Pause.

Trust.

Those were the watchwords that saw me, and my voice, through an intensive week of leading corporate workshops while fighting a cold.

“Exhale” came from my bodyworker, Roy, who observed at our last appointment that my breathing seemed tight. “Focus on exhaling,” he said. “The inhaling will take care of itself.” (He’s good with the aphorisms.)

“Pause” and “Trust” were what I added for jangled nerves—not only my concern over how my scratchy throat would manage all that talking, but also the opening-night jitters that went along with one of the classes being a first-time delivery. I wanted an easy way to remember that it’s OK to wait before answering a question…that I can rely on my preparation and my solid training skills…that it’s OK not to over-prepare.

Exhale…pause…trust…turned out to be a revolutionary combination. Not only did it keep my voice relaxed, it slowed down my usually rapid-fire speech. (An acquaintance once said he had to replay my minute-waltz-style voicemail five times before he understood it. And as my spouse will confirm, I’m wont to interrupt, with all good intentions and enthusiasm.)  As I stood in front of the training room, the watchwords helped me stay calm, present and receptive to students’ needs while also keeping the class’s energy up. Surprise! There are other ways to keep people engaged besides talking fast.

I had more fun, too.

Exhale.

Pause.

Trust.

Now, can I remember to use these watchwords when I’m not training? Like, when I’m writing? Checking email? Talking on the phone?

I like being right. I hate being wrong. Creating means spending a lot of time hanging out in the not-right zone. Bleah!

It’s one of the main reasons I get immobilized. You can say all you want, “Go ahead, just write a terrible first draft” (and believe me, I always write lousy first drafts, and second and third ones too), but I find this aspect of creativity nearly intolerable. I hate committing to a choice—a word, a sentence, an organizing principle—knowing I will just have to change it later.

Yet this is how ideas get refined. I revisit them, rework them, see how they relate to each other, begin to see what’s more or less important, find new relationships, decide what’s a tangent and what’s core, eliminate the excess. Did I mention that I hate that this is how the process works? It’s excruciating to me.

After coming across the work of psychologist Carol Dweck, I’m beginning to understand my reaction a little better. Dweck has done research into the difference between performance goals (“I did great! I’m smart and talented! Reward me!”) and learning goals (“I persisted and eventually got there! Yay!”)  As the proverbial A-student, I grew up (happily) performance-focused, rewarded for consistently Getting It Right. This works fine until you hit a setback. Performance-focused A-student types never learn to manage the frustration of Getting It Wrong. Their (my) approach is: “There is a Right Way, and the goal is to get to the Right Way sooner. Wrongness is unacceptable and a big waste of time!” The kid who’s rewarded for persistence rather than performance thinks, “Oh, I love a problem! If I keep working at it, I’ll figure it out.”

“I love a problem”? This attitude is completely alien to me. In my mind, “I don’t know how” leads automatically to “Therefore, I cannot.” My progress is continually throttled by the emotional conviction that “No answer YET” equals “There IS no answer.”

And really, almost all of life is about Not Yet. The moments of “Got it!” are brief and fleeting. So it would be useful to learn tolerance and appreciation for Not Yet.

A scientist I’m acquainted with heard my description of creativity-as-successive-iterations-of-not-rightness and told me, “That’s how science works: Asking successively better questions. It’s a cumulative process.” I like the word “cumulative.” It suggests not that things are wrong-wrong-wrong-until-Bing! they’re OK, but rather that I’m building on my work so that it keeps getting better.

Tolerating not-rightness is a learned behavior, and I don’t know (yet) how to learn it. I have some ideas, though. And I’m persisting.

Even though I’m not going to bed so early these days, a few things are different, in a good way.

• I have gone to bed early a few times in the past few weeks, and slept nicely.

• I haven’t beaten myself up for working late when I needed to.

• I think of myself as someone who will resume going to bed earlier. Maybe my identity is shifting a little.

Some other things I’ve noticed:

• Although shutting the computer off by 9:00 doesn’t guarantee I’ll meet the early bedtime goal, not shutting the computer off by 9:00 does guarantee that I won’t fall asleep until much later than I want to. To put it more simply, it’s really, really, important to turn the computer off early! Even if I don’t feel finished that day!

• And I have to be careful about TV. Okay to watch some, earlyish. Watching a lot, late-ish, gets me worked up and makes it harder to fall asleep. I need to find other ways to reward myself for turning off the computer, aside from TV.

• I had planned not to be distressed when I take a long time to fall asleep on a given night, or wake up in the middle of the night. Nice theory, but when the tossing and turning and mind-racing go on for hours, mm, not so easy to let it go. I need techniques to call on when that happens. Indeed, you yourself may have been wondering, “But Janet, what are you supposed to do when you go to bed early and then lie awake? Because I [meaning of course you] do not find that kind of thing at all motivating!”

