Compartmentalizing, Obsession And Time Blocking - a podcast by Jai//Em

Links & Quick Notes:

Compartmentalizing, Obsession and Time Blocking. This week I want to walk you through my experience with these three things, share how I think they are related, and strategize how we can use them to get creative shit done.

Complete Guide To Time Blocking
Time Blocking 101
Best Time Blocking Apps
Obsession: Your Key...
Obsessive People Likely To Be Successful

Final Scene, Six Feet Under, featuring "Breathe Me" by Sia
Is Six Feet Under's Finale the Best Finale of All Time?

Oxygen Not Include Game Trailer
Life-Changing Habit of Journaling

Full Show Notes:

The X Factor: Australia, Food Network Star, The Tyra Banks Show, The Apprentice:UK, Deal Or No Deal, Noah's Ark, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Go Diego Go, So You Think You Can Dance, Intervention, Mock Of The Week, The Colbert Report, Entertainment Tonight: Canada, Dancing With The Stars, The Deadliest Catch, The Boondocks, Everybody Hates Chris, Ghost Whisperer, The Sweet Life of Zach And Cody, American Dad, Avatar The Last Airbender (Nickelodeon), Bones, America (Brazilian drama), How I Met Your Mother, Dr. Who (reboot), Criminal Minds, Grey's Anatomy, and The Office…. All shows that premiered in 2005.

Hey, hi and hello! Welcome to Creative4evr. The podcast dedicated to keeping you forever inspired, forever motivated, forever creative, and forever YOU.  I am your host, Janet, a.k.a. Jai//Em, a.k.a. the voice inside your head, a.k.a. your biggest fan, and together we’re going to get some creative shit done.

All right! First, I want to make sure that everybody is staying safe and doing what they need to do to take care of themselves during this terrible time of Coronavirus (Covid-19). This outbreak is worldwide, as you know. Please continue to take care of yourselves, be safe, stay inside as much as you can, please, please, please so that we can #flattenthecurve and get through this.

I thought it was going to be maybe a month, but it looks like it could be much longer than that. But we can do it! Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. I'm thinking about you.

All right, so this week we're going to talk about three things: Compartmentalizing, Obsession and Time Blocking. I've had to get very serious about these three things so that I can get out of my own way to be as productive and creative as possible day-to-day, week-to-week. I thought this would be a great thing to share with you. How I think compartmentalizing, obsession and time-blocking are related, and strategize how you can use these things to get creative shit done.

COMPARTMENTALIZING

Do you compartmentalize? Do you do it all the time, most of the time or occasionally?

Compartmentalize means to divide into sections or categories. Most often associated with emotions and feelings. The best example I guess would be someone that is in a relationship and yells at their partner, You never tell me what you're feeling. I never know what you're going through because you never share, it never comes out of you. You are compartmentalizing and I'm not a part of those areas of your life and I want to be…

I'm just making something up right but basically, when we think of “compartmentalizing” we usually think about emotions and feelings and whether people are dividing those emotions and feelings into certain categories of their lives and not sharing them outside of those categories. Or if they do, feelings and emotions from all sections of their life affect all other parts of their life.

When I started writing this episode, I immediately wrote the words, "I compartmentalize all the time.” And then I was like, you damn liar. You absolutely do not compartmentalize all the time, not even most of the time. I already said the word is most often associated with feelings and emotions, and…have I met myself?

Remember back when Six Feet Under was the HBO TV show that everyone was obsessed with? Well when that show ended in 2005… And I remember watching the finale (crying the entire time). I then immediately downloaded the song "Breathe Me" by Sia, which plays over the last 10 minutes of the finale, and then fell into a deep depression. This tells you right from jump, I wasn’t compartmentalizing my emotions because I let this made up story, I saw on TV depress me. Then I let those feelings bleed into my actual life. God help someone if they hadn't watched the show and I found out about it. I was immediately like, What do you mean, you haven’t seen the show?! What are you watching instead?.......... Ummm, so I don’t know what you are doing with your life, but no one is gonna be thinking about those shows you just mentioned in 15 years. You need to watch Six Feet Under so you understand WHY I’m so upset, WHY I’m attacking you at work…

So, I’m being hyperbolic (but only a little a bit). My point is, I don’t usually compartmentalize. I carry emotions and feelings from one situation right on into the next one.  And you know what? I am okay with that! Notice when I initially asked you the question, I did not say, Are you GOOD or BAD at compartmentalizing? I don’t want you to judge yourself if you don’t do it, nor do I want you to praise yourself for doing it. Too often we assign value to our personal characteristics or habits for no reason. Thou shall not compartmentalize! is not a thing.  Compartmentalizing is Golden! is also not a thing. You either do it often or you don’t. Simple as that.

