Procrastination pisses me off. Some days it’s easy to manage procrastination. Other days procrastination runs amok like a drunken elephant. You’ve been there, sitting at your computer for hours, intending to work on some amazing project, but instead you spend several hours studying Napoleon’s exile on Elba. You really really want (need) to work on your project, but the only thing you’ve done is allowed yourself to procrastinate, creating a boatload of cognitive dissonance between what you wanted to do and what you actually did.

I believe that procrastinating a task is harder than actually doing that task. Why? You’d think that procrastinating a task would be easy, but that only takes into account the surface-level physical action. If you could somehow look at an image of a procrastinator’s brain, you’d find that procrastination uses a great amount of mental energy, an ongoing argument that probably goes something like this:

I’m doing this one thing, but I should be working on that other thing. I’ll get around to that other thing…later. Not right now. Laaaater. Damnit, I need to do that now. But Napoleon is so interesting!

If you know of a better recipe for low-level neurosis (with a side of guilt and shame), let me know. I’ve never seen one.

The worst part about procrastination is this: the time spent procrastinating is usually more than enough time to finish at least a large chunk of that all-so-important Task.

Why Procrastinate?

Dr. Timothy Pychyl, award-winning professor and diligent studier of procrastination, calls procrastination a ‘lack of self-regulatory abilities.’  According to him, low conscientiousness is a predictor for procrastination. Conscientiousness is influenced by the following factors: order, dutifulness (carefulness), achievement, self-discipline, deliberation.  Other predictors for procrastination include worry, anxiety, and a fear of failure. (I’ve written about managing the fear of failure before).

Further, your personality type will affect the how, why, and when procrastination affects you. Some of us are worse than others, so we all have to be cognizant of our own penchants for procrastination.

I’d hate to suggest that some people are born procrastinators. However, since this might be the case, then for those of us who do procrastinate (a staggering majority?),  we need to deploy some creative techniques to manage procrastination and get to work. Here they are…

Identify All Your Tasks

If procrastination is a result of low conscientiousness, and conscientiousness means being “painstaking and careful” (wikipedia), then an accurate inventory of tasks will help. Procrastination is also a symptom of uncertainty. So to avoid procrastination, you need to be certain and clear about your task. How can you do what you need to do if you don’t know what you’re doing?

• Make a big to-do list of all your separate tasks. This is your starting point. A ‘mind sweep,’ in the parlance of Getting Things Done.
• Break large projects down into a series of small, discrete tasks.
• Be specific in what you need to do…and how you intend to do it.

Lasso Your Time

Procrastination turns your time into a crazy cow, running this way and that. You need to rein in your time and make it heel. Here’s what works for me:

• For three days, keep a time log of your daily activities. You can be as detailed as you like, so long as you at least get the time down to fifteen minute intervals.
• Set up a fixed-time schedule. Plan to do the same things at about the same time.
• Work in 30 minute blocks (give or take). Set a timer and do only one thing until the timer goes off.
• Identify your time suckers (web surfing, television, pursuit of snipes), become conscious of them, and learn to avoid them.  Once you get them under control, you could even use them as a reward system for completing certain tasks.

Other Creative Techniques to End Procrastination

• Eliminate perfection and aim for results. Perfectionism will only create anxiety and a fear of failure. It’s far better to create something with a 90% amazing factor than to intend to create something that is 100% amazing. Never mind that 100% amazing is damn near impossible to achieve. Just get started and make creative inertia work for you.
• Have a clean and tidy workspace. I’m sure there’s some debate between order, tidiness, and creativity, but I know that when my workspace is a mess, youtube and digg become very alluring. Other the other hand, if I’m making a mess while I’m working,  that’s cool; that just means I’m making progress.
• Take a break and take a walk. As you’re walking, think about your task and the separate steps you need to take to finish it. The extra air and increased blood flow should offset some of that procrastination-stress and help you clear your mind.
• Focus on only a few items from your to-do list. We’ve all got about 1,000 things on our lists. For me, working from a super-long list makes by brain shut down. Seriously. Things get fuzzy. To combat this curious phenomenon, I’ll write down only two or three items from this list and focus only on those items. When those are finished, I can either engage in idleness or pull a couple more tasks off the list.
• Eliminate distractions. I’m sure you’ve heard this before. Shut off the email, chat, cell phones, etc. In short, anything that might popup, ring, flash, scream, etc.
• Give up. If procrastination is a form of a avoidance, you’ve got to figure out why you’re avoiding that task. Maybe you really just shouldn’t be doing it. Drop it, forget it, pay someone else to do it, whatever. Learn to know when to quit.
• Take tiny actions. Just do one little thing. Forget the big picture, the final product, all the different steps. Just take one single step. After that, take another. Then another. Take a break. Shake. Rinse. Repeat. Finish!

I hope this helps. I’ve used each and every one of these techniques in one form or another over the years. You’ve probably seen some of them before, but hopefully you’ll find something new that works for you. If you’ve used any of these techniques or if you have other creative techniques for managing procrastination, I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line in the comments and let me know what works.

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As I’ve said before, I’m always looking for ways to develop a better memory. A couple years ago, a copy of The Memory Book fell into my lap (only to be lost in one of my many moves). This work contained some cool theories and tricks. The ones that stands out the most in my mind are the  associative, memory-linking  tricks.

When talking about memory, associative just means connecting one memory to another through some sensory/spatial detail. When I say ‘pocket watch,’ you probably form some image in your mind. If you continue to think about pocket watches, you might find some other memory, maybe of someone who carried one, or of a watch store.

To have a better memory, you need to make the most of our mind’s tendency to make these mental associations. Look at it like this: if climbing to the top of a rock is retrieving a memory, then associations are like hand holds cut into the rock. You can still reach the top, but using the hand holds make this climb far easier.

We can have a better memory using association and associative techniques. But first, some theory.

