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This is part of a series of entries on Making Ideas Happen.

In LEADERSHIP CAPABILITY, the part of the book on the third and last element of the formula (see Blog I), Belsky first addresses “the rewards overhaul.” We need to overcome systems of short-term rewards built in to school, traditional employment, etc. Not that they’re bad, but that they get in the way when pursuing long-term goals or extraordinary things. What to do first?

Unplug from the traditional rewards system. As you shift your focus away from short-term rewards, you must be willing to go without “success” in the eyes of others….

While it can be psychologically and financially difficult to depart from the race toward conventional rewards after a lifetime working with one mind-set, doing so is imperative to succeeding in the long term. Otherwise, you will struggle to sustain your long-term projects amidst the desire to be validated in the near term.

Going without “success”? Psychologically and financially difficult? Can I get an amen?! Totally just described my life over the last several years. We are not alone.

This is part of a series of entries on Making Ideas Happen.

A few things on Reference Items.

Years ago, when I started anew to dig into acting and music and writing and other non-corporate America stuff, I got some nice notebooks. This was a good idea, finding a notebook I liked instead of just buying whatever could be found on the shelves of Duane Reade. One brand I’m fond of is Miquelrius, and they often come in colored sections (example) and I suppose the colors are for a filing or organizing of some sort. After a while, I ignored the colored sections and just started taking notes page by page with a date at the top and putting a start date and end date on the title page when it got full.

Fast forward to 2011 and me reading MIH and coming upon this:

References Are Worth Storing, Not Revering

The tendency to take notes … and compulsively save various types of handouts … is ingrained from our early days in elementary school.

For many of us, this habit of recording and organizing everything has become a time- and space-consuming behavior with no real payoff.

While we might cherish the opportunity to refer back to the thoughts or main points gathered in meetings and brainstorms of the past, we rarely have the luxury to do so. Truth be told, we can barely complete our Action Steps amidst the chaos of the everyday, let alone refer back to References.

What to do instead?

1. Reduce your scribe-like tendencies, especially if you know that when the notebook closes, Action Steps and References and all that you wrote of value disappears from your mind.

2. Use a chronological pile (or file). Yes! Validation of what I’ve been doing for a while now. In this day of scheduling software, it is easier than ever to match meetings in the past with exact dates, and then in turn to use that date — and nothing more — as the way to label it to later find any notes you might need. Just put everything in one big pile! Efficient. Simple. Keeps your space clear.

3. When you get a handout or URL or whatever, question it. “What is the relevance? For what purpose would I refer back to this at some point?” If you can’t answer the question, throw the Reference out.

I look around at my workspace, and see only partial progress in this regard. But progress, nonetheless. One manila folder for 2011 is better than the previous, ever-increasing number of manila folders I went through for this subject and that, and then new sub-subject and blah blah blah.

Does this help? Heidi?

This is part of a series of entries on Making Ideas Happen.

A few things on Action Steps.

“Action Steps are to be revered and treated as sacred.”

“The most productive people pay attention to the finer details of their rituals to keep themselves engaged. As you develop your own system to manage Action Steps, you will want to make it ‘sticky.’ ”

Action Steps are best when they start with verbs. This is not something eye-opening for me as I read MIH. If I dig into past records on my computer, I see that most of my items have always started with verbs, but I see some random exceptions:

Dry cleaning
Quarters!
Discover payment due 6/22
Pics to State Farm

While these are pretty clear — clear and concrete is key — it’s still easy to see that these items become that much more actionable if I phrase them with a verb first:

Take jacket to dry cleaners
Put quarters for parking in my car
Make payment on my Discover card (due 6/22)
Email pics to State Farm

Now, as I wrote earlier, the word action jumps off the page for an actor. There’s talking and feeling and other gerunds that actors do, but more and more I’ve found ways in which the key to doing good acting work is in the doing. Similarly, writing Action Steps this way is simply more better (although there’s something powerful about “Quarters!” just the way it is, now that I think about it).

This is part of a series of entries on Making Ideas Happen.

From MIH: “A surplus of ideas is as dangerous as a drought. Without some structure, you can become an addict of the brain-spinning indulgence of idea generation.”

If you’ve sensed this to be true for you, it may help to shift some energy towards “project management.” So says MIH, but … yikes! I remember being introduced to project management in my first office jobs via complicated charts and convoluted software that later became Microsoft Project. That approach seems pretty craptacular still, and I don’t think that’s what MIH is advocating (though smart use of technology is encouraged).

What MIH recommends is the Action Method. It can be implemented in different ways (paper, computer, what-not), but it comes down to a few principles:

1. A relentless bias toward action pushes ideas forward.
2. Stuff that is actionable must be made personal.
3. Taking and organizing extensive notes aren’t worth the effort.
4. Use design-centric systems to stay organized.
5. Organize in the context of projects, not location.