And what I have discovered this week through asking other people about their compartmentalizing habits, is that most of the time when someone does compartmentalize, it’s to section-off the bad feelings and emotions they have. Example: After a shitty day at work… Well most of us ATTEMPT to compartmentalize the feelings and emotions associated with that bad day and leave them at work. We try not to bring that energy home with us. I’m not saying we’re successful, I’m saying we try. However, when most of us have a great day at work, we want to bring those positive emotions and feelings home with us. We try to take that good energy with us everywhere.

And thinking about it this way, leads to me to believe that the closer each of us gets to living our best life, the less compartmentalizing of emotions and feelings we’ll do because that energy, those emotions and feelings will be positive and we’ll WANT to them to affect the other areas of our life! I dunno, I never thought about it that way, but after talking to other people about it, I think it’s interesting and a new life goal for me. To get to my best life and so I will never really compartmentalize because I'll want those emotions and feelings to go with me wherever I go.

OBSESSION

Next up! Obsession. You know what I can do!? OBSESS. I can get wildly obsessed with something and then focus on it for hours, days, weeks, months. I can spend every fiber of my being thinking about 1 thing from all angles whether that be a crush, or a new computer I want, a new project, or even 1 paragraph of something I'm writing. When I get into the zone of obsession, NOTHING but death can keep me from it.

Now this, unlike compartmentalizing should probably have some value assigned to it. Obsession is not necessarily a good thing, and in extreme circumstances is very problematic, but I am gonna keep it real, my amount of obsession has served me well. I end up spending such a considerable amount of time and focus on projects and ideas or whatever that I am usually successful. Let's put it this way, it's good when I'm obsessed about something career oriented. It's bad when it's about Harry Potter because I fall deep into the rabbit hole and ultimately waste time.  Right now, I am currently obsessed with the video game Oxygen Not Included. It’s a space-colony simulation game. You land on a rock and you and your crew have to survive with the equipment, tools and little food you have. It’s a resource management game. You dig out coal and metal ore, etc. and use these things to power your generators and keep oxygen in your base otherwise everyone will suffocate. You can build very elaborate worlds over time. Right now, I am trying to master hydrogen power plant designs that provide power to the whole base without too much carbon dioxide output. I bet I am losing half of you with this video game tangent, my point is, I’m obsessed.

WHAT HAVE LEARNED SO FAR?

So, what have we surfaced about me so far? That I carry my emotions and feelings across all facets of my life, and I don’t mind it! It's a part of who I am.

And that my ability to obsess is also something I don’t mind either. I like being able to focus on things intensely.

So, the question becomes, how can I use this, how can my lack of compartmentalizing and my obsession help me, give me an advantage?

JOURNALING

So, I've been trying to answer this question for years. How do I do it. Take my emotion and feeling and obsessions and use them to get creative shit done. And I've tried a lot of things.

I tried tough love. Having conversations with myself where I lay down the law and demand that I get my act together and focus! Janet! Take this feeling, explore it, write something and finish it. Do it now. Do it!  -- I don’t have to tell you that this approach didn’t work for me. It’s scary and mean and didn’t do anything for my confidence or inspiration.

I tried letting it happen organically! Relaxing into the idea that good things will come to me if I don’t try to force anything and I just remain open it and positive. Janet, if you get inspired to take an emotion and do something with it, great. If you don’t know worries, no pressure. It’ll happen eventually. -- I don’t have to tell you that this approach didn’t work me either. I had more ideas and dreams than I did when I was trying to tough love them out of me, but nothing materialized after that.  And that’s because we, as creative people, have to assume a base level of effort in order to start and finish a project. Remember dreams and then steps toward those dreams? Trying to let it happen organically was all dreams and no steps.

I tried journaling and…this has really worked for me. I usually do it in the evening and it helps me tremendously because I can get my emotions and feelings out, and I can get them all out, unfiltered, without worrying how I sound, or how I might be perceived. Journaling allows me to focus my emotions and feelings on a piece of paper and then I am able to go back, understand myself a little better, find the seed of an idea or dream, and sometimes I’m even able to pull directly from my journal. I have found a lot of dialogue for characters in my journals.

