Time To Create – The One Percent Wake Up

[Dan Goodwin]

Do you have enough time to create? Do you find it easy to set specific creative time aside and commit to just creating without distraction? Do you allow yourself to spend time simply creating without worrying about all the other things that seem to demanding your attention?

For most of us the answer is no, no and no again.

At the core of this struggle to find time to create is the belief we have and keep telling ourselves: “I don’t have time to create...”

If you tell yourself something often enough, whatever the cold hard facts are, you’ll start to believe it, and accept it is real. Worse then that, you’ll accept it as something that’s set in stone and can’t ever be changed.

Try saying out loud right now: “I don’t have time to create.”

How does it make you feel? Empowered and in control? Able to choose exactly what you want to do with your time? No again.

So how can you turn this belief around and actually let the possibility that you CAN make time to create start to seep through the cracks like the first rays of sunshine on a summer morning?

There’s a great technique that will instantly help you see your “time challenged” situation differently. Welcome to the One Percent Wake Up.

Let’s explain. The key to creating consistently, to building your creative confidence and reaching your potential is to create every day. This can be as little as 15 minutes.

Now 15 minutes is a quarter of one hour. And there are 24 hours in each day, we’ll all get the same amount of time. This means than there are 96 chunks of 15 minutes in a whole day, (4 per hour multiplied by 24 hours). Stay with me.

So when you commit to creating for 15 minutes a day, that’s just one little bite size chunk of time out the 96 you have available on any given day.

This means that in a whole day, for every one chunk of time you spend creating, you then spend another 95 chunks doing other things.

1 out 96 is approximately 1%. Committing to 15 minutes each day means your devoting a tiny 1% of your time to creating.

Here’s what that looks like visually:

Is that an amount that seems a reasonable starting point for anyone who knows how important creating is to them, their life and their happiness?

Welcome to the One Percent Wake Up.

If you feel that 1% of your time each day, each week, each year of your life is too much to give over to creativity, then I would suggest you stop reading and think seriously about how important creating really is for you.

Still reading? Great, then it’s time to put the One Percent Wake Up into action. Start today, set aside a specific chunk of 15 minutes. Write down when you’re going to do, and don’t be sidetracked. Do the same tomorrow, the next day and beyond.

In just a couple of weeks, you’ll have the beginnings of a powerful daily creativity habit that you can use to create absolutely anything you set your mind – and your creativity – to achieving.

[Barbara Ann Storrier]

This helped me immensely when I discovered it during the Time To Create course you did a few months ago, Dan ... it's such a little bit, and it makes a big difference! I do at least fifteen minutes every morning, and the days when I don't work I get a few more chunks ... it's great!