Create! (with small children in the house)
an e-book by Jarkko Laine, published at http://jarkkolaine.com under the Creative Commons Attribution licence in January 2011.
Just like everything I write, this is for my sons.
Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................6 A few words about me!......................................................................................................................8
Start by Creating Art ................................................................10 Children Come First .................................................................12 Create for your children!.................................................................................................................12 Don始t let your work take over!.........................................................................................................13 How I try to keep my kids in the center of my attention!..................................................................14
Accept (and Cheat) Your Limits ...................................................16 You have more time than you think!................................................................................................17 Ideas for first things to let go!..........................................................................................................18 Two hours can be enough!..............................................................................................................20 Set (near) impossible goals!...........................................................................................................21 Be stubborn!....................................................................................................................................22
Be prepared to forget your best ideas!............................................................................................23
Create a Routine .....................................................................25 The case for mornings!...................................................................................................................26 My morning routine!........................................................................................................................28 My evening routine!.........................................................................................................................29 Stare back at the empty canvas!.....................................................................................................30
Publish Your Work ...................................................................31 Resistance!.....................................................................................................................................32 Start shipping today!.......................................................................................................................34
There is No Such Thing as Failure ................................................35 Case Study: Writing this book .....................................................37 Resources ..............................................................................41
Introduction It’s 10 P.M. Your children are sleeping and after a day full of action, the house is quiet. The thought of writing a few words to your novel crosses your mind but you let it pass as quickly as it came. Even though you are tired, you don’t feel like going to bed, so you update your Facebook status instead. During the night, the baby always wakes up just when are about to fall asleep. When your alarm finally goes off, you snooze it as many times you can until you have to rush to work or to take care of your kids, just like every day before. Your book? It can wait, you decide.
If this sounds familiar to you or you find yourself nodding to at least some parts of the picture, this small e-book is for you. Writing this book, I fought against those very same daily hurdles that keep getting in the way of inspiration and getting the work done and out the door. I know where you are coming from. 6
There is something inside you that wants to get out: a book, a song, a painting, a blog, or maybe a fresh business idea that will change the world in a big way. You can’t stop thinking about the idea, yet you never make it to working on it. All day, you are full of ideas and plans on how to continue the work, but unlike the single super-achievers you compare yourself to, you can’t act on the inspiration as it hits you but have to wait until night falls and your children go to sleep. With small children in the house, it is very easy to give up and accept that creating the art you dream of just isn’t for you. Logically thinking, it’s true. Thinking the opposite is nothing but crazy. That doesn’t have to stop you. I have never heard a creator say it’s easy to make art; even if they don’t have children, there is always something to keep them from doing the work. Deep inside your mind, there is a fear, very good at coming up with excuses to keep you from doing anything remarkable. Question that voice when it tells you that you can’t make it. Then look for clever ways to overcome the obstactles and you will find out that in many cases the issues aren’t nearly as impossible to work with as you thought at first. I fight my excuses every day, and for the past three and a half years, I have done it with small children in the house.
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A few words about me I am Jarkko Laine. 30 years old. Reader, husband, and father to two lively boys, Oiva (3 years) and Altti (1 year). And I create things. As I am releasing this book, I am half way through my second week as a full-time dad, recovering from a six-year career in the computer games business. On January 17th, 2011, I embarqued on this whole new adventure, taking a six month break from work to become a stay-at-home dad for my boys as my wife completes her studies. Everything about this turn in life is new to me1, so this book is mostly written from the point of view of a dad who loves to create, but juggles his days between a family, a day job, and an unstoppable urge to create. For as long as I can remember, I have always had a bunch of projects going on, so when Oiva was born three and a half years ago, I wasn’t ready to give up working on the things that excite me and wait for him to grow older before creating something again — I had to find clever ways to keep at least something going on. I had just started my blog a few weeks To read more about my ongoing adventures, I’d love it if you stopped by at my blog at http://jarkkolaine.com or said hi on Twitter (Iʼm @jalaine). 8 1
before Oiva’s birth and was full of passion for it, so I kept writing. As Oiva grew older and showed natural talent in sleeping full nights, I found a bit more time in my hands. Just as I got used to the peaceful Saturday afternoon creation time, he quit his daily naps and time was cut back again. I kept my projects going with varying success, blogging, freelance writing, freelance programming. I even released my first open source WordPress plugin, Donation Can. Then came, Altti, cutting the time and energy available for my projects again. Luckily kids usually come to this world one at a time, so by the time Altti was born, I was already used to working on my ideas with one toddler in the house. Adding one more to the mix made it harder to focus, but it also added to my reason for trying to make my projects work. Seeing Altti reminded me that I wasn’t doing this just for myself and for my own need to create, but to be there for my kids, and to show them how much I believe in following your passion and ideas. On the following pages, I will go through the things I have learned as I keep trying to create with two small children in the household. I hope at least some of it will be useful to you and inspire you to fight your excuses and get working on that idea, big or small, that has been bugging you, waiting to make it out of your head. It’s time to start creating. Your kids will appreciate you for it.