So journaling is good, and I highly recommend it.  However, and we’ll talk more about it in another episode, journaling acts more like a database or library of feelings and emotions that we can then explore to find something to focus into action. But we don’t want journaling to hinder us by being our only door to creative action.

We need the option to skip journaling and jump straight into channeling emotion and feeling into something more. Example: There have been times where I have strong feelings about something going in the world politically. And politics move fast, right? So, it doesn’t serve me to have strong feelings about something, write them down in a journal and then come back later to write an opinion piece for a blog. By the time I do all that the emotion and passion I felt has started to dissipate, not to mention because hot topics like politics move so fast if I don’t act immediately, it may be old news in a matter of hours.

Another example of this comes up for me at certain times of the day. I am a morning person so that is always a great time for me. I feel good, I feel happy, I feel alert and confident. I’m always in the best position to use my feelings and emotions to take steps toward my dreams in the morning. So yeah, I could start my mornings journaling and catalog my thoughts, but it would be more efficient if I just dived right into a project a took advantage of my morning-personness. Is that a word?

TIME BLOCKING

So, here is what I’ve started to do and what I encourage you to explore and try yourself. Time blocking.

So, time blocking is a productivity management strategy that challenges you to divide your tasks, actions, responsibilities into blocks of time. And for those of you thinking, Jai//Em, I already my meetings and appointments scheduled in my phone. Well this is a little more aggressive than that. This is not just adding your 3 pm call to your calendar, this is scheduling ALL your calls and meetings to happen during a specific block of time so that you are focused only on that. No checking emails during that time, no eating lunch during that time, just all the meetings and calls back-to-back.

Complete Guide To Time Blocking
Time Blocking 101
Best Time Blocking Apps

Now the reason I have had success with time-blocking as a creative is I have been able to provide structure around the most optimal parts of my day – my mornings. Of course, the way you choose to time block will be based on your own life. In my case, I don’t have kids or pets. I have access food at my day job, and I don’t have to operate transportation to get to work, I just ride the subway. So, with all of this in mind, here is how a great week usually goes for me.

I typically have 3 blocks of time in my calendar each morning during the week. 2 are called Morning Focus and the other is technically Self-care but usually I just label it as gym. Alright, first Morning Focus block. This is very early in the morning 5 am – 7 am. And during this time, I do creative work, whatever that may be. Writing a podcast episode, researching topics for future content creation, getting a portion of a book chapter out of my head, creating musical interludes for the podcast. What I can tell you is, during this time, I don’t check emails or social media. I don’t read or listen to books; I don’t even have breakfast during this time. I may have some tea, but that is it.

2nd block of time -- Self-care or the gym block. It’s usually 90 minutes long and includes 1 hour for physical activity, and about 30 minutes to get ready for the day with a yogurt or bowl of cereal squeezed in. During this time, I listen to podcasts, an audible book, music or even a rough cut of something I’ve recorded to make sure sound quality is good. Now I always use these 90 minutes to listen to something because it is very easy to do so while working out or showering, I have headphones at the gym, and I blast the phone so I can hear it in the shower. Anyway, 90 minutes later that block is done and am good to go.

Third block of time – Morning Focus again! Now, this one is a little different because I sometimes record an episode during this time, and sometimes I use it for my day job. If my day job workload is crazy, then this is when I start the day working from home before I go in. It’s easier to focus and it brings my start of the workday stress level down. You know that feeling when you walk into your day job and there is sort of a panic in your heart because you sit down and think to yourself, Where, do I begin today? Oh, good morning Steve. Okay, I guess I’ll look through—What? A meeting when? Okay, sure, okay I’m gonna-- Oh, hi Lisa, yes good morning, okay, wait an email…. 

I hate that shit. And having a morning focus block at home really helps me when my day job workload is large. However, if things are going smooth at work, I usually record. I have the house to myself by this time as my spouse has gone to her job, and often I am recording what I wrote in the first focus block. It’s funny because recording takes the least amount of time for the podcast, if I finish quickly I will either start editing or jump back to whatever I was doing in the 1st morning focus. The best part is, I can literally walk out of the door at any time because I am already ready to go.

I end these 3 blocks of time by getting on the train. This is where I will read a book on my phone, watch a TV show I downloaded on my phone, or listen to music, a podcast, audible or another rough cut of something I’ve recorded to make sure sound quality is good. Usually I chill out and watch a TV show.

