Increasing Productivity

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There are so many people out there selling ways and habits you can adopt to increase your productive output with your creative work.

Funnily enough, I find we're generally living lives that demand more from us than what we are capable of, so I think, it's better to question what we can drop instead.

Today's episode is specifically focused on one area of our lives we could all probably do with improving, to help reduce our stress and improve our mental health and thus increase our productive output. 

Scarlett Marie is a true born creative, who has spent her whole life dabbling in the arts and craft, only to find her feet in the world of words whereby she has spent over fifteen years making stories come alive.

Her time and energy has been mainly spent on the series A Royal Life, of which she started drafting when she was fifteen. 

Here on the 'Diary of a Writer' she hopes to show people a peek behind the door of what it means to live as a full-time creative. 

Visit bookishfeat.com for more details. 

Transcript

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So I've just kicked my cat off my chair to sit down and make this recording. And now he has decided to sit on my lap and pass. So we shall see how this episode goes and how much of a quunk there might be when he decides to, I don't know, attack my microphone. Anyhow, last week I was speaking a little about mental health and how if your mental health is in good shape, we can be more efficient creators. I just wanted to expand on that in this session and provide some tips or more like habits one can adapt or more so let go of to help create a clearer mindset and thus a more efficient creator within yourself. Now, what I'm speaking about isn't going to be anything earth-shattering or perhaps new to you, but I just thought it was worth discussing for the sake of discussing. I don't know, don't really have a good argument for discussing this, but here we are. So, as you can probably get a sense or gas, the biggest thing I'm going to go after is the news and social media. Both are very heavily promoted in news in our day and age. And I think you'd have to be living under a rock to not realize just how much of an effect these two things have on people's mental health. I don't really want to preach at you and tell you that you should be off social media and you shouldn't check the news because I think that's just kind of not unbelievable or impossible. I'm sure there is a way to do it. But I just I think there's a bit of a middle ground that can be found with these two things. And that's kind of what I want to discuss because our society is really good at taking the pendulum from one side and swinging it very far to the other side. It really sucks at finding middle ground. Western society does not know what middle ground is, it just knows how to swing a pendulum from one side to the other, and we just generally go from one extreme to the next. And it's just, as human beings, we're just gonna constantly struggle with that, aren't we? Because you know, we're just not designed to, I guess, live in extreme ends of the ratio. People are generally pretty grey in our way of thinking and our behavior, like we've got good and bad inside of us, we're kind of clean and messy, we're nice and mean, like it's just that whole pendulum's falsely swinging, just doesn't really align with human nature. And I think we all start to feel the buckle of whatever trend there might be and you know how we're meant to adapt to things. Anyhow, anyhow. What I want to kind of talk, what I kind of want to say is that I don't actually have a strong social media presence. I've tried all the social media things, apps, whatnot, and I've just generally always found them pretty damn boring, to be honest. And I just could never commit to the time and effort it took. I just it just I'm just too lazy to really make a go of anything. In saying that, I do have one platform that I like to, I suppose, doom scroll on, and that's Reddit. And people kind of debate whether Reddit is actually social media, but I do think it is. And we're for the sake of this discussion, we're just gonna say that it is. But I have a few rules in how I engage with it, and I suppose these are kind of habits that anyone can adapt to any social media platform they like to use because I know everyone has a different platform that that that they find works for them. And one of my rules is that I never leave comments, I never engage with the content. I always just read or scroll past and just absorb the content without actually engaging in it. I find not engaging in social media actually reduces a lot of my anxiety because it means that then you don't have to worry about what people are how people are going to respond, and you don't lose time trying to, I suppose, defend yourself or getting caught up in someone else's narrative and dealing with all the shit that can come from putting an innocent comment on a post. So I find not commenting on social media really helpful and I'm just quite content just absorbing the information. The other thing is I really curate my feed and what I look at. So all the subs I follow are about uplifting news that's going on around the world, or it's about arts and crafts and people's creations. Because while I can have the patience to sit