Read time: 7 minutes
MCC #74 – 22 Sep 2023
Welcome to My Creative Calling!
You clasp your tremoring hands together.
And squeeze them tight.
“Ouch!” you scream, while shaking out your left hand.
You suddenly realise you almost popped your index finger knuckle out.
“Wow, I must be tense.”
Your shoulders are stiff as a fence post.
You can’t think straight.
“My mind is a bloody mess!”
“How did I even get here?”
“I didn’t sign up for this.”
You let out a deep breath as you lean your head back while rubbing your palms down your thighs.
You look to the side, out your window, gazing endlessly into the clear blue skies.
A single butterfly catches your eye as it flutters up into oblivion.
You are mesmerised by its beautiful orange-brown and black patterned wings.
You start to daydream about those beautiful wings attached to your back, lifting you out of this mess.
“This is my escape.”
You roar “FREEDOM!” in your mind, like the famous line from the movie Braveheart.
You quickly pause.
The spark returns to your eyes.
“Wait!” you exclaim.
“I do have the power to change things. This is my life.”
A quote wanders into your mind like a stray wispy cloud moving into that blue sky:
“How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?”
Jerry Colonna
And you realise:
“This is all my making.”
“I created this mess.”
“And I’m gonna get out of it.”
You roll your head in a wide circle while you ponder where to begin…
You feel like you need less in your life.
But you’re craving more depth.
You pose a question:
Can you achieve your results in fewer hours?
This is something I have been pondering.
Life just seems to be getting more and more hectic.
And I can’t keep up.
Can I tell you a secret?
I’ve been craving less.
I’ve realised I need more buffer room in my life. I can’t be maxing out 8+ hours of work every day.
Why?
- Next month, we’ll have a new addition to our family, baby #2! I want to be a present dad.
- We’ve seen a few health scares. I want to spend more time with aging family members.
- I want to do more things that replenish my soul, like reading, writing and walking.
- I want to spend more time completing courses and taking action to learn skills that unlock higher levels in life and business.
At first, I was like, “I need to work more.”
Work harder, get results, then freedom.
But now, I’m not so sure.
Maybe more work isn’t the answer…
I am challenging myself to do less.
But achieve more.
More what?
More meaningful results.
Less stuff
I know society tells us we should want more.
You feel pressure to “keep up with the Joneses” every time you go on Instagram:
- Do I need that fancy car?
- Does my child need those monkey bars in our backyard?
- One of those Frank Green water bottles would look pretty cool on my desk.
And so you work the soul-sucking job so that you can buy a bigger house and more “stuff”.
But do you really need all that stuff?
Is it worth the pain and misery?
Could there be a better way?
Less hours
Next, I have been feeling the burn of overwork.
Yep, burnout.
It keeps creeping back in.
Sneaky, isn’t it?
You feel it, too.
I’ve been slowly coming around to the idea that we don’t need to work all day.
We can get our most important work done in 3-4 hours.
We don’t need to be a slave at the desk all day.
I’ve seen this on both sides of the coin.
One side of the coin
When I was a corporate manager, I couldn’t believe how much of the day was consumed with bullsh*t:
- Mindless meetings about nothing.
- Gossiping at the water cooler.
- People seeking any excuse to get out of the office.
And then I would frantically have to finish my real work in the last hour or two of the day. I usually stayed late, an hour or so after the distractions and interruptions were gone.
I could confidently argue that I was doing all my “work” in 3 to 4 hours.
The other 4+ hours were filled with bullsh*t.
You may be thinking that’s a bit harsh. Those BS hours are what life is all about: people and connection. And I agree, it’s what makes corporate life tolerable. Otherwise, we would pretty much be machines. But I was arguing from the point of — how much time do you need to do the actual “work”?
And now:
The other side of the coin.
Since going out on my own as a solopreneur and creator, I see the same dilemma, but in a different format.
Yes, it’s saddening to admit, isn’t it? That we leave our sh*tty corporate existence only to carry over the same bad habits around 9-5 culture and time wasting.
I have 100% autonomy. Now, instead of all those distractions and interruptions coming from people in the office, they come from my phone and web browser.
It’s too easy to go on social media, YouTube, respond to an email, or “quickly” look something up… Next minute, I wake up miles down some deep, dark internet rabbit hole, and 2 hours have passed.
Now, I don’t mean goofing off. These tasks sneakily disguise themselves as “work”:
- Social media is where my potential clients are.
