Here at Happenchance, 2011 looked a lot like 2010, only with a bigger readership, a clearer message, and a bit more self-deprecation. (My original title for this post was ’2011: A Slow Year at a Mediocre Blog’).

In the late winter and early spring, I focused on writing longer articles. For the middle of the year, I slowed down my posting as I tried and failed to make a living outside the 9-to-5.

In the fall, at the request of my more faithful readers, I revived the roundup posts. While the roundups are easier to write (2 hours vs. 15-20 hours), they attract far less engagement than the longer posts and are of dubious long-term value to you. Whether they’ll continue in 2012 remains to be seen.

As I said before, my strategy for 2012 is to do less, better. With a baby on the way, a full-time job, and fiction to write, I’m going to be a busy boy, and as much as I enjoy writing for you, I only have so much energy and attention.

For now, I intend to take a couple months off from regular posting here at this fine site. I’ll likely start something up again in the spring. Until then, watch for longer, resource-rich articles, perfect for bookmarking and sharing (not just quick consumption).

A Few Stats

For 2011, Happenchance had 71,283 total visitors, about 5000-7,000 visitors/month. Most people read about 2.8 pages per visit.Of these visitors, 85% were new, 15% were returning. As of today, 165 people receive updates by email.

I created no products and earned less that $500 in commissions from the General Store and a couple affiliate products. Since I’ve never put any serious effort into monetizing this site, this comes as no surprise.

Popular Articles

Perhaps because it was picked up on Y-Combinator,  this silly-yet-fun article on standing desks was far and away my most viewed post.

Here are a few other popular articles I’m still proud of:

• 7 PhD-Approved Ways to Increase Your Happiness 
• 8 Lessons in Creative Work I Learned From My Garden
• How Creating Systems Can Make Your Microbusiness Rock (My microbusinesses actually sucked, but that’s because I had too many of them. However, the principles are still sound: creating operations manuals and checklists for your endeavors will make your life easier)
• Information is Overrated
• 5 Simple-Yet-Power Tools for Defeating Resistance 
• Stop Whining and Start Grinding

This year I’ve also received several kind emails from readers. For the most part, they just wanted to thank me for writing something they read here. This feedback is enormously gratifying, and if you have any suggestions for what you’d like to see in the coming year, please contact me and let me know. Your feedback helps me shape this site.

See You Later!

As always, thanks for reading. I’ll be back in a couple months. Until then, I hope you create something amazing!

Photo credit: jurvetson

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1. 2010 in Review…Plus Happenchance’s 2 Dirty Secrets

• Who Enters Flow is a post from Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman. In this article, Dr. Kaufman addresses the question of who enters flow (much of the article draws on results from a new paper from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi). Interestingly, high intelligence is not associated with a greater likelihood of entering flow. My armchair theory: intelligent people have a lot of mental chatter that makes them self-conscious.
• As an English major, I noticed a definite bias among professors and snootier students against ‘genre’ fiction. Yet, as David Farland argues in this article, genres like sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, western, etc., satisfy a basic human desire: to get us high on endorphins and serotonin as a result of being drawn in to a good story. Next time somebody tries to give you hell for enjoying such works, just tell them you’re doing it for the endorphins.  (This doesn’t change the fact that I found Twilight unreadable).
• Have you ever wondered why our brains make us laugh? Turns out laughter is a reward mechanism for noticing unexpected patterns or realizing our assumptions were incorrect. Here’s a write-up on some recent research on this topic.

Have a great week!

Photo credit: anieto2k

You may also enjoy:

1. Week 45 Roundup: Building Momentum, Creativity Models, and Incubation
2. Week 43 Roundup: Muttering to Yourself, Genetics, and More
3. What is Flow?

Today during a visit to Monticello I gained an appreciation of Thomas Jefferson the geek:  TJ was an unrepentant polymath and reader who at one time held the largest collection of books in the young United States. He compulsively recorded his expenses, gardening activity, and the daily temperature and wind direction. He also wrote over 1,000 letters a year (which were copied then filed in chronological and alphabetical order). And he used a standing desk:

After strolling the grounds, I went into the gift shop and found proof TJ was also a proto-blogger: he wrote a top-ten list of “canons for observation in practical life.” Here they are:

1. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do to-day.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have it.
4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.
6. We never repent of having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.
9. Take things always by their smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.

