Resolutions 2011

Now that we are three weeks into the New Year and the giddy effects of eggnog and champagne are wearing off, I thought I would look soberly at my resolutions for 2011.  I know, resolutions get a bad rap, because we tend to make grandiose resolutions thinking of what we could accomplish in a year, but after a few weeks the realization that it requires effort to keep those goals eats away at our will power.

I enjoyed the book Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath; which is about the process of making changes.  (Their book Made to Stick is very good as well.)  Anyway, I signed up for their infrequent newsletter and received the following suggestions for resolutions:

FIVE TIPS FOR (FINALLY) GETTING YOUR NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION RIGHT

1. Don't be ambitious. When change is hard, aim low. A friend of ours, the editor of a wellness magazine, has a "1-Song Workout" that she does on days when she doesn't feel like working out. She tells herself, "All I have to do is work out for one song," but of course she often gets in a groove and finishes a full workout. So don't set an ambitious New Year's resolution like "I'll work out four times a week." Instead, plan to do "1-Song Workouts" on Monday and Thursday. Leave yourself room to overachieve -- that feeling of "nailing it" is what will keep you hooked.

2. Watch for bright spots. If you're trying to eat healthier, for instance, don't obsess about all the times that you slip and eat an Oreo. Instead, keep a constant watch on what does work. If you ate healthy food all day yesterday, how did you get away with it? Was it because you had healthy "heat & eat" food that was easy to fix? Was it because you never let yourself get so hungry that you'd crave fatty foods? Did you avoid the office lunch at the Mexican place? If you can understand what allowed you to succeed, you can do more of it. That's bright-spots thinking. (Need a refresher on "bright spots"?)

3. Make simple tweaks in your environment. If you're trying to increase your savings, pay with cash and leave your cards at home. If you're trying to diet, carry around a Ziploc of apple slices. If you're trying to jog, lay out your clothes the night before. If you're trying to stop oversleeping, set up a double (or triple?) alarm system. (Or buy a Clocky with your Xmas gift cards!) This stuff sounds insignificant, but it will make a big difference.

4. Rely on planning, not willpower. Your Resolution calls for a new way of behaving. And that's a challenge because you've been practicing the old way of behaving for a long time. The old way is well-paved and familiar and comfortable. So you can't just bet on willpower or good intentions to ensure your success. Use your planning skills. Get yourself on the hook for something! Don't plan to "learn Spanish." Register for a Spanish course at your local community college. Do it right now -- you're already online. Or don't "try hard" to go to the gym in the morning. Email your friend, right now, and tell 'em to come get you at 7am on January 3.

5. Publicize your resolution. We all know peer pressure works. So use it on yourself.  Tell everybody you know what your resolution is. They'll bug you about it, and you won't want to disappoint them. Just knowing that they know will make you more likely to succeed. Hell, if you want, tell us. We won't bug you about it, but we'll silently root for you.

I think the last tip is very good.  When you publicly let people know your goals, there’s pressure to put up or shut up.  Never under estimate the power of peer pressure.  So, what are my resolutions for 2011? 

I will lose 22lbs.  Now, some people may think that’s crazy or too large and I haven’t really comprehended the Heath Brother’s advice.  My goal last year was to lose 50lbs!  Needless to say, I gave up hope half way through the year.  But 22lbs works out to about 2lbs a month, which works out to about half a pound a week.  Through simple diet and a bit of exercise, I don’t think that’s outrageous.  Consistent and simple effort is the key here – for me, at least.  It’s also so drawn out that I can see if I’m on track or not.  My goal is to weigh 200lbs or less on the morning of Dec. 31.

To be honest, I actually started this last week and have already lost 5lbs!  Now, I don’t expect that amount of weight loss to be the norm.  It’s always easier to lose the first few pounds.  Sometimes just being aware of your weight or measuring it contributes to weight loss.

I weigh myself Monday mornings.  On Jan. 10, I was 222lbs.  On Jan. 17, I was 217lbs.  Yay for me.    I will update my weight on Mondays until I reach my goal.  After that, I will update it monthly to ensure I’m staying the course.  If my weight goes above 205, I’ll start updating weekly, again.

