Dear Designers,
Around this same time each year, I start to lose focus. It’s been a handful of months of “it’s a new year, let’s do this thing!”, and I suddenly feel like…”Wait, what thing? What are my goals again? Are things progressing as I hoped? Am I on top of everything?”, etc., etc., etc.
I’ve always been someone who is susceptible to shiny object syndrome. I’m never short on ideas and I often find myself trying to get the next idea going before I’ve completed the current one. The problem with this is that I’m often left feeling crazed, confused, and unfocused. I really don’t like that feeling.
This year is also a challenge because I’m traveling right now, and traveling always leaves me a little unfocused. Between wanting to explore the place I’m in and being inspired by everything around me, my brain is on overdrive.
So today I decided to do something about it.
I always travel with a notebook and now I’m going to make good use of it.
Rather than letting myself get completely overwhelmed and unfocused, I’m doing daily brain dumps to help me sift through the noise. But I’m taking it a step further and creating little categories to organize everything into.
Category A- Improvements to our offering
Category B- New offerings for our Community
Category C- Not so important things that need to get done but can wait
Category D- Things I want to read/research/further explore
Category E- Things I’ve started that need to be completed
While I understand that this idea is not all that profound, I can’t believe how much it’s helped me get re-focused. We’re all working so hard; we’re experiencing the ups and downs of entrepreneurship every single day and that is so very trying.
It’s easy to feel like all momentum and direction are lost. It’s easy to get discouraged because we don’t feel like we did on January 2nd- pumped and ready to conquer the world.
Personally, I don’t think there’s much we can do to prevent the loss of focus. I’ve tried. I believe it’s a natural part of being a business owner, entrepreneur, and creative.
But I do think that we can get better at accepting the loss of focus and create a plan for ourselves to get back on track. Embrace a bit of chaos but take some steps to turn that chaos into productivity.
Lots of love and encouragement,
Theresa Thompson
Hello Nicole, Thank you for your blog statement encouraging all us creatives to focus, focus and focus some more. Sometimes, being human gets in the way, but that’s exactly what we are (as my weight watcher leader tells me every time I slip-up).
I’m a 2nd year textile degree student currently looking for placements in a huge industry, and, it’s challenging to say the least, particularly as I’ve arrived at this part of my career-journey a bit late in life.
The key to applying for work seems to be research, research and guess what? some more research.
But, your quite right you have to love, with a passion, this whole business of creativity.
Once again, thanks very much for such an inspiring blog.