Depressing Math is especially depressing when you’re living through a pandemic. Covid hasn’t taken away our weeks, but it has robbed us of our favorite activities — experiences that are already in short supply.
A reminder to savor life and time with family and friends
Should one also change in conjunction with the seasons? By this I mean more than donning a natty scarf when the temperature drops below a certain level—I mean changing things about the way you eat, sleep, live, and work.
[P]roductivity advice seems to always think in terms of the day, the week, the year, or five years, never the season, the sun, and the shadow.
I have a lot of logistical changes I make at the season turn for fall and spring, but I like the idea of shifting life / work focus too.
Some questions to consider at the change of the season:
Alas, not super helpful. More setting the foundation for signing up for her course — arguing that we’re thinking about things the wrong way, and we need to flip our perspective to focus on building connection — but nothing about how to build connection. Or, as the title advertised, get people really into your work.
Key takeaways:
I think I’m done with these free workshops / course sales pitches for a while. They feel too much like those timeshare deals where you get a free / discounted stay but have to go to the sales pitch. I understand that folks can’t give away everything but it’s frustrating when it feels like you got nothing tangible out of your time, that the answer to how to get people into your work (or fill in the blank) is to join their course. All the success stories were not about how people built an audience, but how they made more work.
Sometimes cynical me gets this feeling, from seeing many creatives offering workshops and classes, that succeeding financially in the creative field is a MLM scheme where you tell other creatives how to sell their work but where you’re making your money is in selling things to creatives. And I say this as someone who’s potentially interested in turning the free planning guide I created for creative types into a published planner. I want to help people, and think I have some useful things to say, but also see it as a market that people are willing to spend in. I read a lot in the “self help” sphere, so I do see value there. But it makes me question how financially successful creative work can realistically be alone, when it seems like a lot of times where the money comes from is eager self-funded creatives lower in the experience ladder.