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Start by Creating Art Jay Shafer designs tiny houses for a living. If you come across with his Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, it’s not immediately obvious that the business didn’t start with a clear plan. Yet, at first, all Shafer wanted to do was to build himself an affordable 89 square foot house to minimize his impact on the environment and to keep things simple. Saving on mortgages and being free to move from place to place came as welcome bonuses. Luckily for him, he soon realized that he really enjoyed designing those tiny houses on wheels, and that there were others like him who didn’t want to live in the standard american house either. Shafer acted on his passion and started by creating his brand of art. Then, it became the way he makes his living. I dream of making a living creating something sustainable that I can call my legacy, using minimalism as a tool. People like Jay Shafer are my inspiration. But jumping from a regular consumer to a minimalist business 2 owner is a big jump — big enough to keep most of us from even trying. That’s why I think it is important to have an intermediate step where you just create for creation’s sake, even if you plan to turn it into a business later on.
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Whenever I link to a commercial product, I do it through affiliate links. That means that if you end up buying the product, I will get a share of the price of the purchase. I only promote products (i.e. books) that I have found useful myself. 10
First, create art. You can turn it into a business later. For me, the frustrating part about career advice has always been figuring out what I want to do. I get excited easily, and there are hundreds of things that could be awesome. Every time I read about turning my passion into a business, I ask myself: “so what is my passion, then?” Treating every option as a way to create art makes the process much easier: Instead of committing to making something work right from the begining, I can start practicing and creating first and then see if it becomes something worth doing even after the initial excitement has worn off. By starting from the art3, you don’t have to worry about the profitability of your idea upfront. You can instead work on anything that excites you and keeps you dreaming at night, enjoying the excitement that comes from creating something that you can call your own. By giving yourself total freedom to figure out what makes you come alive, it will be easier to find out the right thing to choose to work on in your business — if a business is what you are aiming for. You might not want to build a business or cash in on your passions. That’s perfectly fine and doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be creating art. I believe everyone is born creative, and to live happy, full lives, we all need to be creating and sharing what we create with each other. So keep reading, no matter what your reason for wanting to create. 3
In this book, when I talk about art, I use a broad definition adapted from Seth Godin: art means anything uniquely yours that you build and then share with the world. Some examples include writing, baking your bread, knitting, painting or song writing, but you can easliy continue the list with other creative activities you enjoy. 11
Children Come First Create for your children Entrepreneur, wine guy, and author Gary Vaynerchuk has a powerful idea: everything we put out on the Internet will stay there for our children and grandchildren to read and watch. Everything. Take some time to think about it! Let the idea sink in. It creates some pressure to create things that your children can be proud of, doesn’t it? At the same time, everything you say and do are examples that shape your children’s minds. When you don’t give up on your goals, you give an example that shouts out loud: ”Go ahead and create the things you dream up! There is nothing wrong with going after great things.” I can’t wait to see all the things that are growing inside my sons’ minds and what they will create when given the chance (the creation process starts early on and some of the stuff Oiva comes up with at age three is already blowing my mind). I believe our parents feel the same way about you and me. So I create. 12
Don’t let your work take over A word of warning: When you work hard to create something you believe in, the risk to ignore everyone around you gets very real. It’s easy to justify work that you do for a good reason, and good reasons don’t get much better than doing something for your children. Just think about all the stories you’ve heard about fathers giving all they got to provide for their families, working day and night, in the end never getting to know their children. These fathers think they are doing everything they can for their families but end up being alienated from the ones they love. No matter how great your legacy, your children will rather have you today than your great work for years to come. If one of your reasons for creating is the idea that you are doing it for your children, remember that it doesn’t make sense to create if as a result you don’t have the time to just play with them. In fact, instead of encouraging them to create, you will send the opposite signal and make sure they never become creators like you and sacrifice the other areas in their lives. To create for your children means letting your passion shine through in a way that they too can see and appreciate in you. To get there, I believe, nothing is more important than making sure your children are in the center of your attention. It’s not always easy, but it’s well worth the effort. 13
How I try to keep my kids in the center of my attention Here are some ideas that have worked for me as I try to keep my reasons for creating real.4 At times, following them slows down my creative process, even stopping it for days, but I accept that as the cost for putting the kids first. It would definitely be easier to just lock myself inside an office and work away. Some day I might do that too, but right now, as I also have a day job, I need all the time with my sons I can get. I can always kick myself to work harder on the remaining time if I really want to. 1.
