A long time ago, I read this book*. I didn’t like it, it was horrible.

*Essentialism by Greg McKeown

I’m reluctantly concluding I might need to reconsider. It seems wherever I’ve wandered over the interwebs the past week, everyone is saying how wonderful it is, how life-changing it is. Pfffff.

What’s prompted this change of heart?

I did a little exercise. No, not this sort (although I did this, too)

The sort where you take a blank (online) calendar and add in all the things you’d LIKE to do in a day or week, with pretty colours and everything - so when stuff comes in to your schedule, it sits on top of this ideal scenario, and you can see at a glance if indeed it does…fit.

It also doesn’t account for the whole planning an ideal week where you get everything done but in reality end up sitting like a potato for half of Thursday trying to work out how to use GarageBand to change the ringtone on your phone 🫠

So back to this ‘essentials’ nonsense

I then tried to come up with a list of essential things I absolutely need to do in a week. A ‘bare-minimum, keep-the-show-on-the-road’ sort of week. Something that allows for potato days, just-not-feeling-it days, and wheels-coming-off days.

Pretty swiftly, this escalated to include lists of essentials for all the different areas of life. Business stuff, if I want to keep things ticking along. Art stuff, so I’m not a complete fraud who only tells other people what to do (plus, exhibitions coming up, all that sort of thing). Home stuff, so we’re not living in a sort of Young Ones type of scenario (fun fact: our friends in Bristol live just down the road from the pub in the TV series).

And pretty soon after starting that list, it all started to look like a horrendous To-Do list that had an absolute snowball’s chance of ever being completed. What a waste of time. AGAIN.

Tiny habits

We had our last Creative Chaos Club this week, and even though my studio is now considerably tidier than it was at the start, I posed the question: how likely is it to descend into chaos again? Answer: very likely - because it’s ME who’s in charge of what comes in, what gets used, and what doesn’t get put away.

Time for another book? This one* - one that I did enjoy reading, but too long ago.

*Atomic Habits by James Clear

What’s ONE tiny thing I could do (and I’m not doing already) that would make the BIGGEST difference?

Doesn’t take a genius to work out that it’s actually putting stuff away. Even if I only took one minute to put one thing away at the end of the day, my space would be better than it has been the last few months.

Sigh. And how annoying, that the concept of doing one tiny thing fits very neatly into the idea of concentrating on the essentials, not the everythings.

But understanding, and being able to DO, are two very different things

The best bit (such as there is a best bit) of having ADHD is being able to see POTENTIAL and POSSIBILITIES in so many things. It’s super, because creativity. But it makes simplifying anything almost impossible. Everything is connected, everything is interesting, everything is important.

Approaching things sideways

Yesterday, I shoved all thoughts of lists and To-Dos to one side, as I’d given myself the whole day to have a play around in my newly tidied space, dig out some projects, and get a bit of an idea for the things I could work on to have something to show for myself next year, at exhibition time.

Sitting at my desk idly wondering what to do first, I glanced along my shelves and discovered a box of bits from the Tansy Hargan retreat last year. I’ve been back to spend another week with Tansy since, but still haven’t finished this project from last time. I actually took the box from the shelf thinking I could empty it and use it for something else…but as I started to look at the contents, handle them (with the intention of throwing some things away, like the air-dry clay beads) ideas started to pop up, and I found myself reaching for paint, varnish, fabric scraps…

And before I knew what was what, I’d started to create. And as I painted my air-dry clay beads with fluorescent pink paint, I realised I’d also just created my little list of ‘essentials’ for art. Huh.

• Gaze into space; do nothing

• Handle my materials

• Make something, anything…

  • one mark

  • one stitch

  • stick something down

  • join two things together

  • arrange things into patterns

And suddenly, it all fitted into place and as I was working, I found my list of ‘essentials’ for everything else, too. As so many times before, it was easiest to approach things sideways i.e. forget all about it, do something else instead.

And while I doubt the little things I fiddled with yesterday will lead to a finished masterpiece to put on the wall of an exhibition, it rekindled that creative fire🔥and I’m now full of ideas again.

I’m pretty pleased with my ‘essentials’ list, too

It’s simple - remarkable! And while it does still look a little like a To Do list, I reckon it’s not a bad little checklist for life - well, for my life.

What would your list of ‘essentials’ look like?

And is there one tiny thing that would make everything else easier?

Leave a comment

Until next time,

I’m off to do a few more essentials before the day is over…that daylight is already slipping away! And I need to devise something suitably Samhain-y for dinner tonight. Something involving pumpkin?!

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