When in doubt, do the feng shui thing

Okay, so I've got a whole slew of projects underway, and each has three main media types associated with it: print book, electronic (webpage/blog), and audio (podcast). I've got a lot of content I'm in the process of refining and producing. I've got tens of audio files I recorded here and there as "guerilla podcasts) (with my hand-held iRiver 890), and now need to strip out the excess audio (background noise from passing traffic, pauses when I needed to catch up with myself, sneezes, coughts, etc.) I've also got lots of print content to edit, namely my book Fuel which is ever so close to being complete. And when that's done, I need to format the manuscript, upload it to Lulu.com, and be on my merry published way.

In the meantime, I've got a virtual book tour to produce for Fuel, and I've got to document the process, as well, so that others can see just how easy it is, and consequently sign up for podcasting with Podtopia.net and purchase the Virtual Book Reading Tour "cookbook".

It's all related, you see. And not much of it is entirely sequential. A lot of these tasks can be done in tandem, like recording readings for Fuel and making note of needed edits as I go along. Like producing the podcasts of the virtual book tour and documenting the process as I go. Like nailing down edits in print and formatting the manuscript. Like blogging about the process as I go. All of it can happen together, or in various combinations. The idea of breaking down all these tasks into individual pieces, is starting to look foolish.

I'm coming to realize more and more that coventional planning just doesn't cut it, when it comes to a "multi-threaded creative process". Where creations are non-sequential, or they can be completed at the same time, my habit of keeping track of what all I need to do (ahead of time) becomes overly burdensome and actually prohibitive. I've long been a compulsive planner, writing my lists of things to do, breaking down all the tasks into sub-tasks, mapping steps out, and checking them off as I go. But in this PEAPOD process, the fact that multiple steps can take place in tandem, but I'm never absolutely certain how things will fit together, till I'm in process, trying to map everything out ahead of time and then follow specific steps, just hinders my process.

This is where feng shui (or my understanding of feng shui) comes in. It's my understanding that feng shui is about understanding the energy patterns of a space, and then taking steps to make the most of that energy... by placing fans or flutes or mirrors in certain locations, or arranging furniture a certain way. From what I've read, it's also about using a room for what its purpose is -- not using your kitchen as a library, not using your bathroom as a study, not using your living room to store extra unused items. It's about understanding, respecting, and working with energy, from what I understand -- of course, I could be wrong.

That's the strategy I'm now taking with PEAPOD -- understanding what kind of energy I've got going on, at the time when I sit down to work, respecting that energy, and working with it. I honestly have so much I want to get done, there's no danger of me frittering away my time. I need to trust the energy I have, and believe that it will guide me in the right direction that I need to go in, on my little productivity odyssey.

Trust plays into this a good deal. Planning, to me, seems to be somewhat about a lack of trust -- it's mapping out Things To Be Done ahead of time, in the belief that they Must Be Done in a certain way, at a certain time. Surely, it's important (when you're working in a large group of people on a complex project with lots of interdependencies) to understand where you're going and what you're doing. But when you're on your own, like I am now, and your projects are limited in scope (tho' not in reach), trying to plot everything out ahead of time and lock yourself into a schedule, can be the least productive habit you can practice.

When you're on your own, you've got to follow the energy. Especially if you're a creative person, like I am, on a creative mission, like this is. The creative impulse is an "organic" and unpredictable thing, with myriad interconnected interdependencies that tie in with things like the weather, how much sleep you got the night before, how your physical health is, what's going on with you emotionally, etc. The energy you have isn't something that be carefully mapped and controlled and managed. Creative energy is a flow. And that flow thrives on the unpredictable and uncontrollable. In fact, the more variables there are in your energy flow, the less predictable it is, the more peaks and valleys exist along the creative path, the richer the inspiration and the more productive your muse(s) can be. The creative actually benefits from chaos. Not too much chaos, of course -- it needs to be balanced. But balancing chaos and controlling it are two different things.

While in a larger organization or in a corporate environment, success is largely based on consistency and predictability, on a smaller, creative scale, consistency and predictability can be tremendously numbing and dumbing-down. On a larger corporate scale, planning helps get you where you're going, on a smaller, individual scale, planning can just get in the way. When you're moving with the energy, depending on your energy, guided by the whims of chaos, any attempt to predict or control it, can just get in the way.

So, I'm doing the feng shui thing. I'm following the energy, listening to it, taking cues from it, and getting some stuff done. For real. Not according to plan, but much quicker than I was, when I was planning it all out.