Troubleshoot the Distracted Reader

Here are 5 ways to trouble-shoot your distracted reading. If you find you have a million books to read, or article stacking on top of article, bookmarked on your phone or browser — if you just can’t focus long enough to get a full-book-meal down, and dart off into daydreams or phone-scrolling at the slightest jolt, you’re probably not clinically ADHD (although you could be that too).

But you may be The Distracted Post-Modern Reader.

It isn’t easy getting slow, or falling into the silence of a page — or 5, or 10 — these days. Shoot, for a whole book, we need to fall into more than triple that page count.

With a few troubleshooting strategies, tou can balance your attention, and get the joy of self-forgetful perusal back without the pain of force-feeding.

 

1.  The Mobile Read (also known as “The Walking Read”)

No, not on the mobile phone. (Although your read may be on your phone.) I mean, take the read mobile. Walk with it.

I find that when my mind can’t follow, it sometimes settles and focuses if my feet can. This past week, I took a tome on my regular walk around the lake in Brighton. Even simply standing for a while helped.

If you also have a child who can’t get his head into a book, let him pace. We pace ourselves literally by pacing, and sometimes a lack of attention isn’t too little attention, but a hyper-aware attention, which needs its-too-much-energy expended a little kinetically before it settles down.

2.  The Loud Read

Start by reading aloud. Slowly.

When you taste words, and hear words, your brain gets present. A heaping part of losing attention is being unable to be present. So settle into reading first by settling into the sensory experience of the words. The words can be overlooked even while you’re looking at them by a mind that just sees — words visually are just abstract symbols. Words spoken and heard are a full sensory experience.

Read the first page, or two, or three out loud. Slowly. See if it doesn’t get your attention hopping — and back home to the experience of the language.

3. The Distracted Read

This may be for if you do truly experience symptoms of classic ADD/ADHD. I find it helps me tremendously.

Conversation, boring background lectures, white noise.

Silence can give me — and many others I know — over-focus. I can’t focus because I’m trying too hard. I have too much attention, and it’s racing past the page to the next twenty, or to dinner, or to the stifling afternoon quiet — whatever it is, it’s bored distracted, and too attentive. I put on dull youtube tutorials, or the child-safety-training I use for camp counseling, and voila, my ears are full, and my attention is free.

Or my ears are full of ignoring something dull. It seems to help.

4. The Listening Read

You may just want to listen for a while. If you can’t attend to a page, you may not be a visual-processor.

Try audiobooks for a bit.

5.  The Friend Read

Read with someone. Another’s presence can ground you — whether it be emotionally or otherwise. Especially if you’re an extrovert, reading with someone may be exactly what brings your body and mind back into the story, or content, of your book.

A friendly read removes the fear of isolation, and reminds the emotionally-distracted-mind that — although reading truly never is done in isolation, since it is an endless interaction and conversation with character, story, author, ideas, and self — it can appear to be an act of isolation. Reading, especially in our social-media-saturated world, can seem disconnected.

Reading with a friend can gently remove that impression. And restore attention.

So read like a boss. But don’t feel failed if you’re a distracted reader.  Troubleshoot the practice of reading, and peruse again for the fun of it, with tools that get you grounded on the page.

My Latest at Freelancers Union: 5 New Food Attitudes to Fuel Your Freelancing

“Think of your brain as an endurance athlete — but a performer of feats of invention rather than physical prowess. It needs fuel. And you probably need practice approaching food with a new attitude.  “

Check out my latest at The Freelancer’s Union!  You can nix the attitudes to nourishment that hold you back with these 5 new food attitudes.

4 Ways to Swap Burnout for Nourishment in Social Media

When Media Drain, How To Turn It Back Around

Do you notice you have the most scintillating copy and content to write for your clients on twitter and Facebook?

Do you notice, after a day braining the blazes out of it, you feel drained and dull? Personally, there are days I can’t remember what I wrote or the strategies I used to connect and engage my audience.

