Keeping the Rhythm of Your Work

Keeping the Rhythm of Your Work

 

That’s what working on independent projects is all about. Whether you’re someone who’s working a full-time job with a family at home or you’re a crazy person who’s relegated themselves to their solo work, you always need a rhythm for your free time if you want to get something done. And by that I don’t mean a daily schedule so rigid that even one bad day could annihilate all progress on a project. Nor do I mean creating a work plan so relaxed that you’ll go days on end without doing anything before pouring in five hours of creative juices in a single day. If you want to create something in your free time—be that a novel, a film script, an art project, building something, or even an unclassifiable outsider project—you have to work on it every day. The best way I’ve found to go about this is by planning a certain amount to accomplish each day (and, if you’re like me and have too much going on at the same time, to do this with every project you have in progress). It doesn’t matter when you do it, and it doesn’t matter how long it takes. If you have a solo venture you want to finish and put out into the world, you have to say to yourself every day: “I won’t sleep until I get this much done.”

 

For example, I have a few different writing projects going on at the same time. Two are finished and in the revision stages, while two others are still being written. My solution to juggling all of this is to get a little bit of each done at a time: Revise a chapter in each finished work, write 2,000 words in the more important in-progress work, and write 1,000 words in the less important in-progress work. That’s two chapters revised and 3,000 words written every day. While I personally don’t have a set time for when I get this work done—pretty much any free time I have is relegated to making sure I end up with everything finished by nightfall—it can be helpful for some. It can also be helpful to start small, to maybe have one or two projects going on at the same time, chipping away at a little bit every day. Again, because it’s what I know the most about, if you’re an aspiring writer with an idea and want to get started, you can always begin with as little as 500, 200, or even 100 words a day at the beginning. The best way to make progress, though, is to always be building on what you’re doing, although at your own pace so you don’t get burned out.

 

If you’re asking yourself questions about time management and a lack of willpower or ideas to do this every day, stop. If you end up with a day when you simply don’t have enough time to both get your independent work done and function normally the next day, then that’s fine. Your project isn’t going to disappear in the wind. Just start from square one the next day, doing whatever aspects of it you’d have done the day before. There will, of course, be that feeling eating away at your heart, the guilt that comes with “falling behind” on a project. But remember: This is your project, not anyone else’s. Unless you’ve already signed a contract with a publisher, art gallery, or what have you, there’s no reason to feel guilty if outside forces made it impossible to work on a given day. As for lack of ideas, writers block, and other such ailments many creators face, I’ve found that trying to power through them can be helpful. Yes, what you do that day won’t be quite as good as what you’ve done in days before, but so long as you’re willing to go back and polish, there’s no reason not to keep pushing even on days you don’t want to create. After all, if everything goes well, someday you may end up in a situation where you have to create no matter how you feel on a given day. Better to start practicing for the future now than to be stuck in a rut with no way out later on.

 

While this next suggestion will sound extreme—and is also a fantastic way of making everything you once enjoyed feel monotonous and boring—you can also apply this “daily output” suggestion with a “daily intake” suggestion. Many creators are often inspired by outside forces, whether that be the media we consume or, in the case of more architecturally minded persons, the things we see in our day-to-day lives. I think it’s important to always have a daily goal as to how much you want to consume of the independent profession you’re trying to pursue. If you’re an architect, spending an hour a day researching the building structure of an object can be helpful. If you want to write for film, watching a movie a day with eyes and ears open can inspire improvement over your own work. If you’re a writer, reading a healthy fifty pages or so a day can be useful in improving your own craft. I need to stress that doing any of this isn’t just about enjoyment. When you study that architecture, you have to do so while thinking about why its structure works so well. When watching that film, you need to parse out what does and doesn’t work in the script, acting, set design, and cinematography. When reading that novel, you must discover what attributes made it strong enough to be published. Some days it can make what you love feel like a chore, while other days it can be exciting to learn doing what you enjoy. But, in my opinion, it is absolutely necessary to harnessing whatever craft you’re pursuing through your project.

 

Creating an independent project is not enough, especially when the Internet allows anyone with a computer to do whatever they want. What matters most is utilizing those resources that everyone has in order to create something nobody else has to ability to. The first step to doing that is having a rhythm by which you work and—if you’d like—by which you play. There’s a reason you’ve heard of every creator you’ve ever heard of, and that’s because they’ve stuck with their craft for long enough to get their names recognized. The longer you do something, the better you’ll be able to do it. Some days it will feel like a slog, like it won’t hurt to quit for a little while, and like nothing you do will ever amount to anything. The only path to creation is forward no matter the naysayers (even if one of those naysayers is yourself). It is the only way you’ll ever improve, progress, and finish what you start: By putting the work in, day-by-day, every day.