This week’s guest blogger is coach Robbie Swale. Robbie writes: “If you’d asked me seven years ago how long it would take me to write a 250-word guest blog for an organisation I really respect, I don’t know what I’d have said.
An hour? An afternoon?
The truth is it might have taken me days of thinking and re-editing.
I certainly wouldn’t have said, ‘Four minutes’.
And yet, that’s how long this blog is going to take me.
You see, I have a writing practice. Each week, I write a piece in 12 minutes, proof-read it once, and post it.
It was designed by my coach and me, to help me to get more comfortable sharing myself with the world.
And so when Claire offered me the chance to write 250 words, I checked how long my pieces normally were. It turned out 12 minutes gets me 500-1000 words. So four minutes might get me the 250 words I need.
Even I’m surprised by that.
This is a productivity lesson – I used to spend SO MUCH more time than I needed on tasks. I was a perfectionist; now I’m an enoughist. Obsess over ‘just enough’.
It’s a practice lesson – it’s easier to write a piece in a few minutes when you’ve been practising for years.
It’s a creativity lesson – creativity is not linear. A day’s wrangling with these words wouldn’t have made this a better article to inspire you to create.
The timer is powerful.
You are creative.
You can do more than you think, in less time.
This piece really was written with a 4-minute timer. That got me 326 words and the editing took longer than normal to get down under 250.
You might be interested to know that my first book, How to Start When You’re Stuck, which Claire and I discussed on the Coaching Inn and which was written 12 minutes at a time over three years, is currently available for free on Kindle, from 31st March to 4th April, 2023.”
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