Merlin Mann is one of my favorite people on the Internet because he’s very real.  And I personally identify with his latest shift away from productivity and towards creativity and actually doing things.

I just watched his talk called “Toward Patterns For Creativity“.

A pattern, in this context, is a strategy.  The value of a strategy is that it either works, doesn’t work, or partially works.  A strategy that doesn’t work is a bad strategy, of course.

He mentioned these three patterns in particular as being patterns that work:

1. Want it.
2. Work really hard at it.
3. Get better.

I’m a little worried that these are still too abstract.  Okay, there is something that you want.  But maybe you don’t want it enough.  How do you change how much you want something?  How do you apply the pattern to something?

Desire, motivation, and energy to work are not the most straightforward qualities of the universe.  They come from an unknown place in our subconscious.  Perhaps from the same place that confidence itself comes from.  Can you bootstrap desire, motivation, and confidence?  Or must you already have access to them before employing them?

Dilly-dallying: when I know what I want to do, but I’m not really doing it yet, for no good reason.  AKA lollygag.

Dilly-dallying is a result of not feeling urgency.  Sometimes urgency comes in the form of a deadline.  Sometimes it comes in the form of a fear of failure.  On the other hand, once in a while, urgency comes in the form of inspiration.  The creative process is highly urgent, and if I find myself dilly-dallying it’s usually because I like the idea of something, perhaps the idea of it being done, but the inspiration to actually build it or do it is lacking.

How not to stop dilly-dallying

• Berate myself for dilly-dallying
• Distract myself from what was distracting me before with another distraction
• Get depressed cause I can never get anything done

Why is dilly-dallying such a tempting vortex for me?

While dilly-dallying doesn’t get anything done, it doesn’t not get anything done either.  I could stop dilly-dallying at any point and then I’d be out of the gates towards my goal.  I’m just not doing it yet.  But I could.  Now.  Or now.  Or now.  But until then, dilly-dallying is like a nice little nap before going out.  It doesn’t take energy, and it doesn’t hurt anything too much.

What’s not to enjoy about dilly-dallying?

Despite the comfort factor of dilly-dallying, it is not a truly enjoyable past-time.  In fact, it slowly eats at my self-confidence and sense of purpose.  It is enjoyable in the sense that it is not painful, but it is not rewarding in itself.  Enjoyment as lack of unenjoyment is the lowest form of enjoyment.

Suggestions to combat the dilly-dally urge

Not all dilly-dally remedies are created equal.  As mentioned above, deadlines and fear, while they can cure the common dilly-dally urge, aren’t necessarily gonna produce the same quality of action as creative inspiration will.

Here are some things that help me get off my lazy ass when I find myself dilly-dallying too long:

Look for a short-term reward in the thing you’re avoiding. For example, if you want to build a yacht, cut down those trees with style.  Work on your form, enjoy the swing, breath in the air, and inject meaning into the tiniest little task.  Pretend that this is the opening scene of a movie, hinting at all that is to come.  Finding the meaning and beauty in the current task, rather than focusing all of your attention on the completed task, is the key to building something that as a whole has meaning, attention to detail, and beauty.

Take an irreversible step. I like to hedge my bets and always leave an escape hatch.  But escape hatches promote dilly-dallying.  An irreversible step, like paying for the yoga retreat months in advance, will help motivate and inspire me to be all in with my 2-3 times a week yoga classes.  Irreversible steps seem unwise on the surface since they are unnecessarily limiting my options rather than expanding them, but I work well within the confines of limited options.  I can make the best of a single option a lot easier than trying to make the best of multiple options.

This is an open theory.  What do you think about dilly-dallying?

My intention here is to create a factory of social learning projects that work towards a common goal and gain momentum by rolling down the hill together.

A project, for the purposes of this site, is something that meets the following criteria:

1. Has a well-defined objective
2. Requires learning something new
3. Contributes to a well-balanced and healthy life
4. Brings attention and appreciation to a neglected topic
5. Produces something
6. Has a social or sharable element
7. Has good intentions

Once a project is begun, I will track it.  Tracking my projects here is a project in itself.

See all projects.

This could easily be the only piece of advice I really have for anyone.

Failure to take your own advice in your own life renders all said advice to others as invalid, and every otherwise good intention you might have becomes moot.  Not only does it neutralize your advice, it also gives otherwise any other associated conversation the stink of hypocrisy.

So, while my series of Theories of Enjoyment may take the shape of advice to you, please don’t take it as such other than to the extent that the words are said in your own voice, and for your own reasons.  These theories are purely my own hypotheses to myself, and have no tested real world application. I’m speaking them publicly because things said out loud tend to stick a little better in my head, and putting my intentions out there is the best way to signal the support of others when I don’t have the strength to follow my own advice.

And anyway, the assumption of this piece of advice is that you do have advice to take.  So, while I make my own, I encourage you to do the same!

What is your advice?

Photo credit Vinícius Sgarbe

Photo credit Tattfoo from the Nature Matching System project.

I’m building an iPhone app that lets you know what’s in season in your state.  It’s a simple idea and a simple app, that hopefully has a use to people.  I was inspired by a chapter in “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” that talked about the benefits of becoming aware of the way food comes to you, and how the benefit of that awareness is knowing when and where to get the tastiest, best, fruits and vegetables at the time of year that they are freshest, need to travel the least, and are the more environmentally friendly.

The Home Screen: what’s currently in season in your state?

After a week of work, I’ve gotten most of the data normalized and have set up the basic structure of the information on the iPhone.  I’m trying to think of the best ways to display the information that I have… for example, from this screen above, I know how much longer a particular food will be in season, but what’s the best way to display that information?  Would it be more or less helpful to show a food’s full year of availability than to only show how much longer it was in season?  I think, in this case, that showing less information is going to be better.  We really only need to know how much longer carrots will be in season and don’t really care at the moment when it will be in season again.

Another question to consider.  Is it important at all to have the food sorted by name?  Or should it be sorted by how much longer it will be available?  Should the app encourage you to take advantage of foods that are going out of season soon over foods that are available all year round?

Food Detail Page

Then there’s the food detail page to consider.  At a bare minimum, it will display the name of the food, a picture, and the states in which it is currently in season.  However, should I use the fact that I know which state you’re currently in to highlight how many miles a particular item would have to travel to get to you?  Would that information even be accurate?

I’m going to add a way to leave notes about a particular food.  Perhaps commenting on its actual availability in a given season, from a given part of the country.  This information could be shared with others in your area, and around the country.

Other things I’m considering:

• Being able to favorite a particular food
• Seeing a Google Map that visually displays the states that its currently available in
• Links to online info?  Wikipedia?  Some other resource?  What kind of information would be useful to know?  Nutrients?  Shelf-life?

Notifications

The other feature I’m really excited about is to allow people to register their email addresses so that they can get notifications when food is coming into season or going out of season.