Productivity
Ira Glass on Developing Your Creative Skill: Go for Quantity, Not Quality
The below 2 minute video of Ira Glass explaining how the secret to artistic quality is to do a lot of art is well worth your time. Bayles and Orland make the same point in their terrific book Art & Fear. They tell a (true, I believe) story of two pottery classes: One class was…
Read MoreWho Makes the Best Mentor? And Coming to Terms with My $14,500 Mentor Failure
Who makes the best mentor? According to research, it’s not the star performers: In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, for example, Jerker Denrell of the University of Oxford and Chengwei Liu of the University of Warwick counsel us to model ourselves on solid, second-tier performers, not the flashy…
Read MoreDesigner Milton Glaser’s Universe of Abundance
An important element of perfectionism is a sense of scarcity and deprivation, so this quotation from iconic graphic designer Milton Glaser offers an important antiperfectionist message: “If you perceive the universe as being a universe of abundance, then it will be. If you think of the universe as one of scarcity then it will be…I…
Read MoreMy Inner Critic is a Wise Latina
I had a really bad night’s sleep last night, even for me. At one point, I actually dreamt that I was being judged by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor! Could be worse–could have been Scalia or Alito or Thomas. So the yield of twelve+ years work helping others overcome their perfectionism is that my Inner…
Read MoreWikipedia the Wise
New Articles on Procrastination and Perfectionism, and How to Help Your Kid Kick the Video Game Habit
Just posted new, updated sections on how to recognize and overcome Procrastination and Perfectionism. Please check them out! Also posted a new article called How to Help Your Kids Kick the Video Game Habit. It’s adapted from one I published a while back on the Psychology Today blog, andit will be useful to anyone (not…
Read MoreGood Apps for Distraction-Free Writing
Here are ten apps that let you write on a “clean” screen without distracting menus or other junk.
Read MoreRob Hatch on Learning versus “Figuring It Out”
A great post from Rob Hatch on asking why asking an expert is usually better than just figuring things out yourself: I do have limited time. Do I want to spend my limited time training, or do I want to spend it putting my own plan together after reading about how to train, what to…
Read MoreAmanda Palmer on Why Artists Should Self-Promote (Bonus: How To Do It Without Selling Out!)
Last week I wrote about Amanda Palmer’s excellent keynote speech for the Grub Street Writers’ Muse and the Marketplace conference, where she made an impassioned plea for artists to validate themselves instead of waiting for a publisher, gallery owner, studio, or other gatekeeper’s endorsement. She also had a lot of useful things to say about…
Read MoreReader Response: Self-Compassion DOES Overcome Procrastination in a Day!
In response to my recent piece on How to Get Over Procrastination in a Day, a reader wrote: “I want to thank you for your recent blog on how you avoided writing one day and had self-compassion. When I read it, I was having a “blank mind” day, filled with personal and writerly insecurities; and…
Read More