How we remember

Memory is necessarily a difficult thing to study, but Atkinson & Shiffrin created a serviceable if out-dated model. Their model divides memory into three parts: sensory, short-term (working), and long-term. Memories form when sensory data is synthesized and assimilated; some of this becomes colored with meaning,

What does memory assimilation mean? In my unscientific, layman’s opinion, the sensory data becomes integrated with information that was already present.

What does this theory tell us about memory?

Memories are like links in a chain, and each link is connected through association to another link.  Example: when you listen to a record you haven’t heard for a while, you probably remember some obscure event that happened long ago when you used to listen to the record. Same for smells. Textures. Tastes.

Knowing this, you can consciously use association to improve synthesis and storage of new information as well as recall of old information.

Retrieval of Long-Term Memories

If you don’t know where you’ve been, how can you know where you’re going? -Source forgotten for the sake of irony.

Let’s start with a way to retrieve sensory information you’ve already processed but can’t seem to remember. For me, the best way to do this is to use a series of landmarks.

For example, if I need to remember where I lived in 2002, I can’t just pull up a mental folder marked apartments. I’ve lived in a few too many places for that. (See this post on nomadism). I need to go through a chain:

-I was x years old, in my x year at uni, taking… a political science class on the fourth floor of Smith Hall. We were reading Development as Freedom. I read it at home while sitting in an ugly green leather chair. That ugly green chair sat in a living room with cracked orange walls. I’ve only lived in one orange-walled house, so I know I lived at xxxx Buffington Avenue.

For each step, I had to connect one piece of information to the next using some clear mental image or bit of sensory data. I could’ve taken any number of routes to arrive at this same piece of information, but that was the easiest for me.

Storing New Memories

When you learn something new, or have some vital new piece of information you need to remember, look for ways to connect it with some pre-existing memory sensory data. A practical application (and admittedly common example) of this is remembering names.

Like aging, forgetting names is one of those utterly embarrassing things we all have to deal with. Some are better at this than others, but by using associative tricks, you can increase the likelihood of remembering people’s names. Common tricks for remembering names include:

• Associating a new person’s name with someone you already know. If you’re meeting a John, associate that person’s face with another John you know.
• Associate their name with some striking physical feature. The more ridiculous and exaggerated, the better.

You can use association in other ways as well. The Greeks swore by the Method of Loci for organizing new knowledge, but I haven’t yet made a serious effort at learning this technique.

Associative tricks are so powerful that, with a little practice, you can use them to remember long lists of unrelated information. Check out the following video for an excellent demonstration of this technique:

Finally, none of this is to suggest that you should keep everything in your head. Quite the contrary; having an external brain like a (knock-off) Moleskine will increase your memory by 1,453,532%, and using clever tricks like calendar reminders will ensure you won’t forget things like birthdays and review dates. Developing a better memory through association is just one more creative technique you can use to help you on your quest to create something amazing. Good luck.

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Photo Credit: alexindigo

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Editor’s note: We’re still waiting on the author’s brain to return from Asia. It’s on the slow boat but it should arrive any day now. Until then, we have to work with what we’ve got.

As a musician, I need to remember a staggering amount of information: songs, chord changes, lyrics, leads, etc. In a short-term project, this is easy enough: practice a bunch of songs, perform them, and go on to the next thing.

However, a few months ago, I realized I had a problem: I’d forgotten more songs than I could count. I would learn a song, play it a few times, then forget about it. When I wanted to play it months later, I really had forgotten about it; I had to go back and relearn the damn thing.

After a little research, I discovered my problem: I didn’t have a system in place for reviewing material I had already learned. Sure, it’s easy enough to relearn a song I’ve learned in the past, but this is luxuriously inefficient use of my limited practice time. In short, I was cramming when I should’ve been spacing.

What is Spacing?

Spacing isn’t the thing you do at a party after you’ve had too much (insert your favorite poison here). Spacing is a creative technique that involves reviewing new material at set intervals of time.

In 1886, German scientist Hermann Ebbinghaus proved that cramming  sucks when he published Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. In this work, he identified the spacing effect. The spacing effect states that people remember best when they study new information a little bit over a long period of time. Before we look at remembering, we need to see how people go about forgetting.

The graph below (courtesy of Wikipedia user Icez ) shows the standard forgetting curve. The red line represents information learned once and never reviewed: an exponential decrease. The green lines show forgetting curves if you review on day one, two, and three. Note day three: the drop is far less severe; we can assume that the information will drop far slower and will be far easier to recall over the next several weeks.

As sharp as the red curve is, it’s obvious that learning something once (cramming) is rarely enough. Even with a bagful of mnemonic and associative tricks, some things simply have to be reviewed. This brings up a new question, then: At what interval do you review?

First, let’s assume we don’t need to review everyday. According to research from Hal Pashler et al, increasing the interval between reviews actually resulted in better retention. In other words, reviewing weekly is less effective than reviewing at one week, then one month, then three months. So, to retain new information, we need to spread review sessions out. What are the ideal intervals for retaining new information?

1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year.

These review intervals take advantage of Ebbinghaus’ spacing effect and Pashler’s research on efficient review and retention. But there’s still one more problem: remembering to review.

How to Remember to Review

Google might one day turn us all into cold cyborgs connected to a collective command-and-control system, but  Gmail and Google Calendar are excellent tools for spaced reviews. Here’s my setup.

When I learn a new (song, since that’s the example I’m using), I’ll go into Google Calendar and create an Event using the above interval schedule (1,1,1,1,3,6,1). Each event includes a reminder sent to my inbox that says ‘time to review XX song.’ Set it up and  forget about it…until review day.

Low-tech solutions are easy enough to implement: you can simply pencil in review dates on your paper wall calendar. Obviously this works best if you check your calendar most days.

High or low tech, once you decide on a system, you can tweak the dates to accommodate your schedule. For me, I spend about one day a month reviewing things I learned over three months ago.

