Your Creative Workload Is Dangerously Precarious (Here’s How to Fix It)
When you’ve taken on too much, the slightest slip-up can result in catastrophe for all your creative projects.
--
Earlier this week I was walking from the living room to the kitchen to put away a few groceries I’d just picked up.
Between the fingers of my right hand were wedged two glass bottles, one kombucha, the other, juice. My left hand had a hold on my jacket and a rather large, round block of cheese, with a bag of apples tucked in the crook of my arm.
Halfway to the kitchen, one of the bottles begin to slip between my fingers, followed closely by the other.
As the bottles wobbled and slid, I instinctively dropped my jacket and the block of cheese from my one hand and just managed to regain control of both of the bottles, as well as the apples before they crashed to the floor.
Disaster (read: sticky, spiky mess) averted.
The incident got me thinking, however, about how often we get ourselves into trouble in our creative lives by first loading ourselves up with more than we can carry, and then, trying to maintain control of it all when one piece begins to slip.
More Options Aren’t Always Better
I think most of us are aware that we’re carrying more than we can sustain control over.
The challenge is we’re confronted with a daily barrage of new tools, tactics, and ideas promising to deliver the results we’re chasing. Seduced by the promise of a quick and easy win, we pick them up without thinking about how they’ll affect the balance of the load we’re already carrying.
And so on top of our client work or day job, we decide to start a podcast… and then a newsletter… followed by a YouTube channel… all while trying to stay active on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter as well.
Instead of stacking these new additions carefully to form a broad and sturdy foundation, however, we simply stack them on top of each other, forming an ever more precarious tower.
Part of the reason we continue to add to our load is that it feels as though there’s nothing…
