One of my biggest challenges in running a creative business has been being productive while working from my bedroom studio. After talking to my artist friends, I realised that this is something most artists/ business owners who are working from home struggle with.

Being your own boss comes with its own set of challenges. And the struggle of being productive and responsible for our production timelines is a common theme.

In this blog post, I am going to share what helps me get out of a slump and get going!

Becoming a Neutral Observer

I have been making a conscious effort to be a neutral observer of my own life, and that extends to my journey as an artist and how I show up in my business.

When we approach situations from the point of neutrality we can look at things from the lens of how things played out, instead of how we think things played out when looking through a lens clouded by our feelings. So look at things objectively, and put subjectivity aside.

When we can shed our biases and look at things play-by-play, we create the space to shift things because it is a space devoid of judgment.

Acknowledging the Status Quo

It all starts with acknowledging the current state of things. Acknowledging that, ‘The production cycle is behind schedule’, ‘I let a lot of time pass by’, or whatever that thing bringing you down is.

And while doing the same, it is important to remove the self-deprecating language. Saying negative things about ourselves like ‘I am lazy’, ‘I always do this’, ‘Why do I keep self-sabotaging myself’, keeps us stuck in those behaviours and ways of being.

Embracing Curiosity

After we have acknowledged that something is not working, the next step is to get curious! The quality of your questions determines the quality of your answers and consequently the quality of your life.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to shift your focus from the problems to the solutions- ‘What caused this task to be delayed?’, ‘What roadblocks did I face in the timely and successful completion of the task?’, ‘What can I do differently next time?’, ‘How can I break this task down and cut down my overwhelm?’

“Contrary to popular thinking, success is not built on a foundation of failures but through the learnings and improvements that come from it. Each failure teaches us what won’t work – and when we figure out the root cause for failure – we learn what could work.”

[Quoted from David Wee’s 27.05.2019 article titled ‘The Difference between Success and Failure is 1 and 9’ published on LinkedIn]

Get into Action!

Once I have identified what’s not working, I put my head down, put my blinders on, and get into action! My secret is to just get to it without giving myself the time to analyze the situation and come up with a perfectly valid argument about why I should stay where I am.

The same action creates the same results. If you want different results, you ought to take different actions. Because action creates change.

If there’s one thing you take away from this blog post, let it be this.

You’ve probably heard this many times, but that’s because it really is the not-so-secret ‘secret’ to bring about any kind of change- Get into action!