Practical Advice for Better Living.

There are an amazing number of effective tools to beat fatigue. This is part 15 of a series on how to get your energy back right now.

Tool #15. Freewrite.

Freewriting provides a gateway out of fatigue because it frees the mind from rumination. We are only able to hold a small number of thoughts concurrently. When we’re tired a lot of that space gets taken up with the discomfort we’re feeling. A self-narrative of “I’m tired” looping over and over again ruins motivation. We can get on a new track by giving ourselves a prompt and guiding thought smoothly into energy. I’ve used freewriting to stay motivated through all nighters, to quit exhausting jobs and to finish essays blisteringly fast.

Many people are introduced to freewriting as something without structure. Indeed, it can be that, but when you’re feeling down then that emotion will be reflected on the page. Try making freewriting less free to see results. Use a prompt to force you to focus on a task at hand. Define some rules to ensure productivity is hitting the page.

What if you can’t even get started? Use time-boxing. Say, “I’m going to write for 5 minutes.” If you’re really struggling then try, “I’m going to write for 1 minute.” You’ll find one minute turning into ten and a solution. Give yourself implicit freedom to go as long as you need.

Here are a few ideas to get you started. Place one of these questions at the top of a page and answer it.

• What am I trying accomplish?
• What am I afraid of?
• How can I end my fear?
• What is the next smallest step I can take? And the next?
• What does a good outcome look like?
• How can I recover from the worst possible outcome?
• If perfect didn’t matter how would you solve this?
• How would a person I admire do this?
• What is one thing I can do to feel better?

• You have ten minutes.
• You can’t edit anything that you’ve written.
• You can only use positive adjectives.
• Everything must be written as a list.
• Every single action that must to taken to reach success must be taken out. (ex: Writing an email. Minimize Word. Open Chrome. Open Gmail. Click compose. Click on the subject area. etc.)

Seeing a program remind you of errors hurts. It helps to turn the squiggly lines off in word processors. A great alternative to the perfectionist environment of Word is Darkroom for Windows and WriteRoom for OS X. They remove all the distractions.

Alternatively, you can make yourself freewrite for an audience for extra benefits. Any blogging platform will do. A few of my friends are active writers and I set up an account in their network that I totally restricted to myself to freewriting on. For months I had to write 3-5 paragraphs in 15 minutes with editing banned beyond the sentence I was working on and the result had to be posted the moment the timer went off. Feeling compelled to generate content pushed me to come write clearly and succinctly. My friends are warm and understanding. They provided wonderful feedback on the content of my posts. It was consistently worth opening the creative process up to them.

If a certain format isn’t enlightening then try a new one. You can find extra ideas at Dextronet or in my previous post on finding solutions. Turn figuring out your problems into a game. This is all for you. Reward yourself for good ideas. Relish in typos. Flatter yourself, you genius.

Go back to the How to Beat Fatigue series.

Yours,

Adam Widmer

Practical Advice for Better Living.

There are an amazing number of effective tools to beat fatigue. This is part 14 of a series on how to get your energy back right now.

Tool #14. Be as Big as Your Ideas.

Creativity is as deep as the freedom with which you express myself. When I was a child struggling with illness I’d write in tiny letters. The text I put forth was as constrained as I felt. As I grew happier and healthier my handwriting remained in its small habituated form. Flourishing now, much more of my time is spent working inspired. This results in more ideas and a stronger desire to write them down. There is a pattern in excited expression. My written word naturally grows larger with enthusiasm. This suggests a simple hack. Write everything out and write it large. Crank up the magnitude of expression and everything inside you can move with it. Fabricate passion through your actions so that you can overwrite fatigue.

There are tons of options to exploit this. It’s going to be vital that you abandon any conservationist tendencies for the duration of the exercise. Your ideas are the only things that matter. Identify your problems and get ready. Use sheet after sheet of printer paper and only write a few massive sentences on each page. Slip into the meeting room in your office and fill the whiteboard with your thoughts. Go into an empty classroom in your school and use the chalkboard. Write in sweeping dramatic letters. Your mind deserves all the space in the world. Act like a genius and let yourself become one.

My room is covered in adhesive whiteboard for just this purpose. It’s awesome. Try it out and let me know how it works for you!

Go back to the How to Beat Fatigue series.

Yours,

Adam Widmer

Practical Advice for Better Living.

There are an amazing number of effective tools to beat fatigue. This is part 13 of a series on how to get your energy back right now.

Tool #13. Talk to Someone.

There are days when your energy is waning and your inspiration is at its end. You’re tired of the voice in your head. Nothing feels correct. Every useless thought drains you more. Regardless, you have a problem to solve. There’s a way out if you can call upon the assistance of another person.

Listeners empower you. We catch their energy and reshape our communication. When you’ve got a problem you can’t solve or don’t want to deal with consider calling over a co-worker, phoning a friend or ringing your mother. They don’t have to know a thing about the domain you’re working on. It’s often best if they’re not familiar because then they won’t judge you. Just tell them that you want to think out loud. Focus your mind be restricting the conversation to 5-10. Give the listener permission to ask questions if something is completely nonsensical. Explain the problem to them in plain English. Discuss the upsides and downsides to the solutions you’re considering. Walk around and gesticulate if you can. Tell them any Ahas! or maybes while you chat. Thank them and drop the call the moment a light goes off.

Go back to the How to Beat Fatigue series.

Yours,

Adam Widmer