So here’s what I’ve been trying, on nights when sleep is difficult:

Mindful breathing. Middle-of-the-night Mindfulness 101: Notice what’s going through your mind, without getting involved in it . . . notice what’s happening in your body, without feeling compelled to fix it. Then bring attention to your breath, observing when your mind wanders away from the breath and gently bringing it back. I admit that switching from thinking (with mind racing) to observing (without attachment) does not come so very naturally! I’m practicing . . . Anyway, here are some ideas for doing this at bedtime. (The breathing exercises are all good. Pick the simplest one, or the first one, or close your eyes and point. Don’t get all agitated over which one to use.)

Acupressure. One night this worked! Not every night. There are lots of acupressure points that are supposed to help with insomnia. This video explains two of them very clearly. (Sorry about the brief ad. But note the video is from the lovely people at the late lamented Elephant Pharmacy!) An internet search will turn up lots more.

It’s 9:30pm (oops!) as I draft this. Turning off the computer now—will edit and post during daylight hours. See? Stopping before I’m finished. I can do it.

Nothing wrong with that. Being free to stay up and sleep in is one of the main reasons I became self-employed all those years ago. (It is true! Maybe the main reason.)  But this style works less well for me than it used to. I feel tired and behind the curve a lot of the time—kind of in a state of perpetual jet lag. I do seem to have more potentially productive energy in the morning, on the occasions when I’m awake—I’d like to take advantage of that. And the late-night schedule presents problems when I have to get up early to lead a workshop.

I experimented with shaking up the late-night habit on my mini-vacation last month. I got a spa treatment in the afternoon, which left me super-relaxed. I fixed a simple dinner at the place I was staying, watched a low-key movie on DVD, and went to bed at 11pm. 11pm is early for me! Ah, the benefits of being out of my usual environment, without the usual stimuli, and with lots of pampering.

I was able to build on the post-vacation-early-to-bed momentum for a few days. But as with previous campaigns, I quickly slipped back into my old ways. Nevertheless, I continue to examine this habit with an eye to changing it! One idea seems key:

Turn off the computer by 8:30 or 9:00pm. This also includes stopping other work, such as bill-paying. So that I have the time I need to wind down before bed.

Habits—not so simple

This intention has a lot of sub-issues attached to it, making it not so easy to stick with. For example:

I need to get used to stopping before I feel finished. (This principle alone could be a whole series of blog posts.) Also, I need to practice accepting that a lost day doesn’t have to be paid for with a late night—or another way of putting it, accepting that for an earlier night to happen, there may be Less Accomplished and that’s OK. It doesn’t feel OK! Need to work with that.

And there’s a big piece in all of this about not wanting to miss anything. I’m like the little kid—I was that little kid—who wails, “Do I have to go to bed? Can’t I pleeeeeeze stay up longer? When I grow up, I’m going to stay up as late as I want!”

I need compassion for the part of me that doesn’t want to Miss All the Fun.

Another piece: Often what throws me off the Earlier Bedtime Project is an imminent deadline. Staying up half the night seems to be a major way I cope with the anxiety of turning nothing into something. Whether it’s the lack of distractions, or sheer exhaustion that eventually wears away my resistance, it’s hard to give up a successful, if dysfunctional, coping mechanism.

So, when I inevitably slip back, for whatever reason, I’d like to not be surprised or overly discouraged by it. To notice the pull of the old habit and let that be OK…and then get back on the horse.

Inviting, not just avoiding

Some positive incentives might help too. For instance, really noticing what my energy is like in the morning. Do I create/think better then? If so, acknowledging and running with it might be self-reinforcing. Also self-reinforcing: Luxuriating in the post-computer time. I worry about being bored. What if I looked forward to watching a TV show I love, fixing a nice snack. Thinking of it as really treating myself to lovely, restful evenings. Enjoying my evening Sabbath. So that I’m going toward something I value, not just giving something up.

One other thing: Not freaking out if I take a long time to fall asleep on a given night. Tossing and turning for a while doesn’t mean the plan is flawed or that I should give up. I need to remind myself that one night, a couple of nights of restlessness are not a big deal.

These are all great-sounding ideas, but a lot to keep in mind—more than I can keep in mind when feeling the tug of the usual way. My focus:

Computer off at 8:30 or 9:00. Treat myself to some lovely rest. Kindly thoughts for the worker bee whose work never feels done, and for the kid who doesn’t want anyone to tell her she has to go to bed, ever.

