How Stepping Away from your Work Makes you More Productive

Every morning whenever possible, I like to write before I start my day. I don’t eat first because the hunger I feel at this time of day can only be satiated by creativity. That’s the best kind of hunger. Some mornings I am simply not inspired to write …either because I’ve sabotaged my muse by checking my email or socials first, or maybe I feel like writing but can’t seem to focus my attention on what – a kind of paralysis by analysis.

As artists, we thrive when we are working hard and flounder when we are hardly working.

We tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be constantly innovating and creating or learning something new, to always be “productive” or “producing work” -and when we aren’t, we feel somehow “less than” or not up to par. The word work has become associated with reward or acknowledgement so much so that there’s even a new word in our urban dictionary WERK which is defined as A congratulatory exclamation of approval.

“Something is wrong with me” we think, when our usual ways aren’t “working”. We have the data to support it too. We’ve done it before, so why can’t we do it now? Glimpses of imposter syndrome start to creep in as we create stories about why… “It was a fluke last time” “I’m a one shot wonder”. We berate ourselves with negative thoughts that deviate from the original goal which was to be creative and waste our energy creating anxiety, distress, and suffering for ourselves instead. If the negative self-talk isn’t enough to paralyze us, we shift into troubleshooting mode and attempt to “fix” the situation by trying harder, working longer, forcing ourselves to produce. But it’s even harder now, because now we are spending our energy on trying to fix something that we perceive as a problem.

But hold on a second! There’s nothing to fix. There is NO problem. You haven’t suddenly lost it. There is nothing wrong with you. Take a moment to step back and breathe.

Your creativity hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s always been there. It’s you that has departed. You are off on some tangent creating volumes of stories, explanations and excuses about why things aren’t working – why you aren’t working. Getting further and further away from engaging in the very thing you wanted to do in the first place.

What’s interesting here is that we have stumbled upon a tool that can be quite useful if we are aware enough to consciously choose it rather than default to it via a stress response.

Take another moment to consider this. How much time do you waste “trying to be more productive and discover you are even further away from what you are trying to do?”

What would be different if instead of spending time and energy trying to force productivity you chose to step away, to create space between you and the goal? Choosing to distance yourself. Distancing yourself when used as a tool, affords us the space and perspective we sometimes need to renew our energy.

Think about a time when you had “forced perspective” when you had to sit out of a performance because of injury or illness. Do you recall how amazing it felt to return?

Our days are filled with these opportunities to step away even in a micro-moment, to widen our lens so that we can access more of our higher frequencies and focus on what it is we really want to be doing.

I have lots of unfinished ideas and I’m okay with that, I know they’ll wait for me. In fact I do some of my best work in places I would never associate with working. Don’t limit yourself by believing that ideas only get done in some cloistered workspace. That’s just the place where you record the work. The work is created inside of you. Wherever you are.

I’m Lisa Hopkins. Thanks so much for listening. Stay safe and healthy everyone and remember to live in the moment.

Listen to Audio Version here!

Published in Collaboration with:

Also by Lisa Hopkins:

Strengthening the Divine Muscle of Choice

Discovering Our “WHO”

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