morning person

Good morning, person.

Are you reading this before noon?

Do you work best before the sun peaks?

“I don’t know”? Me too.

It was recently discovered that there are genes that determine morningness

so it is a “thing.”

Yet, like so many things that we cling to and assert our identity to, it often times becomes a mental hindrance if you are trying to create change.

you say you’re not a morning person—that your best inspiration strikes after dark. 

That might be true.

But what I have come to starkly realize for myself that when you start taking action consistently and you actively seek inspiration, it comes; you don’t have to wait for it to find you. 

‘Cause if you do, you may be waiting forever.

Progress isn’t made from a lightning epiphany someone had just once in bed wearing their mismatched socks. It is made from someone taking stock, doing the work, regularly. Sometimes slowly. Whether it’s before dawn or after dusk is inconsequential. Everyone moves differently.

For some time, I had been fascinated by successful people’s morning routines. I studied people whose work I was consistently enamored with and wanted to know what they did to start their days. Some of them meditated, some wrote plays, some did pushups. Some, like Marie Forleo, started it the night before by outlining her day in her planner. Big ups.

Not much did they have in common other than the fact that each of them did seem to have a morning, i.e. woke before noon. And none of them were eating donuts or any kind of junk. When you’re in a sugar stupor it can put you in a mental funk. 

Regardless of what their process was, they were making things happen just because.

My process is a constant experiment in being comfortable being uncomfortable. At the present, I do pushups, meditate, and write. And if the rest of the day doesn’t pan out, I did something for me before the first light.

Did it dawn on you that you’re a self-made morning person, too? Tweet me your early-riser ritual @alisonperrie. I’d love to hear from you.  

Just

To be "just" is one of those words that is more than what it seems. It is a chameleon--adjective and adverb. Limiting and lonely, but fair. Who else recently has given us enough equity to keep us satisfied? Just just.

The limiting nature of 'just' can be cruel. And in the same vein, completely inaccurate. When we are just 'something'--tying that word to something that the English language has deemed intimate enough to dictate our 'us-ness'--a writer, for instance, we create a mental block. The writer is never 'just' a writer, at least in modern times. The writer is an expert researcher--a curious explorer capable of acquiring the minimum viable knowledge in a subject to make her dangerous. Often the writer is also an SEO specialist, if she writes for the web, capable and willing to hold long conversations that end up as interviews on podcasts. Like 'just', she is a chameleon too.

As creative beings, we need limitations. We crave to be corralled to an area of thought. We are able to take out our sidewalk chalk and go crazy, but not go beyond the gate. Also, not to use the red, as it is off-brand and gets less engagement than blue. That's fine, we say, we like the boundaries and we like them communicated. There is a limitation to our affinity for limitations, however. We like boundaries that frame, not cut into our space. If it is, we become distraught. We feel caged. We blame others for work that no longer works. We feel that we are owed something. That it is only fair. The thing of it, though, is that even though we are told we deserve equity, that we should not expect it to be fair. Either way, it ought to be accepted. Accepted as just, or not. It doesn't mean we stop or we use it as a crutch. A crutch can be a tool and we have the power to accept this just as is. 

unwreckless abandon

for Anne

"Take what's yours and leave the rest."

She said as I had just given a frustrated groan about the inaccessibility of The Kind Diet, a vegan lifestyle book whose recipes touted Japanese sea vegetables and umeboshi plum paste. I mean, I lived in the most accessible city in the world--New York, and I had no idea where I was supposed to buy a sunchoke in December.

Something about the line she uttered stunned me enough to shut me up. I have since used it as a sort of mantra to decide what goes on my plate through the buffet, what to feel when I listen to a TedTalk that makes grandiose claims, at a girlfriend's "shop 'n' swap," a social gathering where we bring items we no longer want in our closets and pick out something 'new,' if only to us. I have found comfort in this statement. Understanding what feels right about claiming ownership over a "thing" or "things" makes it easier to dissociate from the entire entity. You are leaving, but not without a piece of it--your piece. In this way, it is much easier to understand what to leave. It is much more difficult to know when to leave.

