i gotta get thru this
productivity and banishing david bowie
Before I sat down to write to you, I mixed together ingredients for a blueberry muffin cake. It's baking in the oven now.
I am going through a productivity slump at the moment, for various slumpy reasons. May and early June was a very productive time for me, and after that busy period I said to myself, "Okay, let's take a little break to recuperate and then get back on the horse."
After two weeks of doing Not Very Much At All, I feel like I should have recuperated. Instead I feel like I've lost some momentum.
I asked some people on Instagram for their advice. Here were some good bits of advice I was given:
start small and do one easy task
say you'll do 40% of something, and you might end up doing 100% of it anyway
do something relatively easy and unrelated to your main tasks to just get you in the flow of "getting things done"
get out of your usual surroundings
rest, take a break & ride it out
So today I have been baking a cake because it’s relatively easy but also restful, and I hope it gets me back into the swing of doing things. It’s like a fun warm-up!
Ooh! Just as I wrote this, the oven beeped. Let's see how the cake is doing:
Oh yes. Here's the recipe, if you're interested.
Back to being productive and getting things done. I have a to-do list for my album which is very very long. So what I want to do now is focus on the next two steps. Unfortunately, those steps are very very large:
Step 1: find more funding for mixing, mastering and releasing the album
Step 2: go over all the songs we've recorded recently (I will tell you more about this soon!) and start finessing the songs so they're ready to be mixed
Those two things are big. And in a perfect world, I would have two weeks off of work and a cottage in the middle of nowhere in which to get them done.
Alas, there is no cottage and there is no two weeks, and to be honest, if I did have two weeks off work, I'd probably still not get any of this done.
It may come as a surprise to some people, based on how I might come across through social media, but I have long-considered myself a serial procrastinator, a half-asser, still the schoolgirl who never practised her recorder for music lessons and forgot to do her homework for school.
Of course, at the wizened age of 31 I am now relatively organised and have a deep appreciation for a google spreadsheet, but I still often don't like doing things, and will favour flicking through Instagram, reading Batman comics (I am enjoying my Batman comics right now) and watching Youtube videos about how to land a passenger plane (one must always be prepared).
In addition, I struggle getting things done in summer. I remember seeing a post by the insanely beautiful and talented creator ThistleThistle on Instagram which talked about summer seasonal depression. I have never gotten the winter blues, ever. But I always dread summer — summer makes me uncomfortable and slow, and every year I just want a bit more of a breeze, a bit less pressure to be Living My Best Life (because ‘Living Your Best Life’ in summer always seems to involve being dehydrated).
I often find that autumn and winter is my season of plotting and activity, and the summer should just be a moment to soak up inspiration: book reading, museums, holidays and day trips. But this summer, I am in the middle of making an album! I have so much to do!
So. How am I gonna get through this? Do I stand in a room with an assaultive strobe light whilst Daniel Bedingfield's "Gotta Get Thru This" plays over and over? Because that idea sounds good. Although, it might not work.
My first port of call was to bake the cake. My second port of call is to make an ugly brain-dump list on a piece of lined paper. This list will not cure my ailments of not-wanting-to-do-ness, but it's the first step. Name the beast!
After I banish David Bowie, I will then be able to break things down into smaller chunks. It’s a start.
Every Wednesday at 7pm I go to an improv class and every Wednesday at 6:30pm I want to poop my pants with nervousness about it. When I walk into the room I still feel the tightness of the day, my brain is in ‘thinking’ mode and not in ‘improv’ mode.
But then we do warm-ups! We walk around the room saying, “I will support you,” we pretend to be New Yorkers ordering bagels, we point at people and say “woof” and it’s so stupid but it really loosens me up and gets me into the mode. The improv mode!
Cartoonist and teacher Lynda Barry recommends — when faced with a blank page and no idea what to write or draw — just drawing a spiral, really really slowly.
When I sit down to record a cover or a new song, I spend at least ten minutes warming up my voice so I can get into the singing zone.
I think that when it comes to productivity it’s the same. Try a warm-up, if you can. Today, that warm-up was baking a cake, writing this newsletter, and then writing a list. You just gotta ease into it and trust that once you warm up, there will be some spark waiting for you that you can grab on to. And if it’s not there, then try again tomorrow.
things i liked
I am bringing back the ‘things i liked’ newsletter section because some of you said you missed it! So here is what I’ve been liking recently:
✶ The Last House on Needless Street was the last book I read which had me gripping the sides of my Kindle. Took a while to get into it, but it has the most beautiful characters and a twist you’ll never see coming.
✶ I would recommend this Taylor Swift song to you but I feel in my heart that you probably already know that Taylor Swift has songs (this one is very good though).
✶ It’s apparently Grimace’s birthday all this month, you know, the loveable purple guy from the McDonalds’ mascot troupe. Despite it being a marketing ploy to sell purple milkshakes in America, I love Grimace and I love this happy image even though everyone else apart from Grimace is slightly terrifying.
✶ This Man Man song sounds like if cartoon skeletons made music:
✶ Cabbagebutterflies aka Makena makes some beautiful things and their simple collage style involving magazine cut-outs and text has been inspiring me a lot lately.
So we’ve come to the end of this newsletter which took me a lot of time to write because of my productivity slump. But maybe… this is the end of it, or at least it’s the beginning of getting things done, again. No promises!
I’ll be back next week at our usual time of Thursday-ish, with some more creative advice and updates on music.
Until then!
Be good,
Olivia 🌈🌋🎶✨🏔📝🎲
DO NOT ERASE DAVID BOWIE - PERIOD!