Keep your computer turned off when the children are around. Your e-mail can wait, and admit it, you won’t be able to create anything anyway without some peace and quiet. Just focus on one thing at the time and you will feel much more relaxed — and be more productive in the long run too.5
2.
If you are employed in a day job in addition to your creative projects (or if your creative work is your ”day job”), make sure to get to work early enough so you get back to your kids before it’s time for them to go to sleep. It’s easy to steal time from them by working too long in the evening (and then sleeping late) or in the morning, only leaving to work as they wake up.
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I must admit, though, that there are times when I find myself violating some of my own principles and need to practice repentance.
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Check out Leo Babautaʼs new book, Focus for more ideas and inspiration on single-tasking for productivity. 14
3.
Get creative together. If your creative endeavors are online and involve writing, your small children won’t be able to appreciate them yet. For starters, they don’t know how to read, and unless you are creating content for children, they probably wouldn’t understand your thoughts even if they knew the words. To start sharing your passion for creation with your kids already at this early age, you need to think of something else. How about creating some art together? Drawing, painting, small do-it-yourself projects, or playing with Legos are all things that have worked really well with my older son, and as he grows, the possibilities are getting only more interesting!
4.
Create something for your children. Past November, I signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) with the brave idea of writing a mystery / adventure novel for my three-year-old. In the end, I couldn’t write every day and failed to complete the project in time for the one month deadline. Oiva enjoyed the story, however, so even though NaNoWriMo is long gone, I am going to keep writing it to practice my writing in a way that brings joy to my children. Who knows what else could come out of this project in the longer run? 15
Accept (and Cheat) Your Limits Creating together with your kids is great, and I recommend jumping to every opportunity to do so, but that’s not really the hard part. The hard part is bringing your own unique art to life. That’s what the rest of the book is about: working your way towards your big goals when you feel the world is nothing but a showcase of your limitations. When you have small children in your household, they depend on you on pretty much everything, and so, when they are awake, there is no moment of silence, not to mention time for focusing on your art. We wouldn’t want it any other way, but knowing that doesn’t make things any easier. There are days when I work as hard as I can with my limited resources and nothing happens. Then I listen to someone like Gary Vaynerchuk (he does have kids, by the way) who tells you that you need to hustle from early morning to late night, eighteen hours every day. And I ask myself if I can ever work hard enough. I know that at this point in my life, I don’t want to be Gary Vaynerchuk, so would it be better to just give up right now? There is some truth to this, but it’s not the whole truth: You have more time than you think. So what if you can’t create as much as the most hardworking people out there put out. It’s still far better to get your art out there than to keep it in your head! Later is better than never. 16
You have more time than you think In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto made a simple observation: 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. He then continued the observations and not only found that a similar distribution of wealth was found all over Europe, but that 80% of the peas in his backyard were coming from 20% of the peapods. He was on to something. Later, his observations have been applied to all kinds of practices from software to health care, to business profits, as well as crimes and quality control. In his non-fiction bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss applies the Pareto principle, or 80-20 rule, to work productivity in a way that is helpful for us as we try to fit as much creation time into our full days as reasonably possible: if 20% (or less, as Ferriss will tell you) of the actions lead to 80% of the results, it’s worth paying close attention to what you spend your time on. Start by being completely honest with yourself and make sure you know exactly how much time you have for your work. If you have never gone through this thought process before, you will be surprised by the results. There are so many unnecessary things people tend to spend time on that you can give up and use the time for creating your legacy instead. Be ruthless: List all of the daily activities you do when your kids are asleep and consider each of them separately, asking yourself: ”Does this activity matter more than creating my legacy?” If not, get rid of it. 17
If it’s something you have to do anyway, try to find clever ways to do it faster. For example, I don’t want to spend too much time cleaning my home, so I have decided to be a minimalist and not have too many items to clean and take care of.
Ideas for first things to let go Here are some ideas for things that you can give up first to free up time for your creation. As you go through the list, think about the ideas and if you too could give them up without sacrificing too much of your life quality. Then continue to your own pastimes and see if there is something more there that you can live without. 1.
