The Heart To Start: Win the Inner War & Let Your Art Shine

parts sounded interesting to me. Then I’d pick the most interesting-sounding
chapter of all of the books and I’d scan the subheadings. If I got pulled in by
the content, I’d keep reading. Otherwise, I’d move on to another chapter in
another book.
By reducing my own sense of commitment in reading a book, I gave reading a
fighting chance over Facebook when I had a moment free. Like many people,
I had previously believed that if I picked up a book, I was somehow
committing to reading the whole book. Or I’d think that I needed to start at
the beginning, with the introduction. With my new relationship to books, I
had complete permission to start wherever I liked and to put the book down if
it wasn’t interesting. I found that there were many little pockets of time
throughout my day when I could have been reading – yet I had been filling
those pockets with Facebook.
The same way those little pockets of time I was filling with Facebook would
sometimes spiral into much longer, unproductive, and unsatisfying sessions,
the little pockets of time I was filling with reading books grew into longer
reading sessions that were both productive and satisfying. Over time, I grew
from reading snippets of books to reading entire books. In the couple of years
since I hijacked my Facebook habit with a book-reading habit, I’ve read more
than a hundred books, I’ve collected thousands of interesting facts and stories
that I use in my writing, and by reading lots of writing, I’ve improved my
own writing. I still use Facebook, but just for a few minutes a day, and I’m
easily able to stop because I’d rather be reading a book.
I’ve extended this method of mentally reducing the investment to other parts
of my work. If I have a moment free, I might pick up my phone and
brainstorm some bullet-points of things I’d like to talk about with a podcast
guest or what points I’d like to make in a blog post. By giving myself
permission to make a small investment in my art, I sometimes build
momentum and find myself drafting a whole blog post on my phone –
especially if my dentist happens to keep me waiting longer than usual.

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This isn’t to say that you need to quit using Facebook, or that reading books is
necessarily productive for you, personally. The point is that you have many
little pockets of time throughout the day when you could start making your
art. You don’t have to be sitting at the easel or in the recording studio. You
might be riding the train, standing in line, or waiting for a friend to arrive at
the cafe. If you take the pressure off yourself and let yourself make a tiny
start, you often make way more progress than you could have imagined.
If you have only a few minutes free, you can jot down notes about characters
for your novel. You can beatbox a song into your smartphone. Even if you’re
a chef, you can make progress on your art while waiting. Simply Recipes
founder Elise Bauer told me that she sometimes brainstorms flavor
combinations in her own mind.
Watch out for times when you are Inflating the Investment. What low-
commitment things do you end up doing instead of making your art? Change
your perception of what it takes to get started. Your art will not only fill the
tiny spaces in your life, it will expand and grow into a body of work.
I inflated the investment, in part, because I believed I had to read a book from
start to finish. A similar mental distortion makes us think that we need to
make our art in a linear progression. We’ll cover this in the next chapter and
discuss what to do about it.

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