Blaugust 1: The Stressbox

 

Blaugust has me thinking about dealing with the things that stop me from blogging (i.e., writer's block), and one of the tools I use is a stressbox. It’s a mashup of two lifehacks that I found on the internet:

• When you write down what’s bothering you, putting physical distance between yourself and the list can be like leaving your problems behind.
• When your inner critic is particularly fierce, you can invite a second inner critic to point out shortcomings in the first critic’s attacks. (This was a joke* about tricking the two critics into arguing with each other so you could sneak off to do some real work.) 

When I can’t make any progress on a project, I create a stressbox by opening up a disposable notepad.txt file and writing out all my objections.

A few things can happen from here.

Maybe I’ll identify an underlying issue that’s stopping me from making progress. Or I could wear out my inner critic by venting until there’s nothing left to criticize. Sometimes, it’s McDonald’s Theory in action — I lay out my worst possible ideas, and then it’s much easier to improve from there. 

I also get the fun mental image of trapping my inner critic(s) in that two-dimensional prison from Superman II.

The stressbox can sound like a waste of time, but I normally bring it out when I’ve already wasted a lot of time procrastinating with things like gaming or household chores.

It’s no less constructive than any other form of procrastination, and it gets me closer to a place where I'm doing actual work. (I’m already seated at the computer and typing in complete sentences; it’s a minor change to start typing in a different window.) 

The main drawback is that the comments from the stressbox are never part of the finished work — the file is never saved, because who wants a record of their most obnoxious self-criticism? 

I end up forgetting that it can be an important part of my creative process. Every time I sit down in front of a new project, I have to remember how it works all over again. 

*Update 11/27/23: I FOUND THE JOKE!

Getting Started with McDonalds Theory

None of my projects could have been completed without the McDonald’s Theory. It’s one of the most useful pieces of advice I’ve encountered. As Jon Bell puts it: 

“There’s no defined process for all creative work, but I’ve come to believe that all creative endeavors share one thing: the second step is easier than the first. Always.” 

Bell’s theory makes that first step less difficult — when you start with the worst possible option, it’s easy to improve from there.

 

Good creative work involves making gradual improvements to an initial idea. That’s tricky when your inner critic won’t let you commit to something, but it’s simpler when you commit to making that idea terrible. 

Once you’ve declared that the plan is to eat at McDonald’s, it becomes much easier to make better plans. 

Jon Ingold made a similar observation when he discussed his approach to writing games with meaningful choices. “No one has the time to be brilliant all the time,” he said. “You need to just get it down, and get it better.” 

After you’ve gotten it down, the terrible idea might look too terrible. Things can seem so dismal that there’s no hope for improvement. That’s when it’s important to remember that everyone has difficulty judging the value of their own work. 

Authors never know how their writing will be received. Editors always overlook typos in their own material. Charles Darwin thought he was “the most miserable, bemuddled, stupid Dog in all England,” although other scientists disagree. 

It’s impossible to tell whether you’re working on something amazing or something awful — Kara Cutruzzula spent a year setting herself up for failure and described it as a process where you “vacillate between extreme narcissism and extreme self-loathing.” 

The narcissism helps you create things, and the loathing helps you improve them, but the risk of public failure is the only way to learn what other people think. 

The good thing about failure is that it presents opportunities to learn and improve. Cutruzzula ultimately viewed every failure as a brick. “As long as you keep laying bricks,” she wrote, “you will build something.” 

The key is to learn from each failure and move on to the next project. To start that project, you need to come up with an idea. That’s when it’s useful to return to the McDonald’s Theory.

 

Photo by Niklas Rhöse on Unsplash.

Backing into your dreams

The most effective goal setting happens in reverse, when you pick what you want and work backwards to see how you can get there. It's easiest to tackle your biggest goals in baby steps, and working back from the finish line helps you step in the right direction. I map things out in writing.

For example, it has been a lifelong dream of mine to meet Bruce Campbell, so I can start by writing that down ("MEET BRUCE CAMPBELL"). I can meet him by luring him out of his palatial Hollywood mansion with the smell of a delicious, fresh-baked pie, so I would write "BAKE A PIE" under "MEET BRUCE CAMPBELL." The logically preceding step would be "LEARN HOW TO BAKE," although I shouldn't forget to include "LEARN BRUCE CAMPBELL'S FAVORITE TYPE OF PIE," and "FIND OUT WHERE BRUCE CAMPBELL LIVES," which should all be listed as steps towards our eventual meeting. I'm done once I have worked my way back to the point I'm at now, which is ignorant of Bruce's address (and pie preferences) and unable to bake (but full of ambition). Then I have a roadmap that I can follow upwards to realize my dreams.

This method also works to encourage parallel thinking and to recognize more than one way to reach a goal. For example, I don't need to bake a pie, as long as I have something that looks like a pie ("BUILD FAKE PIE") along with a way to simulate that new-pie smell ("GENERATE EXCITING SMELLS"). This is great because once I have laid out all of my options I can choose which ones will take the least amount of work for maximum efficiency. I can also work on multiple strategies so that I have backup plans if something doesn't turn out the way it's supposed to ("RENT PIE COSTUME").

However, problems arise at the two extremes of the creativity spectrum: the unimaginative and the insane. Unimaginative people may scoff at my goal of bringing the dead back to life, calling it a crime against God and nature. However, neither of these obstacles are insurmountable. A figurative definition of “dead” allows me to work miracles (CONVINCE NETWORK TO RESUME “ADVENTURES OF BRISCO COUNTY JR” SERIES) or facsimiles thereof (BUY “ADVENTURES OF BRISCO COUNTY JR” DVDS). A little imagination makes it easy to publish that memoir by your cat, as long as you're flexible on the definitions of "memoir," "cat," and "publish."

Far more challenging are the goals that can not (or should not) be attempted. People could waste their entire lives trying to eat braised leprechaun calves, and that's not even a goal that wastes the lives of others. All it takes is one person going about the courtship of Jodie Foster the wrong way to ruin things for everyone.

That's why there is something to be said for having your plans reviewed by a third party. The internet, the yellow pages, or even the line at the unemployment office are all excellent places to find one of the hundreds of thousands of professional coaches out there who will help you develop a plan of action in exchange for money (or in some cases, a hot meal). A coach can align your goals with more realistic and achievable expectations, like helping you realize that turning milk into yogurt can be as personally rewarding as converting mass into energy.

Whether you are working backwards on your own or with assistance, the method helps not only to reach your goal, but for seeing if your goal is worth reaching. Why spend 12 years teaching a cat to play the banjo when it won't even put you on the cover of Cat Fancy magazine? After a thorough examination of your objectives and priorities, you may find that you can set the bar for your goals so low that you accomplish something by doing almost nothing at all ("MEET SOMEONE NAMED BRUCE").