Reviewing old material might take a little extra time and effort, but it’s worth it. If you can’t remember what you’ve learned, what’s the point of learning it in the first place?

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Photo credit: arboghast

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Knowing when and how to quit is one of the most valuable skills out there. Why? By strategically quitting things that don’t work for you, you’re free to work on things that do.

Quitting has gotten bad rap over the years. When you say you’re quitting anything besides cigarette smoking, seal clubbing, or self-mutilation, people look at you like you’re some kind of failure (of course, we know there’s nothing wrong with failure).

Of all the vices out there, though, we can learn the most from gambling. What does gambling have to do with quitting?

The gamblers who make the most money are the ones who know when to quit.

Rather than reinvest their winnings in the hopes of an even bigger win (which they’re sure to lose), they choose a wise time to cash out, often with the help of a magic talisman.

We can learn from these canny folks, no talisman required.

Before I go further, I should add some caveats.

Perseverance is important, and finishing most of what you start is admirable and full of side benefits. The problem most people have is quitting too soon, rather than too late.

Developing professional-level skills and abilities can take years. According to Malcolm Gladwell, those at the top of their field put in 10,000 hours of focused practice. They never quit. ..but not everyone can be a Bill Gates, Jimi Hendrix, or Joyce Carol Oates.

Sometimes you have to focus on just one thing, let go of the others, and move on. All these people are (were) exceptional at their main skill. All the other stuff, they quit along the way.

In short, keep working on what works for you, but quit most everything else.

Why Quit?

Quitting is never an easy decision. After putting in months or years developing a skill or working on a project, letting go seems like such a huge waste of time and energy.

Reasons to quit include:

• Gaining freedom from something that’s changed from a cute, cuddly new thing to a snarling, snapping, biting pain in the ass.
• Having more time to focus on one or two more important things. Or…having more time to spend with your family.
• Reducing stress levels. When you really just don’t want to do something, doing it anyway (for a long period of time) will probably kill you.
• To move on to new projects; to change, grow, and learn.
• As a way to get out of a long-term rut.
• Regaining your soul, in the event some malevolent force of your own making is sucking it out through an ethereal straw.

When to Quit?

The time to quit is different for everybody. The gambler can tell with a stroke of the lucky rabbit’s foot. Without a talisman, your task is  harder. Sometimes the need to quit is obvious, sometimes not so.  Only you can be the judge.

Here are some warning signs:

• Feeling apathetic and disinterested over a long period of time, nothing a vacation or re-orientation will cure.
• When you’ve either achieved your goals, you realize that the goals are unachievable, or you simply don’t give a flying fudgebar about goals.
• When the thought of working on the project makes you want to gouge out your eyes with chopsticks.
• After having a moment of clarity and realizing you’ve been living out some kind of sad delusion.
• You get a little older and realize the things you wanted in the past aren’t what you want now.

How to Quit?

The clever gambler recognizes a losing streak and, instead of trying to play their way out of it, they cut their losses and develop an exit strategy. For you, when you quit something, it needn’t be a total loss either. With a little foresight and planning, you too can make a graceful exit.

• Sometimes you just need a readjustment in what you want. You might not become a megastar but it’s perfectly possible to carve out a living.
• If you have created something tangible (a business or a blog), you could sell it off, piece by piece.
• In some cases, you need to train a replacement. This can be fun but also disorienting.
• Whenever possible, have something else lined up. Quitting something that was an important part of your life can leave a big gap.
• Reflect back on your time and figure out what you’ve learned.
• Don’t burn any bridges. If you’re leaving some project that involved other people (and most do), let everyone know you appreciated doing whatever with them.

That’s it. Remember, the value lies in strategic quitting. Do what works for you. Say goodbye to everything else. Cut your losses. Finish what you can and forget about the rest. Good luck!

Over to You

• Any strategies for quitting?
• Do you think people should simply never give up?
• Is baby seal really as delicious as I’ve been told?

Photo credit: koiart66

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Imagine a club bouncer, a big guy with a neck like a tire. He has tattoos and can lift a car with one hand. If someone at the club starts acting like a fool, this guy acts with authority: he picks them up with one hand and tosses out onto the street without batting breaking a sweat on his scarred, untroubled brow.

Yet, our bouncer’s real dream is to be a freelance designer. Being a bouncer is just a job well-suited to his herculean physique. In his spare time, he creates anime characters in Illustrator and draws logos for imaginary companies. But if you ask him about it, he’ll say “it’s just a thing I do, you know, I mean, it’s fun. I don’t think it’s very good.”

When he’s in his element, nobody questions his authority. But in this new territory, poor guy, he’s unsure of himself. While being humble is great and nobody likes a braggart, his answers and demeanor lack conviction and authority.

His work is actually pretty good, somewhere between conscious incompetence and conscious competence (see the four stages of competence).  He’s no Picasso, but he’s no stumblebum, either.

But because he’s working for himself and still new to design, he doesn’t feel confident about his work. No boss or organization is around to tell him whether or not his work is worth charging for.

It’s a kind of catch-22: you need authority to gain experience, but you need experience to gain authority.

What can he (and we) do?

We all need to be lions for our own work. If we aren’t the final authority on what we create, then who is? When people meet you and examine your work, most likely they’re asking themselves a few questions: ‘is this the real deal? I’m not sure. What about the person who created it? Are they serious?

People can smell self-doubt from a mile away. In the case of the bouncer, he reeks of it (worse than the bar smell that sticks to his clothes), and as a result people pass him over. If only he felt the same authority about his design work that he feels about his bouncing.

From authority flows confidence, and a confident creator will create better work. Why? Excessive self-doubt is crippling. The unsure musician usually stumbles.

Back to our bouncer. Why is he so confident while working for someone else’s interest but not his own?

