Field notes from eight months of working, living, and leading this year. When to spend less time, why we’re all mental and emotional lefties right now, the unscratchable itch, and more.

I’ve had a memo hastily titled “Notes from the Edge of Panic” going on my phone for the past eight months. This week I sat down to reread it, filling in a few details. I kept the title because I still kind of like it. Those eight months gave me these eight meditative thoughts. I'm giving them to you now—we should give each other as much as we can, shouldn't we?

1. Taking the long view has a lot to do with faith and very little to do with a plan.

I’m not talking about capital-F "Faith". I mean the capacity for directing energy into the unknown, believing that it’s not lost. I still hustle for the businesses I help lead, those under my care, those in my household. I still cook dinner most nights because I trust that it’s good for my soul, not just my insides. It's easy to get lost in the middle distance between what I can do with what's before me and the horizon point. I have to look to the horizon a lot more often. My plan now might look a lot like not having a plan, but sometimes that’s just the right plan.

2. Everything takes longer than I expected (or than I’ve been allowing).

I used to work inside time boxes much more before. Now it’s okay if ideas take months to shape up because what even is time anymore? I should have been doing things this way for years. (But to be fair to my former self, my career hasn’t always given me months, or even weeks, or even days.) But like an excellent chili, the big ideas need a long simmer.

3. Some things just don’t need much time (and I’ve been overkilling it).

When I put on an outfit, packed a lunch, drove to the office, and put my head down to work, I brought much professional force to bear on whatever I pointed my attention at. Some jobs take all the brain muscle I have. But some require a light, possibly silly touch. Right now I don’t work in an office. It’s easier not to see every job as a nail requiring a smack from my professional sledgehammer. My coworkers are my three-year-old and two cats. I work with a view of my backyard or in my wife’s bakery. My mental feather duster is easier to reach for than the hammer these days.

4. We’re all mental and emotional lefties now.

In April I trimmed off the tip of my right thumb on accident (be more careful than me with a mandoline slicer). At urgent care they cleaned it up and wrapped a giant bandage around it. My right hand stayed mostly out of commission for the next month. I slowly became quasi-ambidextrous. We all had to live with being cut off from each other this year. We’ve been developing our intellectual-emotional shadow functions. We may never master them, but we’ll be able to do so much more than we could before because of our new mental ambidexterity. I think this is what the evolution of humanity feels like.

5. It's okay to have an unscratchable itch.

The idea you can’t get to the bottom of. Not being home for Christmas. Not understanding your politics/faith/budget right now. Things come back around, just wait and see.

I think you extract what you need from your experiences. Maybe it was always this way, but especially now: Everyone’s vantage point is really, really different. I think we more often need to remember that each other is a human being, same as us. Same feelings. Different experiences. Same ups and downs (though at different times), loneliness, wonder, regret, and joy from different vantage points. I’m trying to spend way less time telling other people how to get to those feelings the same way I did. Just that I have them, too. Yours and my sound waves need an echo, not to be told that we’re shouting in the wrong caves.

7. Spiraling isn’t always circling the drain.

No ideas (yet). Nothing’s working (yet). Nothing feels good (yet). But sometimes you’re being pulled through a wormhole to a new galaxy of new ideas. I know almost nothing about the future, but I do know it’s non-linear. I can’t draw a straight line to it. We get there with the spiral.

We don’t have to agree on everything. We can’t agree on everything. But when it comes to our collective fate, consensus is critical. What can we learn as a “we”? The future is what we’re making it, together, right now.

Those are my notes. I’m not at the edge of panic anymore, but stuff is still weird. After reading these, I'm curious: What else did you learn about lately? I'd love to hear the big stuff, small stuff, or anything in between. Drop us a line on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or send me an email.

When it comes to creative work, why is it so hard to get down to business? In this blog post, Justin shares what he's learned about productivity in creative work over the last 10 or so years.

When it comes to creative work, why is it so hard to get down to business? You just have to outline the bare bones of the course, write the campaign strategy, or sketch a few logo ideas. You know: It won’t actually take very long. Just a few minutes! Maybe ten (fifteen tops). But you can’t seem to find that time.

Or is it you? Have you lost your edge? Usually the pressure works in your favor. The squeeze makes your best work emerge (are you toothpaste?). But not this time. And, really, not the last few times. What changed?

I’ll tell you the secret at the top. Creative work takes a really long time. You think fifteen minutes, but in truth you have to feed it hours. Wait, that can’t be right. Right?

Let’s start at the end and work backwards to tally up what actually goes into the “real work.” You know the to-do you’re thinking of takes fifteen minutes. But you had to write two bad drafts before this great one (it happens), so say forty-five minutes.

You managed your coworkers’ demands on your time today. Guarding your calendar kept interruptions away. As your mother wryly used to say, you don't need peace and quiet all the time, but a piece of quiet would work wonders. Making the space in your day took five minutes ten different times.

Maybe you took a walk too, which really helped you see today’s true priorities and get your metabolism going. Walk: fifteen minutes.

You had the energy because you ate breakfast, not just coffee. Even if breakfast came from a cereal box or a freezer, it took an extra ten minutes to prep and eat.

You felt clear-headed when you woke up today, which means you slept better last night. That took an extra hour of eyes-closed time. To get to sleep, you read in bed for thirty minutes instead of clearing your inbox for tomorrow. You made dinner a balanced, unwinding meal too—that cost another hour and a half, even if you left the dishes for later (they need to soak, right?).

The motivation for last night’s dinner came from the self-care you did before it. You squeezed in a short run, meditated, read a novel, or caught up with those friends you’ve been playing calendar tag with for weeks even though you really do like them (you do!). It only took an hour. These conscious actions told your inner kid—the one who’s coming up with these great ideas out of nowhere today—that you care for her or him, too. They paid it forward at crunch time.

So, the real work only took fifteen minutes. But making it possible required an additional five hours and forty-five minutes. Just for those fifteen minutes! The grand total comes to six hours.

Your creative work itself formed the tip of a ginormous temporal iceberg.

Knowing that this is how creative tasks work means the end of your guilt about not getting to that to-do before. Instead, acknowledge the hours of work and self-enriching time you must give to the true task of creating your own optimal conditions. Lay the groundwork. If the real work only took fifteen minutes, anyone could do it all the time, including you.

Going to yoga? Catching a matinee? Reading a book? Suddenly, that’s time very well spent. Give yourself credit for all those hours being part of the process, even part of the work itself.

We at Pathwright build our platform to be a clear, pleasant place to do your creative work when you’re ready. We can’t create more hours in your day, but we can make sure you don’t waste any of the ones you do have. We’re all in this together.

Notes from the Edge of Panic

The Secret to Creative Work

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