I find the 2nd point a non-issue, as I’m a team of one and I care about my life. I find the 3rd and 5th points freeing. So many notes I’ve taken, then organized, then never looked at. So many times I’ve tried to separate “at work” from “at home.” I find the 4th point a vindication of the priority I’ve placed on aesthetics over the years. All of this is meaningless or crippling if you don’t like doing it, on some level. Beauty is a key component to me liking something.

That leaves mostly the 1st point to work on: A relentless bias towards action. Paraphrasing from MIH, the Action Method begins with a simple premise: everything is a project. Every project in life can be reduced into these three primary components. Action Steps are the specific, concrete tasks that inch you forward. References are sketches, websites, handouts you may want to refer back to.¹ Backburner Items are things that are not now actionable but may be someday.

As you go about your day, you’re generating Action Steps, References and Backburner Items at a fast clip, aren’t you? I know I am. Ideas in the shower, in the car, wherever. Much of this will be lost if not captured. When captured properly, I think it’s freeing, not burdensome, because the bigger burden comes from a sense of, “What was I supposed to be doing?” or, “What was that great idea I had yesterday morning?”

MIH advocates their own software to capture information and keep track of Action Steps, but I am using Things. I’ll confess that the jury is still out on how well this works, but so far I think this is my experience: Using Things well helps me. Using Things poorly makes life miserabler (if that’s a word).

Things uses different terms, but I found some keys to using it well on their forums.² Here’s my current approach, with the Action Method on the left, and the corresponding Things functionality on the right.

Action Steps: Next
Focus Items: Today
Backburner Items: Someday
Projects: Projects
Stuff I can’t figure out right this second: Inbox and/or Areas

I’d be curious to hear from you. What software are you using? If not, what lovely paper-based method are you using? (See point 4 above regarding my opinion that your method is best if it’s “lovely.”)

Up next, more details on Action Steps.

This is part of a series of entries inspired by Making Ideas Happen.

Organization and execution. “Organization? But I’m an artist. Get thee hence!” The creative mind is rebellious to restrictions and procedures, to anything corporate. Trust me, I know! But consider the value of organization and execution. I believe that I can be intellectual and a successful actor, that left-brain and right-brain are not mutually exclusive, that a lack of business savvy is one of the biggest problems in this town.¹ More and more of us in all fields in this country are freelancers, so we will increasingly benefit from embracing the value of organization to make ideas happen.

As a writer, I have great ideas. Yes, I switched there, but stay with me. As a writer, I have lots of great ideas for some seriously awesome web series.² I’ve created in my mind Vulvacious, Fur Elise and several other gems. The reason you don’t know me as a writer of amazing web serieses is simple: I’m all creativity, zero organization, zero execution. The creativity is high enough, but that alone means squat.

So, back to organization and execution. Disappointinlgly, MIH tells us that Thomas Kinkade, “Painter of Light,” excels in this area. I can think of some political people who excel at this, too, though their politics are even more hideous than a Kinkade painting. The quality of the idea is not necessarily what makes or breaks its success. More important is what MIH calls “The Action Method, work and life with a bias toward action.”

The word action jumps off the page for an actor. Hence my continued perusal³ of this book.

Relatedly, the best approach to acting, as I’ve come to learn via Stephen Book, is this: Acting is doing, and there’s always more to do. As taught to me, this mainly applies to the craft, that is, the moments on stage or on a set, but it’s also true of pursuing the acting work in the first place — or pursuing anything that’s hard to get.

Stay tuned for more on action and the Action Method.

This is my first entry inspired by Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision & Reality, a book by Scott Belsky that I’ve been reading recently. Don’t remember exactly how I stumbled on this book (pretty sure it was via some sort of bloggish something), but it comes at a good time for me, when the ways I’m using to get things done need rethinking, so I’m grateful for it. Since I see lots of good stuff in this book that applies to working as an actor, to working in the other jobs I’ve had and will have, and to personal tasks, I want to share a few passages that have jumped off the page at me.

To begin, whatever your idea is, Mr Belsky’s six years’ of research resulted in a good formula for making it happen:

MAKING IDEAS HAPPEN = (THE IDEA) + ORGANIZATION AND EXECUTION + FORCES OF COMMUNITY + LEADERSHIP CAPABILITY

That’s it. That’s what the book is about it. And regarding the first component, “The way you organize projects, prioritize, and manage your energy is arguably more important than the quality of the ideas you wish to pursue.” That alone is a lot to chew on, so we’ll end today’s blog there.

Meanwhile, if any of this resonates with you, the internet will quickly lead you to much more on Making Ideas Happen, the Action Method, the 99 Percent, Behance, etc.