Creativity Go-Go juice. It runs out.

Have you ever sat staring, dumbstruck at a problem for what seemed to be hours? Tempting you to believe that there is no way out of it, and this time you would have to admit defeat. Your energy reservoir is looking pretty low... or is it that your 'energy' has signified to you that a change of direction is about to happen, whether you like it or not.

I have come to the conclusion that there seems to be a finite amount of time that you can utilise creative energy and enthusiasm until it becomes yet another form of energy. You have a limited time to tap into it before all your positive thoughts start mutating into something less productive, like frustration, fear or BOREDOM.

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”
― Albert Einstein

Before I started my own business venture, if I challenged myself during the week to run fast, and to achieve a 25 minute pace over my 4 mile route, then I did it in a month of trying.

Since then I have been cruising, and finding it really difficult to motivate myself to achieve that time again. Infact I have been languising between 26 and 27minutes... the horror!

I am no unhappier, and my energy levels seem pretty stable, but it's just that I don't appear to have enough 'force' to help push down my running times like I was just 3 months ago. I came to the realisation that my powers of focus and effort had a very real limit, and changed form: bad-times. Conversely, good-times also.

I could very well have gone through years of stretching my energy levels right up until a complete burnout before I knew that this valuable resource had a finite quantity or needed recharging from time to time. As I have now experienced this 'loss' first hand, it allows me to make plans, predict energy limits and become even more focused. Spreading myself so thinly across many different tasks has been holding me back!! Time to concentrate my efforts more closely.

"The No. 1 cause of burnout is doing the same thing over and over again and not seeing results. You need to do something different...." -Steve Kaczmarski

You will possibly know of someone that endlessly procrastinates. That person maybe you. All that wasted energy is such a shame! Dumping horrendous amounts of time into tasks and never quite managing to complete all of them. It is as frustrating for those watching as it is for those in the middle it. BUT do they really get anything less done? I can only talk from personal experience, but the energy just doesn't simply dissolve into nothing. This 'energy', it gets absorbed into another task, or becomes the thought behind another task. Continuously being recycled into your life.

Fear not, you can see and predict when it is about to happen because free thinking has to be effortless. Once you feel resistance then your task becomes more work than play. Best to keep ideas fresh and uncluttered by making records of what it is that you are doing, so that you can come back to it once the energy has come around in a full circle once again.

This is at the heart of how I can keep using my time in some kind of productive fashion. I offer this advice up as a potential way to all those who find themselves crippled under heaps of work, or never seem to find the time to do what it is that they are supposed to be doing. Buy a little black book. Fill it with ideas and positional logs on where you are with life's little challenges. (Note: Use the A7 version, it fits in all your pockets and has an understated quality. I love my A7 pad). Refer back to it and use it when you feel your creative energies are beginning to transmogrify... turn them into something useful, and don't be scared. Unpredictable are your energies (yoda), and their nature is to flow continuously like a river through your mind. Cautionary note. If you were bathing in a river, you would naturally want to know who or what it was that could contaminate the water upstream from you. The same goes for allowing others into you mind. Be open, but also allow for a certain amount of exclusivity of your precious attention.

Let me know if you have any success at doing this.


Engine[er]