Caring equals productive

One thing that people don’t often mention when they’re speaking about productivity is that productivity relies a lot upon someone actually caring about the project on which they’re working. It’s quite obvious when you think about it. People will be better at, try harder at and spend more time doing things which they want to do when compared to tasks they don’t want to do. I think that’s very clear and I doubt anyone would argue against that fact. The problem with this whole concept is that in our daily lives many of us have to do things which we don’t particularly find enjoyable or want to do. There are a couple ways of dealing with this problem.

The first way is to find a way to care about your work. Find things you enjoy about it, take pride in your expertise and your effort and claim ownership of the project. Make it your own and as something that is inseparable from you, it will start to matter more and more to you as a person. This is essentially what I’ve done when dealing with IT. When I did IT in the military, I didn’t particularly find the environment or the job itself very appealing, but I found ways to care about my work. I cared about my reputation and about how people viewed my projects. I cared about the protection, maintenance and development of my assets. I made everything my own and I cared what happened with it. I worked to make myself indispensable and respected and although I didn’t see my ultimate future in IT or the military, there were things about it that I did enjoy. I think I was more productive than most people an I don’t know many people who cared about their work more than I did. This approach can earn you trust, friendship and respect even if you aren’t keen on staying in the field.

The second way to deal with the problem is to stop doing work which doesn’t excite you. This is easier said than done, as most people these days tend to specialize in one field and it is often difficult to find employment in a new field without further education or experience. In 2007, I decided to get out of the military. I wanted to pursue freelance writing. I didn’t have a degree and I wasn’t going to work for anyone. I moved with my wife to rural Scotland and I ended up having to do some IT work to get by. While I have done a few paid writing jobs and I am working on some projects on my own, this didn’t end up being what I had hoped it would be. I don’t really consider myself a failure in this respect. At least I can say I tried. I took a risk and lived a life and challenged myself. Some of it was bad timing, some of it was inexperience and a lack of understanding about how to proceed. I still want to be a writer, and I intend to pursue that goal for the rest of my life, unless something inside of me changes. My methods of attaining this goal may change occasionally, but in my head the end is still the same.

So what I’m saying by this in my own simple way is that you shouldn’t live a half life just getting by, doing what is required but nothing more. You should live to produce and create, whatever method you choose. Whether you choose to learn to care about what you already do or choose to pursue something you already care about and learn what you need to know, do either one with all of your available energy. Either path will bring you good things.

Creative productivity

I don’t know if anyone who happens upon my website really knows about my history of web projects. For the most part, nothing has really taken off in popularity. I’ve got this blog, but I’ve also got a blog over at Riding the Wind which is dedicated to spiritual matters, my daily life, my photography and my creative writing/poetry. It hasn’t been updated in a little while because I’ve been busy with this, but I fully intend to continue posting there. I’ve also got another site. HandRooster started out as a little project my wife and I started for fun. We decided to make a webcomic. I wrote the comics and she drew them, and for a while we were pretty productive. It was fun but after a while I found it difficult to come up with new standalone ideas and I didn’t want to have Steph constantly grinding away on super long projects. Some of our comics were much better than others, and we were occasionally accused of ripping off one popular comic or another, but we didn’t really care that much because we weren’t huge comic readers. The only comic I used to read was Penny Arcade and there was no way we could copy that stuff. Anyway, after a while Steph started to find it was taking her a really long time to do these comics and she didn’t really want to do it anymore, so it sort of died out. I didn’t really want it to die out because at this point we were getting some decent traffic and it was the most successful thing I had ever done on the internet. We had actual fans and it was rewarding in that way if not in a monetary way.

I decided to draw the thing on my own, but I think I found it even more difficult than she did, because I am in no way an artist. I can’t really draw, so it took me many hours to create simple stick art. One thing led to another and I found myself lapsing and nothing really got done. That is, until now. I’ve just posted an update on the site and while I make no promises about my reliability in updates, I’ll try my best. You see, I’ve got a new method.

I started to think about how I could adapt my system in order to be more productive in making a comic. Originally, I was creating the comic with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and a Wacom tablet. Sketchbook is really great software if you can actually draw and I love the way it is designed for a tablet but every line I make is a shaky squiggly line and I have to blow things up super huge in order to make things smooth. Basically, I suck at that. I’m not an artist. I’m more of an idea guy in general. This problem had me looking for other solutions. I tried Photoshop and some other software but I still had similar problems. I tried to draw things on paper, thinking I could scan them in to do coloring, etc but it turns out I’m even worse without an undo button, despite finding it easier to make normal lines. After all of this, I decided to try Adobe Illustrator. I’d tried it before and found it difficult to get used to, but I used to use Macromedia Freehand with some success years ago before the comic. I decided to give Illustrator another try. It was not easy, but I did find a way to use it which was much quicker and less labor intensive for me. The result can be seen over at HandRooster. It isn’t a work of art but it is the basis of a webcomic, in the loosest sense of that word. I’m thinking about starting to create longer story lines after being inspired by a comic written by Mr. John Campbell of pictures for sad children.

I think what I’ve learned through all of this is that creativity is work too. It’s not easy stuff and in order to continue to create, you must give something of yourself. It’s natural to have highs and lows of activity and to find yourself searching for inspiration or ideas. It’s natural to want a break sometimes. It’s also possible to rejuvenate your creative energy and continue to create. Sometimes you’re going to have critics and hatemongers hounding you and sometimes you’ll start to believe that what you’re producing isn’t worth anything but the good thing about continuing to do anything is that you’ll only find better ways to do it and gain skill in the process. Since the whole talent thing has been proven to be nonsense and mastery is really about lots and lots of practice, why shouldn’t your (or my) projects be out there for the world to see just because you’re new to the process?