By most accounts, 2012 was a heck of a year. I know I'm in good company when I say that the year passed at lightning speed, full of change, a few surprises, and lots of good material for Morning Pages. During all the months that I wasn't writing to you (the last issue of this newsletter went out in February!), I was busy getting down and dirty with a brick-and-mortar studio, having a lot of fun and growing in numerous ways. But the studio is closed now (you can read more about that adventure here) and I'm pleased to resume this point of connection. One of you sweetly wrote to ask me what had happened to the Creative Times--so this is a special shout-out to you, E.D.!

If you haven't been to the Studio Mothers blog lately, come on over and check out my Three Words for 2013, my favorite app for the new year, and as always, the Monday Post, where you can share your creative intentions for the coming week.

I hope that 2012 was kind to you, and that you're on track for a fabulous 2013. In this issue, I share how I'm getting off to a good start this year. If any of these ideas inspire you, let me know!

Warmly,

For many months now--or is it years?--I've been on a quest. A quest to slow things down. A quest to stop running around like a maniac from calendar item to calendar item. A quest to breathe more and do less. And I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about.

After being over-booked and over-worked for way too long, with too many days like this one, I finally realized that I have to stop overestimating the bandwidth of any given day. I have a bad habit of continually anticipating more time than I actually have, not leaving room for the significant amount of unexpected and last-minute requests and events that force me to shoe-horn my "regular" work into the margins. I decided to take drastic action with my schedule.

At the beginning of this month, I enacted a One Thing Only rule. This means that I only schedule one thing on any given day. There are still all of the regular activities--kids, domestic life, errands, hours of laptop-based work--but any kind of one-off that gets written in my calendar has to stand alone. This means that if I have a client meeting in the afternoon, I don't schedule anything else for that day. If I decide to schedule morning coffee with a friend, I leave the afternoon unbooked. If I have a dentist appointment just after lunch, the rest of the day is locked down. Crazy, huh?

It hasn't been easy. I still look at my planner and say "Well, on Thursday I only have a 30-minute coaching call at 11:00. I can fit an hour-long editorial conference call in at 2:00, right?" I mean, who wouldn't do that? But the truth is, that with two or more events scheduled in any given day, reality eats up the rest of my schedule. I end up losing the hours of actual work time that I'd planned on. By the time I crawl into bed, I've been busy all day but I haven't crossed off even half of the action items on my list. As a freelancer and a coach, I don't get paid without billable time--and I don't get billable time unless I'm at my desk, uninterrupted, doing my work.

Working for yourself means that you have the luxury--and the potential curse--of managing your time in the way that works best for you. If you're a fulltime employee at an office, your time isn't entirely within your control. There are days when you sit in endless meetings and feel like you didn't get a moment of actual work done. Is there any way you can creatively apply the One Thing Only rule to parts of your workday, or at least your time away from the office?

In time, as the anxiety about being less scheduled recedes, what takes its place is a greater sense of calmness, focus, and satisfaction. You really can do more with less. I talked about this idea with my good friend Ellen Olson-Brown, who shared with me her daily practice of drawing one thing, all month. Read on for details about Ellen's inspiring practice.

I'll be writing more about the power of one in next month's issue. If you're motivated to try this, or have already enacted a different plan for reducing your busy-ness, I'd love to hear from you.

On the first of the month, I choose one familiar household object--a toy, a necklace, a clock on the wall--to sketch every morning of that month. I draw every day because I want to draw well, and I believe in the power of consistent practice, for two minutes or an hour, or an entire morning. I draw because I find the nonverbal work of visual observation and moving the pencil on the page to be meditative and centering. I draw because anchoring myself in wordless observation and movement ultimately helps me access my writing (the word-soaked centerpiece of the creative work that I do) from a more honest and flexible place.  

Drawing the same object every morning means that I eliminate "but I don't know what to draw!" as a barrier to getting started. It allows me to zoom in, sometimes drawing a tiny portion of an object, or to zoom out and include context and surroundings. It allows me to try and fail and try again to capture curves and shadows and relationships, to be playful, with the knowledge that I can give it another go the next day.

At the end of the month, I flip back through my journal and review the drawings I've done. I literally stack up evidence that I have met my commitment to myself, and this deepens my belief (and the self-fulfilling prophecy) that I'll be able to show up again in the future, for drawing and other projects. I'm often surprised by the quality of what I've drawn, especially on the mornings where I recall feeling frustrated or stuck. And I'm never able to look at the objects I've drawn for 28 or 20 or 31 days without a feeling that they not just props in my life, but friends I know intimately.

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