Time Management Tuesday: Reading "Boundless Creativity"

You will be delighted, I'm sure, to hear that I am reading a book for us. I’m halfway through Boundless Creativity: A Spiritual Workbook for Overcoming Self-doubt, Emotional Traps, and Other Creative Blocks by Martha Alderson. I was interested in the book because Alderson wrote The Plot Whisperer, which has the best explanation of organic writing I’ve ever seen.


I think Boundless Creativity will be particularly helpful for new writers (or creatives of any type) trying to get started with their work. As in people who are struggling to find time to do personal creative work versus the day job or family work. For instance, so far Alderson is talking a lot about using goal setting to work out a plan for what you're going to do over a specific period of time. You all know how I love goals.

The book has, though, given this more established writer a little jump start for her spring work.

An Inner Spiritual Goal--Finish Something

I have to say that I’m struggling with the spiritual aspects of this book. I sometimes find them distracting. However, there is a section early on about inner spiritual goals that I jumped on.

Alderson describes spiritual goals as "inner goals you decide to address to live your best creative life." Over the course of doing the workbook sections, it came out that spiritually I feel overwhelmed with tasks and that it has a negative impact on my ability to stay focused on any one particular task. I give in to the overwhelm. Yes, that's something I've been talking about here for...ah...probably years.

I was instructed to combine a flaw I'd written about along with a personal strength to create a mantra. Mantras are a spiritual thing that I actually kind of understand. It's a word or saying that's supposed to aid meditation or maybe just in life. The mantra I came up with was "When I am exhausted and overwhelmed from too many tasks, I choose one to complete. One that can be completed."

Or, to put it in a less unwieldy manner, "Finish something."

I tried to deal with the finishing issue a couple of years ago, but, quite honestly, I'm overwhelmed with the amount of time management and productivity material I've picked up since I started this time management feature here at the blog. But now I have this mantra, "Finish something," and that seems to be helping. For the last few days, anyway.

Now by "finish something," I don't necessarily mean writing the next book. Finishing cleaning a counter, the next entry in a trail album, taking care of the clothes piled on a chair, or cooking the eggplant before it goes bad works just fine. Because what I want this mantra to do for me is make me feel less overwhelmed by the multitude of things that go on in life. When I'm not feeling overwhelmed, I can concentrate on work a whole lot better.

Oh, one of the things I finished last week was setting up a private workstation for myself on the main floor of the house. I won't go into the long story of why I needed to do that, but it had been at the back of my mind for a few weeks, if not longer.

Finished.

So for someone who doesn't totally get the spiritual aspects of this book, the spiritual aspects of this book have helped my creativity this past week.

I will have more on Boundless Creativity in future weeks.

FTC Disclosure:  I received my copy of Boundless Creativity from a publicist marketing it.