Tangled Mess – A distraction or a creative opportunity?
There’s a system for goals that I have come across time and again. If applied, the system can be very useful to move a person forward.
Briefly, it’s about identifying the big long-term goals and the ones that will get you there which are the mid-term and short-term goals. This is about making use of the results of that process.
A goal that always comes up every time I break things down is ‘keeping organised’ – a way of being in control.
A Goal Turned into a Distraction?
I have spent some days organising information and tools and made an attempt to assess what I have that is useful and what is complete rubbish or sadly out of date.
It’s too big a job to do thoroughly. Why? because I have bought so many information products, wordpress themes, wordpress plugins and little pieces of software – let alone training and information books – I have totally lost track of and even forgotten some of them. I remember that I have a thing that does ‘blah’ but what is it called, and where is it filed? If I can remember the name of the author or the date I bought it, that’ll help. What if it came as a bonus with something else?
I know many of them are very good; some simply have little gems of information in them. Others have neat solutions to technical problems. Some are just the same thing as another thing bought a year ago with a new name and a fancier interface – I’m beginning to recognise those and ignoring them. It’s so easy to double up when you’re desperate to improve your website performance or need the right brush for an effect in a painting.
I’ve always been pretty good in that I do list information and software in a spread-sheet, together with the date, cost, the person from whom it was bought and even a column to show what it is, but that’s not enough. I need a detailed description of the item, and often it’s a bundle-buy with extras that belong in a different category.
Fiddly details can bog you down
For example, a super duper clever wordpress plugin comes with some bonus plugins and a wordpress theme, plus a nice training pdf on a related subject. That’s already three categories – Plugins, Themes, Training. These each need sub-categories of their own!
The plugins and themes need sub-categories for their functions. Some help with connecting social sites such as facebook and twitter and then they don’t connect the ones you want and you need another one. There are themes that include that function but not the sharing side. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are plugins to do a huge range of tasks. There are themes that include many functions.
Then there’s the training. This could be in the form of books, sound tracks, videos or whole courses. Some are very focussed on one subject, others incorporate many side subjects. Again, there is often very good information on one subject with scant information on another part of the puzzle. Some try to be, or claim to be, comprehensive and, in a way, they are. So comprehensive that it’s difficult to know what is important for what I want to achieve.
The list goes on.
There are Art books about history, techniques and artists. Then there’s internet stuff, making websites and marketing etc. etc. It really needs a proper database with relationships, which work best with which – the kind of website they are suitable for, whether they are free or paid (premium) and the licence level I have as well as where detailed instructions can be found. A spread-sheet just doesn’t cut it.
In fact, it occurs to me that I could make such a thing in an office-type database application – and I could, given time.
But is that what I really need to do now in order to move on and progress with making a living, living a life and enjoying both? Well, Yes and No.
Yes and No? The Yes is that it’s definitely better to be organised so that time isn’t wasted searching for things. The No is that it doesn’t all have to be done at once – or completely. That could be just another distraction, an excuse not to get on with the thing that will move me one step closer to my goals, Today.
Cherry Picking
When embarking on a project, perhaps it would be wiser to find the information and tools needed for the work in hand. Dig the best of them out and store them with the project. The project itself can serve as a database, a memory jogger for another occasion. The association with a particular project can serve as the trigger, a sort of analogue database in the mind.
The Advantages and Pitfalls of Distractions
It’s hard enough to Identify Goals, break them down and incorporate them in a daily routine, but when one of those becomes a total immersion exercise that takes over the day, even days and weeks, it’s transformed into a distraction.
Now, this can be very destructive, taking you off-course and slowing progress down.
But Wait! It can just as easily be a breakthrough that takes you down a new and exciting path. Could it be that this is just what I/you need to create something new – that provides the key to solving something? Many a successful invention comes from the need to solve a problem, after all.
So how can you know whether you are wasting time and allowing yourself to be distracted, or whether you have just hit on ‘a good thing’?
I don’t know the answer to that – No-one does unless it is explored further. I don’t even know how to choose the things that could be explored, never mind whether it would be worthwhile.
And here I am, back to my central philosophy or theory about questions and answers – full circle.
The only correct answer to almost any question is:-
It Depends….
Every person and every circumstance is different. How can there possibly be a correct answer for all?
As an artist – all this talk could be seen as a distraction from making artworks – although I know that living and doing other things provides material for creative works.
Perhaps I will write again about distractions that take you away from productive activity and how to control them. It would be interesting to know how other people solve the problem of keeping sight of goals and whether allowing certain distractions has produced new ideas.
Please, do use the comments section here to air your views…
