Ideas, Motivation, and The Best Thing You’ve Ever Done

This blog post brings you four of my latest Creative Work Problems comics and a tip for each topic.

The first one is about ideas and how they can take a little longer than we want them to. The second is about to-do lists and how overwhelming they can become. The third one is about motivation and how it comes and goes quickly. The last one is about how we like things we do, and after a while, we realize what a stupid thing we did (which is good).

Good Ideas Take Time

Often we have more bad ideas than good ones. This can sometimes make us feel like we don’t have any good ideas. So we often give up too soon. What helps is not to lose hope and to work on the ideas again for a while. Make variations, brainstorm again, or maybe try a completely new approach. If we keep at it, then the good idea will be there at some point, which we can then improve little by little. An idea doesn’t come to us in a perfect form, but it has the potential to become great. We just have to keep working on it.

Here’s a post for getting good ideas: Getting Good Ideas

Too Many To-Do’s

Too many planned tasks can be disastrous. 🥵 I hear these little empty boxes screaming at me when I can’t tick them off. Let’s stop this so we can sleep better. We always want to do more than we can do. But in the end, our day only lasts 24 hours. And we have to divide the hours cleverly without overwhelming ourselves.

Here are some tips that you can use to better deal with to-do lists.

1. Plan enough (buffer) time. Most of the time, your tasks last longer than you think.
2. Never write more on your to-do list than you can do in one day. If you have to do so many things, then something is going wrong with your general planning.
3. Do the most important task first.
4. Have flexible things planned that don’t necessarily have to be done today. You’ll feel better if you still can’t finish them.
5. Some people only put three tasks on their daily to-do list. Much less overwhelming than an endless list.
6. Put your To-Do List where you can see it. I have a notebook just for my lists. It always stays open on my desk while I’m working.
7. If you have problems doing anything at all, it is often helpful to have a To-Do list with just one task. It can be anything. For example, watering flowers. Gradually you can create more tasks when you feel like it.

If you follow some of these tips, it will be easier “to do” your to-do list! And your list won’t annihilate you with empty little boxes. 🔥

When Motivation Arrives

Motivation comes and goes. Sometimes it fades faster than you would like. Or in this case, faster out the window. 👉 💥

I can give you the following advice: Don’t wait until you are motivated to work on your creative project. Don’t wait for the muse that may never come. Start with the thing you don’t have the motivation for yet. It is tricky, but sometimes it helps to spend ten minutes working on the task you’re not motivated to do. The magic is that you can get inspired by sitting down and working. And the inspiration will also quickly give you the motivation you are lacking. Ten minutes can then quickly turn into an hour or more. Try this when you’re waiting for your motivation to appear (or when you see it jumping out of the window).

Funnily enough, I had no motivation to finish this little comic. But I kept sitting down and working on it for a few minutes. And lo and behold, something came out in the end.

Some Good Work At Last …?

We sometimes have the feeling that we can’t produce anything good. But then the moment comes when we create something we like so much that we think it can’t get any better.

Yet things change after a while.

We look back on it years later and realize what we created back then is just crap. That’s a good sign. It means we have grown in our passion and made progress in our creative life. Those are the moments we need to remember! When we think we’re not moving forward. A thing in the past that we can grab onto when we are in creative despair.

But even if you don’t have those moments where you think you’ve made something great, you can still see how you’ve gotten better.

That’s why I advise you to look at your old work to see how much progress you have made. And use this as a weapon of creativity if you need it.

Those four comics are one of the last ones of my “Creative Work Problems” comic. You will find the new ones I do on Instagram if I start them again. If you have ideas for comic topics you can reach me here.

This post was last updated on 2 September 2024