Volume 3, Number 01
A new year is upon us, which means it's time to repeat all of those things we do every year. Everything, I hope,
but the mistakes.
Because when it comes to mistakes, you only want to be making new ones.
In what has turned out to be one of my more popular posts of late, I've gone
public about my intention to make new mistakes, and plenty of them, I'm sure, via my new credo--stolen from Voltaire, a terrific,
long-dead
French writer worth reading (start with this, if you're interested):
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
Some of us don't struggle with perfectionism as much as others of us, "others" being me, first and foremost. I shudder to think of the years, or
possibly decades I've wasted trying to make things perfect instead of just making things. Even worse, of the months (or possibly years) I've wasted
rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, like the man says.
Because when you unpack that lovely Voltaire quotation a bit, the news about perfectionism gets worse. It's not just the enemy of the good; it's the
enemy of hope, freedom, change, growth and finally, fabulosity.
So how do you break yourself of the perfectionism habit? The same way you make any significant change, accomplish any great feat, eat any sized
elephant: in tiny, incremental forkfuls, one bite at a time. And the way you eat the perfectionism elephant is both the easiest and the hardest thing
in the world to do. Ready?
Be bad for 10 minutes each day, for 30 days.
Not exactly revolutionary, I know. It's that old saw about practicing something for 10 minutes per day to make it a habit. Leo Babauta, a terrific blogger who's just come out
with what I hope is a terrific book (it's next on my list) created a public forum for doing just that, and I've been playing along, literally: I set
a
timer, practice my guitar every day for 10 minutes, and then post that I did it to a public website.
For me, though, the key to making it work is that whole permission-to-be-bad thing. Because it takes a long time to get as good at something (or to
get something to come out as good as you'd like it to), and you need something to help you bridge the gap (or, as Seth Godin calls it, get through the
Dip.)
Currently, I'm letting myself be bad at guitar every day for 10 minutes. But because even that is difficult, I've done a few things to make the being
bad a little less awful...
Sandwich your ten between two fantastic things.
Leo talks about using a "trigger" to remind you about your 10 minutes. I picked breakfast, because that means COFFEE, which I love. I don't even need
a "sandwich" because I feel so great after getting to sing for five minutes, but if you're really new at something, it might be helpful to have both
a
happy trigger and a fun reward.
Tie your 10 to your bigger goal.
My goal is to be a joyful conduit of truth, beauty and love. (Yes, really.) At this point, all signs are pointing to that being some kind of writing
or entertaining people on a bigger scale. So for a few days, I spent my 10 minutes writing a song. It's not a great song, but it was incredibly fun
and inspiring for me, because it helped me imagine a day when I might be great at this song-writing and singing and performing stuff. (***You can see me perform here, but beware--there is
VERY foul language.***)
It's VERY important to tie this to your big, huge, change-the-world goal. Or at least, your biggest, hugest goal you can readily identify. I'm a
crazy fangirl for Ginny Ditzler's Your Best Year Yet method, but other great discovery books are The Artist's
Way, Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting and Is Your Genius at Work? (links to all of these here)
Spend five of the minutes being bad and five being good
This works after you've got even a tiny bit of proficiency. To get better at guitar, I need to learn scales, fingering, barre chords--all stuff I
hate, because I'm so bad at it. But I can play a G, C and D chord and sing a song (lots of them, actually). So five of the minutes, I spend doing new
stuff; the other five, I reward myself by wailing away (still badly) at my three chords.
If you have other workarounds for dealing with perfectionism, I'd love to hear them. I'm writing about it all this month on the blog; you can email
me or just post a comment anywhere you see fit, and I'll collect them in a post at the end of the month.
And (SHILL ALERT! SHILL ALERT!) if your perfectionism is getting in the way of you getting out there and marketing yourself, take a
look at my Super-Secret Hire the Communicatrix page.
Because if the best teachers are the ones who are living it, when it comes to grappling with perfectionism, I
may just be the best teacher around.
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colleen wainwright | communicatrix
(323) 634-9930
If you're a tip-crazy fool, you may enjoy this recent blog post on 30 things
you can do to improve yourself in 10 minutes. It was inspired by a 10-things-you-can-do-in-30-minutes post I wrote for my Networker column
for actors; these are a little more agnostic, but actors, there's plenty there for you, too!
New to communicatrix | focuses? Now
you can catch up on the back issues archived here for your convenience, and
see what you've missed!
Like this? Know someone else who might? Please forward it using the link at the top of the
page! You'll help them, you'll help me, and I'm pretty sure you'll help an angel get his wings.
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WRITING TIPS OF THE MONTH
I stumbled on the marvelous site of marvelous designer-slash-writer (hey...why does that sound familiar to
me, I wonder?) Lisa Firke via the Thesis WordPress Theme community page. (More on that soon!) While we all know that the perfect is the enemy of the
good (see that big article to your left, if you don't know what I'm talking about) and that the secret to getting anything done, ultimately, is in
actually doing it, sometimes it's nice to have a few new ways to mix it up. Lisa has crafted a little section with a number of nice kickstarts for
writers--and hey, everyone's a writer sometime, right? Some of Lisa's ways may be new to and some may not, but boy, does she have an
electric way of putting things across. It alone may motivate you to get to it; if not, you could find far worse ways to spend a few moments than
reading more great writing.
MONSTER TIMESAVING WORDPRESS THEME OF THE MONTH
I will wrangle code where necessary--and alas, sometimes it is--but after four long years of wrangling my
own blog code, I have finally decided there are more important things I can do with my time. Like actually writing the blog. So when it comes time to
update communicatrix-dot-com once again, I will do one of two things: hire one of my brilliant design/developer friends like Reese or Adam to code it from scratch, if I'm feeling flush. Or, if I'm not, hire them to
restyle the amazing
Thesis template for WordPress, by Chris
Pearson.
When I was getting ready to launch the
Virgo's Guide
to Marketing, my partner site for the marketing project I'm working on via Marketing Mentor, I bit the bullet and bought it based on several good reviews. Yes, it's $87 and
damn, I'm cheap. But that's why I got it--it looks great out of the box, and no code-wrassling required. Plus it's easy to retool as you have the
time. It's so incredible that I'm actually considering becoming an affiliate for the first product ever. Yes, really. (Sorry, I didn't mean
to make you faint--can I get you a glass of water or something?)
CD OF THE MONTH
Music can be a huge motivator for me. I use it to help me get through tedious chores, stop-and-go driving
or anything else I find odious. Sometimes, though I need music that's not only uplifting, but lyric-free--or at least, in a language I don't
understand, so my mind can stay focused and on task, while my spirit gets a little boost. For creative thinking, baroque music is fantastic (a little
secret I learned from Ginny Ditzler.) But for when I need something livelier, my new-favorite tuneage is Francophonic, a
retrospective compilation of African singer-songwriter-guitarist Franco. Great harmonies, wonderful guitar playing (talk about keeping me motivated!)
and tunes that fairly burst with joy--it's a fantastic album, jam-packed with creative inspiration. Found via the terrific short newsletter Very Short List, which I found via the
terrific,
if more tallish, Spencer
Cross.
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(a link back to my site is fine), you don't
change
anything and you don't
use it to make money.
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