5 Times My Motto Helped Me Achieve More as a Creative

The tool I needed to keep going

Being a creative is pretty much a non-stop job. Oftentimes you don’t need to commute to an office, let alone leave your home or bed. You aren’t structured by days in a week or hours on a clock, so how do you push yourself to keep going, to keep writing, to keep sewing, to keep painting?

Without a deadline looming over my shoulder or an accountability partner keeping me in check, I discovered that the best way to keep myself motivated was by adopting a personal motto.

The problem was that it eventually fizzled out since we both weren’t committed to being accountability buddies, and other daily life things took precedent. — Alicia Glenn, Huff Post (2015)

It came to me one day during a pity party I had been throwing for myself for not finishing another list of tasks. The list of things I wanted to accomplish were piling up and the finish line seemed further and further away.

During my wallowing, I swatted away sympathetic attempts at telling me how hard I work and that my time would come. What I realised is that ultimately I wasn’t working hard enough and to better I had to “Try Harder.”

This thought process seeped into my day to day life but impacted most of all when I began creating a Web Series, which I wrote and co-produced. Here are a few ways repeating to myself to Try Harder spurred the creative and technical processes.

Admin

From putting out casting notices to sourcing locations, there is a lot of admin involved before production even begins. Working full time, I was dedicating evenings to anything web series related. More often than not, I didn’t get started until 9 p.m. where I would have dozens of emails to reply to and the day’s exhaustion had snuck up on me.

By 11 p.m. my eyes were losing the fight to stay open, and so the cycle would begin again with new emails plus the ones I hadn’t gotten to the day before.

Try Harder Approach

I had a smartphone and I was fortunate that my hour-plus commute was above ground. Instead of reading, I sat eyes glued to my phone, fingers racing across the keyboard answering emails, scheduling social media posts, and creating posters.

My mind was energized, not slumped from a full day with more work to pile on top. I utilized my surroundings and made it work. I did the same again on the commute home and in the evenings once settled, I rarely had anything left to round up.

Writing

I had seven episodes to write, I had done two with vague promises to have the remaining five finished as soon as possible. The plan was to write an episode per weekend; write on Saturday, edit on Sunday. In five weeks I would be finished.

Except for the fact that when the weekend rolled around I didn’t want to do more work. I’d allow myself to sleep in and then pitter-patter the days away, half-heartedly getting through a quarter of the script, if that. I was weeks behind schedule and bailing water from a sinking boat.

Try Harder Approach

No more lie-ins. The sluggish (though deserved) start to the day was throwing me off-balance. The alarm went off, I brushed my teeth, grabbed my laptop, and got typing. I divvied up the scenes, four per hour, and after the first four scenes were done I got up, changed, made myself a cup of tea, and continued.

In four hours on a Saturday, I had a script written and had the rest of the day to do with as I wished instead of having the task looming over me. On Sunday I did the same thing, this time using the first hour to edit the last script, before embarking on the next.

Video Editing

If there is one part of the creative process I dislike the most, it is post-production. To cut down on costs I found myself not only having to do a picture edit but also learn to colour correct and create graphics for the last episode.

I gave up on more than three occasions. It was difficult. The tutorials I found either didn’t tell me exactly what I wanted to know, or I got fed up going back and forth between YouTube and Adobe Premiere Pro as I was spoon-fed step by step instructions.

Try Harder Approach

If I wanted to shell out £150 for an editor then I should. If not, then I had to persevere. Those were my options.

We weren’t pressed for time at this stage and so I set myself a goal of two months and only edited on a Sunday. The slow and steady progress, forced me to stick with it, learning specific editing techniques, and slowly implementing them in my work. For all my cry babying I got the job done in the end because it was never impossible.

Socialising

Unavoidable in this modern-day and age, whether it’s in person or by phone, and during the summer the list of events to attend stretch on.

Before I knew it, work drinks, dinners, cultured events, catch-ups, it was all eating into the time I should have been spending drafting call sheets, discussing characters with nervous actors, or making sure I got a good night's sleep before a long day to follow.

Try Harder Approach

Boundaries had to be set. I limited myself to one after-work activity during the week, and nothing the day before a shoot. I chose to only attend the more important events of close friends and let everything else slide.

Phone catch-ups were had during the twenty-minute walk between the station and my house, and I would tell people beforehand that they were on a ticking clock.

Once people understood the pressures I was under they were understanding the situation, further lessening the burden to socialise.

Accepting Long Hours

I was up at 6 a.m., and after a full day of work had to meet prospective cast members, or travel across the city to film. Other times it was to scout locations or pick up equipment we would need over the weekend.

Grumpy did not even begin to describe the mood I quickly fell into, and there was no hiding it. On one or two occasions it bordered on demoralising and unprofessional.

Try Harder Approach

The only option was to embrace the phase I was in, after all, nobody had forced me to write, co-produce, and direct a web series. It was something I undertook willingly and I had to accept all the bells and whistles that came along with that.

My compromise was to keep one evening a week free where I could just go home and not have to answer emails or interact with cast or crew. Sometimes trying harder was giving yourself room to breathe.

A personal motto can help you to decide when you are having difficulty in making a decision. It can help you to stay focused on what is important. It can remind you of your ultimate goal and make you persevere when conditions are not in your favour. — Gulrukh Tausif, DAWN (2017)

My personal motto told me to demand more from myself and has become a constant voice in my head keeping me going whenever I want to stop.

A few tips for coming up with your own motto:

• Keep It Short: Something you can easily repeat to yourself, you don’t want to have a long sentence you can scarcely recall. If it’s punchy it’s more likely to stick. Think of all the brand taglines you know off of the top of your head, short and sweet, and in no way less effective.
• Make It Personal: Not to say you can’t rip off and apply an existing motto, saying or phraseology, but make sure it directly applies. I debated using Nike’s, “Just Do It” for a while because I like checking off lists and their logo is a tick. It felt like a natural fit, but the words didn’t have the effect I was after. When I told myself “Just Do It,” the term sounded pleading in my head, when what I needed was assertiveness.
• Something Positive: It’s a lot easier to make yourself do something if it doesn’t quite feel like a chore. A motto can not only make you more productive, but it can also keep you calm and so make sure your motto is encouraging, thus your mind will be frequently injected with a burst of positivity, which is always a bonus.

Being a creative person isn’t always as whimsical and carefree as it seems. Sometimes we need something to give us pause, a way of keeping ourselves in the game when all we want to do is procrastinate or stop.