I can basically do one round of creative work each day. Maybe two. No more. The attention, capacity, and focus required to write, research, and develop ideas are limited to a few hours daily, especially when life includes a spouse, children, bills, bowel movements, and social media. Cherish and protect the hours available for creative work; allocate them to your most important projects.

What qualifies as creative work? For me, this counts any effort that requires talking to or listening to myself, providing space for ideas to percolate and materialize. My creative work includes writing stories and books, conducting research, developing content for talks or workshops, and making decisions or plans. Creative work is the opposite of managing and coordinating; it craves some level of isolation from the interruptions and disruptions of others.

Understand How Things Work

The conditions required for me to produce quality writing and research on a consistent basis are clear. I no longer berate myself for failing to “do that extra thing” during a day when the potential was not there in the first place. I get one round, occasionally two, of focused creating each day. I value the capacity that exists and try (and often fail) to protect my time accordingly.

Each Sunday, I review my commitments, prioritize projects, and plan the week, knowing that I have seven to nine sessions for creative work available. Normally, I schedule these for mornings, when my mind is clear and untarnished by incoming texts, calls, and emails. Once competing requests intrude, they distract the mind, kidnap attention, and disperse the focus required to create.

Things work how they work. Consider science, an iterative process of testing hypotheses to gain incremental understanding. We misunderstand the progression when forgetting the original sufferings that inspired long chains of work and discovery leading to cancer treatments and vaccines. On occasion, our lives intertwine with this process in real time, as in the early days of COVID. Medical professionals made recommendations about an imperfectly understood virus in the “fog of war”; they worked on deadlines to simultaneously save lives and gain understanding as others scrolled.

Value available time for creative work and discovery. There is no “maybe I can squeeze in a bit more today.” No, that’s not how it flows. Maybe, with better control over your environment and a discipline built from practice, you can extend sessions from 90 minutes to two hours, or two hours to three hours. Perhaps, on a quiet day, you uncover another session in the evening, but those are the exceptions. They are gifts.

Have Role Models

Role models exist in our lives and in books, movies, and shows. In Star Trek, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Captain Kirk put facts, humanity, and their teams above themselves. In The Lone Ranger, another show I watched years ago, the masked man emphasized the importance of friendship – “to have a friend, a man must be one” – equality, self-sufficiency, and ownership for our decisions. To quote his Moral Code:

“…we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken.”

When I think about how we motivate others to improve or change, I think about those who coached and taught me over the years. That list starts with my parents, and goes on to include teachers, managers, and coaches.[1] My father taught my brother and me how to “begin with the end in mind” and to floss our teeth. The influence of my parents and other mentors started with high standards role modeled through their own behaviors. They spoke to me honestly with an “idea” or vision of how I could do things better. And they held me accountable.

I find that role models push us past laziness and ignorance. They communicate and reinforce common values and respect in a family or community. Without a common sense for our humanity, and a powerful urge to protect the rule of law for everyone, then we are subject to those unencumbered by concern for others: the despot, the zealot, the narcissist. Most of us do not wake up each morning thinking about how to take from others, or that the rules don’t apply. But some people do.

My mentors are people of integrity and high moral character. When they make a mistake, they ask, “how do I improve? How do I correct this?” They do not blame others. An advisor once asked me of a colleague, “does he take ownership?” No process or set of rules can substitute for a lack of ownership.

Two Lessons for Better Days

First, follow a process for scheduling your time to engage in meaningful work. In fact, maintain a fanatical focus on this process and believe that it will lead to improvement and performance. All you control is your next action, so give yourself every opportunity to positively advance your priorities.

Two, choose role models that inspire the best in you. As Seneca taught, associate only with people that improve you.

Sometimes the world or human frailties distract us from engaging in quality work. The world conspires for our attention, money, and energy. It takes a strong sense of what we want, who we admire, and how we plan to reliably sift through the noise and create.

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[1] Rolfe “Buz” Williams, my high school football coach, passed away this spring. Coach Williams, and his wife Lucy, had a huge influence on me, my brother, and many others. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/smdailyjournal/name/rolfe-williams-obituary?id=58630828