Just Begin
Possibly the best teaching advice ever (that works for all sorts of non-teaching stuff, too)
Many years ago, when I was completing my practicum for graduate school, my supervisor and I were going over the syllabus for a course we were co-teaching. I was looking over the whole semester, feeling overwhelmed by all the work that needed to be done to prepare for all fifteen weeks of lessons, when she said, "Listen, you only have to stay one class ahead of the students."
I can't recall if it calmed me down in that moment, but I can tell you that it has calmed me down over and over and over again in the 13+ years I've been teaching since then. It was top of mind when I started teaching Designing Your Life several years ago and found myself up at 5:00 am going over exercises and fine-tuning slides on Wednesday mornings before the class met. It's been on my mind this semester as I roll out a new version of the class for younger students and learn new exercises to share with them on Monday afternoons before a Tuesday class.
The most obvious magic this little phrase weaves is the reminder not to slip into overwhelm. To focus on each part of the whole instead of everything everywhere all at once. To break big things down into do-able bits and to put the first things first (meaning not getting hung up on planning that activity for a month from now, when there are four weeks of stuff to do before that).
But there's a more subtle magic to it, as well. Just before I sat down to write this post, an email landed in my inbox with the subject line Don't be Brilliant—Just Begin1 and it dawned on me that only staying "one step ahead" means being action-oriented. Just starting with the thing in front of you: be that next week's class, the first sentence of that story you want to write, the roughest rough draft of a business plan ever, posting the first item on Etsy—whatever the thing is. It needn't be a semester full of lesson plans in your Google drive, a polished novel, a fully-formed business plan, an Etsy page full of items.
Whatever your version of a semester's worth of lesson plans is—what if you just stayed one step ahead? Just did one thing today? Just began?
Maybe it won't be brilliant. But it will be done. And once something is done it can be tested/critiqued/enjoyed. And then you know what—you can use that feedback to do it again.
Perhaps just a bit more brilliantly.
This Week Last Year
We were talking about habits to support the marathon of sustainable creativity including, but not limited to: white space/down time, consuming other art, and deadlines.
Strength Training for Creatives
The post below popped up in my Instagram feed recently, and it hit just a little too close to home:
Squirrel of the Week
Went to pick up my coffee beans and found this absolutely adorable mug :
What might you just begin this week? Any advice that’s stuck with you over the years? I’d love to hear about any and all of it!
The email was the Yoga with Adriene newsletter, and she was referencing something that Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way (and known for morning pages), said in an interview.
I think your phrase "action oriented" is the hub around which this wisdom revolves. Everything changed for me when I started trying to internalize the parallel idea that you shouldn't wait for perfect tools, plenty of time, adequate money, and so on before attempting to do, build, or achieve something. Theodore Roosevelt said, "Do what you can, where you are, with what you've got." Living by that changes the game. Great piece!
I *love* this and needed to hear it.