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Monday, January 10, 2022

How to be creative and productive

How to be creative and productive

I am a dreamer.

I am happy with being a dreamer.

I came to grips with being a dreamer after reading about the different Meyer-Briggs personality types.

I am an INFP type. 

Knowing more about what makes me tick has helped me create a plan of action for my year that I am comfortable following. It also felt good creating it.

How I use my journal

The beginning of my ideas starts in my head with massive amounts of information, possibilities and intentions.

I don't need to write in my journal to come up with a to do list or help me get my thoughts on paper.

I need a journal to get me writing. The act of writing with a pen slows my mind and helps me to decide where to start for the day.

I use my own digital journals and planners in Goodnotes. I created this journal with a page for the morning and a page for the evening because I find that I need to write more than just once in the day. I fill the morning page with how I feel and what I might like to do or how I slept and why. Sometimes I have a light bulb moment that needs to be recorded for future review.

I find it very useful to my personal growth to look back on my musings each week, each month and each year.

I have made the image big enough for you to read if you like.


How I use my vision boards

I discovered recently that there was a different way to use the vision boards that suited me better. 

I don't really need a vision board to create a picture of my dreams and goals. I seem to do that in my head all the time. I do like the process of sitting down and collecting up images or quotes or words that describe my dreams and goals but I don't need the visual reminder to look at later.

I guess the best way to describe my vision boards is like a snapshot of my brain. I start with the big picture and come up with lots of tasks that will eventually lead to the big vision. 

I tend to interchange the terms vision and goal because of the way I think. The vision is my goal. Then I go straight to coming up with the tasks required to get there.

I have always tried to follow the accepted theory that you have a vision then you set up SMART goals then you break each goal into smaller tasks. I also felt like I was just doing it wrong because SMART goals seemed pointless to me. I now know that I am not thinking wrong, I am thinking differently.

The beauty of using a digital planner is that I can enlarge it to write then shrink it down to see the overall image. I like the big picture vision that I can see as a concrete image when I shrink the page to full view.

I am not a purist when it comes to setting goals

The accepted terms for making progress in my life tend to get all mixed together. If I stop and think about how I label things I come up with these definitions.

Vision/Goal: Taking an area of my life and dreaming about how I could change and improve. (Accepted term would be VISION) 

Project: I divide the life areas into 3 related topics. (Accepted term would be GOAL)

Task: Any action or series of actions that will move me towards completing a project. (Many of my tasks would be considered PROJECTS)

Planning: Creating tasks that will lead me towards my vision.

Productivity: Doing the tasks that will enable me to complete a project.

Review and adjust: Make sure the tasks I am doing are part of the plan. Add to the vision board as ideas pop up. Tick off what I have been doing.


How I organise my to do list


I used to think I had to have a traditional to do list in order to be productive.
I used to think I had to have my top 3 written down for each day.

I am naturally a creative person. I am always thinking of things to do and they get analysed constantly.
(As an aside - this is why I need to be still in order to replenish my energy. I have to basically turn my brain off in order to relax properly. Lunch with friends just doesn't do it.)
To be productive on any given day I need a focus. Top 3 doesn't matter to me. My focus is usually to move forward on a variety of tasks/projects.

You might say that I should just put the tasks I intend doing that day on my "to do" list as 1, 2, 3.
This is probably where my way of thinking doesn't fit perfectly with a job that requires reporting to a team about my linear completion of set tasks. Because I like to skip about and work in zig zags it is difficult to convince a boss that I am actually going anywhere. Most bosses want to see progress from milestone to milestone in a lock step fashion.

I like to work on several related projects and tasks in an order that is logical to me. This doesn't mean I can't report my progress in a way that satisfies the boss. I means that I have to expend a lot of energy arranging my progress into a form that the boss will accept. Frustrating at the least.
(As an aside - after many years working for said bosses I am happy to say that I am retired from my job and now I do work that is related to my life purpose in a way that suits me.)

This is what my to do list looks like. It takes shape over several days and when the page is full or finished I start a new page. You might think that it just looks like less of tasks in boxes but the magic is in the detail.



When you look past the boxes you can see that I have a thing that is more like one of those puzzles where you slide the square pieces around so you end up with a picture.



Imagine showing this to your boss to show what you got done. There are no little squares with ticks in them or lists of tasks with a line through them. There aren't even any coloured outlines. I just put those on the image to make my process clearer.

Looking at the red set of 4 boxes in the middle I have arrows from the top corner to the other boxes. 

The top box has a cross through it which means I have done that task. 
The other three boxes have circles round them from my review the day before yesterday. They are not done. 
They also have the blue asterisk in them from yesterday meaning they still have to be done with a little more urgency. They are holding up the next step in a bigger project.

I only have 4 big vision goals so it is easy for me to know that the project being held up is the automated email sequence in Mailchimp for my newsletter subscribers. Automating business processes is my big vision.

Task completed

I enjoyed analysing how I think about my work. I have a strong purpose in life and I love what I am doing.
Thank you for reading. I hope you find some useful insights into your own productivity successes or failures.
I am about to put a cross through the Blog on setting goals task on my desk planner.

Here's to a successful life,
Val

P.S. 
I forgot to add in the picture I took of my desk area. I have found it very energising to sit at a desk that just has the essentials on it. There is a pencil jar of coloured pens out of shot on the left that I use for my planner page.