Now for the links:

• Corbett Barr just posted a video on 3 tips for dealing with procrastination. #1 is my favorite: procrastinate anyway, but do something fun that has value and moves you toward your goal.
• Seth Godin wrote something a couple days ago that resonated with me called Self Truth; he says that you’ll never become the best violinist in the world, but you can be an “idiosyncratic exception to the standard” [of best]. In other words, sitting around and improving your technique/skills is a form of hiding…or procrastination.
• Here’s a pair of articles from David Mansaray on consumption and production as they apply to advanced learning (1, 2). In my experience, it’s way too easy and tempting to use “research time” as a way to avoid the pain of actually producing anything. Getting out of this habit is a matter of behavior change. Check out this post for more.
• For people like the idea of Write or Die but would prefer something more cuddly (I kind of wish Write or Die’s  ’electric shock’ option actually worked), check out http://writtenkitten.net/
• Commuting sucks, I used to have a five-minute walking commute. Now I do 40 miles a day and the only thing keeping me sane is audiobooks. I enjoyed my car-free lifestyle while it lasted, but the commuter trains stopped running by my house about sixty years ago. Anyway, here’s a great infographic entitled The True Cost of Commuting. While you’re on the subject, check out this blog post on the same topic.
• Here are 8 Counter-Intuitive Ways to Increase Your Well-Being & Creativity.

You may also enjoy:

1. Week 43 Roundup: Muttering to Yourself, Genetics, and More
2. Week 47 Roundup: Why We Read, Why We Laugh, Flow
3. How to Manage Procrastination

 Mind the gap. Sometimes you find that the work you’re creating is okay, but it’s not where you want it to be. You’ve been at it for awhile, but you’re not quite ready to get it out there. This dissatisfaction might be an aspect of Resistance, but other times you’re somewhere in what Ira Glass describes as the Gap, the awkward place between your ability and your taste:

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.

But there is this gap.

For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer, and your taste is why your work disappoints you.

A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit.

Most everybody I know who does interesting, creative work went through a phase of years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing we want it to have.

And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it’s totally normal and the most important thing you can possibly do is do a lot of work.

Put yourself on deadline so that every week you will finish one story. Put yourself in a situation where you have to turn out the work, because it is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.

I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met.

It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

#

• This is wild: word births, recorded by an MIT scientist.

when mom and dad and nanny first hear a child speaking a word, they unconsciously stress it by repeating it back to him all by itself or in very short sentences. Then as he gets the word, the sentences lengthen again. The infant shapes the caregivers’ behavior, the better to learn.

 

• I read in the Washington Post that, according to a recent AP-Ipsos poll, one in four Americans read no books last year. Yikes.
• [If you're looking for something to read, check out SFSignal's awesome flowchart guideto Navigating NPR's Top 100 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books].
• How many books do you read a year? I shoot for fifty, but this year it’s looking closer to thirty. Maybe I could start giving books away to a) get people re-hooked on books and b) thin my overflowing bookshelves.
• Got a side hustle? Here are five tips from Jen Gresham to help you stay sane and profitable.
•  In a rut? Sometimes the easiest way out, according to Leo Babauta, is to take that first step, and often the first step is to ask “what if…”  If you’re looking for on this topic, check out my article How to Get Out of a Rut.

Keep fighting the good fight.

Photo credit: meyerfelix

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1. Week 43 Roundup: Muttering to Yourself, Genetics, and More
2. Week 46 Roundup: Monticello, Procrastination, and Commuting
3. Week 2 Roundup

Muttering To Yourself in the Name of Productivity

I recently read here that prolific sci-fi writer Kevin J. Anderson has dictated about 50 novels into a recording device while hiking.

Hiking and story creation all at once? Why the hell didn’t I try this before?

To test KJA’s technique, I left for a hike with only the seed of a story and a little digital recorder. When I returned, I had a reasonably well-developed first draft in my recorder. I still have to type it then run it through the revision mill, but I was happy with the results.

Some people might have an easier time getting ideas out by speaking rather than typing. Test this for yourself and let me know in the comments if this worked or has worked for you.

(A few years ago, the sight of someone walking around muttering to themselves might’ve been troubling, but we’ve all heard one half of some bluetooth user’s conversation. It doesn’t matter. Mutter away, my friends.)

More on muttering: 

Here’s an older Times article from award-winning writer Richard Powers on dictation.

If you can’t be bothered to type what you record (or you shudder when you hear the sound of your own voice) you could try Dragon NaturallySpeaking (aff. link).

Related to K.J. Anderson’s dictation-while-walking technique, this article from the Association of Psychological Sciences discusses new researh on the links between body movement and creativity. One choice quote:

“Actual physical acts appear to activate the abstract processes that overcome mental rigidity and make new connections—the nuts and bolts of creativity.”

Genetic Stuff 

How much do your genes matter in learning and creativity? Are some people born brilliant and able to do advanced calculus?  In the article How Much Do Genes Matter, Scott Young does a great job of qualifying intelligence and making a case that training and skill improvement (leveling up) are just as important as genetics.