As a representative for an organization larger than himself, he is shielded by policies and the larger group. If he says ‘no!’ to someone, he’s not saying ‘no’ as an individual but as a representative of that organization or group. If a person has a problem with the bouncer’s actions, the bouncer can always say he was just doing what he was told. He has a job to do and he has the full force of the company backing him up.

In short, it’s often easier to act in someone else’s interests. Why? Because responsibility lies not with the individual but with the organization. How can we give ourselves authority to act our own interests (and that of our work)?

• Recognize that you have a responsibility to be the final authority on your own work. Be prepared to define it and defed it.
• Know your stuff inside and out. Whatever your discipline or skill, put in the time, the effort, and be prepared to die on the treadmill.
• Reject the notion that a company’s interests are more valid than your own. When you create work, you’re a one-person company.
• Cultivate quiet confidence and humble mastery. If you think your work really isn’t good enough, then keep working until it is.
• Never apologize for anything you make (unless it physically harms someone). That’s like apologizing for your own existence.
• Imagine the people who support your work are your organization. Pretend you are accountable to them and working in their interests.

Over to you

• Why do you think it’s easier to act in the interests of others?
• What kind of mind tricks do you have for giving yourself authority?

Photo credit: eschipul

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Have you ever become completely lost in your favorite activity? Lost track of time? Felt focused, energized, and completely unselfconscious? As  if your body and mind were working in perfect harmony?

If so, you may have experienced something by described by the Hungarian professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as the Flow state. In his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimum Experience, CM explains what Flow is, when people experience it,  and why it’s so important.

Athletes call this ‘being in the zone.’ Buddhists might call this simply mindfulness or low-level nirvana. The Greeks would describe this as being taken over by the muse.

Whenever you see an amazing performance or creation, it’s a safe bet to assume the performer or creator was experiencing flow.

Why is Flow Important?

According to Csikszentmihalyi, once a person achieves a certain level of income (maybe $35,000 US/year), their happiness levels are about the same as people who make $300,000/year. What does this mean?

Making more money doesn’t make people happier. Owning more  stuff doesn’t make people happier.

Experiencing Flow makes people happier.

Experiencing flow will not only make you happier, but it will improve the quality of your work. Writers say the work they produce while in the Flow state is some of their best. People who perform together like athletes and musicians spend a lot of time talking about chemistry. Why? Because good chemistry leads to more frequent Flow in groups. This leads to better overall performance.

What is Flow?

Flow is attention. Total and complete attention. Or, in Csikszentmihalyi’s words, Flow is:

“being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

Other characteristics of flow include:

• Feeling energized, focused, engrossed, and unselfconscious
• Experiencing great clarity, engagement, and total immersion
• Being blissfully ignorant of things like hunger and fatigue

When do People Experience Flow?

Everything I’ve read suggests that most people find flow while doing one of two things: hobbies they love or working at their job. The latter is a little surprising, as a lot of people will tell you they don’t like their job. Jobs, though, have all several of the components required for flow: a rule-based system, feedback, clear and definable goals.

A person is most likely to find flow while engaged in an activity where the challenges match the skill level. During low-challenge activities, people become bored. If an activity is too challenging, they experience worry and anxiety. The chart below describes when people are most likely to experience flow.

Besides doing hobbies and activities, many people find Flow in social situations. Why? Conversation and social interactions have definite rules, they provide immediate feedback, and they’re rewarding for their own sake.

Other flow-inducing activities include creating music and art, writing, writing code and building websites, playing sports, learning and studying, reading, watching good movies, playing chess and other board games, building things, traveling, climbing and abseiling/rapelling,  skiing, surfing…this list could keep going.

Video games seem to be designed with flow in mind. People have written papers on such things. Jenove Chen, for example. Why are games so likely to help people find flow? They have all the attributes required for finding flow: a  system with clear rules, immediate feedback (scores), goal-based challenges. They also require full concentration, engagement, and a certain amount of skill.

Finally, people rarely experience flow during passive recreation. Csikszentmihalyi cites a German study that found people who read more books reported more frequent flow experiences. On the other hand, the more television a person watched, the less likely they were to experience flow. Why? Television is a passive medium. Watching requires little skill and provides no challenge. Plus, commercials destroy concentration.

Tips for Finding Flow

Finding flow can take some work. I wish there were a magic button you could push. But, as they say, wish in one hand… Regardless, here are a few tips from my own experience that you might find useful.

• Ensure that an activity challenges you and engages your interests.
• Have clear goals. If you know exactly what you want, your mind will help you get it.
• Engage all your senses. One painter (I’ve lost the source) said sniffing a painting helped.
• Create a comfortable environment.
• Forgot about other people. Forget about other activities. Forget about failure.
• Use background music. For me, lyrics are distracting, so I stick with jazz, classical, and some jam bands.
• Eliminate all distractions. This could be other people, cell phones, email, whatever.
• Look and listen for feedback.
• Put in adequate time to learn the required skills. Most challenging activities have a learning curve.

Further Reading

• The book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
• Wikipedia entry on Flow. Plenty of good resources at the end of this entry.
• Article from Psychology Today called Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
• Solving Procrastination Using Flow by Kevin Chiu.

Over to You:

• Where do you find Flow?
• Do you have any tips for finding flow? Are there meta-skills for entering flow?
• Any meditation or Zen practitioner out there? What’s your take on this concept?

Flow diagram credit: Dr.  Enh
Photo credit: morphomir

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Musicians aren’t the only people prone to stage fright. Any act of creation is a performance. Your work is your performance. Writers, designers, sculptors, etc., all know that the things they make will end up in front of people who will inevitably judge them. Sometimes the feedback will be immediate; other times it could come weeks, months, even years later.

While we hope that our work will be received with laurels and accolades, we secretly imagine that we (and our work) will be criticized, condemned, shamed, ridiculed, and mocked in front of the whole world.

Terrifying stuff!