down and rewrite a novel 10 times, I do not have the patience to sew or to bake and make a cake look fantastic. So I'm always just like so amazed when people post things online about things that they've, you know, um cross-stitched or embroidered or baked and decorated, because I'm just like, how the fuck do you have the patience to do that? So I I really and it's a sort of form of creativity, isn't it? And it's just pretty to look at. So I generally have a very curative feed of when of what I see on Reddit, and that really helps me basically get my fix of basically feeling connected to the world and connected to other people without getting lost in the negativity of what else there is in the world. There's so much talk about the fact that we shouldn't need social media, or we shouldn't have social media. And I see a lot of people commenting online on Reddit about how they got rid of social media and their lives are much happier. And then ironically, they're on Reddit still. But anyway, but the and that and that I think that's great. I think it's really great when people can step away from these platforms and still have a very good life. But I do think it's nice to still have some sort of connection to the outside world and to see what other humans are doing. And so, whilst yes, social media definitely has an effect on our mental health, I think there are ways we can be using these platforms in a way that actually benefits us, as opposed to just being a negative vortex that we can't get out of. And I do appreciate that on some platforms this is going to be easier to do than others, which again is why I really suggest that you have a think and figure out which platform is going to work to you. I'm really fortunate in the fact that I've actually also got an app for Reddit, which doesn't show me any ads because I'm sure as anyone realizes that we are just being bombarded by so many ads these days that it is just a constant zap on our energy and it's just absolutely exhausting. Like you can't even go to the petrol station anymore and just get five minutes at the pump just filling up your car without adverts blurting at you. You can't even bloody sit at a red light anymore without seeing some sort of billboard that's trying to make you feel inadequate in some part of your life so that you spend your hard-earned money on their products. So the the ads are relentless, and that's why I say be cautious of which platform you choose because some are better than others in how you can kind of minimize the amount of ads you are exposed to. The other thing I wanted to mention was the news. I don't have a TV, so I never sit down and watch the news. And I consume the news mostly in written form, like you know, old school journalistic articles. It's amazing to me in this day and age, just how confronting the news is in this day and age, especially with people having cameras in their phones, like people are literally recording people getting shot in the head or you know, a tsunami coming in and just like drowning a whole bunch of people. And it's you you can get vicariously traumatized by that. And yet we've just kind of made it a normal thing. Like it should be just normal to wake up in the morning at 7 a.m., get your hot beverage, and then just, I don't know, watch someone die on your screen. Like I hate to say it because it should be obvious, but that's not normal and it's not healthy, and our brains aren't designed to cope with that type of information. I read a really interesting book, I think it was last year, about our brains and the um social part of our brains and how much it actually hasn't evolved over the thousands of years since you know, being um kind of in that cave tribe situation and how our brain is still really configured to those times. And we can only really absorb so much information and uh what's the other thing? Um handle a certain size of social contracts, you know, that there's only there's only so much our brains can actually still handle in this day and age. That's sort of just shoved aside and we're just expected to sort of deal with it. And then we kind of step back and we wonder where everyone's mental health is down the drain. And it's like, well, we're co we're totally overexposed to information and not just helpful information, but completely I'm gonna say this, but it and it sounds probably dis discouraging or hurtful, but useless news. Like I'm in Australia. What benefit is there in me turning on the news and seeing what's happening in the US or even the UK? It's like on the other side of the planet. Yes, maybe if I have family over there, I can understand the more emotional connection to the place. But in this instance, I don't have family in either of those places. And I can't do anything to help the people on the other side of the planet. I mean, Jesus Christ, I can't even do anything to help the people in my freaking neighborhood. So what good is it for me to know what is going on over there, absorbing all that negative energy and all that kind of mindfuck about injustice and whatnot when all I'm really needing to do is go on about my day. And this isn't to criticize people who generally feel like they need to be in the know, but I would question and I would ask yourself why you feel like that is the case. Because I I think that's the funny thing. If you there's so much we can't do for so many people, and