Finish hard things that are on no one’s agenda but your own

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What’s the Creative Focus Workshop?

The CFW helps creatives and small business owners create sustainable work practices and avoid burnout while getting big, ambitious projects finished.

I’ve led the CFW for over 8 years, teaching people how to finish the dream projects that no one is waiting for but themselves. We build executive function and internal motivation for focusing and finishing. And we do it with loads of compassion and acknowledgement of our complex, demanding, full human lives.

Over the years, as I’ve personally worked with hundreds of creative people, it’s become increasingly clear:

Productivity, efficiency, and discipline are simply NOT viable answers to the question of “how do I make sure I’m spending my life doing what’s most important to me?”

In fact, they’re the enemies of success. (Even success at simply getting stuff done.)

“Productivity” is how you become your own worst boss, burn yourself out, and learn to hate what you love.

“Efficiency” is a fantastic way to squeeze all the joy out of your work so that it’s just as tedious as everything you’re doing now.

“Discipline” sets you up for such a toxic relationship with your work that you’d rather clean your brother’s bathtub grout with your own toothbrush than work on your projects.

This approach leads to misery and burnout. It’s a crappy way to live, and not only that: it doesn’t work. Not over the long haul, and often not even in the short term.

Escaping this toxic approach to productivity often leads to what seems to be its complement and solution: lowering expectations, pulling back, and focusing on self-care. And to be clear, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with retreating and taking care of yourself when you’re hurting and need it.

But where does that leave your ambitions and ideas?

If you’re not cracking down on yourself with brutal discipline and punishment…

How are you supposed to finish hard things that no one cares about but you?

In the Creative Focus Workshop, we do things differently.

Instead of the old cycle of: create a massive project, drive yourself as hard as possible, then crash and nurse yourself back to health, we aim to build a sustainable, even joyful, ongoing practice for planning and finishing work.

With a thoughtfully-designed practice, you can pursue your ambitious projects and bring your ideas to life without misery and self-punishment.

You can build internal motivation and self-accountability (the best kind!) without resorting to shaming yourself when you fall short.

You can pay yourself first and put your most important work at the head of the line, every day, while also prioritizing your mental and physical health, your relationships, and the rest of your wildly complicated life.

The program has two major components:

Part one is mastering high-quality, reliable decision-making to determine how best to spend your limited time, which reduces overwhelm and anxiety about task and time management.

Part two is implementing a practice of paying yourself first with your time. When you do that, it translates to following through and finishing those demanding projects that have the promise of moving your business forward, but that normally get back-burnered in favor of the mountain of urgent…everything…that we face on a daily basis.

I’ve had students make films, develop businesses, finish and publish novels, put on career retrospective exhibitions, launch apps, you name it. After running this course with over a thousand students, I know the material works.

Oh, and who the heck are you, “Jessica Abel”?

In case an invitation was forwarded to you and we’ve never met: I’m a cartoonist and author, and founder of Autonomous Creative, where I work with creative entrepreneurs who want to build solid, reliable, growing businesses without sacrificing their health or sanity.

I’ve published many books, including Growing Gills: How to Find Creative Focus When You're Drowning in Your Daily Life, Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio, the graphic novel La Perdida, and two textbooks about making comics, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures and Mastering Comics.

I’ve also have taught at the university level for 25+ years. Between that and launching Autonomous Creative in 2015, I’ve been developing courses and road-testing them with real people for my entire career. That experience has given me a broad and nuanced ability to help people in all kinds of circumstances, with plenty of neurodivergence in the mix, to surprise themselves with what they can pull off—without relying on “self-discipline” and generally being horrible task-masters to themselves.

Participate in the Creative Focus Workshop on desktop…or get the app to join in on the go

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