For Best Results: Use When Ready

Posted by Trisha Wagner on December 8, 2008

I have learned a great lesson today- some things in life cannot be rushed.  I had a wonderful opportunity to work from home yesterday and despite my best intentions, productivity was elusive.  I simply could not understand it.  My son had a sleepover at his grandmother’s Saturday night which allowed me to knock out several hours of work.  I expected him home Sunday morning and struggled with mommy guilt when I learned they were willing to keep him a few more hours if I wanted to finish up my hours.  I decided that we would give it a try and I could finish up early (versus midnight) and actually enjoy some quality time with him in the afternoon.  To my utter dismay and complete annoyance, I struggled for several hours trying to write.  The more I struggled, the harder it became.  As the minutes ticked by with only crickets chirping in my head my frustration grew.  A more experienced person may have recognized this as a sign to take a break, do something else, to perhaps let their creative juices stew.  The funny thing about experience is you have to experience things to learn from them.  So I sat and I wrote and I deleted and I rewrote- but things just didn’t feel right.  (Note-this is the second sign that I missed to give it a break)

I will save you the trauma of reading my minute by minute playback of a torturous afternoon trying to force something that wasn’t happening.  I ended up going to bed disgruntled, frustrated and lacking the hours that I desperately wanted to have done early.  Granted I put the hours in, but you can’t bill a client for time spend…..thinking.

So here we are today and I’m at my day job and suddenly (I promise this is no exaggeration as I’m sure the writers with experience are well aware) ideas just started pinging around in my brain.  Witty titles, great topics, ideas, ideas, ideas!  It was as if a switch (location unknown) was flipped and I could almost see the gears turning in my head.  And while I can’t help but be excited with all these awesome thoughts bouncing around I have to chuckle at life’s little lessons.  Some things simply can’t be forced and sometimes timing can be a real pain in the butt!

In hindsight I could have done a lot of better things with my time yesterday then mentally beating myself up for not being “productive” but I will take from that experience something that will surely benefit me in the near future.  Let a sleeping mind rest…..it is probably charging up for a burst of productivity.

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