I will write a page of script a day or 7 pages a week.  This gives me some leeway if I “stumble” during the week.  I started this habit at the end of last year, but had fallen off the wagon by December.  A page a day of script writing isn’t very difficult, but it’s about re-establishing the habit and being consistent.  I think one of the challenges for many writers is that they put on a lot of pressure for that page.  Not me.  I am almost a 100% certain it will stink, but I will write it.

I will complete the first draft of one play.  This should be a happy outcome of the  previous goal.  Again, the first draft should be “crappy”, so no pressure on the quality.  But I do expect to have at least one new piece underway.  A stretch goal could be to have a second draft completed, but I will definitely be happy to have a first draft completed.

Obviously, this is my attempt to “publicize” my resolutions.  I guess I could provide weekly updates on the writing ones, as well as the weight goal.  That way, I can keep a tally and you can see how I’m doing.   

What about you?  Do you have any goals for 2011 that you’d care to publicize?

What Bar are you measuring yourself by?

Last month, I was at a two day workshop by Yael Farber at Nightwood Theatre.  She’s a writer/director/performer from South Africa.  The workshop was called “Playing With Fire” and was described as:

A unique, intensive master class facilitated by Yael Farber for actors and performing artists / creators, writers and directors interested to deepen their process and open access to their “core fire”.

It was the wording of “core fire” that caught my attention.  It reminded me a bit of shamanism and passion and creativity.  I had never heard of Yael Farber and I had no idea what to expect.  But the word “fire” beckoned me seductively.

 It was a great experience and is serving as a motivator to renew some of the passion and excitement I feel about writing.  One of the things that Yael talked about was stretching ourselves as artists.  Part of that is done by having a “bar” to measure ourselves against.  And the best bar is ourself, not others.

Only we know what we are capable of.  Only we know when we are giving 80% effort, instead of 100%.  Only we know if we are really pushing ourselves or just going through the motions.

An analogy that Yael used was going to yoga class. Because she is naturally flexible she appears to be a yoga master.  But she said that because she’s able to do those stretches, she actually has to really push herself beyond those stretches to get the full effect of them.  Whereas, someone who isn’t as flexible may actually be pushing themselves much further even if they can’t touch their toes.

It is a matter of perspective.  Your perspective.  So what if you are more flexible or talented than someone else?  Are you growing?  Are you pushing yourself?  The only time you can coast is when you are going downhill.

The key is that only you know if you are stretching yourself. 

The concept was timely, because I was rehearsing a play.   And I was feeling annoyed by the level of commitment and ability of some of the other people involved with the show.  After thinking about what Yael had said, I realized that regardless of what I felt about the others, I wasn’t giving a 100% of my ability.  I wasn’t pushing myself.  Shame on me.

I mean, I wasn’t even off book yet and I had a small part!  I decided to put up or shut up.  But, it’s hard to push yourself.  And when you use yourself as a bar, you know what you are capable of or what you should be capable of.  More effort is required.   More effort is always required!

In terms of writing, I was already on my journey to write a page a day.  The thirty days are up and the habit has been initiated.  Now, I need to keep it up.  But I need to explore ways to push myself further in my writing. 

Where do you need to push yourself to stretch yourself beyond the bar you are at?

Pass the Dip, please

In the quest to become really good at something, according to Seth Godin’s book The Dip, you need to get past the dip.  No, not the thing you dunk potato chips into.  Hmm.  Dip… The dip that Godin is talking about is that space between being okay at something and becoming a master of something.

When you discover or develop an ability like writing or playing an instrument, there is an initial period of excitement where it’s fun and you are learning new things and that causes a snowball effect making you  come back and learn more or develop more.  However, the honeymoon eventually ends and you get to “the dip”. 

The dip is the space where you are not learning so many new things, but need to develop and practice what you already know. It’s the time where you develop and enhance your skills through practice and perseverance.   It’s the lull between being a novice and becoming a master.  It can take months or it can take years.  If you want to become excellent at something, you need to get through “the dip.” 

The dip is where most people quit.

