Life as a Visual Storyteller—Episode 34—3rd August, 2015: Keep the Destination, Change the Route
It's a public holiday here in Ireland today. I got up late. I hadn't intended to. Usually, on a Monday, I get up and go to the swimming pool. Not today.
Today, I've hit the physical and mental limits of my ambition. I'm worn out.
Fortunately, I know what to do.
- Keep creating content at the current pace My current daily content creation programme is punishing. Adding video over the last couple of days has added a significant amount of work. If I start in earnest at 8pm, it's long gone midnight by the time the blogpost, cartoon, podcast and video are live. Then, I need some downtime before I go to sleep. Last night it is was past 1am.
That's far too late.
However, once I hit a rhythm, I reckon I can get everything done in 3 hours. That way, I'll be asleep by midnight. Much more sustainable. I just need to keep going.
- Create more diverse content
I have a plan to build a community around a new blog. This new blog is very important to me. It's part of my long-game strategy.
My problem so far has been finding time to do anything about it. My current schedule doesn't leave me any time to produce content for it.
The solution is to take time from Life as a Visual Storyteller. Alternate daily between this blog and the other one.
The downside is half as much content here. However, the ultimate goal is to improve my cartooning/drawing skills and build an online business. I'll still be doing that on a daily basis. Only now, it'll be over two locations.
- Flexible training programme
Apart from only getting to bed around 1pm last night, the other thing that killed me this morning was yesterday's run. It was, after all, a 25% increase over my previous longest run—both in terms of distance and time. That's a big jump.
Taking today off completely to let my body recover is, I think sensible. Even if I am only rationalising it in the face of having slept through my window of opportunity to go swimming today.
Still, I can make up for the missed swim later this week. As long as I do, I'll be OK. Someone hold me accountable on Sunday, won't you? Just ask whether I got the missing swim done.
The lesson
As creatives and as entrepreneurs, we need goals. We need to know where we want to end up. We also need a roadmap to get us there with some sort of route planned out.
The lesson, for me at least, is that the route can't be rigid. We need to allow for diversions, closed roads, blocked paths, appealing side trips, collapsed bridges, whatever—you get the metaphor. In other words, we have to be flexible. The end goal remains the same. How we get there can change at any given moment.
So, it's important that we don't stop at road blocks. Instead, we need to figure a way over, around or through them.
#cartoon #podcast #creativity #goals #planning #running #health #fitness