During the past 18 months, I have become more and more entrenched in a yoga lifestyle.
Notice I didn't say yoga "workouts," but a yoga "lifestyle."
What I mean by that is, when you regularly practice yoga as a physical exercise, soon other things follow ... Your taste for food changes so that you crave healthier options. You sleep better. And you actually start to take different approaches to your way of thinking and solving problems.
I'm not sure why all of this happens, but I apply the way I think about conquering certain yoga poses to the way I am tackling the challenges in my day.
This is especially true when I am on deadline.
During a yoga class, you move from pose to pose, and your body has to adjust to new ways of bending and stretching. Some poses come to you more easily than others. For example, I've gotten to the point where I could move through Warrior poses and Triangle poses in my sleep. In fact, usually during yoga class, I move through those poses with my eyes closed and almost go into a dream-like-state while I do it.
Then there are other poses that don't come so easily for me. With those, I have to learn how to transition my body with an intermediate pose before I can actually move into the actual pose full-throttle. And there are still others that I can't master at all, even with the transitions. For those, I have to revert to Child's Pose while I catch my breath.
Now what does this have to do with writing on deadline? Everything.
There are some days where I feel the world is crashing on my head -- in short, a series of difficult yoga poses.
Today is one such day.
I have two magazine assignments due on Friday. Two days ago, the foundational source for one of my pieces suddenly flaked out and said she wouldn't be interviewed. (Another blog entry, but I digress.) I had to rebuild the framework for that story and find replacement sources. The other story was ready to write, but I have tons of notes and a word count ceiling of 600.
In the middle of that, my child got sick and is home from school with his third virus in the past two months.
On top of that, yesterday morning I stepped on a shard of glass (dropped the night before by the same child ... and I thought I'd swept all of it up, but I guess NOT) ... and have a nice slice into my right foot -- which is either here nor there when it comes to time management, but I think I've replaced bandages about 12 times since then and fussed with some Epsom salts -- anyway, it's been another distraction.
I would call this the equivalent of moving from one difficult yoga pose to another.
Today I am completing two more magazine interviews for one of the stories, outlining and writing the second one and .... oh yeah .... simultaneously communicating with a second client, for whom I am ghost-writing a book about a chapter that we are tackling this week.
Sooooooooooooooo .... This is where a yoga "lifestyle" comes in:
First, in yoga, with a difficult pose, you learn to master the intermediate pose.
In this case, to jump start my writing cylinders, which completely feel zapped, I am tackling an intermediate pose: I am writing this blog entry. You might think that this postpones the magazine article, but it doesn't. For me, when I'm writing something that has nothing to do with the immediate deadline assignment, I kick-start my brain into the required action of concentrated word gathering and organization.
Next in yoga, as you move to the more difficult pose, you learn to breathe through the discomfort.
There are poses that I want to get out of as soon as I've entered them. I close my eyes and practice the art of the "breath." When you focus on your breathing, the physical discomfort begins to vanish, and you start to relax into the pose.
In the same way, as I work my way through endless interview notes and organize them into a coherent story format, I "breathe." The "breath" for me looks like this: I put on music that I know will motivate me. The music relaxes me, I start literally breathing deeper, and I automatically sink into organizing and writing.
Finally, you master the difficult pose. You are able to hold the pose and allow your mind to travel to the state of relaxation.
Once I have the notes and outline and lead of the story conquered, I master the story in much the same way. The words flow like water. The "pose" is no longer an issue.
Then it's time to move to the next "pose" ... and by then, you're home free, because if you find it's difficult, you just put the same plan into motion again -- hit a transitional activity to jump start the mind or body and then breathe into it.
And now that I've successfully blown through my transitional time, i.e. writing this for you, I'm off to plugging in some music, breathing deeply and starting the difficult work of the day.
The next time you hit a tight deadline and face challenges that may circumvent you from reaching it, try this. Even if you don't practice yoga as a physical exercise, learning to move from one activity to the next with a sequence of transitional activity and relaxation will free your mind from stress. Creativity then takes over, and before you know it, your work will be done.
