MentorWords

When Nike introduced the swoosh and the just do it concept, they were on to something profound. Unfortunately, years of overexposure have trivialized this important idea, and to say the words just do it is to become prosaic, bourgeois.

Today I became acquainted with an artist named Jane Hunt, a painter working primarily in acrylics with a signature texturing approach. As an artist she is noteworthy just on the merit of her paintings, which combine a lavish color sensibility with an uncanny capacity to convey not just the look but the mood of nature. But equally inspiring is her practice. Ms Hunt challenges herself to paint a painting (not just part of a painting, or a study) every day and post a picture of the finished work on her blog. She says in one blog entry that some days she knows what she will paint when she wakes, and other days she doesn’t figure it out until she is halfway through.

The point is, she paints either way.

It calls to mind how often we say we don’t have time. Many days I become frustrated when I do not complete some important aspect of my work because I ran out of time. Yet when I review my day with complete honesty, I realize that each time I sat down at my desk I did something other than the most important aspects of my work. Ten minutes between arrival and my first meeting? Better do email. Only have 20 minutes between meetings? That’s enough time to make a cup of coffee and open mail. Feeling sluggish after lunch? Not a good time to write, then, is it? I guess I’ll file.

Of course, email, filing, and opening mail are important. But if I add up the five and 10-minute slots I allocated to busywork because those slots of time weren’t valuable enough to do something, well, valuable with, it’s as much as an hour a day. Where did I get the idea that I couldn’t write a magazine article draft in three sessions of 15 minutes each? Why do I think I absolutely must do an important analysis in a one-hour block with no interruptions?

And why, when I get two hours of uninterrupted time at my desk, do I keep peeking at email or checking in with social networking sites to see if I have messages? Social research demonstrates that we’re all wasting inordinate amounts of time checking in with electronic gadgets. Of course, this doesn’t make my procrastination any less shameful just because I’m doing it in good company.

For some folks the procrastination they nurture may be attributable to boredom with what they have chosen to do. For others, it may be a character deficiency, laziness. But I believe most of us procrastinate out of fear or insecurity. In their book Art and Fear, authors David Bayles and Ted Orland address our profoundly human fear of making our best effort and still failing. The fear that our work may not be good enough can keep us from beginning the work in the first place. We choose instead to do numerous other things at which we know we are competent, but which do not contribute revenue to our bottom line or substance to our self-image. We file. We email. We run out of time.

One of the most memorable lines from Art and Fear is “you learn how to make your work by making your work.” This is what Ms. Hunt is doing when she challenges herself to paint a painting every day. This is something to which we can all aspire.

The easiest way to do this is to grab your satisfaction from the process of embracing your most meaningful work every time you have five or 10 minutes to do so. Treat your valuable work as you would a new lover, one you happily draw into any hidden corner for a stolen moment of passion. No, you won’t want to stop when it’s time to go pick up the kids from school, head to your next meeting, or answer the next phone call. But over time you will begin to anticipate those moments of profound creativity and insight that you steal from your day. The process of doing your meaningful work will become your motivation, eventually supplanting the fear of failing at your meaningful work.

So call me bourgeois if you like, but what the hell – I’ll say it anyway. Just do it.

© 2009. Andrea M. Hill