A couple weeks ago, Tyler Tervooren tweeted something about DRD4 (dopamine receptor D4), the novelty/thrill-seeking/adventure gene. Now he has an article entitled Hack your Genetics for Better Risk Taking.

Even though genetics may play a factor in your proclivities toward car theft and sky diving, in the overall scheme of things the amount of effort you put into yourself and your work still matter more than any inherent talent. Just as important is your perseverance, or as Jocelyn K. Glei describes it in this excellent article, grit. I agree.

All this reminds me of a quote (and I’ve forgotten the source):

“I work my ass off so somebody with half the dedication and twice the genes cannot outperform me.”

Other stuffs

Alison Gresik has a great article about working retreats and the benefits of loneliness on Sean Ogle’s site. I’ve spent several months on solitary working retreats, and I think they’re a kick-ass way to grow as an artist/craftsman/whatever. Plus it’s pretty easy to incorporate travel into a working retreat.

I’m including this article as much for the headline as for the content: Top 9 Ways to Deal With Business Overwhelm (So You Can Avoid Thoughts of Mass Murder). I would only like to add this pro tip:

it’s not the thoughts of mass murder that get you in trouble.

Have a freaky halloween.

Seth

photo credit: goaliej54

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1. Week 47 Roundup: Why We Read, Why We Laugh, Flow
2. Week 45 Roundup: Building Momentum, Creativity Models, and Incubation
3. Week 46 Roundup: Monticello, Procrastination, and Commuting

Happy fall everybody.

Over the next few months, I’ll not be writing many articles here at Happenchance. Between a pregnant wife, NaNoWriMo, a full-time job, and a couple other little projects, I’m a busy boy. I do have a bigger project here at Happenchance in my someday/maybe folder; I’ll keep you updated as this develops.

Until then, I want to keep providing you with useful content, so I’m going to revive something I used to do: weekly roundups of the best articles on creative work, initiative, time management, motivation, resistance, and other topics I think you’ll find useful.

In short, I’m going to dabble in content curation with the occasional original article. Let’s say for now I’m severing half a finger and putting it on ice for eventual reattachment.

A Novel in a Month? Why not? 

Before we get to this week’s links, I’d like to remind you that NaNoWriMo starts in a few days. I’ve completed this the past three years, and against my better judgement I’m shooting for a fourth. I’ve written about NaNoWriMo before here, here, and here. If you write, this may be one of the best exercises out there for building your fiction chops.

The Roundup

• Ever feel like you know all you need to know but can’t quite execute? This is not an uncommon problem. Here Dragos Roua explains why information is cheap but action is expensive. IMO, taking action, even the wrong action, is better than doing nothing; at least you’ll learn something.
• Related to the last article is this one on initiative from G.I. Jen at Everyday Bright. Without initiative, all you’ve got is bunch of ideas, and ideas without execution are pretty much worthless. To quote Edison: “genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Fortunately, developing the initiative habit is reasonably easy, and once you do you’ll be in possession of an increasing rare and valuable skill.
• Julien Smith explains how our avoidance of risk is frequently based on faulty assumptions and relates this back to the #OWS protests.
• Jonathan Fields (of Career Renegade) has launched a new book on uncertainty, and here Mark from Lateral Action interviews him with an emphasis on the creative/maker aspects of his work. Here’s a gem:

Great work requires decisions and actions in the face of uncertainty. In fact, studies prove a strong and direct relationship between your ability to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty and creativity

You may also enjoy:

1. Week 43 Roundup: Muttering to Yourself, Genetics, and More
2. Week 47 Roundup: Why We Read, Why We Laugh, Flow
3. Week 2 Roundup

Recently I picked up another book from the eminent psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. In this work, Csikszentmihalyi follows up on his seminal book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Long-time Happenchance readers know that I’ve made much hay about the flow state and how, in my opinion, we create our best work when we lose track of time, forget ourselves, and become one with our work. (For an introduction to flow, check out my cleverly-titled post What Is Flow?)

In this book, Csikszentmihalyi makes the following statement, and I think it succinctly sums up why we spend our free time working on creative projects. To paraphrase:

The creative life may not make you rich or famous, but your everyday life will be more rewarding and fulfilling.

Unfortunately, our desire and intention to create is thwarted and we find ourselves unmotivated, apathetic, disinterested, and prone to excessive procrastination. Csikszentmihalyi identifies four major reasons why this happens:

1. We have too many demands on our time, focus, and attention. Our psychic energy is dissipated and it becomes difficult to enter the flow state because our mental engagement muscles are fatigued.
2. Too many distractions in our immediate sphere of attention prevents us from being able to channel our energy into our work.
3. We are lazy and undisciplined in our approach to our creative work.
4. We have energy but aren’t sure what to do with it.

