I spend a lot of time reading; so much so that my wife tells me I’m a bit of a moron for spending so much time doing something that is so inherently boring. Her paraphrased words, not mine. IF by some chance you didn’t guess by reading the title, or by knowing me, that the subject matter I happen to read most about is politics (and history, and science, and….), then I should let you in on a little secret: I am often immersed in politically oriented reading. For many months I’ve grown tired of it and the vitriol involved in political debate; however, I generally stay tuned in. The freak show can be amusing.

Something I’ve noticed, and not all by myself but in addition to the observations of others, is the way in which the left and right are often characterized by those in the know. Policies are not debated based on evidence and evaluated for what they are; cause and effect have no place in the debate, rather judgments are based on hyperbole and rhetoric. No one is innocent.

But people take these views to heart, and bring it to work, to school, to churches, and to the dinner table; all the while espousing a view that really doesn’t get to the heart of the matter at all; never addressing the lackluster policies brought forth by either group; doing a great disservice to the national character by involving themselves in something they hardly understand; honestly, democracy is not a good thing. Representative republics are. Democracy relies on rhetoric and vote buying, while republics presumably rely on rationality and vote buying…wait, what?

Look, the heart of the matter is both sides have it wrong; governments are for the protection of a given society’s members and their natural rights, not for the distribution of rights. The more this philosophy has shifted in the citizenry over the years, however, the more the government has taken steps to entrench itself; ultimately the social contract becomes null and void.

Cynicism:1, Me: 0. Semi-colon usage: 7(ish). Semi-colon wins.

Is it the start of a new year that often gets you thinking about what made you so disappointed with your efforts last year, or is it simple pessimism? Because I’ve found myself not only reinventing my branding and website in an effort to clean out the cob webs of creativity, but writing many posts relating to said motivation, writing, and goals for the year. Not that this is necessarily an unusual or unwanted thing; it serves to get me moving and motivated for the year. It helps give me a renewed sense of purpose in my design efforts, though I still have procrastination issues.¹

Believe me, most tasks I undertake are neither difficult, nor do they warrant such a reaction,² but I find myself a little terrified of starting something that could become overwhelming. In order to move past that nasty procrastination stage, and arrive at an appropriately acceptable result, I employ a couple of simple strategies that makes the given task a little less daunting.

Find a mitigating factor. In the case of getting projects started at work, I often need to find something that helps to lessen the impact of a larger task. In most circumstances that means finding a solution that makes the project easier to finish by speeding up the menial tasks; often I’ll see if there is a way to use php to my advantage by setting up a little script to run through a file, file names, or output some code that would have taken me quite some time to do manually. In other cases, I’ll take advantage of actions and batch processing in Photoshop in order to run through a long list of images in the shortest amount of time, with the least amount of manual processing possible.

Delegate tasks efficiently. Which tasks are of the need-to-do-now variety and which are less important? In a lot of cases I tend to block early sections of my day for the easy to do tasks in order to get them done, as well as to do something that requires less concentration in general, and devote the rest of the day to one or two of the more important projects on the docket. This doesn’t always work well and may not be what others recommend, but it helps me to work through tasks efficiently as well as to prepare myself mentally for the most important project; I do break this pattern if important projects are more urgent than usual. The reason I adopted this pattern was primarily as a way to deal with early morning meetings, as meetings would often interrupt my creative flow on the larger projects.³

Look on the bright side. You could always be doing something less fulfilling than what it is you are getting ready to start. I’ve not written much in the past year as far as short stories, editorials, poetry, and web design posts go, and this is because I lacked the motivation to do so. Why? Because I don’t always appreciate my skill and look pessimistically at my ideas. Don’t emulate that. Look for the good in your ideas, and you’ll be less likely to put them aside.

Make your goals public. It’s more difficult to slack off when others are holding you accountable, though it is easy to cheat that one if you’re doing it online only. Make the announcement on your blog, but make sure you’ve got a living person breathing down your neck to make sure you’re completing a task.

To summarize. You should find a mitigating factor, delegate tasks efficiently, look on the bright side, and make your goals public in order to make sure you get yourself motivated. As I said, these are simple things that I’ve done to motivate myself, and they work for me; which means, they may not work for you; which means…that you should think of things that help to motivate you, write about it, and act on it. Get to work, and hold yourself accountable to your goals.

Ok, as per one of my goals recently, I’ve been trying to write something every day. So far I’ve produced a smattering of work, none of which is fantastic, but I figure I might as well post it and get it out there.

Cold Air

The morning air brushes past my face–
but it refuses to move on.
It stings as it begins to move through my
nose and mouth, past my tongue.
I exhale.
I move on.

Strong

Where goes the strong one?
Into eternity I would guess.
Blown back again, not so missed.
Maybe forgotten. One day remembered.
Walk away; the night will remember.

My only concern with my goal for this year, writing at least one piece for this blog every week, is that I don’t feel particularly creative in my writing. Now, I may be technically competent, and have enough knowledge of various subjects to pass muster in blog form, but when it comes to writing creatively, I’m egregiously lacking in the interesting department. My writing stinks unless you want a term paper.

And so the subject for this week is: strategies to help me improve my writing, or how to get better at creative pursuits. Which also happens to be the subject of one of my notes.

As stated in that note, the strategy for me to employ is the classic “practice, practice, practice” technique successfully used by generations of people; in this case, I’ll use the stereotypical artists Moleskine notebook I carry around, and try to write a new bit of poetry every day in an effort to improve my creative process. What techniques will work best to create something new and fresh, and how will that help in my design work? I’m pretty excited about exploring this in 2010.

Which brings me around to the ol’ explanation of why I feel that I’m not good at writing to begin with. It is my lack of production that bothers me. It seems prior to the explosion in my personal time spent online, I could write fairly well, and fairly creatively, without the feeling of being hindered. Perhaps that view is simply in hindsight, rose-colored glasses and all, but my patience for some pursuits has dimmed considerably.

Wish me luck, can’t wait to post some of the results. In other news, keep an eye out for a progress meter I’m about to post.