TV. Watching a typical movie takes about 1.5 to 2 hours. One episode of CSI, ads included, is one hour. If you devoted that time to your art, what could you create in a month?
2.
The newspaper. I don’t know about you, but when I used to read the paper, it always took at least half an hour. And in the end, I realized I don’t even need to know all those news. If I decide to read in the morning, I rather pick up a book and focus on some more timeless ideas than today’s events. 18
3.
Sleep. This is a tricky one. For a short period of time, it can be helpful for your projects to give up some sleeping time, but not for too long, and not too much. There are some clever hacks for getting away with less sleep but they rely on such tight sleeping schedules that I have found them impossible to even try with children. I sleep about six to seven hours per night (not counting the baby calming breaks), except one or two nights a week, when I take some of it back and sleep for eight hours.
4.
Blogs and YouTube. So you have given up TV and newspapers? Don’t cheer for yourself just yet: you may be just consuming the same type of information through a different medium. It’s OK to pick the blogs you enjoy most, and allow yourself to hop to YouTube every now and then for a small dose of entertainment, but be really careful and learn to notice when you are surfing the web just to spend time. That’s when you need to get back to creating, or even turn off the computer and get some sleep.
5.
Email, Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Twice a day should be enough. Any more than that is just another form of killing time. But I have to admit, I’m still failing at giving these up...
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Two hours can be enough By eliminating most of my timesuckers, I have been able to free about two hours every day.6 Two hours is not much, but it’s a lot better than not creating at all: according to Everett Bogue’s free e-book Minimalist Workday, it is all you need to run a great business. I would prefer to work a bit more than that, but I do agree that two hours is enough to keep you going. Actually, I would say that no matter how little time you can free for your art, you should still try it out to see if you can get something done. What’s the worst that could happen? Spending an hour trying to create and then ending up with no results. Doesn’t sound that bad to me. Once you have figured out how much work you can do, use the time and put in the work. Don’t just plan for it. Wake up earlier or stay up later, commit to your work, and ship something awesome. Don’t use your special hours for unproductive ”me time”, surfing the web or procrastinating in other ways. Procrastination is deceptive: you may feel that you are relaxing by tweeting and checking your e-mails but in the end it’s not making you any happier. When you stick with your plan and produce art for those two hours, you will feel good about yourself and facing the kids and your day job for the rest of the day (or the next day) comes much more naturally for you. For a long time, I used to take this time from the mornings, but because my younger son is not that good a sleeper, I have now switched to evenings. That way I know I can get my undisturbed time for sure. 20 6
Set (near) impossible goals In his humorous essay published in 1955 in The Economist, writer Cyril Northcote Parkinson launched the saying that would later be known as ”Parkinson’s Law”: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. It’s not a law in the scientific sense, just an observation about life in general, and says nothing about what happens when you shrink the time available, but the productivity community has taken this idea into practice, sometimes with remarkable success. They say that by setting your goals so that they are near impossible, you can fight the effect of this law. Work may not shrink but at least you get to do it in just about the real minimum amount of time, even if that is a bit more than the time you allocated. My own experience supports this idea: I can easily spend four hours on a project that can be finished in one or two if you aren’t careful. Just remember you can’t shrink work infinitely. There is no spell or magic bullet that could make something that takes a long time happen in just a few moments. No matter how tight you set your goals, you can’t run a marathon in half an hour. Writing a book takes time, even if you try to do it in just two hours. Keeping that in mind as you start your project will help you to not give up when you notice that things aren’t going quite according to your optimistic plan. 21
Be stubborn When you are tired and things are not moving as fast as you had hoped, you will start to doubt yourself. If you haven’t experienced this yet, I can assure you: it will happen, sooner or later. I’m talking about serious doubt that can kill your project and freeze you on your tracks for a long time — if you are not prepared for it. The moment where your success will be judged.7 Many people give up during the hard times of doubt and never make it to the other side of it. The ones who are stubborn enough to keep executing on their plans are the ones who get to see the results. I have experienced this way too many times, going in circles from blogging to freelance writing, to software, to another blog, and still back to the original blog. When I look back at the times when I have switched tracks to try something else, I see a pile of projects that were almost ready and could have rocked my world, abandoned because of my fear that I was doing the wrong thing. This is not how you create a legacy. Stick to your plan and complete what you are working on. Once you have shipped it, analyze your situation and see if you need to try another direction. The worst time to change your plans is when you are doubting yourself. Finish your e-book and put it out. Record that song and share it with the rest of us. Only then you will see how people react. Insist on leaving your mark to the world — even when you don’t see the difference you are making yourself.8 7
Seth Godin discusses the topic in a whole lot more detail in The Dip.
