The Power of Ten

Are you stuck on a project? Is your stomach tied in knots because you're not doing what's on your "to-do" list? Have you heard of The Tolerable Ten?

On a post about overcoming procrastination, http://www.successfulacademic.com/ recommends we work at a task for ten minutes that we've been putting off. Is it something we need to start? We can do that in ten minutes. Is it a project we've bogged down in? We can tolerate a ten-minute tackle of a difficult spot. After staying with the venture for ten minutes, we can choose to continue working on the project or quit. Staying with a dreaded task for ten minutes builds our confidence. We can do it, even if we have to do it ten minutes at a time.

The important thing is just starting, or in many cases, starting again. I have an article I promised I'd rewrite the night before I left for the Philly writers' conference. After the conference, I had company for almost two weeks. Then I lost a week concerned with many things. When I finally sat down to do the rewrite, I discovered my notes were missing. I probably left them in Philly. So I've dreaded having to admit to the person I interviewed I haven't finished the profile rewrite.

I can do this. I really can. In perspective, it's not that big a deal. I've allowed myself to be sidetracked. All I have to do is sit down (half-way there--I'm sitting) and rewrite the article ten minutes at a time. I can pick up the phone and dial her number to ask for details if I need to. I can do that in ten minutes. I might be a little embarrassed, but I will survive.

So what have you been putting off? Writing? Editing? Cleaning? Calling? Confronting? Set a timer for ten minutes. Take a deep breath. Let's get unstuck. Let's get started. Let's begin and finish incomplete projects ten minutes at a time.

More Powerful Than the Written Word

My friend Barbara flew up from Florida to attend the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers' Conference with me. After the conference during her visit, we had lunch with her friend Betty who told us about a doctor's appointment she had.

During extensive testing, her doctor discovered the blood pressure in one of her legs was lower than the pressure in the other. He told her he wanted her to walk an hour a day seven days a week. "You'd think he'd at least give me Sundays off," she said.

Betty doesn't walk the hour in one session. Some days she'll walk the length of the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk and back. That takes her 45 minutes. Then she'll walk the other 15 minutes at her home later in the day.

Last Christmas her kids bought her a treadmill so she didn't have to get out in the weather. She's not a TV watcher, she said, so she'd walk 30 minutes during the noon news broadcast and 30 minutes during the evening news. As she told her story, I felt a few pangs of guilt and shame.

I have a treadmill gathering dust in my living room. Sure, I was going to walk while I watched TV, too. "You need to get some kind of exercise," my husband has said. "Why don't you walk?" So we bought a used treadmill.

"You need to walk at least 30 minutes a day three days a week," more than one doctor has told me over the years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've read the articles. I really have. I know the benefits of exercise for physical and mental well-being.

Why did one woman's story over breakfast at IHOP motivate me to get moving? Picture this. Betty is 86. Can you see this dear lady walking along the boardwalk every day or on a treadmill in her living room when weather doesn't permit?

On the way home from our meeting with Betty, Barbara and I had a heart-to-heart. "My doctor thinks I walk every day," she said, "because I lied to him." Ah. My sister. "If Betty can do it, I can do it, too," she said. Barbara turned 82 on her last birthday.

More powerful than the words I read in all those articles on-line and in magazines and pamphlets, more motivational than hearing my husband's, my doctor's, and Dr. Oz's encouragement is the power of example. Who would have thought an 86-year-old woman would be strong enough to get my sedentary body up and moving?

We can't spend all our time in front of the computer. Let's get out there and motivate someone to be her best self. Do you have a motivational story to tell? Write it. Share it. But better than writing it is living it.

We Can't Do Everything -- But We Can Do Something

I just returned from the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers' Conference. What a great (exhausting) four days! I met so many wonderful writers and came home with new focus.

Liz Babbs, one of the speakers, said Great Britain is a post-Christian nation and she sees America quickly following. She talked about darkness in Great Britain. A missionary/writer serving in Bulgaria talked about the darkness in Bulgaria and how difficult it was to share the gospel. The people are discouraged, without hope, she said. America as a post-Christian nation? What do those in darkness need but light?

Let's keep the ground fertile for the message of life. What can you write today to let your light shine? Jesus is not dead. Neither are we. As long as we have breath, our writing is important. Let's put God's love in writing.