To counter these four obstacles, Csikszentmihalyi recommends we let go of certain pursuits. For multipotentialites like so many of us are, choosing which pursuits to abandon is like being forced by an axe-weilding madman to decide which digit to sever, and from what I understand, the obvious choice, the pinkie toe, is vital to your balance, so this decision necessarily requires considerable deliberation.

Our work is often so close to us that it feels like an extension of ourselves, and the choice is a brutal one.

However, severing certain projects (but probably not digits) often proves beneficial. According to Csikszentmihalyi, the quality of our experience improves in proportion to the effort invested. In short, the more you do something, the better you become, and you can only become better when you narrow your focus. (See also: Stop Whining and Start Grinding).

I would add that the creative rewards are greater when we’re not just going through the motions but applying diligent and deliberate practice. For example, if you’re a musician, this means not just playing through a song as you’d like to hear it, but slowing the tempo down to largo, breaking the piece into its component parts, digging in to ensure that each part is perfect, and that each time you play the song, you play it better than the time before.

In  the past, I’ve written about why I think laser focus is a myth. However, I can easily square position this with my previous recommendations: Csikszentmihalyi isn’t saying individuals should abandon everything but that One Big Project. Instead, he suggests to abandon those things which you elect to do but don’t derive that much benefit from.

Creativity and good creative work results from a combination of ideas and pursuits. Scrap the extraneous stuff, but keep mashing up your different interests until you have something that is uniquely yours.

Further, some activities complement each other like tomatoes and cucumbers. For me, a smashing solution to a writing-related problems is to play the piano. Conversely, when I’m experience a particular piano-playing problem, writing seems to engage areas of my brain that allow my subconscious mind to solve said problems.

To abandon one in favor of the other would be to the detriment of both and would probably leave me off-balance and bloody.

How you decide what (if anything) to abandon, that’s up to you. For me, I let go of the things I

• notoriously avoid doing.
• felt drained after finally doing.
• only tried out of curiosity.
• have no reasonable expectation of mastery or excellence (the world is full of half-asses. No need to swell their ranks).

Share with (almost) 5,000 monthly readers: What projects or pursuits have you abandoned in favor of others? What results did you experience? And for my more morbid readers (and I know you’ve all thought about this): if you had to lose a digit, which one would it be? 

Photo credit: artiomp

No related posts.

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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In my youth, I slayed countless dragons, trolls, wyverns and slime monsters. I completed perilous quests, hoarded potions, learned the lore of several diverse worlds, and even flew more than a couple airships.

No wonder I was a pasty kid.

If I’ve lost you, I’m referring to my youthful obsession with role-playing video games (RPGs) like Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Kings Quest V, and a couple others. (okay, so I lost a couple months to World of Warcraft in my mid-twenties. Whatever).

While the utility of such digital diversions is debatable, I learned something wildly important from these games:

You become a badass by gaining XP and leveling up.

While playing RPGs you collect XP (experience points) by defeating ever-more challenging enemies. You start out a chicken-kicking weakling who has just lost her entire village to a monster attack and you end the game a powerful mage who uses her fire magic to immolate her nemesis.

To build a badass character, you have to spend hours and hours engaged in a practice called grinding. Grinding means spending hours in the forest killing slime monsters in order in order to gain XP and collect loot. More XP and loot allows you to level up and move forward in the game.

The Hidden Life Lesson in Every RPGs

Building your life is like building a character in an RPG (albeit far more complex and interesting). To improve your life, build your skills, and level up, you have to do some grinding.

If this were a cheesy personal development blog (okay, it kind of is, grr), then I might call this post ‘Level Up your Life’ or some other alliterative silliness. But I prefer the –ing rhyme.

This idea of grind->gain XP-> level up is obvious, but too many people miss it.

• Want to level up your career? Then stop bitching about how much your job sucks and start grinding in order to build those skills that will improve your current job, allow you to start your own business, go freelance or find another job.
• Want to level up your finances? Shut up about the damn economy and start learning  about the psychology of money. While you’re at it, you might want to work on those  impulse-control skills. Understanding the true cost of interest helps, too.
• Want to level up your earning skills? Build your marketing skills, learn to turn your passions into profits, or go back to school.
• Want to max out your time management and productivity skills? Buy and use this book
• Overleveraged, underemployed college graduate? Go teach English in Asia. What you miss out on in career-XP you’ll make up for in loot collected.
• Want to level up your writing skills? Then start writing. Reading books and blogs on writing won’t make you a better writer unless you actually write. That’s like reading a game’s instruction manual in order to level up your character.
• Want to level up your charisma? Then apply some of the time-tested goodness from Dale Carnegie’s classic book (free on archive.org)

This is simple: if you want to level up your life (damn it, I said it), you have put in a lot of dedicated time to gaining experience and improving your skills.