The proposal was for a workshop in a new subject area—a topic I wasn’t sure I wanted to develop. I’d gone over the pros and cons and decided it was worth trying for. (Pros: It’s good to stretch into new areas. The niche might have growth potential. I should take the work that comes my way—you never know where an opportunity might lead. Cons: This would take my focus off the niche I was working hard to develop. The deadline was tight. The work would be hugely time-consuming. I wasn’t familiar with some of the technology involved.)

I’d been sweating over the proposal for hours, and I’d written about two paragraphs. I worried that I was being unrealistic about how long the program would take to create. Would this mean a month of all-nighters? How would I learn what I needed to in the time available? I worried about the effect on my other projects. Yet I didn’t want to back down from a challenge. The proposal wasn’t anything elaborate, but I couldn’t find the words to tell the client what I could do for him and why I was right for the job.

Finally, after much angst, I decided to withdraw from consideration. Sometimes, I reasoned, it’s good to say no to an opportunity. I didn’t want to risk losing momentum on the projects I was working on. I didn’t want to promise more than I could deliver in the allotted time.

I slept very well that night. The next morning, I woke up with all kinds of ideas about what I could have asked for, that would have made the project feasible for me. With the pressure off, I could finally see clearly what I needed in order to deliver what the client wanted, and what the deal-breakers were. So, just for practice—as an exercise in identifying what I want and need—I threw together a proposal that asked for those things: detailed examples from the company that I could turn into relevant activities for workshop participants. Assistance with the technology. A fee high enough to assure that I wouldn’t begrudge the hours I’d be investing.

And then—what the heck—I submitted the proposal I’d dashed off when I was free of pressure and thinking clearly.

Wouldn’t it make a great ending if wound up getting the gig? I didn’t, which was fine. The proposal was strong. I valued the experience I’d gotten in asserting my needs.

Admitting what you want and need, and asking for it, saves a lot of time.

Still working on: How can I tap into this understanding when the stakes are high? How do I release the pressure, and keep the focus?

At Tools for Thought, Andre Kibbe spells out why a relentless focus on the sacred cows of productivity and efficiency is the opposite of helpful when you’re doing creative work.

He’s writing about the limitations of Parkinson’s law (“work expands to fill the time available for its completion”), which, as Andre reminds us, is not a law at all but a Humorous Saying. Unfortunately, it’s taken all too seriously by people who use it as a reason to place unrealistic time constraints around projects. The problem, says Andre, and this is where I stopped reading to let it sink in:

people can move faster on demand but cannot think faster.

Although not his point, this also explains why having multiple knowledge-based projects due at the same time, and imminently, can lead to brain freeze if you’re (I’m) not careful.

Then here comes Charles Faris with his pro-procrastination post:

Procrastination will do things for you that no planner can. Procrastination will create space. It will create time. It will create clarity of thought.

Chas isn’t saying, blow off everything that people are depending on you for, but pointing out that we attach more importance to our tasks than they deserve.  Here’s the gotcha that got me:

How many times in your life have you made a list and not completed everything on it, and everything worked out fine? …And how many times have you skipped tea and shoelaces and cookie jars in order to do something that turned out to be of absolutely zero consequence?

My other favorite Charles, Charlie Gilkey at Productive Flourishing, suggests pruning your projects the way you prune your rosebushes. (Yeah, I know I was just down on gardening, but he’s right about the pruning thing.) It hurts to slice off new growth (potential opportunities), says Charlie, but that’s what makes full blossoming possible.

Right now I’ve got that clenching feeling that tells me there’s too much on my list. So my resolution for the next few days: back up, lighten up, hang out. Replenish my creativity. Get my good judgment back.

It hasn’t turned out that way.

I expected to love gardening. It’s one of America’s top-ten hobbies!  My mom and my stepmom have beautiful gardens. My community-garden neighbors have lush and showy plots. My plot is OK-looking (thank heavens for California poppies that plant themselves and look festive), but I’m finding gardening to be mainly an exercise in things not going the way I wanted.

You could argue that this provides a perfect opportunity to engage with life as it is, rather than as I planned it. Whereupon I would have to smack you. Or at least lecture you sternly.

My biggest complaint is, sigh, the time that gardening takes. Tending to plants is supposed to be a welcome respite, when you happily get into flow with the rhythms of nature. “Just watering” leads to weeding leads to harvesting and before you know it, two relaxing hours have passed. Many gardeners embrace this phenomenon. But I begrudge it. I feel guilty about it. Kind of like web surfing—some good comes from it, but this is not what I was supposed to be doing.

On the plus side: growing my own blueberries and kale and arugula is cool. But but but: birds and bugs and, I fear, poachers, get to the crops before I do. Maddening.