Yet, as we’ve already covered, we are our own harshest critics and our fear of failure does more to stop us than any actual audience member ever could. We also know that the brain does all kinds of things to protect itself from perceived (read: imaginary) threats. Let’s take a closer look at stage fright.

What is Stage Fright?

Stage fright manifests itself in various ways, but most commonly it shows up as:

• Anxiety Everything you felt on your first date…multiplied by ten. Sweaty palms, nausea, etc.
• Procrastination Screwing off in order to avoid the perceived dangers of public ridicule.
• Self-doubt We imagine that we aren’t good enough to create anything people might actually appreciate.
• Perfectionism By spending weeks or years trying to get something ‘right,’ we use this as an excuse to avoid performing.

Why Do We Get Stage Fright?

• Lack of experience This is tricky, because there’s only one way to get experience. Getting experience can be uncomfortable, but the wisdom that comes from experience is priceless and worth any minor, temporary pain.
• Caring too Much Anything we create is close to our hearts. We hate to imagine it being torn down like a sand castle.
• Having an Overactive imagination By imagining all the things that could go wrong, we miss opportunities to let things go well.
• Having an Overpowering inner critic This voice tells us everything we create is shit and we should consider a career in fast food.
• Fear of ridicule No one except fools and comedians like to be laughed at. Stage fright is our mind’s way of telling us that we are running the risk of being publicly mocked and shamed.

Manage Stage Fright

• Remember the Hardest Thing You’ve Ever Done By comparison, whatever performance you’re putting on will seem easy. People tell me this is more effective than barbiturates.
• Channel the Anxiety Turn your nervous energy into performance energy. When you see performers bouncing around on stage, they’re probably making the most of their stage fright.
• Write About It Imagine the very worst case scenario and you’ll realize that one rotten performance won’t result in an earth-shattering cataclysm.
• Be Brave Putting your work in front of the world requires a certain amount of fortitude. You must be prepared to defend your work and deal with any negative backlash. But remember that the critics you imagine are worse that the one’s you’ll face.
• Fake Confidence If you’re really terrified, pretend you’re someone else, more confident and experienced. You’ll probably convince your audience. You might even convince yourself.
• Separate Your Work from Your Self Remember that you are not your work. Your work is only something you created. Even if something you make ‘fails,’ that doesn’t make you a failure. We all have a right to fail smashingly.
• Ignore Critics and Doubters Everyone is a critic, but that doesn’t mean they have anything useful to say. Criticism usually isn’t personal. One caveat: if you hear the same criticism over and over again from different sources, you should pay attention.
• Challenge Your Conception of Critics In most cases, the only legitimacy they have is in your own mind. If you can see critics for who they really are, they won’t seem so scary.
• Have Confidence In your Preparation After you have put in days and weeks and years working on your craft, after you have practiced to the best of your abilities, you have to trust yourself that are ready.
• Use a Pen or Stage Name Some people find this an effective way to separate their performing self from their personal self.
• Go Easy On Yourself We all do silly things sometimes. It’s no big deal. If something you do doesn’t work, call it an experience and move on.
• Imagine Wild Success Most Olympic athletes use some kind of visualization. You should, too. Imagine yourself giving a perfectly executed performance. Include all the sensory details you can.
• Relax! Performing should be fun for both you and the audience. Chill out. Try deep breathing, meditation, brisk walking, or kicking cardboard boxes; whatever works for you.

Over to You:

• How do you deal with stage fright and performance anxiety?
• Looking back, was your first date really that terrifying?

photo credit: DerrickT

You may also enjoy:

1. How to Manage Your Inner Critic
2. How to Manage the Fear of Failure
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This is the third article in the series Removing Barriers to Creating Amazing Things. Previous articles have dealt with removing physical barriers and managing your inner critic. This big honker of a post will examine our attitudes toward failure and end with some strategies on managing the fear of failure.

But first I want to start with some song lyrics from Ben Folds Five. These lyrics are from the song Regrets off the album The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner.

“I thought about the hours wasted
Watching TV, drinking beer
I thought about the things I thought about
Until immobilized with fear
And all the great ideas I had
And how we just made fun
Of those who had the guts to try and fail
And then I ended up in jail
Regrets, regrets”

Fear of failure is like an invisible fence, the kind used for dogs. In an invisible fence, wires are buried around the perimeter of a yard. The dog wears a collar with a radio transmitter. When the dog gets near the perimeter, the collar emits a little warning buzzer. If the dog keeps going, the beep gets louder, and if he goes outside the perimeter, he gets a little shock.

This is classic classical conditioning at work. After a few shocks, the dog only needs to hear the buzzer to know that if he goes any further, he will experience an unpleasant feeling.

Fear of failure is quite similar, except that instead of wearing a collar, we have these pesky things called brains. As I said previously in How to Manage Your Inner Critic, the brain wants us to be safe, comfortable and protected. In order to do this, the brain creates an invisible perimeter and tells us not to go outside.

“Enemies lurk outside,” the brain says, “and you could be hurt. You could fall on your face. Stay in here, where it’s safe.”

When we get close to this invisible fence, instead of a warning buzzer, we experience all kinds of strange things: scenarios in which we are ridiculed, abandoned, humiliated, and ruined. When we get even closer, instead of a shock, we get things like anxiety, cynicism, and perfectionism.

But you know what? That collar only has a limited range, and once you go far enough outside the perimeter, the collar stops working altogether. Of course, you might find that another invisible fence lies farther out in the distance, and the shocks are greater, but that’s no different.

Fear sucks.

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” -Mark Twain

In the past, fear served humans well. Fear kept us safe from predators, the elements, and other humans. When venturing out into new lands, we had to be especially careful. Tigers and hostile tribes lurked in the bushes, waiting until the prime moment to pounce. By creating scenarios and imagining these threats, the brain made us keep our guard up; it’s easier to fight when your weapon is at the ready.

Now, at least in the  developed world, we have little to fear from predators and enemies, but the brain continues to conjure threats and dangers.

