Creativity Under The Gun
There's an old saying:
"Pressure makes diamonds"
(My friend has modified this saying:
"... but it also makes garbage more compact.")
The last few weeks have been really scary for me. Uncertainty at work has driven my anxiety into overdrive. To be honest, in that state of mind, it's very difficult to get anything done. When what I'm worried about is so intense, it's almost impossible to keep my brain focused on anything but the most urgent of tasks. My brain keeps cycling back to the big impending problem, which was not something I could do much about!
I'm always driven by action, I need something to DO. Unless I'm DOING SOMETHING about a problem, it's very hard for me to feel better. My brain was constantly circling the problem, hunting for some action, ANY ACTION I could take that would fix the problem.
Eventually the cloud lifted and it looks like I escaped disaster...... for now.
But then I realized:
Hey.... there were some okay ideas in those panic attacks! Maybe I should take some of these actions anyway.
The best ideas I came up with were around the concept of 'Taking Inventory'. I'll be tackling some of these tasks in the upcoming weeks:
Taking Inventory
It's good to do a self-check every once in awhile. It's important to just do your best and keep moving forward, but every once in awhile it's good practice to stop and benchmark yourself. In particular, these are the things I'll be taking inventory of:
- Contacts: Who do I know? Where have those people ended up? What are the up to recently? It's time to brush off the rolodex and start scheduling some coffees 
- Ideas: I have a LOT of ideas that I have generated in the past but didn't have time to act on. Now it's reversed. Time pressure has let up a bit, but I'm feeling uninspired. This is the time to data-mine some past inspiration
- Food: As weird as it sounds, lately I've been poking around my cupboards and realizing that I'm either out of one product or way overstocked on another. I can't remember the ingredients I do or do not have, and that's making it tough to "whip up a meal" when I don't have a lot of time. Time to look through my staple foods and figure out what's in abundance and what's lacking.
- Clutter: I've done an OK job reducing clutter in certain areas, but there's still a bit of ways to go. I've lost track of what needs to be sold and what needs to be fixed. I had an idea that I should just gather and put all the for-sale-or-broken things on the kitchen table and keep taking care of them until they're all gone.
Is inducing a panic state a recommended strategy?
NO.
As I mentioned, during this scary time I was not the most productive. This is about getting the good out of the bad. It's during the times of trial that fundamental truths are revealed to us: what matters the most, how we really feel, where allegiances lie and what urgently needs fixing.
So get that done!