A Tale of Fast Women and Fiber Arts
I got my daughter a crochet kit as part of her Christmas, because she’s been pleading with me to teach her to crochet, or knit, or do SOMETHING with the lovely soft yarns I usually have tucked around Le Maison French most of the time.
As it turns out, apparently the people who produced the aforementioned “Kids Crochet Kit” had an even sketchier grasp of needlecrafts than I do. There was not a crochet hook to be found in the kit, but there were two plastic knitting needles, along with some brightly colored yarns.
img courtesy bjearwicke on sxc
My five year old MIGHT have the patience and dexterity for crochet, but neither of us has the patience that me teaching her to knit would require. So we decided that I would knit her a scarf from the yarn, and she would pick out the colors for the stripes. I’m currently a little more than half way done (13 of 18 stripes complete!)
Despite being passably decent at crochet, I have never really done well at knitting. Partly the discrepancy is due to the fact that my mom and grandma both crocheted, and they taught me the basics despite the fact that I am left-handed and they were both righties.
But mostly, I think it’s because crochet stitches are bigger, and most crochet patterns include intentional gaps, so you make visible progress much faster on a crochet project than on a knitting project.
I have two basic speeds for getting myself through life: warp 10 (or hyperspeed, if your geekyness leans more in the direction of Star Wars than Star Trek) and full stop.
I don’t like slow progress much. I don’t much care for incremental gains. I like blast offs. I like the Big Finish. It’s that “marching to pretoria” part in the middle I could do without.
I tend to like projects that I can knock out quickly. Otherwise, I’ve found my best bet for longer projects is to work on it in bursts, get as far as I can as fast as I can, and then set it aside for something else when I start to lose steam. When I do that, I can usually come back to it later for another burst, and another, till I get it done.
It’s when I try to “push on through” despite having lost all energy and enthusiasm for whatever the work at hand is, that things go really badly.
When I try to “pace myself” it never seems to work out. Imposing a pace on myself that isn’t natural feels forced. It usually turns whatever I’m trying to accomplish into a chore. Which sucks away all my motivation and energy pretty quickly. Ironically, trying to reserve my energy so it will last longer usually has the opposite effect.
So as we enter 2010, a year when there are so many big, can’t-knock-it-out-in-one-shot amazing things I want to accomplish, I need to remember to honor my own natural rhythm and momentum for getting things done.
And. we’re. OFF!
Your work style sounds a lot like mine. It has taken me time to come to recognize the ebb and flow of my own creative energy. A lot of outsiders assume software development is a mechanical process like building a house and don’t understand it’s a creative process.
When I’m in the zone and focused, my productivity knows no bounds. I’ve been known to come in early, stay late and skip lunch because I’m so engrossed in what I’m doing. When I’m not inspired or the project doesn’t particularly interest me, it’s a huge struggle. Progress is virtually nonexistent until I can find my motivation. Shorter projects tend to interest me more than long ones.
I really think companies need to do more to accommodate their creative employees’ need to generate that creativity. An AP clerk is important, but he or she isn’t going to transform the business. The graphic artists, videographers, programmers and copy writers can, and those processes aren’t done with blueprints or based on a measurable queue of work.
Charles Robinson´s last blog ..How to cook pot roast in 42 short hours!
Charles: Someone I follow on Twitter, @BigBrightBulb, recently hipped me to some really cool planning tools that seem like they’re geared around following the ebb and flow of your own energy. You could check it out here. I thought the “Productivity Planner Series” looked particularly interesting.
And yeah, I do the same “forget to eat” thing when I’m really in the zone and motivated.
Working at an advertising agency, we get probably a bit more latitude for the need to generate creativity than most employees. Since for me personally, I spent most of my career outside the agency environment, I often have to remind myself to take that latitude, instead of assuming it’s the same culture I was used to in the corporate world.