Procrastinate for the Win + Creative Scaffolding starts on Saturday!

Think that procrastination means you are wrong, broken or lazy? Not a chance! If I believed that I’d be rocking gently in a corner of my flat right now…

Procrastination is a part of living, a part of ART-MAKING and if you embrace it, it’ll change everything!

There is still time to sign-up for my free call today on how to make procrastination your BFF (and if you can’t make the call live, a recording will be emailed out to you within 24 hours).

And Creative Scaffolding, my love-letter to creativity in all aspects of life, starts on Saturday and I’d be beside myself with joy if you joined me. We’re going to take all that unused creative potential inside of you and we’re going to revolutionize your life!

I know that sounds like a big statement but the last time I ran this course one participant moved to the other side of Canada and sold her house, another stood up to her boss about her working conditions and another realized that she was incredibly talented at helping people execute their dreams so she created a workshop! None of them considered themselves ‘creative’ when we started working together and they certainly didn’t see how creativity impacted such seemly diverse and unrelated parts of their lives. But it does..and it DID!

SO DO IT! Love, P x

How to Make Procrastination Your BFF! – A Telejam

No, seriously! It’s possible – Procrastination doesn’t have to be the bane of your life.

It’s more like an awkward dinner guest that you wish hadn’t come but by the end of the night has chatted to everyone (including your cranky aunty who never approves of anyone) and is standing over the sink washing the dishes while you enjoy your third slice of cake. It can be that good!

Let me show you how!

Join me on Wednesday, June 5th at 1pm PST for a one-hour jam that I hope will ultimately end the deadlock in your life and have you more productive than ever before.

I’ll also be making time at the end of the call for a Q+A on CREATIVE SCAFFOLDING, a 4-week guided adventure to unlock your innate Artist, find your own personal frame-work for engaging creativity and court inspiration in all you do!

:: Learn my 4 Golden Rules to Befriending Procrastination…

:: Why we need Procrastination on our side instead if pushing against it and…

:: What to do when you just have no choice but to get the work done (otherwise known as ‘You Have One Hour to get Your Dreaded Jazz Harmony Homework Done – GO!’)

:: As well as all the juicy details on Creative Scaffolding and what to expect from 4 weeks of creative canoodling with moi.

My sincere hope is that this call will be of practical use to you. I’ll be sharing things that I learned the hard way, insights I wish I had had when I was in college and felt immobilized by a wall of procrastination that felt more akin to a straightjacket. There is no reason why work, Art or life need ever be this hard for anyone else…

And if you can’t make the call live, fear not! There will be a recording sent straight to your inbox for good measure, yours to keep forever and listen to whenever you need a pep-talk.

Just click the giant star below and sign up for all the details and call-in info. I can’t wait to get this party started with you…

The Right to Sleep

image by Stephen Brace, via Flickr Creative Commons

So this is the incredible paradox of Being Me (and I sincerely hope you too…go on, be a paradox with me so I don’t feel like a complete eejit!)…

I don’t sleep. I procrastinate going to bed. However I also need lots of sleep. Yup, you read that correctly.

I actively do not sleep but I also, actively sleep lots.

I’ve been thinking about this recently as I have been feeling tired. I blame the move. I did good at first. I packed. I said goodbye. I flew. I arrived. I shlepped stuff to places. I did lots of yoga and lots of exploring the new city. I went to bed early. I got up early.

Now I am freakin’ tired and sleeping for 12 hours, with some cat naps on the side, is not entirely out of the question. I have also been feeling super inspired and these lightning bolts of inspiration and energy hit me at bedtime. (Interesting Factoid – my maternal Grandfather was struck by lightning as a young man and survived!)

So what to do? This Paradox needs her rest! Her rest is key to creating high-quality creative stuff. The ‘early to bed & early to rise’ cycle helps get all the creativity juicy and rich, the ideas flowing. Now I want to actually create it and it wants to be created at 3 in the morning! And I’m a procrastinating SUCKER and will stay up and do it, even with obligations the next day.

I think that to dream is human but to Create, Divine. But I also think that to burn yourself out is all too human and to Sleep is Divine! I need both these things, obviously, in my life but I can’t seem to balance them for love nor money.

I think that is because I am letting the Creativity take priority. Creativity is an electric-blue high when it descends on you, what flying must feel like. It’s potent and addictive and somehow sacred, something you shouldn’t turn away.

