Interconnected

Between one thing and another I’ve not been posting much here recently. I’d like to say it’s because I’ve been busy, but I think that’s insufficient cause. Rather, there are three factors:

1. Too much busyness of the wrong kind. I’ve been busy with travel, client work, formally and informally advising startups, coffee meetings, email to arrange coffee meetings, life admin… all of which feels good and helpful, and generating of opportunities. But I’ve been neglecting my own projects (I include writing here in that category). Which means I’ve both lost momentum and acclimatised to that loss of momentum. Not only have I deprived myself of the energy that comes from personal creative activity, but this is compounded by:
2. Procrastination. For me, procrastination often comes from being disconnected from my feelings – it’s fine to not want to do something, the killer is not knowing whether I want to do something or not. Procrastination is an emotional strategy. My capacity to do even unrelated tasks reduces, as I slow down on the task at hand. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of figuring out what I want out of the future, and I’m not familiar with listening to that part of myself. Between busyness and procrastination, I’ve been hit by:
3. Thrashing, where I spend more time moving between things than doing the things themselves. Which further reduces my capacity for productive endeavour, which strengthens the conditions that lead to thrashing, which… Etc.

How to break the loop?

I don’t know, but here’s a possible strategy: Re-build a habit of personal creative output by climbing the ladder from whatever I’m doing now. I tweet and post photos on Instagram quite happily, and the next level up is writing here.

So, move my fingers, attempt not to think too much about quality, the objective is to start with a blank document and end up publishing it. Repeat.

Repeating might be difficult because I’m imminently off on my summer hols. I’ll start when I get back…