The truth is, we leave all the time. Everything is abandoned. And that is OK. Or maybe it just is. Side note, I just finished the Power of Now by Eckhard Tolle, so my thinking has been esoteric as of recently. We abandon the remainder of a rich dessert after a fully satisfying meal, the winter for a trip to more tropical climates, and we abandon our carts, to the dismay of e-tailers everywhere. We abandon our work everyday. True, there is a difference between hitting send on the last e-mail and packing up for the day so as to beat rush hour traffic and stepping away for the last time from a project you have been toiling at for months or years. Abandon can be extremely painful. It can mean failure, and often does. If you leave before you get what you came for, then yeah, it can really suck--the opposite of success. I used to think success was hitting a milestone, a benchmark--getting an accolade of some sort. I have recently asked others about their definition of success, and that was not an uncommon answer. However, to people to aspire to embark on creative pursuits, we must understand that abandon is inevitable. Eventually, the writer relaxes her knuckles from their poise on the keyboard, the painter pulls her brush away from the canvas. It often feels undone. But it may be helpful to ask yourself when in the midst of a project or a piece--do I have I all I need here without continuing or is there more I can offer? Can I learn anything else here? If we are not continuing to learn, it is likely we should leave.

Why You Need 100 Days Of

to undermine the bitchy whisperer [i.e. Fear] deep within you that says: “pssssh…you can’t pull this off.”

I am an expert at trying ‘a thing’ on for size twirling around in it, asking a few people their opinion, and then finding some reason why it’s not for me (too tight, too high maintenance, not short enough, or someone else I knew had something just like it.) I was desperate for a self-inflicted project that I could commit to. I was so sick of getting excited about and letting myself down. Just once, I needed to be acquitted of quitting.

Do you dearly depart from your side projects too? Is there a calling that you keep letting go to voicemail? Or, actually, for me it is more like a tugging at my pant leg that I kept kicking away.

And then there are those people that are DOING that thing you want to do really well. The ones that spark *jealousy*. The ones whose work you see that make you say ‘I wish I made that.’ Or, ‘I had that idea 6 YEARS ago!’ Or, that creepy/vulnerable moment where you hear someone’s words and something in your chest shifts and it resonates within the caverns of your soul. That happened to me within the first few pages of Elle Luna’s Crossroads Between Should and Must, given to me by my friend, Missy. Afterward, a deep google search revealed the #100DayProject she and the Great Discontent were running, which helped people the world over stay accountable and inspired in their daily pursuits towards their creative goals.

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Inside Elle Luna's The Crossroads Between Should and Must

But the dates were in April and at this point, Fall was in full force. I back-burnered the thought. Then, publishing house art director, Catherine Casalino came and spoke to my SVA typography class. She was doing #100DaysinWonderland inspired by the fictitious tome she was reading and the iconic NYC designer, Michael Beirut.

My Chrome search bar revealed, not only that his last name is actually spelled Bierut, but that he designed the FedEx logo, was also an SVA instructor, and had his students embark on a 100 Days Challenge on 11/7/07.

It was November 5th 8 years later when I saw that post. I had two days.

WHY 100 DAYS?

It’s memorable for one. And Jay Papasan, and Real Estate mogul Gary Keller show us in The One Thing that it takes 66 days to form a habit. As creative people, our drive and resolve to make is met with an indefatigable force [the bitchy whisperer above] that create painstaking delays in delivering our craft to the world. So, think of those other 34 days as an insurance policy against failure-to-ship.

There is also proof that the first 100 days in an era can dictate overall success in an endeavour, as exemplified by the scrutiny of the newly elected presidents. This 3 and a 1/3rd month gestation period is an opportunity to build momentum. And as Michael Watkins observes in his HBR article, Why the First 100 Days Matters, leaders “entering new roles can stumble badly and still recover. But it’s a whole lot easier if they don’t stumble in the first place. And that’s why the transition period matters so much.”

It can feel daunting to embark on something that can feel as though it would claim entire nights, weekends, or precious time away from family, friends, and professional pursuits.

