Will unlimited time & freedom free you?
Your wildest dreams have come true!
You have unlimited time and money and NOW you are finally free to create your thing.
Maybe you rent a gorgeous lake house away from it all, with an inspiring view.
You fill your studio with your favorite creative tools. The tools you’ll use to craft your project, THE project. The project you’ve been yearning to make.
Your novel, your art, your music, your business … your thing!
You sit down at your desk in front of a typewriter and put a crisp sheet of white paper into the typewriter.
You confidently hit the letter O, you begin, to go … slooooow….
Especially if you’re a perfectionist!
I used to be the owner of the belief that if ONLY I had unlimited time and money I would crank out magical, amazing creative dream projects all the live long day.
Yup, life would definitely be perfect once I had 100% freedom.
But, it wasn’t until I had 100% freedom that I realized, this belief is 100% wrong.
I experience this first-hand when I decided to run away and go ALL-IN on a passion project.
The plan was to take 4 months off freelancing to completely devote all of my energy to concept, write and design a set of travel planners.
And for good measure I moved to a remote fishing village in Mexico so I wouldn’t have to worry about money and no one from America would bug me. (Especially pesky clients.)
No creative briefs, no zoom calls, no obligations. No problemo!
(I don’t think my cell phone even worked.)
I indulgently strolled the sleepy Mexican streets, notebook in hand, deliciously dreaming about how awesome my thing was gonna be. I was finally going to make a perfect thing. And no one was gonna get in my way.
After a few hours of work in the morning, I’d pop into a seaside shack and order a crispy tuna tostada and wash it down with a tasty mexican beer.
A cervesa-inspired-siesta later, I’d finally get back to working on my project.
But this project deserved custom illustrations. And before I could start drawing I first spent hours watching Skillshare tutorials to help me hone my style.
When I finally landed on a look, I managed to complicate my illustration process to require switching between FOUR different design programs and SEVEN separate steps.
At my worst I wasted an entire day on a 2-inch kernel of popcorn that was gonna be in the margin of one page. 
So yeah, turns out my new found freedom made me slower than Mexican molasses.
If you want something done give it to a busy person
Yup, the adage is true. Someone who has more on their plate is more likely to actually finish all the things on that plate. Like a side project.
If I spend unlimited time on something shouldn’t I get better results?
In theory spending more time seems like you should get better results. But in reality they just might be different results, not necessarily better.
The Law of Diminishing Returns tells us that at a certain tipping point using a more is more approach eventually stops working and can even backfire.
What if your job can help you?!
Could the people and resources at your job actually HELP you finish your side project?!
Instead of focusing on all the ways your current job holds you back. What if you make a list of all the tiny ways your current gig might actually help you with your future dream.
A shift in perspective could be life changing!
**Action Step: Job Positive Brainstorm
Grab a paper and pen and write as long a list as possible about the ways your current job might help you finish your passion project and maybe even make it better!
Here’s a few ideas to kick things off:
Your current job could help by…
- Supplying steady money while you build something else
- You can use their printer!
- Test out your ideas
- Collaborate with coworkers
- Steal notebooks and awesome pens from the supply closet 🙋🏻♀️
- Keeping you slightly busy so you move faster on your side project!
What other positive things can you think of???
“When you change the way you look at things… the things you look at change.”
Max Planck