Why?

Any creative endeavor involves setting out for new territory. Thoughts of doing and creating amazing things make us uncomfortable and anxious. When we create, we put ourselves and our hearts out there. We open ourselves up for public ridicule and shaming. Sure, some people are happy to create only for themselves, and that’s fine, but having an audience will, I promise, influence and improve your work. Having an audience is like having a source of feedback.

And there’s the rub.  You need feedback to improve, but when the brain gleefully points how awful it is to fail, we stop ourselves from taking the steps necessary for that feedback.

What’s Wrong With Failure?

Our attitude toward failure is learned in school and reinforced through mass culture. If you do horribly in a class, you ‘earn’ an F (for failure!). The problem is that ‘earning’ an F usually results from not trying. Laziness and apathy were the cause of this failure.

As we get older, though, we begin to perceive failure a little differently: failure changes from laziness and not trying to actually trying but not having any success. Failing starts to equal doing something wrong. Failure can also mean screwing up…big time.

This is a huge shift. Think about it. Look back at the lyrics from the beginning…who is the bigger ‘failure?’ The guy who sat on the couch drinking beer and laughing at the people out there failing? Or the people actually trying and failing?

History is filled with people who ‘failed.’ You’ve probably heard these stories a million times, but just in case…

• Michael Jordan failed when he tried out for his high school basketball team.
• Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times before invented the light bulb.
• Robert Pirsig failed 121 times to find a publisher for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

You get the point. If we say that failure is not getting something right the first time, then these people were bigger failures than the Hindenburg. Yet today, all three of these failures are regarded as wildly successful individuals.

As creative people, we are  way too hard on ourselves. Every rejection is personal,  and every unrealized dream is the end of the world. Yet, by giving into that mentality, we start to think about taking the easy road, the path most traveled. If we give up on what we were meant to do, we will end up doing something we don’t want to do, only because it is the safe, easy, and fail-proof path.

Redefining Failure

“A calm sea does not make a skilled sailor.” -African proverb

As people who create amazing things, we need to redefine failure.

Merriam-Webster’s first definition of failure is an omission of occurrence or performance. Yet, if you’re actually trying to do or create something, then you have performed something. The problem is you didn’t get the desired result or outcome. So, in this sense, you have had only limited success.

When your creation fails, it does not mean that you failed. It just means you either didn’t find the right audience or you need to improve your skills. We all have setbacks and we all make mistakes.

Learn from your failures. In each lies valuable lessons.

Remember: Every failure is an education.

Before we get into strategies for managing the fear of failure, let’s take a look at some symptoms of this odious problem.

What does fear of failure look like?

Fear of failure takes many forms, but it usually comes down to one thing: not trying. How does fear of failure manifest itself?

• Procrastination: We put off doing things in order to avoid the imagined pain of doing them. In reality, the pain of not doing them is usually worse [than the pain of actually doing them].
• Anxiety. The thought that we might fail paralyzes us and prevents us from even trying. If you think about some big idea and you get a weird feeling in your stomach, that’s anxiety. Fortunately, it’s easy to channel this anxiety into creative energy, but you have to get started to do it.
• Cynicism: Some people become cynical and say everything is shit. This is really just an excuse not to try (and to keep your fragile little ego safe in the process).
• Waiting for something or someone. You can wait for years, but nothing could come along. No one will rescue you. The world won’t change in your favor.
• Worrying about others. People don’t like to upset the dynamics of their social circle. Yet, when you start trying things, you run the risk of doing just that and, if you have limited success, those who were made uncomfortable by your efforts will be the first to point out your failures.
• Perfectionism. Nothing is perfect. Nothing. You can spend years working out the final details, but eventually you have to say enough is enough and trust that you’ve done the best you could.

Managing the Fear of Failure

In my opinion, the most important thing you can do to manage the fear of failure is to ask yourself one question: “Realistically, what is the worst that could happen?”

That’s it. Imagine the worst-case scenario. This is very powerful. When you really scrutinize all the worst-case scenarios, you realize they’re not that bad. In almost all cases, you’ll still have your family, friends, and finances. You might look like a goof for a few minutes, but people forget things quite quickly. And… assuming you learn from whatever missteps you make, eventually the things you do and create will supplant any early setbacks.

Here are more techniques for managing the fear of failure:

• Judge success based on your own results. Don’t compare your results to those of others. We all progress at a different pace.

• Just get started. This is often the most terrifying part of any endeavor. The first steps are the hardest, but once you get moving, you can make this creative inertia work for you.

• Set small, concrete goals. Rather than focus on one huge goal, focus on small and specific goals.  Let’s say you want to make a living as a painter. Not easy, but doable. Focus on selling one piece a month.

• Remember that you are not your work. If something you make is poorly received, either look for ways to improve it or chalk it up to a learning experience and move onto the next thing.

• Set a cut-off date. You’ve seen the guys that are rocking well past their prime. Their goal is to get a record deal. While their persistence is admirable, they never set a concrete goal or took responsibility for their own success. They waited on someone to rescue them. No one did.

• Take responsibility. Your success depends on you alone. While it’s easy to blame external forces (the shitty economy, a rotten town, lazy friends), these are all beyond your control.

• Recognize that nothing is a sure thing. All endeavors require risk. Entrepreneurs risk capital and reputation. Artists and creators risk their mental well-being, but that risk is the price of  admission for playing the game.

• Rest assured that failure gets easier. The first ones burn, but after a while, it gets easier. Especially once you get some honest feedback and learn to learn from your mistakes.

Who am I to talk about failure?

I am proud to say I have had a lot of ‘failures.’ From each I learned some valuable lessons.