But what if you committed just 20 minutes a day? That’s half of an already-shortened lunch break or two showers. Imagine the calories and water you’d be saving! Seriously, though, the length of time will vary, depending on your project, and can be way shorter like Zak Klauck’s 100 posters-in-a-minute project. We will get to what kinds of projects make a good fit later, but first, the other less worthy reasons for starting a project (other than squashing your fear that is).

100 DAYS OF GETTING BETTER FASTER

Imagine that sensation of starting something new. Snowboarding, for example. You sucked at it, granted. You can barely sustain momentum long enough to sneeze and lose balance before you have no other excuse for faceplanting, which seems to cause muscle memory amnesia. i.e., you used to have abdominal fortitude before you strapped yourself into a board and headed for the bottom of a hill. Maybe you are with a few people on the slope that suck worse. That’s comforting for a minute but then

WHISSSSSSSHHHHH….the pro’s whiz past you in a flash of color and sound. And they’re having the time of their lives.

At least that is how I saw it when I tried snowboarding for the first time on an aggressively sunny day on the icy slopes at Hunter Mountain in upstate New York. Except those pro’s I mentioned were actually 7-year-olds that come every winter with their fit European parents. The pros (and my boyfriend at the time) were far, far away on another hill, but one that could at least could still see from where I was. I could have phoned it in after my lesson as I had endured enough wipeouts on near zero-degree inclines to earn an adult hot chocolate in the lodge. That is where most of the other first timers in my class had gone. But what kept me from hanging with it and long after my comrades had hung up their bindings?

It was that feeling that when I did start coasting if only for a second, it was fun. It’s fun!

You feel a slight breeze. It’s thrilling and effortless; you forget that ache in your wrist and for a moment, you are in the flow and it’s phenomenal. It’s adrenaline, and pride, and excitation, and fear all served up in this flaming high-flying cocktail and you are crushing it, gliding down the slope until BUMP, you’re down again. If only you could sustain that momentum for a moment longer, multiply it by 2 each time, you just might make it down the hill before the week is out.

It is similar with creative pursuits. You start making a thing, getting into the groove, and what you make isn’t that good at all. But the concept is there. It has good bones. And though you notice the Gap between what you’re making and what you want to make, the best way to get to where your heroes are is to start making. A lot. And the more you make on a consistent basis, the faster you fail and the quicker get to sucking less.

100 DAYS OF FINDING YOUR PEOPLE

When I left my job in September, I did not know exactly what I was looking for next. But I knew who I looked to that were doing things I loved really well. And what do you do when you discover something you love? You get to know it. You sign up for their mailing list and read and research. Watch Youtube videos and drink instant coffee in graphic PJ pants with your socks pulled up. And then you attempt to emulate it. I admired the sharp-tongued wit of copywriter Ashley Ambirge, the vulnerable hand-lettered poetry of design-thinker, Debbie Millman, and the principles laid out by best-selling author, Austin Kleon, in Steal Like An Artist. That is when my project, #100DaysofCopy was born. And along the way, I discovered so many amazing artists and writers that blew my mind with their creative contributions to the world and to my project. And suddenly, we were connected through a shared appreciation for consistent expression, or just a really well-placed pun.

100 DAYS OF IDEA MACHINERY

You will notice something strange start to take shape when you start making everyday. It starts sporadically at first. You will start to feel the first drops and then inspiration comes out gushing like broken water pipe. You can’t get get the ideas down fast enough. And then the next day the mainline will be arid and you need to start scratching the surfaces of your swipe file to get groundwater. Later, we will get into ways to safeguard your trajectory when this (and other pesky things called Life) intervene, but I promise, the more you keep working, the process flow will regulate itself.

If this revvs your engine to start your own 100 Day journey, stay tuned for the next installment — What to Expect, where I’ll lay out provisions to pack as you prepare for the days ahead in your creative adventure.

[Note: this is 1 of a 3-part series for Polyama Project.

Part 1 — WHY You Need 100 Days Of

Part 2 — WHAT to Expect on Your 100 Days

Part 3 — HOW to Find Your #100DayProject

If you’re a multipassionate entrepreneur, sign up for the Polyama Project mailing list here.]