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One of the best blog posts of 2010 talks about this. (by Derek Sivers) 22
Be prepared to forget your best ideas Inspiration can come at any time. For someone working in a day job or taking care of his children at home, often at just the wrong time when there is no chance of rushing to the computer (or canvas, or whatever tools your art form demands) and acting on the inspiration. As surely as you will come up with great ideas during the day, you will forget them by the time you get to implementing them. In the past three and a half years as a blogger, I have tried to develop many different habits hoping to turn myself into a productivity powerhouse. For most parts that hasn’t happened, but there is one habit that has stuck with me — perhaps because it is the smallest as well as the most useful of all the habit changes I have tried so far: carrying a notebook with me everywhere I go. Carrying a notebook, you can quickly write down the ideas as they cross your mind while you are building that Lego tower with your kids. And it comes with some nice bonuses:
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You will always have pen and paper with you: When you meet a new person and need to write down his phone number. When someone calls you and tells you an address to go to. When you go grocery shopping and need to write a list of things to buy. 23
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It’s faster than journaling: Around the same time that I started carrying my notebook with me, I also started a diary. After about a month, it dried out. I just didn’t have the time to write my thoughts down after work, blogging and family time. Luckily carrying a small notebook with me all the time gives me some of the benefits of journaling in a more efficient way.
•
You get to help someone else: Having a pen with you all the time means that whenever you see someone in a need of a writing device, you have one to share. I usually don’t share my notebook (I do let my wife write shopping lists in it) but the pen is something that I lend all the time. It makes people happy, and it’s a good opportunity to tell them to carry one with them as well.
All it takes is that you visit your nearest office supply store and buy a cheap notebook and a pen and stick them into your pocket. If you have some extra envelopes or other blank paper somewhere in the house, you don’t even need to buy a notebook — you can save money and be nice to the environment by creating a unique one yourself. I suggest you give it a shot.
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Create a Routine For ten years, Michael Pollan started his days of writing the same way: he walked through his back yard in New England to a small writing cabin he had built for himself (for writing, reading and daydreaming, as he tells in his book, A Place of My Own), sat down to his desk and got to work. The only insulation the cabin had were the rows of books surrounding every wall, but that didn’t stop Pollan from spending his days in the peace of this special place, even on cold winter days. The place had become a big part of his creation routine. A clear routine sets you up for creating. It doesn’t matter that much what your routine is, but by always following the same steps religiously, you will teach your mind to treat them as a signal that now is the time to get creative. At first, it will be hard to get creative at command but you will get used to it, so much that in the end you will notice that almost every time you haven’t been able get your work done, it has been because you failed to follow your routine. My routine is about timing: I devote two to three hours of my days to my art in a time slot I have decided in advance. Although I work in the evenings for now, I know my best work gets done when I am able to wake up at five and start working immediately after. The idea of working when you feel like it sounds tempting, but it’s not for me and I doubt it is for you either. If we get a strong impulse to create during the hours our kids are awake, there’s not too much we can do about it. 25
The case for mornings Until recently, I used to do all my writing and creating before heading to my day job at sunrise. If you can, I suggest you try the same. It all depends on your children’s sleeping patterns. My one-year-old has a much more irregular sleep rythm than his older brother, and he often wakes up to cry about just an hour before my alarm used to go off at five. I tried to stick to my morning routine for a couple of months, but it was very hard to wake up so soon after comforting the baby, so I finally gave up and started taking my two hours of undirsturbed work in the evenings. It’s not perfect but it works. If your children have a steady, predictable sleeping rythm that allows you to work in the morning, I suggest you give it a try. ”But I am not a morning person”, you say. The thing is, I wouldn’t call myself one either. Before we had kids, it was normal for my wife and me to sleep until 10 or 11 whenever we had a chance to do so, sometimes even longer. Reading Leo Babauta’s writing about the benefits of waking up early made me change my mind and with trying it out and practicing a bit made me love it. I had turned from night owl to early riser.
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By waking up earlier and using your mornings for your art, you get to...
1.
Be the first one to use your brain. When you create last thing in the evening, you have let everyone else get a piece of your mind before finally giving yourself a turn. You are already tired after a long day and it’s easy to give up and hit the sack. By reversing this order, you not only get to work on your art with a (well) rested mind but can also relax and go to bed when you feel tired in the evening.