- Email is where my true fans are.
- YouTube is my university.
But no, they are usually some form of procrastination.
And so, back to the main point here. All this “time-wasting” usually means I am in catchup mode at the end of the day. I finish my writing in the late afternoon, I’m doing coaching sessions at 7:30 pm, and sometimes I reply to people at 9 pm…
So what is going on?
I get my “real work” done at the end of the day in those 3-4 hours.
But why does the whole day fill out?
Parkinson’s Law
And so what happens?
If you have 48 hours to complete a project, how long will it take?
48 hours.
But how long will it take if you have a week to do the same project?
You guessed it, one week!
I remember this in my University days. I was always burning the midnight oil the night before the deadline. My assignments would magically get done precisely “on time”, no earlier.
Could there be a better way?
Do we really need 8 hours to achieve our results?
Have you even defined what your desired “results” are?
Could we achieve our desired business results in less time?
Less “growth”
Are you getting tired of all this focus on “growth”?
Don’t get me wrong, I am all about “personal growth”, but I’m not talking about that here. I mean all these “growth” peddlers online, like the Instagram business coaches, pushing you to grow, grow, grow.
But what for?
Do we need all that “growth”?
I’ve come to realise that I don’t. As a coach, writer, and father, I don’t really have room for much more.
I’m at a stage where I’m craving deeper connection versus mindless “growth”. I’m craving space over busyness.
I’m accepting that my personality thrives in the depths, not the shallows. And that is where my gift to the world lies. By spreading myself too thin and trying to please everyone, I lose my superpower.
And that would be a shame.
So here is my reminder to you:
Don’t let somebody tell you what to do.
— Especially some 20-year-old Instagram “growth coach” who hasn’t lived a full life yet.
You know what you need deep down.
You feel it.
You long for it.
I encourage you to take some of your own medicine.
Follow your own voice, not someone else’s.
What would be your advice to yourself?
I always felt pressured to be on more social platforms as a creator. “Why not spread my message wider to more people?” I thought.
Big mistake.
It only led to burnout and misery trying to keep up.
And so here I am simplifying my platform strategy.
I’ve quit all social platforms except for Instagram and LinkedIn.
I want to have space to dive deeper with fewer options.
So, we have spoken about less stuff, less hours, and less “growth”.
What is the answer to those?
More meaning
Yes, that big word I throw around a lot over here — meaning.
And how can you get more meaning in your days?
Shorten your work time.
Use Parkinson’s Law to your advantage.
If you have less work time, it will force you to do the important work in that time.
Less filler, more meaning.
And then more freedom for what matters outside of work.
A realisation
I recently realised that “meaning” is the underlying theme around all my work. Yes, I talk a lot about creativity, purpose, and fulfilment, but at the end of the day, it’s all in the name of meaning.
After 15 years of chasing the wrong things in life, my creative calling is tied up in that search for meaning. I’m returning to my creative soul, which I had as a child. For you, it may be something different.
But I have also realised that in our struggles and what we feel called to create in the world lies a gift for how we can best help others.
Do you feel that sense of meaning is lacking in your life?
If you would like some help:
- exploring what is meaningful to you
- and then creating something significant in your life
Reflection
In what areas of your life are you craving “less”?
Where are you overwhelmed and burning out?
What would “less” look like?
What is meaningful to you?
How could you make more room for that?
A quote to ponder
Anyway, there’s simply no comparison between:
a) waking up in the morning with the sense that there are many hours of struggle ahead if I want to preserve a modicum of sanity;
versus
b) waking up with the thought that today I’ll get to spend a few hours on work I overwhelmingly enjoy, adding a few more metaphorical bricks to whatever I’m building, but with plenty of time for other activities, too.
When you put it like that, perhaps it’s not a huge surprise that one of these turns out to be a rather more productive mindset than the other.
Oliver Burkeman
What happened this week
Poetry & Purpose
Bless This Day
“Feeling flat.
Down and out.
Almost ready to give up.
Almost.”
… Continue reading on Substack.
Final thoughts
Today’s writing background music playlist was Bloghouse on Spotify. Thanks Daniel “Mamba” Odoi for sharing this one on IG.
I hope you enjoyed this letter, please share it with a friend.
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It would be great to have you on board!
Cheers!
Matt K. Head
When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you:
Coaching
- Leading authentically
- Find more meaning and fulfilment in your work
- Gain clarity and start taking action on your creative journey
