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Wise words for us creatives from Leo Babauta

The Brain’s Fast Mode

Posted: 05 Dec 2014 11:26 AM PST

By Leo Babauta

On a typical day, I’ll be in a work mode that looks something like this:

• I’ll check my email and process it as quickly as possible.
• Then I’ll open a document to write something.
• I’ll quickly switch to one of my favorite sites for finding well-written or useful online articles.
• Then I’ll switch back to the writing.
• Then I’ll go do some cleaning.
• Then back to the writing.

The problem is that my mind isn’t in a mode for focusing on the writing. It’s in Fast Mode, brought on by the processing of email, where I will make quick decisions on emails, take quick action, and quickly dispose of them.
Even in this quick email processing, I have trouble dealing with the two or three emails that require longer thought or action. The ones that require me to deliberate usually end up sitting in my inbox for a few days, because my mind is in Fast Mode whenever I’m in my inbox.
Writing or otherwise creating when your brain is in Fast Mode is nearly impossible, until you switch to Slow Mode. You’ll just switch from the writing to some smaller, faster task, or go to distractions.
Considering a tough decision long enough to weigh the various factors and make a good decision is also pretty near impossible while you’re in Fast Mode. So you put off the decisions until later, even if it would only take a few minutes to make a decision.
Any task that isn’t a quick click or two also gets pushed back while you’re in Fast Mode. You don’t have time to spend five minutes on a single task, because you’re so busy!
You can’t really exercise or meditate in Fast Mode, either, because those take longer than a minute. They take a block of time that isn’t just a minute or two that you can do in Fast Mode.
You can watch TV, because TV has learned to appeal to Fast Mode, switching constantly to new things every few seconds. But you won’t watch a slower film that requires your mind to pay attention and give it consideration for longer than a few minutes.
Being in Fast Mode leads to constant switching, and constant busy-ness. It leads to overwork, because when do you switch it off? It leads to exhaustion, because we never give ourselves breathing room.
Learn to recognize when you’re in Fast Mode, and practice switching to Slow Mode now and then. It’s essential to doing all the things that are really important.

My interview with Jody Seay is live

In late March, I had an interview with Jody Seay, a good ole girl from Texas, who has a cable access show called Back Page, where she interviews Northwest writers. I interviewed with Jody four years ago after my memoir was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. This time she and I talked about writing and recovery, and my two new books: Sober Play: Using Creativity for a More Joyful Recovery and my first novel, The Color of Longing.

Jody's a great interviewer and I so appreciate the help she gives us local writers. You can watch the interview here: http://media.oregonstate.edu/tag/back%20page

Eric Maisel's new Making Your Creative Mark

I've been a reader, fan, and student of creativity coach Eric Maisel for quite a long time. I got my first Maisel book, The Creativity Book, about 10 years or so ago. It opened up a whole new world of ideas for me. Since then I've read a number of the others and taken a half-dozen online courses with him. His honest teachings about the creative life have been both encouraging and grounding as I move my way further into a life in the arts.

His new book, Making Your Creative Mark, takes the same honest and practical approach to creating a life in the arts: things to know, things to do, things to consider, things to sort out. He addresses some of the most hidden issues for creatives: confidence, passion, empathy, stress, and managing our minds, our self-talk. I think you will find this book of great value.

Here are some of my favorite ideas from the book:

1. There is almost nothing that we are free to control. By the same token, there is almost nothing that we aren't free to influence.

2. Complete projects for the sake of making progress.

3. Remember that passion isn't optional.

4. You need to be a calmly confident seller.

I also want to put in a plug for Eric's book Natural Psychology, which changed my life. It's an articulated philosophy for those of us who are concerned with finding meaning in life. Happy reading!

New blog name, expanded blog focus

When I started The Writing Wheel blog in 2008, my interest in the creative process was pretty confined to helping writers do better work. Over the last five years, while I have continued to work as an editor and have spent a lot of time working on my own fiction writing and writing about that here, I've become more and more committed to my visual art practice. I've also written and published a book on the creative process called Sober Play: Using Creativity for a More Joyful Recovery.

I'm really fascinated by all aspects of the creative process and want to expand my discussions in this blog to more aspects of the creative process, both for artists and for everyday creatives. I'm also linking this blog to my Jill Kelly Creative Facebook page where I'll be posting as well.

I've got lots to stay about creativity: tips, suggestions, musings and amusings. For today, here's a new piece from my studio and a quote from Luciano Pavarotti: "People think I'm disciplined. It's not discipline, it's devotion, and there's a great difference."

How can you turn your devotion to your creative life?

Reworking a set-aside novel

Last June, I finished a second draft of my third novel, When Your Mother Doesn't. I proofread it and then sent it out to several trusted early readers. The story concerns three women, a mother and two daughters, who are getting together for the first time in 24 years.Weaving together by means of this reunion, I tell the stories of each of them and how they came to be who they are in relationship to each other.

I had tried something experimental in the first daughter's story by using reverse chronology, and while the general comments about the book were very favorable, only one person liked the experiment. The other four readers felt confused by it or had to keep looking back at what was happening to keep things straight. Not good news for me.

I'm currently on a writing retreat at the Oregon Coast and one of my tasks was to reread Frankie's story and see how I could resolve this issue. I decided to scrap the experiment and go with a more straightforward telling of the story. That required quite a few changes and I also decided to simplify Frankie's life. I'd written the other two stories first and felt a need to make Frankie's story as complex and dramatic as her sister's and her mother's, but I realized today that that was both unnecessary and inauthentic, for part of Frankie's story is that it isn't all that dramatic. My challenge is to make it compelling in its ordinariness. I'm not sure I've succeeded in that yet but I think I'm closer.

The wheels of traditional publishing grind exceeding slow!

In early February I signed a contract with Skyhorse Publishing for my second novel, Fog of Dead Souls. Since the odds of getting a traditional publisher these days are about a thousand to one, I felt very lucky. And I'm very glad I did as this is the easiest way to widespread sales although there is no guarantee that that will happen.

But I'm learning how slow this old process is. It's been two and a half months and the advance check has just finally arrived at my agent's. It now has to clear the bank and then they send me the money minus 15%.

My book is scheduled to be published in February 2014, basically a year from signing. Of course it is fiction and not a time-sensitive subject so there is no hurry, but when I finished my Sober Play book in late December, I had it proofread, designed, uploaded, and copies in my hand in less than 3 weeks. I am mindful though that I had only one book to get done and they have a rotating list of quite a few happening. I'm just one of the authors they publish for. But it is a curious and interesting process.