Social Media drain.  The constant buzz. The need to have something to say, and voracious need to beat the buzz with something better — if you write for a living or if you freelance with any form of content that has to fly out into the twitter-sphere, you’re set for one equation: all out, none in. The only answer to that math is a sum of empty.

Do these three things, and use the same tools you use for work to nourish your creativity,; you’ll flourish, and ultimately, your productivity will too.  But remember, it’s not about the product, it’s about the process.

1. “Our best and brightest need to stop viewing social media as a quick avenue to fame and fortune“(1)

View it as an avenue into conversation, an avenue for connection, an avenue and outlet for creativity.  But fame and fortune will drain you every time. You’re the best and brightest; you’re not a cog or a battery.

2. Take the quips, wisdoms, wise-cracks, and little gems of insight, and give them to yourself.

What?  Yes.  Carry a little notepad. Make it solid and physical.  When you think up a spark, write it to yourself first. Promote yourself first. Give yourself your own quotes, in your voice.

Your voice, which leads us to…

3. Allocate time to listen to your own values, your voice, your head.

Turn off everything. Take a 30 minute or hour walk if you can. Do something pointless, but enjoyably creative. Don’t be driven by brand-ese. Marketing is its own foghorn.  But your voice needs to be louder, and stronger, or you’ll lose the lungs to use that foghorn in work.

4.  Look at the ratio of time spent speaking in client “brand” or “voice” to the time spent just writing or speaking with your own voice.

If it’s 80/20 in favor of the brand, or the ad, turn it around.  I tried slam-poetry for a while; when I couldn’t go slam some poetry, I took walks and sang. Weird?  Irrelevant.  It made room for me in my life and authenticity and gave me back some perspective on my work as well.

You need meaning in your life to engage and create meaning.  But the bottom-line is: You need a life.  When media buzz become omnipresent, we lose all sense of connection.  By using the 4 strategies above, I turned my worst drain around, and funneled my resource back in to where the drain became an opportunity to re-fuel.

1. “The New American Brain Drain”

How to Freelance Your Fanny Into Meaningful Work

Working for someone whose mission and attitude you love:  You can’t buy that kind of client.  You can’t bill for that kind of client.  You can’t plan that kind of client.

But to have that kind of client makes working a journey and a discovery, instead of a drag or a slog.

So how do you give yourself the gift of meaningful work? After all, you’re freelancing: YOU get to choose, right?

The truth is, sometimes yes and sometimes no.

When I began freelancing, my first client looked like a winner.  This woman was a pearl with an artistic side-business and an elderly-care front business, and she talked shop like family. She just wanted to invite everybody in to the little shindig of her life, and pals was the catchword.

My job was a slightly unorthodox mix of promotion and some on-site care for the owner of the client’s apartment complex.

The bastard-blend of work could have been a warning.  At this point in my career, I would call it a definite red flag.  If my job is not clear as new paint, and carefully relegated to writing, branding, coaching, or social media support, I have come to expect blurry boundaries, arguments about rate, and increasing expectations as to my involvement and responsibility without increased pay.

It was no red-flag at the time. I was also a little starving on the work-frontier.

At the end of it, I got physically ill.  But I also cut ties professionally and completely.  What I didn’t cut was lingering awkwardness, and the fact that I was renting from said client’s client.

Awkward, yes. Uncomfortable, yes. Predictable? Avoidable? Probably not.

NOT MEANINGFUL WORK. NOT HEALTHY WORK.

The one thing I could have changed was my attitude of scarcity: that desperation that says take anything now you won’t make it you may not deserve better.

My next gig was better.  It came about not through starving, but through a friendship and referral. All right, I was in dire straits.  But I didn’t approach it as a kid in dire straits; I approached it like a manager interviewing a new employee.  Did I fit with this company?  Were they teachable?  Did they want to work with me, not pal around?

Most importantly: Did I resonate with their mission and business practice?

Personally, I cannot do branding work for a client whose mission or voice clash with mine.  It may be a universal rule of freelancing that good work is like a good marriage — compatibility and willingness to trust and communicate — but it is definitely a personal freelance rule for me.