Notice I didn't say yoga "workouts," but a yoga "lifestyle."
What I mean by that is, when you regularly practice yoga as a physical exercise, soon other things follow ... Your taste for food changes so that you crave healthier options. You sleep better. And you actually start to take different approaches to your way of thinking and solving problems.
I'm not sure why all of this happens, but I apply the way I think about conquering certain yoga poses to the way I am tackling the challenges in my day.
This is especially true when I am on deadline.
During a yoga class, you move from pose to pose, and your body has to adjust to new ways of bending and stretching. Some poses come to you more easily than others. For example, I've gotten to the point where I could move through Warrior poses and Triangle poses in my sleep. In fact, usually during yoga class, I move through those poses with my eyes closed and almost go into a dream-like-state while I do it.
Then there are other poses that don't come so easily for me. With those, I have to learn how to transition my body with an intermediate pose before I can actually move into the actual pose full-throttle. And there are still others that I can't master at all, even with the transitions. For those, I have to revert to Child's Pose while I catch my breath.
Now what does this have to do with writing on deadline? Everything.
There are some days where I feel the world is crashing on my head -- in short, a series of difficult yoga poses.
Today is one such day.
I have two magazine assignments due on Friday. Two days ago, the foundational source for one of my pieces suddenly flaked out and said she wouldn't be interviewed. (Another blog entry, but I digress.) I had to rebuild the framework for that story and find replacement sources. The other story was ready to write, but I have tons of notes and a word count ceiling of 600.
In the middle of that, my child got sick and is home from school with his third virus in the past two months.
On top of that, yesterday morning I stepped on a shard of glass (dropped the night before by the same child ... and I thought I'd swept all of it up, but I guess NOT) ... and have a nice slice into my right foot -- which is either here nor there when it comes to time management, but I think I've replaced bandages about 12 times since then and fussed with some Epsom salts -- anyway, it's been another distraction.
I would call this the equivalent of moving from one difficult yoga pose to another.
Today I am completing two more magazine interviews for one of the stories, outlining and writing the second one and .... oh yeah .... simultaneously communicating with a second client, for whom I am ghost-writing a book about a chapter that we are tackling this week.
Sooooooooooooooo .... This is where a yoga "lifestyle" comes in:
First, in yoga, with a difficult pose, you learn to master the intermediate pose.
In this case, to jump start my writing cylinders, which completely feel zapped, I am tackling an intermediate pose: I am writing this blog entry. You might think that this postpones the magazine article, but it doesn't. For me, when I'm writing something that has nothing to do with the immediate deadline assignment, I kick-start my brain into the required action of concentrated word gathering and organization.
Next in yoga, as you move to the more difficult pose, you learn to breathe through the discomfort.
There are poses that I want to get out of as soon as I've entered them. I close my eyes and practice the art of the "breath." When you focus on your breathing, the physical discomfort begins to vanish, and you start to relax into the pose.
In the same way, as I work my way through endless interview notes and organize them into a coherent story format, I "breathe." The "breath" for me looks like this: I put on music that I know will motivate me. The music relaxes me, I start literally breathing deeper, and I automatically sink into organizing and writing.
Finally, you master the difficult pose. You are able to hold the pose and allow your mind to travel to the state of relaxation.
Once I have the notes and outline and lead of the story conquered, I master the story in much the same way. The words flow like water. The "pose" is no longer an issue.
Then it's time to move to the next "pose" ... and by then, you're home free, because if you find it's difficult, you just put the same plan into motion again -- hit a transitional activity to jump start the mind or body and then breathe into it.
And now that I've successfully blown through my transitional time, i.e. writing this for you, I'm off to plugging in some music, breathing deeply and starting the difficult work of the day.
The next time you hit a tight deadline and face challenges that may circumvent you from reaching it, try this. Even if you don't practice yoga as a physical exercise, learning to move from one activity to the next with a sequence of transitional activity and relaxation will free your mind from stress. Creativity then takes over, and before you know it, your work will be done.
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