Monday Memo #39
Time box.
The Monday memo is food for thought to fuel your week.
Hi everyone,
Starting a creative project is hard. Finishing is hard. Heck, the work in the middle isn’t easy either. But you can get better at all of these things with time-boxing.
A time box is a constraint that you impose on yourself to do focused work for a period of time. This constraint is incredibly, unexpectedly empowering. If you have to finish in four hours, you think more carefully about what you start. You make decisions not based on some ideal, but what is feasible within the time available. And you don’t have a lot of time for worrying, second-guessing yourself, or procrastination.
I worked in the newspaper business for about ten years. I suppose you could call it my first career. I was an infographer: that meant my job was to create infographics, visual explanations like maps, charts, and diagrams to show how things worked, where they happened, to answer questions visually.
I made weather maps, stock price charts, maps showing where things that had happened or were being planned. I made small graphics, about the size of an index card, and big ones that took up a whole broadsheet newspaper page.
A newsroom is a great environment for learning how to start and finish things. Every day we would all show up for work not knowing what we would be creating. All we knew was that the paper would be so many pages (maybe 50 in those days) and it was our job to fill those pages with pictures and stories about what’s going on in the world.
Imagine that. In the morning I would attend a meeting to hear what was going on and my job was to listen and suggest ideas for visual maps and stories. And I would make promises about how much space I could fill up, before I really even knew anything. So I would have to guess: “three columns by ten inches” or “one column by three inches” or “a half page.”
Once I made the promise I would have until about 6 pm to deliver. In between I would have to figure it out, collect the information, figure out what to draw, find references, interview people, and make an infographic. Sometimes several.
We didn’t call it a time box, but that’s what it was. Having the time box was a great way to get practice in starting, finishing and all the middle stuff too. I was lucky to have those years of practice, creating things fast under that pressure of daily deadlines.
One nice thing about working for a newspaper was that every day was a new day. There was not a lot of time or energy spent on anguishing over the mistakes of the past. Not everything we did was perfect. Under such conditions, how could it be? Each day was a brand-new start.
You don’t need to work for a newspaper to give yourself time-boxes. You can set a time-box for yourself any time. In fact you might want to consider making it a daily practice. Kevin Friedburg of 7-second websites writes his daily newsletter in 25 minutes every day.
A time box can be any size you care to make it. Ten minutes, 20 minutes, an hour, a day, a week. The point is to commit to a time within which you will conceive, start, and finish something within that time frame.
Exercise.
Here’s your exercise for the week. Commit yourself to a daily time box for a week. Give yourself a time and a format. For example: “Every day this week I will take 20 minutes and write a post for my blog or LinkedIn. At the end of 20 minutes I will publish it.”
I have a daily time-boxed practice: Every morning, before I take in any new information, before I look at any screens — in other words, before I pollute my mind with all the things that are going on around me — I write four pages in my journal. I write down whatever comes to mind. The only rule is to write until I finish four pages. I guess technically that’s not a time box, but a “four pages box” — but I’m generally done in 20-30 minutes.
These early morning sessions generate a lot of the ideas that later turn into more involved projects. Daily creative habits like this are the fundamental building blocks of a creative life. They build your skills and confidence in starting, finishing, and publishing.
So give yourself a time box and a simple format and try it for a week. Let me know what happens.
Our next Collaboratory.
In our next Collaboratory, we will work with coach and consultant Kevin Farr on “the economics of self.” I’ve known Kevin for many years. He’s a thoughtful, caring human who has been through a lot, including addiction and recovery, and is bringing all of those experiences into creating meaningful work in service of others. In this session we will spend some time reflecting on our core values and comparing them to how we actually spend our time and money. I expect we will generate some interesting insights.
Become a member today to access this live, interactive session, on Wednesday, September 18, from 9 to 10:30 am Pacific time.
Project studio.
I’m also planning a change-up from our Collaboratory format in October. Starting with a kick-off call on October 9, I will run a seven-week intensive I’m calling Project Studio. I will provide a lightweight structure within which we will work together to complete our personal creative projects, encourage and support each other, and hold each other accountable to being true to our creative selves. Project Studio will meet weekly, every Wednesday, from 9 to 10:30 am, starting October 9 and wrapping up on November 20, just before Thanksgiving in the US. Project studio will be free for members.
In between now and October I will be sharing a lot more details about Project Studio, so if you’re interested, check out the detailed description on our website. If you’re not sure yet you can follow the journey here and decide later.
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