How is your focus? Do you generally feel mentally sharp, ready to tackle challenges or engage in sustained concentration? Do you need a go-go-juice like coffee just to fire up your brain in the mornings? Would it be more accurate to say that your mind is stimulated on a regular basis or just…bored?
These are just some of the questions you should ask yourself when assessing whether there are changes you need to make in this area during your Course Correct.
One of the first things I wrote down in my head-to-toe scan was my brain-fog and lack of focus. Rumor has it, that this can happen at my age (hellloooo menopause!) so I wasn’t worried in the way that I was worried about my body. However, a lack of focus and distractedness had begun to affect my work. Trouble concentrating and staying single-minded were becoming major issues in my output as a writer. Despite misconceptions that all authors with published books must be rich and live a leisurely life typing away on a veranda somewhere, the reality is much different.
It can be likened to a track meet, running and running in a continuous circle. The hurdles have different names, but there are always hurdles. Getting an agent, scoring a book deal, marketing your books in the hopes that people will buy, but there’s no guarantee that the next book will sell, or even then next one.
Most fiction writers labor for months and months to produce a book that might never see the light of day. Once you are published, there’s tremendous pressure to release a book a year. Rejection never gets easier and if there’s not rejection from publishers, then there are the reviews. Because it’s my passion, I’ve willingly put myself on the track and have been go, go go for over a decade.
Working from home—while perfect for a solitude-loving introvert like me—also takes discipline. It’s too easy to become distracted by kids, dogs, laundry, housework, meal prep, books, or you know…Outlander. I’ve never met a writer who couldn’t justify a binge-watch by calling it “research.”
The Internet is another labyrinthine cave system. Even when you’re truly using the Internet to research for books, one rabbit hole leads to another. Hey, it’s a fascinating world out there when you really start looking!
Let’s not forget that our publishers very much expect us to have a “presence” online. They give authors the ready excuse that Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are part of our jobs.
About a year ago, a passion project went on submission and didn’t sell. It’s utterly demoralizing to work so hard on something and to have an editor fall in love with it, only to have the manuscript ultimately rejected for one reason or another. That mindset on top of some burnout from the previous three years when I wrote, edited, promoted a paranormal series and sold another standalone novel and I’d hit a point where my ability to create was severely suffering.
I took time off from writing and found a part-time seasonal job only to realize with utter clarity that there are just some jobs I’m not suited for. I returned to my writing desk to discover that while I had the desire, I lacked the focus.
Something new was going on and if I was to continue to pursue my passion, I had to find out what it was and fix it.
A friend in the publishing business recommended a book called, Deep Work by Cal Newport. In the book, he states, “The type of work that optimizes your performance is deep work. If you’re not comfortable going deep for extended periods of time, it’ll be difficult to get your performance to the peak levels of quality and quantity increasingly necessary to thrive professionally. Unless your talent and skills absolutely dwarf those of your competition, the deep workers among them will outproduce you.”
I wanted to become as Newport calls it, “…a disciple of depth in a shallow world.”
How much of the communication in your life sucks the juice from it rather than filling you up? Do you think that you’ll just take a quick peek at social media or emails only to find that you’ve been sucked into a ravenous black hole where time becomes meaningless until you crawl back out and see how much of it has disappeared?
Do you end some days feeling fragmented, split apart, or as Bilbo Baggins so succinctly puts it, “I feel thin. Sort of stretched. Like butter scraped over too much bread.”
Like a bad boyfriend, social media gives what you think you need yet slyly cuts away at your work, your sense of self, and your happiness. Every leap from focused work to the mostly inane chatter of the Internet, robs you of the 15-20 precious minutes it takes to reinsert yourself into deep work. In the course of a day, that really adds up.
Where was the sacredness in my work? By “sacred” I don’t mean to imply that my work is imbued with divinity. Rather, that as a creative person it should be respected and sacred TO ME and my time and attention to it should reflect and honor that.
“If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive—no matter how skilled or talented you are.” – from Deep Work
I began to wonder: if I freed up my time by eliminating “shallow” tasks that were sucking the hours from my days, how much could I accomplish? It became very clear that one of my Course Correct rules needed to include: Limiting social media and at least 4 hours each day of uninterrupted focused work time. As I keep stating, I knew this would have benefits for my relationships, too. How often do we pretend to listen to our partners or kids while our attention is half on them and half on the phone in our hands? Every area of life impacts the others, remember?
To work better and love better, I had to hold the reins of my runaway mind firmly in my own grasp and direct it to where I wanted and needed it to go. For me, this is an invaluable component in living up to my potential as a writer and as a person overall. For this reason, I included it on my 90-day plan.
MENTAL / EMOTIONAL HEALTH
If you suffer, like I do, with any type of mood disorder, then it will affect every area of your life. The zones are braided together: physical health affects emotional health affects relationships affects self-esteem…on and on. I think it’s true for all of us that the quality of our daily lives, our work, our parenting, everything…is greatly impacted by our moods and emotional state.
I now know that my anxiety and depression played a role in my inability to concentrate and focus. The vicious circle was enacted; I’d not be able to focus, which would then, in turn, create more frustration and self-recrimination. I’d feel worse.
If you have a psychiatric/mood disorder, it is massively important to do everything within your power to support yourself in being as balanced as you can be. When I am gripped by anxiety, I know from experience that I will feel better if take the healthy and appropriate steps that tamp down my agitation and nerves. I also have learned that depression’s shadow will darken my life more often if I’m not taking care of myself by moving my body, nurturing it, being gentle with myself, and loving myself as I’d love my best friend through a crisis.
Also, give thought as to the best use of your leisure time. By all means, have it. Puttering and quietness can be deeply restorative to the mind.
It bears repeating that your brain is greatly affected by how well you take care of other zones in your life. Quality sleep, healthful foods, and exercise all directly affect your brain chemistry (including the chemistry of your “2nd brain”—your gut.) Again, this is why I advocate examining all zones of your life for improvements. A tune-up in all areas improves overall performance.
If you’re struggling with emotional challenges or mental health issues, I urge you not to ignore it. I believe from the deepest part of myself that we were not created and gifted with this miraculous thing called life just to be unhappy. If you have children, could you ever say that you created them to be unhappy? Of course not!
Doctors, therapists, self-help books, support groups, medications, counselors… These are just some of the avenues you can explore. Remember that Course Correcting in the other segments of your life (sleep, connections, food, and exercise, etc.,) will greatly impact the quality of your emotional and mental health.
No matter what your life story is, no matter how brutal your past, you are worthy of happiness and peace of mind.
Seek it like a missile and don’t give up until you hit your target. Of all of the segments I discuss in Course Correct, this is arguably the most impactful to your overall triumph in meeting and being your Higher Self and in living your greatest life.
STIMULATION
What sparks you?
You realize you need and deserve to be lit up in life, right? Too often, we let the mundane routine of our days take priority to the exclusion of all else. I’ll tell you something right now; if you nodded your head when you read the above passages about the time suck that is social media because you acknowledge the hold it’s had on you, then I can say with certainty you have the time to fit in an activity that sparks you.
Is there something you’ve always wanted to learn? What will you regret not having tried? For me, it’s learning to speak Italian and learning to dance the tango. Even fifteen minutes doing Italian lessons on an app will make me feel more inspired, interested, interesting, and stimulated.
What a criminal shame it would be to spend our lives not being curious, learning new things, and engaging our incredible brains to the best of our abilities.
ACTION ITEMS:
· Assess areas of work, focus, distraction, stimulation, boredom, mental health and write down what you need to either eliminate or do in order to be the person you most want to be. Now, let’s continue on our whole-life checklist. Onward!