2.
Have your brain work through the night. It’s quite common to find a solution to a problem that has been bothering you by just sleeping on it. If you work on your creative projects first thing in the morning, you can leverage this effect and get ideas from your sleep. If you go do all the other things in your life first, it’s easy to forget the inspiration you had in the morning by the time you get to act on it.
3.
Enjoy the energy of a day just beginning. There is something special and energizing about early mornings: the world around you is waking up, you have the whole day ahead of you, and this is your chance to make the most out of it.
4.
Focus better. Your family is still asleep, and if you look out the window, you see a quiet world. Your mind has had a chance to clear itself through a good night’s sleep. Focusing on what matters will never get any easier than this.
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My morning routine This is what my morning routine looked like when I still woke up before the sun. It was an intentionally simple routine, but if you feel it needs something more, feel free to make yours as different as you like. This is just an example to pick ideas from. 5:00 AM: Alarm goes off. I try to get up at first ring, as I have noticed that it’s very easy to fall back to sleep and lose a day’s worth of creation time just by pressing the snooze button. 5:05 AM: Prepare a small breakfast. Some home made yoghurt and a few slices of bread. I usually eat while working, to save some time. 5:07 AM: Start writing. I try to stay off Twitter and email, but often end up checking them first anyway. If you do that, do it as quickly as you can and then get to work. You can always find an empty slot for them later in the day. 6:30 AM: Time to start wrapping up so I can go to work on time and get back home early enough to spend some time with my family. It’s easy to slip and work longer, especially when you are just about to finish something, but try to keep the routine solid also at this end. It will help you the next day when you have been able to see your kids to bed on time, and had enough sleep to wake up on time the next day.
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My evening routine Now that I work in the evening instead of early mornings to accomodate to my one-year-old’s irregular sleeping patterns, my routine is even simpler than the one I used to have in the morning. There are slightly more interruptions in the evenings, and I can’t follow this routine every night of the week, like I could with the morning routine, but in all, this routine is also working decently. If working in the morning is not possible for you, you may want to try something similar to these steps. 8:30 - 9:00 PM: Both of the boys are asleep and I am ready to get to work. Depending on how pressing the work, I might take the time until 9 for reading a book or just sitting down and relaxing in silence. 9:00 PM: Start writing. After a while, when start to feel tired, pour myself a cup of tea. Keep writing. 11:30 PM (or a bit later): Stop and head to bed. It doesn’t get much simpler than this, don’t you think?
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Stare back at the empty canvas As you have noticed, a lot of the examples in this book are about writing. So is this one. But the same advice transfer well to other forms of art as well. When you sit down at your desk to create, at first you will feel empty. It’s as if you don’t have anything to give to the world. The screen, canvas or multi-track recorder is staring at you, laughing at your incompetence, but don’t give up. This is what writers call the block. Stare back and prove yourself. Make this a part of your work routine. When faced with the block, it’s easy to leave the work for a later time. When you have all the time in the world, working only when you feel like it might even work, but with a family to take care of, you don’t have all the time in the world. All you have is your daily slot of about two hours. Lose it and you will not create today. Some days, that’s fine, but it’s better to start with the assumption that today is not one of those days. So, sit through the block and start putting words on paper. As you fight through it, you will be the last one to laugh.