A quick summary of Time Lessons from the Garden…

What I am NOT learning from gardening, though I expected to:

Nature and I are as one. O the celestial harmony!

In actual fact, nature and I are continually at odds over (a) oxalis, (b) that weed that starts out tiny and cute and then turns grassy and scatters seeds everywhere, (c) dandelions (a complex matter, since I can and do eat them), (d) snails (theoretically I could eat those too, oh ick), (e) earwigs, (f) the dreaded cabbage looper.

Things gardening has the potential to teach me, though it has yet to happen:

All things pass away. Beauty is but fleeting; so is ugliness. So much is beyond your control—don’t fight it. Stop trying for perfection, accept what you can do today and let that be enough. To everything its season.

Things I am actually learning from gardening:

Get. Out. Of. The. Damn. House.

Also: Two people working together can make more progress, and have more fun, than one person working alone. Especially when one of them knows what they’re doing. (Thanks, Mom.)

My coaching clients ask this question too. It’s tricky when you don’t have authority over the other person and the other person (surprise!) doesn’t appear to be interested in changing their behavior.

In a course I led earlier this week, a participant complained about a colleague whose lack of planning was causing her all kinds of stress. The participant—call her Cammie—posed it as a delegation issue: “I try to delegate, but it doesn’t work out,” she said. “I don’t trust other people to do things on time, the way I need them to be done. ”

In training, as in coaching, I encourage people to ask questions that get more specific. So, “How can I possibly delegate when I’m a control freak without authority and other people can’t be trusted?” might become “Where is the breakdown happening? Who’s disappointing me? When am I hearing about it? What quality standard is good enough? What can’t be compromised? What’s worked, and why or why not?”

Turns out Cammie was successfully sharing tasks with peers on her team. Just the one colleague was giving her problems. He worked remotely, making communication clumsier. He didn’t follow up when he said he would. He didn’t warn her when he ran into glitches. So she often had to scramble at the last minute, when tasks she’d counted on him to do weren’t done, or were done sloppily.

One reason she hadn’t been able to address the situation effectively was her pent-up irritation about the way he kept letting things slip. “Why do I have to keep cleaning up after him?” she fumed. “I don’t want to take the project back and do it myself—I don’t have time. But I have to work overtime when he doesn’t come through. I can’t figure out how to motivate him. Financial incentives don’t work. Embarrassment doesn’t work. I don’t want to get him fired—he really knows this business. Why can’t he just do what he’s supposed to?”

Starting with the quickest payoff

Cammie was putting a lot of time and energy into seething over her co-worker’s personality defects. Which may be considerable. I haven’t met the guy.

As we discussed this issue during the break, we could have spent time analyzing his motives, her communication style, their personality differences, and her options for sending a complaint up the hierarchy. But given that she was going around in circles with her frustration, it seemed practical to start where the quickest payoff was for her—looking at how she could reduce her own stress and last-minute scrambling.

My question for Cammie: What would be a way she could work with this colleague with less emotional investment, less improvising on deadline? We brainstormed emotionally neutral follow-up techniques—interim deadlines, templates, flowcharts.

The plan she came up with:

- Back up from the due date and identify checkpoints.

- List questions to ask her colleague, via email, at each checkpoint. List possible responses that, based on his (non)performance, suggest he’s off track.

- Write email scripts—neutral tone—in response to his potential responses.

- At the time she assigns him a task, plug the checkpoints into her calendar. On every marked date, send him a prewritten email. If needed, send escalating follow-up emails—already scripted—based on his response. So she doesn’t have to think about each step or get exasperated when he doesn’t come through again.

Later, it would most likely be fruitful for Cammie to look into the personality and incentive issues. She could put herself in the guy’s position and ask herself, what’s going on? Maybe he’s overwhelmed by personal concerns. Maybe he likes to see how much he can get away with. Maybe he never learned to juggle competing priorities. In any case, based on what she knows about him, what incentives/consequences would he care about? It’s hard to think through these questions when emotions are running high.

Meanwhile, by building in a follow-up system, she’s not only easing last-minute pressure on herself, she’s making it more costly for him to stick with his current M.O. He doesn’t get to let things slide until deadline.

Sure, it would be great if he would take the initiative and stay on top of projects without her having to breathe down his neck.

I have a saying I like to trot out whenever I’m miffed: “When I am emperor of the universe, a lot of things are gonna change around here.” But I’m not emperor of the universe now. So given the situation as it is, rather than the way I think it should be, it’s helpful to step back and ask, Where do I have influence? How can I lower the emotional temperature? How can I take care of myself?