Quitting isn’t bad, as long as you quit the right things.   If you have a major goal, you will need to quit things that distract you from that goal.  You will need to quit things that take up valuable time, but don’t give any returns towards your goals.  I can hear my wife saying, “You mean, like watching TV?”  Sigh.  Yes, like watching TV.

Only you will know what things you should quit.   But first, you need to decide what the goal is.  What is the thing you won’t quit until you achieve it?  Once you know what that is, then you can start looking at the things that you can quit because they are distracting you from your main goal.  Stephen Covey said, “It’s easy to say ‘no’ when you have a bigger ‘yes’ inside.”  If you have something very important to you, like a goal you are committed to achieving, it is easy to quit or say no to other things.

It’s not easy to get past the dip.  If it was easy, everyone would be a master.  You need to put in the time to become great at what you want to become great at.  I want to become a great playwright, so in my way of going through the dip, I’m working towards writing a page a day (WAPAD). 

I’m at Day 13 of taking baby steps towards that goal.  I just completed my sixth day of writing half a page a day.  After tomorrow, I will work on ¾’s of a page a day.  Once my habit is developed of writing a page a day, I will have to keep up the habit.  I will actually have to increase the habit to more than one page a day, but that will be another habit to develop and I will take baby steps for that, too.

What is your goal?  What is that you want to reach for that will push you through your own “dip”?

Keeping the Magic Secret

When people find out that I’m a writer, they often ask what I’m working on.  If I’m in the throes of a first draft, I’ll mumble something about not liking to talk about my work.  It’s hard to explain, but I have found from experience that if I talk about a project before a first draft has been completed, I run the risk of not completing it.  It’s as if talking about it removes the need to write about it.

It’s not an unusual concept.  One of the reasons that artists create works of art is because it is a way that they can articulate an idea or feeling they have.  If you can talk about it, then what is the need to express it through art?  It’s as if you have sucked out the magic from the piece.

After I have a first draft done, I don’t mind talking about it.  Because the piece is now a thing.  It exists.  It has form.  It may not have reached its final form and there may be a lot of work (rewriting) ahead to get it to the form it needs, but it has been birthed. 

It’s as if the first draft is really part of the gestation process and if you talk about your piece too soon, you run the risk of miscarrying.  Once the first draft is done, it’s only a matter of refining and adding.  Of course, when I say “only” I don’t mean to diminish the next process.  It’s similar to the development of a child.  After they’re born, there’s years of development before they become an adult; but without the birth, there is no child and no adult. 

Similarly, although it may seem as if most of the work is spent doing the rewriting, without the first draft, there is no play.  So, it is very important to get to that first draft.  Duh, I know. 

But how many false starts have you had on the stories that you’ve written?  Do you get started but then after talking about it to someone, find that you have run out of steam?

Keep the details of your first draft to yourself.  Don’t talk about a piece until you have a first draft done.  If someone asks what you are working on, tell them you’re fleshing out an idea, but you’re not really sure where it is going yet.

If you need to talk it out, talk it out on paper.  This is the part of the magic.  Get that first draft done on your own.  The first draft is the time to make your mistakes and flounder.  You don’t know what you are giving birth to, but it’s exciting to find out. 

Once the first draft is done, the magic has happened.  Now it’s time to start the hard work.  But don’t forget to pass out the cigars and celebrate!

By the way, Day 9 of WAPAD and I moved up to a half page of script writing a day yesterday.  Hey, my daily writing has doubled.  Yay! 

Keeping the Magic Alive

Whoo hoo!  I’m on Day 6 of WAPAD.  And I did my writing quota today and it’s a Saturday.  However, even though I was only a page and a bit into my project (a musical adaptation of a one of my short stories), I have moved on to another project.  Why?  The other story excites me more.

There is a contradiction of motivations in writing.  If you are serious about writing, you must do it consistently; hence, my urge to develop my WAPAD (writing a page a day) habit.  Conversely, a project needs to excite you in some way for you to stick with it to the end.  Consistency and passion drive most works of expression.

Although, I find my musical project exciting, I’ve never written a musical.  I’ve seen a few musicals and I have an intuition that this story could work better as a musical than a straight play.  But…  There’s a lot of work involved to get this story to the musical version.  And some of those steps have been nagging away at me and robbing me of some of my enthusiasm.

