“Ugh. Who needs this?” you ask yourself. The creative dream you’re pursuing has some unexpected stuff stuck to it.
In your mind, the creative life was going to be lemon drops and teddy bears and every minute a grand one.
But you found there were records to keep and skills to learn, and now you spend half your time dreading, for lack of a better term, the yuck.
Sometimes you slug your way through it inch by inch. Other times you give up and watch the Food Channel. Who knew there were so many ways to use couscous?
And wasn’t there a cool little project you had in mind? Your story, your sculpture, your 6-DVD program called Yoga for Cat Lovers? The fun stuff. What happened to the fun stuff?
There must be something better than the slugging and the dread.
Sixty Minutes of Yuck
What if you crammed the yuck into just one hour? The ugly hour. Sixty minutes of yuck is better than a full day of drudgery.
It’s surprising how much yuck you can knock out in sixty minutes. Besides, the dread’s the thing that’s really sucking the life out of you.
Gather all that yuck, break it into yucky little chunks, and devote an ugly hour a day to the horrid little pieces you’ve created. Knowing your time with them is limited will put you at ease.
Sooner’s better than later. Slip through the slime as early as possible. You’ll have the rest of a beautiful day ahead of you.
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
If it serves the bigger dream, how can it be yucky? How would you know the cloud had a silver lining if there wasn’t the cloud? Instead of trying to get through the yuck, I’d submit there’s more to learn from it than the lemon drops.
Peace.
@vinylart
Alright, Daniel. You just tell yourself that the next time you’re filling out tax forms.
An opportunity to streamline record-keeping. A goal to make enough money to hire an accountant. A way to remember all the sales of the past year. A bump of encouragement that I’ve turned a profit.
Peace.
@vinylart
I’m still not buying that you enjoy it as much as you enjoy the art.
More importantly, you don’t have to.
Let’s give people a break. They don’t have to find something deep, mysterious, and glorious in every activity.
I helped my wife raise two children who I’m madly in love with. I never got a deep, meaningful, rush from changing dirty diapers, but I did it anyway. Sometimes you just have to deal with the shit and get on with it.
HA! Yeah. I’m with Ken on this one. The number one complaint most of my creative biz people have is, “I thought I’d get to do what I love *all* the time, now I’m bookkeeping? Blech!” Sometimes they can fool themselves with that ‘serving a larger purpose’ thinking, but not usually for very long. (So we work on that. ha)
Thanks for another great post, Ken!
All the best!
deb
Oh my gosh! I just did this today without even realizing it, and wondered why the ‘yuck’ was so much easier…
I took a big index card length-wise and put my planned schedule with major project activities on the top part. And then on the bottom part, underneath the schedule, I put all the little ‘yucks’ that kept coming up & had to get done. The ones that took 5-10 minutes each. I set aside a time when I felt like it was time to do the yucks, and I just blasted through them. It took about an hour and at the end of it I felt strong, powerful, non-yucky! My other trick was getting an assistant to do the true yucks. Now my yucks aren’t SO yucky…they’re just not inspiring. I’ll never be rid of them entirely, but putting an electric fence around them definitely helps.
Hi, Kelly.
I did something pretty similar while working with the membership software I purchased. I printed out the table of contents from the instruction manual and checked each section off as I completed it.
It wasn’t exactly exciting or inspiring, but I got it done.
Ah! I hate the yuck! I like the idea of the yuck hour. It’d have to be the first hour of the day though, or I’ll just push it off until later.
This strategy is subject of an entire book by Brian Tracy: “Eat that frog”:
(…)
An old saying is that “If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long!” Your “FROG” is the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it now! It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment.
It has also been said that “If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first!” This is another way of saying that if you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first. Discipline yourself to begin immediately and then to persist until the task is complete before you go on to something else.
You can think of it as a “TEST” or personal challenge. You must resist the temptation to start with the easier task! You must continually remind yourself that one of the most important decisions you make each day is your choice of what you will do immediately and what you will do later — if you do it at all!
One final assumption is “If you have to eat a live frog, it does not pay to sit and look at it for a very long time!”
(…)
When you’ve done the ugly stuff – eat the frog – you feel that you achieved sth, and at the same time you are relieved that you don’t have this frog on your plate.
The sensation is extremely pleasing and uplifting
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This strategy is subject of an entire book by Brian Tracy: “Eat that frog”:
(…)
An old saying is that “If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long!” Your “FROG” is the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it now! It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment.
It has also been said that “If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first!” This is another way of saying that if you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first. Discipline yourself to begin immediately and then to persist until the task is complete before you go on to something else.
You can think of it as a “TEST” or personal challenge. You must resist the temptation to start with the easier task! You must continually remind yourself that one of the most important decisions you make each day is your choice of what you will do immediately and what you will do later — if you do it at all!
One final assumption is “If you have to eat a live frog, it does not pay to sit and look at it for a very long time!”
(…)
When you’ve done the ugly stuff – eat the frog – you feel that you achieved sth, and at the same time you are relieved that you don’t have this frog on your plate.
The sensation is extremely pleasing and uplifting
I almost completely agree, but I differ in one way. I think the thing that you should do first is the most important thing and that may or may not be something you enjoy.
I believe in setting aside time to deal with the things you would otherwise resist, but I reserve the top spot for the thing I believe is the most important thing I need to accomplish.
Right now, I’m working on a book which is my top priority. It’s the first thing I do after waking up and getting dressed. But I also happen to enjoy it.
After reading this yuck stuff, I wrote the following in my journal……….
“Maybe expressing stuff to a friend that isn’t there helps this to go away. This feeling of “yuck”. maybe I am my best friend. After I write it then yuck itself becomes the inspiration. Is Yuck my friend? The biggest thing I have against “Yuck” is the time that “Yuck” takes. I’d rather waste time than give it to “Yuck”. But if “Yuck” is my friend, why am I so upset with “Yuck”? Sometimes, “Yuck”, you’re just no fun. I only really like you, “Yuck”, when you’re giving me things. And…..Yuck?……if you can hear me….. if you ARE that voice in me that categorizes my activities then I say my activities, then I say….Yuck? if you’re gonna hang around can you be a little more fun about it? A little more understanding with my doubt about your intentions, Yuck? So, Yuck, don’t be stern with me if I draw a sketch of yuck or for yuck. Yuck? This one’s for you.
oops,I didn’t proof read….the phrase….then I say my activities… is superfluous.