when we're watching the news or reading the news, we kind of just get this helpless sense because we can't fix anything, we can't do anything, and that of course is going to have an effect on our mental health. Basically, the news is just constantly telling you all the terrible things that are happening in the world and how helpless you are to fix them. Not to mention journalism this day and age is just dying out. So you kind of don't really trust the information that's being published out there and whether it's real or not, because because corporations have so kindly bought up all the news feeds and just started to use them to basically sell their own propaganda. So it it becomes really difficult at this point to actually know what is real and what is not real. And at some point, I think it just becomes easier to just not engage and to not care. I mean, if something is gonna happen to you, which is immediately gonna affect you, you will, I believe, get notified. You know, they do have capabilities of sending out SMSs to areas. If there's like something disastrous gonna happen, someone will more or less likely knock on your door if it's gonna really affect you. Like there is actually really no need to be so engaged in the world and it's crazy affairs. Now, in saying all of this, I do admittedly sometimes you go to I think two specific news sites, and I sometimes check the headlines, and once in a while they have an interesting article that I might click on, and I will generally read that because it just helps inform me or educate me about something that I wasn't aware of. So I am aware that the news can be helpful in that regard, but I think there's a difference in being able to read an article and being forced to watch something happening live and also watching it on TV and having to deal with all the jargon that comes with news reporters and you know trying to listen to what they anticipate is is going to happen because the news does have this huge fear-mongring personality to it, and they always like to discuss the worst case scenarios, and funnily enough, the worst case scenarios generally never do arise, and so you're just constantly being, I guess, on edge about the worst-case scenario that never really happens. So basically go back. I think reading the news is a lot better than visually absorbing it, and I think it's a lot better to read the news or absorb the news without the commentary of reporters or specialists or whoever the fuck they bring in on those shows to kind of discuss the matter. I think it's much better to absorb the news in the quietest form possible and then trust yourself to make your own opinions on the matter, or go to the length of doing your own research and then forming an opinion, or you know what, just not having an opinion. It is really okay not to have an opinion. I know that's such an odd thing to say in this day and age when having opinions on everything seems like the most important thing. But as I've gotten older and just kind of disengaged more with the world and its antics, I've really realized the value of not having an opinion on something. It is actually nice not to have an opinion on things and just be like not even meh, but just be completely neutral to the situation and the fact that it is just not worth your time and energy to even construct an opinion on the matter. And there is something very freeing about that, and it also saves so much of your personal energy to then allow you to do other things that do matter to you and which you do have a strong opinion about, like your creative work. So I don't know really what the hell my point was here. I feel like I just kind of rambled at you about a whole bunch of fucking nonsense. But what I really would try to encourage is just look at how you're using social media and how it is affecting you and how much time you spend absorbing the news because the internet is inherently very negative space, like it is just such a negative energy to the internet these days, and you know, there's so many ways the world could fall apart on us at any moment, and there's always someone out there doing better than you or doing worse than you, and you know, as an artist, it already feels very hard to be able to make it or become this definition of success that is important to you, and I just I just really question whether having that negative world commentary does any good because I have noticed previously that whenever I've got too absorbed in Reddit or in the news, that I'm generally more disengaged in my creative work. I just generally get a feeling, well, what's the point? You know, the world's obviously going to end, and my stories are so insignificant. What is the point? And I don't think that's a healthy mindset for anyone to be in. Because ultimately, this is your life, and if you want to create, you should create. It doesn't matter if it never becomes anything or never becomes your main source of income. There is just such beauty in creating and leaving behind anything of yourself, and I think sometimes the world can kind of make us feel like we're so small that not even that matters, but it does. It really does. So if you find yourself struggling to create or be motivated to create, I would strongly encourage you to look at how you are using your spare time and what sort of negative spaces you might find yourself slipping into without realizing.