Setting Realistic Goals

I am a person of the extremes. There is absolutely never an in between with me. I have an aversion to middle ground. I don't know balance. I am all or nothing. 

I briefly mentioned in last weeks post that I'm trying to maintain a healthy work/life balance. Remember? Yeah... I'm really shit at it. 

I am pretty much all or nothing in every aspect of my character and I think I always have been. This basically means I am really obsessively passionate or disinterested. This can be both excellent and problematic. It particularly affects the creative process. It means I know what I like and can produce strong content around it. But it also means that if I'm not utterly engaged I cannot motivate myself to produce work.  

Creatives tend to be sporadic. It is natural for creativity to peak and digress and sometimes leave you for months or years. Like, every six pages of my notebook says something along the lines of 'my words won't work'. Nearly everyone I know who is part of/aspires to be part of the creative industry struggles to be creative. It is a fact. And it is a fact I am comfortable with in some ways. I think to some extent, the lack of creativity is simply a part of creating. 

However, my all or nothing attitude seems to only worsen the sporadic nature of my creativity. My 'all' side has some perfectionist qualities which have given me a terrible fear of putting out anything that isn't everything it could be. Everything I produce must be 'all', perfect, my very best. This is problematic when you are trying to create on a regular basis. To keep people interested in your online content you must be consistent. However, naturally, my creativity levels are not consistent. I cannot post an excellently written and beautifully presented blog every 3 days. It simply isn't feasible. My creativity cannot keep up with it. 

Maya of the past attempted to find solutions to this problem. Instead of posting a simple blog post, like the OOTW last week, which frankly people seem to find relatively engaging, I didn't post anything at all. I convinced myself that if it isn't an 1000 word, moral based post with at least a 1/8 of sarcasm and humour then it simply wasn't good enough. As a consequence we got a 7 month period of no writing, a lot of deleted posts and an irrational fear towards blogging. (RE: That time I didn't post at all between July 2014 and February 2015). 

This leaks into my studies too. I just cannot get a grasp of that healthy, do a bit of work each day and sleep between 10:30pm and 7:30am, lifestyle going. I have always prepared for exams by locking myself in a room with a desk and some books from 4pm-3am, napping all day and repeating the process. I cannot do 'a little bit' or 'read two chapters'. I have an obsession with completion. I've known I've disliked a book (which I was reading for pleasure) from 3 chapters in but finished it because 'I have to'.  I want to write whole 3000 word essays in one sitting and read 34 chapter novels in a day. 

This is not feasible. 

I need to stop setting such unrealistic goals. Because they only lead to disappointment. 

I've been trying to challenge the whole 'all or nothing' thing recently on this blog. I told you I was going to post weekly. I didn't go into detail to much but I had two simple rules/: 

1. You have to post weekly 

 2. It doesn't matter how good it is the rule is just to post. 

This is a realistic goal which I can stick to. And actually, I'm not disgusted by the content I've been putting out. I feel better about creating than I did in February. The pressure to post weekly is a healthy pressure which I can maintain. I am finally challenging a life long habit and I think I'm challenging it successfully. 

Setting realistic goals is something I'm trying to apply across all of life at the moment, including revision. If you set goals which can be achieved you will feel good about yourself. If you set yourself 700 tasks to in a day and only manage 3, you will feel disappointed and like you have failed when in reality, you should be focusing on the 3 things you did do. This is basic logic which for some reason has taken me 19 years to learn. 

Exam season is approaching and a lot of you probably have exams and deadlines. Please don't be a wally like me. Set those realistic goals and look after yourselves.