“I don’t want to turn away that feeling from my life! What if it never comes back?!”, my Ego says.  Way to scare me out of bed and right to where you want me most. Tired, cranky, vunerable and striving hard.

So I’m here to Defend the Rights of Sleep…

(…cue national anthem of wherever you are and flag fluttering in the background, your eyes misting over slightly with pride…)

~ To be indulged at will

~ To be of sound quality and length

~ To be dream-full and content

~ To be protected from external forces that wish to side-line and marginalize it

I find these truths to be self-evident, and worthy of protection!

» Are you with me?!

My Most Procrastinated Task is…

…sleep!

Yup, you heard me! I’m meant to be asleep right now. I’m tired enough for it. I’ll drop off in a heartbeat but at night I come alive with ideas and notions and wee things that I just *have* to do before sleeping. I feel creative and inspired but honestly, for all the ‘doing’ in the wee hours, nothing gets done!

And then suddenly it’s 2am and you have to be up for that studio session you’re engineering in a few hours time!

No matter how excited I am about what I’ll be doing the next day (in fact, sometimes that makes it worse!), no matter how invested I am in treating myself well, no matter sincere the promises to myself during the day, the majority of the time I’ll stay up…like 4 nights out of 7.

I  love this quiet time when I can be alone and still without feeling judged or pressure that I should be doing something productive. I can read or write or watch a film and it’s fine. It’s my choice and I am free. But I do it to the detriment of my sleepy needs thus defeating the purpose I feel.

So since I’ve done it again tonight I just thought I would put that information out into the Universe and see what happens.

After writing ‘Working WITH Procrastination’ earlier this week I’ve become much more productive during daylight hours and honest about what is tasks I want to do. I hoping that a little honest acknowledgement of what is going on here and some loving light shone into the corners this habit, I can find where the kink is and help smooth it out.

~ Does anyone else out there have the same problem? Any tips or advice would be most welcome.

And I’m off to bed…right now…honestly!

Working WITH Procrastination

I have a tough teacher in life!

It turned up sometime around the first set of really important exams in my life, when I was about 16. It’s followed me around ever since, to college and beyond, into my home and my own personal endeavors.

It is unrelenting, pretty sneaky but delivers its message directly and then leaves you to do what you will with it. Which often means I miss the message and just do nothing!

It’s Procrastination.

Procrastination is the bane of my life. It is also the most constant, unflinching indicator of where my work and life are at in that exact moment. That’s because I don’t always procrastinate at every opportunity.

I don’t procrastinate when I’m fired up, in fact I often put other jobs and projects on the backburner to concentrate on what is exciting me right this moment.

I don’t procrastinate when I feel invested in the outcome, especially if I can see where this achievement could lead me in the future.

I don’t procrastinate when I am up against a deadline and must get it done.

I don’t procrastinate when I respect and admire the people I’m working with and am excited about our collaborating.

It wasn’t until I thought about procrastination in this way that I saw what procrastination illuminates.  It shows me where the energy has gone out of a project or where an idea is stale. Better than pushing against a brick wall, if I’m aware of WHY I’m procrastinating I can evaluate, change direction, improve and revitalise.

And there was me thinking that I was just Procrastinating-Pari forever!

So what has spending this entire evening trying to write this one little article taught me??

Well, I didn’t start with a plan so I had nothing to get fired up about, no outcome to focus on and no deadline for myself other than getting something posted TODAY! It was this fuzzy, unfocussed deadline that has dragged this article and realisation out of me, kicking and screaming and checking facebook every 10 minutes!

The easiest way to bypass procrastination completely is to start with a plan. A plan forces you to committ to your idea, evaluate and improve your system before you even start and get you fired up for the fun ahead!

And on that note, I’m off to have a cup of tea and relax after a hard evening procrastinating…

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**Just a quick shout out to all my lovely readers who receive my blog via Google Reader or RSS feed…you probably didn’t see Friday’s post ‘More on Igniting Your Creativity’ pop up on your feed due to some technical difficulties here at Lighting Little Fires HQ! My sincere apologies!

Stop by and have a gander if you haven’t already. I’ll be updating it tomorrow with more books/articles/links recommended by the Superhero Possé of Creative Thinkers I’m lucky to know. Feel free to take your rightful place in our Possé and comment or tweet me if you have anything to add!**