Getting To The Important Stuff

June 14, 2010

Interview with Eric Maisel, author of the book Brainstorm: Harnessing the Power of Productive Obsessions

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Mike Carruthers:
Does it even seem that you never quite get around to those important projects and goals that you’ve set for yourself? This is really quite common and the solution as simple as I might sounds is to just show up and start working on them.

Eric Maisel:
And the regularity and routine of showing up day in and day out makes a tremendous difference.
 

Psychologist Eric Maisel, author of the book Brainstorm... 

That’s why in working with clients one of the first things I try to get is an agreement that they’ll show up. And then you know it’s the potato chip model if you show up for one minute you can’t just eat one potato chip and you can’t really just write for one minute. So the showing up is crucial.

Inevitably there will be times when you don’t show up and you don’t stick to working on your project.

And remember that when you fall off the wagon so to speak if you can just remember to forgive yourself and get back on the horse tomorrow – that’s most of the game.

Eric says when you have these projects you say you want to do it is so easy to put them off and occupy your mind with worry instead.

And that may distinguish productive people from people who don’t get as much as they would like. When they are worried about something that’s what grabs their neurons – that’s to use some technical language. Namely lots of neurons gather to do that worrying and all those neurons are stolen from whatever else they might love to be thinking about.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here