• I failed Calculus. Twice. I also learned two things: one, it’s okay to quit things that just don’t work. Two, don’t go to class with a hangover.
• The first time I ever sang in front of an audience, my guitar and voice were out of tune. My voice cracked. I forgot the words. I quit after my second song and left in shame. Yet, a few months later, I was happily crooning away in front of larger and larger audiences.
• My first attempt at creating an information product, Pizza Confidential, sold only a few copies. I spent more on advertising than I made in book sales. Yet, from that experience, I learned some valuable lessons. (If you know anyone who delivers pizza, do me favor and send them the link).
• The first time I spent any significant time away from home, I set out to hike all 2,176+ miles of the Appalachian Trail. After a couple months, though, I bitched out and went home. A couple years later, I am wrapping up my first year of living abroad.
• I am collecting an impressive pile of  rejection slips for my short fiction. At first they were form letters, but I’ve also started to get some valuable personal feedback from editors.
• This list could continue, but that’s enough for one post.

Over to You:

• How has failure helped you grow?
• Have you ever been paralyzed by what you later learned was an irrational fear of failure?
• What can we learn from the failure of others?

Here’s to a 2010 full of failure! ! !

If you enjoyed this post or others, share it! Tweet it, Digg it, Stumble it, email it to friends, or submit it to your favorite online service.

photo credit: tommy the pariah

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Learning a second (or third, or fourth) language is a great. Not only can you learn to communicate with millions of people, but you generally become smarter, sexier, and more savvy about your own language.

Being a (former) classroom language teacher, I hate to say this, but here goes: traditional language learning is expensive and ineffective. However, if you  combine a little motivation and discipline with the wealth of free materials available online, you can get a solid foundation in a new language without stepping foot in a classroom .

Creative Techniques for Language Learning

• Setting a language learning goal will help you progress faster (visiting a country is a great goal and a fun reward for your hard work).
• Using associative techniques is the most effective way to learn new vocabulary words.
• Look for material that holds your interest. If you’re bored, you won’t learn.
• Listening to and mimicking native speakers will reduce your learning time.
• Music is great. Scientists concur.
• Cramming is less effective than spaced repetition. 30 minutes a day always beats 4 hours 2x per week.
• Learn the 100 most common words first, then the 1000 most common.
• Learning an easy language first makes it easier to progress to harder languages.

Language learning is challenging, but it shouldn’t be painful. I hope these resources help you have a totally non-terrifying learning experience.

Free Online Language Courses

1. LiveMocha is like Facebook for language learners. LM features 50-60 hour graduated courses in most major languages. Some of it quite similar to the odiously expensive Rosetta Stone software. Best of all, you can find native speakers of your target language to practice with. They sell some courses, but most of the basic content is free.

2. The Foreign Service Institute offers a cornucopia of wonkish, government-created public domain language courses. Many languages are  featured, though some have more complete course material than others. When available, you can download audio and .pdf of all the lessons. The .pdf files are all scanned and some of them are crooked…for some reason, this makes me like the course all the more.

3. Busuu.com is similar to LiveMocha;  it is a social learning platform with picture-based vocabulary learning exercises. They also have a video chat application (even for their non-paying customers).

4. The BBC has a plenty of video and downloadable audio content in their Languages section. Understandably, most of the content is oriented towards European langauges.

5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Open Courseware lets you view syllabuses from their language courses. Some courses have more content. The best part about this is you can use these as a model to design your own course of study.

Language Learning Tips, Tricks, and Hacks.

6. Tim Ferriss speaks German, Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin. In his post How to Learn any Language in 3 Months, he explains how he does it. Most important takeaways: word frequency lists and choosing highly interesting and relevant material. He also has a good post called Why Language Classes Don’t Work.

7. For a look at a pretty serious polyglot, check out Alexander Arguelles’ site or youtube channel. The videos are decidedly awkward, but he knows his stuff. The video of his daily linguistic workout is amazing (his morning routine consists of writing Arabic, Chinese, Greek, and some others). His language learning journal is a good idea for anyone who likes to keep track of things.

8. In How to Speak a Language In Two Months, Benny Lewis outlines his method for learning new languages. His main tips: learn all the vocabulary and phrases from a travel book, don’t speak English (or your native language), and set a lot of mini-goals. As an added bonus for all the tips on this site, Benny is a pretty funny writer.

9. The site How to Learn Any Language has a collection of tips and tricks for learning languages. My favorite part of the site is language profile section. They rate languages by popularity (hearts) and cacti. 5 cacti = a damn hard language (Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic). They also have an active discussion board.

10. The Linguist on Language is a good blog with plenty of video content. He says (and I agree) that its better to learn a language before you study it; i.e. don’t worry about grammar at first, just build a foundation and learn the ‘music’ of the language.

11. 100 Hacks to Learn a New Language in No Time is a great post with links for each hack.

12. Omniglot has a lot of information for learning other scripts and alphabets

Other Resources

13. If you have Skype, you can find plenty of conversation partners in your target language. Check out the Conversation Exchange or The Mixxer. If you’d like to see more places to find conversation partners, here is a good list.

14. The Flashcard Exchange has user-generated web-based flashcards for every subject imaginable, so you’re sure to find some for your target language. You can also access the flashcards on your iPhone.

15. Learning good pronunciation is crucial when studying a new language. Forvo is a site that claims to have all the words in the world pronounced by native  speakers. Their stats are impressive: as of today, they have 413,784 words pronounced in 229 languages

16. Smart.fm is a social/learning website built around spaced repetition and a predictive algorithm that guesses what material you need to study and when you need to study it. Lots of resources here for learning Kanji and Hanja, as well resources for Spanish, French and German.

17. Youtube has millions of videos in hundreds of languages. Besides language lessons, you can find music videos and other clips; sometimes you can even find foreign-language videos with English subtitles. If I’m watching a music video, I pull up song lyrics and follow along.

18. Multilingual books has a pretty comprehensive collection of links to television broadcasts from around the world.  BeelineTV.com has some channels as well, though several of the links don’t work.

