If you’d asked me two years ago to name the biggest factor stopping me from getting my creative work done, I would have hands-down said overuse of social media: I used to spend WAY too much time on Facebook (ugh…) and scrolling through Twitter hoping for that gambler’s jackpot payout of finding something awesome that keeps us all hooked.
Now I use social media a lot less and usually only pull it up at set times of the day, so that doesn’t feel like a problem anymore.
Then if you’d asked me last year about my biggest weakness I would have said lethargic time wasting: sleeping too much, getting distracted between tasks, and taking long breaks when I didn’t really need them. I stopped doing these things in part because working an office Day Job made it necessary to tighten my routine, but also because I realized how destructive they were to my overall work habits.
Now I’ve been mulling which of over current weaknesses has been causing the most interference, and the new main culprit seems more complicated than the others:
I just take on too many things.
What Does It Mean to Take On Too Much?
I like to keep busy with stimulating projects, but I also like to read a lot and see friends and keep up with hobbies like hiking and board games and the occasional video game. With my writing and other creative work I also tend to pick up opportunities as I stumble across them or as they come to me. Not only do I view this as getting my work out in as many places as possible, but because I’m not sure which avenues will have the biggest payout I tend to put my eggs in multiple baskets so that I might hit big on at least one of them. I also pursue different opportunities for extra cash (especially in the editing realm) as a way of supplying the funds I need to keep the bills paid, thus reducing my reliance on a Day Job in the future.
Unfortunately, though, this also means that I commit to a lot of things…and spread myself pretty thin.
Though my overcommitment can occasionally lead to a week of desperate racing against deadlines or pulling an all-nighter that CLEARLY shows me that I’ve tried to do too much, more often my overzealousness takes a less visible form: I just fall behind on longer-term projects (like my novel…) to a point where they take a lot longer than I want them too, as I talked about in my April Novel update.
This feeling of slowness and time-wasting hits me especially hard when I’m doing something that for whatever reason just doesn’t feel worthwhile, whether that thing is a creative project or a night socializing with people I’d rather not be socializing with. Each time this happens I’m left with the same crushing, discouraging feeling: Why did I waste my time on this?
Remedy: Start Saying No More Often
This is some advice I first got from my friend and fellow writer James Crews back in grad school: as much as it hurts, you have to learn to say no.
This means learning to say no to offers of any kind (creative, social, Day Job-related, etc.) that you predict might make you feel regret (“Augh, why did I waste my time on that???”) after all’s said and done. Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference because these offers feel exciting and full of potential in the moment…but I’ve learned that most of the time it’s easy to tell the difference.
You’ll know these unworthwhile offers when they come up because they make you hesitate, consider ways of sneaking out of them, or just raise a red flag over what their eventual payoff might be. (The specific negatives might look different for you, though—these are just a few of mine!)
When I get these premonitions I’ve been trying harder to honestly and clearly say no, both to myself and to the other person, and explain that I just can’t take this on right now. (If you’re one of the people reading this that I’ve had to say No to over the past few weeks, sorry—I swear it’s nothing personal!)
I still tend to say yes a lot, but I’ve been trying harder to say no too.
Know Your Own Biggest Weakness
I reflect on my habit of taking on too much not just so I can help other people who have the same problem, but to suggest something more universal: All of us have a biggest weakness that’s holding us back, and the sooner we identify it and figure out how to remedy it, the better our chances of squashing it, just like I’ve whittled down my social media addiction and time-wasting tendencies over the past few years.
Finding your weakness doesn’t have to involve a huge list of self-deprecating negatives that you just end up beating yourself up about—actually, the final product shouldn’t be a list at all, because a list of things would be harder to focus on and make you feel overwhelmed. I recommend focusing on just one weakness so you can attack it with all of your energy and ultimately learn to work around it, even if you find out later that it’s not your biggest one.
To identify your biggest weakness, try thinking about these questions:
- When do I feel myself being held back?
- When do I feel like I’m not working to my highest potential?
- What kinds of things do I regret after doing them?
This shouldn’t require a lot of thought—it actually works better if they’re things that spring to mind right away, without a lot of brainstorming. Try making a list (like, seriously, write it down!) to make it more concrete, because writing down little things might serve as a series of arrows to identifying the bigger thing.
Then, when you’ve singled out that bigger thing, write that down too, both to make it more real, and so it can serve as a concrete goal for you to work toward. As you can see from the top of this post, I wrote my reminder down on one of the many post-it notes I keep stuck the wall by my desk, but feel free to use whatever method works for you.
Again, I can’t stress the WRITING IT DOWN part enough. It doesn’t matter whether you do it on a post-it, in a journal, on a to-do list or bullet journal, on your phone, on your own blog, or on your bathroom mirror—just make sure to record it somewhere so it doesn’t disappear into the ether—because that’s how we fall into repeating the same bad habits over and over.
Final Challenge
If you’re feeling especially bold, post your own Biggest Weakness here in the comments (even if it’s anonymous!) as a way of making it more real and encouraging others to do the same—because that’s where real change comes from.
Keep shooting for your own goals, and be sure to keep in touch ;-)
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