Write a letter to someone struggling and remind them of your love. Write an article, a devotion, a brochure, a letter to an editor, an e-mail to offer hope, comfort, encouragement. Do a little thing today. The book can wait. Wrap your words in an envelope of prayer, stamp with love and send your message on its way.

Let's commit to being light, sharing light, through our writing. Remember the Motel 6 tag line, "We'll leave the light on for you"? Let's leave the light on for our children.

Keep On Keeping On

I need about two more weeks to get ready for writers' conference. But instead, I have two days. I've been focused on preparation for more than a month.

Early on, I studied the list of authors, editors and agents coming to the conference. I requested meetings and pulled out articles I wanted to present. I had plenty of time, I thought, to get the writing done.

But this morning, I was still struggling with getting one article just right. How could I best say what I wanted to say in those worrisome paragraphs?

I needed some help. Then one of Oswald Chambers' devotions from My Utmost from His Highest came to mind. From December 15th, "Approved Unto God":

"If you cannot express yourself on any subject, struggle until you can. If you do not, someone will be the poorer all the days of his life. . . Always make a practice of provoking your own mind to think out what it accepts easily. . . . The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance."

This morning I wanted to quit. I didn't see how I could finish the article. But I know this: just when we want to quit, it's time to keep on.

All an editor at conference can do is say no. And if she does, then I have a completed article to send to another market when I get home.

An Encouraging Story

Yesterday I caught part of an interview on the radio with author William Moss. He said he'd gotten an order for 1,000 copies of Finding Inner Peace During Troubled Times for distribution to inmates. He got a second order for 4,000 more. If you go on Amazon you'll see this book was published in 2009. Moss said he's gotten over 100 letters from inmates telling him how his book has changed their lives.

Here's the encouraging part of the story. Moss wrote the book after he became sober six years ago at the age of 85. That's not a typo.

So tell me again how you'll never be free from that thing that plagues you? How you've given up on yourself or on someone else, how you've given up hope? How you'll never get published? How you can't change? How you're too old?

Hmm. Okay. That's what I thought.

Unexpected Surprises

A delightful new book in our public library collection is Tereasa Surratt's A Very Modest Cottage, a Country Living Book by Hearst Books, a division of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. Ms. Surrratt describes the process of moving a 1920's log cabin she'd dreamed about owning as a child across two states and renovating it. You'll appreciate the authors humor and the ample color photographs. One of Surratt's comments on page 32 made me close the book and smile. I had to think about her observation and mull over it.

She describes what she calls the beauty of low expectations. "You are never disappointed if you predict only disaster." She was talking about a weather forecast during the cottage's cross-country trip. But think about it if you're a reluctant writer. Isn't it true that you are never disappointed if you predict only doom and gloom?

What are your predictions of disaster regarding your writing? You'll never get published, right? You can't compete with all the talent out there? Your writing will never be good enough? The topic has already been covered?

If we don't write and submit what we write, then we'll never feel the sting of rejection. But rejection isn't that big a deal. It's just a little sting. We can face disappointment and still go about our daily business. We're tough.

Judging Our Work

I'm taking a six week pottery class. Jessie is a very talented young woman in the class. Every piece she's made both by hand and on the wheel looks like it should be on display in a museum.

Jessie comes from a family of artists. Her grandmother was a water colorist. In going through her grandmother's things after her death, Jessie said she found some wonderful paintings that her grandmother evidently didn't like. Sometimes Jessie found paintings on both sides of the paper, and sometimes the paintings had been discarded for scrap. Jessie said she went through her grandmother's discards, and she framed paintings she loved to display in her house.

After someone else in class groaned about how pitiful his work was, our instructor, Kate, said she's noticed we often don't realize how good our work is. Everyone else's work looks better, we think, than ours. We're all guilty of comparing our work to others'.

In our last class, Kate asked us to get all our pieces together to glaze. I saw one vase I thought was so beautiful I consciously thought, "I wish this were mine." I picked it up, turned it over to see whose initials were carved into the bottom, and there they were -- JD, mine. Under pressure to crank out a piece the week or so before, I'd rolled out a slab, chosen a stamp for design, and attached a bottom. It was a simple piece I'd done quickly, and after it went through the fire, I loved it. Hopefully I'll still love it after the glaze is applied.

We are not in position to evaluate our own work. Just do it. Let it sit a week. When you go back to read your manuscript, you might be surprised.

originally written 10-15-10