Day #822 - Kicks

And Questions

I’ve been weirdly slow in completing the final few illustrations for the new book. I’ve had the time to do them, I’ve just failed to use it effectively. I’m not quite sure why: prevarication as a defence against having to commit to saying ‘it’s done’, or simply inefficiency.

For me, the act of publication is an act of commitment: it’s not that I cannot revise and iterate work afterwards, but by moving it from daily #WorkingOutLoud into something with actual printed covers and actual printed pages makes it somehow more formal and permanent (even though I know full well that ‘permanence’, in our digital world, is more prevalent than it ever used to be).

Sae has (rightfully) been giving me a good kick to just get it done!

This will be my 22nd book, so I am very familiar with what it feels like after it’s complete: a strange feeling of nothing to do… and also a kind of disconnection as you move away from holding your thoughts as ‘writing’ and into ‘practice’.

I’ve already started using this work in my practice - a dynamic space where language evolves and ideas develop. So already I am starting to feel a disconnect opening up - such as the ideas around the ‘rocks’ we cling onto in times of change - which I’m talking about, but did not write about in the book.

Use your sixty seconds today to consider your motivation to complete something: is it deadline based, internally motivated, system based, or something else.

Do you - too - sometimes need a kick - or is part of your leadership to apply the question or the kick

?