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Publish Your Work I have had my fair share of failed projects, and I am sure that there are many more to come. They have died for different reasons, but the ones that still haunt me today all have one thing in common: no one ever saw them. They are the ones that took too long to finish and were never shipped to the public. One such project was a web site called ”Share Your World,” a social network for sharing your neighborhood with someone from across the world, thus making it possible to see what it is like to live in a country different from your own. I worked on it for months, but never shipped. When I finally started doing initial tests to see how many users the site would support, I figured it would need a full rewrite to work in the real world. Because I hadn’t shipped earlier, I didn’t have data to tell me whether the site was worth the effort or not. So, I left the project aside, killing it without ever actually making that decision. In 2007, when I decided to start writing, I had learned something from this experience: instead of going for a book or any longer product right from the start, I created a blog to get small victories and to build the work incrementally, practicing, but at the same time shipping the slowly improving art to a growing audience. I have found that this makes all the difference — especially when you have small children in the house. Had that web site project taken place in the years after Oiva’s birth, it would have taken even longer to get to the point where it finally failed, and it would have died a lot earlier for sheer lack of trust for my ability to create something worth publishing. 31
Resistance In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield writes about an internal force that every creator has to face. In this book so far, we have touched many of the effects of this force. Now it’s time to name it: Pressfield calls it Resistance. Resistance, most easily explained as fear, is what keeps you from finishing your great idea, fighting harder and harder as you approach the finishing line. Resistance disguises as perfectly reasonable doubts such as ”Who do I think I am to write an e-book about creating?” or ”Why should anyone use my product when there are tons of others they can choose from?” To ever finish anything remarkable, you have to deal with Resistance in one way or another. Seth Godin offers a solution that works. In Linchpin, he writes: ”The only solution is to call all the bluffs at once, to tolerate no rational or irrational reason to hold back on your art. The only solution is to start today, to start now, and to ship.” And even better, to keep things rolling, ship your work as often as you can. Even the smallest victory will be better at keeping you going than nothing. Your legacy won’t be built in a day, so to make sure you will create one, split it to the smallest elements you can think of, and then still once or twice more. With the Internet making it easier to publish than ever, we have a powerful tool for fighting resistance at our hands. Instead of waiting for everything to be ready, release the first steps. They might just create a great success. 32
Chris Guillebeau, Leo Babauta, and many others gained their book deals by first collecting a following of eager readers through blogging. Leo’s latest book, Focus, was written in a completely transparent process where he published several ”beta” versions online for free before completing the project and officially releasing the book. Hugh MacLeod became famous by sharing his back of the business card art pieces on his blog, one drawing at the time. Now, he is making a good living selling his art. Seth Godin has built several of his books from ideas that he first presented on his blog. In fact, one book, Small Is The New Big, consists of nothing but blog posts tied together in a book format. My friend Joona and his band Unzyme released the songs from their debute album one by one on their web site as they were recording them. This helped them find a producer and create some buzz about the record long before it was finished. I released the first version of my WordPress plugin, Donation Can when nothing but the core functionality was in place. Since then, I have been updating it in small steps, getting closer to done with each iteration. While not a world changing success, the plugin has been in use for over a year by 4,500 people, who have used it collect money to good causes. If I would have waited for 100% done, they would still not have access to the plugin! By publishing my ideas one by one on my blog, I have been able to build a library of 271 (and growing) published articles, each about 500 to 1,000 words long. You could say I have a book 33
or two written. It’s not the most polished of books, and I cringe at some of the articles today, but it’s my creation, out there in the world, and I’m happy to have built it. If I had waited to complete a book before shipping the articles, they wouldn’t be there for you to read today.
Start shipping today Let me repeat once more: don’t wait until you have it just right. Decide on one small project and ship it as soon as you can. Use the motivation you get from small victories to repeat until you have built your legacy. It happens step by step, tricking resistance at each level: ”This is just a small idea” — Ship! ”This is just one song” — Ship! And finally, you will have gathered enough experience working with your doubts so that you can say: ”It’s just one book, and I have already shipped all of its chapters before,” and ship the complete book! Don’t wait to be perfect, just get your best work done, and ship.
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There is No Such Thing as Failure Whatever your passion, you won’t reach your goals overnight. One blog post doesn’t make a blog, and a year of blogging doesn’t usually turn you into a professional writer. The same applies to all forms of art. You will doubt yourself. You will compare your success to others who are moving faster than you. You will feel that you have failed to achieve your goals. When you want to create and change the world through your art, no matter what shape it takes, the only thing that matters in the end is how well you survice your long distances. Dustin Curtis, a self-proclaimed superhero and internet persona to follow closely, got it right in his recent article, titled Press On, where he writes: ”Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.” Sometimes it looks like success happens overnight. I guess it is possible, but usually, that overnight success is preceeded by a period of relative anonymity. It’s a pretty safe guess to say that you have at least ten, most likely many more years ahead of you. A lot can happen in those years. If you stick to your goal, a year can make a big difference but 10 can be what changes you from just another guy trying to make it with his projects into the one who is setting the rules of the game and changing the world. 35
By never giving up, even when I get to slow points, I have been able to keep my blog going for three years. Maybe I am just stubborn, but even when my projects go silently for months, I still never consider them dead: as long as I am alive, I can bring them back to life. The only way to fail is if you never try.