Start with Slime Monsters, Not Wyverns

Remember what I wrote about Small Wins? This RPG approach to skill-building is no different. Unless you’re suicidal, you wouldn’t direct your level 1 character into a cave full of level 20 trolls.

And, speaking from my own hair-pulling experience, you shouldn’t set a goal to earn $5,000 a month from freelancing in 3 months if your previous freelance income is zero.

Reduce Your Grinding Time

Up up down down left right left right B A hit start.

Sometimes, when you kill an enemy, they drop a rare item, for example the  Flaming Sword of Awesome. This FSoA allows you to gain a lot of experience (and level up) in a hurry. FSoAs require more effort than the Konami code, but they do exist. When you find one, make good use of it. You still have to grind, but just know that there’s no speed limit.

Talk to me

• What skills would you like to level up?
• Do you have a flaming sword of awesome to share? (i.e. a strategy to gain experience faster?)
• Warrior or mage, which are you?

Photo cred: aztlek

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Is your project stuck? Are you working on something but feel like there’s no end in sight? Maybe it’s time to reframe the way you look at wins. We all want big, victorious completions, but sometimes it’s better to scale it down and celebrate the first victories, the small wins.

If you’re building a ship, forget the champagne bottles and marching bands before the maiden voyage. That’s a year away. Celebrate when you finish the blueprints.

Karl Weick, in his influential 1984 American Psychologist article “Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems” laid out pragmatic reasons for celebrating small wins. His examples are diverse, ranging from the Apollo 13 mission to the manufacture of Rayon.

Since most of us aren’t astronauts or factory magnates, we need ways to apply this concept to our creative projects.

First, let’s define small wins. A small win

• is “an outcome of moderate importance.”
• isn’t necessarily the next logical step towards a goal (i.e. not step 3 of 42)
• moves you in the general (rather than the specific) direction of your goal.
• is more easily viewed as a win in the context of a finished project.
• preserves the gains achieved by other small wins.

Why are small wins so effective?

Weick writes that “once a small win has been accomplished, forces are set in motion that favor another small win.”

Think inertia here. Getting that first win is difficult, because objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Once you have that first small win, however, you’re in motion, and objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

When projects and problems are extremely complex, you may encounter some distortion in the steps necessary to reach the end point. Small wins remove this distortion by giving you a clear next step.

I believe this is why Getting Things Done is such a popular methodology for personal effectiveness; next actions are easy, and completing them gives you the feeling of progress.

Small wins are similar to the systems approach because they allow you to break a complex task or operation down into small, discrete subsystems. Weick writes that “a system with fewer interdependent events is a simpler system. It is easier to comprehend, easier to control, easier to improve.”

Small wins are effective because:

• they build a pattern of action that propels you forward.
• they simplify complex problems and projects.
• they give you a sense of completion for ongoing projects. Projects without a definite endpoint require these small wins to keep you engaged.
• they reduce stress (which increases engagement) by giving you tasks you know you can finish.
• humans crave and enjoy completion. Imagine not knowing whether or not Frodo reached Mordor with the One Ring.
• all but the most dour bastards love to celebrate. Small wins give you plenty of reasons (excuses) to celebrate.

Examples of applying small wins:

• Building a website. Simply setting out to create a site with authoritative content, good design, and plenty of features sounds like a beast of a task. If you start out with this as the primary goal (and its completion as the win you’re going for), you’ll be frustrated. If, instead, you approach this as a series of discrete tasks with each completion a win, you’re more likely to finish the site.
• Writing a book.  Setting only a goal of ‘finish this cyborg-vampire saga (Vyborgs, hehe) by the end of the year’ is most likely setting yourself up for a combination of pain, disappointment, and frustration. However, a goal of ‘write 500 words today’ is easy. Repeat that for 160 days, do your editing along the way, and you’re sitting pretty at 80,000 words (note: if you do set out to write a novel, be sure to check out Syd Field’s Screenplay and spend some time on Storyfix.

Talk to Me

• How have you used small wins to propel your projects forward?
• What are other examples/applications of small wins?
• Here’s a chance to clarify you’re thinking and maybe get some feedback: If you’re stuck on a project, what could you do today that would give you a small win?

Photo credit: atlih

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