Authentic August – Day 10
Moving forward I commit to completing these posts in 90 minutes or less. This includes the writing, finding the image above, editing it for a thumbnail, scheduling the YouTube live read-along, and announcing it on my Facebook. The actual live read-along, the last step in this sequence, will not be included in the 90 minutes. Without this time constraint I fool myself into thinking that I have all day to complete this, when in reality I have other responsibilities and projects I’d like to get to. Simple things like working out or hanging out with my brother, to more involved things like editing my vlogs or recording some music.
I think the 90 minute time limit will help me out a ton. First of all, it will help develop my focus. If I don’t want to write something that’s completely incoherent, I’ll need to minimize as many distractions as possible. This means no texting, no phone calls, no moving my piece after seeing the chess.com notification (my username is Maveriq if you wanna play!).
Secondly, over time I’ll get to see if my writing is improving. If I rush a post on one day, and the next I’m typing away for a whopping five hours, then I’d probably see a huge variability in quality. But if every time I’m only allotted 90 minutes, and I see that my writing is getting better (or worse!), then at least I’ll know it isn’t because of how much time I spent on it.
Third, this isn’t supposed to be about quality anyway! It’s about the daily practice of starting and finishing something creative. It’s about riding these random trains of thought on an inward journey to my authentic self. Unpolished and unfiltered, whatever comes up comes up, and we can flesh it out later.
Which brings me to the fourth and final benefit: I get to generate fodder for more fleshed out vlogs later! Because I’m not pressuring myself to write so high quality, I’m free to write the way I would in a journal, which is usually more raw, real, and authentic. And what I’m beginning to realize is that I can just repurpose these blogs into better quality, refined ideas for the vlogs on my YouTube channel. Seemingly unrelated blog posts might actually hide some underlying themes, and later I can weave these ideas together into some unified point for a vlog. Take for example, Rose-Colored Glasses part 1 and 2 – I’ll be developing that into video content for tomorrow’s video.
I may find that 90 minutes is unrealistic (I only have 20 minutes left!), but I do think it’s vital I start working within a time limit for these posts. Now that I seem to have gotten myself out of the creative/existential rut I was in – which is why I started Authentic August in the first place, to get out of that place – I need to reintroduce some of the structure I had before I fell into that funk. I was rocking all of my habits for a solid 3 to 4 months, and then it all kinda caved in! In hindsight, I think that last month of “super discipline” was meaningless. I found myself just going through the motions, so I know that getting back to that level isn’t the answer. The answer is probably somewhere between funk and frenzied. Somewhere between hard work and good rest. So here’s to creating a space that’s somewhere in between discipline and surrender…
With LOVE,
Q.
p.s. I only have 10 minutes left to complete everything else! I’ll report back what the final time ends up being: 1 hour, 45 minutes. Something to work on!