Plan patient, executable strategies

At times when a creative project has an unclear direction, feels overwhelmingly large, or requires more consistency than intensity, find ways to organize creative work into cyclical units such that:

• "completing more of those activities will reliably bring you closer to the goal"
• "each activity consumes a predictable amount of effort"
• "each activity feels doable"
• "little effort is required to select and plan an activity"
• Source

This encourages moving at enjoyable pace and evens out tendencies toward hurrying or delaying by both setting boundaries and reducing friction.

The strategy will be different depending on the project and specific type of work. The smaller and more focused on one issue or "mode" at a time the better (Separate creative tasks).

Examples:

• Writing morning pages
• Pomodoro timers - Shape time with boundaries
• Build habits with a minimum consistent dose – Creativity is a habit
• Test driven development cycles in programming

Here there is no mastery of unnameable creative processes: only the patience of a craftsman, chipping away slowly; the mastery of what is made does not lie in the depths of some impenetrable ego; it lies, instead, in the simple mastery of the steps in the process, and in the definition of these steps. (The Timeless Way of Building, pg. 161)