There are few feelings better than the sensation you get when you’re about to explore a new idea. Creativity of any kind is a rush unlike any other, and far too many of us are forced to suppress original thinking throughout the majority of the day because our current careers do not fall in line with who or what we aspire to become. Most people find they need to set aside time outside their 9-5 to in order to try exploring any creative endeavor, but actually following through is a lot easier said than done.
There is a great and frustrating old saying, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” Maybe you hope to dedicate an hour a day to doing something creative, and maybe for the first few days or weeks that goal is fairly easy to meet. Inevitably, however, a day will come when something happens to break your newly established routine:
- A late night out causes you to sleep in
- A child, pet, or loved one falls ill and needs you to help care for them
- Your job demands you spend more time at the office
- A family event (birth, death, etc). unexpectedly occurs
- That little voice inside that tells you there is no chance you will succeed convinces you to not take a day off
- Your alarm doesn’t go off
There are countless reasons why our best made plans go awry, both big and small. When those things happen and our still relatively new routine of purposefully setting aside time to create is jeopardized it can be incredibly hard to get ourselves back on the right track. We tell ourselves that people meant to succeed would never allow themselves to slip so easily. We tell ourselves we cannot trust ourselves to chase our dreams. We tell ourselves we are not deserving of aspiring to or becoming something greater than what we war and we are wrong for doing so.
Everyone fails. Everyone has setbacks and unexpected turns that throw their lives into chaos. There is no perfect plan for dealing with life’s ability to spin out of control at any given moment and there never will be. What separates those who rise above the hurdles of existence and those who do not is actually something fairly simple: Those who succeed have a when-then plan.
What is a when-then plan?
When-then plans are a system a checks and balances that ensures creative people do not lose focus when life throws them curveballs. Let me give you an example:
“WHEN I am unable to spend an hour writing in the morning (or any time at all), THEN I will spend five minutes reviewing my recent creative output in the evening and deciding how I’ll work the next day.”
Here’s another:
“WHEN I know I will be unable to spend anytime being creative in the more the morning of evening THEN I will take 10-minutes out of my lunch to write, draw, or otherwise express myself.”
When-then plans do not make up for the hour of time you lost, but it does keep you connected to your creativity and your goals when you do not have time to work on them. So much of the reasoning behind why we lose connection to our goals when we start becoming increasingly busy is that we allow ourselves to stop thinking about them. We push our future ambitions out of our mind to focus on an immediate need or problem, and in doing so we make it incredibly hard to pull those thoughts and ideas back into the realm of possibility.
The lost time is still a downer, but by having a then-when system in place you can still make personal progress on a daily basis. Taking a step back from your work before reviewing it can help your be more fairly critical of your efforts. These short sessions of review can help you readjust your focus and more precisely plan your future timeline, which will account for the time lost to the demands of the day/week/etc.
New habits are only good intentions until you have a when-then plan in place, and that plan is only good when you put it into use. Do not let life convince you that you will never be more than what you are right now because that is a lie. You can aspire to something greater, and there is a way to get there as long as you’re willing to put in the work.
James Shotwell is the Digital Markerting Coordinator for Haulix. He is also the Film Editor for Substream Magazine and host of the Inside Music Podcast. He asks that you follow him on Twitter, and he wouldn’t mind you sent him photos of your cats.
