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- [00:01]
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Welcome to five Minute Magic from the Mindful Creative Podcast, a short bonus episode sharing tips and insights from the pages of the book of the same title. Every week I'll be sharing one or two ideas that can give you an actionable takeaway for your creative process, your work, your business, or just food for thought for the weekend ahead. These episodes share content from the audiobook and you can find the link to the full version in the show notes below. This is the second episode from the chapter titled Pause and if you have skipped the previous episode, do take time and give it a listen as today we're continuing with the theme of audit in the last episode we talked about auditing our lives. I know it sounds a bit like a boardroom advice from a business coach, but it was more about having an inward look and suggestions to pinpoint what does and doesn't work in our lives. Today we're doing the same for our work. Why? Because it's easy to spend quite a few years speeding down the career path without looking anywhere but forward. Taking on work, getting across the line, getting paid on time, hopefully, and then doing it all over again until we find ourselves unhappy with our current situation or destination. So let's take a look back at the good bids and learning from the times when it didn't work so well so we can avoid making the same mistakes again in the future.
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Auditing your work Once you've audited the person who does the work, then you can hone your attention on the work being done. This is a time for you to take a step back from the bit of the canvas you've been working on and appreciate how it fits into the whole painting. You might take your entire portfolio, or if that's too big a task, you might review the last 12 months or the last six. Whatever makes sense to you and whatever helps you best appreciate your progress. To this point, there are some basic key questions you can ask yourself honestly and dispassionately. That is, they're not an excuse to berate yourself or unfairly compare your work to others. How has your work evolved over the time frame you're looking at? Has it improved or have you been doing it on autopilot recently? Do you remember most of the work or is it all a bit of a blur of new clients and commissions? How much of your recent work did you actually enjoy producing? Did you make the right call in accepting work that helps you grow? Or are your choices giving you more work that doesn't align with your hopes and long term aspirations? Outcomes aside, what have you learned by doing this work? Have you deepened your understanding of what you're doing? For example, if you're a graphic designer, have you developed new skills? Do you put together designs that are a little subtler or more complex? If you're a writer, have you widened your vocabulary or improved your grasp of grammar? Or have you become a cliche generator? Are there any constants in your work? Do the same themes, ideas, words or images keep cropping up? What is that telling you? What are the wins in your work? Are there any pieces or even pieces of pieces where you think, yep, nailed it there? Did you take time to celebrate the good stuff or just move straight to the next project? What have been the learning curves? Have there been any mistakes or outright fuck ups? And if so, equally as important, have you learned from them? You can also ask other trusted and honest people in your network for their opinion. How do they see your work and or business? As an observer, this kind of honest audit can work surprising wonders for your confidence, especially if you can remain open to it. If you were as atrocious as your untamed inner critic or imposter wanted you to believe, you wouldn't be in a position where you had a portfolio to review. You simply wouldn't have had any work. To some, such a process might feel like an annual review with the boss, the kind of daft corporate dance that we went into business to try and avoid. But it does have creative value and helps you reorientate yourself. You're always going to be further along on your journey than the last time you stopped and looked around, and it can be inspiring to see how far you become. Far more inspiring than scrolling through other people's portfolios and worrying that yours doesn't look quite like theirs. Many of you reading this or embarking on this kind of life and work audit will be doing so from the position of having crashed. And whether you stumbled or hurtled off course, there will have been warning signs that were missed. It likely won't be the first time. That's okay. You're reading the words of someone who kept going and going, running red lights and smashing through barriers. The important thing to do is to recognize it so that you can better spot the signs and take useful, corrective action. Take the time to sit and reflect on your career, maybe even your life up to this point. When have been the times that you've burnt yourself out or driven yourself over the edge? What caused it, and can you remember how long the buildup was each time? Have you had a series of burnouts that have increased in intensity over time. Importantly, are there things that you keep doing or forgetting to do that are causing them? Honest self knowledge, untainted by our neuroses or the perceived judgment of others, can be one of the most powerful tools we will ever use, as long as we use it and action what it tells us. That might sound obvious to the point of corniness, but we misuse or fail to use our power all the time. Think of the gym memberships we take out and never use fully or at all. How we use something as powerful as the Internet to watch TikToks and squabble in comment sections. The times we stay out doing vodka shots or binge a TV series, knowing full well that we'll likely be too hungover or tired to function properly the next day. Unplug and so, having looked in the mirror, looked back, assessed and appraised, there comes another, perhaps even more daunting challenge. Unplugging. The more we live, work and generally can't do without the world that's always online, the frankly scarier the idea of leaving it, even if just for a day becomes your mind can doubtless generate multiple excuses for why you of all people need to stay plugged in at all times. It's your work, it's your business, it's your life. Phone on the bedside table whilst you sleep, in the kitchen while you're cooking, in your lap, whilst you're watching tv, in the bathroom while you shower. Notifications on at all times and scrolling even if there aren't any. When you wake up at mealtimes, before you go to sleep, when you wake up in the night whilst queuing on the toilet, on holiday, on the bus, on the train, in the passenger seat. And let's be honest, we all know from that furtive downward glance whether someone's on their phone whilst driving. Unplugging is good for you. And that doesn't only apply to social media. Avoiding watching TV news and reading newspapers can help too. Having audited your life and work, one of the positive changes you can make if you don't already do it is to schedule in a set time to unplug. Perhaps an evening or a day of the weekend. Find time for yourself. Yes, social media does hold all kinds of potential for your creativity in your business, but our creative minds simply cannot take the constant overload. And our creative potential and creative time are wasted by endless and aimless scrolling through, let's face it, vapid, repetitive crap that leaves your mind as soon as it leaves your screen, if it ever goes in at all. The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection. Thomas Paine.