19. Open Culture has a large list of podcasts entitled Free Foreign Language Lessons.

20. Google Translate is, in my opinion, the best and cleanest online translator out there.

21. For more study materials, don’t forget about your local library. Larger branch libraries usually keep material in stock. Whenever possible, look for books with interesting audio content.

ENJOY!

Over to You:

• Do you speak any other languages?
• Can you share any tips or tricks for language learning?

1st Photo Credit: D Sharon Pruitt
2nd Photo Credit: jeremybarwick

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This is the first in a series follow-up posts  to last week’s post on removing barriers to creating amazing things. The last post was on removing physical barriers. The following posts will deal with removing mental barriers.

First: Before I start, I want to say first that I’m a little uncomfortable writing these kind of posts. Why?

I’m suspicious of anyone who tells people how or what to think.

While Happenchance is about helping people do more and better creative work, and I’ll concede that’s a kind of personal development, a lot of personal development (a.k.a. self-help) creeps me out. There’s a lot of bad advice out there. Sometimes people die. Others waste thousands of dollars on feel-good seminars, books, programs, etc.

But there’s also tons of good advice, some created by wonderful, well-intentioned people. Today, I hope to share some of that advice without sounding like a charlatan, a self-righteous toad, or a pseudo-guru.

Remember two things:

• There is no change without action.
• The only people who (think they) have all the answers are either insane or candidates for assassination.

Here goes….

Inner Critics and Editors

“As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

The inner critic is a rotten friend to have around, like the guy that shows up at your party just to tell you your party sucks…while he drinks all your imported beer.

The mind is a funny thing. It can conceive things unrivaled in nature and unimaginable to past generations, but it can also turn a man into a quivering jellyfish, afraid of his own toaster. In the case of inner critics, it can fill a person with self-doubt and prevent them from creating something amazing.

Anyone who creates anything has critics. That’s the price of playing the game. Yet, our inner critics are the harshest and most destructive critics of all.

Judgmental, intimidating, berating, etc., inner critics are actually the mind’s perverse way of trying to protect us. The mind wants us to be comfortable and complacent, to avoid shame and ridicule. Their logic is like this: ‘if I don’t create anything bad, I will avoid shame.’  Yet, not trying is the most shameful thing of all.

Inner critics may speak in the voice of teachers, friends,  or parents, but the message is the same: “this is shit.” They are an accumulation of negative experiences that accumulate about us like iron shavings around a magnet.

Other things the inner critic might say:

• You’ve never done anything right.
• Everything worth doing has already been done. Why bother?
• So many people are so much better than you.
• You’re a phony, a fake, a fraud.
• You have the brain of a marmot and the heart of a gila monster.
• [insert your favorite negative quote here]

Note that the internal critic tends to speak in the second person, as if it is a voice outside your own head. Remember, though, that these are voices in your head. As such, you can manage them, control them, and eventually beat them into painful, bloody submission.

How to Manage Your Inner Critic(s)

A negative inner monologue is essentially a learned behavior that must be unlearned. This may take some time, but it is possible to learn to manage or even silence your inner critic. You may have to try several different methods. As far as I know, there is no silver bullet for silencing inner critics (unless your inner critic happens to be a werewolf).

Here are tricks for managing and silencing your inner critic.

• Separate early drafts from revisions. For me, the trick is telling the inner critic that I will do well,  but I  must go through several revisions and make some mistakes along the way. Nothing works right on the first try. Once I learned this lesson, things became much easier. I suppose I gave myself permission to fail.
• Tell them to take a leave of absence. If you have a running dialog with your inner critic, tell them to take a leave of absence (with pay) and promise they can come back and help during revisions. The inner critic can be a pretty good bullshit detector if you can learn to work with them, but just like any relationship you need plenty of space.
• Question the voice. If you have one voice that is particularly bad, ask yourself what right that critic has to stop you from what you want or need to do. Others say to question the motivations of these voices.
• Acknowledge the voice. One psychologist recommends a technique called ‘thank you-goodbye.’ He says that inner critics are well-intentioned but they only know how to convey their message in negative terms. I haven’t used this but it seems legit.
• Make a deal with the critic. Write down (on paper) what they say, make a promise to deal with it later, then forget about it. This technique makes the most of our tendency to procrastinate. Who cares if you break a promise to your critics? They’re jerks anyway.
• Decouple what you create with who you are. I’ve written some awful stuff, but its not who I am, just something I made while I was learning. When I look back at what I’ve done, it’s easy to see a progression from awful to less-awful to mediocre. Along the way, if I had said ‘that’s awful, so I’m awful,’ then I never would’ve reached the level of mediocrity I’m so proud  of today.
• Give yourself permission to fail. Every failure is an education. By failing, we learn what doesn’t work. Sometimes we learn what does. The people who succeed are usually people who have a nice track record of failures and clusterf$@ks. The only way to have good ideas are to have lots of  bad ones.
• Write about it. While journals won’t solve all your problems, they are useful for keeping your inner critics in check. How? By writing their arguments and objections, you can see how silly and irrational they actually are. Then you can craft arguments to destroy them once and for all!
• Have confidence in yourself and your abilities. This may be the most important trick in the book. If you say you can’t do something, you probably can’t. Instead, grab your inner critic by the hand, co-opt a popular campaign slogan, and chant ‘yes we can, yes we can’ until you start to believe it.

Resources

Article from Psychology Today: Before You Create, Pacify Your Inner Critic

Fighting the Internal Critic by Betty W. Phillips, PhD

Wall Street Journal Article on Silencing Your Inner Critic

Over to You:

• Do you have any tricks for managing your inner critics?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of inner critics?
• Am I a charlatan?

Later this week, I’ll be putting up a collection of resources on language learning. Next week I’ll continue the series on removing mental barriers with a post on How to Manage Fear of Failure.

If you enjoyed this post or others, share it! Tweet it, Digg it, Stumble it, email it to friends, or submit it to your favorite online service.

photo credit: fpat

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