Did I resonate? Yes.  Was it a perfect fit?  No, we talked it out. Was their mission meaningful and authentic?  Yes.

Do I love exploring the content they promote, hawking their courses across social media, and teaching their staff how to navigate blogging?  Absolutely yes.

I could not have planned this gig if I tried.  What I could do, and did, was own my voice, own my boundaries, respect my value — and remain open to the next opportunity.

You may not be able to plan the work that feels like play, exploration, or relationship, but you can do these three things to get in its way:

1. Know what you do, do what you do, and take clients who want what you do.

2. CHOOSE. Don’t dive for a gig out of desperation or wont. There is no scarcity of work.  Scarcity is fear in disguise, and it’s an attitude.

3.  Continue to develop YOUR voice. Without self-development, you won’t know if you’ve connected with a client who resonates or not.  You won’t have the chance to choose. You’ll lose your voice in the slog of someone’s brand.

So how do you find that sweet-spot of meaningful work?  Look out for it, expect it, and no — you can’t plan it.  But enjoy it when you get it — one good gig leads to another, as they say; and having a good time (or enjoying a good job) means giving a good time (and doing a good job).

My Latest at Freelancers Union: 5 things successful freelancers do to keep their sanity

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”—Aristotle

The same can be said of sanity.

Check out these tips my latest at The Freelancers Union! You can bee on the ropes — and stay sane with these daily reminders:

The 5 Things Successful Freelancers Do To Keep Their Sanity.

How Epic Fiction Frees Your Freelancing

What’s the first stage of burn-out?  A sense of purposelessness — that deadly inside voice so dull drumming out the beat of it’s not enough, it’s never enough. This is the last thing you need as a freelancer, and one of the first hurtles that most self-employed hit, and break themselves on.

So how can epic fiction get you up and over the fence?

Get Out of Yourself

 Any time you focus on one task for too long, you wear out the brain paths for that particular work.  Studies show the human attention span works ideally in 20 minute increments. After 20 minutes?  Your think box needs a change of channel and some fresh air. So what happens when you’re self-focused, project-focused, and under deadline for hours on end?

Exactly.  Burn, baby, burn.

Epic fiction gives you a total and complete break with the minutiae of the left-brain analytical. Better yet, fiction’s interior struggles and epic fiction’s cosmic challenges throw the fried freelancer into an oft-forgotten-truth: There’s a lot more out there than just me and this bleeding project deadline and my mad-scientist client. Or, you know, something along those lines.

I spent two whole days agonizing over non-stop content writing for a client at one point last year.  I finally threw it all in a metaphorical bin, went for a run, and crashed on the floor with Valente’s Fairyland books. I forgot myself entirely for a few hours. When I surfaced, I didn’t know where I was.  But I did know I had words again in my fingers, and I knew how to string them together to write a badass blog for this client, and then some.

Get out of yourself — you were meant to live in the epic world, not try to fit it all into your little head.

Have Some Fun

 Stories re-connect us to our creativity.  How are you supposed to freelance — whether it be graphic design, writing, web design — if you’re disconnected from that?  All right. Axe that. Stories re-connect us with out ability to play.

Play has no deadlines. Play is always perfect.  Play is where we learn and enjoy the things that make us who we are — and who we are is the only place from which we can work effectively, healthily, and happily.

Play is good.  Play teaches, without relegating us to cogs or demoting us to the lowly serf of utilitarian productivity. Play is part of fiction, and fiction connects us to our ability to empathize, learn, and relate to ourselves and others.

Have some fun.  Read some epic fiction.

And finally…

…some epic fiction is really bad.

Have a Laugh, Take a Break

Second most deadly deal for you freelancing freedom-fighters: Seriousness.  Perfectionism.  PARALYSIS.  I run into this bloke on a regular turn-table basis.  Getting stuck in my head, and in a whirl around a project or client without a break, turns me into a compulsive freak for perfection — and it is all based on the deadly serious.

No laughs, guys. No laughs.