So – during a good week, I am able to use time blocking and my good energy morning-person emotion and feelings and focus it into action, into steps toward my dreams. By the time I’ve walked into my day job --- I’ve had 1, usually 2 opportunities to focus on creativity, and at least 1 opportunity to focus and get a head start on my workday if I needed. I’ve worked out, and I’ve indulged in an activity I enjoy like a tv show, book, or podcast. All this by 10 am.

The rest of the day, once I get to work and everything after that, I don’t time block anything except my sleep which I almost always happens from 9 pm to 5 am. This is because I usually have a variety of things going on the rest of the day and evening which doesn’t work well with time-blocking. When I was trying to do it, I was just setting myself up for failure and disappointment. I could never guarantee that I’d be home and done with work by 7 pm, or that my day wouldn’t have my emotions and feelings all over the place leaving me tired and unmotivated. So, in the evenings, I get a journal entry done! I take my emotions and feelings and focus them on the page, try to get them out of my heart and mind in order to save them for another time when I can successfully focus them into something actionable.  Outside of a journal entry in the evenings, I let life happen and get in bed by my sleep time block at 9 pm.

Now Saturdays and Sundays, my favorite days as a creative person, are my obsession days! And I love it! On these days I pick something and just obsess. It can be trying to master that video game I was telling you about earlier, jumping into a book and finishing it the same day, teaching myself how to use Adobe After Effects, or a marathon podcast editing session. The fact of the matter is, I always get so much done during this time! I think it’s because I allow myself to really enjoy whatever I decide to obsess over. I never pick something I hate, you know? It’s never taxes or paying bills or doing the dishes. I do that stuff in the evenings when I’m not at my best. HA! On the weekend days I obsess and conquer and obsess some more.

So, what if you time blocked a portion of your day? What if you allowed yourself an obsession day or hour?  Do you think you would be able to focus your emotions and feelings during this time into something fruitful? Into creative action? You may not have the same lifestyle as me, you may have kids or a night work schedule or Tuesdays off, not Saturdays, but whatever your week-to-week is, I bet you can find some consistent time to block off and take advantage of. So many of you are night owls. You could do your time blocking between 10p and Midnight. And remember when we talked about making sacrifices for your creativity in a previous episode? That I often pass up drinks after work, etc. so I can stay on schedule, not be hungover and have time for more creativity? Well, now is a good time to try this out while we have to social distance. You have probably found a few free hours of time in your days now that you’d usually be out in these streets. What if you time block them to get creative?

Of course, it will take some time get into the habit of time-blocking and you will never be 100% at it. I have 7 Self-care, a.k.a gym, chunks blocked out of my schedule each week and I usually only do 4 of them as I described above. The other 3 I dedicate to laundry or cleaning up which is also self-care… or I sometimes I just have a half-assed work out, which I am okay with. No matter how intense that block of time is, it’s still a self-care time block and I use it as such. Same with the morning focus time block. It’s never about HOW MUCH or HOW INTENSELY I use that time, it’s simply that I use that time to focus my energy, emotions and feelings on creativity, every day.

So I encourage you to try time blocking out. I'm gonna put a bunch of links in the show notes so that you can read some more about it.( See above) Do what works for you start slowly start small.

I also urge you to embrace not being able to compartmentalize embrace having emotions and feelings throughout the day from all parts of your day and seeing what you can do with those if you focus it into work into. Something creative into a project or business and that you also obsess and obsess freely when you have time to and see what that does for your you know heart and soul because I'm telling you makes me feel good.

All right, it's been a pleasure doing this show today. It's really done my heart some good writing this episode. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @Creative4evr. Until next time stay safe be conscious about what's going on around you if you can help others.

Please do isolation and social distancing is a way to help others, so just keep that in mind when you feel like you just need to leave the house you are helping others by staying at home. And we will talk next week.

Oh and I think I'm gonna start releasing Creative4evr podcast episodes on Fridays. So hear me out. I think if I release them on Fridays because I love Saturday and Sunday as like my creative days so much that if I release them on Fridays, then you get to hear about being creative on a Friday which might set you up for success during the weekend, right? 

So, Yeah, we're gonna try that. We were doing Wednesdays now we're gonna do Fridays. I like it. We'll see if you do too. Okay. Don't forget to be creative this week even if you just think about it. Later!

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