m not a researcher. I’m just an outside observer, and an ignorant one at that. A full comparison of Korean vs. American education is waaay beyond the scope of this article. (Here’s an article dealing with the negative impact of the hagwon industry).

However, I’d like to think I’ve learned a few things about learning from my ever-gracious host country.

• Sometimes rote memorization has its place; some information simply has to be learned by heart. You can’t Google foreign language vocabulary or math formulas.
• Your friends and peers influence you more than you think. When all your peers are so hard-working, it’s shameful to be lazy.
• You don’t need expensive courses and fancy technology, you just need to put in the time, work, and energy. On education, South Korea spends half as much as the US but gets better results.
• The less free time you have, the more valuable it becomes. Make the most of what you’ve got.
• In the West, elbow-numbing hard work is underrated. Sometimes you just have to push yourself really damn hard.

Today, Korea is a modern, industrialized country, but according to the OECD (via the BBC), 40 years ago, Korea’s national wealth was the same as that of Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world.

How did Korea pull itself out of that mess? They rolled up their sleeves, built a bunch of factories, looked to the outside world, studied hard, and outworked almost everyone else around them. In short, through work, effort, and sweat, Korea transformed itself from a war-torn mess to one of the richest countries in Asia.

Is it any wonder Korean students work so hard?

photo credit: zukunftsalick

If you’re a student studying a foreign language, click here to learn about the Language Hacking Guide.

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When I was 25, I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s first novel Everything Is Illuminated. The novel is a whimsical modernist work  about a young man who goes to the Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis during WWII. Critical reaction bordered on exuberance, later tempered by a minor backlash. Houghton Mifflin published this when Foer was 25.

When I learned Foer’s young age at the time of writing, I came close to abandoning my own modest writing goals in favor of a career as a plumber. I’d certainly be more financially stable.

If you look a little closer, though, you can see that Foer had a lot going for him. He attended a private prep school. He had classes with the children of senators and attorney generals. He also had Joyce Carol Oates for freshman writing at Princeton; she ended up being his advisor for his  senior thesis.

Joyce Carol Freaking Oates….for a freshman-level class.

To put this in perspective, my freshman writing instructor was a dude with a skullet (example) who had just self-published his first novel about a CIA conspiracy. Sometimes he brought his stinky-ass dog to class.

Undoubtedly, Foer is a talented writer. I’m sure he put in thousands of hours of hard work, but you can’t ignore the advantages conferred upon him by the accident of birth. If Foer hadn’t been encouraged by Oates, he probably would’ve discovered success elsewhere, all because he was off to a good start the day he was born.

Politicians pay lip service to equality and opportunity. This rhetoric plays nicely in the media. However, the reality is muddier. Even in developed, first-world nations, we’re all born into vastly different circumstances. The accident of birth could drop us from the universal uterus to a starting point in an Amish enclave, a Shanghai slum, or a Pyrenees palace.

It’s all chance.

Personally, I think my starting point was cool. My parents were great. I went to public school just like everybody else. I might grumble about public school (I never really had to try), but I realize I was damn lucky. I’ll also admit I was kind of lazy.

After visiting places like Chiapas and Cambodia (photos), I’ve realized just how lucky myself and others born into the developed world are. If you’ve ever met a landmine victim or seen a group of street children begging, you know what I’m talking about.

After reading great novels by people my age or younger, I realized that if I ever want to write anything worth reading, I will have to do a ridiculous amount of work because I’m off to a relatively late start.

New mantra: I can’t change what I did, only what I will do.

Look, America has more problems than a turkey has feathers, but it’s still an excellent country to be born into. We have clean(ish) water, freedom from armed militias (exceptions), almost universal literacy, and lots of good, affordable universities and community colleges.

We also have a country where, if you’re willing to work, you can at least have a roof over your head and enough to eat. Even better, you can be lazy for a few years and still make up for lost time and opportunities.

Back to Foer. Foer got Joyce Carol Freaking Oates as an advisor. I got the skullet guy. The main difference was the accidents of birth.

Let’s look at a couple more examples of  people who created great work at an early age. Mozart famously ‘started composing’ at age five, but this just means he made up little melodies on the harpsichord while his composer/court musician father transcribed them. Pablo Picasso started his Blue Period in his early twenties. As a child, his talent was recognized by his painter/art professor father. See a pattern here?

When you have someone who decides what you’re going to do, or you’re put into a situation where you have famous mentors, chances are you’re going to have some success at an early age. Maybe not at the Mozart level, but you’re going to be better than your average creator.

For everyone else, we have to figure things out as we go along. We work menial jobs to support ourselves. We wait tables and deliver pizzas to earn rent money or put ourselves through school(s).We might take a round-about path to our craft or career, and that’s only if we are lucky enough to find it and able to find the time to work on it.

Yes, people born with some advantage have to work hard, but the majority of people have to work even harder to close the gaps caused by birth accidents. The people born into really difficult circumstances have a harder slog than anybody. Those who pull themselves out of the hardest circumstances deserve more respect that someone like Foer or even myself (if I ever actually do anything awesome) deserve. People like Oprah Winfrey, Ray Charles, Andrew Carnegie, and even (ahem) 50 Cent all come to mind.

Sadly, many people recognize the amount of work required and simply quit before they start. The road is too long, the mountain too steep.

For those that do  try to close these gaps, we have to put in forty hours a week…on top of a regular job. A four hour work week? That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard (By the way, Tim Ferriss, author of the Four Hour Work, went to a private boarding school before attending Princeton.)

For those of you who are figuring it as you go along, those born only with a desire to create and make the world just a little bit better, I tip my fedora to you.

I would like to leave you with a quote I like.  It’s from a writer whose first work was also published at 26. This writer was born to working-class parents, went to a one-room school house, and was the first of her family to finish high school.

Not exactly an enviable accident of birth, but this was later balanced out by winning a scholarship to Syracuse and writing a lot of practice novels. Through relentless effort and hard work, this person became the most ridiculuously prolific writer of the twentieth century.

While the quote is specific to writing, we can apply it to any creative endeavor.

“Writing is not a race, and nobody really wins.”

That writer’s name?

Joyce Carol Oates.

Photo Credit: cindy47452

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