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Case Study: Writing this book It’s ironic that writing a book about creating with children would become an example on how hard it is to complete anything. That’s exactly what happened with this book. One of the warm days of August in 2010, Everett Bogue released his free 5,000 word e-book, Minimalist Workday. I read the book the same day and loved it, but most of all I was inspired by this claim Everett presents in the book’s introduction: ”This e-book took me 4 hours to write and edit, and 2 hours to produce.” A grand total of six hours for a complete e-book? If this was all it took to complete an e-book, why couldn’t I do the same? I decided to give it a shot, and even tweeted back to Everett: @evbogue I'm amazed that you wrote that ebook in two hours! To see if it's possible for the rest of us too, I'll try the same this week :) Definitely one of the tweets I should have left untweeted (I even got the number of hours wrong!).
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But I’m good at believing impossible things, so I really believed I could pull it off this time: Creating with small children in the household was a topic I knew a lot about. I had over three years of experience from doing it with my two sons and I had already touched the topic on my blog. Writing a book of about 5,000 words (as I estimated the length at that time) and maybe 25 pages couldn’t take long. Writing started well. I woke up at five in the morning and wrote for two hours every day. Sure, I was already slower than Everett, but I didn’t let that bother me and so I ended up finishing the first draft in just a couple of days. I was optimistic about completing the work and sent an e-mail to my mailing list subscribers: there was a small e-book coming soon. Then, without warning, something changed. When my alarm went off at 5 A.M., I didn’t feel like waking up. I was tired and pressed snooze again and again, so that when I finally got up, there was no time left for writing. All I could do was to hurry to my day job. And as you know, with children, if you waste your one chance for effective work time, you don’t get another until the next day. So, there I was, with a halffinished e-book that I had already mentioned to my newsletter subscribers, making no progress towards finishing it. I had a bad feeling that something like this had already happened before. It was Resistance at work.
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I wish I could say I found a magic formula to trick resistance and make creating easy again. I didn’t. All I could find were small ideas that kept me moving, slower than expected but still moving, and finally completing the book six months after the original announcement.
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Fixing my routines: I had been neglecting my running for most of the summer. Getting back to my running schedule (maybe surprisingly) helped me stick to my writing routine as well. My untested theory is that when you get small amounts of success in sticking to something, the effect multiplies by making you more likely to stick to the rest of your routines as well. The effect of this routine fix was not longlived, though. I started biking to work and gave up running to save time, and again, I was stuck with my writing as well.
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Adapting to changes: For years already, I have used the morning hours as my productive creating time, and like I explain in the section ”The case for mornings,” earlier in this book, it has worked really well for me. But with children, things usually change the moment you get used to the status quo. My younger son started waking up more times, and I noticed that if he wakes up at 4 or 4:30 A.M., it makes it really hard for me to get up just an hour or so after helping him regain his sleep. I decided that for now, it’s better to work in the evening and continued the work.
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Fueling the need to create: I kept following bloggers who finished and published their projects as I was stalling with mine, and slowly but steadily this built up the feeling that I just had to get this thing out the door. 39
Most importantly, I kept reminding myself of this Seth Godin quote: Why do you need to feel like something in order to do the work? They call it work because it’s difficult, not because it’s something you need to feel like. When you want to complete and ship art, it becomes work — even if you are never going to make money from it — and there will always come times when you don’t feel like it. That’s when you do the work. For me, in the end, it paid off, and you are now flipping through my creation! I hope you have enjoyed it and found something useful to try out in your own life. Just remember: There will never be enough time for creating art and building businesses when sharing your home with toddlers and babies, but that’s OK; you can still create if you really want. It will just take longer than for others with no such commitments. Thank you for reading, and good luck with your creative projects! I can’t wait to see what you will create. If you want to get in touch, to discuss the topics of this e-book, or just to chat about something else, you can find me on Twitter at @jalaine or via e-mail at jarkko@jarkkolaine.com. Follow my blog at http://jarkkolaine.com for more of my ideas and projects. 40
Resources You don’t need to read more than this to start creating. Give yourself the permission to experiment with your ideas, and then just start. If you feel curious and want to get more information than what I was able to fit in these 40 pages, you are lucky. A lot has been written about art, productivity, minimalism and other related topics. Here is a short list of valuable e-book resources created by some of the bloggers and world changers who I look up to.
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Minimalist Business by Everett Bogue Minimalist Workday by Everett Bogue (FREE) Small Ways to Make a Big Difference by Raam Dev (FREE) 279 Days to Overnight Success by Chris Guillebeau Unconventional Guide to Work Working for Yourself by Chris Guillebeau Art + Money by Chris Guillebeau Consume Less, Create More by Brett Oblack Smalltopia: A Practical Guide to Working for Yourself by Tammy Strobel
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