Well, epic fiction:  You can be horrid to high heaven.  You can make no sense.  You can sometimes include wizards in speedos, heinous plot-twists, and long-lost-impossible-brothers-with-…is it a secret weapon to save the world again? YES! Sometimes.

When I was growing up, my dad had rather a thing for picking family movies. He had a thing, which was also a talent for picking the very worst film you had ever set eyes on. One such shiner included dialogue written by what must have an illiterate wookiee from his marooned bark in the North Pole. It was so bad, we laughed for days.

It’s good to be bad sometimes. In less paradoxical prose, it’s good to laugh and not worry about making sense.  It’s good to laugh at yourself.

Working for yourself often looks like freedom at first. It isn’t if you don’t give yourself a break, disengage, and get epic.  If you’re the sort that really just can’t find a tooth to sink into epic fiction, try a story anyhow.

Our sense of well-being and ability to work is directly proportional to our sense of purpose. 

We freelancers are free-folk, if we give ourselves the break, the laugh…and the epic fiction. Purpose doesn’t come from being productive.  Purpose comes from having a sense of something great, receiving the cool beans of the universe, and doing what we love.

Next time you’re 8 hours in and feeling like a mole-in-a-mountain, why not try taking a time-out for the epic?

Some epic fiction recommendations if you’re at a loss:

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

Wheel of Time  by Robert Jordan (always thought this was a snorter)

Alphabet of Thorn  by Patricia McKillip

Dalemark Quartet  by Diana Wynne Jones

The Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb

The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

The Girl Who…Fairyland Trio  by Catheryne Valente

The Runelords  by David Farland

Disclaimer: Not all titles recommended for stellar literary merit. Some, as noted, snorters.  But that’s the point.

Weird Works: Freelancing, Freelancers Union, BRANDING

 

Some of the best support I ever received in growing a business skips right along with THIS article (Why being weird works)

Be. YOU.

One hears the siren call of branding; the blast to put fangs into your FB posts; SEO and key words.  Don’t deviate!

The truth of the matter is, there’s balance.  Consistency is important.

But do you know what?  Being odd gets you clients; and being you is what you’re hired for — your audacity, your authenticity, your quirks and talents.  Communicate yourself well, with art and diligence and enthusiasm. But don’t  dumb down your highs, or spike your lows.  You don’t need to mainstream; you don’t need to slick.

Be an audacious son of a monkey.

Your words are important; and as important as your words is your voice.  Anyone can write empower; educate;  connect.  Who do those words connect to though?

To put it visually: Anyone can type a branding concept or word.  But what’s your font?  And where do you fling that beauty,  and with what heart or head or intent?

As the excellent freelancer does below, I shall quote Gervais: “People everywhere in the world will recognize and appreciate… innovation…. From my own experiences I’ve learned that quirky, different, fringe projects that may only be cult, often travel a lot better internationally. “

Travel yourself internationally.  Communicate well.  But don’t feel the compulsion to slick your metaphoric-hair down and stick to talking points.

If you’re an artist, a freelancer, a speaker, your audacity, your you is what gets you jobs.

It also gets you happy.

But who cares about that?  Pardon my flippancy.  Happiness also attracts clients.  So love what you do, and be yourself about it.

Freelancing and Rate: Get What You’re Worth, KNOW What You’re Worth

I love Sara Horowitz and the Freelancers Union.  But I especially love this most recent posting on fee rates and freelancing, because the waters of setting your own rate are rocky, and fears of charging too much or too little can paralyze us into waffling.

Here’s the article: How To Get Paid…‘

But if you want the digest, take these bullet points–

• Know your own worth, and don’t be afraid to charge what you’re worth
• Research your market
• Have a system
• Know that it’s your job to communicate your value, and to educate your client about just what you provide

Sometimes, we fly by the seats of our trousers, and that works.  But don’t balance your livelihood on a zipline fling with a hook in your belt loop.  Investing time in yourself, your business, and confidence in your value speaks volumes — in fact, it shows your client you’re worth the cash shelled out.

Know what you’re worth, and act like you’re worth it.

But check the article out for some in-depth suggestions for just how to calculate what you need, and how to offer it.