Reduce the scope and keep the schedule

Since the beginning of the year I´ve been writing about planning. Basically about setting goals that turn into actionable steps, that get scheduled.

What´s your relationship with your publishing schedule?

In yesterday´s post Marie Forleo shared Five strategies to keep you creatively inspired. I was most interested in #4: Commit. She says that this is the most underrated creativity tip of all. That when you turn pro and fully commit to producing/writing/creating/making something on deadline, it just happens.

Does it, really?

I wonder.

Then I heard the best advice on making things happen on schedule. It came from Srinivas Rao interview to James Clear: Changing  your identity to change your habits.

Among other things they talked about post traumatic stress vs. post traumatic growth, taking failure as a data point needed for success, the all or nothing mentality, response to environment and altering behaviour. And here´s where it got practical with his own story of a post that didn´t perform that well: you have to have a process to always do the work, to go through a volume of work.

My on line planner and home planner for last week

It takes time to find a schedule that works for you. Try different paces: once a month, once a week, evey other week, every day Mon-Fri, twice or three time s a week. In the beginning I wrote whenever I had something to share. I have changed over the years according to my projects, having a day assigned to each. This year I´m writing on Wednesdays (new for me), leaving Fridays for guest posts and some Linky parties on weekends. 

What if some day you do not feel up to it? James advice is to "reduce the scope and stick to the schedule". Sometimes the idea of creating something great and wonderful feels a little too much to start as the scope of the project is really big in our heads and that prevents us from getting going. In that case, to be able to start, reduce the size of the project/post in hand, do a simpler version of it and deliver on time to keep the schedule. You can go back to the project and make more parts of it. 

Other concepts that caught my attention in Srini´s interview: How can you become the type of person that achieves something? By changing your behaviour to be the person who does. How? Changing your environment to make better choices, making good things easier to do and making what you want to avoid more difficult to do. Listen to the whole interview here for a more complete explanation (change in behaviour is around the mid interview mark).

PS: if you want to listen to more candid conversations with creative entrepreneurs and insanely interesting people visit The Unmistakable Creative podcast here.