Pteroberries

I've found I work best when I allow myself to do what's on my mind. If I'm not forcing thoughts and ideas, they flow more easily, I can see things from different angles, and I don't feel like I'm fighting against myself. The problem with this, of course, is that my mind is rarely fixated on what REALLY needs to get done at any given moment.

Some people (generally referred to as "productive members of society") don't have this problem, or at least not to the extent that I find I do. This is either due to some natural focus they have, or in most cases, I think, they've developed the mental discipline to get shit done when it needs doing.

Now, I can buckle down and get things done; I don't mind sweat, work or overtime, but I find difficulty when I try to work on something creative or with much longer term or looser goals. When I sit down to work on something like that, my mind says "no thank you, we'd rather think about blueberry pterodactyls."

I've had to develop some techniques to trick my brain into putting in work where I want it.

1) let it do what it wants.

I open up whatever project I want to work on, and then I open up a blank document.

"Blueberry pterodactyls you say? Fascinating, tell me more."
"... Really? Ok, well...."

Under normal operating conditions, my brain has the attention span of a Kool-Aid fueled 8-year-old, and I know the blueberry pterodactyls will run their course pretty quickly. The second the stream of consciousness stalls I switch over to my project and I use the leftover momentum to get started.

That momentum isn't going to last long though. Pretty soon the downhill coast off of Pterodactyl Hill is going to peter out and I'll find myself working against gravity again.

2) Build momentum

Ive found that my brain (and maybe yours) will tackle just about any subject, if properly warmed up to it. The problem is that real-world stuff is rarely as interesting as indigo dinosaurs.

I let myself go back to the pterodactyls when my momentum slows too much. I want to keep mental speed. I switch back to the pterodactyls and let my brain ramp up again before going back to the real work; Sometimes it's 30 seconds, sometimes it's 30 minutes.

I could probably use a merry-go-round as an analog: giving your brain a hard spin with the pterodactyls and then coasting on your real project awhile before giving it another good shove. But I would much rather compare this to that time when Bill Shatner took a Klingon ship around the sun, using it's gravity to slingshot all his homies back in time so they could apprehend a couple of whales and save Earth... Again.

I like that much better.

I just started a sentence with a conjunction and abused ellipses... Suck it!

3) Convince it that it wants something else

I cycle back and forth between whatever project I'm working on and free-writing about whatever is getting in the way. Sometimes I never get away from this pattern and I'll cycle back and forth for as long as can I stay glued to the computer, and that's usually sufficient. Sometimes though, I'm able to get myself completely off the distraction and engrossed deep enough in my project to just "go."

Tricking an 8-year-old into gleefully doing something it doesn't really want to is deceitful, it's impolite but it's also a beautiful, satisfying feeling regardless of how much or little I actually get done.

Incidentally, this post was a pterodactyl for another project.