Tag Archives: writing

#Reverb10 Day 18: Try

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See if you can spot what's wrong, yet AWESOME, about this picture.

Note: This is the eighteenth in a month-long exercise called Reverb10, where bloggers reflect on the year before and think towards the year ahead. The idea is to post daily, based on the day’s prompts; let’s see how well I do.

Prompt: Try. What do you want to try next year? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did / didn’t go for it?

I’m writing this at about half past midnight, on an evening when my mind has once again refused to let me fall asleep at a normal hour. So right now, I’m feeling like what I’d like to try next year is some bedtime strategies to kick my life-long insomnia habit. Any ideas?

In terms of things I wanted to try in 2010, there wasn’t much that I *didn’t* try this year. Call me fearless, crazy, whatever you want to call it, but I’ve always been the type who gets curious about things and then tries them. I do it with food, I do it in business, and next year, I’m going to be doing it with design education. Sometimes I fall flat on my arse; sometimes I’m met with varying degrees of success. In any case, I always end up trying, and I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I didn’t.

Beyond the insomnia thing, the one thing I’ve been dying to do in 2011, if I find myself actually possessed of the time, is write a book. I’ve got two in mind; the first is about starting an indie design business (and all the emotional challenges therein). The second (and more interesting) one is about design for Drupal – by which I mean the ins and outs of a Drupal project from a designer’s perspective *beyond* colors and layouts. I want to talk about UX, strategy, some development tricks that make a designer’s life easier, and a bunch of other stuff – all of which is geared towards bridging the gap between developer-speak and designers. It’ll be interesting to see what shakes out (if anything) in that regard.

HINT: If anyone’s a publisher, I’m open to offers…

Reverb10 Day 2: Writing

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Note: This is the second in a month-long exercise called Reverb10, where bloggers reflect on the year before and think towards the year ahead. The idea is to post daily, based on the day’s prompts; let’s see how well I do.

December 2 – Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

I have to adjust this prompt to “creativity” rather than “writing.” On any given day, I could be writing, doing design or strategy, or creating things with my hands. All of it ends up in my work in some way or another. In terms of a daily thing that interrupts that flow, my gut tells me that it has something to do with being chronically over-scheduled. On my least productive days, I feel like I’m frantically moving on from thing to thing, without the ability to give each thing the care it deserves.

I’ve developed strategies to help; small rituals, using the Action Method, and taking a few minutes each morning to write and get my head ready for what I have to do that day, to name a few. But if there’s one thing that I want to take more care with in 2011, it’s organizing my schedule so that each ball I have to juggle gets the attention it deserves.

Part of this means employing new strategies. For a start, I’m trying out this strategy outlined in a recent 99 percent post – which calls for prioritizing projects, and blocking out specific 2-3 hour blocks in your calendar for hard thinking. But the larger part, and the one I’ll likely find hardest, is going to be dropping some of the commitments I’ve accumulated in my “old life” in order to make room for the new commitments I’ve made. Either way, it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.