Also, I want to have a play ready for the Hamilton Fringe Festival Playwriting Contest.  The contest opens December 1, 2010 and is open until February 25, 2011.  I would like to be able to submit a second or third draft of my script before the deadline closes.  Usually, I’m frantically trying to get my first draft in on the final day of the deadline.  L

So, what happened?  There are always a few ideas bouncing around my head.  I have one idea that I have been trying to formulate into a story.  And last week, as I was riding the train home, an element popped into my head which will be the catalyst to pushing the idea into a play.  I apologize for being a bit oblique in talking about the things that I am working on, but I will discuss that tomorrow. 

Apparently Isaac Asimov worked on multiple projects at the same time.  He would have a bunch typewriters set up in his writing room; one for each project.  When he got tired of a project, he would get up, go to another typewriter and start writing on that project.  How did that work for him?   Isaac Asimov wrote about 500 books.

So, for me to keep passionate about writing a page a day, I need to be working on a story that excites me.  I may run out of steam on this second story, too; but, then I will go back to the musical or start working on another story idea.  WAPAD is the goal, so I need to make sure that the things I am working on will excite me enough to come back to the blank page each day.

You Can’t Do it All

It’s Day 4 of the WAPAD and I have gotten in my quarter page a day.  It seems ridiculously easy, but I have found myself still wanting to skip it a couple of times this week.  However, I tell myself that it is only a little thing and get it done.  The key for me is to get it done before getting to work.  Thank goodness for commuter trains and a laptop.  That really helps.

Of course, I haven’t been as diligent with getting any blog entries done.  Instead of beating myself up for it, though, I’ve been philosophical.  You can’t do it all.  That’s why it’s really important to decide what’s important to you.  Playwriting is really important to me. 

I can feel a decision building up.  I love watching TV.  September is one of my favourite times of the year.  I look forward to the TV times arriving and reading the synopses of all the new shows and picking which ones to watch.  Sigh.  Being a TV reviewer would be my dream job.  But watching TV is time consuming.  And I’m starting to regret spending so much time in front of the boob tube.

At this point, I can still do it all.  My WAPAD commitment hasn’t grown to a point where it can’t be done on my train ride.  I can still waste a couple of hours in front of the TV.  But the end is coming, I fear.  

There are a lot of things related to playwriting like reading plays, reading biographies of playwrights, watching plays, being involved in a playwriting group, submitting to contests and theatres, and, of course, writing.  These are all things I should be doing or spending more time on.  My beloved TV watching isn’t on that list.  And if I am honest with myself, it is utterly expendable.

Because you can’t do it all, it is vitally important to decide what you can do.  If you have writing goals, you need to look at those things that take your time and aren’t related to writing.  Many of them are time wasters.  To start, make a note of what they are and observe how much time you are spending on them.  But be warned, you need to reduce or eliminate them eventually.

Getting up after falling down

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again, right?   Sigh.  I knew that the weekend would be challenging for me to get my writing done.  It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I blew off Saturday and Sunday.  The crazy thing is that there were a few moments that I could have written, but I didn’t “feel” like it and I let the moment pass.

However, I really want to establish a habit of writing every day.  So, I pick myself up, dust off the procrastination debris and start over.  The key to doing these thirty days is that they need to be consecutive.  Miss a day and I need to start over.   (Thanks goodness I wasn’t at Day 25 or something!)

By the same token, I’m not going to browbeat myself over missing the weekend.  To be honest, I have a page and a quarter of writing that I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t decided to start this WAPAD (Writing a Page a Day) in the first place.  Actually, after today, I am at a page and a half.  Slow but sure.

For me, it really is important to try to get the writing done as early as possible – especially on the weekends.  There is so much to do on Saturday and Sunday and there is a brief amount of time before everyone else is up and moving around, so it is important to take advantage of it as quickly as possible. 

I will be more motivated, next weekend, for sure.  So welcome to Day 1 of WAPAD – Redux.  I have done today's writing, in case you're wondering.