Notes From the Creative Planning Workshop
Workshop notes for those interested in increasing their productivity, motivation and confidence with creative planning.
If you’ve seen any of my YouTube videos or pictures of my office you may be familiar with my post-it planning A3 sheet of paper on the noticeboard behind my desk. Or you may have seen my planning notebook in Instagram reels, in my videos or in pictures on my Substack.
These two items are part of the system I use to help me plan my writing and other creative projects. My system has evolved over the years and is based on the premise of taking really tiny steps to become more productive, more motivated and eventually more confident with my writing and associated projects.
I’ve used this system on projects such as: becoming monetised on YouTube, creating this Substack, writing a workbook called Journaling Your Goals which I sell through my website and finishing my non-fiction book proposal which I did last week and is now with my beta reader.
The idea is that breaking down my big, scary projects into smaller steps makes them feel more manageable and less scary. All I have to do is concentrate on the task before me and not worry about the finished and final project. Sounds simple, right? But many of us say to ourselves I’m going to write a book, for example, and set about doing it, only to give up because of overwhelm and fears. Tiny steps help get around those fears.
However, before I start working out my to-do list and breaking my projects down into smaller steps, I brainstorm and ensure I am working on the projects that align with my overall creative goals and ambitions. Over the years I have spent hours and hours (and hours!) working on a creative project only to realise I was doing it because I thought I should - not because it was going to get me closer to my ultimate goals.
Just before we tick over into a new month, I have a mini-brainstorm and work out what projects I’m going to focus on in the forthcoming month. You may have seen this process in videos such as this one:
(I’m hoping to upload an April re-set very soon).
Due to the number of views these types of videos get me and the questions I was receiving, I started to think about creating workshops to talk more in-depth about my process. On Sunday I held my second creative planning workshop but I’m aware not everyone can attend; whether that’s time differences or because of other commitments.
So, below the paywall, I’m going to summarise the workshop questions and exercises we worked through for our April planning session.
This is for you if:
You’re fed up with dreaming about all the creative projects you want to do and want to crack on and make progress.
You feel overwhelmed with all the ideas you have.
You feel you have no ideas.
You aim to achieve every project idea that passes through your head in the same week or month and when that doesn’t happen you feel like a failure.
You don’t know where to start.
Your head is alive with thoughts, ideas, and whispers of ‘you can’t do this’, or ‘this is beyond you’, or ‘why bother, you’ll simply fail’.
SPECIAL SUBSCRIBER OFFER: You can now gain 20% off annual AND monthly plans for 12 months (until March 31st).
We will go into more detail in the live Planning Workshops (the next one is on Sunday 28th April at 5pm British Summer Time). This is where I will go through the exercises with you and share my issues, answers and experiences which may help you understand your own planning situation better.
But, if you cannot attend and would like the knowledge behind my planning systems then this is the next best thing I can offer.